Extemporaneous

crumpled paper

on shattered glass

air bears down

pressure never letting up

***

words on crumpled paper

hiding inevitable beauty

unquestionable delicacy 

power beyond measure

power that might never, ever be exercised

***

travertine tile and high gloss high shine

wants needs all desires expressed fufilled

regretted dissected discussed and forgiven

***

sullied words

atop crumpled paper

on a path of shattered glass and hot coals

and gravel

spread across the floor

who could possibly miss it?

A ruined cake of my own design

Yet I was the one

to step

right in the middle of it

Drink my thoughts

and taste the salt in the river

kiss my face and

taste the salt in my tears

make imperfect, lovely caramels and

add salt from the Med

add vodka to pink lemonade slushies and make virgin margaritas

with coarse salt on the rim of the glass

tattoo your name on my hip and my heart and

spill your salty seed across my belly and

love me

love me

love me

Souls tied together

twisted up

in a knot

that cannot be untied;

tangled up strings

that cannot

be straightened out;

an effortless understanding

that can never

be unknown,

surpassing all need for explanation

for scorekeeping or

for words

or for proximity.

This magic,

supernatural, indivisible, invisible

thing that surrounds us -

we can’t, won’t articulate it

but we know it,

feel it,

recognize it

without question

without conversation

without end

I have so many thoughts in my head and none of them are ready to be put on paper.  It’s frustrating.  I wouldn’t really call it writer’s block - the words are there, running around, being blended and reconfigured and dealt with.  And they will be dealt with, eventually. 

But for now, I wait. I sleep. I let the words do their thang, dawg, and I resist the tempation to disappear into the woods or the pool or a bottle of vodka, and I wait, think, write down snippets of something that might be interesting, or intelligble, or somehow, sometime useful.  It’s frustrating but I have been here before and I know the way out will evetually reveal itself.  Sometimes manual labor will do it - yesterday I mowed the grass, cleaned house, even changed sheets (shocking!)and nothing.

Sometimes reading will do it, but nothing on my many, many shelves is appealing to me.

Sometimes church will do it, and I went to church this morning, though not my own, and it was interesting but not inspiring.

Sometimes cooking long, complicated dishes will do it, but it’s hot and no one wants to eat Pasta Bolognese while they sweat through their clothes.

Sometimes music will do it, but I listen to the incredible words of the singer/songwriters I have discovered lately and rather than being inspired, I am intimidated. Why is it that I am 36 and she is 19 and she has written THOSE lyrics and I, who have lived through all kindsa shit has not yet written anything quite so…deep sigh…singable/publishable/memorable…so yeah, music isn’t helping.

So I wait, watch, feed the starter words in my head and have faith that eventually the finished thoughts will tumble out of my head like puppies. And I will post five or a thousand things in one day and the drought will become a flood and y’all will say dude, for reals. Shut up!

But alas, today is not that day. 

And Next Food Network Star is on.  And the kids have been playing Barbies nonstop for two days without cleaning any of it up and dishes and laundry and comparison shopping must be done and I am sure somewhere in there is something that’s my responsibility to deal with.

**disclaimer- I have a migraine and this post may or may not actually make sense and is probably only funny in my head.

But I’m posting anyway.

Why not, right? This isn’t NPR, people. Work with me here!

As we were driving in to work/camp today, people were obviously adhering to the “drive like an idiot and drive people insane and they will stop driving and see, oil crisis soved!” school of thought, and my head. which was already about to explode from the pain, throbbed even more violently. At one point we were behind/beside a Mazda B2000 truck, loaded down with lawnmowers and high chairs, and this person spent an inordinate amount of time driving on the line between the straight lane and the turn lane and my husband said “GET OVER ALREADY! You’re in a Mazda B2000! It’s 2008!  Move along!”  And I said, “It may be a B2000 but 1978 called and they want their truck back.  DOES THAT THING EVEN TAKE UNLEADED GAS?”

Almost immediately after, I spied a new mini with a license plate that said “Lost Boy.” I was expecting some whippet of a nervous little gay boy, smoking and talking on his cell phone, trying desperately to hold onto his youth and avoid looking directly at the breeders lest our hetero-sensibilities somehow rub off on him.  I mean, isn’t that what you would have expected? Instead, Oh Lord.

It was some guy. Some old guy. With salt and pepper hair that was VERY fluffy and brushed back, and a very large salt-and-pepper pornstache on his face.

Husband: Lost Boy? Interesting plate.

Me: I bet he’s friends with [insert name of nervous whippet of a gay boy here].  OH MY GOD! LOOK!

Husband, looking around frantically for impending disaster: WHAT?

Me: LOST BOY needs to shave his pornstache! Jesus!

Husband: What the hell is a….(looks over at Lost Boy)  (laughs hysterically)  Oh, pornstache!

Me: ….

Husband: You know, if you had a headache all the time, you could be a stand up. You’re funny as shit!

Me: I know.

Kids: Can we hear “Mercy” now?

Little kid: But not the song with the bad words in it! I’m not supposed to say “This shit’s driving me crazy.”

Husband: …

Me: …

Big Kid: What’s a pornstache?

Sometimes

when my hair falls in my face

and I gently brush it away

I imagine that

maybe it’s you,

maybe your fingers can feel my silky hair sliding between them,

maybe your breath is on my cheek,

maybe your lips are close enough kiss me

and maybe we can bring

it all back

and maybe,

it can be as amazing

as it was before.

You know how sometimes you just have a freaking awesome day, and everything just clicks and comes together?

I had one of those days today and it felt incredible!

Yeah, I’m gonna need you to check out Newton Faulkner…dreamcatchme

And also Adele…Chasing Pavements

And I hear the new Coldplay is fantastic (oh, Chris Martin, you are skinny but maybe you could fix me!)

Now, let’s talk about the best of all, Alanis Morissette, Flavors of Entanglement.

Oh, she is my hero!

It has been pretty well documented that these songs were penned after the break up of her engagement to Ryan Reynolds.  Seriously. Van Wilder?!  Oh well, who am I to judge?  Whatever happened, we got some fucking awesome songs out of it. 

Track One: Citizen of the Planet

Starts slow and builds to a really cool rock crescendo and crashes back, suddenly, to slow. The strings and bass guitar in this are incredible, and one thing I love about Alanis is that she is SMART. I had to google a bunch of the references in the lyrics, but it was time well spent:

I am a citizen of the planet

My president is Kwan Yin

My frontier is on an airplane

My prison: homes for rehabiliting

(Kwan Yin is the buddhist goddess of compassion…yeah…she’s good!)

Track 3: Straitjacket

I think we have all felt this way at some point or another -

Something so benign from me construed as cruelty

Such a difference between who I am and who you see

Conclusions you come to of me, routinely incorrect

I don’t know who you’re talking to

With such fucking disrespect

This shit’s making me crazy

How you nullify what’s in my head

You say one thing, do another

And swear that’s not what you did

(Just don’t let your kids listen, it’s clear and catchy and they WILL REPEAT IT WHEN YOUR MOM IS STANDING THERE!)  (I heard!)

Track 6  - In Praise of the Vulnerable Man

Her anger is abating a bit, she is realizing he wasn’t ALL bad…I mean, this is a great line:

You are the sexiest man I’ve ever been with

You, never hotter than with armor spent…

Your man arrives home from work, tie loosened, a little tousseled, world weary…and he looks at you at smiles all the way up to his eyes, and the skin around his eyes crinkles and he just looks so hot and vulnerable and oh, girl. Yes.

Track 7: Moratorium

Been here too:

I declare a moratorium on things relationship

I declare a respite from the toils of liaison

I do need a breather from the flavors of entanglement

I declare a full time out from all things committment

Track 8: Torch

This is the song for the woman really coming to terms with the end - she lists all the random things she will miss about him, things uniquely him, universally appealing.

These are the things that I miss
These are not times for the weak of heart
These are the days of raw despondence
And I never dreamed I would have to lay down my torch for you like this

Track 10, Tapes, is one of those that I am just not completely ready to hear yet - it speaks of the background noise we all hear in our heads - you aren’t good enough, you can’t do it, you don’t deserve it…I think when I have a few more weeks of killing those tapes I’ll be ready to listen and absorb.

Then there is the last track, Incomplete.

Listening to and absorbing this song has been life changing for me.

“Incomplete”

One day I’ll find relief
I’ll be arrived
And I’ll be friend to my friends who know how to be friends
One day I’ll be at peace
I’ll be enlightened and I’ll be married with children and maybe adopt
One day I will be healed
I will gather my wounds forge the end of tragic comedy

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture this whole time of being forever incomplete

One day my mind will retreat
And I’ll know God
And I’ll be constantly one with her night dusk and day
One day I’ll be secure
Like the women I see on their thirtieth anniversaries

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture this whole time of being forever incomplete

Ever unfolding
Ever expanding
Ever adventurous
And torturous
And never done

One day I will speak freely
I’ll be less afraid
And measured outside of my poems and lyrics and art
One day I will be faith-filled
I’ll be trusting and spacious authentic and grounded and home

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture this whole time of being forever incomplete

 

Why are you still reading?GO BUY THIS ALREADY!!!!

(No, there is no talk of going down on anyone anywhere BUT IT IS STILL AN AWESOME CD!)

See Part 1 here and Part 2 here

I inhale deeply, breathing in your sweet scent.  Your fragrance drives me crazy, it makes me so hot. I tentatively move forward, kissing the inside of your creamy thighs.  I work my way to the center of your legs, and slowly kiss my way up and down your slit. I feel you open up to me and dip my tongue in, slowly, hesitantly.  I slide my tongue deeper inside you, tasting your juices and feeling your hot, throbbing pussy against me.   I find your clit with my tongue and lick it - reveling in its different taste and texture. I suck it into my mouth and hear you moan, feel you tense.  I circle your clit with my tongue, round and round and round until I hear you scream and moan and whisper my name and feel the rush of new and delicious nectar from your core.  It tastes so good, like honey and sex and spicy cherries.  I kept teasing you, lapping your juices up and wanting to make you cum again.   I remember something an ex-lover did that drove me wild, time after time, and I decide to see if it had the same effect on you. I slide two fingers into your pussy, then pull one out and tease your ass with it, while rubbing your gspot with the other finger and your clit with my warm, wet tongue.

I feel you pulling my hair, I hear your voice, raspy and low with desire, begging me to let you cum, begging me to lick harder, rub harder, oh god yes right there, right there…ohhhhhhhhhh….

The intensity of your orgasm is almost enough to set off my own.  I know I am wet, probably wetter than I have ever been, and I can only imagine what it’s going to feel like when you get me off.

You finally stop shuddering and I slide up so that I am lying beside you, and I wrap my arms around you and kiss the back of your neck and your shoulders, gently, slowly, intentionally.  I find all the places that I love to have a lover touch me after an intense orgasm.  I feel you calm down, I feel  you relax.  You roll over, facing me, pressing your body against me.

 You sigh deeply, relaxed and satisfied.  I love this feeling, knowng I have made you this happy. I kiss your forehead, and remembering that you once told me you get cold after you come, I pull the covers up over us.

You kick them off. “Somehow, I’m plenty warm…” you whisper.  We lay there together for a few minutes, our breathing and heartbeats almost in perfect rhythm.  I almost drift off, my previous urgent need to orgasm easing off a bit. 

Then I feel your cool, smooth hand on my breast, moving down and tracing the curve of my hip. Your touch is softer and yet more sure than I imagined it would be.  Feeling your fingertips on my skin awakens my senses again.  I move my legs apart, giving you access to my wet, hot center.

With your fingertip, you open me up, but just barely. You are determined, I think, to prove to me that sex can be sweet and gentle and still be extremely satisfying.  You find my clit and stroke it slowly, gently, barely touching you. I try to grind my hips against you. I try to get more of you touching me. I try to get more of you inside me, but you resist.

You are a very determined person - you aren’t going to give up on this, no matter how much I beg and plead.

You lower your head, taking my nipple in your mouth. Your warm, soft tongue feels so good, and you lull me into feeling complacent and suddenly you bite down, hard! I cry out and you keep biting, while keeping your very light touch on my clit. I feel my orgasm start at my toes and travel through my body.  I bite my lip to keep from screaming, and I almost black out.  You touch my face, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “Open your eyes, Heather…” so I do, and I see you licking my nectar off your fingers.

“Come here, let me hold you,” you say, and I wriggle into your arms.

I kiss you, feeling again the softness and sweetness of kissing you.

“I’m so  glad we did this…” you say, as I drift off to sleep, the taste of you in my throat, your hands caressing me, our breasts pressing against each other.

“Me too,” I sigh into your neck.

Finally asleep, I don’t dream of anything.  My deepest, most secret, most improbable fantasy has already come true.