Author: Inthegazeoftheother

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Orange and Blue

  

I colored your feet orange and blue while you called me names like “whore” and “cunt”, 

your toes brimming like the koi pond pressed in a steely concrete commercial center, juxtaposed erupted urchins of God’s flashing tongue dimmed by man’s dull blunt greed.

You promised me a cutting inscription of flesh, bled poem to my thighs, while I raised my glass to meet your eyes, full of razor smiles and pinned suggestion.

And while we slashed each other’s will, the poison mist encircled our ears, making rhymes echo, fall flat down the canals and pool in pelvic hollows of warm, viscous amethyst paramnesia.

“Get lost!” you roared. Startled, I gazed upon you, the words traversing lacrimal streams teleprompting your dread: Lose me inside and bring me home to your harbors, belly deep in the will of cabined fear and vicious distraint.

Aloud, my response came: “Let me paint the coraled sea around you orange and blue.” 

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War

  

The war raged a life time, blood and brains dashed to the ground only to be resurrected repeatedly like an ungrateful Lazarus or an unrepentant Prometheus caught in an eternal circle.

One side fought for the good of progress, bravery, cleverness and right action. This side delivered the goods, made the world go round and fed the hungry, sheltered the vulnerable from the elements by sheer will to control.

The other side ceded control, refused to fight and surrendered before the battle began. This side stomped itself invisible, passive and weakly withdrawn, drawn to a light no one could see, a lost vision never achieved, destination never reached.

While one side won the battle, the other won the war. While one side walked in the light, the other created it. However, neither side rested in confidence nor in peace, both sides claiming no victory in vanquishing the other.

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Cheers to You

  

 

“Have a good day. Stay out of trouble,” she says as she pats his naked ass and then flies out the door, already late for work.

Here’s to a year of self-possession and comfort, independence and fulfilling your own expectations. Here’s to love and familiarity, trained fingers and lips finding all the right grooves. Here’s to kindness of kin, those who have your back and keep you no matter what. Here’s to the empathy of strangers and believers. Here’s to compassion and good samaritans, accidental heroes and intentional fools. Here’s to health and good cheer. Here’s to you.

To another year with you in it. 

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Pinwheel Day

  
Arbitrary framework the hours make; 

the shadows perform tragedies on screen-less walls.

When I was 12 I discovered an ache inside me,

one only quelled by singing the love song antidote

in lilting swallows warbling trills at the edges.

Nature offset flame in cool wind balancing my moods

 that hatched my youth to full fledged childlessness.

Today is just a day; life expels to slowly turn pinwheels.

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Hair

  
My older sister played the grooves off this album in 1971. I can still recite every word to some of the songs, and I often burst into a refrain of “Aquarius” when my first-born, Aquarian, squares some of her traits to her zodiac sign. Sometimes I belt out the tune merely because it is such a belting kind of song and the edge of my range register of the song can induce a near spiritual experience or maybe it’s just the oxygen deprivation.

Hair defines. 

My hair has always been a badge of horror and honor. Growing up in the hippy long straight hair parted down the middle fashion era, my hair was a horror. I was mortified that my mother had to cut my black frizzy mop very short, pixie style, to save her the time and grief of taming it, the snarls and fuzz that did not hang but billowed everywhere like a balloon around my head. My hair grew out not down. 

But in the 70s when Jimi Hendrix had already made his mark and died to solidify it, somehow afros for everyone called the day. Then, my hair was perfect. A pic and a shake set the wide puffy do–like a giant woolly black powder puff–for the day. Not a hair primper, that suited me fine. 

When the 80s arrived with its feathered bangs and poof teased hairstyles that required hair to hang up and down vertically not horizontally, I was in trouble again. Though my hair did a bit of a mullet in the early 80s, it was back to the search for the perfect stylist professional enough to make order out of the chaos that was my willful unmatched sides of thick naturally unruly curls doing their own thing. Terri and John did decent jobs with my head for the shearing every couple of months I endured to keep legit.

After the 90s, short hair to medium length hair cuts managed a certain neat professionalism to my look until the end of the first decade of the new millennium when the ever-tightening yet losing the grip of my hair’s will came to an end with Gina, the whispering sideline soccer mom color specialist who subtly wooed me into her kitchen swivel chair for the leap into another’s appearance: long blonde, straight hair. 

And the chorus kicks in:

Gimme a head with hair

Long beautiful hair

Shining, gleaming

Streaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there hair

Shoulder length or longer

Here baby, there mama

Everywhere daddy daddy
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Flow it, show it

Long as God can grow it

My hair

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If I were your eyes…

  
I’d find more than the prize to keep myself on

or the road

if I were your eyes.

If I saw what you saw, 

I’d be wary too, 

wondering what next, who else wants what I have, 

what I need to protect.

Gazing out from yours, 

the world would be clear,

hindsight perfection,

for mistakes are costly and pre-calculations wise. 

Peering from under your nose,

I’d assess what’s what,

figure people out,

know their numbers,

predictive labels paying off in fearless dividends.

And if I stared at your desire,

the way you do,

square in her face,

laser cutting pupils

penetrated retinal heart,

a mirror reflection I’d see chestnut fire burning me.

 

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Resolved

res·o·lu·tionˌrezəˈlo͞oSH(ə)n

noun

1.

a firm decision to do or not to do something.

“she kept her resolution not to see Anne any more”

synonyms: intention, resolve, decision, intent, aim, plan; commitment, pledge, promise

“her resolution not to smoke”

2.

the action of solving a problem, dispute, or contentious matter.

“the peaceful resolution of all disputes”

synonyms: solution to, answer to, end to, ending to, settlement of, conclusion to

“a satisfactory resolution of the problem”

Life in balance is like mastering the clutch and stick shift: easing up and pressing down with perfect timing and coordination for smooth acceleration. Overeager with the gas and you rev the engine uselessly, going nowhere as the insufficiently released clutch pins you in place. Quick release without the gas and you lurch and stall. When cars imitate life.

I’m always tempted by resolutions this time of year but I know better. For me, there is no better self-sabotage than to resolve to do something at the start of the year. Too much pressure. While the wholeness of it–starting at the beginning–feels right, the aggressiveness of such perfection clearly undermines any chance of success. Too much gas, not enough release, in other words, stultified with the big anticipation of achievement, I know I will wig myself out with the magnanimity of starting something big, something important, desired.

Because to resolve is to be firm about solving a problem, taking steps to change. Those words are intimidating enough to write: change, problem, solve. 

It’s not a simple equation like some sort of accounting problem. Let’s see. I spent 2015 not nearly motivated enough to keep my environment clutter free and organized or my body exercised enough (probably the key to the lack of motivation), so if we add up the months of non-activity, under motivation, increased clutter, and add a little more motivation and exercise x 2 next year, then that = clean kitchen and work space in 2016.  Nah.

Like writing, the trick is to fool yourself by starting in the middle or anywhere but the beginning. I advise writing students with writer’s block to skip the introduction and start some place less comitted, to lower pressure, somewhere beyond the introductory paragraph of the essay. Same goes for resolutions. Jump in where it is easiest to feel less pressure, say like late February. 

That’s the time to solve the big problems–exercise, eating habits, organization–which takes the right balance of push and pull, surrender and action. The balanced tension and release or stasis grows incrementally by daily practices and mental predisposition. Personally (or impersonally) I am fond of the I-can-do-anything-for-15-minutes timed routine. I set a timer and do one overdue chore, one distasteful task a day, for exactly 15 minutes. The daily doing sets my mind clock, and so I regulate my actions and attitude by the repetition. 

But only if I start on a Tuesday. So here’s to arbitrarily chosen days on an arbitrary Roman calendar to toggling along just as we always do–unresolved and ambling.  
 

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A Cello Rests

 
 

A cello rests in a room, its neck snugged to the corner, 

nearly facing the wall in neglect as if ashamed, 

calumny’s dust. 

Never her fault, I never loved enough, not until late, too late.

I played for spans.

A public school music teacher examining my third grade hands declared, 

“You have long fingers; you’ll play the cello.”

And pronouncement became performance.

I practiced and played: solo, ensemble and orchestra.

Competitions endured at the lust of a failed cello teacher and complicit parents

yielded no more than a B plus plus, merely a red ribbon.

But I scored Romberg’s cello sonata into my fingers for life.

And the taste, a hint of burning desire–first conquest, then mastery.

Until the mid-70s teen culture enwrapped me in smokey rock concerts and pubs,

boys and weed.

And the cello lay low in my childhood home ’til California stole me.

She plays me time to time, decade to decade since then,

testing my resolve and desire, the want-it factor.

She breaks my every attempt, every dream of recapture,

having long ago mastered me.

 

credit: clker.com

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The Other Woman

  
Today, I am the other woman. 

Well, not THE other woman but another woman.

You see, I’m not myself, so I must be someone else.

Someone like me, who I am most other days, does not hide

does not steal away from the controls to cede the center.

Not the spotlight but the hub, co-equal and convergent.

But all the other mothers took my role today, the hiders

much-to-doing but not without martyred smile and cheer,

disposed to giver-worker-bee-busy-as-a-buzz-on-beer.

But I have always been eye of the storm where the stillness

of separation–me from them–oxygenates breathing space.

And yet today, I played her, the subdued sideline spectator,

the other woman waiting in the wings to seduce the shadows,

bait them cover me in downy anonymity, cog-less care free.

Who is she, this other woman impersonating me?

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