icy pours down the spine, splashing red ropes along the way.
while at the core smolders.
and pines needles pierce the ink filled plastic bags overhead.
reaching reaching always up and over.
farther south, ghastly palms lurk to be filled,
receding from street lamp glow.
…
and I overshot it. by 27.6 miles. shyly i bury back through the tunnel i brazenly forged just minutes prior, resigned to retreat and advancement in the self-same sigh.
that feeling after you reach out to someone,
when you know silence was the better option.
and the reason for silence is not even so much for their heart
as for your own.
because you know that regardless of what you say - or don’t say-
their response will be an audio and visual void.
that absence of response, willing rejection of your care
and intentional vulnerability
is a quiet sting of smolder seethe embarrassment.
and then the accusations swarm: you care too much,
need too much, bother too much, talk too much.
you are simultaneously too much and not enough.
but the accuser’s script is on loop;
he lacks new material, and the trite lines
echo pains of generations and millennia of accepting such heavy loads
in isolation and shame.
but where light is shed, darkness cannot dwell.
it’s fact.
so Light, come quickly.
(i am not my faults.)
as this central american explorer stirred a soup of cabbages, grains, and all that sprouts from the earth’s soft soil,
her mouth transformed into a spout of rich wisdom and perspective from Above.
i spent the morning sitting, gazing upon her curl-framed face, drinking in her tales of jungle treks, jaguars, hitchhiking, sowing and reaping from the land, and a God who answers her prayers for food and water with a watermelon.
seamlessly, she continued stitching Truth through the day,
not lifting the needle once in need of light, watered-down chat.
continued on from her story to mine, in the seamlessness that we are all a part of His.
sometimes you must open your eyelids far earlier than they would desire,
for the sake of time spent with a friend from that southern peninsula.
and those are the times that you sit across from her
as she eats peanut butter pie and chocolate milk for breakfast,
and tells you of how her body is broken but her spirit is alive.
whetted hunger for adventure.
it is the renewed remembrance
of the inherited bloodline of my ancestors.
that same blood pumps under my skin,
past my bones, within my veins.
nebulosity terrifies me.
solidity paralyzes me.
i’m a scared kid, generally.
but Your nebulously solid hand holding mine
promises of pure smile & yes.
and in Your eyes, i see that falling is okay.
lemontown - by me.
okay. so it feels really vulnerable and ridiculous to be posting something as.. vulnerable and rough as my shaky-handed attempt at music on here. but i need to get over that fear and share this. music is meant for community, right?
more and more prefacing: i don’t know how to use garageband. i did this on one track, on my front porch tonight, as a last ditch attempt to get a move on and share it. kathleen porter and marygrace wolnski told me to share it. so if you don’t like it, blame them. ; ) just kidding, don’t blame them for anything ever. aaaand to top off this laundry list of disclaimers.. i’m new to songwriting.
if you want to know a babybit of the story at all, “lemontown” is a song about my two months at home at the end of 2011. God called me back home to florida for a season, which honestly scared the crap out of me. but OH. HE IS SO FAITHFUL. and He makes a way! and He even gave me a song about it all. (which, if you know me, is such a desire of my heart).
He truly changed the citrus sting of my Lemontown into the freshness of spring.
and then she wished she could send herself skyward.
throw her body over that generous tree limb,
weave her own four through the cluster of branches spiraling out.
oh, to make contact.
oh, to melt in and become a part of something outside herself..
part of someone outside herself..
enmeshed for each moment. cradled and cradler.
this waking dream led her imagination by the hand,
this waking dream was the snap-spark of origin
that birthed a thousand-and-one unfinished paintings, framed,
credited (or not) to her name.
(to her uniquely anonymous name.)
there is a valley- a minute earthen dip of clay & soil-
where my diminutive, slowly-waking body travels early in the morn.
i rise & shuffle,
half-dreaming,
to that slight & warm cup for my cells and soul.
lungs exhale, ears open, i melt in entirety.
(held.held.held.)
my heartbeat, slow, steadily hums.
(held.held.held.)
His soft footprints press into rich, fertile ground.
(known.known.known.)
funneled into my ears, His song resounds with the natural acoustics that come with knowing the architecture of eternity.
(known.known.known.)
and this is the early-dawn tuning
(loved.loved.loved.)
of good morning,
(loved.)
here am i,
(loved.)
You are all.
(loved.)
today at the shore
i unzipped my chest,
aching to hold the ocean
inside these ribs.
but the briny phantom flow flew
through the slits hung among the rungs
and flitted off,
reflecting sand dollar and gull wings,
basking in the elusivity
of ebb and flow.
