Hustle Meditations

In the morning I ache for the shape
your body makes in my arms,
as though I were simply a glass
aware of her purpose to be filled
to brimming.

It is summer and the whole thing feels like
beginning again.
We all want to go mad and run outside,
because we know that every inch of our bodies was made to be kissed
by the extensive embrace of light.

I will admit; sometimes it feels like
sorrow
as the rays bend toward afternoon.
We rush to fill our glasses, as the day cools
like fresh bread out of the oven.  We rush to fill
our nights.

Watching the stars, I feel as though I am pregnant
with the whole world.
I’d swear you were all my lovers.

There is a splendid parting
that can occur only after we have been
utterly combined.
I wish
to become only more of myself,
which is love, gritty and beautiful.

At times, I don’t think you know
how you have changed my life.
This is why I need to spend my hours writing—
to find the next closest exact way to say it,
in search for that perfect definition that becomes
Love
itself.

Hailstorms, the herald of summer magick–
I am reminded of adventures as a young woman, learning to practice in the high altitude.
It was a dance of chemistry and broom and glass.
We camped in the attic and worked love spells, and then we wallpapered the entire house in poetry.
Now I like to cum when it thunderstorms
Orgasms like Kali
the sky seems to share in my shudder and I can hear my heart cry out, shatter.
Sometimes the artist finds herself in darkness and you
are left there suspended, dear Reader
on the edge of death–
there are teachers and master sorcerers
Enlightenment is at hand (and foot, and any other part belonging to human)
consciousness dawning
up up and away
always exploding
all ways the big bang, the morning of creation

reincarnation

When it hails, the air feels a little dangerous, a little too full of charge.
We tuck ourselves into bed, and fuck our lovers
or we make love to ourselves
and wait

There is a skill to possessing desire,
being the rider

and not letting it consume us.

liberation
of the heart
dear pilgrim

To those who cry artistry is but a career obsession with the self I say
art is made to touch.
We must let the world work on us
caressing us like rain storms and we must
protect the rain
as dear

as our beloved’s heart.

We can resist our designs in many ways,

dulling our senses in an illusion,
yielding our strong hearts over to strength of a drink, or more

becoming forgetful
is also a choice–
we are so powerful we must decide to shut down awareness.
When these feelings climb too high for feeble minds to remain steady
we might tell ourselves we are refusing the pre-destined routes of the robot
but this too is a mistake, ranking
this over that
consciousness over consciousness
space over space

What if we are more like the robot than we imagine?
we too can perform single-pointedly
that which we have been built to do.
We are light conductors.  We are channels.

And Love, sometimes I am anxious, too.
And while these high frequencies conduct through us, and down into the ground
maybe we don’t have to do anything, reach for something a little stiffer
maybe we can be pliable, be together,
holding one another steady.

We imagine we are grabbing a small corner of private space
something just for ourselves, when our eyes meet over the rim of a glass and our bodies almost merge
when really what we are measuring out in glasses, is just a metaphor for the parts of us that soar free.

When I make love to you
I am making love to the world.  This is always occurring
our dance is no different today but sometimes I seem to need it more.
Perhaps this shows me how far I have wandered, how many moments I have chosen to forget.
We are intimate.  We are our most private utterances.  We are billboards.

I have a small confession: I whispered the word “Love” to the ice in your drink when you weren’t looking
felt the molecules rearrange.
and when you drank a toast down, you were drinking my love potion.
but you can make your own
go mad with desire to be close to the Beloved, who is everywhere.  All you have to do is breathe, and perform
with all the strength you have
that which sets your heart free.

For this piece, I have my Chere Mama to thank as the inspiring muse.  Well, her and the gorgeous California sun, and some days spent by the sea celebrating her 60th birthday this past weekend.  It’s nice to take time to come home, re-charge, and reunite with some family friends.  Plus, my parents know how to throw a party.  So while it’s not really a Hustle Meditation, it is another type of love poem, which as you know are the types that I love best.  Please enjoy.

xx

Sterling

 

 

Every day is an opportunity to bless and be blessed,
and some days
I feel the truth of this, can barely contain myself in it.
I just sit in awe, letting my lower lip drop a fraction
feeling so delightfully tangled
and not caring the way the elements
play with my hair.
In moments like this I know the truth,
that eyes are made for so much more than seeing;
that I exist somehow also to be seen
watched and tenderly tended as I grow,
blossoming into brilliant flower and fruit.

And as I watch her
I aspire to become as beautiful and wise.
I want to learn to do as she does,
maturing enough to take these jeweled petals and
give myself away
becoming the medicine someone needs,
the spice in a soup made to soothe and nourish,
or the note in a perfume that enchants.
I hope one day to be picked and made into a tea
or a sweet smelling bath for a child weary from pushing her tender shoots out of the earth for the first time,
like my mother was for me.

I know that I will remember to dance,
to roll around, hang upside down if the mood strikes me, spread myself across the world,
caressing every corner before I go.
I will dry gracefully like roses that still hold the magic of a thousand valentines or love spells,
becoming somehow more potent as the heavenly bodies whirl around us.
It is a blessing to know now that we are dancing together.

In this moment there is nothing but gratitude
and I feel so much more like a thief than a poet
to have so much.
So I breathe in deeply
the blessing that is today
knowing I am only borrowing the wind.
As my breath dissolves, I feel such relief
because I am giving it back to you.

Perhaps I can be the poet after all;
she is the one who gives everything away.

For you Mama!  On your birthday!

There is a Contemplative Dance Practice
that involves just the eyes:
direct focus, eyes closed,
soft gaze, and peripheral vision, or even
looking at the spaces between things.

This is a way to dance, when

—forget getting out of bed—

bravery
is staying awake,
is the willingness to continue
to draw breath through the static of pain
or the crushing weight of
i don’t know what, something raging,
something not
functional
is a loose term, anyway.

Once I thought it was such a priority,
becoming a functioning adult, a contributing
mainstreamer.
I tried hunching my shoulders and cracking the whip,
sucking in my gut until I could
no longer draw breath–
all this to fit it’s dictate.

Then something broke;
and I began to celebrate my dysfunction, my
disassociation making excuses
for me,

I am not like them
stay separate, out of reach or
give up when it’s hard to say
what I mean

reducing myself to miscommunication
and imbalanced equations.

 

Now I realize more about what my functions really are.
I function each day
as a conduit, a conductor, a translator.
Or a mirror.
A balancing agent.
An answer.

I can be functional while catatonic
because I am a poetic scientist
observing —peripheral gaze—
my own unresponsiveness.
I listen to the voices fire command after command
after command
and answer with
a blink at the edge of capacity
because today this is my dance.

I function
as a lover,
using the special nuances I know you like, filling page after page,
or making love for hours,
seeing only that darkness of my eyelids and
the brilliant flashes of light.

I practice listening.
I am trying to learn to stand myself,
to hear the bias and the slander and the poison
and not use it
because
it might be my function to sing a song about you
and I must be still so I can hear all the notes
written in the spaces between silence.

I function as your muse,
a friend
looking directly at you, becoming that spark
igniting movement suddenly,
changing behavior in wild fits
or driving you delightfully mad.

I can be a functional fantasy,
inviting your gaze to slide over me I
do things for you that you might not do for yourself.
I remind you of things and
distract you from things.
I even let you close your eyes.

I couldn’t possibly compensate you
for all the time you have spent
being kind to me, for what you have taught me.
And I swear I will forget the tally marks as I learn
to relax into this economy
of caring for one another.

And what if it were also my job
my function
to be optimistic,
confident
that despite all of this appearance of brokenness
with its clamoring symptoms and crippling side effects
I can soften my gaze, knowing
I am complete?

What if we were to realize
we work,
and we each get to decide
how we fit together.

Inspired by the novels of Calvino, I will use the opening
lines to tease you a little bit.

For I am drunk and awake the same moment your alarm sounds in dark. In this light

the lines blurr against jim morrison and french lingerie and green cigarettes

a sweet yet intoxicated haze to wrap around you like uncertain cadence and shaky rhyme

incense ashes and prayers i cannot deny

this is a seduction and

 

You were distracted by my perfume anyway.

When I have your full attention
I will smile just for you.
I promise to do nothing
else until you have recovered.

I like using the body of the poem to relax,
notice the beauty, the small details, feel the drop of moisture sliding over muscles and
down my back as I toss my head
way back, stretching my neck.
Even I can smell pleasure building as my spine
purrs and undulates.

I  love that we have learned to drink to one another
a hundred different ways
and chilled tequila has become a happy prescription
for damp afternoons.
I run my tongue along my lips and taste salt.

Here is the moment I wish poems could take all night
because there is never just one rolling,
shuddering, echoing climax,
not if it is done well.

The poems you like best
are the ones that leave you breathless,
reaching for
the poet’s heart still beating
behind the crystalline lattice of ink on a page.

Time and again, you pull my work off the shelf
because it always seems fresh to you;
in secret I come to the library at night,
erasing and rewriting every page.

You are not alarmed—
no one would guess you are searching
for an author who can communicate
a longing as wide as yours.

When you open the book of my poems
you detect a faint smell, not like settled dust
or yellowing paper;
a sweet smell that hovers just out of reach,
a scent that you wish could fill your house.

You lick your lips, already thirsty—
nostalgic for a dream not quite formed or remembered.
You are bracing for the ending, and tremble at my
patience, how I revolve slowly and say
Let us toast pages that have never been written

Let us toast the pages we may hold in our hands.

I will never tell you what is in my perfume.
You will inhale the last drops into you,
never knowing where else you could find it,

turning each and every page, until the last.

I cannot help but save the last lines for the end.
These are always a little sad and I try to make them clever
but Darling I know
there is a tender sorrow to even
the endings we choose.

What is it in us that craves a fresh start?
Perhaps it is our curiosity,
that impulse so embraced by children–
choice-less in the youthful mind
dulled by boredom and accumulation.

What is it in us that craves a fresh start?

Perhaps it is our wisdom,
knowing we are already new.

***

We think of each other as something solid.

He watched her through many shifting shades of light, lipstick, mood.
He studied her form until he thought he had memorized every contour, could predict the ways she would bend, would move.
He noted the minutiae of her gestures, and glances.
These details were not independent of his desire.  These details were not independent of her desire.  They were just details.
He felt he could piece them together this way.  Capture her.

He did all this to imprint her likeness upon his mind,
as though her likeness were one thing, and one thing only.
As though there were a way to get it right, get it complete, have the whole picture.
As though there were a whole picture to posses.

He drew her line by line.  He described her in words he knew she would like, because this portrait wasn’t just for him; it was from him as well.
It was a gift he could give her, a mirror so she could see a little more of what he saw.
As though she hadn’t already changed
the moment he dropped his gaze.

Here.
This is the part that craves a fresh start.
This desire to be seen.

She had always wanted to be caught.  As a small girl she would set up her catwalk. Pretty and preening, and purring, and prowling.  No one told her to do it, no one was watching then.
But she pulled out her fanciest shorts and little crop top.  The ones with the black lace trim.  She set it up, so she could be seen, the light streaming in the windows.  Practicing.  Practicing in front of an empty room.

Over twenty years later, she still makes her slinky way across the stage, she still preens and purrs.  But now she is seen, she is watched.
She wants you to see every detail.

This desire is intuitive.  We want to be recognized,
forgetting that we are all one expression of the same radiant intelligence.
This desire to be seen is not separate from the desire to see.
Awake, we are seen completely.  And who is the audience.  Who is the witness?

The earth is my witness.

I want to press my forehead to yours, looking so deeply into your eyes, they blur into a single orb, your eyes mirroring my eyes, mirroring what is.

It is a lie that I can keep some part back, some part private, some part untouchable.
It is a lie that I can hide anything at all.

Perhaps this is why we so crave a fresh start.
These habits grow tiresome.  Lies are boring, and the negativity is terminal.
She cracks his with a smile.

Every time she smiles for him, the lines deepen.  Her face grows less young.
Every time she smiles, there is the reminder at the corners of her mouth that she is
somehow both less and more than before.

I want to show you something new.   I want to show you
how I’ve changed since you last looked away.
Watch me again, again!  Watch me do it again, watch me do it better this time.
Watch me.  Watch me.
Says the child.

She loved this attention, her flame seeming to grow brighter with it.
It did not grow brighter, though; it only seemed to grow brighter.
Watch me again, she says,
She means

I need you.  I need you, just as you need me.  We need one another.  We need to remember what it is like to be the same.

Yet when he showed her the likeness, held it up for her to see, to feel as he felt it, she became

She fumbled a moment.
She said, let’s begin again.  I want to be new.  Capture me, again.   See me.  Capture me again.

A studious pupil,
I remember being told
Romance is like a shipwreck.
We imagine ourselves solid as we set out to sea,
armed with our ropes and measures and maps
passed down through the ages.
Yet the outcome is always the same–
beautiful, and tragic,
for, the Ocean would never make
such a mistake.

Be mine.
Give me everything.
I promise
I will give it all back.
I will leave
no mark,
no burn cutting into the softest skin,
no scratch, no telltale sign.
I will leave no mark
until you beg for it.

As she washed over him, his eyes
made the measurement of her collar,
his fingers took special care
adjusting the length of the silk.

Be mine
he whispered, using only that language of eyes
and trembling fingers,
believing she could give him everything.

And perhaps she did
loose herself completely
for just a single moment  that seemed to stretch
time itself
like right before the wave breaks and
all the hearts on board
beat together.

If you’ve been lucky enough to meet me in person and receive one of my yummy calling cards (hint: we’ve usually been up real close and personal, and I liked it) you know that one of my titles right along with Poet and Professional Distraction, is Muse.  It’s no empty threat either.  I’ve inspired stories and plays and poems, and even one rock opera.  I love when these juicy morsels find their way into my inbox.  As some of my regular readers know,  I occasionally like to share some of these literary snippets that I muse forth.  This one is by Mike, and I can just imagine him reading it to me, his voice deep and rhythmic in my ear.

Come and visit.  You might be inspired as well.

xx

Ster£ing

 

 

Strip it

and what’s there

Ever since college and endless themed parties (which I am excellent at throwing), I’ve become a great fan of the theme.  Every year around December/Jan I come up with a new theme for the new year.  Themes in the past have included “Nowhere but Up,” “It’s Me,” and “The End of the World (as we know it.)”  The theme usually represents an aspiration I have for the year, and is also just a way to be goofy about goals.  Some themes have worked better than others.  Last year (2013) the theme was “Enlightenment Now.”  Am I Enlightened?  Not all of the time.  But having that theme prompted me to spend a lot of time studying, in retreat, and ultimately looking at the reality of impermanence.  It also led me to examine my habitual activities and mind states.  I’d say it was successful, and definitely an ongoing resolution.

On that subject, I’ve been reading a lot of anti-resolutions floating around cyber space.  Personally, I like resolutions.  Perhaps I am ever the optimist, but that’s my job.  I know that motivations and aspirations lead to change, and being the creative type, I use them to have fun.
My take on 2014 New Year’s Resolutions: Trophy Life

My hashtag for the year Is TrophyLife.  It’s my undercurrent, my theme, my party.  The rose-tinted glasses.  Living the Trophy Life takes practice.  It takes deepening through repetition.  It is like touching upon the moments of Enlightenment that are happening–even right now, even right now– and resting with them.  This holding does not represent a grasping, nor does the resting represent a drifting into sleep, or unconsciousness.   It represents an ongoing awareness.  A constant remembering.  A resolution to come back, and come back, and come back.  Until the gaps become smaller and smaller, and soon everything is a reminder to wake up.  Soon everything is a reminder to wake up.  Wake up.  So my life is a trophy; it is a precious, beautiful prize.  And while there is plenty of celebration to be had living a prized life, there must also be the gratitude and dedication to use it well.  The trophy life has everything to do with balance, radical, balance.  Extreme balance takes practice, takes conditioning.  I have identified three areas of conditioning that I need every day to keep my balance.
1. Body.  The body needs to move.  Every day.   I have goals surrounding my flexibility, my strength, my fitness, and my diet.  Common and simple practices I have to strengthen include things like stretching and drinking enough water.  Cool goals include being able to do the splits and getting stronger.   The body is not static.  It needs something a little different every day as it changes.  It becomes a delight to notice how it changes, responding in tiny ways that are almost invisible, at first.
2. Speech.  I am a writer.  I write every day because I love it and I need it.   I have small goals as a writer and I have large goals as a writer.  These need to be addressed daily.  Morning  pages (a daily stream-of-consciousness exercise) is a great way to get this muscle conditioned, and help me check my talk in every day, un-written life.  Sometimes pages are an emotional rant that clears my head.  Sometimes pages turn into a poem, or excerpts in the longer projects I have going.  Sometimes (like today) they become blog posts.
3. Mind.  This can mean reading and study, but first and foremost, this means a daily sitting meditation practice.  There is just no substitute for it.  My teacher Sakyong Mipam Rimpoche gives this simple teaching.  “Every day the body needs movement and the mind needs stillness.”  A stable mind is the fertile soil out of which genius can manifest and grow.