May you be balanced and at peace.

Dear Livejournal,

I think I am done with you.

Skin
by Lucia Perillo

Back then it seemed that wherever a girl took off her
clothes the police would find her –
in the backs of cars or beside the dark night ponds,
opening like a green leaf across
some boy’s knees, the skin so white and taut beneath the
moor, it was almost too terrible,
too beautiful to look at, a tinderbox, though she did not
know. But the men who came
beating the night rushes with their flashlights and
thighs – they knew. About Helen,
about how a body could cause the fall of Troy and the
death of a perfectly good king.
So they read the boy his rights and shoved him spread-
legged against the car
while the girl hopped barefoot on the asphalt, cloaked in
a wool rescue blanket.
Or sometimes girls fled so their fathers wouldn’t hit
them, their white legs flashing as they ran.
And the boys were handcuffed just until their wrists had
welts and let off half a block from home.

God for how many years did I believe there were truly
laws against such things,
laws of adulthood: no yelling out of cars in traffic tunnels,
no walking without shoes,
no singing any foolish songs in public places. Or else they
could lock you in jail
or, as good as condemning you to death, tell both your
lower- and upper-case Catholic fathers.
And out of all these crimes, unveiling the body was of
course the worst, as though something
about the skin’s phosphorescence, its surface as velvet as
as a deer’s new horn,
could drive not only men but civilization mad, could lead
us to unspeakable cruelties.
There were elders who from experience understood these
things much better than we.
And it’s true: remembering I had that kind of skin does
drive me half-crazy with loss.
Skin like the spathe of a broad white lily on the first
morning it unfurls.

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention -- the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggarge

I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?

My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.

MUST...OWN...THIS!!!!!

Lotus Cat Tree

Aieeeeee!
<3

I feel as though I'm living in some sort of time warp wherein holidays rush toward me at an incomprehensible speed -- not with heavy, steel-toed strides, but with soft, ballet-footed, sprinting tiptoes. Christmas has come at me like a flood; at first I felt unready for it and closed my eyes to the tinsel and chocolates in stores. But now, as the holiday is soon approaching, my heart is quietly disappointed that the usually comforting and joyful excitement of the coming season has escaped me. I haven't had time to look forward to it or steer my mind in the direction the holiday spirit. Although I no longer celebrate religious aspect of Christmas and haven't in many years, I continue to appreciate and be thankful for the brightly generous and uplifting nature of this season. I am devoting this weekend to preparing my heart and home for what I hope will manage to be a beautiful holiday filled with the spirit of Christmas.

Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence



Namaste <3

Maybe these things are happening because I just need to enjoy myself,
let go,
not worry
and nitpick and plan and scramble to grip my little hands on life's steering wheel

because what good is it, anyway, for one to gain the world but lose her soul?



Maybe the universe is telling me to find a balance between logic and soul?

I had a dream that I was going to New York City but I didn't have a warm enough jacket and was worried I might freeze to death. To remedy this, the Wizard of Oz offered to loan me some ruby slippers so that I could click my heels and take a hot air balloon there. Instead of a hot air balloon, I ended up on a ship. To avoid paying for two tickets, I killed my husband and put him in a cheap wooden coffin, taking him along with me as baggage. When I arrived in New York, the immigration officers were very angry that I had a dead body along with me. They grabbed me, took me ashore, and dumped me there, throwing the coffin out of the ship so that it split open and the body rolled out. The arms had broken off and my husband's body was stiff and yellow.

A Man Walks Into a Bar

I can hear the ache behind your lips
and the way our hearts are looking
in separate directions
even when they are near enough to

reach forward and touch,
eyes widening,
neck softening
as raw and open-wounded organs


often long to.

“The trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” –Erica Jong

“The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.” --Frances Willard




Abyss

With what
or with whom will we fill
the spaces left to fill?



Momentum

It is, in these situations,
difficult to tell
whether one is a coward or a warrior

Was the fight worth fighting?
Or within my insistence on lingering,
did I shrink back from opportunity,
wasting my life in friction when it could have been
momentum?