I once wrote about joy and feeling ashamed for it

and now i regret feeling ashamed

because even as it was a false idol

there was a moment, I believe in the prayer of

honest, joyous, love

and that precious moment, though it made me feel ashamed, boastful, and like i was leading with my love stuck ego

i would give every ounce of my soul for it back

i would return every lesson i have learned

to simply feel loved in joy again

to know i am a priority

to believe he is true

to return to a place of loved bursting, nearly boastful joy

instead of waiting for him to come home

from rescuing someone else.

again.

Why bother

it's been three years or more since I felt the desire to write without objection and yet, here I am again.

i cannot sleep,
knowing a fullish moon will creep her way to my window
and awaken me in three hours or so -

why bother?

last time i delved into feeling,
i found myself exploratory,

undecided - exempt from conclusion

this time it shall be different.

40 days or 39 ways to choose something new.

I will write shitty poems, and terrible blogs,

I will unfurl the emotion and pain and passion of the past 4 years.

I will shake off obligation and reject blind optimism while stepping into the shiny bright joy that I exist to bring.

I will get a silent keyboard, so i can write at night, tucked in bed, naked with chanel no. 5 while he sleeps next to me.

I will understand we need different things - we all need different things.

and my thighs will be his resting place while i find their power to reclaim my mountains,

because I bother, because I know,

I will learn how to love and to climb with abandon again.

To write about life in the brightness of ocean breezes with a hummingbird at your window is simply obnoxious.....

Oh to write once more, how I scrape at my comforted soul to find the angst of story. But I am unfortunately quite pleased.

Is it only in the darkness that poetry can be written and have joy and love taken away the ability to write? I miss that author, that story teller, that mountain climbing woman with a cross to bear, because she could move with words. Her struggle inspired others. Her willingness to keep climbing, to keep sharing, to keep believing was remarkable. I miss the nights of writing and pouring out my soul for others in an effort to self interpret. I see a reflection of that soul and I love her. 

Now, I sit in my beautiful home, at a perfectly appointed writer's desk, with an inspirational altar attended by Ganesha, Kwan Yin, Lakshmi and Saint Francis, and am lifted by ocean breezes. I admire a picture of the man that loves me as I love him, and feel the twinkle of a gorgeous nine foot Christmas tree that one of my darling soon to be step daughters called "catalog perfect" while a hummingbird visits my magenta December blooming geranium and I think, you have nothing to write about anymore. 

It is a confusing paradox for the writer. I am calm. I am comforted. I am happy. I want to revisit the story of my past and evolve the chapters into a tale for more to read, but walking down that memoir's lane is foggy and seems disrespectful of my present. I wonder if perhaps, I am no longer entitled to that struggle.

And so I start again.... writing with questions - for the purpose of discovering more questions - because I have no idea what answers I am seeking, and even though I am quite pleased, I am still on a journey and must keep climbing. 

  

Free To

I am free to create and free to explore.

I am free to destroy and free to restore.

Given this life, grateful ever again

I will give and I will love and both I shall send.

With grace and serenity, I wear my colors red white and blue

In love and gentility, I share my freedom with you

With each day I break a stone barrier glass ceiling
and yet I stare at my left hand without that old ring.

The encumbrance of freedom means I can enjoy

the adventure and passion of a life undestroyed.

Renewed, reviewed, rethought and re-seen,

I accept the onus of what freedom means. 

Summers McKay

What the Fuck am I Going to Do with Your Last 11 Condoms?

Yes, they come in packs of twelve. Yes, this was the first pack we ever actually attempted to use. Yes, I decided I want to be a mom and so I removed my IUD and even though we weren't supposed to have sex anymore, we did anyway.

We used one of twelve that night. In the morning we didn't use anything. Eleven days later I had a positive pregnancy test. A few days later it was clear I wasn't pregnant.

And yes, it was clear it was time to end it. Because you are not where I am. I am not where you are. We care in the present. In this relationship, there is no future. Yes, there is honor in what we shared. No, there is no tomorrow.

And yes, I was confused and happy and concerned and unsure. And no I wasn't ready, but yes I did have an imagination.

I imagined an intrepid little kid who decided to be conceived and convinced me to take out my IUD and calmed me to agree and wait patiently on a night when I would otherwise say no ... and then to let that morning happen. I imagined that kid for a while.

And now I have eleven condoms left and no you, and no intrepid little kid, and I'm OK with waiting, and figuring out a better way with someway, not you.

But I am just not sure what to do with the remaining barriers of our failed attempt at boundaries because I still have some sort of screwed up hope that an intrepid kid will make the throwing away a lot less ceremonial.

The Type of Woman & The Type of Man

Sometimes the curves are more than I can face in a public way. Sometimes I feel more intensely than playful prose will allow.

There is no reason we should be a pair,
nor any sense to the cadence of our friendship,
but for a night - a few nights - we were kind to one another.
Passionate, gentle, loving
and kind.

I have never known kind.
And I am not sure what makes for forever,
but I know compared
to what made for my past,
you are better.

And gently, with no obligation
I love you.

And yet again, I dive into a fountain of pennies

Diving knuckles first into a jar 

of generic peanut butter with a spoon,

 I call it dinner,

and I am spent.

Every last dollar of emotion has been paid

 into a week of writing, creating, believing

that pennies of words might turn to gold.

For a moment, I started to fall for a new beau 

and he played the role of temporary muse,

because that is what I know.

But he was as broken as I once was, 

a distraction, attraction, and a way to feel
something strong.

Yet I am determined,

this time story telling

will pay.

I will collect.

Fearlessness of Waves

Tonight I thought of waves
and how they call out
patterns of the heart

sometimes quiet and then
suddenly passionate
rolling in sets
unexpected pounding on sand
that might prefer to be ignored.

an ocean dark and salty
sends forth
a simple wave that commits
to rushing to the shore
and with courage it bends

and hopes the land
might welcome its curl.

Naked with Chanel No 5: I can not control all fairy tales.

We are all but players in each other's stories and tonight - more so than ever, of this - I am aware.

There is a villain in my story, a tall and cold selfish villain of a man who stole from me and gave nothing in return who found a vicious witch upon my demise. She took, she crooked, she broke what I crafted and lovingly scripted. She destroyed with one lethal kiss a story I'd spent a decade building and painfully lost. She took from me all grace.

I am the intrepid princess, determined to do right over wrong and give without remorse and create without restraint, I am my own hero. Because in my story - what else might I be?

And yet - in their eyes, I am the villain. The cold, the aggressive, the ungiving. The one who rejected Prince Charming and dismayed his righteous journey. To him, I am flawed, dramatic and unworthy of his triumph. To her - the burden he had to bear on his journey into her arms. He was trapped and she freed him. No matter my story, it is theirs which prevails. I am their villain.

And she, the conniving and ungraceful villain of my story, is simply a princess who after a long journey of lonely pain has finally found the prince charming of her own fairy tale.

So to this I shall resign my own art of words. Two tales of three villains, two princesses, and one prince. It is simply the mirror through which we look to find the story's reflection.

To recognize the characters we play in the story of others is essential, but most importantly to be pleased with the character we play in our own, is the only happily ever after.

Thanksgiving for Friendship

I am grateful for friendship

in all its evolutions,

and believing that tomorrow

might be better than today.

Yet if it is not

and today is all I’ve got

then thank you for the times we have had.

Thank you for the loves I’ve loved

and the life I’ve lived,

the stories I’ve heard,

the adventures you've shared,

and the tales we have told.

I am honored.

Thank you to all

who have laid the cobblestones

upon the road I’ve journeyed,
and mortared the bricks in my creative foundation.

 It is this richness and strength
that you have brought to my wanderings

for which I am most grateful.