I finally fell asleep around noon. I was blessed with a dreamless sleep then woke up to the nightmare of reality. No news about my child. Looking at lawyers I can't afford then becoming frozen with panic. Now that all the secrets have been spilled and the contract is still not being followed. How long will I be blocked from my daughter? How long will it take to find a lawyer and wait for the endless filing of paper work that could take months? The stress is overwhelming. It has been a long journey with no justice in sight. At least I am writing poetry. At least I am eating. At least I am showering. I make tiny goals just to get through each day and dissolve in to tears and then can't do much but rest. I am terrified of getting Covid19 and moving back in to the world without being vaccinated yet. I am terrified she will get Covid19 because of the regular social events over there. I have lost seven pounds in a week because my stomach is all gnarled up with foreboding.
The night is creeping up and I am dreading another long one. I don't know where I am going, I only know that where I have been is not a place I want to go again. Having to relive all of this in court a fucking nightmare.

when you were small you hung on to my leg 
as if  you were going to drift away
like a feather

time is just memories now
one after the other
a pile of down

I am gathering as many as I can
my arms are full
but you know how feathers are
it's windy outside

when you were small
I used to spread my arms wide open
and tell you I loved you that much plus infinity
and you would laugh

when you were small
I used to sing to you and make up songs
about washing your feet or brushing your hair
then you started to sing and make up your 
own silly songs
the first real song
I taught you was Baa Baa black sheep

when you were a baby
I wore you in a pouch on my chest
because you cried when your weren't
close to my heart
you could only fall asleep that way too

you are still close to my heart
I love you as much as my arms can hold plus infinity

the night is a void
there is no light 
peeking beneath her door

loss is gnawing at my heart
my dreams are rescinded
I stay awake to keep 
the nightmares away

 this longing 
is a an open wound
this darkness will 
​swallow me

the stars never did shine
 the sun is just a memory
an ache that has gone numb

the night is a long dark hallway

the lost souls have claimed me

My X did not return my daughter today. I took down all the posts because I don't know what is going on. I know she is confused. X told my husband Annabelle didn't want to come home until Thursday but she did not communicate that to me and I have again been text begging him for information on what is going on. She always comes home on Tuesday. Because there is no communication and I am being alienated. I don't know. I am working on trying to get her a therapist. I am just worried and I can't sleep again. Her text communication was odd. She has no problem telling me when she is angry but didn't text back when I asked if it was true she didn't want to come home until Thursday. It was as if someone was standing over her. I just texted her I love her and left it at that. I have been dealing with this for two years now but this is the first time he has refused to return her. I am just so tired of this. I am just really worried. I can't read or sleep.

Since I just got a new computer I had to go through my poetry files again to put them on this computer. Technically you are not supposed to post poems on your blog if you want a chance to get published in a lit mag but all the poems I will be posting have already been published in lit mags two or more years ago. It is nice to take them out once awhile like some dress I never wear stuffed into the back of my closet. If I ever manage to get back to writing poetry and publishing again I will just put the link of the lit mag on my blog. 

A list of my favorite poems
written by me
when I still cared to write poems

 published in Anti-Heroin chic magazine

Bound
they cling to each other/in a one room apartment/his belongings in trash bags surround the bed/ he holds her while she cries/it isn’t enough for either of them/it never was/his addiction a shadow in the room/it still holds him/clouds his memory of the pain he has caused/her body is scarred/each slash/ something cruel that was done to her/ he tells her the scars are healing/traces them with his finger/her body stiffens at his touch/you are still beautiful he says/she says nothing/she doesn’t want to be beautiful/it has only caused her pain/she remembers how quick he can change/ how his sweet tongue/can turn to acid/ now he is sleepy and hollow/he holds her/but she is really holding him/ his new apartment/reminds her of his old one/reminds her of how they began in darkness/how things never change/and illusions die/truth is a skeleton/a loss this big/ will swallow her whole/to believe in him/to keep losing something that can not be grasped/she has lost herself/she has a history of loving ghosts/how he looks at her now/the longing in his eyes/in the beginning/he showed her to not be afraid of her darkness/now she just wants light/this pain/this love/is suffocating her/she knows nothing of herself/what it means to be by yourself/to take care of yourself/he tells her how he wants to hold her like this all night/she imagines falling asleep and never waking/ frozen in time on this bedspread the color of ashes and dirt/how hard it is to rise


the other night/she dreamt this/ his cheeks drawn so thin/ a sketch of himself/ laying on this dingy bed together/ tracing each others scars/hers healing/ his deep red gashes that bleed on the sheets/they held on to one another/facing each other/she tried to stop the bleeding/her hands covered in his blood/ he gently holds her hands over her own scars/ the dream shifts/she is young again/ a teenager babysitting with another boy/ playing house/as they scramble to watch six kids/ the baby is so small/crawling away/wandering through the house/they try to find  the baby/ look everywhere/in closets/the basement /a cupboard/while they search/they hear a crash outside/sirens and screams/the parents come home/thank her for babysitting/seemingly unaware of the chaos/ she looks out the window/a tractor trailer truck has crashed in to the bedroom of he little boy who lives across the street/the mother is crying/he is dead/ he is dead/but the parents inside this home/cannot see/cannot hear/they thank me again/I try to tell them I lost their baby/but the mother is holding her safe in her arms


Published in Rat's Ass Review
Nominated for best new poet

girl 1983


she is wearing a red dress with little yellow flowers embroidered on the collar /he has her foot in one hand/a pair of white tights in the other/they look at each other/he looks away/when he touches her/it is too rough/the girl looks at a cobweb in the corner of the bathroom ceiling/he pulls the tights up to her thighs /his hands rest/ where the tights haven’t touched yet/are goose bumps /he slides his hands to her knees/then to her waist/ lifts her up off the dryer/sets her down/she yanks and pulls at the tights/ until they reach beyond her belly button/at the bus stop/he holds her hand in his/tells her that later when she gets off the bus /he will be waiting/the girl looks down at her ankles/where the tights are beginning to pool and wrinkle like loose skin/she imagines his hands peeling her/ like a banana/like a scab


Published in The Inflectionist Review

muscles like fists

the body remembers/what the mind tries to forget/here with you/opening/you are him/you are them/I am closing/I go back/my body follows/muscles like fists/loud music drowns memories/I push/they keep coming/on the bed/I watch myself crawl away/he who is all of them/ yanks her back by the hair/muscles like fists/I remember/ she is me/between her legs is a wound/when you hold me in your arms/ you don’t know they are here with us/you ask me if I am okay/I say yes/she looks at me/ I don’t want to be there/I want to be here/ I don’t want to be her/muscles like fists/wounds turned to scars/she remembers thinking/when her face is in the pillow/he doesn’t have to see her eyes/she is her own ghost/her body a house haunted/ her mouth a graveyard of unsaid things

Published in Rat's Ass Review
Nominated for a Pushcart prize

boys who call themselves men

gentle with your garden
you check on it several times a day
as if it were a newborn baby
or more accurately
that girl from work
you text at night 


you avoid me


 and when I use my voice 
to express my hurt
you step on the gas pedal
and threaten to drive us both
to our death


tired of tiptoeing
around boys 
who call themselves men


I loathe myself
for being a cliché 
“don’t upset your father”
“just leave him be until he calms down”


I heard it from my mother
I said it to my daughter
I said it to myself
I am invisible


but your rage is seen
saved
you are squirrel 
hoarding your nuts


my pain is your nourishment
your self worth an intricately tied sailors knot
that can only be undone by my tears


I am a trash can for your sperm
 it was better for you then masturbating into a sock
a sock I would have had to wash
so maybe it was better for me?


I wash myself instead
pretend I do not see my dignity
go down the drain


I am a rag doll
all my good parts
torn at the seam


incompetent with needle and thread
you find a new model
someone more naïve
someone who can’t say no


she will paint her face for you
coo at how you blessed her pussy
with just one stroke of your sword


you won’t be happy though
even with pills
and empty headed silent girls

you will never be a man


​Published in Typehouse Literary magazine


Dismantling Walls


On these nights 
I drift from past to present
I do not tell you my walls are falling down
that bedrooms in old houses remind me of him


I listen to your soft snore
watch the headlights from a passing car
I am neither here nor there
a place in the middle where reality is blurred


I don’t know what you think of me
this woman that turns into a girl
with the slip of a touch 


You live in this old house
that reveals itself daily
a leak on the porch with no origin
walls that groan cold in the wind
patchwork layers peeling back years


 your childhood home sits in your backyard
walls gutted to the beginning
a window halfway open like a sleepy eye


I think maybe
this is why you love me
that I am part of your collection of things to restore 


I touch the bed, my cheek, one of my thighs 
before curling up like a cat
I fall asleep with your hand on my back


In the dark of my dream
I read poems I have not yet written
on walls as thin and delicate as tracing paper


When I wake 
I do not remember the poems
just that the words were my walls
and I was the light illuminating them

Published in Haunted Waters Press

The Getty


you were a sorceress 
a storyteller
a traveler


we sat on top of our bunk beds
our floor painted red
looking out the window


you pointed to the red Getty sign
glowing in the distance
“Shelly, I’m gonna take you there one day”
you said


“The Getty is a magical place where
there are lollipops as big as your head” 
you said tapping your knuckle on the 
top of my head


I was in awe of how much you knew
“Inside it is lit up with Christmas lights all…year…long”
“No one yells at anyone
children are treated like royalty”


the look on your face made me a believer
as you stared off into the distance
your eyes wide
your hands painting this picture in my mind,
dancing wide arcs and hushed symbols


It might’ve been a month later or a day
that you were gone
for the weekend


when my mother packed me into our
maroon Ford Escort
It was so new the ashtray was still empty
and pulled up in front of The Getty


I held my breath
her enormous beige purse
hid my view
until we were at the door


she pushed it open 
and I heard it jangle
like Santa’s sleigh bell


squinting into the harsh fluorescent light,
the smell of gasoline assaulting my nose,
my mother at the counter buying cigarettes
from a man with blackened fingertips,


tree air fresheners wrapped in cellophane
 hanging behind the counter,
 along with shelves and shelves of motor oil.


I can't remember where this was published
it was so long ago

Eyes like the sky


I was six jumping on the couch
pulled my shirt over my head
“you can take your clothes off”
said my step-dad smiling


I ran around the house barefoot
and naked smacking my belly like a drum
you encourage me to dance


“Wouldn’t it be fun to wear your mother’s make-up?”
I nodded, ran to catch up while you rummaged
under the bathroom sink


I longed to wear her blue eye shadow
our eyes to look like skies,
you picked me up, held me on the sink
cold on my bare bottom and I giggled,
and you with the eye shadow and a black tube
“sit still,” lifting up my chin,
my eyes closing, the circling my lids
with pallet of blue, them
the mascara wand to the tips of my lashes,
the warmth of your hand lifting my chin.


“Am I ready?” “Yes,” turning the mirror,
look at how pretty, in a hushed voice,
like mommy.


When mommy came home
She yelled at me for getting into her makeup
and taking off my clothes.



This has never been published.
I forgot I ever wrote it until loading it on the new computer.

That girl with the daddy issues

On Father’s day I get drunk. I get drunk with men like him. 
A week ago an aunt I don’t know found me on Facebook to tell me that my father was homeless and dying on the streets. Out of prison addicted to something or other. He was never a father to me, just a man with my eyes.


 I get drunk. I give all my dollar bills to the homeless people that line the streets at night. They are drunk like me, drunk like him. I wonder where he is on Father’s Day, probably not remembering he has a daughter, a needle in his arm, passed out in his own piss. 


I am not remembering him and it takes work, it takes gulps instead of sips. I don’t forget to forget the man I actually called Daddy. My stepdad, my abuser, the one who raised me in contempt while the man with my eyes sat in prison. He is swallowed down too. He is a part of the forgetting.


The forgetting stops and I remember them both now. I step back into the nightmare hole of my past. My current boyfriend starts to yell at his friend and breaks all the empty glasses on the table in a rage that seems to come out of nowhere.  Just as last night ended in his anger, for what I forget, so good at forgetting, this night will too. I am reminded of the man with my eyes what he said to me when he got out of prison and I asked him if he had been afraid, “I am the one everyone was afraid of.” I am reminded of my stepfather choking me against a wall because I stood up to him, once. 


Once, just once I wish I was tough. If it meant not feeling so helpless all the time, so scared and sad. I have a panic attack right there in front of my boyfriend and his friend. I have panic attack remembering these things I don’t want. I feel like I am choking on year’s worth of fear. I am overwhelmed with the sadness that I will never feel safe. 


I go home with the boyfriend who scares me. I find a backbone somewhere down in my deranged guts and tell him how he was wrong and I don’t remember if he argues or what he says until the next day because I fall asleep crying. He holds me and promises me he won’t do this again, like he did last night and the night before. Like they all have before.


My life so far is a list of promises unmet, promises to myself, promises from others. My ex husband used to give me flowers after his outbursts, my stepdad toys or books, the man with my eyes just gave up and abandoned me completely but not before he beat the shit out of my teenage mother, not before he broke her spirit for life.  


I wish I didn’t have to be nice all the time, this song and dance of being a woman, constantly catering to others, massaging their egos so they don’t erupt. I am a walking apology, a bunch of hushed okays. I am a whisper when I want to be a scream. All this because I want to be loved. I am terrified of abandonment. I am that girl with the daddy issues. I get drunk to drown my anger to push it deep down inside. 


Outside, I am nice and I am smiling and I am always apologizing. I am always crying.  I am a woman who soothes the tempers of men while my gut is seething like acid. I am tired of anger. I am tired of men. I am tired of being me. 

















​

It is 4:21 am and of course I am awake. I fell asleep around 10:30 and woke up at 1:00 and have been up since. Last night or yesterday morning, time has ceased to have any meaning to me anymore I revisited Nabokov's Insomnia Dreams. I started reading it about two years ago and then put it on a shelf and forgot I was reading it.  I remembered in my own insomniac state that I I should finish reading it and picked it up again.
Nabokov was a life long insomniac. In 1964 after reading John Dunne's An Experiment with time he decided to conduct his own experiment with time. John Dunne was a philosopher and poet. The purpose of the experiment was to test the theory that time might go in reverse, so that paradoxically, a later event may generate an earlier dream.
So Nabokov for eighty days wrote down his dreams on index cards then connected them to later events and even some of his novels. The result is Insomniac Dreams. I am halfway through reading it. 
After I finish reading it I plan to repeat the experiment on this blog. I set about getting a copy of John Dunne's An Experiment with Time (because of course I will need to read it to do the experiment ),it was harder to get a copy than I imagined.  It has been in an out of print since it was written in 1927. All the used book sellers in the U.S were asking ridiculous prices for a battered crappy copy. The most expensive was over 500$!! 
I finally found an excellent condition hardcover with dust jacket on Abe books for about 25 bucks but it is from the UK and cost 30$ for shipping, still way cheaper then the 150-500$ crap copies found here. I should get it in about two weeks. I am excited about doing the experiment because I am fascinated with my own dreams and have been reading everything on dreams lately. I started reading Carlos Castaneda's The Art of dreaming about an hour ago. As far as time goes I have never believed it is linear because the way my mind works it has never been linear. Most people who have PTSD have issues with time. 
Yesterday I took a nap. I suppose my insomnia finally caught up with me. It was a short nap but I dreamt. I always remember my dreams when I nap as opposed to when I sleep at night I only remember them most of the time.
Anyway I dreamt that my daughter came home from her dad's with a ferret. In the dream her now dead hamster was still alive and she still wasn't taking care of it so I was annoyed she brought home this ferret. Ferrets smell pretty bad. She didn't bring it with a cage or anything. So it wandered around the house and the hamster cage for some reason she had taken it apart. So now I have a ferret and hamster running free in the house and the dream should be comedic but it isn't. She ignores the ferret like she does the hamster and I feel bad for the neglected animals and end up having to take care of them when she goes back to her dad's. I also vaguely remember a blackberry bush somewhere in the dream and eating blackberries or feeding blackberries to the ferret who is wearing a tiny scarf. 
Ferrets are from the weasel family. Weasels are weasels that is all I needed to know about the symbology in that dream.
In a couple weeks my aimless blog will not be so aimless as I document my own experiment with time and dreams.
An excerpt from Nabokov's Insomniac Dreams

23 Nov. 1964 6:45am
End of a long "Butterfly" dream which started after I had fallen asleep following upon a sterile awakening at 6:15 am. Have arrived (by funiculaire?) to a collecting ground at timberland (In Switzerland? In Spain?), but in order to get to it have to cross the hall of a large gay hotel. Very spry and thin, dressed in white, skip down the steps on the other side and find myself on the marshy border of a lake. Lots of bog flowers, rich soil, colorful, sunny, but not one single butterfly (familiar sensation in dream). Instead of a net am carrying a huge spoon-cannot understand how I managed to forget my net and bring this thing-wonder how I shall catch anything with it. Notice a kind of letter box open on the right side, full of butterflies someone has collected and left there. One is alive-a marvelous aberration of the Green fritillary with unusually elongated wings, the green all fused together and the brown of an extraordinary variegated hue. It eyes me in conscious agony as I try to kill it by pinching its thorax-very tenacious of life. Finally slip it into a Morocco case-old, red, zippered. Then realize that all the time a man camouflaged in some way is seated next to me to the left in front of the receptacle in which the butterflies are; and prepares a slide for the microscope. We converse in English. He is the owner of the butterflies. I am very much embarrassed. Offer to return the fritillary. He declines with polite half-heartedness. 

This is not a book review.  I skim through this book after dreams or nightmares. Like, today, I pass by it on my bookshelf and pick it up and open to a random page. I have not read the introduction by The Dalai Lama. I have not read it from cover to cover. I am not sure I would want to. 
Today my random opening was to pg. 160: "Examination of the Signs of Death which Occur in Dreams." It says that dreams that occur in late evening or midnight are unreliable. Great. I think most of my dreams are in the early morning or afternoon. But then what I later read is not so great, because it means my dreams are reliable. 
Dreams, dreams, dreams. A dream can be a metaphor. A dream can be a longing or a fear. But in many religious texts and this ancient text, dreams are prophetic. I have recorded my dreams off and on for years. More often than not they cryptically foretold future events in my life. I am sure I am not the only one that pays attention to their dreams or nightmares.
Here's an excerpt from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, pg. 161-162:

Examination of the Signs of Death which Occur in Dreams
"First, one should know that those dreams which occur in the late evening or around midnight are unreliable,
But if one dreams between dawn and daybreak that:
One is riding a cat or a white monkey with a red face,
While moving further and further towards the east,
It is said that this is a sign of death caused by king spirits.
If one dreams of riding a tiger, fox, or corpse,
Or of riding a buffalo, pig, camel, or donkey,
While moving further and further towards the south,
This is a sign of death indicating that one has fallen into the hands of Yama.

Furthermore, if one dreams of eating feces,
Of wearing black clothes of yak hair, while plunging downwards,
Of being trapped in a wicker-basket or snare,
Of being bound with iron chains,
Or of copulating repeatedly with a black figure or animal,
These are also signs which are indicative of death.

If one dreams of being disemboweled by a fierce..."

I have been sleeping during the day and awake at night due to spiritual issues. Then my trusted old lap top decided it was time to move on. So with a new computer and at least six hours of sleep I am back to the daily oracle.
Today I am working with my Star Spinner deck. This deck is absolutely stunning and it is becoming one of my favorites to work with.

I did a general reading for myself today because sometimes the signs are just frying pans hitting you on the head. I was pleasantly surprised with the cards that came up and now feel a bit more hopeful.

Past/Justice XI- Justice reminds us to actively course correct those instances of institutional bias. It is not simply a matter of what is fair. Justice interrogates which lenses are corrupted by structures that value a concentration of power. Regardless of whether or not it benefits you personally, value and pursue what is right despite, what is popular.

Present/Wheel of fate X-  The Wheel of fate is a reminder that things are as they are meant to be. There are good turns and there are bad turns, but so long as The Wheel turns life proceeds. It is a reminder that despite all its highs and lows, life continues. The Wheel of fate generally heralds a certain amount of good luck.

Future/III Coins- Your collaborative relationships are in a very good place. The three of coins indicates that your work environment is healthy and that you are in harmony with your colleagues. Everyones input and respective fields of expertise are valued. This bodes well for the implementation of fresh projects and the pursuit of new opportunities. You have the chance to make your wishes into material reality.

It is always nice when in a negative, sleep deprived stupor to pull an excellent card reading.  This beautiful deck by Trungles has 81 cards and guidebook. The deck has multiple Lovers cards to reflect a range of romantic expression.

Today's card reading is from The Hermetic Tarot. The Hermetic Tarot is based upon the esoteric workings of The Secret Order of The Golden Dawn. "Founded in 1888 as a secret magical fraternity, the order counted among its members some of the foremost occultists and writers of the period including MacGregor, Mathers, Arthur Edward Waite, Dion Fortune, Paul Foster Case, Aleister Crowley, and W.B Yeats."
I just joined Twitter today. I have used twitter in the past when I was part of a literary magazine but have not used it in a long time. I chose to ask these most sacred cards if I would get more twitter followers for my blog. I know it is silly but with doing a new card and tarot deck info on my blog daily sometimes it is hard to come up with deep questions. I received Queen of Wands known in The Hermetic Tarot as Queen of the Thrones of Flame.
​From the booklet that came with the cards: Queen of the Thrones of Flame. Water of Fire. A crowned queen with long falling hair and resolute face is seated upon a throne surrounded by flames. Her right hand rests on the crest of a leopard's head. She bears a long wand with a very heavy spherical head. The wand is suggestive of the mysteries of Bacchus. The symbols for Pisces and Aries appear beneath the orb of her wand. Rules from the last decan of Pisces to above 20 degrees of Aries. Including part Andromeda. Meanings: Adaptable. Steady force. Sympathetic. Understanding when she wants to be.
Since I got the card in the upright position I only put that meaning, the reversed meaning is negative and only applies if the card is drawn reversed. This is a beautiful deck and quite intense energetically perhaps that is why I feel a little silly asking it such a frivolous question about twitter follows but still it delivered. It appears that I will get more twitter followers eventually and steadily.
Incidentally I happen to be an Aries. Bacchus was the Roman god of agriculture, wine and fertility, equivalent to the Greek god Dionysus. His plants were vines and twirling ivy. I am pretty sure we are friends. Two of my tattoos are vines and ivy.
I have included a photo of Israel Regardie's The Golden Dawn. It has all the magical secrets of The Order of the Golden Dawn. I have yet to be able to decipher any of it. It is an encyclopedia of rites and rituals. I collect books and it is a great companion to this beautiful deck.