Stop She Says

This voice has been silenced
by betrayals and burnings
so subtle
it's become normal

belief systems that were
contorted to "fix me"
from speaking truths about actions
and wrongful intrusions

Greedy spirits
love to punish anything
that threatens to expose
its nastiness

uses any means necessary
to diminish her voice that says:
"Stop"

Stop excavating
Stop raping
Stop taking
Stop hitting
Stop manipulating
Stop yelling
Stop warping
Stop forcing
Stop intimidating
Stop killing
Stop groping
Stop attacking
Stop accusing
Stop talking
Stop demanding
Stop imprisoning

Start
Start listening
Start crying
Start stroking
Start apologizing
Start praying
Start giving
Start laughing
Start loving
Start playing
Start planting
Start liberating
Start supporting
Start caring
Start relaxing
Start trusting
Start truth-telling
Start tenderness
Start living

Life is Precious

In the dream
She gave me
her typical silent treatment

life's experiences informed her to
think before She speaks

how those silences used to kill my
need-to-know why and right now
young woman's curious and playful mind

Her knowing smirks
spread thickly like a Mother's superior intution
known all over the doormats of every home

then her voice echoes as if it yawned awake:
"all I ever wanted you to consider is that life is precious. It's as precious as a gem."

that's it.
10 years of silence.
and this is what she tells me.

I become enraged by these pearls of wisdom

All the stupid, misguided, wasteful energy sufferings
when all I had to consider was:
"life is precious. As precious as a gem."

i wouldn't have done this or that
said this or that
or slept with this or that.

this is the beginning of the truly holy life.
no matter how humiliating it has been to get here.

I'll be damned to find out what she says to me in 10 years' time.

Perhaps: "Eating broccoli" will be a profound teaching
when my stomach is beyond capable of digestion.

But her echoing wisdom is from a woman
who has been desperately trying to get through to me.

It's me who couldn't listen.

And there Esmeralda stood waiting...

And there Esmeralda stood waiting

For what, nobody knew. Her body worn-down from many years of walking up and down the centuries-old stone pathways, her feet full of calluses and nobody in her life to rub them soft. How did life turn out this way? So difficult to just get water for the day, much less silver coins to buy quesillo at the market.

Where was there to go, really? She's been surrounded by ancient reminders that almost everything comes and goes – the needs for living stayed the same – food, water, paying the rent, and some laughter in-between. Love – well that’s a fleeting fancy. Roberto, Ricardo, Rodrigo – all had their day and good riddance. Their promises carried too many strings of having to endure their hot-headed dreams that were going nowhere on a donkey’s back ass.

It’s a shame with Esmeralda. She’s become what all women around here become. Alone, hardened, withered and no place to be but behind the loom, weaving blankets for tourists who believe she loves her quaint and simple life. They don’t look deeper into her eyes and notice that she’s somewhere else as she ties the ends of the threads, wishing that this was the last blanket she made in her life, her hands aching so much from overworking.

Youth seems to be a mockery at this age – wisdom from the elders merely given to warn the young ladies that, yes, one day, this is your fate, too, my dear, so don’t get too haughty about your fine figure. The men around here break hearts like their breaking beer bottles.

Oh, yes, the women here once had high hopes and dreams, too. Now we’ve shriveled down to the bare bones truth that no one will save our town – no matter how much money or ideals they’re carrying. They don’t have the heart to tell their granddaughters what sourness lies ahead for them from the moment they are born. The grandmothers do well feigning smiles every birthday – pretending for the sake of celebration, that there are blessings to being human. Who could have the heart to tell the truth of life to an 8-year-old girl who loves pink balloons and chocolate frosting?

There seems to be no cure for Esmeralda’s waiting. Every sunset her figure fades into the turquoise wall by the back door of her house, where the chips of paint are peeling off more and more as each day passes. Her shadow we’ve grown to know better than her. We leave plates of food for her, our only offering. But we respect her enough to do it quietly without her knowing who left them there. One day we know we’ll find the plate still there. And perhaps, then, Esmeralda won’t be waiting any longer.

dearest zack

Dearest Zack,

Every time we meet, you ignite a knowing within me, as we both seem to understand the drives and passions of the other. Your presence in my life has been so important to my soul journey, where you have been the masculine mirror to my feminine self in a family where both of us felt like we didn't belong.

I've always wondered what past life we had together, to have reincarnated and decided not to subscribe to the same rules of material life afforded to our other cousins. At times when I felt I was going mad, felt misunderstood, didn't know what drove me to create for the sake of it in a decaying urban landscape, wanting to explore these things called poetry, art, anarchy and spiritual delving instead of making up families of normalized structures, you were always in the background of my life doing similar things in different ways.

Remember the night when we toppled down East-side brick buildings with our fascinating wonder at how much we had in common, disregarding possible thug harm while crossing back alley side streets at 2 a.m.? What a freedom from anything named fear! . Was it possible? These attachments of genetic bonds so deep that made us have we endless things to catch up on about science, philosophy, metallic recycled art and massive dreams of a future world without industrial complexes and broken people?

Wasn’t it wild how we'd go several months without seeing or hearing from the other, only to reacquaint and discover we are were literally on the same page of the same book? Both of us questing for this gateway between love, life, death, suffering and holding to one's inner values, getting lost within different dimensional worlds without the binds of false responsibilities for systems we cared nothing about? While we awoke to earth pods, crystals and new civilizations of the imagination discovering our innate powers of attraction, descending us into underworld labryinth mysteries including oddball suspicions of crow-like characters?

See! This is what I mean! How you and I get these long stream of consciousness diatribes and see nothing crazy about taboo explorations into tunnels of generally misunderstood waves of consciousness. Call it the pot-head mind, I call it exploring the universe of unexplored recesses.

We co-mingled in our own esteems of super-tall ego family members, while our own egos twinned the other way -- constructing so-called humble self-deprecation. We went through our fascinations of dark paths only to discover the cosmic joke in it all -- how we really were just trying to distance ourselves from people we never wanted to become, forgetting at times along the way that our core yearning was to be loved by them in the first place.

Remember that time when we both emailed each other as we were going into the same Vipassana retreat (tho’ in different places -- you in Nepal and me in Toronto). Yes our consciousnesses have been intermingling for eons in the yet-to-be-named star systems but somehow we agreed to ascend to the Truth at this point in time, lifting ourselves up from the depths of darkness only to discover that indeed the truth is that unconditional love and compassion are the only thing that govern.

Who else was as fascinated by coffeehouses in Kensington Market and gender-bending presumptions in backroom eco-building structures as you and I? We’d both watch how our personal desires for reaching our potentials would backlash in activist scenes where people were shooting each other down in subtle and idealistically maniacal ways. Who else could understand our motives to want to transition society from extremely heartless functions back to Mother Earth's wonderful new order? You see, I have been watching you the whole time, knowing that underneath all the seeming madness, your heart and soul has been on the wave of this time that has been wanting to uncover chaotic truth, dispelling the myths of dependable comfort in systems already falling faulty.

Then yet another journey, our own humbling recovery from our acts of self-destruction through the familiar ego of our fears and warrior stances.

Was life as vacant for you as it was for me when you learned that there is no enemy once we left our own ideals behind with the city? That there is a paradise that exists between the mires of pollution and consumer waste? Contrived in our helplessness of the vastness of this incredibly shameful collective delusion? Was there any way of reaching our Spirits up past the reality of some of our ancestors’ lack of caring about quiet beings other than humans in their walk toward God?

Yes, this letter is an outpouring of my Love and Appreciation for you. I have inklings of what you’ve been searching and yearning for in wishing a new reality for yourself and all humanity. This conflict of being on the verge of change and still having the courage to living according to what makes you pulse and inspired. I get the struggle you’ve carried with having to turn wanderings into an epic story because facing other truths about the real pain of not feeling like you had a home to come to or one where you want to stay for too long was too much to swallow and unburden.

How there are few people here in Ontario who could fully see your depth of compassion for all who have been excluded, rejected, neglected and those who most have given up on. It’s that very heart in you that has kept me so loyal to your walk, so proud of what you’re doing day-by-day, intertwining your dreams of creating rhythms from a place outside of how it’s normally been done, while inviting others to play with you, even for just a short while.

Just by writing this letter it is releasing all that has been built up in the misunderstandings of family dynamics, of feeling on the verge of not mattering and twisting and turning it into something magical – seeing how powerfully beautiful our determination to be True to Ourselves has really taken us, so we can sit in an element of peace that the resistances, inner guidance in the face of doubters, the restlessness of a world and people who couldn’t see the vision – that at least there are 2 of us who get it.

I can’t wait to have so many more awarenesses and awakenings with you in this human journey.

In love, peace and understanding,

yer cuz

My Dearest Angel

My dear sweet Angel,

Oh, so many wishes I have for you--as many as the dandelion seed floatings blowing through a summer afternoon wind's embrace.

I wish that the world would align in a way that keeps the sparkle in your eye shining--a world filled with experiences of innocence, joy, wonder, love and gentleness. I pray that your jokester heart tickles the Creator as you draw so near, and She giggles in rolled laughter that topples her mountains of jagged edges and opens up her vulnerable soft belly. I want your fingers to flipdeedoodle on the strings of your guitar, easing hearts and souls of heavenly masters -- so that your woooo-hooooo-hooooo-hoooo echoes up and up to Thunder Bay, awakening the Sleeping Giants of the northern beings.

I dream of a time when we can walk again hand-in-hand through forests of tree sprites, trusting the comfort of their guidance for those like us who are light in heart and foot, while the robin serenades our steps and the mourning dove cooos our lovers' language.

My greatest desire is that you get to touch everyone's being with your warm and uplifting wisdoms that roll out like fresh new sea pearls trolloping over your tongue. Where you are given accolades of simple compliments and stories of transformed lives from those who crack up over your corniest of punny poetics.

Now, with a wink, you already know that I have so many other desires for you, unspeakable for this common page. So I will simply say, in my heart dream for you, I want all to see that indeed compassion is sexier than superstar muscles. I invite you to come closer to me so I can show you exactly what I mean.

Love always,
your dear Sweet One

That red-laced dress

Dearest,

Oh that red lace dress…

Do you remember the one I picked out at the 2^nd-hand store on Queen Street and called you to come and take a look? And so willingly, though with a roll in your eyes, as if to say “it’s just a dress…pick one”, you came anyways and suffered being the only man in a room full of 20’s-era dresses and pure silk stockings.

“Baby, you look damn sexy, I love it on you”, you whispered in my ear.

I needed that from you – that way you would make me feel so desired over the simplest things.

“I love your little tooth and how it sticks out over your lip…” you’d have a knack of finding the little parts of me that never seemed to be noticed by anybody else.

No matter what I would wear, no matter if I gained weight or lost it, you found something beautiful in me. You let me be me in my doc marten boots, made-it-myself t-shirts, silver nose-ring hoop and baggy sweatshirts and still you would hold me and make love to me.

That’s why it hurt so much when that night, at the gala when you drank too much of the free red wine, you agreed with the only other black man with the dreads that “red only looks good on black people...” I was the only person who was wearing a fully red dress that night.

When you mumbled to me on the way home in the taxi about what he had said to you, my pride turned into my stomach, pulling all of my beauty with it. Is this really what you thought? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you stick up for me? Why did you let me go out and look like a clown in public? Is this what black people thought of white people? The core pain of racial divisions around beauty stabbed through our relationship for the first time.

It is a terrible thing when you realize your beloved sees you as something less than wonderful.

Though I haven’t reflected much about it, it is possible this was one of the things that lead to our demise. Me not being beautiful in your eyes anymore, feeling you would much rather be with a woman who looks good in a red dress.

Dearest Unnamed Tree

Dearest Unnamed Tree,

I never knew that I would fall so deeply for you. When we first met, it was by mere chance, in the midst of the ancient playground of the Zapotecs, seeped of Gods and gameball sacrifices. I hope you don’t take this personally, but you had the funniest hairstyle I had ever seen for a tree -- parts sticking up and out, a do’ that extended way far out, and curly-cue branches tinged with burnt red-hue spatterings. And, my, your trunk, short-stubbed yet twisted in knots within knots of each other -- you had clearly grown into your own, standing firm, alone, yet confident, even though you looked a wee bit more eccentric than all the others.

I have to admit that at the time when you and I first engaged, I was far more enraptured with my travel soul mate, Ben. He is, after all, human, and you – well, you are a quieter sort. I wonder if perhaps you placed a love spell on me when you heard me giggling and twirling in love—such a reprieve, I'm sure, in a land weighed down with millenias-old conflicts. Yes, that must have been how you picked me to be the one and only for you! Though given the strength of the sun, I could be over-exaggerating, blinded by your infatuating talent of mesmerizing young ladies with your unspeakable stare. Regardless, in my heart, I carried you back to Canada and held you in tight.

Sadly, my dear mate, Ben, and I parted. Who else could I share with in the delight of your memory? What was I to do? I thought I had to tuck everything away in dusty treasure chests—including you! Yes, I am so very very sorry but it’s true. Even you, I tried to deny. Though I know that the specialness of you is far too great to be hidden away in the recesses of my own mind.

Without any loves to love in my life, I walked by store windows on Bay Street, envious at mannequined bodies who had no worries about soul mates and where-to-go-next ponderings. Yet I somehow knew I couldn’t be anybody without some kind of heart beating beneath the surface. No matter where I went I couldn’t find a cure for this malady in the grey, one-tree-at-a-time-lined sidewalks of Toronto.

Scanning the mini-forests of the Big City, I had an ache to reconnect with beings of the leaf-ed variety. I strolled through the massive oak trees in High Park, hoping they would let me be their little acorn, but they said – nope, dear one, you gotta go back home ---you’re just not so very mighty like us. So I pursued another, closer to my size. I admit that I pretended I was enraptured by the maple trees with their flittering red-tinged autumn glory leaves– yes…anyone would agree that they really are quite lovely…but they're reserved for somebody else, not me. And the sturdy pine trees, with their forever-needles aggrandizing Canadiana postcards -- they couldn't even accept my sorrows!

What was I missing??? I couldn’t sort out this soul frenzy.

So I just sold everything! Everything! I had to get out of this dreadful, uncaring city. I risked not having a place to live. I risked my life and personal safety. No job, no direction. The only thing I was sure of was that I needed to return to Oaxaca City. Something or someone was there for me. . .

So I went. And I sat in a room for 2-months in Mexico, pondering what madness would lead me to this place, no idea of what the heck I was doing there in the first place. The more I sat in the heat waves of time, the more I felt the heartbreak by previous lovers. The mariachi players singing latin tales of love gone wrong just added to the wounds. Was my destiny to simply die in this land of dreams of poets and painters who never get noticed?

Not knowing what else to do, I plopped myself on the bus that chugged cautiously up the mountain to the Zapotec ruins. Out the window I stared over the cliff that seemed ruthless in eating up tourists like me who never asked the credentials of the bus driver.

When will this pain and misery end, was my ongoing mantra on the trip. Yet I felt guilty for even wallowing in this self-pity given the level of comfort I was afforded compared to my fellow human who is living in a slum with threats of illness and invasion always around the corner.

I got off the bus, not wanting to relate with anyone, stretching my body into the clouds. It all looked the exact same as 2 ½ years before. The museum was still there. the ticket agent accepting payment. The same tour guide uniforms. But no Ben this time. Just me. Was I on some-type of roller coaster ride that would never end, coming back to the beginning only to go in another ridiculous circle?

I paid my fare and started strolling like a visitor who no longer belongs to the route of tourist first-timers. I am a more seasoned pro here and no one could tell me to stay along the road of historical explanations. I left my bus compatriots behind and decided I would, as was the essence of this journey, go it alone.

By one of the tombs, I met a fellow who was at least a foot taller than me. He asked if he could take a picture of me beside a tree. I had suspicions that perhaps he was just looking for a photo to send home to tell others he had found a young foreign lady. But, he made a believable argument with his awed enthusiasm that he was collecting the seeds from this tree because it is the very same tree that produces the resin for the traditional rubber ball game. He wanted to show his friends on the coast the height of the tree in comparison to me. What a phenomenal love slave he had become to this tree and the game, as I would soon learn I was the same to you.

The man left grinning with contentment from ear-to-ear. Why is it that I could make others happy and not myself? Why, Dear God, was I here in this land where there is endless pollution, suffering, people living in class divisions? How is it that my feet were walking on the same land that others walked 2,000 or more years ago? What is the point of it all?!

Then I stumbled and tripped over that great landscape I visited merely 2 1/2 years before. And I SAW YOU AGAIN! My knees wobbled at the sight of you...I had shamefully forgotten about you since so much had happened from the last time we met. I forgot we had this quiet relationship unbeknownst by others. That we had made some kind of pact that you held in your tree-trunk heart--that I had discarded somehow? Was it really you calling me across two countries -- yearning for us to reacquaint?

IT WAS! You called out for me to come to see you. You knew the depths of my own heart failing in relationships gone by. You knew I needed to see something familiar to salve this yearning for a friend who made no judgments about me or others. I laid under your shade and never wanted to leave. I felt I could die there and everything would be okay. I had found you again. I swear I felt the tickling of your tiny green leaves reaching down to my shoulder, saying sweetly "oh, dear Heather, I missed you. I love you and hoped you'd return."

You needed me as much as I needed you! After all, how many other people have spent the time to appreciate all the unusual gifts you have to offer, preferring to spend their time on the massive man-made steps of temples across the way. Of course! Two hours was far too short for this love affair but I knew I needed to return back to the city, otherwise I'd be mixing with Spirits under the midnight moon.

I collected all of your heart seeds into my being, promising never to forget you because I was now your newly self-appointed guardian who cares about you and will send you thoughts of love from ethers of long distances. It's sad but true-- I just can't physically visit like this all the time, for I have my roots as you have yours. But I love you and always will and you have not gone unnoticed in this world of people too busy to check out eccentric trees with funny hairstyles.

Love always,
Heather