loopy dreams

I’ve been having another spate of the recurring school dream. The one where i am given a teaching timetable, consulted tenderly by the bosses, soon-to-be-colleagues, students and friends, about the coming term. They are enthusiastic about working with me. They want me and they want me to be happy too – is my classroom alright? Do i want them to change the pre-dawn start? What else can they do for me? All of them. Even the now-haloed SMT. So you can tell right from the get-go that there must be some seriously deluded unconscious thinking going on. Or my sarcasm finally imploded. Or else my celestials really don't "get" how teaching broke me in the first place; how demons wear the mask of leadership then guide stars to ruin on the rocks of OFSTED, ably assisted by a death-threatening ex, an impossible "other" relationship, a huge undiagnosed gallstone, actual deaths (two of those) and a semi-holy amount of stuff i could not even begin to share on screen, though i am oddly tempted at times.

Perhaps i need exorcism ... the past just won't let go. Some might say it's me who can't let go, but i no longer care to argue the difference. Or take responsibility for the shadows others have bled into me. Nor am i declaring it's ok to be a victim either. I'd just like all this "stuff" erased, cleanly and thoroughly, from Now *bleh* - and if you tell me that's what life is all about, i may have to scream as i incinerate this hell of a dream.

I know that who i am is because of all "that" ... but sometimes i'd like to dream of the One, you know the star-cross'd romance that ended up on the cutting room floor time and time again, the One i would cheerfully reincarnate to find but this time for a happy ending ... and bam! Here i am - their smiles patiently, perfectly intact while i seem to be on the teaching team ... again. Nooo!

So, mid-dream-loop, i find my voice, point out that teaching – and the rest – all but killed me in waking life; i am retired, out of it, would lose my small but essential pension if i was on the payroll, it unhinged me last time anyhow so why would i want to do it again, exactly? They gaze at me through blissed-out calm while loving hearts all but pop night's air. It dreamily occurs to me that i've been on their etheric payroll for some time already. omg! Incarceration looms for sure - how long have i been "here" - and why is it that i'm the only one climbing the walls with worry? Sometimes it’s really good to wake up, y’know?

just a moment ...

Solo Songs - my book

My son has urged me for ages to make a statement here about "Solo Songs". I am shy about promoting it. Perhaps self-criticism comes too easily to me. But I promised him. I am proud of this book. I know first-hand what happened for me to wake up, spirit-howling, but with a "voice" at last. I am proud that I still soul-grow from it all - with Muse. We breathe and bleed our glories and mistakes equally. You know what? I am even happy that I was with someone who, at the time I started to compile these poems, assumed that without him I could not make a book in the first place ... grrrr! That was an end of him, of course, as well as the beginning of "Solo Songs".

I am in love. I didn't always know that but Alan (on the otherside now) showed me. Cool how someone I never met could save my life. He pulled many from the abyss of self-destruction. Beloveds continue to do that. We are all in love. It's natural. Innately hardwired. What isn't is the mess we make of it all, personally and globally. That's to do with choice. And maybe shadows too.

Should you be interested - "Solo Songs" is on Amazon.

paws in thought

The roads around this area mirror perfectly how my life has been so far – they travel as and where they do because they can, rather than because they should. Each route seemed like a good idea at the time, then things changed and suddenly it wasn’t.

Which is why I couldn’t find the designated vet assigned to my erroneously assumed-pregnant feline dominatrix, Tobi. As with all good ideas and poems only ever half abandoned in the draft folder (no-one gets the key to THAT door!) persistent stubbornness really came into its own … never mind all those fancy navi-gismos that claim to take you "there".

Instinct minus any sense of logic, plus another of those amazing local angels I have spoken of before in this blog, made magic. I found the surgery almost on my doorstep – though it was incredibly invisible. Tobi's operation went well, though it turned out that she had already been "done". Now my poor T-being has to do all that recovering, undignified bald patch a-shivering in the growing colder winter air, while I am manically opening or locking doors and repeatedly interrogating cats to clarify who can/not go outside.

I feel for Tobi. Or maybe I mean that I feel like her. The day went crazy. Even being doped up on mind altering painkillers can't have fooled her that humanity is anything less than insane. Last week Rusty had his op too, so this tiny sanctuary of ours has become a place of walking wounded … kind of surreal, eh? Except the truth of it is in-verse … we're all healing.

just thinking ...

In violet, moon glides mist, guides
daydreams’ drifting cloud to earth.
Thoughts fingertip across warm skin,
so eloquently - you - don’t stop.

Silent, flesh dares all for visions’ flow.
Joined sinew-breath curves sigh,
wind me round your spine, find mine.
In essence I touch - nothing.

*image: Marta Wiley

in the dark ...

Upside down, or so it seems, bats hang.
Dreams cape tree in ruffled dark,
sonar drifting, idle taste of moth in air.
Shy leather fans hold echoes
fur-close, cradle sound of stormy night.

Inside out, or so it seems, mind stabs
evasive moon yet misses heart.
Unspoken torment, wind impounds
for fun. Fortunate that flame
endures long life for moth to fly at all.

Quiet sense of wing, hush, don’t disturb
the night. Thought-fire only ever
rests for dawn to tip cool branch with sun.
Let me watch dark shadows slide
to kiss, then leave your shoulders bare.