They Shoot Spiders . . . Don’t They?

Liz was a real beauty of a woman to look at and she had a figure to match. She never had a hair out of place and she dressed to assure that image, wearing only the finest, most chic clothing, Liz was a woman secretly coveted by men and openly envied by women. Even when it came to her marriage and her child, only the best and the most beautiful would do.

 

Her husband Mark was a real looker, a hot knock-out and the entire package with the kiss-worthy lips, the slim Elvis hips, just all of it in perfect ‘we could be models’ compliment to Liz’s beauty.

 

Mark and Liz had a child who was just as pretty as they were, and so like a lovely little princess. Her name was Caroline and she was one and a half years old. Not Caroline as in Carol-in, but rather it was pronounced Caro-line as in fine and mine. Lovely, lovable, sweet Caroline was an amazing mixture of her parents. Great, large, luminous, almond-shaped eyes with long, dark lashes that could have been mistaken for very rare, very feathery-violet, ghostly-gray bird’s wings made of goddess gossamer and rattail-comb ratted, black floss.  

 

As is sometimes the case with very special, very lovely people, Liz had some quirky personal ideas about certain things, things like spiders even being allowed to exist on earth, and how one ought to deal with them if one came upon the unlucky creatures inside the home.

 

Living as we all did during this time (I was about 13 years old) at the edge of a small town in the foothills of Northern California, we often found the lost and odd creature crawling or creepily creeping around inside our homes, they having somehow misplaced themselves from the outside into the inside. Huge, such a huge mistake for a spider if it happened to be the oomph-a-loomping lad-about-town on a gad-about inside Liz’s home.

 

As I was visiting a home where Liz and her sisters were staying, it would just have to happen that this would be the day in which a poor, forlorn and lost spider had found himself in the lurk, and without a lick of a shred of luck that he would get out alive. It was a spider, for Pete’s sake, and it was Liz. It was a GIGANTIC HAIRY WOOD SPIDER . . . and it was LIZ!

 

Liz had never moved so quickly in her entire coddled and model-perfect life as she did when she tore down the hallway and into the bathroom to get a super-sized bottle of hairspray in order that she might neutralize the threat. Liz had a plan on how to deal with this interloping bitey-type being, and it was obvious that she had indulged in this practice on more than one occasion, for she moved with purpose, practice and skill. It was almost thrilling to see her in such Panther-flashing-past action, if had not been for the fact that I knew how this story was going to end.

 

Liz screamed in off and on mode the entire time she was saturating the hapless, hopeless pestilence. With the hairspray nozzle set on full blast, it became apparent that this great beast wasn’t going to be feasting on any bugs or flies or anything ever again after Liz got through with it. When it finally stopped moving at long last, plastered to the glass table top in a watershed sheeting of sticky ick, Liz made off back down the hallway to go and fetch some paper towels in order that she might remove the offending monstrosity from her presence, and away from the probing eyes and curiosity of her young toddler daughter.

 

Curious and lovely little Caroline was mesmerized by the movements of her mother, and the lack of movement from the tidbit beasty bite lying on the tabletop corner. Liz had no sooner turned her back to go and get the paper towels than Caroline dashed past us all and made a bee-line, a bug-line over to the obviously (to all of us anyway) dead Spider lying on the coffee table top, now all goo and gore and deplorability. What she did next caused all of us (except the spider-phobic Liz whose back was turned to us) to shriek out loud, screaming out in utter and total horror, “No, Caroline, no!”

 

Liz turned around just in time to see Caroline toss the arachnid back and begin gumming down on the giant spider with all her tiny will and might! Huge, dangly spider legs protruded from the side of her pert, pinkly chomping little mouth, completely creeping everyone out beyond the most creeping out thing you’ve ever been experienced in witnessing, ever.

 

As Caroline munched down on that hairy-legged spider with all she was worth, her mother literally nearly fainted away. I saw shock on her face, and I kid you not, but Liz paled to a Madonna Lily white ghostliness at the sight of her sweet baby girl snacking on the spider, munch-a-crunch lunching as if she only had a cookie, and it was high tea.

 

You would have thought that at least the nasty tasting hairspray would have halted the eight-legged happy meal, not to mention all our voices squealing out, No! Even now, I can still see with utter clarity those ridiculously large spider legs hanging out of the side of her darling child’s mouth as she gummed down on it with total concentration, total determination . . . and childlike innocence. Maybe it was simply to defy her mother, even at one and half years old. You never know, eh. True story, folks.

Triple Heart Spill

I breathe in and you breathe out,
my heart’s upbeat to your heart’s downbeat —
In between the two, we meet.

We are pressed together like autumn leaves,
like awe and wonder in a memory-book
written out in spinal column symmetry.

With a passionate lotus-scented prayer,
I unfold before your sacred body altar,
surrendered in the remembrance

of who we truly are.

We are anointed in a fathomless Love,
in a quicksilver light surge igniting
and striking us from sole to crown.

Shining with the brightest delight,
a Joy born of a grace-filled glory . . .

Something beyond and before
all human knowledge or spiritual power
shoulders us beyond the gods’ playing field.

I worship at the spirit tableaux
of a scintillating triple-heart spill,
stilled to stone at the tone of such

an evocative thrill-sound throating.
This ripple raptured snapshot of Such a Love

has become a sacred offering to ourselves,

born from the subtle emanations of our Love,
the Endlessness of Inconceivable Love,

the Love we’re always forever becoming.

Solipsis of Missals

I don’t want to sit here and lambast my poor pitiable self

in some pseudo-Catholic act of contrition and mortification.

So instead I’m busting out my Bozo the clown in frown face;

busting-up and falling-out with friendlies, undoubtedly,

though now, not.

Somehow in the over hauling of my ego-sack

I usually keep slung back and out of sight,

I pulled wide-open … entirely opened

for all the cyber-world of wizened peeps,

for my forever-keeps, to get a really good gander at.
That’s that then. What’s done has been done.

Or is it?
Was it the Fun of the One?

The laugh-track playback

of a Ludicrous Lord, bored perhaps

with the backlash of His Lamentable Actions?

I am affording myself much more leeway in this

solipsis of missals gone wrong.

 Hmmm. Hum. Soham and so on. Some kind of fun, You, You, You …

 God!

Enough adding to this duckishly-drafted

duck-the-buck muck-about. Alas! What was quacked-out loudly

from my loutish-mouthed cavort

is now twacked back, crafted

by the full moon in bloom last night.

Today I want to say how not sad I am.
Just the writing of these words makes me chortle out loud.

We cannot continue sitting around bummed and bothered

by the play we foddered forth so fiercely 

when our familiarity bred discontent

upon contempt.

 None of us are exempt from the tempting of Fate.

 It’s time for me to wrap-up these loony tuned lines.

I cannot weep for me, for we are, and I am

standing on a Cosmic Runway, shoulder to shoulder

and arm in arm. This Comic Brunt we’re facing,

it’s all Shudder, Frolic and Chum,

Chimera, Chagrin, Fabulot and Got It!

As for me and mine –

We are defined by this cat-with-a-bird-grin

and it’s all just as an endless Amen

to the ending of all our sins

still simmering in and decimating  

from a past that does not exist.

 

 

 

50 Years

At my mother’s funeral service various relatives and friends went to the podium to speak about my mother and what she meant to them. One of the speakers gave a great speech about how marvelously heroic she had been in having to deal with such a difficult challenge in her life, the monumental challenge of being a mother who was so greatly burdened with a disabled child. They went on abou…t how she had so very, very bravely triumphed in this enormously difficult super-test given her because of her crippled, chronically ill, and ever so burdensome daughter. That monumentally burdensome challenge would be me.

It’s like, “Hey, I’m sitting right here. The crippled burden isn’t deaf. She has ears.” Hmmm. It’s not exactly the first time this manner of accusational burden description pertaining to my role in other people’s lives has occurred. No one hates nor berates you half as much as you do yourself. Erica Jong had it right with this one.

(I had to laugh right out loud when rereading this incredibly hilarious ‘poor me’ rendition of an untraditional burden story. Gimme a break.)

So the first memory of it was this: I was standing on a small dirt bluff that ran alongside a field down from my home on Mono Avenue. I stopped and bent down to examine my big toe because it really, really hurt. And it was swollen, very swollen.

The next memory was of myself standing in my parent’s bedroom telling my mom and dad that I didn’t feel well. Suddenly and without warning my knobby, little knees gave out and I collapsed on the floor, crying and wide-eyed with fear.

After that my life was never the same. Everything changed forever. Wonderful, talented, likable, and sometimes envied Mazie was about to learn what it meant to be dismantled by nine year olds and the medical establishment of 1963.

To clarify: My mother really did have it hard and her life was very difficult because of having a disabled child. I give her great credit and infinite gratitude for having been there for me throughout those long, difficult years.

Rejection Session

In this crazy day of complete candor, I want to lay it all out there for the world to make of it what they will, just as I am, and just as it is.

However much it might be a ‘go boldly, go blasé blechedly, or simply indifferently’ in perceiving how others’ might receive and respond to what I have to offer, (including all my nerd-wordy warts, my self-exposed wounds, my flailings upon failings, ju…st every bit of all of it), I am driven to reveal all motives of mine, hidden or obvious, and how we are all truly the same beauty-bearing being breathing in and out of an infinitude of multitudes of various bodies, lives and minds.

When I have nothing to hide nor shrink away from in everything I say, share, and do, (word, thought & deed), I muse to myself searchingly, “How then can I ever be deemed and viewed as a possible fake-fraudling of a friend requestor, someone unworthy of a decent consideration for one’s more ardently desired circle of ‘fahriends?’ I must say that I could be 100% wrong and that those who have snubbed my friendship requests might have very good reasons why they did not accept it, reasons I cannot know nor fathom and which might have nothing to do with liking or not liking me, or not ever wanting to get a chance to like or dislike me. See? I might be projecting my perceptions of the whys and whats of this. Yeah, right.

Am I not saavy clever enough, ‘right-crowd-allowed’ enough to avoid being placed on the hot and hurty seat of a Facebook rejection? Maybe I just don’t get it, don’t see myself as others’ see me. None of us usually do, or even can. Perhaps it’s a ‘buried-in-the-sand’ boneheaded notion of mine in my obvious denial about the ostracism that’s associated with me speaking out against the ‘slick-clique’ club rules of admission … or maybe, Mazie, they really just don’t want you, don’t like you, and don’t like what you present and post. The old ‘you are what you post’ hokey toad road bloatage comes to mind now. Oh yeah. Oooohhh Yeah. Right.

Maybe I’m too forthright. But my drive and passion to ‘burn the house down’ so to speak, is on par for liberational libations being passed around. I don’t want to be a big f*cking phony – ever. In an open-hearted, open-armed ‘Here’s what you get and this is who I am’ blathering, I stand at the ready to answer any and every question one might want to ask of me. I guess I don’t have anything to hide. I have such seriously horrific, unbelievable, incredible AND supernaturally sublime and awesome experiences to share with my friends. A great deal of them are very personal and sensitive stories that some would balk at, perhaps cry foul, and most likely hurriedly scurry away from if they were actually faced with showing everyone, heck, ANYONE these excruciatingly honest redemptive tattle-tales prattled on upon oneself.

The more I might hide and deny my life, and the more I might put on the proverbial, beat-to-death dog in attempting to fake out and pad up an image of what and who I am, (one that isn’t at all my true state), well then, I would be leaving myself open to a more and greater necessity to embellish or to plump-up myself as being someone who I am not.

One cannot for very long, fake kindness or a learned brilliance or comraderie, or anything that calls for personal creativity and true sensitivity to occur and flower on the fly.

The reality-plowing person always shows their open-bowled face, their real and less-than-grace-filled face if that’s who they actually are. Our wolfy-judgey chops and pass-the-buck predatory persona can only hide behind the sheepskin cape of Cheshire-chopped wolfish lies for just so long. We always give ourselves away in the midst of our daily interactions. We can hold a fraudulent pose for just such a time, and then … there be yiking and rreerring and clawing and snarling snoots tilted towards the sky of I, Me, Mine. If I had a dime for every time, eh?

Shall I be selfless enough, kindly and caringly fair enough to rise past my fears of failure and my lifelong ingrained belief that I am not good enough, not loveable enough? Will I be able to arrive at that place wherein I can see through the imposition of my yack-back-in-anger ego, my fragile, primal-dice tossed and stamped human mind? These minds’ of ours, so sadly bent and twisted by our life incidents’ into a fear-wisdom stance, I do not wonder why it so often has us kept on edge and swept-up brutally into karmic knots that we cannot untie easily.

Can I myself put to rest, put to death, all my old useless ideas and archaic beliefs about seeing myself as a loser-failure-freak whose been imagined as being seen as one who has been wobbling awkwardly along Bone-Oaf Boulevard, lurching towards Maroon-Dufus Drive? I can if I’m clear and honest with myself. I can if I continue to inquire, to root out all the bullshit beliefs I still keep and hide about myself.

What will reveal the right (for me) road to recognition-liberation? For myself it’s in my candor and honesty and in utilizing the ability for being completely and totally real. In not clinging to an image needing protection about the unveiling of my foibles and weaknesses and actual humanity, hopefully it might encourage others to be just exactly who they are, exactly as they live and act and interact daily, regularly, sincerely with others.

Feeling Feisty

Though she is quick to learn
& admittedly clever,
her natural doubt of herself
should make her so weak
that she dabbles brilliantly
in half a dozen talents
& thus embellishes
but does not change
our life….
…
So sayeth the Jongmeister. I feel rather feisty when I face down the all-talk and no-action clown who tries to hold me back.

Clown schmown, I ain’t gonna go crawdaddin’ back into my hidey hole of an excuse-maker Mazie personifying cop-outs

and bow-outs and blow-offs.

I’m going to crazy-town this wimp-freak fear-frump right the eff back to the reclusial museless refuse heap I’d habituated.

What a whacked-out normalcy belief I’ve bought into.

‘I gotta be me’ sung to tap dancing and high leaps… Shee-ee-eesh. Show this crackpot of parody to the closest door, please.

Feisty-riding high, and I am, (high on writing) I can say it with a straight face: “O, (D’Oh!) I am fortune’s fool! . . . (well then)

Then I defy you stars!” Good ol’ Willy Shakes! For me and mine, once again … Write!

Do write, and do it as well as you possibly can, and as often as you can (like, everyday).

My Place in This Thing

OhDearGodDearLove, here we go again (chagrined)
in a write-out of all this drudge and over-dubiosity
about myself and my place in this thing …
I tremble in and crumble down,
round-eyed but fright-less.

Fisting-up these twig burl fingers pumped against heaven,
a lifting out from this crackle-shacked cripple act gains momentum.

In the gritting skin of my grimaced grin stretched
to maximum capacity, I give in to the meme

of this dreamland horror show.

I give notice.

Thunderous across the scorch of a body field razed down daily,
the broad mind refinement of this bone-cage parody gains ground
as the sound of my typing taps in tempo to a spinal jive pin-down.

I cannot be confounded by the believer who would leave me
needy and fearful of a future not meant to be free
from expansive acts of pain.

I have tuned out the shouters of credentials imbedded
in these stanzas that could stand in the way
of the middle ground
shoring me forward.

Sometimes it’s like rising upon sea-weedy waves
from a deep grave filled with long good-byes
lasting into the night …

and I’m crying through the salt-doll babble talk
as I bobble along in probabilities, willing
the scatter-fall death of my fears rib-bone buried
in the past memory of poison recalled in this heart.

I am not God’s walking stick, nor the trick knee keeping me
tied-up in terror-tales bordering on the unintellible ramblings
of a brow-beaten, disease eaten mad-woman.

These crookly feet faltering under my limp-along legs,
they hold the power of earth and sky between them
in a hard-fleshed chalice carved with ghostly incantations.

This lament of my own tongue-less, raptured race
is the faceted face, my face in a mirror
seeking the Grace of a God
long ago gone quiet.