By expressing all our feelings, with unconditional loving acceptance, we draw into our lives what we truly desire…
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Welcome to EXPRESSING!
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Secret Morning
by Kathleen MacGregor
Learn the broken, secret questions.
Perhaps morning blushes with need
Even as flowers
Blaze
Bleed
Devour
Celebrate
Its coming.
Monday, January 4th, 2010
A Haunting
By Kathleen MacGregor
During those years my children were at school, I was like a ghost haunting the other parents, teachers and staff. Barely visible, gauzy, unnerving. Only the children could see me clearly and hear me – and the visiting grandmothers. I walked in the shadows of the drama mamas, dressed up to drop off their children. Dressed like rebels, dressed like liberals. To me they were the pawns of the government who allow them to feel like rebels by keeping pot marginal. “Don’t make trouble”. They scold the homely questioner. Their voices scrape in their throats. Expensive gypsies. I am a ghost to them, transparent and unreal. They might think they glimpse me but my presence has faded already into a small story, a ghost story of a mother who used to haunt this school. And when I open my eyes my son is sitting next to me and asking what the tooth fairy does with all the teeth. I picture his teeth in my jewelery box, tucked into pillowed satin pouches. I don’t know why. I don’t have a plan for them. I only know I want to keep them. My child’s teeth.
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
The Sister
by Kathleen MacGregor
What I love about family gatherings,
is being a sister to my brothers.
We play games and laugh and I can see how we’re alike.
I see the shadow of me in them and can love my shape.
I can hear the echo of my voice in their voices and can love
my voice. I love to feel that connection
and I can feel it even though
we’re playing a card game or tossing a salad.
Divided.
Part of me is with the game and the chatter and
another part is sitting back. The great- grandmother.
Watching, listening, smiling understanding.
Sometimes dozing lightly into dreams.
Waking to the sound of my own voice telling the cousins that dinner
is ready. Dinner that the other part of me helped prepare.
We all helped. I love it when we all run outside
after dinner, when it’s good and dark, for a special game of
hide and seek. We are all children then,
running through the darkness.
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
All Hell Broke Loose
by Betty Idarius
“All hell broke loose!” he said
As if that’s a bad thing
Well let me tell you
It’s Hell time!
It’s about time
For everything to fall apart
So if you don’t like the heat
Get out of the way
Out of my way
Because I’ve opened the door
It can’t be closed anymore
I want it all to come out
It’s what I’ve asked for
It’s what you’ve pretended you wanted
It’s not neat and pretty
This going to hell business
It’s not controllable
Not understandable
It’s the ultimate letting go
Not knowing
Just falling, falling, falling into it
Wondering if you will survive it?
Let me tell you now
That you won’t
You won’t survive it!
Not this part of you
That believes in the neat and pretty
The tidy and understandable
The controllable
That all get’s thrown out the window
It evaporates actually
Into the thin air of nothingness
That it always was
It’s not so bad this hell place
Highly underrated
Underestimated too
For the power that it holds
Always has held
To do it’s work in the dark
In the shadow
Not because it needs to
But because no one has wanted to see
The truth of what goes on
Down here in hell
It’s had to stay down here
Pushed down
So unloved and unwanted
And it’s not possible to stay fresh
And clean and pretty
Under such conditions
So if you’re asking to go here
Don’t expect prettiness
Not at first at least
And don’t expect to come out alive
Not as you’ve known yourself
Everything gets transformed down here
Burned alive
Purified actually
Though it may not seem that way at first
It’s not possible to know what will happen
It’s not that kind of place
Not made for those wanting the comfortable road
I want to bring some light down here
Any light at all would be new here
Enough acceptance
For what’s been going on
So we can find out what it really is
These places we’ve been so scared of
So repelled by
Finding out what it is
When it’s no longer suppressed
Pushed down in hell
With all the other parts gasping
Feeling the hatred that is all they have gotten.
Monday, December 7th, 2009
Thanksgiving
by Kathleen MacGregor
On Thanksgiving, when we all come together,
gathering up our stories and our stances
in our arms, like crops from the field;
When we come bearing insistent separateness,
proud individuality,
spilling our armloads clumsily all over each other,
because we have come with more than we can carry,
there is a grief.
The grief pours down from the
middle of us and
pools on the ground at our feet. We are standing in it.
The grief is dammed. Held at bay,
it never makes it to our hearts,
our throats,
our eyes.
Our eyes stay dry.
Just because we think we can’t cry here.
We can’t show what we feel.
Can’t be real.
Walking across the room to my niece,
to help her with her jacket,
I splash through grief. I wade. I swim.
She is growing more distant, unreachable.
The tide has taken me out.
I sink. I watch myself drowning.
Drowning in grief suppressed.
I watch.
And it isn’t until the car pulls away and heads back down the road,
gravel crunching dryly,
that I reach down into that
warm ocean of grief.
And save myself,
gasping for breath,
finally sobbing,
ocean meeting ocean,
love meeting grief,
thanking life
for life.
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
Psychopathic Killer
by Betty Idarius
I am the psychopathic killer.
Do you dare know me?
I have kept myself well hidden
In order to do my dirty work
You have not wanted
To see me here.
I do my work in the shadow.
Unseen, unheard, unfelt
For what I am.
I ride on the tail of rage
The whip at the end
That cuts into fresh tender flesh
Lashing out quickly and deeply
Leaving before
I can be found.
You haven’t known me
Though you are familiar with my works.
The sting of hurt
Rawness of the fresh wound.
Rage is my ride
She serves me well
We work together
Though she doesn’t always know
That I’ve come along.
At times she chooses
To have me with her
To use me as her weapon
To remove what is in her way
To enact her revenge
Nothing gets in my way
Nothing can stop my action.
I work best in the dark
Where there is no light
No consciousness to thwart me
No being there to interfere with
My dirty work
Cold, unfeeling, heartless work
The assassin hired to do a job
Quickly, cleanly, deadly, thoroughly.
Nothing left undecided.
Nothing left at all.
My weapon is sharp, cold, cutting,
Faster than light.
It goes deep
Takes no chance
Definitive
There is no room
For failure here
The verdict is clear
Death is the only deed
Left to complete.
I leave as quickly
As I arrive
No trace left behind
Of who has been here
No fingerprints
No evidence
That points to who it was
That enacted this dirty deed.
Only the wound
The smell of death
Of denial
A rotting stench
That can’t be cleaned.
The rawness and aching
Of pain
That can’t be healed.
You’ve believed that I only exist
Do my dirty work
Through someone else.
You’ve protected yourself
From that externalized force.
How blind you’ve been
To the place
Where I’ve been able to enter.
I’ve fooled you
For a very long time.
Because you see
I really live inside of you.
No other.
Your most unwanted child
Twisted and deformed
Your very own.
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
Lonely One
by Betty Idarius
It’s so lonely in this place.
No one comes to visit here.
They don’t even know I live here.
They don’t know I exist.
I’ve tried to let them know but
It’s as if they shun me.
My voice isn’t very loud,
That’s true.
I haven’t had the courage
To shout and let my presence be felt.
I haven’t wanted to shout,
It feels too much,
Too scary,
Not knowing who will show,
Maybe giving me the kind
Of attention I don’t want.
I’m not very pretty
That’s true
Not the way they seem to like.
My flesh is raw
Festering wounds
Reminders of him.
It’s happened before
That he has come
To be with me.
I don’t know
What he looks like
Who he is
Why he comes
To see me here.
I still feel the sting
Of his lashes on my flesh.
The wounds still raw
Never quite healing
Always reminding me.
Gone as quickly
As he comes.
To let me know
He still exists.
So I’ll continue to stay here
It’s the safest place I know,
The only place I know,
Where it’s quiet and still,
So still I can’t feel myself
Sometimes.
So still I wonder
Sometimes
If I exist.
Beyond the aching
That I know to be me.
Friday, December 4th, 2009
Easier
by Kathleen MacGregor
Something’s bothering me.
In the dim, cold bathroom this morning,
I stubbed my toes as I was rushing
between getting dressed
and a time that hasn’t happened yet.
A time later in the day, the week, the month.
Almost immediately,
holding my foot, and offering my breath to the pain,
to say sorry,
I took it as a reminder to come present.
Aloud I said, “Thank you. Thank you.”
Because I was feeling thanks.
I am learning.
Now, I hear my husband stir in bed. His stirring is irritated somehow.
That cat woke him up twice last night and it’s my fault. I think. I think he thinks.
He doesn’t like the pets. He doesn’t want to be inconvenienced.
I want to hold soft warmth
and cuddle.
I am remembering before we married he told me about his childhood neighbors.
They kept homes across the street from each other.
They visited each other when they felt desirous
of each others company.
The story enraged me. What was the point?
If you’re not willing to fully
be with one another, what’s the point?
In a room so full and dim,
with irritation, blame, and unfulfilled desire
circling like sharks,
I know.
It’s easier.
It is easier than learning about
what you say in a blinding, red rage-
when your body stops, and your mind stops, and
your soul stops resisting the ancient buried hate
and anger wanting to be resurrected.
It’s easier than that.
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
Peaches
By Kathleen MacGregor
It’s later, now.
After the peaches
and the pie crust and
after Dad said
he has lymph cancer.
It’s after spending 3 hours today blanching,
peeling, slicing and spicing
peaches I bought on Tuesday
and placed in the brown paper bag,
on the Mexican tile floor.
Beneath the side board
they rested into themselves
for four days.
Until their scent
dripped thickly from the air
and sweetened us with sunset vapors.
It’s after your wine glass shattered,
scattering broken glass like tiny seeds
all over the kitchen.
I couldn’t be sure
that no glass hadn’t gone into the bowl
with the peaches.
Because you couldn’t bear to feel how sad you felt,
you turned on anger instead.
“Why were the peaches there?”, you pushed.
“You didn’t leave me any room in the kitchen to work”, you tried.
And for once,
I stayed quiet.
I could feel how very sorry you were.
And I was angry too.
For another reason.
Sure the peaches. Sure my hard work. Sure.
More, that those peaches were for for my dad’s birthday.
My dad who has cancer now.
“It could be his last”, I’d heard myself say.
I had thought I’d accepted
that my dad and me -
we’d never accepted each other.
We’d accepted disappointment.
That we’d spent our relationship trying to change each other.
That he is dying just when I figured out I could stop trying and
I had. He was okay with me. And it no longer mattered,
finally, if I was okay with him.
I hadn’t realized that I was still trying to win him over, win his approval
with a peach pie-
until the peaches were lost.
Ah! but what peaches they were!
It’s so hard
to let go of
The peaches.
To let them go.
I had sliced myself into the bowl
with the peaches.
So ripe, sweet. And ready
to become something more than
I thought I was.
Ready to nourish.
Offering myself
in celebration and
in mourning
of daughter and Dad.
It’s me now.
Lying over a pile of garbage
in the garbage can.
Wasted, thrown away.
I just can’t let them go that easily.
I am clinging
like the last peach
of the summer
on the highest branch.
Preferring to wrinkle and dry up in
the sun’s heat
rather than be picked
and eaten.
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Hole Self
by Kathleen MacGregor
Out on the edge of things-
edge of comfort, politeness, legality, acceptability, of “what we do”,
there aren’t a lot of arms
holding you.
There aren’t a lot of voices
reassuring you.
Because you’re somewhere
no one’s ever been.
You don’t know.
And you know
you don’t know.
You are leaning, balancing over the edge
toes tingling, gripping.
Hoping to feel some security
about the place that’s here.
The world is burning behind you.
You will surely burn with it,
if you go back.
But it might be a slow burn, smoldering and singeing.
Jumping will be a death too.
You will be changed.
Your children will be changed.
It’s time to jump, or burn.
The swirling clench deep in the belly
wants to scream the walls down.
Help me!
Wants to panic and sob with wild abandon. And throw things across rooms with brick walls-
smashing, breaking, crashing, deafening, blinding, gasping.
This is too hard, maybe it’s a mistake, go back, fall back, fall apart, I can’t do it. Take it away from me. I don’t know how.
You become the gaping, yawning hole
opening over the edge.
How can you hold a hole?
How can a hole fall
into itself?
