By expressing all our feelings, with unconditional loving acceptance, we draw into our lives what we truly desire…
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By expressing all our feelings, with unconditional loving acceptance, we draw into our lives what we truly desire…
Upcoming Events |

You’re not alone by confusedvision
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.

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.
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.

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?

by Kathleen MacGregor
Looking inside my basement I find dirt, cobwebs, spiders, dampness, old things. Canning jars full of unidentifiable preserves on shelves to my right. A bare bulb lights up the washer and dryer and I smell laundry soap and mildew. The air on my skin feels icy-sharp, cutting. An old rug is rolled up beneath the shelves and boxes are stacked at the back. One of the top boxes has been opened and newspaper is caught mid-slither reaching for the floor. A high window above the laundry area shows ground level behind some camellias. I hear voices, just the music of voices without the lyrics, outside the window there. Humming. The camellias are in bloom. It is February. It’s just rained and I long to pack myself away in that open box and listen to things forevermore. I’ll smile to myself in my box and sometimes cry. Or tremble with fear for the girl being scolded by her father. I’ll see the dogs jogging up to the camellias and I’ll see them piss all over the window. I’ll sleep. It’ll be fine. Fine.

by Kathleen MacGregor
The wind is wildly throwing
itself through the trees,
and the streets.
And the trees, they are bending and twisting.
Peyote dancers feeling into the world
beneath the world.
The sound is like the ocean
slamming itself against the steady shore.
Then the wind seems to inhale.
Silence.
Just like when the water goes from noisy simmer
to boil.
For a moment it’s quiet.
Then the papers fly off the tables and
the cat hides under the bed.
I can see the gold finches clinging
tenaciously to the feeder.
My legs stretch out.
And I wonder
who knows I’m here?
By Pam Bolton and Kathleen MacGregor

What if I told you
It was me?
I picked up the stone
And threw it
At the bird’s nest
And knocked it down
To the ground
And all the babies died.
What if I told you
It was me?
I took the jumping mouse
From the jaws, the paws
Of the cat
And held it
Warm in my palms
Until, hours later,
It died.
What if I told you
All day yesterday
I didn’t care
And the day before
I can’t remember
Where I was or
How I felt?
I wanted to be somewhere
Else, anywhere
And I was.
I was in the nest,
On the ground,
Dying,
In my own palms.

by Kathleen MacGregor
It’s August.
September’s on the way.
This is the time
when she weighs
herself down
with lists, classes, meetings
chores have-tos and
should-dos.
A kind of lust
Has come in.
The sea wants
to carry her away
to a foreign country.
With or
without her family.
With or
without saying
Good-bye.
With or
without coming back.
No thought of returning now-
only flight.
A kind of lust,
so hard to resist.
But resisted, oppressed.
Desire.
She doesn’t know why
it has to be this way.
Or at least why
it has been this way.
Part of her is already gone.
There is a vacancy in her
face and
in her body.
She is
turning, like the leaves,
toward the sinking sun.
The draw to follow him
down.
Down to the
south.
Italy, France, Spain
Or Africa.
There.
Where the sun
never stops kissing his Earth
kisses her to death.
Desire.
Desire to walk
down crumbling stone streets
wearing high heals
which click and echo off the
ancient, mumbling walls
lined with old women in black and
children who stay up late.
Desire to hold orange blossoms
in her hand
And feel her own dress
swing and brush her legs.
To hear the voices of the men
smoking on their apartment
balconies.
The music
drifting from somewhere
just ahead.
The smells
pressing in.
Heavy, thick lust.
To feel the men wanting her.
Desire for all of them.
To abandon all notions
of right and wrong or
consequence.
The half-asleep mistiness of all of it.
A far-away question
floats by,
She doesn’t
know
How this
will
turn
out.
by Kathleen MacGregor

Sometimes
I do nothing all day
but stare out the window
and watch the garden
standing still.
Occasionally shifting her feet
or scratching behind her ear.
A sigh.
A sigh.
A sigh.

by Kathleen MacGregor
You
who laid an aching arm
across my shoulders
encouraging.
Encouraging?
Your face
peering into mine.
Asking.
Was it you?
A park
in December.
Oak trees and chimney smoke.
Did you ever know
anyone so lost
as I was then?
Lost in plain sight.
When you’re lost
you’re a different person.
You’re a lost person
who’s awake and searching.
You notice things and
you talk to people
you’d normally ignore.
There are oracles everywhere
all along the street,
on the other side
of the counter.
Taking your money.
Handing you the change.
Telling you the truth
of the universe.
How to get home.
Whether the oracle sends silence,
curses or directions,
she tells you the way home.
Make a gift
of what the oracle tells you.
It’s all in the listening.
There are oracles everywhere.
Still, I don’t know where I’m going.
And I’m no longer lost.
It’s different now.
I’ve stopped pretending I know the way.
That there is a way.
There’s just the way I’m going.
And that could change any time.
Any time at all.
One oracle said,
If you get lost, just keep turning right.
When you get used to that,
try a left and see what happens.