previously

Once thought of, or felt, self-love seemed, to me, furtive, masturbatory and shameful. Yet now realized, as all I am to myself. Otherwise a life lost in adaption to the expectations of culture; a greater shame have I for the latter.

I adore, so, these stolen hours before dawn; candle burnt both ends middle melting. The silence. No one stirs and nothing heaves but the sea slowly snoring; rippled mirror of eternity merging the stars within both. For a time I am both sailor and strider. A match briefly flicked & flown extinguished gasping, tssssing, cold submersion.

At the hour of awakening, played Aeolian, the threads of all that was, is and will be played upon the winds of creation. Woven a tapestry beyond my keen affirmed unfolding.

Robed in dawn, covered with stars, she, Mother Mary, invited me into her pulsing pink grotto home silently. Twice. I have yet to see her face beneath the hood shadowed seeing her in all women now.

I’m guessing here, between this and that site, 30,000 hits?! And what I said cannot be unsaid. Still wondering, wandering within, had I not written for me alone; notes of a life unfolding anonymously.

Goggle, ogle, gape remembering Can Can on Broadway at twelve, drowning in Vincent’s paintings, by the way Happy Birthday, retrospective at the Met and several prints haunting my adolescent bedroom by mom placed mementos graven

None of this is about me, but us, what holds the stars in their courses, for now at least. Creation is real, with or without: observation, discernment, judgment . . . The good, bad, grotesque, ecstatic of it all available; should only you ask, or knock upon the door of your unknowing.
Fear.
Terror, actually, for me was finding myself unworthy of life; merely that which we generally take for granted. Worse was the specter of insanity . . . add . . . and more true of me than I generally accept the knowing of; finding an excuse to live another day. In some sense longing for an authority to tell me that I was okay.

It works for me that I was in error seeking a woman to mirror me as well, whole, capable. Not a failure as male, father, lover, husband. More importantly -- as a person. Being that way left me owned, like a pet, or used as a convenience. Always subordinate, inferior; an inconvenience.

19:53

There is a point of expansion, departure, acceleration achieving exit speed; a voice of one’s own. My reverence for others, mostly women, slays me again and again . . . I cannot, I refuse to again be a wooden figure in someone else’s doll house.

. . . could it be, Mary that is, who I see when I look into a mirror?

130330 02:53 previously
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

illusions illumined

Forgotten, until this moment, the waining of my enthusiasm, and ability, to love a woman as only a man could or should. Is the simple sense of how it never gave more than a fleeting pleasure for afterward was always the question; “did you put the garbage out?”

Women.

Astonishing!

So pragmatic . . . riddled with love’s darts and little swimmers, of need she must be.

. . . add, for me, it was never a thought to be warmed of a cold November night, clammy the sea enshrouded and I near death; at any contact, flesh to flesh, save for the frenzy, I sweat. Remembering my son’s head as I prayed that God take me instead of him, the wringing wet hair in my hands. 

So odd, no excuse nor rationalization, better I’d left than stayed, for eventually I would have fled, love expressed vital instead of rigamarole/rigor mortis, same same, silence. 

“The way of a man with a maid . . . “ 

REALLY!

I can count on the fingers of one hand the few who seemed to nourish nurture one another beneficially. At that I have met hundreds if not thousands of such wed . . . rarer than genius is love and of love best friends better.

As a child I sought the mirror of love in a woman’s eyes. Disremembering that in his own home a prophet is but a fool. Now a stranger in a strange land estranged I lurch forward to whatever is to be. No stranger to myself.

Jesus is generous while Exxon is Judas . . . just conjecture, a rogue thought as I arose this happy day, good tide.

Rampant, exultant, jubilant and surprised, endlessly, these Easter and Christmas Morns reprised daily. I love too ferociously and lust less for consummation, save in this, the better good for her than me.

04:34

Witnessing death, in my arms, my children, friends by choice or chance - disease, and those I loved, especially at hospice, leaves me without fear of it for myself. Lending a sure urgency to applaud those who live yet know it not but merely exist indifferent celebrate nothing but usury.

I can lend you nothing but my curiosity, lifelong, what does resurrection mean? If nothing I can see, sense, taste, touch it seems more in particle than whole, same as was? No. Different I think for the world turns faster towards its own demise. In itself usury smothers and the meek remain suffocated. But do they? 

die!

or live forever more as did He does . . . 

and for love I would comfort those about to die but denied I am left to wander painting my thoughts upon the night for those of us who remain oblivious equally sailing the solar winds;

be well and rejoice, again I say or suggest rejoice!

. . . far be it for/from me to inflict/impose upon your slumber those amongst the living dead

130331 02:58 illusions illumined

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved