Prayers Hooked at the Vapor Elbow

As I draw my breath up to yours
I feel a prayer forming in my lungs
I tell myself not to exhale fully
for then I’ve given away my psalms
you become my God
and I know you are just human
stumbling through imperfection
like I
who trace this hosanna upon your thigh
with fingers chapters of hymnals
and palms stigmata-ed
because I died biographies ago
though I didn’t feel loss
only this resurrection into new (kissme) chances
with you
I (kissyou) leave my eucharist on your lips
from my tongue that places it there
like a good little monsignor
who has devoted her life to God (missme)
and God wears waffle thermals when it’s cold
and croched gloves so that the snow (licksme)
doesn’t soak through to skin
against yours (tasting)
as I slide my fingertips down the palm where your mittens open.
I lost convention
down the ravine of salttrail faces
moistening sadnesses forsaken to pasts
that will never overlap the future
Because I wear new gloves
Ahem, new mittens (kissme)
under the same moonluster (ikissyou)
frozen by the same snowflakes
heaped on coats now glistening
like rhinestones
studding our shoulders
in tandem chorus-line dazzle
Sparkly me – o! I light you up
Frost cloudlets puff the air before you
I remember the prayer in my lungs
I won’t hoard it here
I breathe out fully (yourconsumption)
and my cloud interhumidifies and undulates with yours
Prayers hooked at the vapor elbow
I like how atmosphere gases work
Dancing Gods
I have just touched my prayer to the sky that heavens our heads
now wigged with white preChristmas precipitate sugar (hungryme)
chilled farenheit crystallizes placid white grace
Oh how my sweet tooth rejoices
The flake of powderedsnowconfection that has just floated to the corner of your mouth
will now dissolve as my
lips lean in and (kissyou) melt the flake
with the warmth that keeps these words inside my cheeks
the fireplace upon whose mantle
you place your mittens to dry at night.

Epitaph

There’s a filigree inside me
Beyond the parterre of my soul
A fugue of calligraphic wishes
Atomic flight paths in cordate gold
Rebus shapes of love yous
Festoon a leitmotif of Byronic odes
Around this thorax Lorax heart
Lymnings I have and hold
I saved me from Bedouin wandering
Scores or was it seconds ago
The ocean spits up stained glass antiques
Like pearls caught in oyster throats
I am no different from seasides
Parlous preternatural repose
Please feel free to salt your margaritas
Into the aeternum mines I hold
Neuroplastic card carrying member
Entheogens and mistletoe
Were the portal to happily ever after
Trading faith for proof of the known
I live as a panegyric
That no one has far to go
That place of love and light and magic
Is already tattooed on your soul
It isn’t even a journey
It’s a letting go
The balustrade that hems your gables
Really can’t stop your fall
We like to live in corners
Borders protected, collars up in the cold
But there’s no such thing as hiding
Since there’s no such thing as alone
I invite you into my parlor
Fires roaring and there’ll be tea and scones
And here’s a little secret
Mi casa (really) es su home
One last little thank you
Though it’s not little, no, no, no
See this Claddagh on my left ring finger
Feel free to write this I Do in stone.

*The Tao of Now = Wow*

*The Tao of Now = Wow*

…I wanted to know what love was
so I unclenched my fist
I wanted to learn what love was
so I placed two fingers on the ulna-side of her wrist
I wanted to learn what love was
so I did the overflowing sinkful of her dishes
I learned that love was
a lot more than love sonnets & wishes

I wanted to know what trust was
so I fired mental habit drones
I wanted to learn what trust was
so put my glass house on the market, and on Ebay I put all the stones
I wanted to learn what trust was
so I told uninvited insecurities to go home
I learned that trust was
something I couldn’t learn alone

I wanted to know what truth was
so I shut up for once
I wanted to learn what truth was
so I put down my gavel of judgment
I wanted to learn what truth was
so I remembered rising and setting is a relative perception of the sun
I learned that truth was
inseparable differences creating the illusion of being more than one

I wanted to know what time was
so I threw my watch into the sea
I wanted to learn what time was
so I gazed at my beloved, who had her sights trained on me
I wanted to learn what time was
so I crossed out a line in Hamlet, since there was never such thing as
“not to be”
And I learned that time
can never take anything away from you or me

I wanted to know what “the good” was
so made a bonfire from my books
I wanted to learn what “the good” was
so I thought of how something is much more than how it looks
I wanted to learn what “the good” was
so to save my queen, I had to sacrifice & kill one of my rooks
I learned that “the good”
isn’t as easy as putting a check inside a box

I wanted to know what family was
so I kissed a mermaid on the forehead
I wanted to learn what family was
I did so as I tucked her into bed
I wanted to learn what family was
so I didn’t look in blood or in my head
I learned that family
is when you’d give the clothes off your back and the skin off your bones,
to make sure mommy and baby are fed

I wanted to know what happiness was
so I threw away my wishlist
I wanted to learn what happiness was
so I sat lotus inside Sarah’s kisses
I wanted to learn what happiness was
so I looked up and sang, “Hey that’s what this is!”
I learned that happiness
is the metric of every instant.

—;—<@

Mt. Hood

July 25, 2010
Mt. Hood

Perma-grin, feeling winsome, this smile wrapped around my head
lip corners knot, connected at the back (like a terrycloth headband
of Olivia Newton John, circa 1981)
I feel happy.  I feel silly.  I feel alive and kickingly
infinite spirit
Exhilirating stream,
in jai ali curls, curlicue eddies, and whipcream whitecaps,
is my pine shower
Ablutions (for my Mephistophelean guilty smirks)
and solutions (to life’s rhetorical fractal-frustrating questions)
pool in perfect clarity
inside my head dunked inside this
polymorphically perfect optic pocket of transparent liquid lattice lashings
crystalline socket with rocks my
don’t-slip-in-the-shower grip stickers on not-porcelain-but-red-clay floor

God
I
Am
Home

Thank you for leaving a towel out for me;
your Sun
and thank you for welcoming me with every bass-silver pebble
that gets smaller and smaller, like those Ukrainian Matryoshka dolls,
until there is seemingly nothing there
and at this sub-atomic space between matter-y bonds, our eternal Oneness
merengues Its diatonic 2/4 accordion hips,
in the form of Us,
rubber waists, arms slung over the nearest partner,
ever so Ram Dass-ically Being Here Now,
who had the chance to sit it out but we chose to
DAAAANCE
One Song
Uni-Verse
One Chance
This isn’t rehearsal

Eternal yet arranged in transient moments
so make the most before the band goes homeward

Poke tortoise head through the spill of translucent
whitewater falling around your head
like Shirley Temple Twisted Sister springy banana fingers
can-canning, petticoats-flinging,
This is ever-newness
Terrapin Grinning, a line ribbons along a jaw with upturned hint …
(every line is
just a series of dots.
Of points who thought they were alone) …
letting all of time know
YOU ARE HAPPY
Enshrined in permanent stillness
as Neil Peart solos and sonic booms
its splish splashy summersaulting acrobatics
of trapeze foothill majesty
where oxygen pendulums on hydrogen swingset.

And now I am clean.

The rush that ensconces in silent din
of every angel made to guide us to never never
(no, always and ever!) land
is matchless.
Because I am spark and air is flint
and fire chars driftwood in scoria pool party
where falcons are dinghys and seagulls the lane-ropes.
Interlacing divine order like water ballet Olympian molecules
that fizz and zip their Nascar propulsion
through a serotonin-soaked scull
soggy terrycloth smile headband
wringing itself out into the riverbed through tears
that are farmer God’s watering can
that grows Joy taller than the Ponderosa tippy toes
that know
heaven isn’t so far away at these ear-popping heights
because this pine is truly ever(green),
like my iris northwest star that beams
Tibetan prayer flag wishy lights
as we have our wishes we wish tonight.

Copyright © 2010 by Gretchen Turner

Copula

9/14/09: Make a list of some things around you, be they in your room, or greater sense of vicinity, etc., things that represent your essence, if it can be put that way. Then link them together into sentences … the following resulted.

Copula

I am a ship’s wheel winking at the ocean foam
I am a Nerf basketball, the sound of *swish* my only home
I am a pregnant skyline at dusk
I am the newborn purples in diapers and drool of every dawn’s hush
I am Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Woody Allen and Mae West
I am the driftwood compass of cobalt seaglass
I am the scream of waves; I am a seagull’s whore
I am the space mist rents when sky longs to touch shore
I am a wheatgrass, bee pollen, flax seed shake
I am hypothalmic tsunami, dendritic earthquake
{when my beloved is near, it’s all I can do
to stop the tremble and kiss lips blue!}
I am a hug junkie; cuddles, my fix
I have a kajillion frequent smiler miles from cloud nine trips
I am what happens when dreams come awake
I am the cocktail of shadows that seduce heartbreaks
I am the fledgling trusting that the twig won’t snap
before confidence puffs and wings start to flap
I am the forgotten blurred image of every rowboat’s wake
I am Carthaginian call-me-in-the-mornings scrawled on the napkin of carbon dating
I am lead husky musher of Antarctic dogsled
I am a hemophiliac heart from which goodbye’s have bled
I am the either and I am the or; I am the neither and I am the nor
I am every hourglass figure of speech
I am pedagogy that defies every teaching
I am my own mind, I question, I think
I am my own veritas; need not vino to drink
I am in love with am-ing and be-ing
I am addicted to yay-ing and wee-ing
I am more grateful than this mini-mouth fits
I am Kilimanjaro peaks of electroencephalograph blips
I am wraith fantasies that rob every grave
I am harpsichord hauntings of Lincoln Centered Haydn
I am the wiggling epiglottis of every aria and opera
I am the aching libretto of every Valkyrie and Traviatta
I am no different than a Bukowski or Baudelaire
I am the brushfire that ignites from phosphorous wishes and flinty prayers
I am talent, latent or expressed
I am the urge for eros, orgasm-ed or repressed
I am the stretchless stomach of our globe’s maternity
I am bulimic wormhole that swallows neutrons and burps infinity
I am the emperor’s haute couture’s new clothes
I am the holes in politicians’ lies and Hoover’s pantyhose
I am ‘myself, everyone else is taken’
I am fate in the floorplan of my own making
I am Jamesonian faith in scientific revolution
Yet I am Deuteronomical tenets in the face of evolution
I am Neptune’s photo of a ‘pale blue dot’
I am cosmic soup in timeless witch’s pot
I am buckaroo Taoboy and Old Testament, too
I am Isis, Poetic Edda and Haitian Voudu
I am miles below tragic and kilometers above comical
I am subatomic-microcosmic-astrophysic, yet Lao Tzu-ishly ecumenical
I am not done with the poem; no, not yet
I am the high scorer in how much life I go get
I am never going to give up on myself
I am the one not afraid, back then, to get help
I am not a plank walker, no!, not anymore
sharks licked lips for dinner but they only got my surfboard
I am my best friend; I am every kid on my block
I am my very own treehouse secret knock
I am blood brothers and blood sisters with you
I am the Hegelian reciprocal rule
I am also the Golden (silver and bronze)
and every other element our atoms dine on
I am getting carried away with this fun-tastic poem
I am turning a ditty into a tome!
I am ambisextrous, a niche along queer
I am multi-attracted; who cares what gender you are!
I am simply a beautyphile
I am obsessed with multitudinous reasons to smile
I am not, though, immune to pain
I am just a determined fungus who mushroomed from every parade rain
I am a spore; I grow new life from the old
I am an opportunistic germ with a right to a host for my cold
I am life in every form so I am not afraid to die
I am the mystery of biotic *any*thing, that lives on in our why’s
I am not just religion, I am science’s how’s
I am, most importantly,
perfect
because I am,
now.

© 2009 Gretchen Turner

*Sex Helix*

*Sex Helix*

This poem explores gender, wholeness and blessed loving acceptance. It is, in part, based on a real event in my life, that is cast as a metaphor for how we are our own saviors, perfect in the prismatic images of God in which we were created. Trying to snuff out another’s complexity of self IS sin, if one has to posit that word.

Non-fiction nucleus of poetic narrative: Once upon a time, I was stuck in frigid cold for a few hours because I was too young to get into the club we were going to, and drove over an hour to get to, but didn’t want to ruin my friends’ good time so I insisted they drop me off at the movie theatre nearby then pick me up when they had gotten their dance~and~libations kicks in. So, reluctantly, they agreed, and dropped me in the parking lot of the theatre then drove away to club. Mind you, it was about 11:30pm and the movie theatre was in the middle of no-man’s land of New Jersey somewhere, with nothing but industrial smokestacks in the distance. The theatre was an oasis of life. The temperature was about 1 degree fahrenheit. And, I was stoned out of my mind.

So I tramped up to the front door of the theatre, clouds billowing out of mouth with every outbreath, pulled handle and – nothing. Theatre was closed.

I was a castaway with no civilization as far as eye could see. (God what a cliché but defining one!) My friends’ car completely out of eye-shot.

This was before cellphones were ubiquitous. Neither I nor my friends had one. Nor did I have a clue as to name of intended club, even if there had been a payphone in vicinity, which there was not.

So, I looked around immediately with an eye for things that might make kindling because if I couldn’t build a fire, I would have made a nice entry to an ice sculpture contest once my friends returned.

Blessedly, I had a sole pack of matches, half-spent, in my pocket. So if I could find enough flammable debris, I might last ‘til they rescued me. (I use lighter in poem because that’s how I originally remembered this story. But after writing poem, I recall they were matches, gravity of my situation heightened because there were only about half of the little phosphor-tipped sticky things left.)

The theatre was circumscribed by a bit of landscaping consisting of wood chips, soil and various decorative shrubs. People’s refuse punctuated the horticultural bed. Thankfully, people are slobs because those woodchips combined with discarded napkins, newspapers, papercups, cast-off empty matchbooks…saved me!

About four hours later, down to barely a match left to keep the kindling going, that I roamed for when each renewed blaze would die down (I have no clue how to ACTUALLY start a fire using only Mother Nature’s stone flint or that string with stick thing – not that appropriate string were available anyway), my friends pulled up…flabbergasted that I had to be OUTSIDE that whole time and astounded by the bonfire glowing next to Loews darkened complex. I was bursting with life! And didn’t wash the sweater I was wearing for months as the smokey, woodsy, elemental aroma was a scent second only to that of my beloved, Sarah, every time I meet heaven on earth in an embrace.

*Sex Helix*

She cccalls herself he and he calls out to her
stutter and shudder in a chemical night
“I’ll take care of you when I hear you say brrrrr”
this Maccabean Bic can flick for 8 days of light

Scramble through brambles, scavenge woodsy chips
Gang won’t be back for a frostbiteful 4 hours
Better get creative if you don’t want Smurf lips
Hypothermic blue’s are un-hip hues, so it’s now or…

Never leave home without cro magnon instincts
Always expect to be your own save
Never be too young to drink
when your friends are on your way to a rave

Be open to failure to get through the door
Be ready to watch your breath freeze into your pillow
before your eyes as you look for
anything from which a fire can be whittled

Fuck the stick rubs, and stony flints too
your only likeness to Paul Bunyan are his kick ass checkered shirts
you were never a Boy Scout, no merit badges for you
and of course Girl Scouts were a joke, you’d not be buried in one of those skirts

It’s just you and your primal survival’s knack
Boy meet girl meet friction of fuck
Who you are or shtoop isn’t white or black
between a rock and a hard place isn’t fun for anyone to be stuck

Does it matter if a boy or girl saves the day?
when it’s your life on the line, will you turn down the help?
Will you stop and say, but wait, are you straight, bi or gay?
or God forbid, trans man or woman (even though you can’t even tell!)

androgen estrogen a helixical pair
you’ve got them both and so much more
so next time you’re about to denounce and stare
at the “freak” out there, remember Eve’s apple had a core

the rejected bit within becomes a desire tree
you throw away rather than admit what’s within you
but if you know the apple is food and comes with seeds
you can love the apple for its power to bloom diversity

to share in common wills and dramas and dreams
there is no foul in wanting, only in others’ prevention
so chomp the apple, its natural to want what gleams
on the boughs of goodness and god and eternal heaven

We all want to be more than what we think our way into seeming
but the kingdom of fullness lay in theodicy
who can be faulted for wanting to be like god and eat of the tree
Maimonides and Liebniz had some lovely theories!

evil is a by-product of rejecting your fullness of self
every cell was made in the image of perfection
God suffuses perfection in every cell
and god made desire in every cell as a form of protection

To guard against hypocrisy, of judging others as bad
but little do you know, you’re not missing a thing
though we deny others what we wish we had
not knowing we are full of God, and thus everything

So remember your inner woman next to your inner man
and bring lighters and matches next time you’re headed out to a club
you can be more than you think you can
a Bic lighter’s no sin, when you’re told two woodies shouldn’t rub.