wayfinding

I

were you ever there

or had I dreamt it

those sixteen years

spent with you never there 

II

we didn’t actually share space 

I was in it while you were out

spending laughing chatting up

young girls on yahoo

III

recollecting places 

and spaces not people

connecting came much later 

after the Shattering 

and the shedding of you

she can be no other than who she is OR this shit don't rhyme

she's the girl the husbands call on a night their wives are distant
she's the girt the young men visit on a night their heart needs a listen

she's the girl that gives her love, and learns of them more than any
she's the girl that no on knows nor takes the time to see

she's the girl that never gets naught but brief interlude on their path to another
she's the girl that knows what boys like, their dick needs a kissn'

"Your body for my soul, fair swap, cause cheap is how feel..." ~ Cowboy Junkies

goodbye ruby tuesday

with the expectation of loss
she loves
temporal and transient

this allows 
for the unconditional
giving she gives 

deeper is the knowing
currency of admissions
she holds safe

as she listens

never alluding that everything 
she does
she thinks, is tinged
with sorrow

and hope
someday

some heart will cling
more than a brief while


"She roll back down to the warm soft ground, laughing to the sky..." Dog and the Butterfly, Heart

in the white space

when she was
a girl
the white space
welcomed
like a lover
she fought
hard to overcome
a sense of self
defeating
her arch nemesis
Mother

Sister sought escape
in a man in a bottle
in a needle

Brother got away
to a space
where poetry never lives

and the littlest lost
in a walkabout
within
a body of bones
flesh, sinew
in a mind that never
calms
in a heart that
bleeds

I'm really actually a happy girl

I had not thought

love

love and grief

grief

I had not thought

in youth

the two entwined

I did not want

one

now I live

seeped in a sorrow

not quite hidden in the half light

pushing out

the joy to surface

deep blue yonder

that girl, who was not green
perhaps you were the first to go

dating in 2017 or happy being single

I’m an overly educated kid-free tattooed Agnostic vegetarian born and raised in Texas. I also just turned 47 and I’m not quite sure how the h*** that math happened, but it has, and I’m here, and it’s a good place to be. I love my dogs, my friends, the people I work with. I love my job, my career. I wake up each day excited to get there and do the stuff I do then get home and do what I do at home. Could be Netflix, jigsaw puzzles, tearing something down, or building something up. 

I’m average. I have an average life. I own a car and house, and have dogs that poop. I pay bills, do chores, read books, muck about in the yard. I love to eat and cook and nap and eat again. This sums it up. Nothing fancy, nothing idealistic. I own my own shit, negotiate interest rates like a pro and have little debt. I may not retire until I’m 75 for the sheer fact that my life goal is to be of service. Novel idea, I know, but it’s not all about me, or you. 

I’m a f****** adult. Not sure how that happened either, but it has. I don’t drop everything to travel spontaneously every weekend. I don’t have an endless stream of photos of me drinking in bars. Been there, done that. Travel gets planned; going out, like ice cream, is a treat not a habit. This means that first long drink of an ice cold Shiner along with a big bowl of homemade gumbo on a hot Texas day while chilling with my best friend and surveying my kingdom from the back porch is one of life’s precious moments. Mostly I like to sleep my 9 hours and coo sweetly to my two four-legged loves.

I weigh anywhere between 110 and 120 on any given day depending on how much I eat and was stick thin for so long, this mini-muffintop ain’t going nowhere anytime soon. I’m okay with that. I’m me and looking for a guy who is his own person and not owned by extreme conformity and social norms. Someone who says, “come on, put your cold-ass feet on me, I’ll warm you up” and respects me enough to take out the trash if it’s full without being asked, massage my neck when I have an allergy headache, lay on the couch when he’s sick and act like a big 'ol baby so I’ll bring him soup, because I will.  I will spoil the right guy to no end and when he spoils me I’ll say thank you, and mean it, because the thrill of chivalry and adoration is not dead, and I will not settle for less.

numbers

nearing forty-seven

and I realize

been holdin’ on to fifteen

‘til my neck tensed

and arm stiffed

why? because I never had it

and thirty-two years of days,

hours, minutes, seconds

have got behind me

suddenly

they are gone

gone

and I am left to wonder

did I do them right?

“I don’t know how to say what I feel” ~ One More Day, One More Night, Tom Petty Echo CD

she

In the garden
There was a girl
Amidst a field fallow
Tending roses
Brightly yellow

And where was he
But absent
In the recollection of days
Of tending the home
Of tending the marriage

Life takes effort
She gave for two

now she lives for one

I am the son and the heir

I had known you once…

you were a budding hope

an Echo

that never took?

that let go too soon?

And I had known you twice…

A solid, clear knowing

my life was in the wrong place

at the wrong time

thrice..

when my brother lay dying

did I make the right decision?

and perhaps another

tall, slim, laughing eyes

only the Portuguese have a name…

for mourning things that never were

Saudade

vision quests

her body wants to push a fever

sans peyote tea

the new ink, setting slow

it’s in her breath and bones

a dull ache and weight

a mourn of never was

in each shallow exhalation

flittering shadows

on the back of heavy lids

a long deep ohhhhhm

on the brink teetering

her body wants to push a fever

doors in limbo

All around me I hear

doors opening, closing

clocks ticking

indiscreet voices purring

machines in their low hum;

I fold into a limbo

of being here

of fitting in

of being not quite hired

All around me I hear

doors opening, closing

I fold into a limbo

of being…

learning to breath

Twelve years dead

            Two years numb

            Ten years living

                        AT the speed of light

                        UNDER water

Finally,

            a slowing

            a learning

                        to breath

            a knowing

it’s okay

she is learning

She is not the norm

Never was

Confused on how to be

She asks patience

Understanding

(And in falling…?

Having felled?
In some limbo?)

She is learning…

There is no norm

Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree Your Ornaments are History

My mother wasn’t much for holidays, and I only recall seeing our scraggly, 1960-something Christmas tree once or twice before I was eight. Most of my youth is fairly hazy, though I’m not sure why, but I remember one present clearly, because I kept it well into my adulthood: a little radio with turntable that I received when I was eleven or so. It was the gift that pissed my sister off the most. But with a birthday on January 10^th, apparently it was thought that combing Christmas and birthday would…what? Fool me? Save my mom time? Maybe I had even been given a choice to get one big gift instead of two smaller ones. Regardless, it was a wonderful and thoughtful gift that made me happy, guilty, and sad all at the same time. The combination of emotions I struggled with for many years.

Even at an early age I was independent and wanted to make others happy. There were ramification to independence in my family. If I wanted something done I’d have to do it myself; if I wanted something, I’d have to find a way to get it myself. This may be why I started working so young.

After those gullible Santa years, I braved the cold dark garage, climbing the wood ladder, and somehow retrieving the damn tree – and the box of ornaments – from the attic myself several times. Bugging and reminding my parents never worked, and they didn’t seem to notice when things just appeared and got done.

Holidays didn’t fare much better when I was married. Christmas and thanksgiving were spent at my in-laws, because soliciting my husband’s help meant an argument and frustration. Much like my youth, I learned to do most things myself if I wanted them done. So any tree at home was up to me.  

It wasn’t just holidays, though, it was keeping my brother, sister, mom and I together through all the drama and the fights, making sure my husband and I did things with his friends, getting us to and from my in-laws, making sure presents were bought and wrapped, and calling my dad a few weeks or months after my birthday so he could wish me well. Pleasing and doing becomes a burden when it’s one-sided, though. Thirty-three years of one-sided got old after a while.

In observation of myself and of others, I’ve come to believe that when we’re accustomed to something and know nothing else, that something becomes the norm.  In reading John Dewey, my thoughts were affirmed; we can either hold on tight to old truths or discover new truths. In hindsight, I believe that I was perpetuating old habits when I went from my parents to husband.

In divorcing my husband, I created new norms and built new habits. Got past and through things that no longer hurt me. In divorcing my husband, I created Christmas for myself; funny thing is, though, I’m now Agnostic. 

Murphy's Law

My mother’s given name, prior to her adoption, was Esther May Murphy. She then became Judy Goodwin and then Judy Maddera, and is now Jude Murphy or some such. Maddera is my father, my deceased brother, my lost sister. Maddera is me. In seeming compliment once, my mother said I’m just like my father, but in looking up, I saw she was frowning. It had been a jab. One I took to heart. One which has afforded me some sense of self. I am like my father in many aspects; I’m logical, methodical, I cross my t’s and dot my i’s, work hard, and quite frankly, I love too easy, too…complete and unconditional with a sense of wonder.

Maddera is Portuguese and the Portuguese know how to mourn a thing that never came to pass, that never was; suadade, a type of melancholia. In hindsight, I spent much of the first 17 years of my life in mourning, in suadade, without knowing what I had lost. In hindsight, the thing I mourned was my own identity and self-worth. Somewhere in my 16 years of marriage, suadade began to fade. Not so much because the marriage nurtured me, but because it didn't and I felt my self-identity lend way to the "wife of."

I’m still not sure where or when I became good enough, but I did. Or rather the concept of "good enough" became the acceptance of "just is." And can I say I truly know who I am when I now grow exponentially day in and day out?  I'm sure of few things.

I only know that if it can happen, it will happen, and it always happens to a Murphy, and I am a Murphy by blood. Yet where my mother will endlessly walkabout in a world that owes her…something, I am content knowing, like my father, I not only have the strength to persevere, but the will to conquer fears, and the desire to love and be loved.

So I may be a Murphy and life may throw me curves, but as a Maddera, I make my own laws and how I take those curves is up to me and any "law" can only bind me if I let it.

on a dark high shelf

A baby white snake slithered

on a dark high shelf

this was

of which she dreamt once

Tarot: the death card drew

And drew and drew

very soon

death became her

the shedding

the death

the shedding

the death

Growth or no

her heart yearns

for the never was

of lovers lost

so close so far

but she may not be

where she thinks yet

something may remain

unshed

something in the way

on a dark high shelf

in a vessel

she don’t

talk about these things

keeps her worry

in a vessel where

ink like blood the scratch-scratch

crazy goes

so her smile can

lit her lips ablaze

with a slow lick and

her mind

stays shiny

he though,

he gets the thick of it

so she mutters

a little crazy his way

in the brightest hours

tossed in the air,

she lands

where she lands;

caked in soil

she cocoons

and in the brightest hours

dreams of air

engulf her;

fair parched pores

drink the water

when it finds her

the hours

losing track of time;

she meant to be writing

instead were she academic-ing

shards of her belaboring 

the hours

the days

the years

to be returned without receipt