The writing exercise was to focus on the first sentence, which was given as a prompt-- "A run over zinnia lay weeping its juices into the asphalt"-- and be open to what wanted to be written after it.

A run over zinnia lay weeping its juices into the asphalt.  No crushed human body could call forth any more compassion from the heart of Jesus.  Loving white light surrounds the macerated petals.  The tender strength of this light creates a protective barrier around the fallen flower so that traffic moves easily around it, honoring its exit from this world into Heaven’s endless realm of love.  The soul of this once radiant red flower dances with the sparkling white light celebrating its release from a life of beauty and service to pollinating bees and hungry humming birds. The blossom’s joy in its dance with the Master’s light whirls it ever faster so that crimson soul and heavenly white light appear to sweet Jesus eyes as celestial peppermint candy.

And with the true spirit of conservation, where nothing is wasted, the Holy Spirit arranges for a bull mastiff recently turned vegetarian to cross this same street when the light turns green, pause near the zinnia, bathing its crushed body with her broad, moist tongue as she laps the fallen beauty into her warm, waiting mouth.  Amen.

Moh Breath

June10th 2011

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DOUGHNUTS IN THE RAIN

 

I’m such a weirdo in the lonely nights

my heart contracts and sprays me with its lies

until we drill for super agitation

and reap the nation’s woes

then you or I

on seeing what is best to make creation

of gods or mire or slides or eyes or cries

we gently focus on initiation

as if the night could tremble with fixation

into the genius of the bright and wild

we long to tremble with a special thigh

in agitation and within imagination

is gifted to our sight a fine raw sign

to not deny surprise

is its own reward

 

move forward with your sexy tabulations

and don’t deny how quickly you will dream

 

of rustic days’ and nights’ interpretations

beyond the silver chains upon the sea

beyond the words’ most sacred me

I ask your realization what this means

as only I will know the secret sweet

a wedding of the widening of the free

 

Marsha Campbell

May 26^th 2011

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beauty has her way.
beauty is not to be taken lightly,
oh no.
my mother told me recently that her mother taught her
"you have to suffer to be beautiful".
and my grandmother was,
beauty in every false eyelash and hair dyed till her death.
slim and manicured, a real beauty.

beauty has her way.

as i write this i feel the sweat under my arms from a day in the sun.
i rolled out of bed today and dressed without showering, something i rarely do.
often i shower two, sometimes three times a day:
once in the morning to wake, mid-day after yoga practice, and in the evening to wash the day from my skin.

beauty.
in search of beauty.
the beauty addict.
beauty-

in yoga practice 5-7 days a week
beautiful
why not?
beauty is on the inside but no one can see it when it's hidden far beneath the surface
why not bring it up, show it, wear it like a badge?

beauty is not to be taken lightly.

i practice to find beauty because i am so silent most of the time.
beauty will speak for itself.
i have discovered this:
if i can not speak, my beauty will speak for me.
showing not telling, a measure of dignity.

trust me, i was not born to be ugly--
i have gained weight, wore a rash of acne, had teeth dangling from pink gums with gaps and braces.
this did not become me.
to become ME i decided to be beautiful.
it was something i wanted--
or, maybe it is the desire of the gods, as martin prechtel teaches, who long for us to show our praise for their many magnificent gifts by adorning ourselves and taking pride in our appearance
...this is not to say i spend money on fine clothing--
but wear rags, handed down to me with great pride and creativity.
boots that walked to my doorstep.
even my underwear was handed down to me, most of it.
rarely a day goes by that i can not trace some article of clothing i am wearing back to an old friend or a friend of my mothers.

beauty.

so, beauty becomes my life's work, like a constant project, something i must invest in and renew...

but sometimes i wonder
what to do with it--
what then, if so much of the time i would rather be invisible
or, what if i can't measure up--
greeted by smiling friendly faces, if really i just feel sour inside
and sad and strange?
how then, does beauty become me....

i am living with this, and wondering sometimes how long i can keep this up
when it's the purity of heart i really want to wear.
this reaches far beneath the skin,
such a paradox...
to develop one as equally as the other.
to cultivate outside and in, dark and light.
so many things to reap and sow,
so many things to compost and surrender.
but how did i get to all of that--
when it's something i have felt ORDERED to do, by some inner drive we can not merely call shallow:
the drive to be beautiful.
why?
the drive to be beautiful.
to be my best, to shine through
because otherwise i am just hiding...and i have done plenty of that.
the story of the ugly duckling-
with crooked teeth.

i come from crooked beauty*.

~julia bernbaum
saturday night write on
june 18, 2011

*reference to the film "crooked beauty" addressing issues of mental illness by ken paul rosenthal

********************************************************************************************************************************

March 12^th 2011 “This moment brings me…”

Zak B. me

Fairfax Community Center

This moment brings me…one more Oreo cookie.   What would you do with fifteen minutes?  That’s long enough to make a new life and then take a shower.  The drive thru wedding chapels in towns like Vegas could knit two lives together on paper in that much time.  You could boil water for tea while dancing to eighties rock tunes on the radio.  Fifteen minutes, 900 seconds: a far cry from a whole day, but these are the brush strokes with which my parents taught my babysitters to paint my world.  Any longer and I could lose focus.

The experience of the office here being populated is distracting.  I choose to acknowledge that and attempt to move forward.

The little Zen Pocket Reader has a quote,

“It is easy to be distant from everything.

It is much harder to be aloof.”

As I head out into the world with my adult self, I find “distant” was my default screen, my safety security fence.  Jurassic Park electrified.  Now my life requires me to be aloof.  Apart from, no matter how close.  Temptations of drinks and desserts and later nights than I can easily snap back from are all on offer.  In many moments of the day, I must actually make judgments against my mission statement, if only I had one.  That question of, “Will you regret this when the sun comes up?” is right there in front of me.  This moment brings me closer to the next decision and the words I will tell myself to make that decision alright.

*******************************************************************************************************************************

Date: April 15^th 2011

Location: Enterprise Resource Center

Author: Zak B. me

Prompt: “Measure Up”

 

 

Hand me the spatula.  Now is the time to taste what is.

No measuring up.

Pure pleasure.  As a child seeing Christmas and knowing this is the only house in the world and I am the only one getting presents.  The concept of pure thought or a universal truth blows away any thought of the beyond this room this moment, this corner of the forest this rainstorm.  The realization that here I sit in a theater and I have to shake off the performance to remember what city I am in, and  who drove to the show.  Was it me this time?  Both scary and beautifully transcendent, the realization that I just experienced something on the stage on the screen that suspended, if only temporarily, my world beyond these walls.  The ability to unlink and fluidly hook back into the part of my life that affects other people is a true luxury, and at the same time an necessity if I will move, as I desire to do, to the next level of consciousness, again, if only temporarily.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Sometimes I forget to remember that is all I need to do just right now.  Every now so often, food and water, and sleep are a good idea, but not key right now.  Breathe in, breathe out.  On a personal note, when I go jogging, I get to choose the pace of my breath.  All I need to do right now when I run is collision avoidance and breath regulation.  No need to measure up to anybody else’s pace.  I cannot.  I must keep my own pace or I will fall away.  I learn what it is to hot dog for some spectator or to lose my own pace to try to dance down the field with someone who does a faster mile pace.  I must, as the poem says, “taste what is.”

*******************************************************************************************************************************

Zak B. me

Fairfax Community Center Festival Day

June 11^th 2011

“Mystery, after all, is God’s other name.”

The space between mind and body.

Real starts and the falseness of preparedness…dropping into a half pipe with a blindfold on…seeing through a garment that shouldn’t show through.  Do I tell her that her left ear is full of sunscreen? Does anybody chew that gum from under the desks or does it just go to waste?  Airplane…cramped…  Do I tell him his belly is on my armrest or do I assume he already knows?  What about the people who are sorta broke, but not broke enough to qualify for socialized medicine?  Would they choose to be more broke just to qualify so they can get prescriptions and food all in one month?  Should people be able to apply for permits to carry rotten fruit to political debates?  The tiger just pretends to be secured in his cage.  No need to disrupt the paying customers.  Melting together, walls down, warmed and blending.  Why would we spend time with you?  Don’t you have better things to do than to spend time with us?  What could we ever teach you?  What would you be willing to share with a room of perfect strangers and perfect kids?  A wall-to-wall confessional.  A search for intelligent life.  A salon, ehem, SAH-lon, for a guy who can’t afford the haircut, but has the comb.  The implement of mass interaction and the wall of words some of us would climb out of our skins without?  “Settle.  Settle.  Settle.”  Why not “Live.  Breathe.  Discover.”?

********************************************************************************************************************************

            GO GIANTS GO!

            The team felt as squnched as a bunch of frogs by a pool that is drying out.

Only ooze left...ooze and muck.  The Giants?  Well, they used to be Giants.

Now they’re slouchers...mud-suckers...losers.

            A man walked down the trail that went from the road to the lake. It was Matt. Faithful Matt. He was an adoring fan. He loved the Giants. He looked down at his team lying all flopped around the water’s edge and heaved a deep sigh.  Sam Bronowski, Joe Korabi, Serh Halloway...all of them.  Looking more dead than alive.

            Matt took a deep breath and let the words come out as a soft whistle betweenhis teeth. “Go Giants go.”    A head turned toward him. It was Mort Simmons, best catcher in the whole world. He sat up and looked at Matt, mud on his face where his mask should have been.  “Sorry man.  We did our best. We did our best, game after game.”   A fellow next to him rolled off a log.  It was Seth, who spoke bitterly. “But you can’t just keep on doing your best.  Get too high, you’ve got to topple...bite the dust.  You know what I mean?”  “That’s some kind of law.”  said Joe, who’d been under a bush. He stood up and his shoes made a sucking sound as he pulled them out of the muck.

            “Guess so,” said Matt. “Never thought much about it.”

            “Feel that way myself,” said Joe, who’d been mostly in the water. 

            “What?”  asked four or five voices.

            “They got medals, and 50,000 bucks apiece.  And Marilyn Monroe.”

            “Shit.” said Ernie.

            “Shit.” said Seth.

            “Shit.” said Kramer.

            Just then a huge alligator surfaced from the center of the pond.  It was  reallya HUGE alligator and it swallowed the whole team in one gulp.  Matt watched from the sidelines with the wisdom of a seasoned fan, and loudly proclaimed, in a sort of ordinary voice:

           

            “GO  GIANTS  GO!”

By True

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Breathing is God’s sea. I go to look for the little lost lamb of Maria Josefa --The crazy grandmother in the House of Bernarda Alba. Where I find Maria Josefa I will find the lamb as she carries it in her arms and begs “Little Lamb, child of mine, let us go to the shore of the sea.”

She wants to find peace in herself and her “child,” a safe place to go get away from the craziness of the women’s household where everyone is a prisoner of the ruler of the State called Bernarda Alba. She wants to go where wisdom and clarity are the norms.

Goodbye, Bernarda Alba. Goodbye—we are leaving you now for the sake of God and the song of the words drawing the water further away and closer within. They give us their song. The waves are singing our thoughts

Marsha Campbell

June 16, 2011