Jackie Chan

September 18, 2024September 19, 2024 | Megan

People. Suh See Ok. 1988. On view at The MET Fifth Avenue. Gallery 233.

Kiai!

Kiai! is a real thing
A Japanese word
A shout– ichi
A battle cry– ni
A spirit focus– san
Not just protracted
Onomatopoeia or a yell in
Comedy-action sequence

Kiai! is designed for real life
Try it on– shi—
Go! A holler that signals
Attack– jou-dan
Assault– tsuki
Let’s make it noble– roku
For purposes of this poem
Make it count– rei

Don’t hurt someone
undeserving– youi
What’s something in your
Life that you wish would
Dematerialize
Infinity in a kick, jab
What would you like to caterwaul
Into counter-offensive– gedan

Just know that when
You chop their solar plexus– chuudan
The center, they may be
More fragile than you imagine
Just a human heart– shinzo
In a suit of skin, sometimes
No breath returns–shichi
Hachi- Yame

Fumi Yanagimoto. Contemporary Artist. Painting.

Sushi

Get in my bell
You gorgeous cut
Of perfectly raw
Snapper and White tail
You delectable rolls
Of seaweed rice
Naked salmon
Perfectly nicked
Lemon save that
horrible cream sauce
For another palate
The best advice
Ever received regarding
Sushi is that if it’s good
No additives are the
Way to go
No unnecessary dressings
If it is perfectly toothy
Scrumptious sushi
Undecorated ditch the
Wasabi and Ginger
Eat it by the mouthful bare

Buddha, Chinese, early 7th century. Probably Amitabha. On view at The MET Fifth Avenue, Gallery 208.

Kali

She cradled my head in her hands
a portal opened to my heart

My body silently convulsed
at the chaos

The truth was I needed love
more than I needed life

I needed touch more than I
needed bread.

I needed tears more than I
needed water.

I needed someone who understood
breath, meditation, muscle, sinew

Connection, bodies, I needed
someone who understood

What being left felt like
I wasn’t yet beginning

To believe I would survive yet, I wasn’t able
to process the complexity

All raw edges and terrifying depths of memory,
I didn’t know I’d return from death

I’d come back into the sunlight, warm and
buttery on my chest, all senses awake

Full Moon, Partial Lunar Eclipse, Pisces, September 2024

the earth comes between
the moon and the sun do you
feel energy shift

Lunar Eclipse. Ryan Moat. January 20, 2019.

Eschatology

Life took us to the edge of the known universe

this brink, this precipice, on a red dirt plateau,
all rust-verged and jagged,
like a tear in heart tissue,
like broken bone projecting through soft skin.

skin, bone, sinew often don’t break cleanly
so there, on that terrifying cliff,
we looked out into the blackness
and saw that it was our own

dotted with infinite, swirling stars,
nebulous arms of our galaxy, folded across
that night, that nothing. we realized
the instant we stepped to the fathomless limit

all the light we carried in our core could somehow
save us, from this end. So into the starry,
inky ebony we leapt, being careful to be
sure that we crossed over the boundary between

everything we’d known, into every
night we’d ever feverishly dreamed.
this jump, this real act of
self-preservation flung us into

the heart of the unknown cosmos
and there we were to greet ourselves
at the gates of our unknowing.
we opened the tiny, golden latch on the

impossibly large, swinging metalwork gate,
stepped slowly, quietly over the threshold of
revelation, everything open and waiting
for us in that pitchy gloam still had

to be sensed– felt, touched, tasted, smelled–
not physically, but by the fingers of
the formerly known soul that now
bore this greater knowing. this

was not the end but the beginning.
a larger excursus on the limitless
infinite than we had previously
known. we’ll never know if there

was only one way to this beginning–
the ledge, the leap, the jump–
our tiny, finite, blink of a guess gives us
the idea that, no, there are

many precipices, many pinnacles, many paths
to the infinite edges of the unknown into
new reaches of galactic consciousness–
seeing and knowing more than we

could possibly have imagined yesterday

Peaches

September 16, 2024September 16, 2024 | Megan

Benediction

Candlelight wavers in the silent brush of the ceiling fan
Night air sinks into currents of cool water brought up
From the little creek, the smell of river paired with even
More oxygen lifts and falls on a fleeting breeze, fresh and sweet

Whatever music and magic there is to be had in
The universe is happening right here inside my home
At my table, it happens in moments like these, in every
Pocket of the world tonight– right here, right now, breath easy

Big Dipper. Again and Forever. September 2024. Image, my own.

Horǎ

In dream, the night is thick
with cricket symphony
the grass stalks golden,
long and chilled in the
meadow, above the sentinel
oak the stars prick blackness
like reverse needle-work
intricate dance, flowing and fire,
thousands of light-years away
yet seemingly so near

The tent is simple and
the lashings have been tested
in a storm that whipped through
an hour ago, howling
at the white flaps of canvas,
smattering rain onto the party
but the air now returns to dark stillness.
Lanterns, re-lit, quiver
and sway in simple
atmospheric breaths

I hug my sister close,
smile at a friend across
the way, eyes connecting
and story-telling for just
an instant and then
I am physically
swept away, time suspends
its relentless snick, and
in that instant we spiral
as one

Limbs outstretched, grasping
and firm as we reach
for one another, smiles,
countenances as wide and
open and awed as galactic
arms around and around
We swirl in an ancient pattern
of love, mirrored in the heavens
templated by earth
and actioned by humans

Under the open-sky,
beneath the tent, midst
the lanterns, our heat
rising in healing, and
celebration, and joy,
an eschewance of hatred,
a ceremony of
transcendence and light
through the ages

Plexus no. 34. Gabriel Dawe. Amon Carter Museum, Austin, TX.

Peach

Oh. My. God. Let the sweet
nectar drip over your lips
and down your chin

Why contain this
experience, the velvet
skin, the wet flesh

The fruit of summer
realized, the sweetness
and pleasure, stunning

“We have to beware of the extent to which liberal individualism has actually been an assault on community… when the genuine staff of life is our interdependency, is our capacity to feel both with and for ourselves and other people.” –bell hooks

Interdependency

Oldest: “Mom, mom! You’ve got to come look at this moon!”

Youngest: “Mom, let’s dance to this song right here in the kitchen.”

Oldest: “i love you” “u r srsly weird”

Youngest: “don’t die”

Oldest: “goom, can you send me five gold dubloons for wendy’s?”

Youngest: “Hey, do you know where my hazmat suit is”

Peaches. Claude Monet. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

Jack Johnson

September 12, 2024September 15, 2024 | Megan

Happy Day, my friends. We’re getting on toward the weekend. Thank you for reading, sharing, and general love for poetry. Even my poetry. 😉 XX, M

Just want to ask anyone who reads this post to kiss Jack Johnson for me if you see him. Oh, and invite him, Jack Johnson, to come and play at my son’s 16th birthday!

Jack, from a Mother,
with love

Sometimes,
you have to write
love poems to people
you may never meet.
Here is mine:
Jack,
We, my people and I,
Have listened to you,
Jack,
their whole lives.
I have to say ‘their’
whole lives because I
found you on a foggy
day in Anchorage,
Alaska. Bubbly Toes
and all. A CD player
in the white honda
accord. I was 19.
When they, my boys,
were small
and still afraid of Mike
Wazowski. You know,
Mike, he’s scary.
He scares children.
On purpose. One eye.
My boys understood
exactly what you
were saying. It
Is. Completely.
Utterly. Better.
When we are
together, Jack.
I don’t mean you
and I, or you and me,
but me and them, Jack
You sang it best.
And you turned
our whole world
Upside Down for
the better. In fact,
that is exactly what
We’ve done. My boys
and I, we’ve tried
to share the love
We’ve found with
everyone. And,
you know, I think
it is working.
With love, M

One Little Fisherman. San Francisco Bay, Crown Beach Tidal Zone. Image, my own.

Ocean in the Bay

there is a time that is tattooed
in my memory, it will never be extracted
We were on Crown Beach, in the San
Francisco Bay, and somehow,
All of Us– Mothers and children,

Grandmothers, mothers and
daughters, sons, and cousins, and
grandchildren, we swam into the
tide. We rocked in the waves; we
laughed out loud with joy in the
shift of the spray, mousse, and suds

god, that memory will sustain
me until the end of my days
an inaudible melody of the past
so whole, so common,
so elemental,
so joy

More Half Moon. September 2024. Image, my own.

Oh, she knew

Oh, she knew
every step in this
dance

She walked in strength,
threaded through the lecterns to
shake

his hand, who would
never have given Her the same grace and
humanity

Of course, she knew,
to live your life in the skin of a
woman

You’d have to know,
what a task, what a challenge, what a
gift

Beach Walkers. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Let it Be

Let it overwhelm you
the unwashed windows
and dishes and uncut grass

Let it be heavy, the
loneliness, the longing, the
unfilled space

Let it be exhausting, to be with
others and support them when you
can barely support yourself

Let it be Wednesdays of barely
making it. Fridays of surrender, and Sundays of
wishing you could have just one more.

Let it be weary when you wish you had the
energy to help one more human with
their diction and syntax

Let it be a complete let-down to
go to the grocery store at 9 p.m. under the too-green
neon lights, the alien otherworld before you sleep

Let it be 6 a.m. and you simply cannot
want for the slow coffee of Saturdays the physical newspaper,
black ink and real paper in your hands

Let it be too much to drink at happy hour on a Thursday
when you know you’ll pay for it
the very next day, poor move

Let it be hiding from virtual bread crumbs that somehow
you created and left for yourself, unanswered
texts and plans gone cold

Ocean

September 10, 2024September 10, 2024 | Megan

Noordwijk, Netherlands; North Sea Shore. January 2023. Image, my own.

Regret

I stood in the tide of
the North Sea
and I should have dived in.
I should have stripped
off my clothes
like an overgrown baby
and screamed and
squawked into the surf

I should have shrugged
off my care for my
friend’s husband. I’m
sure he would have
politely turned around
if I’d asked.
then I’d have had to
contend with the flotsam

on the beach, but that
wouldn’t have mattered,
half shells, stones, sponges
even the cuts on my
feet would have been
worth it if I’d boldly
yawped into the bubbling
spume, a signal

to the universe that I knew,
I saw what was coming
next (which is a lie)
but in that moment,
to prove to myself I was
animate, to confirm I
could do anything, to
beat my chest at the

edge of the world,
to be alive,
especially if I had
known everything that
would begin– days
later– the layers of dreams
I’d have to divest,
the altar I’d have to burn

in sacrilege, the pain that
would engulf me, the end
This is important because
now I know that my
jaunt into the North Sea
would look pale,
naked, unfeathered in
comparison to reality

and it really wouldn’t
have changed anything.
the tide would have
rolled, salt-gray, rhythmic,
unforgiving, over me
as the lanterns burned
brightly in the beach house
but it’s one thing I may
always regret

Flotsam of the North Sea. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.

Ghost

You never think
That someone will pass through you
Like the ghost of who they once were
Like the spirit of a person you once knew

You never think
That it could hurt so badly to unravel
Like every color of who they were was in you
Like each thread that stitched you all together was undone

You never knew
What death while someone is alive feels like
What saying goodbye without saying anything means
What one body of pain can experience

Until you knew

Tide. North Sea, Noordwijk, Netherlands. Imgae, my own.

Comfort

sink into the folds
of an oversized chaise
tuck your body between
the seat cushion
and english arm
rest your head on the
soft folds of the chenille
bolster, squish and
knead yourself into
the billows of down fill
rest all of yourself in
there to see if you’ll
be safe from the storm

Directions. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.

Celebrate

listen, don’t you forget
that even days of sorrow
can be days of celebration
that’s the paradox
we were born for this

My House at Night. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.

Spoon

if you bring your thighs
right under the nook
of my knees
and the bulk of your
body right into the
curve of my hips
and your chest flush
with my back and
wrap yourself around
me all night, I
may remember what
love, and safety, and
sighing in peace
really feels like
I’ll be home again
quiet, delicious, hazy jazz
you’ll quell my longing

Jazz Café Alto. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Image, my own.

Relentless

sometimes this existence can
feel so heavy
so weighted and wearisome
so relentless

Evolve

September 8, 2024September 9, 2024 | Megan

Scrub Oak in Transition, September 2024. Image, my own.

Autumn Equinox

there is this balance,
this even-keeled consciousness,
an equanimity of the breath
in the air this time of year,
the night and the day coming
into equilibrium, living and dying
reflected in the vegetation,
the need for both action and
rest, moving and pause, all
things in their time and space

Rubber Rabbitbrush, September 2024. Image, my own.

Evolve
-for the elders who’ve shone
a light along the way

I’ve been watching the course
of Life more closely as
I’ve neared ‘halfway’

I’m totally clear, I may die tomorrow
of a fungal infection brought
on by an errant hang nail

This year, I started to see
and understand some parts
about this journey called life,

Facets that had never been
open to me before,
that had never been revealed

In youth. I began to witness
the power of personal
human evolution.

I’m sure I’ve seen it displayed
previously, but now, it seemed
closer, more raw and real

The strength, the peace,
the solidarity, and grounding
that some humans

Offer themselves and others
when they choose to live
with their arms stretched

Up to the divine, when
they’re moving forward in
purpose while trusting the

Siren song of the universe
to guide them to good ends,
and over hard roads, too, don’t

Mistake. I don’t think that
living this evolution is simple
in any way. To allow the

Lessons that life has offered
you to be inculcated into
your core, this isn’t a flat

Path, rather peaks and valleys, I see
my mother who pursues her
passions like watercolor and arts

Grant writing without
prompting or celebration,
and steadily understands

what she loves, what she
holds dear and then lifts
up those elements of her

Life, tending to her own
garden of desire, she invests
her best self in her and us.

All I’m saying is that for a
very long time I felt completely
perplexed with the recipe of this

thing I was witnessing–
evolution– my septuagenarian
friends, were practicing this

Art of living with purpose, too,
with love and with a fair dose
of spicy ironic interjection

Swimming every day,
hiking all over the hills
and valleys of our home

They were another of my
sign-posts. And my uncle,
who spoke the eulogy at

My aunt’s celebration of
life, a woman who also
lived and gave her life over to joy,

He has also chosen
to live in the miracle of the
era of man, to let life

Be the ocean, the teacher, and
he became the student,
he’s allowed those learnings

To become part of him
in the way he loves his
children, the way he acts

In community, the way he carries
the knowing that life will always be
a question, a universal

Query that we can only answer
by living more truly, more soundly,
more surely in verity

To that Flame that was lit within
us at our birth, the miracle of
existence realized, we evolve

On Being

be who you are and
who you can be,
and meet those two
verities inside yourself
with loving kindness
and compassion and
let it be enough to
experience the joy
of living as you see fit
as you love yourself

Andrew Wyeth Grasses, September, 2024. Image, my own.

Steady in the Fall

the sun and moon
move into equilibrium
waxing crescent to quarter

peloton of geese ride high in
the wide blue sky, calling
and answering back, headed south

flowers still bloom, delicate violet
saturated yellow, vibrant magenta,
as grass fades, sepia to umber

fully bronze dragon fly the size of
a silver dollar flickers past in the sun
chased by a saxe blue fly the same size

grasshoppers bunch on mustard rabbitbrush
in the sway of breeze next to dark-chocolate
velvet cattails, stalks steeped in pond-water

cooper’s hawk cries from the brush
high and free like an alter ego
finding the next rodent in the undergrowth

the air takes on the rush and pulse
of crisp wind as the sun’s rays angle
longer, cooling field, flower, and fly