Around again

The sun and the earth meet
In this same place every year
The moment begins here
Where there is more dark than light
The day I got married

I sat on the hood of the '64 Plymouth Fury
And talked with God

This is what I deserved
Playing with fire, not caring
who used by body
or why
Giving up on love so long ago
Now feeling anything was rare
And only a problem
to be endured

Why, God? Why this? Why now?
And I knew the answer
But I didn't want to hear it

or feel it

This was the best solution
To a young woman sliding quickly
into hell
A woman who ran out of options
because she would not stop staring at the wall

There was a door
There was a window
But she placed her nose close to the wall

The way the nuns made her do
when she asked too many questions

Why God? Why this? Why now?

Yet I marveled at the life growing inside me...
I would have preferred to walk the path alone
But like really living a life,
I was too scared
And I knew NORMAL people
got married

So I sat on the car
And considered my cage:
Could be worse, you know

I looked up at the sky, filled with the stars
of the atumnal equinox
and thought
I'll never be an astronaut,
a scientist, a lawyer,
or a movie star

I'll be a wife and a mother
It's what I deserve
A cage...no one will ever know I existed
Oh God...what have I done?
I have killed myself before I was even alive.

Such were the thoughts
of a selfish child
who never felt or knew love
whose life was determined without her consent
was it?

These thoughts would take years to forgive
and even more to understand

Cindy September 23 2012

Scary But True

"You will be a healer,"
God said, as He fashioned my body
From a lump of clay.

On this day, I formed you
Created you in your mother's womb

No, it was not in the union of man and wife
But in an act of passion
In an act of desire
And perhaps desperation
Between one who wanted a future
And one who simply wanted right now.
Humble beginnings

Hear that Ave Maria on the radio?
That's for you to remember
She had to endure a lot
To have her son
In a society that would rather kill off a life
or two
than let someone off the hook

She risked all to give life to a child
That somewhere in her heart
She knew he might just save the world. 

Such is a mother's love.

You began in humility
You were asked to suffer
And in that suffering
You had a choice:

Be bitter. Be angry. Get even. Take all you can. Now is all you have.
Or
Be patient. Be compassionate. Be humble. Serve so that others might live.

Use your life, your pain, to heal

You have the choice to heal
Or to destroy
To love
Or to hate
To build plowhares into swords
Or swords into plowshares

To risk death: physical, emotional, spiritual...
To give life

Choose life.
Be a healer.

Ugly things

She said I wrote ugly things
But I didn't

I wrote what was going on
I wrote how I felt about it
And then I hid it
Little scraps of paper
Placed behind milk bottles
Inside statues
Behind pictures...

Often behind the monstrous picture of me
The one she had made
And had"doctored"
So I looked like what she wanted me to be
Instead of who I really was

Behind there I put my dark poetry
Not the kind words for Hallmark cards
Not the "You are such a wonderful mother"
Not the "I love you so much"

But the ones where I was being chased
The ones about how I was hiding
And some about how I gave in

Much, much later...
when I was a teacher
I found "ugly poetry"
on one of my students' desks

I read it...and understood it...
behind the obscenities and sexual suggestions
I heard the cry
And did something about it

A couple of years later
I saw the young girl in a movie theater
I just stood there
She saw me...and ran to me...and hugged my neck

She said, "I'm living with my grandmother now."
And she looked down at the carpet.
Then she looked up.
She hugged me again.
She said "Thank you."

Sometimes...we get lucky
Sometimes we don't

Cindy

I do not care for my bed

I do not care for my bed
You may buy me another if you wish
But this is my bed for now

I allow you to make love to me
I'll play Clare to your Francis
Or Teresa to your John
But quite frankly
This is my bed for now

I wait for you to want real things
And not plays or pretends
To see me as I really am
And love ME
Not the woman you want me to be
But the woman I am
I'll wait...
But not forever

What Love Does

What Love Does

40 years ago, I made a decision
To protect myself from a danger
In a manner quite unorthodox
With consequences I never could have imagined

40 years ago
I thought I could stop the violence
By building a wall
To stop feeling
To live
But to live on my terms
To keep all the power
To save the world
And little children
From the darkness
That I knew was there.

But the plans of a fifteen year old girl
Can hardly stand in the face
Of the plans of the world
Or of God

Sometimes
if we are lucky
We lose
And love wins
Anyway

Cindy
August 7, 2012

Ditto

Saying I love you seems easy enough
But what does it really mean? 
Does it take on the life of the Beloved
Or is it merely a dream
Of what I might think I want to have,
Of someone I'd like to see?
'Cause when I am with that someone I love
The person I see best is me.

In his eyes a beauty exists
of a woman I barely know
In his eyes I find a comfort
that only love can show
In his eyes I see a love for me
and that love by its perfect design
takes this broken old body
and transforms it into something divine.

Saying I love you is always a risk
It wounds as it heals the soul
It tells us, yes, we are beautiful
Yet reminds us of how far still to go
Before that love is perfected
In the Light of Perfect Love's face
He takes what we've given each other
And places upon it His grace

Dare to say I love you
Dare to open your heart
Dare to take on the wounds
Dare to play His part
True love is not in a movie
Is not in a book of rhyme
True love is saying daily
Make me, Lord, one of thine. 

I thank you, sweet man, for teaching me
How to risk my heart again
I thank you for loving me unconditionally
I thank you for being my friend
I thank you for showing me this truth
That light can still shine in this heart
I thank you for giving me hope
....

I love you, too.

Cindy
June 15, 2012

Fast Car

She didn't really tell me
That her parents were killed when she was seven years old
That she was in foster homes ever since then
That she got to see her brother every now and then
But that two months ago
He killed himself
And she was angry
And did something foolish
And now she's here
Waiting for a baby to be born in May

She didn't really tell me those things
Because those things don't really happen to people
God watches over
And when it gets really hard
We get a break
Only there is no break
It just stays hard

Had to unlock the gate
To let her go to meet her parole officer
Somewhere not near by
Leaving at dawn for a 10 o'clock appointment
Babies in the back seat
I wonder why they have to leave so early
Her husband has to restart the car several times
It sputters down the road
Yeah, it might take them three hours to get there...

And I think life just stays hard
For some
That gospel verse
"To those who have much
More will be given
And to those who have little
Even that will be taken away"
And I don't think about how we are being told
To make good use of our gifts
But rather
How those who have much always know how to get more
And those who have so little
Have their little bit taken away from them
Because the poor steal from the poor
As quickly as they steal from the rich
And the rich,
well, sometimes they steal,
but they never get caught.

I sat there, looking at the little girl
thinking how much I had suffered
and survived
and just listening to her
Beginning her journey
Figuring it out
Deciding not to feel

I remember those days of not feeling
And those days when the feelings began
And how deeply it wounded me
So much so that I thought
It might be better to be dead

But I pressed on
Yet never alone
And I found the other side
The side with the light
The side where I could smile again
And mean it

And I decided
When the time comes for her to feel
I think she will make it
After it hurts a lot
She find herself on the side of the light
And she'll be okay

Yes, this one will be okay
Yet still, to think of her, I cry