Ghost Heart

They conspired to put me in a cage and let me die. My poor, poor, Tiger, the Ersatzanna.

I always weep when I remember what must have happened to you, how you must have cried for help. And he sat there, no more than 20 feet away, and played video games, feeling himself powerful as his avatar crept around toting a machine gun and you died.
Your dear Archie must have come to you and meowed too, he must have tried to get that man's attention and he ignored him too, that loathsome man, the father of my children.
My grandmother was dying that day, and that’s where I was, at her side saying goodbye. It was expected that she would go, but I lost you too, and that should not have happened.

He couldn’t stop hurting. He had to hurt me and I had only wanted to help him. Helpless me, I wanted to help, but he wanted to hurt.
How he could have sat there and not known that you were dying painfully is unimaginable to me. Some part of him knew. He wanted to hurt me more, so he hurt you.
I am so sorry my poor Tiger, little Ersatzanna. He is dead now too, the father of my children, but if I could choose to have just one of you restored to life, I would choose you and not him. Children need kittens more than drunkard fathers.

I felt sorry for him when he shot himself in the head, I felt sorry because he had been hurting, and that’s why he hurt others, I felt sorry that he had suffered, that I could never help him.
But I was never sorry that he was gone. That is one point upon which I can agree with him; the world is better without him. I am better without him.

The world is worse without you, my heart.

I set the cage out there. I did it. My father convinced me it was the only way to protect you.
The neighbors' black cat had bitten you twice and almost killed you. My father bid me to put out the cage for the black cat.
In the morning my grandmother was dying and I forgot to bring in the cage before going to say goodbye. The father of my children did not come with us to say goodbye to my grandmother. It was an uncommonly hot day for so late in the fall.
You wandered into the cage they said would protect you. It killed you. And he sat 20 feet away letting you die.

After I screamed Tiger, after they grabbed hold of my arms to hold me back while I screamed and the unborn baby in my womb covered her ears and screamed too, after they held me up by my arms and I screamed louder and the other baby, the one you helped me to nurse, stared wide eyed and silent, after I screamed and they tried, as always, to silence me, after that Tiger, I promised that I would never listen to my father again.
And I knew, after he, the father of my children, let you die in the cage my father had bidden me to set, I knew that was what was in store for me. My agony would be prolonged by indifference, my pleas would fall forever on apathetic ears.
I would be caged and killed bit by bit. Just as it had happened to you Tiger, my heart.

I never said goodbye to you. I don’t even remember what they did with your body.
So I dream that you’ve come back, that you’re there playing with your Archie or running alongside the overgrown mint, streaking past a window.
I am overjoyed to see you so, as you were, as you would still be if you had not gone in my place, little Ersatzanna.
My Tiger, ghost of my heart, I see you rushing along the shadowy edges of my dreams, but I cannot touch you, cannot scoop you up, cannot call you back into the house for safe keeping against the night.
I cannot press you to my chest where you belong safe and warm, small brave Tigress.
So I watch you through the window, stalking through the shadows as dusk deepens, as forgetfulness fades and I remember everything.

Balloons

There you were, a slightly something nothingness to pat the blonde crown of my head. Even in my sleep, I see you, and the characters that were a part of the story that held you suspended like a shiny red balloon set among a bouquet of little white ones. Imagine the heights you might explore entirely on your own if you were to be cut free of the bouquet, tethered as it is to that small lead weight ensconced in a plastic smiley face to make its purpose seem friendlier. As a balloon, bound to the other balloons, your sole purpose is to delight and amuse, and yet I’d wager that you dream of something loftier. I’ll not say that I think one is truly better than the other. The fate of the balloon that rises unhindered towards the golden sun… well it is doomed to POP! While on the other hand, the balloon that remained tethered to it’s bland brethren will eke a few delighted exclamations from one observer or another, and eventually it will begin to shrivel and droop like a withered flower at the end of a flaccid stem until it is just a wrinkly little flap of rubber. Either outcome is somewhat dismal, and still I think I’d like to soar before the end, and well, perhaps that is what I am doing.
That may be the reason that I catch a glimpse of the lot of you in a dream now and then, when a gentle zephyr blows me near the carnival grounds and I see your bulbous heads bobbing up and down in time to the floppy footed step of some horrible clown. What does it mean, soft breeze that you sometimes afford me a glimpse of the bunch I left behind, and especially that red balloon, which surely I admired once as much as any other white balloon might? What does it mean that I sometimes wish for the red balloon to escape a slow demise and soar with the birds of prey above the world and above the clouds? The moment that my own tether was cut, I left the red balloon and its pearly entourage behind, and their fate is their own as mine is my own. How then can I imagine that I know anything of their existence, as I am no longer one of their ilk?
I could not expect them to think of my flight as a worthy way to spend the days until the roller coaster comes shooting out of the final curve and the ride is over, because they choose the tether and the lead weight and I the unclouded sky. I imagine, or perhaps I was once told, that they hope to lift that weight one day as a whole, through an act of magic, via a measure of defiance against the holy laws of nature. One day they will all make an effort which will be unaccountable, given that as time passes they loose strength and buoyancy rather than gain it, and yet, through a special effort made collectively by each individual, they will rise. Or so they hope. It is difficult to get so many air heads aligned to work for a common purpose and then to further make an effort which only they themselves, individually, can hope to invoke.
As long as the bunch is big enough it will always be easier to say, "Well, we would rise if only Bobo would lift his share of the weight." And "The reason we aren’t getting enough lift is because Balin is leaking." And by thus placing attention on all the other balloons in their company, they fail to place the necessary attention on themselves, they fail to apply as individuals the supernatural attention that makes possible the impossible.
Or so I imagine. What can be the reason that my imagination, my dreams, my mind bends back towards you now and again? In my dreams alone all balloons are reconciled and accepting of each other’s fate. Like the animals of the Wind In The Willows, in my dreams we all know that there is no use commenting on the sudden appearance or disappearance of another animal. We are glad when we are together, and remorseless in parting, and ever accepting that otters must swim and moles burrow and sparrows fly. There will be times when we take the path together, and times when our destiny demands that we part, and that is all that there is to it.
Or so I imagine.
So I have dreamed.

Come In!

It all points back to the early years when it seemed I would be a model citizen once I reached a ripe age. In my youth I was cheerful, kind , and, above all, an obedient little girl. The very sweetest and kindest are most susceptible to conviction, so when they suggested that I ask Jesus into my heart I did just that, rather than pretending, like everybody else did. Everyone in America knows that it’s good to talk about Jesus and justify everything you do by insisting that you love Jesus, but of course that’s all just play acting, a little show on the surface of things, a lie we tell ourselves and each other while deep down beneath the shiny veneer, within the confused tangles of the deep psyche, we maneuver towards our greatest desires and veer away from our worst fears, and plot ways to hide all of this subterranean activity under layers and layers of words and social etiquette.
But I did not know that as a child. I was too slow to catch on to the ways of the world. When they bade me to accept Jesus I opened my arms and flung wide the doors to my little heart and cried:
"Come in, come in!"
And that was how my career as an invocant was begun, very innocently, obediently and with the best intentions. My crime, of course, was, is and ever shall be an indulgence in conviction. While immersed in a culture of fakers there can be no greater sin than sincerity. Jesus was for me a gateway deity. The way some kids smoke pot and then move on to try something harsher, I started with what was friendliest and worked my way outward towards the most forbidden. With time I grew sympathetic to stranger wilder forces, forces without forms, or names, or mythologies to dress them in. To those forces beyond calculation I likewise opened the temple of my mammalian countenance and threw back my head to howl an invitation:
"Come in, come in!"
There was never a more generous or hospitable offer to make, nor shall there ever be. I hear from others that this is a very frightening and naughty thing to have done. I hear from human animals that this is a bad thing. I hear this from fakers, from liars, from cowards. I am not ashamed to have looked into my own innermost quarters, into the depths of my heart, and the secret crevices of my mind and discovered that there was darkness there. I am not ashamed to have discovered that I am but a mere mortal, an animal alike in my fears and desires to all other animals. I am not ashamed that I would make a sacrifice of that animal on the altar that we call a lifetime. What is one lamb more or less to the flock? Maybe there are a few that have missed me down at the trough while I was away acting upon my convictions, living not just for the sake of being alive, but rather questioning the possibilities entrenched within that experience, exploring it, testing its measure, prodding its heights and depths with every sense available to me, beyond hope, shame, or fear. You may keep all of the rewards in store for the good animals, I will take all of the punishments reserved for the strays. For freedom I will pay with responsibility, accepting the consequence of my actions and inactions. I will be faithful to my purest impulses, to my open hearted wonderment and willingness. I will accept my worst nature, my cowardly yearnings, as they are mine too, and I will be the one to master them with open eyes and a gentle hand. I am resolved to be a bad girl until the bitter end, incurable of honesty and true charity, ever biting at the tether and bucking at the reign of the masters of the world. My kingdom is in the invisible heavens and hells, embedded in every shadow and every reflection, in every grain of sand and every tear drop. May it live in small gestures that grow grander, may it breath through subtle shapes, hues, and murmurs, may it flourish under this veil of mortality. I invite it with open heart:
"Come in! Come in!"

Pattern Release

What does it mean to go back in time to the place of your origin, to find the world of your inception crystallized like a snowflake, complete with houses outfitted with sagging paint chipped porches frowning out at the dark damp woods and cemeteries, with their rounded head stones like uneven teeth, marked with esoteric symbols, the meanings of which have been buried beneath centuries of linguistic refuse? Can you remember when you and I were one and we danced beneath those trees in a frenzied whirlwind of bare chested ecstasy, our moonlight dappled cheeks glistening with sweat, the claws of the she-bear dangling from our necks, the blood of our loins smeared down our legs?
That was in the forest of our ancestors, in the womb of our mother, a world suspended in a crystal ball, preserved in a moment before the Romans came with their gold plated armor and their eagle crest. We beat them back there, in that forest. We defined the wilderness and the barbaric heart of the untamable darkness. Their solar enterprise, their overwhelming empire, would not penetrate into the cold chaos of annihilation, because we held them back. We drew the line, and we draw it still, the line that marks the place where civilization and the rule of the word may not enter.
We maintain the balance of the universe, keeping to our backs the shadows and the roar of endlessness while holding at bay with the fierceness of our visage the structures of the finite and mortal world with its sterile "one size fits all" laws and walls and limits. We will not be limited. We will smile as they close in on us and pretend to be a part of their game while still holding the limitless behind our backs. We will flip creation on its head so that the limitless flows into the limited, a viral infection spreading through unsuspecting carriers who will hold our secret sign and keep alive our secret dances without knowing what it is that they harbor. Moving like pawns across a chessboard, each game piece is destined for death, but how few of them realize that they are a helpless character in a Holy War? Few look ahead to their deaths, fewer still know on which side of the battlefield they stand, but despite their ignorance all are engaged in a Jihad that has been waged through every possible pattern of life for eternity.
It is a battle older than humanity, the struggle between fire and ice, and it has worked its way through every doe eyed little girl gazing out at the brilliance of the morning star embedded in the velvet fabric of night and through every quick lad springing into action to capture a frog in the ever flowing stream of consciousness. In the middle, betwixt and within the two, we have persevered. Concealed in the mechanical stupor inherent in being a living organism, our secret has been stowed like a rat in the ships cargo hold, waiting for the moment when it can bring its disease to a new world, waiting to destroy civilization in that moment when you and I are one again.
Why not suckle from the teat of the she-bear, the white dragon, and take in the poison of death to watch your eyes turn a steely gray as they begin to see in two directions at once? We have found the pattern for our creation nestled in the cradle of our origin. We have come back to the past to touch our beginning and re-make ourselves. First know thyself, and then make yourself in your own image. Only then will you be a free agent, a maker, a builder. Only then will you be eternal, the serpent nursing on its own tail, a dragon of a dragon born.