musical chairs...

She realized that, the open seat

existed to remain, unfilled by her

its emptiness, was not an invitation

and that deliberate, lack of inclusion

is the way that this game, is played

she exists to be denied, and a situation

firmly ensconced, feet under the table

just as if she belonged, that dream she had

no more a pawn of desire, of inclusion

to her, key yet invisible player, is denied...

lucy meskill

photo credit: judith meskill

aqueous....

Tepid totes of mostly water,

soft, warm elongated skin-tubes

with a symphony of colorful,

variegated softer tubes on the inside.

Beautiful permeable, subtle tinted bags

filled with bony white sticks and warm jelly.

Lustrous, dead keratin protein fibers

on the outside and short plump

life-giving pink filaments on the inside,

we are positively silly with cillia.

Hairs that march along the surface

of almost everything that we are

probing and promoting they glean,

clean and thrill the inner landscape.

And that convoluted brioche-brain

residing just beneath the jointed,

downturned teacup and saucer

that we call the human skull

is filled with the most mysterious

inscrutable material of all.

From it emanates a constant flow

of glimmering steamy swirls,

impulses, from the ever beating

garnet jewel just beneath our ribs,

to emit the perfume of the mind

and the thrilling chemosensational

palpable scent and flavor of feeling.

This tender melding of supple matter

that we call body, that we call home,

sweet home, asks that we employ

the seashells which reside on either

side of our cranium to listen in and out

to all of the important, enlightening

things it has to say, particularly

about the parts of it that are joined

to every other animate and inanimate

thing and being in this glorious,

orrery of an expanding universe...

lucy meskill

on being human...

I had a cat once
who could not resist
an open paper bag
she would climb inside
make her way down

to the glued-end
and punch at it
for the longest time
sometimes being human
feels just like that...

lucy meskill

one smart cookie...

the inscribed sheet 

within this small crisp 

shiny caliper of sugar:

“no need to worry !

you will always have

everything

that you need.”

lucky numbers: 9, 25, 38, 40, 42, 49

learn Chinese

baseball (bang-qiu)

smiling,

I digest…

lucy meskill

geanealogy...

The human seed

a conscious furze,

a meaty spurge,

that 98.6 degrees

of confusion, wonder

and mayhem is loosed

upon the verdant

and slowly cooling crust.

A tree whose roots

are broken off into ten

abbreviated aching stubs

that get shoved, daily, into shoes;

that angry, beautiful burl of

unanswerable questions

which, fearful, twists the present

into a ghostly figment of the past.

We are blood, bone and bacteria

fleeting manifestations of the

massive blue-green marbled

behemoth rolling thru deep space

just beneath our mortal feet;

dreaming in our baby-minds

we prod and knead blindly

for nourishment at her milky teat.

Branded, bonded and burned

into submission, we hoard

the many other meaty species

into the dank, cheerless

needy basement of our hearts;

to linger from pain to table,

we stab and slice them into bites

for which we pay a psychic price.

Trees have big roots to hold them steady

and yet still they falter, thundering;

deep roots do not feed hungry trees

that fortune lies in what is tender

in a hair-thin network, a compassion

of feeder roots ever probing, seeking,

asking subtle moisture, minerals

and healing nurture from dark soil.

The challenges of this mortal place

are best met by fueling growth with wonder

by living, eyes open, blessed moments

to keep from walking into walls;

by making conscience into science

and forging mercy as our threshold

while keeping time with understanding

and then, being willing to let go...

lucy meskill

the ascent...

We are shallow wells

which daily through

the deepest love is drawn

ever upward towards the light,

and by the product of that drawing

are we deepened ever slowly. 

In the gentle leaf and stick strewn

bower of my heart I feel it,

in my small and human way

I sense the humming of the source,

the thrilling of the light,

and the dancers in the dark.

The illusion of no movement

is a very human invention,

it is a gift of the moment

by which we slow-down

the passing of our lives.

When we invented clocks

to parse time into seconds,

like Dr. Frankenstein, we did invent

a monster whom we love to scorn

we named our creation tedium

a thing we love to hate, which

bolsters this stunning illusion

that we have time to spare.

As drivers of vague boredom

we excel at streamlining 

the excessive volume of our grief

over the fact of our mortality

into a thin and pliant band

that staunches the seamless flow

of time to a manageable average 

of 80 lovely beats per minute

ever throbbing at the wrist.

We are weeds in this garden

like the purple thistle in the glen

like a multitude of random grasses 

blooming rampant on the plain,

we are here to aerate the soil

of this mysterious dimension

with our never-ending questions

and plough the fields of wonder

with our endless and sturdy humor,

we are here to break ourselves

and to be formed again anew.

And so, I am always partial, and 

so you are always partial, and so what?

we are here, alone together, 

writing each his and her own version

of this frail, enduring dream of life.

And so, I bid you well my friends

and so, I will always smile to greet you

“hello, I am like you, broken and becoming,

do you want to meet for coffee?"

and this is how it goes, never forever,

but ever joyously, on and on and on...

lucy meskill