Writers
Posts tagged Dominique
Poem: Zygote Dreams
0Dominique Larntz * January 11, 2012 * “Love Letters To My Body”
Zygote Dreams
I.
My father is wholeness
and my mother is love
and all the damage
in the world can only kill me
it cannot unmake me.
II.
I sleep to repair
and remember who I am –
where I was conceived –
and to even out the tremors
of variety and experience
that for a brief instant
allowed me to construct
a story only as permanent
as weather.
III.
I awaken over and over
into the spirit of conception –
now, eternally –
that returns us
to comfort.
Poem: Meditation Today
0Dominique Larntz * January 10 * “Love Letters To My Body”
Meditation Today
Allowing is less
the big breath,
the effortful death
of expectation–and more
the inhales and the exhales
you watch without drama,
easily, like the place
at the top of the pole where
the nylon string attaches
in a tetherball game.
Poem: Neighborhood
0Dominique Larntz * January 9 * “Love Letters To My Body”
Neighborhood
There is so much I can’t do today
that I am reminded
to think small
and then to think even
smaller.
I remember being eight years old
in elementary school.
The teacher polled us
on what we wanted to be
when we grew up.
I said I wanted to be president.
That stands as one of my brightest
negative moments
in socialization
as a child.
While I would have
voted for me,
it was obvious
even the teacher
was shocked
at such a desire
and would not
have cast a ballot
my way.
While my campaign
ended there,
I still find myself
returning to
the intersection
of the avenue-of-where-I-think-I-should-go
and the boulevard-of-the-way-I-was-made
thinking I can re-route the-avenue-
of-where-I-think-I-should-go
to be anything other than
a traffic circle
bringing me again
to the same,
gentle, right turn.
An exuberant day
can make any future appear possible
and it’s easy to forget that to manifest
a career takes twenty-to-forty years.
Life also brings days like today–you
can call it depression, low energy, tired.
And I wonder how I can be
of service in my life
and in the world on such a day,
when I feel I am no good
for doing anything.
And it takes me a long time–until 3 PM–to
even be able to formulate that question.
Almost before the question is finished,
life has offered three lousy drivers
in oversized vehicles.
Each encounter necessitated
that I slow down
in order to avoid collisions.
I cry a little because I realize those drivers
will never see that I saved their lives.
They will probably never know
the mistakes they made.
I am humbled by my small destiny
on my neighborhood roads today,
and the invisibility of it.
I look into the heart of my eyes
and I wonder how many times
in the future I will be able to see
the same humble moments in others.
I wonder how many times
I will be able to see the deftness
and joy that others have felt
as they have traversed this planet,
making the world a better place
in a thousand quiet, transparent acts.
I may be slow to see
and to appreciate
how much
the small
and the smaller still
delights the pathways
of our lives,
but my eyes are
in the neighborhood.
Poem: Past Shame
0Dominique Larntz * January 8 * “Love Letters To My Body”
Past Shame
My little shame
goblin friend,
with your black-lit
punch card eyes
and your cascading
motherboard pigtails,
not only is it
appropriate
for my past
to say no
to me, but
it is time for me
to say no
to my past.
Poem: Bearing Witness
0Dominique Larntz * January 5 * “Love Letters To My Body”
Bearing Witness
Does my body bear fruit
like citrus, with some
squeezable, zestable,
usable outer peel
protecting an inside
so irrevocably liquid
that all you have to do is
twist your hand a bit
to release its juice
along with its
dozens of seeds
and possibly so sour
or so sweet
that it transforms the taste of what it is mixed with
and it cleanses what it rubs against
and it stings wounds it drops into,
and are there many chances–
from all those citrus seeds–
for propagation?
Or does my body bear fruit
like a peach or a plum
with a soft outer skin
that reveals strength
and density
and sweetness
all the way to
a central core seed,
one purpose from which
this type of fruit
propagates?
Or does my body bear fruit
like a coconut,
growing a series of shells
around sweet water
high up in a palm tree
until the day it is ready
to trust that falling
is part if its nature
and it joyfully releases its hold
from the branch
where it has suckled,
and it turns
to embrace the ground
as it stops resisting gravity
and holding onto the trunk–
with its singular seed,
complex and protected
inside many layers,
knowing others
of its kind have been
picked up by waves
and traveled ten thousand
ocean miles to germinate
on a beach
far from
where it started?
Poem: Mindful
0Dominique Larntz * January 4 * “Love Letters To My Body”
Mindful
I just noticed
I was not
noticing
my body
here
right here
under
my
squeezed
mind.
Poem: Incarnation
0Dominique Larntz * January 3 * “Love Letters To My Body”
Incarnation
Stay. Sit with me
for a while.
Dreamworld is still
upon me
and I have not yet
encountered
the corsetry
of the ego,
in its military motions
and ambitious amplifiers.
The voice of life
is gentle,
supporting even
that folly.
If we are one,
we are more
like water
and less like
lions.
I am not sure
how to classify water.
We like to make movies
about predators like lions,
zooming in on how they
hunt and strike and eat
their prey.
Water does lots of things.
Maybe it preys.
It also forms us, fills us,
refreshes us,
grows and houses
our life
and the lives
of species
we have yet to
discover and name.
I praise the water
in me, the water outside of me,
that links me to every
being on this planet
and to the cosmos.
I know
I cannot stay
in this body–
in this life–
forever.
I don’t need
what people say
I need.
I do have the deep
desire to survive
that every life
shares–the blade of grass
that bends
instead of breaks
when your foot
descends
and the palm tree that
arcs into a parabola
when a hurricane hits
its beach.
But life made us mortal
and only our delusions
make us otherwise.
At this moment,
I am friends with life
and life has brought us
together, two bodies,
holding at least
as many states
as water.
Poem: Magic Spaces
0Dominique Larntz * January 2, 2012 * “Love Letters To My Body”
Magic Spaces
I find space in the most mundane places.
I have found too much air in ziploc bags in the freezer
after celebrations so we could tetris leftovers more frugally.
I have found I can pause between inhale and exhale
and calm myself down to my toes.
Today it was in the laundry room where I discovered
two huge drawers under the washer I never knew existed.
This makes me question the definition of mundane.
Healing is found in the same way for me.
The things I am not doing are better for me than the
things I am supposed to do.
Sometimes when I get very still.
Very still.
I can ask, and my body will present an idea to me, one all my own
that appears like an image in my mind. An ‘of course’ that was there
all along, like those drawers under my washer and dryer, a place
to keep the things that will scrub away the years of abuse
and hardship my inner and outer world have heaped upon this
magical, wondrous, gorgeous, moving coalition of cells
that has befriended me in this life.
Carrying the most precious messages of all.
Poem: This is Where I Live
0Dominique Larntz * January 1, 2012 * “Love Letters To My Body”
This is Where I Live
I love my rich body,
and its pleasure
in pouring
into the world
like water.
I can sense a way
to hold myself
as I have spiraled
about you
and as I have been
the sweetest love letter
enveloped within
your arms.
There is no gratitude
physical enough
or loud enough
to express
the truth
that we ache
and arch
and reach
into mature creatures
as we see the seeds
of our identity
in the eyes
of our lovers.