A Year in the Life of an Unemployed Poet

Preface
This collection of poetry was written during the great recession of 2009-2010 and the great depression of my soul. As thoughtful people know, every life experience comes with gain as well as loss. For me, with the loss of society’s definition of employment, there came the time and space for personal introspection and the birth of a bursting period of creativity. It took hard work and sometimes incredible pain to push aside Western cultural notions of meaningfulness to find something much better, much richer, infinitely more important than the corporate ladder climb to spiritual death. Instead I climbed the Ramapo Mountains, and there I found myself.

Bleeding
I was lulled to sleep by the sweet song of spring peepers
and awoke
to the riotous exclamation of wild turkeys
rising over the chattering of early morning birds.

My husband’s arm wrapped around mine,
strong and warm,
hand in hand,
as the end-of-night’s cool dew blew in the bedroom window.

I was happy, for a moment,

until life’s sharp knives
stabbed and slit my consciousness
into thin bleeding slivers
that disintegrated into the air.

In Pursuit of Happiness
I am tired of the cement wall
in front of me.
It is towering and thick and formidable.
I have tried and tried
to climb over it,
to crawl under it,
to creep around it,
but I am unsuccessful.
I want to slam into it full force
and watch my body
burst into a million rainbow shards
that float up
and over.

For My Dancing Cowboy
Should I curtsey and you bow?
What today will we allow?
Will we tango a delightful dance
enjoying our intellectual prance
as we while our hour away
with Kernberg, Freud, or Bowlby today?

Around my waist you reach your arms
without fear and without harm.
As I stretch and reach around your neck,
will we feel distance or will we connect?
Will it be pain or will it be pleasure
as we move to the measure and dance together?

So for today you shall see, yes, you shall see,
what matters the very most to me.
Oh, the deepest pain still remains
repressed in my memory silent has lain.
So I’ll drive over the river and be on my way,
and soon we shall dance and soon we shall play.

Education
(I ain’t paintin’ it black, Mick)
We humans are doing it all
wrong:
We die slow deaths daily.
We should learn from the plants.
Are we really lucky to get old
grey wrinkled color-devoid?

Take it from the plants.

We should go out like fall
leaves:
a burst of brilliance
burning red desire, panting
blinding yellow brighter than the sun, oh yes
boldly orange whose juice puckers lips
and drips off chins onto beautiful breasts
parachuting
to earth
on their way
out.

Don’t let the Final Obliterator gyp you:
Go out in a blaze.
Live and die in technicolor.

And that
would be
a celebration.