we wake up because we need to

this is for anyone that needs to know who i am,
and for (the) few who don't mind who i am.

for all that's done
for all that's said
we're better off
if left for dead
don't feed your rhymes
or bait your schemes
the magic was lost
when we lost our dreams

"and whosoever shall ye believe, then so shall they become as a god to you. and in their hallowed glory, so shall they become godlike. but loose the bonds of trust, and belief shall fall by the wayside, like the deadness of the rose."

~my grandmother, wilma claire crow and i~

My Skin

Take a look at my body, look at my hands
there's so much here that I don't understand
Your face saving promises, whispered like prayers
I don't need them.

Cuz I've been treated so wrong I've been treated so long as if I'm becoming untouchable...

Well, contempt loves the silence it thrives in the dark, the fine winding tendrils that strangle the heart
They say that promises sweeten the blow
but I don't need them...
no I don't need them.

I've been treated so wrong, I've been treated so long as if I'm becoming untouchable
I'm a slow dying flower I'm the frost killing hour sweet turning sour & untouchable.

ooh I need the darkness, the sweetness, the sadness, the weakness,
ooh I need this.

Need a lullabye, a kiss goodnight,
angel, sweet love of my life
ooh I need this

I'm a slow dying flower frost killing hour
the sweet turning sour & untouchable

Do you remember the way that you touched me before,
all the trembling sweetness I loved and adored...
Your face saving promises whispered like prayers.
I don't need them.

I need the darkness, the sweetness, the sadness, the weakness,
ooh I need this.

I need a lullabye a kiss goodnight, angel, sweet love of my life
ooh I need this
Well, is it dark enough, can you see me? do you want me? can you reach me?
or I'm leaving...
you better shut your mouth and hold your breath you kiss me now, you catch your death
oh I mean this...
oh I mean this..

but you will grow wings and fly
and those wings will be strong enough
to lift you above the fears
time has been a thief of hearts
and one soul made away with yours for awhile
but she now gives it back
she offers restitution
she'll guard your children when you cannot
she'll provide the words when you cannot
she'll hold your hand when you need to be steadied
don't let her die
hold her in a place of your eternity
know that she would be there if she could
if she were acceptable
but know she's not
and know its not her decision
if it had been, it would still be good for you
please know the harm that came
was a diversion to her own destiny

but destiny rules
and is final in its judgement
but if there is a god
and a few good souls are worthy
there will be a time and a place
for all of this to become event
and there will be white gowns
and laughing eyes
and everything and everyone
will be pretty
and we'll know each other
and we'll understand why we had to wait
but until then
someone needs your happiness
and the strength of your wings

(now, more than ever.....)

If we never make it back to how far we've come along this way
We search around for solid ground that will help to carry us away
If the memories I left throw the light that helps to guide you through
We trickle down to our goodbyes but a part of me will stay with you
What we've spoken over time
Never broken or compromised
Dream on together
Leaning against each other
However it happens I hope it's
Whatever makes you happy

ms. erin~bear and ms. alex~bear

.....these are the days of our lives.....

"You can't turn back the clock you can't turn back the tide
Ain't that a shame
I'd like to go back one time on a roller coaster ride
When life was just a game
No use in sitting and thinkin' on what you did
When you can lay back and enjoy it through your kids
Sometimes it seems like lately - I just don't know
Better sit back and go with the flow

'Cause these are the days of our lives
They've flown in the swiftness of time
These days are all gone now but some things remain
When I look and I find no change
Those were the days of our lives
The bad things in life were so few
Those days are all gone now but one thing's still true
When I look and I find
I still love you"

this is who i am. and these are things i write..........

"I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small way or a large way."
~mark twain~

in some obscure, unexpected situation you find love. you nurture that love and build on its promises. you dwell in the security it affords and maintain the hopes of all the dreams it brings albeit circumvent. you swim in its waters and bask in its sun. you kiss by its moonlight and fade to the stars of the love night. you readily possess the poppy flowers that surround your every thought. words flow from it and emotions grow with it. and it seems to manifest in your heart but your worldly existence is as empty and incomplete as it was when you stumbled across this euphoric realm. a realm of closed realizations and promises given reason because there is no rhyme. the latitudes of your heart are traced with whispers that grow dim by the everlasting moment. you share less and less. you shirk at realities and hide from finality. but everything is there. just as it was so many years ago. did you change? only in your experiences. the heart is ageless. the capacity to love was always there. waiting. hoping. needing to be filled. so you begin a new search. wondering what was so very important to have been overlooked in the immediate past. all you are left with, the only thing of importance you have grasped, is the unencumbered slight worth of self-piety. ever so slight. and you assume a geographical check of being. you will let place take the upper hand and you will seek out a better one. one where alone is not so evident. one where alone will paint the mountain top masterpieces and the foliaged meadows and the streams that feed the rivers and the perfect-bodied limbs of human willow trees. where alone allows fluid motion with time. and when time ends, its own ebbing is no huge sadness but the opening of the next door and futures offered chance. there are voices you will know immediately. and there are faces, dream visions, that will sweep you up in blessed assurance of some great power but never will you realize a god. because there is no god. there is only the sun with its cloud masks and its cold rain. and you fill the empty promises once again. only this time you have limits. you set them yourself. you allow no closeness so you allow no pain. you banish the porous softness and you leather your heart casings and no one thing will pierce the strength you found in all those tears. but still you dream at night. you are fragile and in no control in your dreams. but the dreams escape into the early morning and you open your eyes on your creation and you are mistakenly content in it till death. and death alone is your best sleep. and some lunatic wails a mournful sonnet with music that steals your sanity but you fight and fight and you build the wall of bricks and mortar and allow no penetration and no weaknesses and you finally have your own song and then you turn your back on it all and walk away. you have to. or you die. or maybe it just all passes through you like the ghost it proves to be, with hurricane force. and you look back and you see the rider on the silent storm and you never recognize the person you were, but you manipulate the coming season of your life and you make grandiose plans for the next round.

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
~mark twain~

or maybe its all just an imitation of life. but it never stops. even with the demise of the future in what we know as such. the tailspin of rhetoric and the spiraling effect of human nature helps to calm the hard times, and sweetens the tears of the lost nights. and you live! and THEN you die. and some stone that appears fitting marks the only territory you can claim. in the end. in the end. in the end. rainbows end to rainbows end. ashes to ashes. dust to dust. finding final flight in the palm of a small child, blown into oblivion. the whisper of all creation, left to journey forever without even knowing what it all meant. be silent. be thankful. be gone. for now. but hurry home. i miss you.

and when we return, let’s brandish hair of fine silk, lips of coral beauty, pearl encased teeth, eyes of caribbean blue, ears tuned with nature, and a body that seems fashioned by the most noteworthy of designers, destined to be the envy of those who were the enemy in the before life. but we will not flaunt our perfections that shadow the less fortunate. we will, on the instead, be creative in our praises and our perceptions. we will befriend the friendless, love the unloved, and mother the orphans, even those with families. we will have a thousand children, and each one of them will have a thousand children. and we will become not a race of mankind, but mankind’s perfect rendition of the living being. we will be poets and philosophers, with heart and soul and no boundaries. everything we have will spill into the oceans and become drink for those who have yet to find paradise. we will blaze trails and clear paths for the comeuppance of a new species. one that will not be under paved with disease and the nourished plagues of the old man. our bible will be torn page by page and each page will be used to light fires that glow from deep forests making the paths visible to the most blind of creatures. and the conglomerate almost nonsensical patterns of our engineers will be a kaleidoscope of stained glass beauty seen in perfect clarity from the stars where we will perch and view our handiwork. we will be the gods that we worshipped in our previous futile existences. and every time we kiss, a new universe will be born. and in the true end, we will fall breathless and lifeless to the form we know as earth. and it will begin anew. over and over till the end of time. and all that was lost will be found. and all that is found will be good. and there will be no question, because with question comes doubt, and with doubt comes suspicion, and with suspicion comes religions, and with religion comes tyranny, and with tyranny comes the fall of mankind.

"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
~mark twain~

who cares? let’s have passion for dinner. let’s serve up to each other fruits and candies and sweetmeats that will melt in each other’s mouths and savor them like fine wine, letting the delicate brocades of our bodies circle and trail in and out of each other while we nibble and taste and share it all. i want to drink the honey sweet milk of your love and offer you my own. i want to last forever on your tongue. i want to feel the rise and the fall of your belly and make room for everything you need to be inside of me. i want a hard, deep kiss that can never come from the mouth to the mouth, but from the slow, steady building of a part of your body that lunges and coils and demands touch. i want to whisper the words that will bring you to a place of no return, and i want to hear the murmurs and the moans that will signal my own release. i want to splash against you and feel the waves of your own heated and pulsating orgasm streaming like liquid silver that will cause me to relinquish all control, to contort and writhe in unified ecstasy. and when you are spent with desire, i want to give you a place to rest your beautiful face on the ample breast pillows that serve no more purpose than that of your pleasure, be it in soft sleep or firm awareness of all that is you and how you make me feel.

i have no desires to invade the spaces wherein lie your objective affections. you are two inches tall and growing. i am ten feet tall and am a diminishing affirmation. i passed down your avenue many years ago and i took an alleyway that led me here. that alley is no longer open. or passable for anyone. those of us who met in the corner with the blue hats and the jews harps and stood for nothing more than you stand for now have long since been silenced in the foreboding shadows of what was right and what was never wrong. i am a creature of habit with none to boast of, and my sins and my own iniquities are zealous but with reason and plight. what never rings will never be heard. what never touches will never be touched. what never meant will never be. but for a nanosecond it was all possible. and so now the possibilities reveal themselves tenfold and still they are not possible. a dance with no steps to follow. a picture with no negative. a life with no end but where did it all begin? it began with a simple desire that was fed by ugliness needing beauty. the game pieces are not interchangeable and the rules are not subject to indecision and we are indecisive by nature. so the game is lost and our time is up. but simply put, a part of me will stay with you. and that is more than ever perfect could achieve. and still i try to fashion words into long comings but i falter with a greater speed than light. i want someone to know that i never understood until now why all the rebellion. and how in the same instance i can say i knew something of what it all meant then, but now i only wonder where all meaning went. and i have found some answers.

no one has written what needs to be said
'nary a sonnet makes sense in my head
you'll keep on living and i'll be long dead
'cause no one has written what needs to be said

you're going to be the sex of me and never mind the death of me. i wish you could find what makes me who i am before you find what makes me who you want me to be.

you're growing like a watered weed and you're choking out all the grass.

hell maybe we’ll just be lovers
maybe we’ll never know about all of the others
even shunning the limelight
taking on the corners
hell maybe we’ll just be lovers

distances of difference miles and miles apart
children grown and yet conceived all places in the heart
music new and music old ageless concepts pending
filling empty quietness with bodies spent and bending
all the lyrics words of nothing when it comes to reason
spring is youth and autumn’s chilled respected both as seasons
retro love its come back round carefully sedated
a step ahead we lag behind and find it over-rated
we stretch the likeness thin as ice avoiding all the cold
but water runs in swift retreat and we succumb too old
the beauty found eternal from within the mind of leisure
must sleep tonite and dreams will form
with the morrow bringing pleasure...hmm.....

gone as far as this road will take me everyone’s old, nobody dies factory’s pumping heartbeats and blood stops flowing inside no new flowers, no spring, no rain all of the windows tinted with gray no way out, no way in nothing but sleep at the end of the day a stepford existence dulling all senses mannequin movements halted by air music falls silent, dinner is served turn out the lights. everything bare.

what if i go when things are uncertain
what if my sun sets with yours on the rise
how can i leave you with all that i’m feeling
in knowing its over will you close my eyes

asking myself what i had to offer
wondering about things i had yet to give
taking the time to sum up the problems
was it enough to justify this?

all of the poems and all of the letters
thousands of whispers into the dark
all that was shared when we had no other
how will you feel when i shut down my heart

will you always know that i never loved better
find some small comfort in the ghost of my name
will you remember just how i touched you
letting the fragments of love ease the pain

was all that i gave you enough to protect you
from things that go crazy when others are blind
even with ashes left held in your hands
was i to your heart what you were to mine

will you go searching for love to come after
will you give honor to what gave us breath
marry a beauty, making her happy
offer the vows and keep them til death

i know that you’ll make it
i know you’ll do well
i know that your sky will always be blue
i know that your children
will bring you great pleasure
i know all these things
because wishes come true

the brief and fragile eternity that breaks all bonds and soars beyond all wishes and all stars, past the heavens and the universes, defying any realm and any plan. too perfect to exist beyond wild imagination. the unleashed reality of a woman and a man light years apart. a ballad not held by words but by the deepest feelings. perfect and pure essence of a dream. floating never lighting on this earth. dancing in the minds of two people gifted in each other. the alpha and the omega.

i wait for you inside my house
keeping vigil sweeping floors
wanting to be painted pretty
in this world of painted whores
words in mindless flurry whelming
pieces showing all i lack
while your plans take on all that's suited
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK...
a morning waiting for intrusion
happenstance and carefree whim
no time to part or ponder beauty
jump, no, thrust, must dive right in
anxious moments, restless .......uh....this is going somewhere.......
........................just not today

psycho-babble is that language spoken by sailors who have become so interested in navigating their way around their boat that they have forgotten to read the stars and the seas. they may be able to get from the galley to the head, but will be lost in their journey from point to port. jesus, being god, is the perfect picture of who god is. jesus, being man, is the picture of perfect humanity. to find him, to meditate on him, is to find god and our own true selves. it is to see the brilliant design of the boat and its course and the beauty of the sea.

i do not work myself into some ecstatic frenzy to meet jesus. he does not speak to me through opium dreams or out of hypnotic trances. he meets me in history and takes me beyond it to himself. any mysticism that is authentic does not abregate time and space -- it infuses those elements with meaning.

look at us all -- we are all of us lost and in all of our different ways of pretending, we all fed ourselves into the very same hell. look at the cross -- we are all of us loved and one god meets us all at the point of our common need and brings to all of us--all who will let him--salvation.

a faith that moves mountains is a faith that expands horizons, it does not bring us into a smaller world of easy answers, but into a larger one where there is room for wonder.

the bible is not a book for the faint of heart, it is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that benefits mankind. it is not a collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice, it does not so much nibble at our shoe leather as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from the bone. it does not give us answers fitted to our small-minded questions, but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask.

is that great "cloud of witnesses" watching my walk so as to judge or is it informing my way so that i may walk it? do they hide the light so that i cannot see it or do they filter it so that the blaze will not blind me? can a man see god face to face and live? can i not see an eclipse better through a pinhole in a paper than without it?
we cannot so much see light as we can see things because of it. so, i do not meet jesus in a vacuum -- i meet him in the world he has provided for me to meet him in--in a world of events and of places, of history (time and space), in a world of lives of people and the rewards of their encounters. i meet him in this world--in the world of these things.

i cannot even think as fast as you are beautiful.

i made a thousand wishes upon a thousand falling lights
and would have made a thousand more but morning took the night
the silver rain that filled the seas and oceans from the skies
like crystal drops of tenderness fell silent in my eyes
when next i see the face of love i hope to cause the shine
that's made the bond we've come to share when your body touches mine
if i could conjure up the sun when most you felt the need
i'd bring its brightness full around and satisfy your greed
i've come to love what you can see i've learned that i can give
a part of me that once was stilled i've learned just how to live
i can't begin to know what waits or why things will be due
but i now know that all this time i’m here to be with you.

you can change everything, and you can change nothing. but if you change nothing, you change everything.

to the came and wents and the used to be's
for the yesterwinds blowing in the trees
to the colored past of the season's leaves
i am now a part
i am one of these
for the faded smile and the washed out seas
to the distant stench of the earth that heaves
for the dust of bones caught in winter's breeze
i am now a part
i am one of these
to the dead man's prayers and the newborn's needs
for the angel's plight and the devil's plea's
though we both object we must both agree
i am now a part
i am one of these

it's been almost two years since i've added/deleted to this site. and now i've forgotten all those little tricks. i'm getting older, my dears.