When I grow Up I want to be A POEM

When I grow up, I want to be a poem Written, edited, and designed by Marianne Márquez with graphic assistance from Charlsey Cartwright Copyright © 2011 Marianne Márquez All rights reserved.

For my mother and all my beautiful friends There are no words that can hold all the love I feel for you.

Every morning there are a few blessed seconds when history does not exist, when yesterday is forgotten and the reality of today has not yet set in.

Before t h e i n st a nt of our fi r st breat h , weelusiareve atunioms,nvented flesh, mala glleiablmmere celat lst,he edge of a dream.

Apulsflinugiditwaves y of meaning, Tariheses,promithsene ofdissolanves.orange or an oracle

Unt i l , l i t l e by l i t l e , form i s ascri b ed tAndo indescri b abl e grace. t h e worl d sol i d i f i e s iandnto convent customaryionalformsusages, an unyielding, solid life.

What once gl i m mered, ions reduced t o t h e shadows t h e wal l s of Pl a t o ’ s cave by our samsara blindness.

Weand tarehen dreamt i n t o t h e worl d we dream the world.

If the single flap of a butterfly’s wing can give rise to a roaring hurricane, this blaze orange cloud could change the universe.

Red light stop And green light go Leave no room for blunders.

But worlds collide and oft careen When living in the in between.

The day has not yet fully awakened here, which is unusual.

Costa Rica is an early riser.

The sky is white against the trees.

I’m living inside a cloud.

The Sounds of Costa Rica Jungle birdsong and the more dissonant music of cars passing on the road below float on the air.

A cat’s whisker rain falls on a corrugated tin roof, on a corrugated, brown face.

"Upe, buenas."” is the doorbell that announces a papaya vendor.

Cumbia rhythms blare from the local record shop and shoulders shimmy.

Car horns greet and rebuke.

"Gooooooooooooooool!"”

The umpire elongates the word until it stretches from the plaza deportes to the milpitas and the green hil s.

The church bells, once the muezzein call to prayer, are a hollow reminder of the hour.

Lizards coo, hugging the wall, then disappear into the crumbling plaster to converse in tones we cannot hear.

The wind surges in ocean waves, buffeting the cabin walls.

The nighttime chorus of crickets and tree frogs is punctuated by the crack of cohetes, the lit le rockets that mean joy, not war in Costa Rica.

The bird that lives high in a tree alongside the cabin ruffles its wings so loudly that they sound like the crack of timber just before it falls.

I am dreaming that it is Quetzalcoatl and that the cracking sound is the portal of time opening.

A water droplet on a leaf

speaks of an impending monsoon.

The morning light is usually vibrant here, but today the trees hold on to the night.

When I grow up, I want to be a poem.

Words are vehicles that can take us to someplace we know very well

or somewhere we have never been before.

Anything can be a doorway.

Language is a prison Language is a prison, ordered let ers that reveal nothing but complicity in the murder of the unwordable.

Freighted with form, narrowed with names, in our attempts to impose order and coherence on this ineffable world

While the world’s wordless discourse continues undiminished An experience of reality with soar and loft Hear them speak of lost friends who await another voice, unrestrained expression beyond words.

Perhaps a long silence could prevent this death.

You are the impulse that instructs my heart to speak in the language of roses, the throat’s lost song.

The ebb and flow of your breath is a cathedral in your chest.

Choose your words carefully.

Craft them into a loving embrace.

The spoken word can float away on incurious breath.

Once etched in sturdier stuff, the traces of its ragged, acidic path cannot be erased.

We hold each other’s fragile hopes in our hands.

Let friendship reign.. and shine.

Love, land on my hand like a butterfly.

Just for a moment.

I’l stay so stil .

Love is more than a feeling.

To call it a feeling is to diminish it.

Tea r o u t t his hea rt t ha t brea ks a nd brea ks a nd brea ks y et aga in into pieces ne ver indivisible.

This m ore t ha n hu ma n flesh re nt wit h sna rling teet h The gash o f red fro m co u rtship to assassina tio n a nd ba ck aga in

Once in a lifetime, if you’re very lucky, you meet someone who divides it.

The time before and the time after.

I loved their traces, their leftover aspects, all they had abandoned of themselves in their confused hurry to conform.

Shouldn’t disenchantment, by its very definition,

be preceded by enchantment?

Her eyes were the color of long-ago sorrows.

One day the journey called her by name and something stirred within her heart that had not moved for a thousand years.

Atlantis

Atlantis

Who but a fool would linger by the shoreline, gazing vacantly across the waves and not marveling at things as they are?

He waits for forces unknown to raise a lost continent which he calls home.

So wil I run, calling out "Oh Atlantis. My love! My life! " as if airy utterances could lift the sunken stone.

Or wil I dive headlong into the waters, as if with one last breath I could regain that deep land.

No, I can but walk these burning sands until the tide, urged by a future moon, brings me to you.

I walk around in my immortal shoes, Never noticing the leather of the soles is wearing thin And the laces are fraying.

Each heart longs for its home.

Both rooted in earth, yet ascending.

Longing changed its upward course to a leafy embrace.

Her heart keeps her aloft in a liminal space.

Where they meet to complete the circle of grace.

Life digs deep into the earth.

It’s finished art is returned.

Softly Gently Like the falling snow Softly Gently I wil let you go

I wiI swihsh IIwaswasa poema poem

that lived in your breast pocket and you forgot about me until one day when your heart was broken, a tear slid down your cheek and when you reached into your pocket for a handkerchief, your hand found instead the well-worn creases of my pages and the words dried your tears and mended your heart and after that I no longer lived in your pocket.

I lived in your heart.

Memories are swept up from neglected corners and carried to us on a gentled wind.

They taste salty or bit er or sweeter than kisses.

Blow me a kiss.

Some beauty comes only with age.

Her face carved by ocean waves, breaking against the slope of the Himalaya for mil ions of years.

When the oceans receded, her face appeared.

Lined with laughter and hardship and the inroads of Mongol emperors

Ghost Dance The echoes of long ago dances

folthelowbil tohwie ngupraibissoned hiknee, d es, iinn blsmears urred ofmovement s , col o r t hat linger in the air.

Tishe sometdancer’imess sopresence t h i n tAhatshihemmeribecomes one wi t h t h e ai r . n g mi r age A distant memory Taheflamemory of wi d e pl a i n s, t bl u e sky, tButhe wievennd andfeatthheersclofromuds eagles di dn’t allow him to fly.

Tishe alpatl tihnata ofremaiceremony n s where none now l i v e who remember it.

Her grace was interrupted only by a blink.

Anything can be a doorway.

New Year’s Eve Lunar Eclipse Tonight, let wisdom eclipse what we think we are certain of.

Tonight, let that which is no longer needed slip away with the tired old year.

Tonight, let us emerge once more in innocence and wonder like the infant year.

Tonight, let it begin again.

Woke up to a pale yellow moon, shining through my window like the sun.

Birds wrote yes in the sky.

Lying under a flowering magnolia tree A canopy of lotus blossoms Set in a pond of a thousand gray ripples That is the sky.

As Above, So Below Shards of broken water Cracked mirror lake bathed in bril iant winter light, reflects a mackerel sky.

Clouds floating in wintry water Trees rooted in sky Earth and sky meet Unknown to the rest of the galaxy.

If we are the only ones here, it’s an awful waste of space and beauty.

The day is waking up slowly.

Rubbing the sleep from its eyes, the sun pulled a blanket of mist back over its head.

The winter solstice is over. We await the return of the prodigal sun.

The eye of the day opened.

Amber lashes against the sky

She awoke to find the grass was strewn with diamonds.

The forest murmurs softly today.

A rising wind speaks with the tongues of leaves.

Noise is music that we have not yet decoded.

Anything can be a doorway.

There are flashes of brightness like silver fishes darting in a stream of consciousness.

The entire sky glowed golden at sunset today.

As the golden sun slips into the water, the sea looks skyward to kiss its dry, parched face and erupts in flames.

The embers glow.

And when t i m e i t s el f has unwound, so shalthinlkintghe wedreamswere thtatheirbrought us here, passengers.

And now for something completely different...

The Song of Seven Seven celestial dragons rode seven jade green waves, spewing silver sea spray with eyes glinting grey.

A sevenfold blessing sent to the foundering land by mystical whispers and the gesture of a sage’s hand.

They traversed the starry heavens to the roiling sea below, merging with the salty waves for they stil had far to go.

They sparkled in the moonlight, though il umed from within.

Their wings, skyscraping silv’ry sails, caught the wintry wind.

Each dragon carried in its crown a magical white stone, containing all the wisdom that man had never known.

Emerging from the sea foam, by wind and water loosed, the dragons rose together metal scales and silver tooth.

The dragons rose up in the sky with booming roars like thunder.

The people woke up quaking and then occurred a blunder.

The vil agers rubbed sleepy eyes as to erase the truth.

Then with fixed stare they pondered the next thing they should do.

The townspeople all wanted to make a pearl their own, for its magic was imparted from the dragon to the man.

But as with many legends, it was both myth and fact.

There was indeed a dragon but scorching breath he lacked.

The hero‘ quick unleashed his sword upon the wrongly adjudged foe.

Before discernment could prevail, he slew a dragon with one blow.

But pearls could not be loosed by force.

They must be freely given.

Neither sword nor cunning, could pry them from the dragons.

Though dragons accidental y dropped a pearl or two sometimes, when soaring on unsteady wings into the heavenly climes.

Too late, he realized his err there standing on the shore.

And without a backward glance, the dragons sailed away once more.

Taking with them wisdom that man may never know, the message that the seven sages spoke in whispers long ago.

The dragons soared back to the stars, though their number was one less.

And the six remaining dragon hearts were heavy with unhappiness.

For centuries it has been told, that in light of moon, the sages from the bamboo grove may send the dragons soon.

To reveal a world of magic we don’t yet comprehend, to show us untold wonders, to be our dearest friends.

Seven celestial dragons rode seven jade green waves, spewing silver sea spray with eyes glinting grey.

Depending upon where you end the story..

All things begin at the beginning

and end at a beginning.