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Accidental Beds. Paula Billups, 5-31-19

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Loveworthy

Listen. It is a moralistic fallacy that this is earned or not, deserved or not in the daily round -- that you need to fight, you need to win Bless your attitude, your achievements, your work, your family, your health, it is not those. Sick, broken, heartbroken, tired, silly, or restless, unable though you may be, it is by the way. Did you remember that? If you could not do tomorrow all that you do today, if it all deserted you, you are loveworthy your condition before you ever opened your eyes. No matter what is or is not yours, you incredible treasure, you improbable light - You are more than enough. Your very bones, sculpted from love, the web of your skin This mercy, this blessing every strand of your hair every cell that whirrs with life announces this. P. Billups 3-2-19

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Ahhhhh

Painted garden fresco from Livia Drusilla’s villa.

Roman, 30-20 BC

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Still The East

I just was overwhelmed by a desire to sleep in my childhood room. I sometimes grow weary and think the world has grown aged and dull and dirty everywhere, but just now I thought of my room. It is still there, and the houses around it, though it is no longer mine -- The neighborhood has changed but little, and the sound of the faraway freight train might still call out the small hours And it is still the plains: still wild and alone on a sea of earth and grass, under the sky's dominion, The wind still scrubs the air and its whorls move unseen in the night but high and vast, to make the stars dance There still the sky is the deep violet of an old, old place washed clean by wind, kept sweet by the scent of baked grass and the whiff of buffaloes and the whisper-print of ancient feet in sacred dance. Tiny in that night my town, tiny in its heart my house, tiny in its east wall the window that was by my bed When I was a young bright stem still pushing off the dust and shaking off the precious dew returned it to the air Wide-eyed and still, cool fresh on my skin in the lavender morning Young, young, young as a sapling and wholly new Wet wings still unfurling, unshaken, still a child of the air Just now, heavy in my weary room I thought -- It is still there, small white Its east window still gives the early cool first hint of day Easily a girl of ten might now sit there in tangled braids and dewy skin like a just-grown pear She now breathing the fresh cold air She now scenting the note of cottonseed and wild beasts' hair, Watching the sky turn rose around a single lingered star the day not yet high or hot She too right now could be still tangled in her sheet and watching - awake and silent - the day's birth and feel this whole wide world is just so new. Paula Billups 1-26-19

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Blood Wolf Moon

(On Nathan Phillips in Washington)

This is what fighting back feels like: standing your ground and calling down peace while you are surrounded by jeers. This is what fighting back looks like. It's exhausting as hell. This is what evil sounds like. It has ice-chip tiptoes and tells you You didn't see what you saw You didn't hear what you heard And how dare you. You hypocrite, what right have you calling it out, rousing yourself, especially right here, today. Mouths full of fear make no noise: Spit out that dead clay. Do not get it twisted, whose fear is whose. A moral coward, a bigot, a racist, an angel-faced crocodile and his "who, me?" tears all should be ashamed to show their scales. Let us be grateful they are too stupid or blinded to fear it, a wakened jubilee. Be grateful they gave us the chance to see them because now we can let them know, "Son, In broad daylight, today, you twisted the wrong tiger's tail." Found yourself in one moment bewildered, human, not knowing what to do going back to what you thought was true but drowning in sound. It sounds like mocking. It feels like hands over your mouth anxious to cast you as unruly prey. It looks like a wide-eyed "how dare you" forming on freshly scrubbed faces And eyes that no matter how golden Are hungry, hungry, hungry. Be encouraged that your anger is, in this, righteous Let it fill your veins like light Let your heart be lifted by a high strange song reminding you of your capacity to protect and elevate your fellow beings your ancestors yourself. Do all you can, though its taste is so sour and strange, each and every day, to give dignity back its place. Fight too for that smiling child who has harmed and insulted and belittled, as much and more than anyone else, himself. Let the ancient voice carry you high So you can see everything clear. Paula Billups 1-21-19

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when i was younger i used to think there was a time & place for i love yous, a precious reserve, they were only meant for few people and only at specific moments, as if they could be wasted, as if the more i said it the less it meant. now i say it as often as possible, to friends i’ve known for days or years, to strangers, to dogs on the street. & i mean it, every single time, my heart near brimming with it, a boundless leaping thing.

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"Banquet of The Clay." Photo by Paula Billups 2017

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Banquet of the Clay

We can't know the ghosts through the bare trees -- we walk by and that by itself is too fast. They go slow. Spokes spinning backwards, like us at the heart --  lost in the hills of this time. History is blinking by ever faster Racing away from view We crack our minds, keep chasing it -- We try -- The faster we scramble to catch time, the thinner the shades. They are all around us but the roar of Now deafens us. We go too fast. Then life befalls us one by one. Misfortune catches at the heel Brings us down to earth and pins us there a while. From the ground, immobile, We watch the race keep passing by That we were one of once They shear past. Racing fate, they cannot see us as our fingers curl in the loam and our toes catch at roots The racers go by so fast, spinning spoke-like, we can't see them anymore. A terrible loneliness shrouds us a while. Then the rustle and whush comes. In dread we look round and they draw near. Now we are still, we see them clear -- Softened by loss. The slow folk, the shades caught before us, are kindly. They greet us the newly fallen, Stay close And invite us to see what healing comes of stillness. In their royal company, we recline. Sweet exhaustion leaves us there In this banquet of the clay, This hall of slow breathing like long water trails -- A place we would never reach in our haste to break the tape A field the lucky runner never sees. Paula Billups Frederick, Maryland 3-18-17

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you deserve the love you keep trying to give everyone else

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A Delicate Milk Floods Winter -- Photo by Paula Billups, Berlin 2016

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A Delicate Milk Floods Winter

A delicate milk floods winter overwhelming my intentions with early fog, making faint the resolution to  meaning, to spin yet another tale -- for no one, for nothing. I used to be so deft at that. Now if such impulse rises I stare it down blankly as if addressing a sudden stray cat staring  greenly back serenely shrugging off the gathering chill taking a long-known meeting (or else a common standoff to reward  the maker of the first sound.) Neither of us can think of a thing worth saying  that words could hold. The mercury dives. And that idea, hazy, deep, abandoned and  unbiddable, ignores my invitation,  winks slowly to show me who’s boss and fluidly turns -- an eddy in the year fades back to the giving darkness  that lifted it --  a lace pattern once so crisp and  diamond-clear distilled to icecream thoughts all melted.  -Paula Billups Hadlyme, CT - January 9, 2017

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Christmas Letter 2016

Photo courtesy of Scott Billups

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Christmas Letter for 2016, A Hard Year (Written for everyone I love who loves me)

For all the ways of hearts can bloom For all the cruel ways they break For the eternal knowledge that sits in every cell in every being that whispers always in the blood, "Nothing matters more than love." For every tyrant that ever fell all of them every single one for breaking faith with that immutable law. For the awful knowledge that love and compassion belong to all of us in exchange for this burden: we will possess the universe til our final light winks out. For all the ways this burden cracks the heart for all the tiny cathedrals we build around it to keep it singing or whispering at least . . . On a night that I, like the half-moon don equal mantles to sorrow, to rejoice I accept -- only just -- that love is all that matters that love gives sorrow sometimes, and that is not an evil thing: only a bird-call barb that sings, "Only by being made of love like strong small keeps can we bear to possess the world." -Paula Billups Austin, Texas Christmas Day, 2016

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Goethe’s final words: “More light.” Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that’s been our unifying cry: “More light.” Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlight. Neon. Incandescent. Lights that banish the darkness from our caves, to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier’s field. Little tiny flashlight for those books we read under the covers when we’re supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom - Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home - Lead Thou me on! Arise, shine, for thy light has come. Light is knowledge. Light is life. Light is light.

Chris Stevens, “Northern Exposure”  (via pigmenting)

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Touch Replacement - “Memories are cemeteries.”

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Touch Replacement

Some time ago in a chilly cemetery I unearthed your last note. Its borrowed contents crumpled me – I knelt in the cold dawn grass. meanwhile a sunrise off, regret took flight. These turning years were spiteful, thieves of me. Now I am someone I didn’t want to be and that she I was you flew from is a wisp that whispers instructions to no avail, to me-now, this body not the same – too many paths strung with wire, tubes and overhot blood stand between then and this. Now you are someone else too. Maybe the last of who you were stayed in the clouds that day. Maybe you landed without him, shed him like a skin that held a fast mad lifetime. Maybe the husk drifted down: was the paper those words leaped from.   Tonight I live a different June as chilled, my heart brittle as old bark lying far from my heimat no grassy plot to hide my parting words. She whispers to me,  You must know the expedition is lost. You must remain calm. That plane vanished midair over Switzerland, Ireland, Venice. That plane holds all the husks – of him him him, of me. We all were dead long since. Memories are cemeteries – air stones stand for what was. Despite the ferocity that put them there Nothing can make them live. How the bourbon gleams – the wind blows chill. How I peer across oceans to seek her how I wish to return to     she, me –  an idea that didn’t quite surface that did not come to light. –Paula Billups   Malden, MA   June 5, 2016

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The River School

The subject was how that copper bell had filled with rain Or why wolves look like haunted jesters when they smile Why cellos are the language of great loss And piano keys play our fingers The subject was a hatred of a too-bright sun or possibly what it is like to go to metaphysics camp in that rainforest where all the trees have purple doors And there are monkeys at the breakfast table, staring with serious green eyes, challenging us with questions, eating ferns Where Neruda, Kahlo and Einstein hold court in a riverbed starting at ten Legs bared, feet rooted in the mud, smiling and smoking clay pipes Where the branches keep their mangoes until our eyes all look to the exact same spot at the identical moment: then the fruit drops into our hands. The subject was the supremacy of the mist. Whatever it was, it disappeared, was forgotten by everyone. We all went indoors in separate towns. But when I put on my shawl this morning, the scent was still there and my senses remembered all except the words. Paula Billups Malden, MA 2-13-16