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Wrongdoing, Pleasure, and Guilt ~ MJ Goodman
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I get painfully angry, deep breathing, heart racing, fist clenched, face flushed angry.
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I need to release the anger, or more accurately, expose my hurt and frustration to the perpetrator of the pain. Often I yell. I will slam a door. I will throw my face into faded, worn sheets, scream, and cry.
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I have now begun an odd ritual that is a release of sorts. Initially it happened without my planning. Since and now, I take my anger and release it in this manner that isn’t good for anything except it brings a creepy sense of satisfaction that I too can do wrong, as I feel I have been wronged. I attempt a feeble crime to balance myself. What I do may not seem like much to many; it may as well seem silly to the same.
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Here you go. I do not recycle at my moment of anger or frustration. Your laugh is now not unexpected. I laugh as well at my nonsensical release, though not in the midst of the action. To take that tin soup can, the box that held linguini, the foil that held roasted zucchini, and aggressively throw it in the REGULAR garbage is for me a naughty venting. I do get an evil pleasure in acting upon this decision. I am being bad; why does that feel good? Talk amongst yourselves.
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Following this is guilt. We are avid recyclers. When I break down an empty box formerly full of rice and place it in regular garbage, I am hurting something, our earth. I am wasting resources that did nothing to me. (Another eye roll may ensue. I understand and do the same.) This may seem preposterous to many. I cannot help that this is the reaction to my indiscretion.
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At any rate, and to be quite frank, I do enjoy the moments of wrongdoing. It is my earthy wild child that isn’t always good. Rigid and straight laced is not always the best road to travel, at least for my mental state. And, I know I could do much worse.
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Regardless of my vent, please reduce, reuse, recycle.
~ Mary Jane Goodman-Giddens
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Between the perfume bottle
and the bracelet resting on my dresser,
there is a story
of how I fell in love with you.
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Between the camera and the books,
a stack of three,
there is a story of how you fell in love with me.
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Slipping on the bracelet, one of silver and engraved,
my eyes read the title of one book.
Never Take For Granted Love, on the cover it did say.
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On my wrist the scent I placed.
Its aroma told of a moment when your arms they lifted me
and we spun circles on brick space.
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Reflected in glass double doors,
this was a true love story’s start.
To have the moment photographed, I could visit it once more.
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On the silver band around my wrist,
my only love had inscribed,
“Never take for granted love.”
Nostalgic tears did fall, from my hazel eyes.
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I will love you until streams run dry, until immersed are desert sands. ~ mary jane goodman
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Come on in.
Come on in.
I’ve got a story to tell.
Come on in.
Come on in,
and sit a spell.
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My mama put her hand on my shoulder
said, Honey you have grown bolder.
That’s all well and good,
but please don’t expect your life to be like polished wood.”
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Come on in.
Come on in.
I’ve got a story to tell.
Come on in.
Come on in,
and sit a spell.
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Splinters come and give piercing pain.
Daddy said, ” They themselves are not to blame.
Life gives us good reason
to appreciate all seasons,
those dark and cold,
those with deeper souls.”
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Come on in.
Come on in.
I’ve got a story to tell.
Come on in.
Come on in,
and sit a spell.
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“When you were three,
living nearly took the best of me.
I closed the door to my room and on my pillow cried,
the most potent tears that ever left my eyes.”
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“The tears left in my heart an empty space.
I then thought of the love you gave.
The pictures on the refrigerator door,
you were showing off the costume you wore.
Warmness filled the empty space in my heart
and I realized hurt in life is an important part.”
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Come on in.
Come on in.
I’ve got a story to tell.
Come on in.
Come on in,
and sit a spell.
–
mary jane goodman
2015 November
While the fire burns,
I will allow myself to learn
the rituals you keep.
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On which side of bed do you sleep?
Do you flip your pillow often through the night,
to feel the cool cotton of the other side?
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Do you pull on both socks before your shoes?
Or do you dress one foot at a time,
before into the car you climb?
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While the fire burns,
I will allow myself to learn
the rituals you keep.
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Is it your desire to run,
while the morning sky is full of sun?
If not, is it your preference,
to move in late afternoon air heaviness?
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Does darkness fill the days with gloom?
Do you see life one with little room,
or are your days those of light, of space, and of grateful play.
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While the fire burns,
I will allow myself to learn
the rituals you keep.
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Between the flicker of the flame
and the gray, smoldering ashes,
I learned to see in a picture frame
seemingly small moments as grand flashes.
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I see and feel your favorite coffee mug,
in my hand the curve of its white handle.
In melded shadow we exist from a single candle.
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On the stained wood mantle, in its spot it sits,
next to the fan, yet not blown out it emits
what will be a memory.
It will own a picture frame,
a grand small moment
in between ashes and flickering flame,
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while the fire burns.
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~ mary jane goodman
2015 November
A parent can want health and joy for their child, and work to that end.
A parent desires to see a child thrive.
A parent can plan for their children, but only to the most basic degree.
It most likely will bear moments of discomfort for the elder, but eventually a parent learns to provide the freedom and the opportunities a child needs to discover her stronger interests, abilities, and use her natural empathy.
Love for a child is not planning their path.
Love for a child is not a constant push.
Love for a child is a gentleness married to guidance.
Love for a child is a slow release.
This is difficult for a parent, yet is a source of liberation and need for both parent and child.
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~ mary jane goodman
~ 2015, November 9
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If I am the unfortunate one
and I live beyond your days,
not making the passage before you,
surviving will be a contradiction to my desire.
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I cannot see that day
without your breath in my ear,
whispering words no one else can hear.
I cannot fathom that first day
when I no longer know your arms
wrapped around my shoulders
sending strength to stand against any unforeseen harm.
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I will see your figure in scrubs walking
down the stairs off our deck.
Rushed you will be, leaving for a day
of stress.
The car will start, and you will leave
for a workday that has no end.
You will not come home.
No engine sounds, there will be no footsteps on the ground.
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I do not want to face that time.
I will fold into myself and wait for mine.
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Any solace could only come from visions,
hallucinations of your eyes looking into mine.
They would lock upon each other, stay fixed.
I would melt again into them
and be forever gone.
~ mj goodman
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Hiccups.
Drinking from the water glass
has not rid me of this embarrassing fun.
Sitting I am at the table, long,
so full in length my aging eyes cannot be sure
of the personalities seated at the opposite end of the unmarred inlaid wood plank.
My tendency is to hope I am the only guest that heard my unintentionally formed lung pop.
Salad forks, dinner forks, knives serrated and not, and silver spoons of different cuts are placed around the largest plate’s circumference.
The pattern displayed is perfectly monotonous.
Impeccably advertised.
Bland.
Striking is the silver;
vibrant is the light off crystal,
yet the setting lacks vivid life.
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The stillness is a striking vision of all that is not living.
Inactive.
Perfectly spaced and arranged.
In a life desired, and graced upon me,
here now all is lifeless,
until my escaping hiccup breaks through the rigid meal.
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Hiccups. I have the painful sort.
While touching the white linen cloth
that carries the china, silver, crystal,
my chest expands;
it releases a second inappropriate sound,
at a greater volume than the first.
The figures beyond my clear vision,
at the far end of the table,
react uncomfortably to the sound.
I do see their life and movement.
No more is this table stagnant.
Chuckles of the humored,
and gasps of those not so tickled,
unveil awakened guests’ now disrupted attempts to be too civilized.
Utensils are used and returned to a lazy spots.
Wine sloshes in uncontrolled goblets.
Guttural sounds and full belly laughs bring life to the strictly displayed scene.
Real humans now sit here, no facades.
The uniform line no longer guides.
The reaction erases the calligraphy, the painstakingly written lines;
it eases restrictions,
and each person lives without a harness steering her or him in the proper direction.
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Hiccups.
Hiccups break the stillness,
the monotony,
as does thunder. It, the noise of thunder claps
awakens the stillness in a scene.
They are only two of the infinite sounds of life
vibrating the tiny bones in my ears.
The deliberate dive of the fox in snow,
nature’s movement follows a regimen.
The fox owns a GPS of sorts.
Science is in control.
Rules of nature reign.
Manners of life guide.
Yet movement, when left to be,
does express and teach what is fullness of life.
Our fox surprises his intended prey;
a vibrant shock awakens.
We do not know,
when surprise will stir the living.
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A break in dominant, pure, stirring monotony,
the lowly hiccup awakens what is beneath the linen tablecloth of order.
It does have order, the ordered actions of and on this world.
Rules,
of chemistry and physics,
are followed.
Even still we find ourselves surprised.
Though sound is part of a grand outline,
it arrives without warning as does the pounce of the fox in white snow.
Both are welcome interruptions to the still.
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If I cared not about nature’s rules,
I would not see sense in life.
I do care.
I am not privy to the timing
of each action, sight, sound, touch, or smell;
I accept the surprise.
I revel in the hiccup at my table
and the subsequent stirrings;
the ordered chaos of living is a welcome hug.
I too, with continued surprises and reveling in them,
would find at death myself,
an even more vibrant human
armed with an overwhelmingly full existence,
owning a mess of organized chaos,
and hiccups at the table.
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Mary Jane's Shoes 