No RegretsJournal

Issue 2 Fall 2009

A journal of poetry, words and images documenting twists and turns of the human condition in the search for love, meaning and community.

No Regrets JournalWebsite: noregretsjournal.comemail: claymedeiros@noregretsjournal.com

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Editor

Clayton Medeiros is a poet and collage artist interested in spirituality, love, the human condition and the search for meaning. claymedeiros@noregrets.com

Contributors

Kim von See grew up in Garland, Texas and escaped to the Pacific Northwest as soon as she could. She lives in downtown Bellingham with several plants.

Neil McKay is a Bellingham poet.

Robert Lashley was a semifinalist for a 2007 Pen/Rosenthal fellowship. He is trying to be an honest man and a good writer.

Submissions

Submissions are by invitation of the editor or contributors.

Copyright October 2009

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Table of Contents

Connections Essay Clayton Medeiros

Your Face Clayton Medeiros

Unfinished Poem Neil McKay

Dark Blue Clayton Medeiros

Whatcom Falls Park Sometime Robert LashleyAfter 10

Memories Clayton Medeiros

A Heart in My Coffee

History Kim von See

Written Out of My Life Clayton Medeiros

Pictures from a Ken Hutcherson Robert LashleyRally

Loves Death Clayton Medeiros

Hymn to a Basement Hair Salon Robert Lashley

Loves Butchery Clayton Medeiros

Tale Kim von See

Love the Open Wound Clayton Medeiros

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Oikos Fellowship Church Kim von See

Poem for Geno Neil McKay

Why Uncle Moe Still Used the Robert LashleyWasherboard (Even After BigMomma Got a Kenmore}

All Photographs and Collages Clayton Medeiros

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Connections

At the core of the human condition is the desire to love and be loved, to overcome the distance between us. The religious mystic wishes to become one with god or the universe. The romantic seeks to join with the beloved.

The inevitability of love is our common ground. The limits and possibilities of shared humanity are the foundation from which we understand the world, construct a life in it, establish values, pursue community and fall in love. Our effort to describe who and what we are in the world proceeds from what we believe. For some, ration-ality is all and only the measured and the measurable count. Logic and science reign. For others, there is a mystical connection to some-thing beyond rationality and the “real world”, a life force or spiritual ground of being that pervades the universe. Others see no guidance in the world, we are alone, adrift and responsible for all we do. Regardless of belief, love is unavoidable and resists all logical constructs.

Facts are limited to what is asked, answered and measured, but we never can ask and answer all of the possible questions. Reality includes what is measured and measurable, but it also includes everything else, intuition, dream states, visions, chemistry and ineffable emotions. Scientific reality becomes what we chose to document. Our lives are beyond science, beyond facts and beyond rationality. Scientific findings are subject to proof and whatconstitutes proof is spelled out in the scientific method. Love is not subject to proof.

Myths assist us in understanding reality by transcending finite experience. Myth does not explain or describe experience and experience does not explain or limit the power of myth. We sense mythic or mythopoetic truth as we intuitively react to the power orrightness of a god, goddess or story. Myth simply is. When it seeksproof, it degenerates and becomes a doctrine which requires an

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institution to enforce its rules. The doctrine overwhelms the original truth of the myth. Doctrinaire love is equally bound to fail.

We search for meaning and purpose in life, love and work. Many find answers in religious and spiritual pursuits. Although some rationalists attack faith as not being grounded in reality, it is a waste of time. Belief simply is. On the other hand, faith can be critiqued. We can tell the difference between an authentic believer and someone acting in bad faith. If we are fortunate, we can also tell the difference between lovers and abusers.

Love is intuitive and chemical. LIke religious belief, it cannot be achieved through rational means. Although love can be mutual and reciprocal, like faith, love does not require anything in return. It simply is. One is smitten. Leszek Kolakowski says, “...There is contained in love...a specific kind of infallibility, of non intellectual certitude, which goes beyond what is accessible to rational trust worthiness....Love does not experience the need to forgive.”

Love cannot be justified. It exists outside the bounds of reason and reasonableness. It has nothing to do with demands or obligations. It must be freely given and freely accepted. Although our unique consciousness forever separates us from the beloved, the act of being in love bonds body and soul and is consummated in making love. The joy of love is in mutuality, transparency and vulnerability, not in the absorption of one person by the other.

The Hasidic story of a single being in heaven separated on earth has its charms. We search for our other half after leaving paradise. If we live in grace, we reunite in the here and now.

Erotic communion is the ultimate communication between lover and beloved. It is ineffable, inarticulate and requires nothing beyond itself tobe complete.

Clayton Medeiros

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Your Face

Among these island windows,Ever changing against the light,There is the curve of your face.Evening comes across The bay to your eyes,Where I see our love,Shared in stillness.Blue day darkens,Prepares star bright night,Company for a windy walk,Blowing our wordsOn a journey to Andromeda.Perhaps lovers there too,Twine their passion like ours,Fill the emptiness between galaxies,A web of embraceExpresses life itself,Generations gifts, one to another.Now is the time of us,Karmic wonders whorl.I see the starsIn your eyes.

Clayton Medeiros

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Unfinished Poem

Every second I paint a picture of you.I’m painting so fast you can’t even see.You on your bicycleYou in the kitchenYou laughing at something I saidI can’t stop watching youFor fear I will miss the poseThat captures the idea of youI’m getting closeYou touching my elbowYou lying on your bellyYou, eyes closed and smilingArms extended in a longer stretch than I thought possibleThese paintings are piling up in my closetI flip through them every dayEach painting informs the next poseOne pose leads to another ideaTwo ideas overlap to reveal a third pictureWhich also must be paintedYou hiding behind a towelYou freckled and softYou so close I can only see your pupils and irisesI try to paint your breath, the smell of your neckThe heat that emanates from the small of your back.I’m close.

Neil McKay

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Dark Blue

Slow darkness comesOut of the sky’s center,Spreads to the horizon,Until there is only star light.Evening’s minutesCount toward dream time,Something long ago blue.

Moment to momentIn day light mystery,Perhaps a song comes,Melodic and infinite,Fills interstitial space,A dance of black holesAmong racing galaxies.

Soft light risesFrom earth’s edge,Separates night from dayUntil the last star fades.Morning’s passing hours,Impatient dog walkersWorried about being late.

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Something graceful comes,Adds French curves, Your favorite color.Afternoon spreads outAgainst the day,An exuberant meditationAmong closest friends

or just you and me.Wings welcome quiet darkAs if sleep needs it,Too fragile for blue.Stories emerge in passing hoursWith separate dreams,Shimmering light between us.

Clayton Medeiros

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hatcom Falls Park, Sometime after 10

The cotton willow bends down, then up, then down with the wind

then to you as if by providence of the milkweeds

 

Themselves, they decorate below and around you, ornamenting

in packs, clusters. Feathering your hair

 

and the pearls of your sweat, flying from the confines of file and phylum

for the chance to lay there beside you

 

They testify in your name, my Whatcom Falls Madonna

They testify with the water bug, the errant carnation

 

They steal away to witness you, and the joy of the program

How they long to be your living witness

Robert Lashley

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Memories

Suitcases in my mindCarefully storedIn keyed lockersLike a railroad stationWith tiled floorsSoaring domed ceilingCareful schedules10:02 arrives 11:07A lost and found

Each suitcase lockedUntil a key turnsSteamy morning coffeeDaffodil springSoft summer dayWind whisked leavesOrion filled skySuitcases wornLeather cornersCreaky hinges

Latches snap openContents once againCome to lightI smell the roomWhere it happenedSunlight across A formica tableScreen door breezeAlmost JuneI miss youOnce again

Clayton Medeiros

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A Heart In My Coffee

There was a heart atopToday’s rainy day mochaEndless varietiesOf gray tease the eyeBlur the time of dayWhere darkness might standBefore or after the lightHearts have their own timeNo diurnal concernsWhere lovers are involvedLove creeps slowly between friendsLeaves us smitten with a glanceSudden chemistry overwhelmsRationality reelsDesperately tries to keep upKindred souls seize the momentHands recognize each otherIn the first danceSpirits long separatedTentatively reach outHope for the true heartThought never to beAs convent walls grewMatched monastic scribblesNotes become chordsChords become melodiesMelodies a heart song

Clayton Medeiros

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history the men i love are generally tall.they are blonde or dark and drinkgood beer mostly but will appreciatea pabst when necessary. they are singers, all of them, giving it upon a road trip or lifting hands candidly in church,some of them only in the lone lightbulb of nighttime, unable to sleep. some of themare unable to sleep. for some of themit is always too much and the weight of thesky keeps them awake. a few of themhave smoked, or still do. the men i love, their shapes are all over the spectrum.most of them i admithave lived in seattle at some point.all of them were young once, like me.a couple of them still are. the one

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quote i like to steal the most says, "this town is too small to writepoems about one-night stands." the men i love i sometimesam in love with. not alwaysbut sometimes, drunkor sober, in my room, walking to work, eating dinner. the men i loveare men up and down, wearing their coats,peeling oranges, listening to thedays change in length.

Kim von See

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Written Out Of My Life

Love’s language, continuous,Sappho or Shakespeare,Songs and sonnets For the darkest lady.I revise old love poemsYou never read, No new words required,My heart claims no geographyIn this in-between moment.

All the maps mislabeled,Routes bleed into each other,Creases where cities were,Our Puritan city on the hill,Unconditional love’s compact, Shattered in life’s apostasy.Too many hidden secrets,Carefully chosen words,Failures of time, meaning.

Linguists believe wordsComes as a birth right,Any language can be learned.The same is true of love,This blank space in usNeeds others to write in it,Translate who we are.In turn, we do the same,Heartfelt, timeless words

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Slowly eaten away With indifferent days,Filled with empty phrasesNo one understood.In love, death has dominion,One passes away,The other has loneliness,An unquenched heart,Lost in interstitial space.

I will miss the time of us,Who we once were,As a distant memory,There are no words left to say.

Clayton Medeiros

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Pictures from a Ken Hutcherson Rally

 

Tell me, child, of your freedom highway.

Tell me of your freedom songs?

 

bitter is the bread of the word on Antioch.

bitter the taste, bitter the kneading.

bitter the loaves, far more bitter the feeding.

 

Where is our freedom highway?

 

bitter is their song told over in glory

told on the times of other ones souls.

told on their backs and the backs of their skulls.

 

Where is our freedom highway?

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bitter is the sound of this new jubilee.

stained are their soul claps, stained are their tongues

stained to the everlasting, passed over and gone.

Where is our freedom highway?

Where, lord, where are our freedom songs

Robert Lashley

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Love’s Death

Not a bad way to go,In a certain time,In a certain place.Carefully chosen friends,A moment When life and death Are the same.The hum of things,Darkness formed emptiness,The nothing, No one ever there.

Look back to happier times,Familiar music, better things,Love, or at least sex.The loneliness ofOne, two or three,Circles always broken,Stay with someone Who, for a long time,Was never there.All we want to be,The other is.

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When will you sing for me?I need a song,My innocence Languishes in silence.Only a song will do,Some disparate back beat,Lost in perfection.Just one day, The need to be right, No glint of what’s to come,Only the backward glance.

Clayton Medeiros

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Hymn to a Basement Hair Salon 

The strands are swift, finely woven

tied together in layer and counter layer.

 

The solution holds by column, section. Tingling

the scalp, scalding the skin, evoking

tears and cries of agony in the finishing

product and process.

 

In time, the pain of the hot comb subsides.

In time, the long and natty waves

will be tethered in row after row.

In time these tears, these layers of sweat

will braid and carry you a crown

 It's ok, baby, I aint gonna take much longer.

Aint trying to hurt you. Just trying to get it right.

It's ok, baby. Be still. Be still

Robert Lashley

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Love’s Butchery

In the face of love’s butcheryHope lost once againLike childhood never wasFairytales endlessly spinNo kiss saves the dayFor sleeping princesses

They dream onBooks rot on the shelfStories are forgottenTragedy merges comedyA single story lineUsurps Greek Myths

No end of day fanfareChildren lie awake Hope for sleepJust darkest simplicityConstellations in disarrayAstrological chaos

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Angels and wizardsDiscuss time’s passageForward and backUnsure of their roleIn the growing silenceof useless wands

Once upon a timeThere was the wordA sense of purposeEverything carefully namedBeginnings and middlesThere is no end of days

A tree grows quietlyPrepares the needed cross

Clayton Medeiros

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tale we will brag about it as long as people will listen. at least i will—the story of the fish eyeball will never get old. like a young anthony bourdain or a good friend guiding me through a first sexual encounter, she told me, "don't thinkabout it, just put it in yourmouth," an audience of well-dressed relatives standingdisgusted on the dock aroundus as we chewed. michael is weird aboutfood that looks like its animal.when he spots the heads and tailswe've

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taken home, the plasticbags round with roe..."good lord." i flashed someteeth at michael as his mouthcurled up like a rotting tomato.

the thing tasted like fish. like a beating cobra heart will taste, inevitably, like little else than a beating cobra heart.just half an hour earlier wehad been stroking the salmon on the floor of the boat, wondering at its silvery weight.

Kim von See

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Love: The Open Wound

Leave the wound open The poet saidFor the sake of loveLike the psalmist “As the lily among thornsso is my love…For lo, the winter is past,and the rain is overand gone; the flowersappear on the earth….My beloved is mineAnd I am” hersSunflowers turning soundA love song to the lightLike Gauguin in TahitiForever planting seedsHonors Van Gogh One day at his door sunflowersThe lotus opens expectantlySeeks the heart’s lightEver hopeful of possibilityAgainst the ravages of lossPetals close in night’s descentLike the phases of the moonLight to dark to lightWhat song can I singTo breach night’s silenceAcross infernal separationThrown from heaven like SatanWho loved too muchLike the rose I takeBeauty and the thorn

Clayton Medeiros

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oikosfellowship church we walk back to our seats still chewing the body dipped in the blood, the most awkward communion one could ask for. gold leaves turn in theirleather covers, we sing between the fabric walls and my dim crush onboring religious music revolves in its chair. this morning someoneowns all of skagit valley, all of the western hemisphere. all of new zealand.there is a pot of coffee by the door, and muffins and water. we have beenplaced in our bodies this morning like ships into bottles.

Kim von See

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Poem for Geno

lying on my couchpretending to read CamusTrying to impress the catwho sleeps on my chestoblivious to my pretensionsdreaming of taking naps.

Neil McKay

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Why Uncle Moe Still Used The Washboard( Even After Big

Momma Got A Kennmore)

 

It is not the rhythm, but the pattern of it

the repetition of motion, sameness in step

the self same baptism in ivory soap, evening wash, and metal.

 

It is a motion intimate in fiber and cleanliness

born of hands and birch wood, wood chips and elbow grease.

 

It is a time and tempo greater than us.

A region toward home held in stick nails and chicken wire.

A bass of a pot that held, in circumference, a land of fateless days.

Robert Lashley

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No Regrets JournalWebsite: www.noregretsjournal.comemail: claymedeiros@noregretsjournal.com

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