POEM: Man in a Dress

Can I cry for just a moment?
Crawl into an embrace for safe space?
Can I drop the lead and not be a light?
And have a hand brush my pretty face?

Can I not be the strong woman for a moment?
Can I find a man to admire for his strengths?
Like a queen who's lost for a king and a ruler
I sit in solitude power for great lengths.

A prince arrives seeking comfort
A prince calls on to me to grant him safe space
A prince calls me his leader and his light
None worthy to brush my pretty face

A prince requests that I teach him about ambition
Focus and drive, I serve as his lead
I am asked to be a servant from the throne
And not a single prince asks what are my needs

Impossible and cold I feel for being treated less
From men who deny living their very best
I am chided for an arrogance
Forced into a position of a man in a dress

How I long for someone to admire
For his ambition and for his strength
Who lives for building his kingdom and nothing less
His best for his one life
Worthy to caress my pretty face

In the presence of such passion and power
Able to address a king and not a prince
I'll feel free and not treated less
No longer to live as
A man in a dress

Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

Man in a Dress

I have been feeling really stretched... Dealing with the loss of several favorite students, my social circle gets smaller as my closest friends pack up and go back east, Bebo is nibbling at everything in the house and a lonliness and boredom for lack of someone to admire... The last one I have ambivalent thoughts about.

I'm tired but I press on for the final spark of energy and finally collapse into bed after an insane hour. I write in the late hours. I practice the piano in the morning and evening hours. I teach in the afternoon. I meet with friends in the between times and I actually welcome their hellos. I think I would just work and practice if I didn't have someone punctuating my time with their presence.

I can't seem to have the capacity to carry friends' drama... And so I find myself wanting to be alone even more. I push myself out into my community though I may not be in the mood. I find a bit of fun and relaxation after showing up... sometimes.

I find myself feeling less emotional, less in my feminine essence; less myself and less human. I am pressed to manage a challenging season within a circle of persons incapable of managing themselves. I don't need another girlfriend to talk and vent with. I have a ton of girlfriends.. a lot of them are guys too. Men who are at a loss at being men. I feel like I'm the man, the dominant and strong figure. And I think my distaste at having children stems from the sense that if I have a child with any of the men that pursue me, I feel that I'll have two children to raise. It's frustrating but it is what is so.

Who's the man?
I'm the man.... in a dress.

I'd "make a great mother" everyone says. I shudder because I wonder if it stems from the sense that their experience of me is a mother figure; a source of emotional security and strength. I generate myself each day, I am depended on to take care of business and I don't have space to relax in anyone's presence often and get centered and be a woman.... sexy, playful,
radiant. When can I be the emotional one or the one that someone is putting at ease?

It's not a literal conversation that I am missing. It's an energy.

Someone has this energy that I long for. When he tells me of his goals and dreams, I am moved by his vision and his goals. His focus, drive and ambition is sexy. He trains and prepares himself like an athelete without ceasing; mentally, emotionally, spiritually. He is deliberate and is a man with a plan. He is such a force of energy that I miss it acutely if I don't hear from him for several days. I feel girlish in his presence. He takes the lead in the conversations that makes me feel like I'm in the presence of power and I feel safe .... He speaks to me as an equal but I feel recognized as a woman. I wish I could enjoy his presence of energy more.

It's strange for me. I have such a strong personality that I feel that I intimidate men generally. And if I don't intimidate them it's because I'm there as someone to give them guidance and help them feel safe. This is a common theme that comes up in conversation with my girlfriends. The dynamics of relating are such that we find ourselves in the care-taking and safety creating position where men feel like emotional weak unmotivated skinbags; teenagers that are always talking about asserting their independence but have no real assertion of who they are.

Perhaps this is what happens in the world with divorce so prevalent. Little boys without a strong male figure grow up only knowing women to be their caretakers. I have girlfriends who's dates ask them to pick them up, guys who can't afford to pay for the date, guys who can barely take care of themselves but will go through great lengths to possess a woman who'll make them feel safe before being a source of strength.

Or maybe this is what happens when women become so independent, seeing the male role as irrelevent... or impossible to fill with a worthy choice. And so children are raised without that voice. Is it a class issue? Where is this world going? Is it a good thing?

I just know how I feel.... in charge by default, the caretaker, the decision maker, dominant, always at focus to make my world and their world safe.. without a real partner, always feeling like the mother and a growing distaste of wanting to become one. The world has enough children....a lot of them are over 20.

What does anyone out there think?


JNET

POEM: Piece My Mind

Piece my mind, will you?
Into fortune cookie thoughts
Read a million words
Admiration on dishes
Conversation naught

Piece my mind, will you?
Playing a game of connect the dots
Broad lines of assumptions
With bold strikes of assertions
Conversation naught

Piece my mind, will you?
With mythologies of childhood fear
Boogie men, phantoms
Misfiled with that you hold dear

Broken dreams?
Kicked off the team?
I was once Last one picked

Piece my mind, will you?
Since I'm already on stage
Tell me my lines
From a house that is dark
Stand stage right. No, left!
What direction?
Why is this so hard?

Piece my mind, will you?
Collage me a truth that suits your day
A million words
To match your million less
My every thought only
For naught
Your best?

Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

Another late night

I can't seem to fall asleep any time before 4am. I am caught in the endless conversation between me and myself. Why? What is going on?

Everything and nothing
Passion and self-pity
Amusement and listlessness
Creativity

What would a conversation be like between me, you, myself and yourself? Here I practice talking. Here I practice speaking into the future; my voice. Here I cut through the noise and clamor of my weaknesses.

And I practice listening.

I practice listening...

I practice listening...

i practice...

listening....

POEM: Listen To Me

Listen to me
As if you
Have
Confidence and hope
How will you then act if you
Are complete
And whole?

Listen to me
As a person with a dream
You do
What you say
And you say what you mean

Listen to me
From a place of strength
And power

Listen to me
Like you love your each hour

Listen to me from that space
You call peace
Birth a future from that place
And make your joy
Increase

Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

POEM: Ride Upon Your Thoughts

You delight
In my conversation
Pouring yourself
Over my words

You give me your admiration
Agreement
I feel acceptance
A new world

You enjoy reading my whimsy
You warmly challenge my stands
You are quiet in your amusement
We travel
Through intriguing lands

I wish to sail in your stories
And smile at the worlds you create

Your ideas,
Your art,
Your frustrations
Life framed in love and ambition great

What fills me most with aniticipation
Expanding beyond your attention caught
Is the joy I delight
In another day to
Ride upon your thoughts

Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday


To the one who hears me and knows that I am listening.

POEM: End of Reason

Everyday I can choose a variety of excuses
I have no money, no interest, no time
I end every conversation in a way to create
Safe spaces of I don't need this, I'm fine

I can produce endless reasons for making things right
And I can see that my tomorrows be filled with maybes and mights

But what will I have after years of somedays and no ways?
Will stacks of excuses and reasons
Build dreams day after day?

What can happen
What would be possible
Can we amuse for awhile
If we went to the end of reason
And lived unreasonable the next mile


Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

POEM: What's Your Line?

Someday, later on, NOW
When, why not, I DON'T KNOW, WOW

I'm confused, It's awesome, yes, no
Why? Why? It's not fair, Wait.
Let's go.

Shhh..
We need to talk.
Hush, shut up.

Share, That's mine, I have hope. I don't have time.
I'm content. Life sucks.
I just want to be comfortable. Life rocks.

You never listen! Promise me...
I am so sorry, It's your fault. I'm broke.
Are you sure? It's you. It's me.

Please, thank you!
I know, I know, I know,

Pardon, say again.

Someday, later on, NOW
When, why not, I DON'T KNOW, WOW


Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

December Has Begun?

November was intense. I am not sure where it was most challenging; to be Jeannette in my life or in my head.

I am like a beaten, tired soldier on the freedom path. Good friends moving back east and favorite students not able to continue their studies with me. And I get to deal with my little issues over rejection and abandonment over that... Funny how my fear theme finds spaces to play out.

The illusion of money got wrapped in relationship to my SELF and became a struggle. I have gained three new students and am slowly recovering from being stretched from a lifestyle where money wasn't a worry and I can pay for life and contingent occasions to not having enough for gas and food and I have to pay for life on plastic.

I got caught up in the drama which I created over my fears. And I had hit the rock wall and driven through it.

I was already on the train earlier this year.

I had been devastated by an earlier betrayal from a friend that I had loved and respected earlier in the year. Betrayal happens.

I have continued being creative and keeping on top of living by keeping in mind my possibility of who I am. Despite circumstances, I dream, I create, I play, I write.

I am not rejected nor unloved. I am not my bank account. I am not my teaching practice. I am not my business. I am not my fears.

I am the future of my mind.

It is a daily choice and some days are harder than others.

I can love those who betray me. Though they create pictures and stories to attempt to ostracize me; they end up isolating themselves. I feel sadness over their plight and I miss them as people and the possibility they could have been in my life. I am especially saddened by the fact that they never got how much I loved them....

Half a dozen of my closest friends have left my world of Los Angeles and it has been challenging to feel that I am in here alone. My car broke down last week and I had to sit still for a couple hours before I found someone within 20 miles available to take me home. All my single friends were either out of town or still at work at 8pm in the evening. And then I didn't want to call anyone too far away. A friend helped me but not after I felt self-pity over issues of rejection and abandonment sitting alone in a place that was a dive for a while.

I have continued playing the game of possibility with my crush. He moves me and I find myself out of my self.

Something about him brings me into all my fears and something about him inspires me to rise up to examine them and laugh.

I find myself laughing.

And so I invent myself... I create the clearing for the possibility of relating and he is the source.

He is busy with his exams and I think that's great. And so here I am to generate myself while he is spinning in his galaxy. Rodrigo's Guitar Concierto keeps me in orbit, Spanish, French, and learning Italian keeps me in orbit. And "Boo" keeps me enrolled as the most magical word.

He reads the books I mention and remembers all my friends and he cares about my relationships especially the broken ones and offers himself as a "bridge of possibility." He puts out such beautiful intention to pour himself into my world that I can only further think well of him.

So time passes and I don't hear from him. I can't make him a monster from my fears.

What power is there from making him wrong for his dreams and goals? I can only create the clearing for him to be in my world. I've created a game and he has choice to play.

I think the game of life is about

"Will you play with me????"

Everyone is asking that question of one another and hoping the answer is yes.

I've taken the game a bit further by asking the question and creating a space where he is inspired to play.

It's scary to live out and play the game... But here I am, December has begun. I love, I live, I express and I am inspired.

POEM: Awake, Dreamer!

How many times will you look at the blue sky
before you forget to notice it?

At what point will you say you are satisfied
with seeing enough full moons?

Does that tree that you walk by every day
still have the most stunning green?
Does its towering presence still humble you?

You have an imagination
that has built castles in your childhood...
What do you build now, Dreamer?

From a cry you now speak...
What have you to say, Friend?
You are someone with a story
and you are the hero in every one of them.

You are the blue sky and full moon!
you have forgotten to recognize
Your existence and presence to yourself
is like that tree you know and love

Awake, Dreamer! Speak, Friend!


Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

Thoughts?

This is the little rabbit hole from a world that shines of neutral, ecstatic color.

The mad chatter of conversation is all for enjoyment and to see that you've missed that the carpet needs to be mowed.

The tea is abundant and the china is unbreakable

And you stand in the garden of your life watching smiling cats contemplating the question echoing from the tree tops..

Who are you??? And your name is not the answer.

What do you say and what do you think?

....a long winded hello.....

....hello....