Jaime Mathis and The Words

We skip verses we don't know, Humming the melody as infill. Anything to avoid hanging  Like a noose from weeping willows. That twisting testimony-  You lie, You camouflage, I provoke When backed into this bloodied corner, Inescapable DNA Demanding a picket fence, Pressed dresses And the ache of stones swallowed to keep quiet. We carry legacies, Secrets, Cementing alliances so long as the tree stands. I see the willow banded, Leaves wither And Time peck through skin. Perhaps there is no need to hum Now that the earth is dry, Roots unhinged for lack of life. Perhaps this is what it means  To grow beyond the song We once sang  To stay alive. 

Destiny I was born a skeptical nun Devotion for blood Thirst for proof  That could never be absolute So I left The habit draped  Over my shoulders And wandered the desert... Cause after cause Cathedral, candidate, Corpse Standing before a  Rosary of eternity My beating heart And falling before  The lance Of inherent frailty. Calling I can't divorce Fate. A call to serve, Digging past ideals Scraping through skin  Into bone Until the thrum of Humanity silences Party lines, humble pennies And absolute Rightness To baptize me  In Holy Choice. Simply the want  For a better striving. A deeper canyon Between summerland And unending night May swallow all belief, But this remains, Black and white  Billowing around me  In tatters Lifting an olive branch Even as the waters rise.

I taught my body to digest meat in my 20's. It turns out that if you aren't fed animal proteins in meat as a kid, your body doesn't produce certain enzymes for doing the job. Meaning, the second I tried a hamburger, my intestines went into emergency evacuation mode and my "adventure" turned gnarly, pronto.   I took this as a personal failing due to my religiously motivated upbringing as a vegetarian. Seventh-day Adventism had screwed me out of the enjoyment of travel through cuisine and I was upset. And motivated. Bone broths and digestive enzyme supplements took over my home after college. I was willing to do whatever it took to reboot my poor, ethically vegetarianized guts. Slowly, my body began to accept meats without violent retaliation. And then I started practicing yoga daily. In and of itself, this would have only supported my meat-quest, but like the questioner I am, I started delving into the philosophy behind the physical movement. For eating me

The monkey mind is chattering tonite. It's topic of choice, all the paths I could have taken, the people that were close and now flicker in the distance of time and memory. Sometimes, when this mental noise gets stirred, I try to believe I can drown in nostalgia, in the memory of shadows streaking lines across skin that we swore we'd never forget. I try to anchor myself in years and dates, reaching for the weight I imagined existing in 37 years. Truth? I feel more weightless now than I ever did at 21. Somehow the pinpoints of meaning, coming of age, legal drinking, college graduation, marriage, children, a first novel, became grains of sand in an endless glass. What is a life? The machine is whirring, processing, running amok. Beneath all the leapings I witness the spin. Have to smile. Remember how long it felt like the bottom of the well. Until the day when I punched through the concrete of thoughts, fickle feelings, and experienced the bottomless depths of my own damn sou

Once, there was a bearded stranger on my flight to Santa Fe. His eyes hid behind black spectacles and he carried an Oxford English Dictionary under his arm. When we arrived in Albequerque, he boarded the train heading into the Sandilla Mountains and beyond them, Santa Fe. He sat across the aisle from me, the OED riding shotgun next to him. It was more than my restraint could handle. I have loved the OED since I was a small girl, its content obviously the key to worlds I hadn't even dreamed. I stood up and walked the aisle to his space. He looked up. Smiled. Motioned to the open seat. I opened my mouth and poured out questions. He left home at 15 to learn about life. Not because home was bad, but because he was curious. He drove the country as a long haul trucker, worked as a farm hand and learn the trade. He could build, transport, politicize and philosophize. He'd come from Portland to Santa Fe after living in a friend's yurt for a couple years while they developed a s