Today was sunburnt skin
A man balanced rocks by the seashore in impossible poses
and she dropped a dollar in his tin
We wandered barefoot on the concrete walls above sunbathers
and basked in the newness of British Columbia air
listening to foreign tongues stilt and slip away from us on every side,
wafting in on silent breezes and out again
We gathered fresh fruit in a farmer's market
blueberries and raspberries, melons and peaches
and filled our bellies by the light of the setting sun on the grass by the bay
we watched the boats weigh anchor
and yachts of partygoers motor to and fro
until our limbs prickled with cold
forcing us to run back to the van to keep warm
Writing by candlelight
we made poetry of our night on the north shore
where the waters sparkled like fireworks with the city lights
and we watched the moon hang low and full on the horizon
the harvest moon
lulled us to sleep

It has come time for endings
It has come time for goodbyes
With careful, slow moves I cut myself from the tapestry
I unbraid and leave frayed edges swollen and stinging
I work despite the dull ache of my muscles
The tearing of some ephemeral skin
I weep and the salty tears sting
I crawl and my wounds scream
I gather my pieces
and cast off the limbs that refuse to come clean
Only what I can carry
heart, liver, lungs
my backbone drags behind through the dust
I am streamlined, next to nothing
The golden arrow of my spirit nearly naked, translucent
I pull dreams back in upon myself
gossamer intentions flutter
like the fragile netting of spider's webs
that have been strung to the far reaches of heaven
and will recess into the womb of my creation
to be rebuilt anew

Glenn and Joe
Pull off their shoes
Compare soles
Rubber to leather
Discuss the best
floor for
softshoe
Dancing with
bad knees
Put back Bud Lights
Keep jukebox
time on the bar
Sing along
Glenn and Joe
Comparing soles
Discuss
softshoe but
Hardshoe
themselves
into the
floor


From the book "Being" by Amber Jade
Copyright 2000 Amber Jade

Don’t get too close, boy
I am not the daytime girl you read about in magazines
I am more apt to be afraid
I am scorching and careless of you
These are not streetlights shining through my skin
This is me, so bright and shameless
coming through the cracks
and I am not asking for repair
Don't turn your back on me, boy
I am not the late night girl
you fantasize about in picture shows
I am more apt to be brave
I am rocking the boat
These arms are weak with swimming
but I am not worse for the wear
and I am not looking for saving

From the book "Being" by Amber Jade
Copyright 2000 Amber Jade

My dear ones…

We don’t know what we’re doing. Isn't it time to just admit it?

You, me, all of us... just... like... duuuuhhhh.

We give each other doctorate degrees for learning a lot about what other people who equally don't know what they are doing think.

We judge each other, calling people we don't like "stupid", when we don't even really know why we're alive, or what life is, or what the point of all of this is... if there is any.

We can get to the moon and we can push our children to score high in tests we invented based on arbitrary metrics, but we can't overcome the urge to eat the brownie, we can't keep our hearts from slamming and our palms from sweating when we step up to a podium in front of a room of peers, and we can't resist judging people based on appearance even when we think we can.

We don't understand our own minds, and we can't choose our own choices even when we think we do. 

What happens when we embrace the truth?

Don’t feign indifference, ease, confidence, perfection.
Nobody has it.
Instagram is a liar.
There’s no power in the Emperor’s Clothes.


Embrace your weakness, your fear, 
the overwhelming rage and pain and failure of your daily struggle and identity. 


Lean into your broken heart and listen to its cry for help. 


Open your eyes on the human mess left crushed under the weight of invisible urges, habits and thoughts and cultural expectations. 


Grit your teeth against the taste of how you unknowingly invited this into you, and crushed yourself in order to earn a place in the armpit of an undeserving culture of imitation and lack of fulfillment. 


Seek the scrape of your fists on the walls and the bruising of your knees on the rock bottom of your isolation, guilt, shame, and regret. 


Never brace yourself for the inevitable fall.


Never stall before your arrival at that point of no return, but bring it forever closer to the light, closer to your beating heart, and closer to the surface. 


Bring your sensitivity into sharp relief, dive into your irritation and desire to change something, anything, and light a flame under your utter resolve to break free. 


There is nothing that fuels the evolution of the human race more than a complete conscious refusal to accept less than joy, less than connection, less than communion, less than truth, less than love. 

And you deserve all of it.


Bring that point of breaking forward until it is hot and raw and bleeding on your kitchen table. 


Don't avoid it, burying it under layers of memory, repression, ignorance. 


This hot red poker in your side is your ticket to motion, piercing through the veils of complacency, an ignition switch launching you toward the being that you came to BE. 


The pain is a gift, wanting to throw you into action, to force you to release all the ties that bind and the baggage that suffocates you, and to cast off all chains as you rise into the unknown, kicking and screaming in every direction, as you fight for the gulp of fresh air you, my dear one, deserved since the first breath you took. 


You didn't come here to slowly drown in the whirlpool of complacency. 


You came here to learn to live fully and authentically. 


You came here to breathe, sharp and clean and possessively, drawing in that aliveness you long for in a sweet and tonic soprano of light, and exhaling the great great confusion of disappointing years of dissonance.


You are the cauldron, the epicenter of the machine of transformation, and the zero point between what is and what can be. 


You are the event horizon.


Choose, choose, and choose again, even when there seems no choice, to raise that rocky bottom of everything you fear until it is up so close that you no longer have to fall through the depths to reach it. 


Raise it up until you stand on it every day, and say:


Today I will only go forward into the unknown, and rise higher.


I will accept nothing less. 


This very moment is the point of no return, and every moment thereafter. 


I will not wait to make the change I know I must make. 


I will not waste my life drowning and waving for help. 


I will save me.


I will rise.

I am a fish who has learned to fly
I am forever changed
Let go your teeth
I cannot take you on my back
Your gills would only dry and crack
and it looks so far down from up there
The summer sun you idolize
would only burn
if you get too close
and the clouds are not sufficient rain for fins
you must have wings for sky things
let go
let go and swim
some things were meant to be so
I am weary of bringing hail and leaves for you to see
and the soot shores that turn my feathers black
are spent and will fall away beneath me
I will not be held any longer by time and tide
I am not of sea, but made of flight
so turn eye and tail
return to the deep
I am the pearl you cannot keep

I have a feeling you will be in the library
Book in hand, half in some other world
You will always smile predictably and perfectly when you look up and see me observing you from afar in the dust-lingering quiet
You'll close your book, and ask me "What?"
And blink
And I will say "Oh, nothing..."
You will wait awkwardly, but warmly, for me to turn on my heel
Before you resume


"What" is that I don't want a library of love
With hearts locked away in intellectual discourse
Straightened up in a proper binding of intellect and reason
I am vermin
I am hungry for destruction
For the mingling of tails and claws
Fur and teeth and writhing
And ripping your pretty words to shreds


I don't think it will be long before you realize you don't love me
That warm smile reads:
I am fascinating because
You are frightened of me
and...
You just don't know it yet


Copyright 2020 Amber Jade

I am clenched teeth
and taut arms
braced
for the neglected times
in-between your touch
when no mere love song can possibly repair
seconds I am un-sewn
and I find myself watching your eyes
colors of the calm sea
for signs of a stirring wind
afraid of hating you for all the moments
you may dissappear
and you are out there
not looking back at me

I wander up long cobblestone stairways overgrown with the Cupid’s praying hands & curled locks of English ivy
my bare feet coming translucent to the deep cool of winter’s bones melting in the youthful chartreuse waistcoats of new grasses’ playful tufts
by & by the hill swells & breaks like a wave into a delirious froth of cherry and plum blossoms
and our orchard tumbles down the other side like a million snowballs frozen in motion
it splashes into a dark current of forest, as the sun dips low in spring’s tangerine sky


An inhalation begins 
and I think of you


I follow the powdery lilt of blossoms and magnolias ebbing & flowing in the evening air
Meandering wood paths carpeted with tiny bells of ochre & petals soft as the sunrise’s first clouds, and laced with burning nettle
A late-to-bed wood bee, with his fuzzy fat bottom, urgently ducks and seeks solace between cast-off leaves on the orchard floor 
as a strobe-light flick of bejeweled brown wing appears, silently snapping invisible curfew-protestors from the air
I fall head over heels and run circles in my heart


I think of you


Doves jostle in their roosts overhead, spill from treetops and dissolve into the dark forest below
sleepy bees wander homeward, pockets heavy with pollen, giddy & softly drunk 
overflowing the threshold of their honey boxes
above, an arc of evening song still echoes - a mad orchestra of birds throwing their hearts toward the sun’s farewell
and the blood thrum of the Earth’s heart beats electrically beneath my soles


I think of you


My bare legs swing out from the weeds at the edge of the orchard field, tangled with nettle, and a hitchhiker rides on my toe
brown and shiny as a nut, curled up, he slowly raises his head to peer at me with mushroom stalk eyes, as if waking from a dream
and then lays a silvery trail across my skin, a tattoo, or a kiss
I leave him on a dandelion at the edge of the stream, where the water is shockingly cold & clear
when it rises over my ankles


my breath hesitates
& starts again


I think of you


Copyright 2020 Amber Jade