The climate change
Between home and here
Is measured in the color of rain

It is not a thunderous watershed of tears
From the cheeks of betrayed fiery Goddesses
That rips boulders from the shoulders of mountains and throws them helplessly toward the sea
​
And it's not a mist like the empathetic breath of sea spray
Reaching a gossamer hand back to soothe the hardened black scars of volcanic rage


When rain comes down here, grey and dominant 
it paints the forest in a sigh
shades of deepest vermillion and chartreuse emerge
truffle brown the trampled leaves
where my naked, cold Hawaii feet go seeking the sands of forest beaches
For some faint echo of the comfort of home


And then something happens
The blue edges of droplets
slow, like icicles forming, in their downward merging
They organize themselves soundlessly
to form perfect lines
The edges crisp and clean like cut glass
And the faces of people in shop windows and on street corners
organize themselves into the clean squares between lines
A picket fence of faces and rules and faces forms
Ruler straight
Mannequin still as they are sped through assembly line structures of work, beer, sex, shame, consumption
with the terminal clicking of precise machines
Ikea melamine boxes and relentlessly similar stainless steel fixtures operate seamlessly
So the concrete tubes of public transportation
Shoot their yellow pills of humanity down the throats of the city
In perfect, pre-measured increments
A testament to design and efficiency


And the dark woods with their explosions of rapturous underbelly color
that lace the edges of urban synchronization 
With dripping unruly tresses
Are allowed to argue the passionate cry of nature
Against the architecture of concrete pathways
Designed by clipped and trimmed humans to best complement them
Like a crib complements (and efficiently contains) a beloved but fussy child


The plaintive song of the wild heart
the padding of a Goddess’s bare feet on raw earth
Heard, yes, but from a measured distance


Copyright 2020 Amber Jade

This house is full of ghosts
You staring blankly from your pillow
like a translucent photograph behind glass
How unfair of me
the tables suddenly overturned on you
still the shock of surprise on your parted lips
I can hear you crying from across the city
the honest ache of departure ravaging your skin
and how difficult it was
how terribly difficult
to see you dangling at the end of the phone line
crying for rescue
and with the sharp edge of my words, I cut you off
For the depth of the fall
I cannot see you coming back
and now I have told everyone
confessed to the crime
so that we will not remain faceless and innocent
but irreversibly broken
and dead forever

I saw you on television
Very clean
Your 2-dimensional belly like cellophane
Rhythmatic crafted fise and fall
Sweating in the bright lights
And wondered
how long until you fell apart
behind the cameras
like wet cardboard
under the slightest
whisper of weather

​

I've already been there
in your living room late nights
washing my underwear in your sink at 10:53 am
You don't need to continually convince me
of how freeing it feels to cry on your shoulder
of the giddy awkwardness of a first kiss
You don't need to look into me with unwavering eyes
or turn my palm upward toward your face
to assure me of all the possibilities
this road may have to offer
It was long before you could say a word
I've already been there

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

At intervals my familiar panic starts anew


Like a brilliantly bright red blossoming wound
the eyes of my core terror snap open
and dilating irises fling themselves from object to object
like gasping fish who dangle from hooks


Every object that emerges from the grainy field of consciousness into focus


   is you


It’s a seeing that shocks and stings:
   the suggestive curve of your spine 
   the vague pursing of your lips
   all the meaning imagined in your half breath


A feeding frenzy for my brain cells 
starving for love
they rip my thoughts to shreds 
analyzing nuances, obsessing on conflicts
leaping from the precipice of a simple gesture
or the wobbling bow of a word cresting a mood
Into the bottomless uncertainty of tomorrows


But in every one
I'm dropped crushed-cigarette-butt-worthless
Having missed the last chance
To leap with my pride intact
to some safe pedestal of independence 
and avoidance


And I cannot help but play the movie in my mind:
with some unsatisfied sneer
you are, inevitably, leaving me


Or worse
staying 
and loving me like you said


making my insecure little heart face itself like this
…relentlessly

Copyright 2020 Amber Jade

I have no idea how to remedy
the angles and gaps between us
Only to say what seems painfully complex and beyond understanding in one second
seems so simple the next
and I think that if we could remove the impotent maze of language
and return to our native tongue of touch and sense
the haze would lift and breath and bodies be so simply one
as they were meant to be
despite all the misguided architecture
of our best intentions

He's outside to smoke a cigarette
conversations about the radio station
and how music moves you

Does it move you?
Not this new stuff, not the way it used to

and everybody wants to know who I am
I am
I am
on the search for a pen
scratching out the fluctuations of a day at its end

and it's all so achingly normal
like the songs on the radio
they come and go
they come and go

Here's a good one, remember this?
Does it move you like it used to do?

And here I find a typical situation
wishing I was anywhere, when we could be
anybody...I am anybody
so what then?

I'm wishing on a pen
Like I'm writing out the future fit for a king
fit for a day full of everything

What are you writing?
I used to write back before the war
What are you writing,
stories about someplace else?

Well, we all want to be someplace else
Like the places on the television shows
they come and go

You heard this one, yeah, it's a good one
This moves me in a way I've never thought
Yeah, this one moves me the way it used to do
Pass the coffee pot

And that pen is flying like nothing else
scratching out the pleas of the achingly normal
dreams upon the shelf

They all want to know what I am thinking
I'm thinking about everything else
And how I'm moved right here
like the songs on the radio
​
Does it move you?
Yeah, you know it moves you
Just the way it used to do

​

The lake was too much today, like every day, to describe
My love, how can I describe a place?
The way the water rippled in the wind
tiny waves crashing on a tumultuous shore
or the way the sun permeated through
a million levels of silver clouds
the manzanita, like watercolor brushstrokes
ebony and scarlet
and the rumble of the train beneath the highway
How can I make you see the touseled landscape
or feel the summer air piercing my lungs
the joy of my soul, the pain in my body
the sadness in my heart?
I would give the memory to you
if I could scale time and distance
because
it is only watercolor
until you feel it

You are waiting
for a phone call
for a plane ticket
for the big love
You are waiting
for the perfect moment
the red light
the glass slipper
to be born
You are waiting
and every day
the second hand has written
the bells chime
a call is rung
and all the planets spin aimlessly
in suspense of your departure
The phone is ringing
the call is waiting
Are you too afraid to answer?

Howdy!
After it sold out on its 2nd edition a number of years ago, I am updating my poetry book "Being", and releasing a 3rd version in eBook format, with a handful of additional  poems, and a spoken-word CD to accompany the digital version. It will also be available in print version before Christmas, or the end of the world, whichever comes last. This requires a lot of me going through and editing and revamping book and laughing at myself (ah, I was so young and naïve back then; I'm old andnaïve now), and trying to work out what sultry, sexy voice to read "Dunkin' Donuts 3AM" with. Believe me, that is hard work.

If you love poetry, or are looking for a gift for a poetry lover, or even if you need some new water closet reading material, "Being" will be available for your perusal by the end of the summer.  I highly reccommend it as fodder to take your white-throne experience to a whole new level of spiritual awakening.

XOXOXO
Amber Jade