Posts tagged Body

Poem: Security Systems


November 25, 2012 * Dominique Larntz


We could build a wall, you and I,
and see it fall back into the particles
and pieces that all physical things turn into,
like Legos in earth’s generous toy chest.

You could write a cypher and make it cyber,
wed a hacker and the two of you could spend
your life staring at screens as your bellies quicken to text
and procedures instead of the bend of a baby’s elbow.

I could serve the neighborhood watch each night, my flashlight
joining the neighbor’s flashlight, repeating until the night yields
and the watch has to watch itself, being over-crowded
with people who need to turn the light on themselves.

You and I could amass a pile of nuts like a squirrel
or a pile of anything else that seems valuable now—funny
money that keeps changing forms—when I was young it was

not even our bodies, because we give them back too,
when destiny points directly to us and tells us it’s time
for the most courageous of human moments.

The only system that works for the human spirit is love,
life’s animating storyteller whose songs keep us fed, who meets
us at every grief and joy equally not as a fragile parent

Poem: Breathing Caves


Dominique Larntz * October 22, 2012

Breathing Caves

Even the earth has caves
that inhale in Winter
and exhale in Summer
but they must have
multiple mouths.

Poem: Breakfast


Dominique Larntz * August 13, 2012


Awake now, I crawl out
and open the top drawer
to pull out my underclothes
of helplessness and guilt
and I consider pulling them
over my tender skin.

I can smell what is cooking
out there—something
delicious and certainly I
should cover up first.

Get dressed, then take
my plate to a quiet place
where no one can see
the depth of this
naked hunger.

Poem: Birth Mother


Dominique Larntz * July 8, 2012


Every child walks a mile as my child
and they make a trail of sacred steps
back to you, beautiful son.

I see to the needs of those around me
as if the mended ghosts of their wounds
will sing in the electricity around you.

I bathe the concave wombs I can save,
fill them with loving soup and soil,
set them out in the sunlight, let them go.

Poem: Dharma Antidote


Dominique Larntz * July 2, 2012


Her body cradles the sorrow
in a canyon so deep
you can’t hear a quarter drop
when you let it go over the edge.

She’s been saying it’s fine
for you spin words of delusion
that swaddle her up to her throat
like a spider’s web.

Her body can’t heal any more
unless she follows the path
of rest and peace and joy,
taking every nap she desires.

Her nerves need a bath of love
and the culture is a river polluted
by overstimulation, by addicts
rushing to destruction.

Her cells weep in blood, the only
language they have, calling for life
to be lived, enjoyed, cherished,
preserved, flowed, balanced, loved.

Poem: Surprisingly, How Pain Left This Morning


Dominique Larntz * June 7, 2012

I was walking down steep dirt in the desert
with the same hurt hip that visits daily
in my forties, and each next step became
the uncertain place that pain makes
its bed frame since the accident.

For a few steps, I relied exclusively on the right,
placing my left only momentarily where I knew
its sole would not slide amongst altitude’s tiny granules,
and landed gracelessly with several hard gaits on its companion.

There’s a shooting pain in this sort of imbalance
that no poem can soothe, because it is outside the words
and inside the music of movement in the space
surrounding what I call myself and my body.

I stopped moving halfway down that hill
and I started to meditate instead of hike.

I took my eyes from the bottom of the crest
and focused on the rock right in front of me.

I changed my mind’s calculation
from counting the steps to get to my car
to noticing that I am in this step.


I sustained a simple, humble change
of awareness in each step,
and the pain dissolved quickly
in an unexpected surprise.

Surprise because I was just
trying to finish the walk without falling down
and I had no eyes for easy steps
where each side supported the other.

Wherever else uncertain,
I am sure to take this walk again,
and I may not always find such easy relief,
but I can dig my heel firmly into faith
in the restoration of balance
over an uneasy terrain.



Poem: What Do I Fight For


Dominique Larntz * May 23, 2012

What do I fight for?

Yesterday I heard
a news broadcast
and my body responded–
arched blood pressure
and clenched muscles.
I am self-aware
enough now to feel it
and that is something
spectacular to me.

Previously, I just ignored
my physiological response,
played the part, did my job,
assignments, projects, tasks,
and one could say my blood,
my body, was automated,
programmed to pretend
to ignore itself.

I am slow and mellow,
you see,
in a fast world.

In a fast world,
messages arrive in bulk
in milliseconds
and slow processors
get inundated
and when we say stop
stop stop stop and stop
we are told we
are thin-skinned
and before we
can process that
we are usually
insulted again,
and again.

Fast world, what would
the headline read
if you stopped
and accepted me
just as I am?

Poem: Stent


Dominique Larntz * May 10, 2012


They propped up his vein
and I keep wondering how that would be–
to have the most tender pathways
inside me opened up by doctors and devices.
I trace a line along my sternum with my finger
when he is not here and when he is beside me,
run my fingers along his chest, trying to feel it.

I place my right ear against his heart,
feeling the gallop of it inside him,
grateful for his life, grateful for mine,
feeling him as intimately
as I feel the inside of my eyelids.

He is the resolution of my life’s projections
and almost losing him to a heart attack
helps me know love the way you see space
only by the things that fill that space.

Poem: Higher Mother


Dominique Larntz * May 9, 2012

Higher Mother

There’s no one to blame
but my stress started in the womb.
I have only begun to mother myself
and I am amazed at how much more
nurturing I still need to receive
from the wiser parts of my life.
The rush of scheduled achievements
has been a distraction—a stoppage—
from true growth.

Poem: Injury Roadsong


Dominique Larntz * February 9, 2012

Injury Roadsong

Take your hand
and the rest of yourself
and hold me here
where I am mortal.
Tell me again
that you know
the same truth as I.
In youth, we have glimpses
of our singularities.
However, these injuries of age
engage a handsome brake
in our soul’s engine, giving us
our own acceleration rate
and there is no speed limit
imposed anymore.
I can finally slow down,
ignore the lines,
get off the road.

Poem: Regression Analysis


Dominique Larntz * January 18, 2012 * “Love Letters to My Body”

Regression Analysis

There was a physical tension–
squeezed and dry from deep inside my cells,
where my body was precisely pinched.
This morning I awoke–
and I was so grateful to feel open again!
I relaxed further by asking life to
soak me with good feeling
until I had extra happiness overflowing
like a newly submerged sponge.

Last night I missed a wonderful few hours together.
Oh, we snuggled and smiled–but my outpouring
was only as nutritious for our souls as styrofoam.

Today I feel delicious again.
I made us breakfast and joyfully.
It could have been anything for anyone.

I can be with you only when I am with myself.
The difference is in me; not in what I am doing.



Poem: Bearing Witness


Dominique Larntz * January 5 * “Love Letters To My Body”

Bearing Witness

Does my body bear fruit
like citrus, with some
squeezable, zestable,
usable outer peel
protecting an inside
so irrevocably liquid
that all you have to do is
twist your hand a bit
to release its juice
along with its
dozens of seeds
and possibly so sour
or so sweet
that it transforms the taste of what it is mixed with
and it cleanses what it rubs against
and it stings wounds it drops into,
and are there many chances–
from all those citrus seeds–
for propagation?

Or does my body bear fruit
like a peach or a plum
with a soft outer skin
that reveals strength
and density
and sweetness
all the way to
a central core seed,
one purpose from which
this type of fruit

Or does my body bear fruit
like a coconut,
growing a series of shells
around sweet water
high up in a palm tree
until the day it is ready
to trust that falling
is part if its nature
and it joyfully releases its hold
from the branch
where it has suckled,
and it turns
to embrace the ground
as it stops resisting gravity
and holding onto the trunk–
with its singular seed,
complex and protected
inside many layers,
knowing others
of its kind have been
picked up by waves
and traveled ten thousand
ocean miles to germinate
on a beach
far from
where it started?


Poem: Mindful


Dominique Larntz * January 4 * “Love Letters To My Body”


I just noticed
I was not
my body
right here

Poem: Magic Spaces


Dominique Larntz * January 2, 2012 * “Love Letters To My Body”

Magic Spaces

I find space in the most mundane places.
I have found too much air in ziploc bags in the freezer
after celebrations so we could tetris leftovers more frugally.
I have found I can pause between inhale and exhale
and calm myself down to my toes.
Today it was in the laundry room where I discovered
two huge drawers under the washer I never knew existed.
This makes me question the definition of mundane.

Healing is found in the same way for me.
The things I am not doing are better for me than the
things I am supposed to do.
Sometimes when I get very still.

Very still.

I can ask, and my body will present an idea to me, one all my own
that appears like an image in my mind. An ‘of course’ that was there
all along, like those drawers under my washer and dryer, a place
to keep the things that will scrub away the years of abuse
and hardship my inner and outer world have heaped upon this
magical, wondrous, gorgeous, moving coalition of cells
that has befriended me in this life.

Carrying the most precious messages of all.

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