A lucky penny, a toe tag, a poem and a key...

How do you talk to the dead? And what's in your purse?

My purse is a black hole. The weight of a trillion universes stuffed into a shoulder bag. I don’t travel light.

Until I can’t shove anything else in and I finally break down and start turning out the pockets— OK, What the hell is even IN HERE?? Hoping for money (it never is), usually finding long lost earrings and loose pills and where every-single-one-of-my-pens-have-been-hiding in a tangle of receipts allegedly retained for “bookkeeping”…

So, I open the lumpy front pocket the other day, and this scene pours out:

Initially I was like, lol @ myself— and, ooh! A quarter! (This is the jackpot of purse coinage as anyone who’s ever been dependent on coin laundry understands.)

But then I just stopped.

Sometimes this feels like the ringing of little bells, but silent, all around me. An omnidirectional understanding that something very interesting is going on and that it’s a good time to pay attention…

It wasn’t a quarter.

It was the metal crematory tag I saved from my father’s bag of ashes.

And it was riding an outcropping of poetry dice! And offering me a key! I’m like, “NEON!!! MURPH SENT US A POEM!!!! LET’S FIND OUT WHAT IT IS!!!!!” (This is what living with me is like.) Careful not to disturb the scene, I abandoned the purse clean-out effort and Neon & I sat down with our notebooks to consider it all.

A perfect Saturday afternoon.

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I should mention…

1. Today is my dad’s birthday.

2. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard from my dad since he passed.

He blew the roof off of our understanding of reality several years back in a way that altered our life...I mean, really altered our life. There was a before and an after-that-moment. Everything after has truthfully been much, much more interesting...

If you haven’t had a life altering experience with a deceased loved one, you might feel like this is wishful new age psychobabble, or maybe it makes you deeply uncomfortable, or maybe it feels impossible so you’re not sure what to think about me, or maybe it makes you really curious or relieved…I don’t know. I do know there are a lot of ways to relate to the dead that I didn’t learn until I learned them…

I made an experimental film about this experience called More Follows using the original audio recording we happened to be making at the moment it happened… [Fair warning, one of my friends calls this audio “very animal”- it’s intense!] You can read my interview with BaitSwitch about it here.

And if you’re interested in joining me online for a unique conversation about death that uses poetry and play, the next Art of Dying Creative Death Cafe will be October 26th, 4pm Central. [This link will take you directly there, it’s free.]

We both found some beautiful poetry in that purse pocket…

My husband & I play with poetry and divination together all the time. These wooden poetry dice are from a short-lived Scrabble offshoot we found abandoned at a flea market. We also love Ransom Notes (which is really just glorified fridge magnets with a poetic prompt— aka so fun). We like magic and we like words and we like gamification, so it all fits. Get yerself a partner who does it all, y’know?

But Neon also knew and loved my dad. Also held on to my father’s cool skin as he transitioned from this world to the next...

So, working from the same visible words that tumbled out of the purse, we each went about making meaning in our own poetic way— then shared with one another.

Here’s mine:

a
whole.
as a
star.
how him.

also none as great
(so, why him?)

that which he may show--

he as none.
i as none.
that whole great "i"

i was
   also
     that.

i was
   also
     him.

i was
   him,
     too.

(a lucky penny. a toe tag. a poem. and a key.-- contents of my purse pocket, sept. 30th 2023)

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Here’s what Neon found:

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“Okay, Boss!”

My dad was “Boss” at the ranch. The owner was “Big Boss” and my dad also called the guys that worked with him for decades “Boss”. “Okay, Boss!” was synonymous with a day on property with my dad…Hey, Boss! …Okay, Boss! …You got it, Boss!…a darling little circle of mutual respect. I worked there with my dad for seven summers beginning in middle school, and I got to be “Boss”, too. Little Boss.

Okay, Boss! We got the message! Happy birthday! We love you!!

xo,

Talked poetry with any ghosts, lately? I’d love to hear about it in the comments, or you can always send me a direct message by replying to this email or connecting with me here.