tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20299555551599350792024-03-12T21:59:17.936-04:00Caged Bird Singing"The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still ...
the caged bird sings of freedom."
--Maya AngelouTiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.comBlogger136125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-88187307677145141862015-12-24T02:48:00.003-05:002015-12-24T02:50:36.781-05:00Thank You for the Rainbows: Remembrance (And Instructions. HA!) The recent passing of a member of my church family -- the giggling, gossiping, generous and already-sorely-missed Katie, who never once flinched when I told her I was gay and then presented me with a Book of Common Prayer that had a cover made of rainbow-colored yarn and the observation that, "You know, whoever made this probably didn't have this in mind, but take it, it suits you." -- has me up Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-14580517660702590272015-09-08T02:58:00.003-04:002015-09-08T02:58:59.658-04:00A Bridge Over Untroubled Water: Sunset on Lake Pontchartrain, and other beauteous thingsIt's 2 a.m. and I'm still awake, because apparently I'm in one of those special cycles wherein anything that makes me a functional human being -- like sleep -- gets kicked to the curb. My brain is breaking up with me. Everything I own is in the box to the left.
Anyway, since I can't sleep, I figured I might as well wax poetic about the sunset on Lake Pontchartrain. We went down South, see, to Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-41866224676818786622015-05-17T15:18:00.001-04:002015-05-17T15:18:47.659-04:00Back in the Saddle: Tif Blogs Again!It has been nearly a year since I, Caged Bird, have posted ANYTHING. I need to get back in the habit. I've thought about it on and off, but the longer I waited the more I had to say, and the more I had to say the less I wanted to say it. It fed itself: the endless loop of Not-Wanting.
Blogging is nice, though. Therapeutic. I know at least one person reads what I post, so it's my way of pinging Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-18594927666800975922014-07-07T20:36:00.000-04:002014-07-07T20:36:25.386-04:00A Family StoryOnce upon a time, there were two truly amazing people living in a tiny town in Pennsylvania. One day, they took in a broken girl and decided to help her put herself back together again. They didn't have to; no one expected it of them. Very few people even knew it was happening. That's what made it so amazing: they didn't have to do it, but they did it anyway.
For awhile, it was rough. The brokenTiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-74096455443101159442014-04-22T23:13:00.001-04:002014-04-22T23:13:19.152-04:00Untitled Poem about Faith (Or Lack Thereof)
No matter how long ago it was,
No matter how many years
months
&Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-18227894836970420762013-12-21T20:13:00.001-05:002013-12-21T20:13:12.850-05:00Christmas Un-Caroling?Sometimes I am rudely and abruptly reminded that no matter how much time may pass, the reality of a violent childhood will be with me forever.
John Michael Montgomery's hit song "The Little Girl" was released in August of 2000. I turned fifteen that December. I was still a little girl myself, and it would be several more months before I would look at my mother through a scrim of tears and blood Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-41177494366190127002013-12-01T01:33:00.001-05:002013-12-01T01:33:45.752-05:00This is AnxietyAnd it wasn't meant to be a poem. I just gave it line breaks so the un-panicked brain could follow it. This really is anxiety.
Things weigh on me. They press and press and press until I'm
flat.
It's anxiety like
carving the heart out of a pumpkin and then cutting it a smile.
The room is too big, the walls soar away when I reach for
them;
I get dizzy and my hands hum.
Or the room is Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-74400517194087642772013-09-07T23:21:00.002-04:002013-09-07T23:21:40.653-04:00Baa, Baa, Black SheepI, Tiffany Allen-Bernard, have come to a horrific realization: I have prejudices.
Yes, yes, everyone does. They taught me this in Social Work school. They even taught me how to pick up on a few of my own, maybe things that were flying by under the radar screen of my conscious mind. But it would take someone deaf, dumb and blind with no nose and no hands, someone completely insensate, to miss my Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-30222583962842446152013-08-22T23:13:00.001-04:002013-08-22T23:13:50.537-04:00Crazy Cat Lady
I once dated a woman I met on the psych ward. (In hindsight,
this was a bad idea.) Then I dated her again. (Don't look at me like that.)
There followed, after breakup number two, a period of dry years. (In more sense
than one.)
Then I fell swimmingly, dizzyingly,
head-over-heels-over-head-over-heels in capital-L Love with this amazing girl, only to have it set off a
host of abandonment Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-67308167576780529632013-08-13T23:22:00.003-04:002013-08-13T23:22:55.237-04:00PennedLately I've been suffering from a sense of pervasive, um, ick: I just don't feel like doing anything. I wake up. I eat. I go back to sleep. Repeat ad nauseam. It's like ever since I came home from Bradford Woods, and from seeing my sister and niece and nephew, everything is so boring. I have a renewed sense of being trapped. Caged. Stifled. Curtailed. Penned up and pent up.
Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-35910220352244184742013-06-19T22:30:00.000-04:002013-06-19T22:30:09.324-04:00A Sorry Little TaleOnce upon a time, there was a mother and daughter who hadn't spoken two words to each other in several years, on account of several heinous and often bloody injustices perpetrated on the mother's part and a state of grief, anger and confusion on the daughter's part -- which, it bears saying, came to a head after she came out of the closet and received from the mother an extensive list of Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-84547884917110715802013-06-09T19:18:00.003-04:002013-06-09T19:18:42.084-04:0033 Things I've Learned in 3 Weeks
1. If you go five minutes without hearing a peep from your
17 month old nephew, chances are good that his sister has locked him in the
bathroom.
2. Ketchup and blood look terrifyingly similar when matted
in a small child's hair. Also, even after you wash the child's hair, the child
will still smell like ketchup for a period of several hours.
3. You can apparently feel guilty enough to Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-76319709805970214072013-04-30T21:54:00.001-04:002013-04-30T21:54:09.693-04:0030in30, DAY 30!!!!! "In the Time of the Zoloft, my Spirits Were Wired"
In the Time of the Zoloft, My Spirits Were Wired.
My plan for the summer is to land a helicopter on the lawn
every morning at 7,
to flatten a crop circle into the grass I'll never mow and
cause a nationwide conspiracy.
The experts from all over will congregate on the porch,
and I'll sneak out the back door with my pet ferret in a
pouch on my chest
and buy us those little packs ofTiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-54490493304599959332013-04-29T20:30:00.002-04:002013-04-29T20:30:12.299-04:0030in30, Day 29: "Local Color"
Local Color
There's a certain intimacy in the backsides of knees
No one notices, save for me and others like me
-- or am I like them? Who is who, and where, and when
Did it happen to you? And what was it, anyway?
Go ahead, friend, and have more coffee.
The bathroom here's a palace.
The sidewalks on Main
are made of brick;
fair warning.
You'll jar your kidneys
Up through your nose.
Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-78302821699608753982013-04-28T20:12:00.000-04:002013-04-28T20:12:07.418-04:0030in30, Day 28: Mind's Eye
I will bathe in coconut
milk in the halfhearted
glow of a rainy
day through the skylight.
There will be the petals of a dozen orange
lilies f l o a t i n g in
the water.
My legs will appear
long
and
finely
toned.
My hair will float around me.
I will feel queenly.
Just lonely
enough to savor the Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-12600077682093179422013-04-27T23:56:00.000-04:002013-04-27T23:56:22.682-04:0030in30, Day 27: Emotion Eats
And temptation is everywhere.
I could afford 3 of it with the
Abe in my pocket right now.
Golden arches, red pigtails,
or powdery confections from the pink-and-orange?
(I could get 4 of those.)
What do you do with hunger,
after it slips its leash and doubles back to bite your heels?
It's not my body that's hungry, anymore.
It's the complicated circuitry that is my Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-2633611233020594012013-04-26T23:10:00.001-04:002013-04-26T23:10:16.144-04:0030in30, Day 26: "Hugging the Beech"
She palms salt, licking the sea from her hand.
The day spreads out golden over the hills,
but her head aches and she pulls the blinds against it.
The curtain billows in the April wind.
She lies on the floor,
breathing the scent of trees turning green.
She brings her arms up and hugs one to her body;
inhale to open, exhale to close the embrace.
The man in white taught her this.
She Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-34017498666421811632013-04-25T23:43:00.001-04:002013-04-25T23:43:26.466-04:0030in30, Day 25: "Recall"
Recall
Mint gum mothballs
motor oil Mop n Glo,Vanilla Fields. Pine sap.
Body shops? Salted wounds,
hollow gut. Wood smoke?
Slightly sick.
Car horns cracking whips wind chimes,
wire hangers clanging. Old trucks idling,
particularly in wintertime.
Sun on snow? Blind with fear,but early set? Sadness, tears.
Closets hide secrets;
darkness veils danger.
Do not turn on the box fan,
it Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-13713689308292620172013-04-24T21:45:00.000-04:002013-04-24T21:45:15.319-04:0030in30, Day 24: "Run"
Run
She has legs like 2 pylons, legs like marble sculptures,
mus-cu-la-ture rolling along
finely tuned under her skin,
legs that should act as pistons, propelling her on-
ward and upward, all sprinting and dancing,
and jumping and plies, all climbing
and conquering.
But.
This woman wasn't made to strut.
Or skate. No leaping, no racing,
no finish line in sight with her bear-
ing down Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-88712237294486905442013-04-23T22:24:00.002-04:002013-04-23T22:24:37.677-04:0030in30, Day 23: "Passing the Murder Garden"
Passing the Murder Garden
All those wands of delphinium
Waving red in the wind,
Those poppies like bloodied kisses,
Tulips an army of girls
All dressed in red blouses;
Those pansies angry, eyeing me,
The Queen of Heart's roses
Gone wild on the vine,
Crocus in beds of flame
Eating up the ground;
Asia lilies sparking hot --
This garden's a raging
inferno,
ITiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-65343575095358646472013-04-22T20:55:00.003-04:002013-04-22T20:55:58.082-04:0030in30, Day 22: "Stalker"
Stalker
One pearl on a strand
I hold between my teeth.
One charm on a bracelet.
One single facet of a diamond,
blinding me with light.
And these mere trinkets.
Paste-jewels in comparison
to the glittering,
glimmering mountain of my
feeling for you.
Were you to die,
I would unwind my
own veins and wire them,
blue and pulsing,
into your arms.
Call me mad scientist, my love,
call Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-57581918959558093832013-04-21T20:56:00.000-04:002013-04-21T20:56:14.139-04:0030in30, Day 21: "Unexpected Irises"
Unexpected Irises
Unexpected irises
BURST!
out of the gray earth,
so blue they hurt,
so bright my eyes narrow;
but oh! When I spot them,
I stop.
What bird dropped them there,
in the lee of the streetlamp?
I stare, arrested by the
POP!
of lavender tongues tasting the air,
which smells of thunder,
lichen, river,
mushrooms, moss,
and Spring.
T.A.B. 4-21-13
Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-56909836503757979872013-04-20T21:25:00.003-04:002013-04-20T21:25:43.344-04:0030in30, Day 20: "Company"
Company
I wonder if they sense danger in an April breeze,
these others. If they distrust the way the sun
flings out its light as it sets behind the high hills
like mountains all around,
and pull their shades against it.
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If the sound of a wind chime fractures
their peace -- what little they've scrounged up,
that is -- and sets their teethTiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-71455543291895272992013-04-19T21:45:00.003-04:002013-04-19T21:45:49.558-04:0030in30, Day 19: "Behind The Desk, Late Morning"
Another headache under the bright white light.
Your eyes are grit. Throat gravel.
Nausea sits in your gut, churning the contents with a stick,
making you think of porcelain and tile floors.
Your knees ache at the joints; your elbows;
your wrists and fingers throb. You ignore it.
You make the pencil scritch, scratch across the page;
It's a nice sound.
You are watching for patrons.
One eye Tiffany Allen-Bernardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13506555561564027418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2029955555159935079.post-75236169950687028972013-04-18T18:54:00.001-04:002013-04-18T18:54:13.411-04:0030in30, Day 18: "Ferryman"
The driver of
the hearse smokes a cigarette
and looks out the window at the empty street.
He doesn't give
a shit anymore.
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