Say hello to your neighbor, offer to help whenever you see an opportunity, seize the opportunity. We will need each other more these next few years than ever before.
Human interaction is part of God’s plan of protection for us. We are hard wired to need each other. We all have an opportunity to become someone’s Angel.
Lake Powell, Utah, USA
For Adam
Remember But Wait
Drum my fingers ‘til they bleed.
Hold my head so it won’t explode.
Pace the floor ‘til I’m in the basement.
Listen to your songs until my heart aches.
Breathing takes effort.
My life has lead me down so many roads
I’ve met so many people but none of them were you.
A mystery out there somewhere
but I don’t know where.
No memory of you
still I could feel you.
I remember you now but I can’t get back there again.
Come to me, please
Or find some place where I can get to you.
I don’t want to change your life
I just want to see you and touch your face to know you’re real.
I barely know you
You were taken from me far too soon.
Together we made magic
That broke the spell!
I thought my life was my own - it never was.
You thought we had a choice - we never did.
I listen to your songs and they break my heart.
I must stop, I can’t remember to breathe.
I pray we find each other again to finish what we started.
I just want to see you again to say -
Thank you, thank you, thank you….
I’ve written, an now published, all these poems for Adam and I feel like a silly old fool. He’s dating a Victoria’s Secret model for cryin’ out loud! And yet I feel compelled to keep trying to reach him. It’s a horrible feeling, really. Empty and awful. I wish his parents had given him my phone number when I talked to them in August, it would have been so much more preferable than going so public with all this. I don’t like any of this because I am, in truth, quite shy. Except for the poems turned into songs, no one has ever read my poetry.
For Adam
In Your Eyes
Let me hide
where I can be myself
inside your eyes
and still be perfect.
Keep me from the judging coal black stares
of demon swine
who don’t care
for insight like yours and mine.
+
Giggling, gurgling, crouched creatures,
who loathe love and fear happiness.
Frustrated women who preach frigidity.
Men who prefer masturbation or rape
to shared intimacy.
Self appointed juror number two
eager to send me to the gallows
for loving one as glorious as you.
Rank, toothless vermin who kept me enslaved
Still use the mores of society
To keep me caged.
Never allowed to love or experience joy.
+
Will you tuck me carefully away?
I’m no longer their toy
Save me from their ignorance and hypocrisy.
Save me with your flawless love.
I long for the safety I found.
Please - Let me hide
in your eyes.
For Adam
OD on Creativity
Let’s get together
And catch up
Rant about what happened to us!
Share where we’ve been
And where we go from here
I was Sleeping Beauty
Subsisting inside a waking coma
Until you broke into my nightmare
And turned it into a heavenly dream.
“She will be loved!” cracked the curse.
Bless you, my beautiful Prince Charming
Time to come into the light
Time to shine
Time to live!
Time together to talk and talk and talk
Time to get high on creativity
Until we OD
I didn’t take this picture, nor is it of me.(I wish)
Maroon 5 owns the rights to this picture.
This is my poem about that feeling.
For Adam
Your Touch
Your hot breath on my neck makes me tremble
My skin awakes anticipating your hand’s caress
My body yields to your warm arms surrounding me
One with me
moving me
lifting me higher than any drug
my spirit soars to meet yours in the heavens
where we collide
with colossal force
to create sparks of feverish rain
that drench us in ecstasy
My daughter, Liberty, painted this picture.
We wondered how it got on the Maroon 5 Album cover. I made some phone calls and I was told it was done by someone else and unless we could prove Liberty painted it, there was nothing we could do. Since Lloyd and Deeta stole her picture we couldn’t prove anything.
When Russell Crowe visited me in 2001, Deeta told him Liberty painted the picture. I couldn’t remember Adam (and the very next day I couldn’t remember Russell) but now I can remember telling Russell that Adam should stop searching for me. As soon as I said, “Tell Adam we’re better off this way,” to Russell, I could hear the song, Better That We Break, and I could feel the excruciating pain behind those words. I heard the whole song in my head. (Sometimes it’s rough being an Empath.) I still need to talk to Russell and Adam, if you’re reading this and you know either of them, tell them about my blog; gracegardener.wordpress.com
We’re Only Seven Miles from the Sun - to Adam Levine
We’re able to communicate with no words.
It’s only time that divides us.
You are my water, my food, my air. I want to hide inside your glorious soul. You rescued me, and I’ll thank you forever for that. This obsession we have for each other will most likely fade, but I’ll take any time I can get with you - an hour, a day, a few months. Life is so tenuous. Happiness is all we can hope for. My day with you was the best day of my life. I pray we can spend another day together!
Thank you, thank you for saving me!
Thank you, thank you for our extraordinary time together!
Thank you, thank you for the magnificent songs! gg
Some Where Out There
Was supposed to have been written by either Rita Coolidge or James Horner, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil
These three people have written nothing else. What would often happen with my songs is the songwriting credits would be doled out among cult churchgoers to then be given to the church and put in a fund to build Doomsday Machines submarines that could drill into a fault line and then pump sea water into the fault line near Christ’s Church, New Zealand, Iceland, and then Tokyo. Even our Nation’s Capitol felt the effects of the Doomsday Machine when the Washington Monument was cracked.
I remember someone say it was such a sad song, but now that he knows I wrote it and I have nobody, it makes it too sad to think about.
Now when I listen to it, I think of my daughters and Adam. I wrote it the day Adam was born. I wrote it before my daughters were born. I hear there’s a beautiful recording of Rita Coolidge and me singing it. I don’t remember that.
For Adam
Wishing On The Same Bright Star
Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight
Someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight
Somewhere out there someone's saying a prayer
That we'll find one another in that big somewhere ou
t there
And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star
And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky
Somewhere out there, if love can see us through
Then we'll be together somewhere out there.
Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA
Each day I awake torn between the desire to save the world and the yearning to savor it. It makes it hard to plan the day. - E.B. White
Me reading to my daughters in 1984.
My Story of My Trip to Heaven
(This happened way before The Shack was written. It has been Cult Legend for twenty-five years.)
I stood on a path amidst a stunning flower arrangement of staggering scope and intensity. The plants and colors were spectacular - like shimmering gems, delicate blown glass shapes, some like fine silk, some like gleaming, rich velvets mingled among delicate lace petals. The beautiful, intricate stems - several fine and twisted, others straight – elegantly supported blossoms, as big as my head. All manner of flowers blooming together sharing their colors and beauty so that the whole garden was a vast 3D collage.
I mused at how the foliage was so perfectly and intricately arranged yet growing in a garden – if it is a garden, I wondered. The man to my right smiled, pleased that I liked the garden so much.
“This place is amazing! What is this place?” I asked: my eyes still exploring the winding pathways of exquisite trellises and hanging plants resembling gold wisteria, orange grapes, purple honeysuckle and blue roses.
“Heaven.”
“This is Heaven?” I immediately thought better of that question because there certainly wasn’t anything like it on Earth, it defied the laws of physics and gravity, not to mention the rules of gardening, so I added, “I guess it must be.” It wasn’t like any place I’d ever seen and the flowers weren’t familiar. “It's really something, truly beautiful.” I turned to focus on the beaming gentleman who now stood by my right shoulder. “And who are you?"
"Jesus," He answered.
I'm in Heaven and I'm talking to Jesus, I thought. I figured I must be dead but didn't remember dying. I could have asked Christ what happened but didn’t. Right then I was too happy to be bothered with the particulars.
"You don't look anything like your pictures," I joked.
At first Jesus laughed because He knew there were no pictures of Him, not any done of Him while He was alive, so no pictures could possibly look like Him; but then He realized I was commenting on the fact that He was black and of course all the pictures show a thin, light-brown-haired white man with a beard; then He really, really laughed.
He asked if I’d like Him to show me around. Certainly I would. I was euphoric.
“Sure,” I giddily replied, “There’s more?”
Christ grinned, glad to be able to show off Heaven. ‘Of course there’s more,’ He thought.
I realized we could talk without speaking. ‘How cool.’
With a smile He brought me to a meadow of glowing green grass and trees.
‘This is like the Emerald Isle.’ I’d been to Ireland, but I’d never seen land such a stunning, glistening color green.
Christ looked at me quizzically.
"Like Ireland." I explained and then began to think of, maybe, a more religious way to describe it and started to say, ‘Where Saint Patrick lived,’ but He shrugged that off and said He got it at Ireland. I couldn’t tell if He knew who Saint Patrick was. At any rate, He wasn’t interested in continuing that thought.
‘It’s all so tremendously beautiful, I love that color green.’ I leaned toward Him and whispered, “I’m not usually a big fan of green.”
Jesus chuckled. “I’m glad you approve,” He joked back. He was only half joking, it seemed. He was genuinely pleased. He gave the impression He was proud of Heaven, which, of course, He should be.
‘You'll like this.’ He brought me to a lush, leafy forest with hills, streams, waterfalls, and trees with huge hanging branches all surrounded by sparkling, sapphire water. I thought it was cool that Christ knew I’d like it, but then I thought, ‘He knows all of us, our intimate thoughts, everything, and I thought, who wouldn’t like it?’ Just appreciating what He created pleased Him. I didn’t feel it necessary to worship Him or please Him. Quite the opposite. It seemed like He was a long-time friend.
Jesus asked how I felt. I said fine. He looked at me and grinned and waited until I thought about the answer. “Fine,” I was pleased to report, ‘really, really fine. Better than I’ve ever felt.’ His grin turned into a most wonderful smile. I smiled back thankful for being in a most glorious, magnificent place with a man who was caring, funny, kind and concerned for my happiness, eager to make sure everything was perfect. I couldn’t imagine encountering such a compassionate spirit on Earth.
This Jesus was a man so content, so funny, so concerned, so helpful, so full of joy, so masculine, so sure of Himself. Not at all the lamb. Not at all the sometimes namby-pamby, sometimes almost effeminate Christ of the movies and European paintings. More a younger Springsteen / Denzel / Clooney character - a decidedly masculine, confident, charismatic character. Christ had the magnetism and charm of Bruce Springsteen on stage; the self assurance, humor, masculinity, and appeal of Denzel Washington and George Clooney. If He was the drippy, soft spoken guy you see in the movies, five-thousand people at a time, would not routinely show up while He was giving one of His sermons. If you think about it, He would have to be that charismatic and charming to draw the kinds of crowds He did in the desert.
While I marveled at the forest, thinking I’d stay in that place a few hundred-thousand years, Christ asked if I’d like to see His house; causing a joy explosion in my heart. I felt humbled, privileged and truly blessed.
Each effortless step traversed many miles; it struck me how enormous Heaven was - like Earth - only it appeared infinitely vast, dazzling and perfect. I realized Earth was a tiny, finite Heaven: I realized that Earth must have been made in Heaven’s image.
Jesus brought me to His house. Each room was the size of Pennsylvania. I oohed and aahed.
I gasped and marveled at all the beautiful works of art, fountains, sculptures, waterfalls, and tapestries made of mosses, lichen and tiny flowers. I embarrassed myself because I couldn’t stop gushing. Each piece was placed perfectly without clutter or gaudiness. It wasn’t like any house I’d ever seen. Finally, I explained I wasn't just telling Him it was beautiful to make Him feel better. Christ interrupted saying He knew I wouldn't lie. He said, ‘That’s something I appreciate about you, that you make people feel better about themselves. You always seem to find the right words to say.’ I took the compliment and shut up.
We smiled at each other for awhile.
I thought, He’s a handsome man but He looks nothing like He’s portrayed. Nothing at all. He doesn't even look Jewish. I would have expected Him to be a dark-skinned, Jewish man. I figured He’d have dark skin because of the area of the world He was from, but I have to admit I was surprised He was black. I thought about how nice it was to be there with Him and how easy He was to please. I felt bliss.
“Would you like to live here?”
The question caused another joy explosion in my heart.
Does He mean Heaven or His house? – I wondered. My soul leapt. My heart was pounding. I was beaming.
God’s voice interrupted, "You can't stay: you have work to do."
"No, they don't need..." I started to say they didn't need me at the bank that badly, thinking it was my salaried job He meant.
"You have work to do." The voice said again; and a hand that fit me in its palm came between us, scooped me up, and, it felt to me like I was crashed hard, face down, into my bed. The
n God said, "Lift up your head." I tried but couldn't.
"Lift up your head." He quietly requested again.
"I can't," I thought back. Then, with a hand about twice the size of my own hand, He put His fingers on my forehead and His palm on the back of my head, and He pulled my head up. When He let go my face plopped back down into my soggy pillow. I thought surely He would ask me to try harder, instead, without another word, He lifted my head again and this time turned it to the side so that my face was out of the pillow.
"Now get up," He requested. I sat up on the edge of the bed. “Breathe,” He said.
I did.
The Rest - of the story is in my book Babble On - it gets pretty horrible.
Thank you for reading my poetry and thoughts. If you remember anything about me that could help me, I hope you’ll take the time to comment on my blog. Please pass this message on. I’d like the book Babble On to go viral. It contains information crucial to our happiness and wellbeing as a planet of brothers. I’d like to see the world turn in a righteous direction. Any help you can provide me is wildly appreciated.
You may know some of my other work.
I was the baby who told the men to let air out of the tires to free the truck that had been stuck under a bridge for hours. I named a dozen products and bands by the time I was 10. I named Windows, Mac, iPod, Google and a hundred more; including the band Maroon 5. I had the ideas for Velcro, the catamaran boat used in the America’s cup, TiVo, Snapple, the pulley cross bow, Radio channel programming and formatting, and Wikipedia. So while you don’t know my name, you know my work and my songs. Unfortunately I was tortured to forget the particulars of the naming, inventing, and song-writing sessions, and my captors took all the money, so I never received a dime, and I was stripped of my happy memories; and in place of the memories I was drugged, electrocuted, tortured, and told I was stupid and homely every day of my life. Now that the amnesia is leaving I’m happy to be having pleasant memories for the first time in my life.
I’ve been married twice so the names I’ve had while living in NJ are Lynn Pezzutti, Lynn McDermott, Lynn Mickelsen; and the cult had many other names for me, I believe one of them may have been Dale Carnegie, Jr. others were Dale, Cassandra, Delilah, and Susan.
God gave me the name Grace and we agreed on Gardener as a last name. I legally changed my name when I went on the road in my little old RV (pictured below) five years ago.