Daily Archives: April 30, 2016

THE MUSE

Posted on by

0

“In folkloric terms, animal horns on a female figure indicate healing and shamanic powers, as well as the ability to cross boundaries – between the human world to the Wilderness World (as the Yaqui call the spirit realm), between male and female, between animal and human. If a painter or writer is to be guided by her Muse, then she must be able to negotiate boundary crossings.

“The figure is wounded, as many of my figures are, to acknowledge the difficult passages of life rather than to fear, repress or ignore them; to celebrate the strength and wisdom that comes from hard experience. Clothes half-on, half-off her body indicate a state of transformation – she is either shedding her human consciousness or returning to it from a primal animal state.”

The Muse

painting by Terri Windling

 

 

 

Shalom

Posted on by

2

i wonder what my heart looks like
after the washing away of all
the filings, the shavings
replete with scents of
graphite and wood
and scryed metal
filigreed and

final?
tumblr_o5vi8jwacE1s5neh1o2_1280
i wonder
if it’s beautiful,
if it’s a testimony
to something?  To someone?
In the midst of loss and abandonment
of everything by everyone I love and held
close and dear, I wonder if God abandons me, here?
tumblr_o5r103xuAE1simprco1_1280
The loneliness of exile echoes
the darkness of captivity
and always the marking,
the marking of the prisoner
and the marking by a prisoner

and the markings
Of a God who cannot forget
and cannot be forgotten.
tumblr_o68tqaWY1I1uufoudo1_1280
God carves with the sword of sorrows
baptised in great inkwells of Shalom
and my heart Their Ready Slate

God mixes beauty and ashes and oil
and Shalom is Their medium and message

(my heart torn and bloody)

and gift of peace, God’s offering
of well-being, God’s great good news
and saving salutation…
tumblr_o68kkiYxpi1s5neh1o1_1280
and I never need to hold it
because God writes it into me
to make it me, and make me it,
to hold it, smell it and to taste it,
to be gathered in forever
and delivered from all grieving…

I wonder what it looks like
my heart within my soul?
tumblr_mjfdm5O2xY1rf0hcwo1_1280

Nepenthe

Posted on by

0

here in the neck,
in the in-between
the glass on top
and the globe
on the bottom
amidst the slide
of sand but where
it bottlenecks up
in the illusion
of steady and still
blissfully pretending
that it is not
trickling

grain
by
grain
tumblr_o5obdlUwDt1ryfipto1_500
I try to figure out
what’s going on
out there beyond,
on the other side
of the impassable wall.

Here among the ruins
of ancient times and places
I pick the flowers that grow
merry and brief and oblivious
to the faded splendour hinted
in the wreckage of time’s passing

grain
by
grain
tumblr_o5oz126brK1qbpnnfo1_1280
are the flowers
the same as the sands
(I wonder this),
do they know they will also
become ruins?

Or do they know some
secret, have they some
nepenthe,
some salve,
some balmy medicine
for sorrow to aid in forgetting
pain and suffering?
tumblr_o5scz9eI7i1trdezwo1_1280
i pick flowers
among the ruins
and long grief
is an altar hungry
for expiations that
are never enough
and yet still offered

grain
by
grain
tumblr_o52rol2x3l1tqvymxo1_500