Prayers, sacred incense
rising on the wings of Faith…
Groans too deep for words
rising on the wings of Faith…
Groans too deep for words
Monthly Archives: November 2016
the Potter
Beautiful poem by a fabulous poetess…Lynda Bullerwell
Sculpts me, shapes me
into a brand new vessel;
his nurturing fingers
add pinches of humility,
kindness and tolerance,
massage the mind,
penetrate the heart
leaving me hungry,
this poet,
this scavenger of words,
tiptoeing on David’s heels,
reading psalms and loving,
in praise and adoration;
just a lowly messenger
after God’s own heart.
~~(I am penning a poem a day from November 24th through December 25th, 2016 to celebrate the birth of Jesus. This is day #5)
Advent Poem: To Go To Bethlehem
Uncanny, peculiar,
uncomfortably strange,
I tend my fires and tell my story…
the story of this quirky girl
overly-intelligent and stuck
in time that is not time,
so unreconciled to time so bo…
Source: Advent Poem: To Go To Bethlehem
Forgotten Beauty
I have not forgotten beauty
gleaming in the rim of gathering dark
sounding in the crying of the snow geese
hiding in the cross cries of the storm
and rain races thru the air
in darts and stinging slaps and snaps
to light upon my eyelashes
to kiss my tippy nose
and I hear deep within the earth
the sighs of slumber, sleepy breath
and turning from this seeming death
when winter races strong
(and yet cannot
NOT be beautiful)
and so I walk the edges here
between the sea and sky and sand
and look for that pink glimmer
of that shell, that alabaster
moment, that holds
and does not break
at least not yet,
for I have not forgotten beauty.
This Horrifying Displacement (On Existence In Post-Trump America)
he spoke in broken words,
an anxious monologue
of guilt confessed and expiation…
me, numbed by the encounter,
and cast reluctant confessor
of an ordinary monster
who committed such
unordinary acts
of blind obedience,
setting ablaze an entire village
with gasoline words ignited
by fists of flame,
and in the name of Great,
of Better…of fear.
And now he can’t get loose,
cannot silence from
his mind the screams
of those people. Them.
Now on a deathbed
of his own design
and no good sense
to even lay down
and be still, a last
desperate attempt
to seek forgiveness
and what am I supposed
to say to this displacement,
this horrifying displacement?
Big-Hand Little-Hand Me
and what, Mama?
You turned me inside out
so red, so dark, a cave…
an old sock wooly
on the outside,
and yet hollow
and full of things
yet held…
and yet the holder
of a galaxy of galaxies!
You took my emptiness
and filled me with Yours
which aches with the pregnant
potentiality of it all.
what am I gunna do
with this new ache
You gave me?
You reach
and grant that grace,
that terrifying removal
of veil and valence and vector…
and this new and bracing ache
remaining behind like
a lost tooth in my
heart’s mouth.
I went to that mat of death
alone and yet surrounded
to discover that pile of me,
I bone of my own bone…
what gain was there?
what loss endured?
my mouth stoppered
my eyes covered
ah but ears so open-wide
to hear the death song sung
so slow and yet so steady
tock-ticking its way round
that twisty path to me
laid there like a circle…
my big-hand little-hand me
We Happy 15 (A sending poem)
Ya know, even Jesus,
being a dude and all,
didn’t get it!
He thought He
could do it all
with just 12…
and Himself of course!
L. O. freaking L!!
What else would you
expect from a man?
They always think a few inches is a ruler!
“Hey buddy, suck it up Bro!
Rub some dirt on it
Call it good”!
Umm…yeah no.
We know different,
am I right?!?!
Every woman knows
it takes 14
to make a goddess!
A living zesty busty
hippy jazzy sleek
fat hale hearty
slick and
slippery
oh so yummy
JUICY LUCY GODDESS
made of us…we happy 14.
Our Hearts have twined,
our souls have moved
And Mama, She poured
out Her glue
until
We have
elided, danced
and birthed and
been born US!!!
goddess awake and so divine
and we decree our ministry:
the mission of the Broken Pot
forever pouring, ever filling
ever loving, ever willing
always welling upward welling
HEALING
Then? Mama Herself
presses in and on to us
(We Happy 14,
extension of Her face,
Her mask created!)
And caps this Broken Pot of wee
with Holy Trust and Sacred Mercy
running burning everywhere
1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14
And Mama…
We Happy 15
Six Word Memoir (Seven Examples)
From fire
and ice
I’m born
Come On In!
the Water’s fine!
from the ashes
I have risen
I’m Mama’s Girl…
Just ask Her!
I am a
Selke
of Shalom
my bones
call the
goddess you
You ask me
why I laugh
^
|
(insert a comma after “why” for double entendre)
In Blood & Bone (A Seven Line poem on “Earth” Day)
It is looming, dark and leaning in, this Winter
and its ancient song echoes in blood and bone.
It pulls down Blue from frozen skies…
While perched nearby a wizened crone…draws breath
and throws her gleeful cracked chanson in cackled tones
that run and roll like casting bones…that dance and then…still
and winter, song, blood and bone and ancient crone…are one.
Deeply Well (French Pantoum)
You are a Many-Moon now
Baby, deeply well
My Conjurer-Priestess
just like Me.
MAMA!!
IT HURTS!!
I HAVE DUG YOU OUT
My Conjurer-Priestess
just like Me!
My Consolation is Sweeter…and
I HAVE DUG YOU OUT!
You shall not run dry…for
My Consolation is Sweeter.
MAMA!!
IT HURTS!!
You shall not run dry…because
you are a Many-Moon now,
Baby…deeply well
Advice In The Maelstrom’s Commencement
These are vulnerable, slinky damp days
exposed by the scalpels of fear.
So steady yourself in your bones, the bones
of the grey granite cliffs and the mist
of the dizzy array of events
that are reeling like carrion crows
while the weak light fast forwards
to night.
Stay deeply centered, just stand
in yourself as you engage a world
that seems to despise its true center.
Remember yourself, be that point
that is present, for you and for others
in the mushy immediate world
that’s careening and swirling
around us.
Ravenous tides of malevolence
thirst for your blood, your breath and your song
and would drain you dry, crumple, discard you
and destroy your rock steady sereneness.
You must simply refuse to be buffeted!
Shine brightly and stay softly confident
in your hard commitment
to truth.
Stand strong, and keep your eyes open
to see who can stand with you, who can’t.
In your stillness be free to jump higher
and to mount up on wings in the long winds
and rely on the ones who just love you
with great tenderness, keep you in check,
cus we all need the tension
of both.
There is no need for undeserved compliments
and a great need for unrestrained love.
Know whatever your loved ones experience
will affect you, yet is not about you!
so keep orienting yourself towards
your truth, and keep letting that truth
shine through all that you are and
you do.
This Indigo Night
I love this poem, but only because it is an accurate capture of an endless nightmare agony-night.
It also captures the pain of being othered
what am I,
here in this current so swift,
here in this flow so crystal,
the color of none, of nothing
seeping from hearts of high mountains
whose tops are jagged and sharp,
sharp enough to shred en…
Source: This Indigo Night
NaNoWriMo: Nation over Novel
This incredible poem is something I just now got around to reading…catching up after time away at retreat. I am both linking to the original stunning post, and copying it here too.
sadly…we know we did not choose life, but a curse
Election Eve, November 7, 2016
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live…” Deuteronomy 30:19-20
The moon is half-and-half tonight, like
A mitzpah coin holding out its promise:
That this is not some space-opera dystopia,
Where the creepy demagogue wanna-be
Is going to shoot down the moon, leave
All our tides raging out of control, our seas
Washing their bloody waves, troughing through
Our silent, ravaged, grey cities. No. Never.
The moon will remain to govern all our tides,
Those of water, those of blood: like clockwork.
The shining silver half-coin will grow to full,
Showing that we shall be together, not long hence,
With what this country was always meant to be:
The melted alloy of many elements, the gift given,
The promise kept: that we are stronger together,
And together we can heal all the broken pieces.
*******************************************
So yesterday I was struggling to write a blogpost about how we need to vote to avoid turning this country into an English-speaking version of 1930s Italy or Germany, how if we fail our country now…
”
Source: NaNoWriMo: Nation over Novel
A Rain So Red And Warm (Transgender Remembrance Day 2016)
“April is the cruellest month…”
T.S. Eliot said…
he simply wasn’t paying
the steep cost of attention.
It’s in the brown pits of November,
when we lie in hopeless wait,
in limbo stuck there in between
the stupid and sublime…
stuck in that old and barren hollow,
wedged between a grease congealed
KFC bucket called Autumn
laying in dead crackly leaves
and its winter-shadow-self
approaching in uneven shambling
gait with cutting winds, harbingers
lurking in its fraying heart.
I listen hard, I strain my soul
in this insensate endless month
for a song, a sound…anything?
maybe a last, desperate word
of Release?
Real-ease?
Reeling, I go through the gates
of death that loom large in the night
aware that I may well be robbed
of all this nothing left to me,
of all the rest of my short years
aware the grave cannot give praise,
that death cannot sing elegy
and I know, finally, that we
are sick for life, and desperate cling
to this nameless shining thing,
a fountain sealed, we drift toward
our edges, there below revealed
Image created by and belonging to Kathie Whitesel. You can find her marvelous work at https://www.etsy.com/listing/196654382/religious-art-abstract-painting-of-jesus
in such familiar frightening
familiar numb-ed anguished sting
shared just by one Incarnate One
a weak and beaten broken man,
a God defeated, crying in
the quiet weeping freezing rain
falling slowly in the black
and cloying plummeting sloe dark
that’s darker than our darkened world
blacker than all blackened loss
blinder than all senseless hate
and bleak as splintery bloody cross
and it is there our questions cold
fall limp…just like the rain itself
and like His sadly dripping tears
(Himself a rain so red and warm)
and here His tears mingle our own
and here His blood flows from His side
and there the final faint quick spark
flickers within His ruined hide
His broken heart amidst the dreck
of our lives brutally played out
in this tragic blind senseless wreck
where light lays down, and breathes its last
and mourns all dreams of futures past.
our only hope a hang-ed man
become the lowest of the low
embodying every despair,
He gives a cross to cling to, know
a hang-ed man, His own self there
insistent Incarnation fair
drinking the deep cup of despair
and promises that it is Done.
(Many thanks to Kathie Whitesel for her amazing piece used above, and her generous allowance of her art to be matched with my poem…it is the perfect image for that part of the poem. Kathie I am so grateful!! ❤ )
In The Face Of Death
waters of Mara
turn to life
and royal streams
of Violet Purple!
purity has taste…go ahead
taste it, taste and see
see Whom you shall see
and say to Them
teach me in Your waters
living, knowing kind
you will find my secrets
hidden in the bottom
ahh
Ancient Grace
in the face
of death
Silver Tails and Fading Light
flick of silver tail,
flash of waning argent light
bloated belly rolling over red echoes
of a blooming crimson sky
and then these little gifts eternal
nestled in the cleans-ed sand
another flick of tired tail
a last flutter of a gaspy-gill
and all is still…
floaty toward the slumber stop
and all is still
In Honor Of The Death Song
It’s swans…
white in the
flashing golden air
flaking off as sky goes
pink at the edges
and falling away
reeling away
in honor of the Death Song…
then
they’re gone,
and echoes flutter
and twisty fall
down upon
my upturned face
and chill each spot
they touch
with that fading Western Glory
I turn, and face my fire-pit
embers dead and full
of waiting bones
Ah, waiting bones, still and calling
crooning for my naked tired flesh
to lay me down on them
(extension of my bones’ face)
and those bones, those
cold glowy bones stark
dig me with rooty bites
and toothy ancient secrets.
I turn my face to see the Last,
the Last Swan soaring, lingering
watching to see me to my
earthy bed of bones
and then I give in
and give myself to those
greedy-needy hungry bones
who must have me for blood
and fertile fire for winter
for winter lasting thru
I close my eyes and sink,
a silver rain red and slow
smoking into that earthy
boney glow…and sigh
and trust the crooning process
of deep marrow…of deep bone.
Japan Was Far Away
When I was little I used to lay in bed and it was like time would surround me, fall down over me, on me, lay round me like the blankets, rough and wool (and scratchy, so I could never get comfortab…
Source: Japan Was Far Away
The Adoration In You
Run, Child, from the once into the upon and thru the times
to emerge knowing that leaves ARE…
having passed from once there
upon a tree
thru air
in that
moment
Twisty
Timeless
Floaty
Look Child, in my voice’s sound and hear
the siren call of Riotous-Red Drifty yellow
(sounds like MMMMMMMM!)
My hand, Baby Girl…touch…my…hand
Darting
Diving
Twisting
Oceans Run and Race thru the air
within these sacrificial leaves…
A continent is written in the wind
beneath their stems!
Crackle
Swish
Swoop
Settle in the sun come down
into a million longing little leaves
all starting…all fall…to settle
Fly without wings, without eyes!
Trust your heart, it sees the leaves
that fall within my Heart for you
and in
falling
and flying
and settling
Shall you know Peace
Shall you touch Release
and know the adoration in you
My Heart of Hearts
A Love Note…From The Darkside Of The Moon
Sisters…
I have come, like Hagar returning home…
back from the dark side of the moon
and I am full of wisdom gleaned
from sun-baked wanderings
across wide bleak and barren lands
and Beautiful Bedouin Deserts
and all the way to that distant shore…
the edge of my soul-wound.
I have faced the edges of myself
I have faced that Gulf of separation
and I have headlong heedless SWAN-DIVED
pure…and I survived
the plunge!
I have crossed over…that gulf
I have TRANS-ED!
And now I run
returned to you, same-sided ones
My CIS-ters dear and precious-rare
marooned and longing for The DARE!
You still stuck on that Lost Coast
of desolation waiting at the long deserted
service station called same old
same old same old old old SIDE
Ohhh Sarahs! I have heard such secrets in
the red-reed voice of Sirocco winds
Oh the things I know, winnowed by that
wind and winnow-stick of courage
from the shifting Sands of self…
I have sifted and been sifted
by the heat and cold and light…and
the dark
the dark
the dark that knows what sleeps alone
the dark that knows what it knows not
(and nought, ahhh, yes, the dark knows nought)
the dark that knows what it knows nought
and it has taught me Love Notes…
on the dark side of the Moon
OHHHH MY MOON!!!
MA MERE!!!
You see, she is stuck too (just like you, Sarah, just like you)
in his orbit circling and one side shining one side dark
her endless pasted happy smile while growing thin and desperate
and starved, ravenous in the night
Oh Sarah, remember you laughed, back then!
Well, I could teach you a thing or two about Laughing NOW!
Cus from your chuckle sprang a promised child
who grew into a nation dusty rusty red?
But I…me? Hagar??
HAH!!
From the Womb of my laughter
springs forth The Children of Her Promise!
I!! The Outcast ME!!
My Laughing womb brings forth
the very Rose Behind The Sun!!
We are two wombs, two moons, Sarah…you and me
But I’m a moon that got fed up and broke away
and learned to spin and twirl and dance!
I learned how to gladden this close Dark
I have understood how to please the Light
as I spin and twirl and turnturnturnspinstepspinturn
lightdarklightdarklightdarklightdarkLIGHT!!!
I am your Hagar! Outcast and returned
here in your hour of great need!
I stand before you, with you
with my wand of Cedar freedom waving
and my book of Mama-Conjuring!!
Ohhh Dearest Sarah, can’t you see?
That you are the same as me?
Look past desert veils so long ago assigned
Peer deep beneath this hoary hated hide!
And see the vital fertile oceanic sea…
see my…
ME!
Ohh Sarah, I see you! I was you…
languishing in bitter wounds of old
I see you in your hurty night
your tear stained grief
and darkened dreams
I see your Crystal Mountain Rare
now Shattered in Indifferent air
and Chasm shards!
And I have come to midwife you
from the womb of your true self
to the mercy of your real True You!
I will help you see with eyes unblinking
thru your tears those canyons riven
by erosion bit by bit from
your most treasured self!
STAND! Leave behind the CIS-ter lands
and join me, we’ll reclaim OURSELVES!
Finally forever truly SIS-TERS
For in truth?
Our destiny is one.
To be exultation light-filled
Trans-women all
crossed over
and spinning wildly,
Joyful in the Night!
In The Thickening Dark Air
The days are growing thin, now…
more firmly anchored, chained to earth
as she grows sleepy and surrenders
to impending, crooning death
that has in time passed always passed
and yet, each time seems like her last___
And I, with naked desperate face
pressed frantic to that fading sky
so blue, impossibly so blue
blue BLUE…and pale and growing paler
as my running tears run free
and carry Blue down to the dirt
of me, the dusty dirt of me
The sky dims in the echoes of
those flying waves of wild geese fleeing
Vanguard of this fading time
this sleepy, grown-thin dying time
so out of step, in stuttering rhyme
They fly and sing, elegiac,
the Songs of Captive Zion, and
the broken harps hung high on willows
on the willows wailing there
while geese fly, sailing sadly by
and as these waves sweep by above
in broken honks (like broken harps
played tragically by broken hands
and broken hearts) that rain, that fall
to lay upon the many-waters growing still
and shining dull in dimming light and wondering
if there is any love left here…or there…
or anywhere to see us safely
thru the night, the coming dark night
sinister and silent as the grave? And still
my tears fall ceaseless, mourning
growing still, so listless, still…
The flapping wings the flutterings
of geese and my tears hot, welling
glistening sliding dripping falling
as the earth shifts and rolls over
on her side and so resigned
she groans and closes sorrowful
and milky sightless rheumy eyes
and the rhythms of the wings,
the waves, the tears (oh tears and tears)
they echo other rhythms dread
stilled long ago…but now awake
a dreadful Sauron Eye aflame
snapped open in malice and pain
unblinking, staring without weeping…
flapflapflap (the wings),
snapsnapsnap (the eyes)
crackcrackcrack (other geese-stepping)
TROMPTROMPTRUMP (the boots, the boots of night)
TRUMPTRUMPTRUMP (boots so shiny underneath
a cold Bone Graveyard moon)
trumptromptrumptromp
I weep…I wonder…if the dying
of the autumn light presages
some dread other coming night
some night hollow as the grave
in this thickening Dark Air
The Knowable And Yet Unseen Fine Line (JP)
Written for my friend a year ago…dedicated now to all who find the rise of an autocrat to power a horrifying prospect
What is this mystery
that imbues us with mercies,
that makes us worthy?
What Hand unbridles us,
makes us like fire
sweeping quick and inexorable
across the dry crackly pampas?
Is calculated bravery…
This Ghost Poetic
This is a couple years ago…I really think it is one of my best poems, in that it carries Meaning from The Beyond into this place. I hope you take your time and enjoy.
I wander this world ghost-like in poetic places,
like a phantom passing thru unseen, unfelt.
I wonder in the presence all around…
I see, I feel… I dwell in mists, resarciate revelation, …
Source: This Ghost Poetic
To The Monster Lurking…
Ever Outward On
flitting forward in fits
and starts and swings
on wings
gossamer, delicate
and strong enough
for a thousand miles
swimming down, out
far away and then again
up, and in, deeper
against the broad current
and into the rushing froth
back to beds of spawning time
and what seems captive
here in time
and two dimension
takes on depth
and height and breadth
and Spirals ever outward
on.
Sands and Shadows and Pearls, Deconstructed
So I wanna give a lil glimpse to how I weave poems into poems…this is Sands and Shadows and Pearls, but taken apart into its strands…you can read each strand, and then go back and look at how I juxtapose to create Poetic Harmonics…this should create some depth and distance in the metaphors and implications of waking, dreaming, shadow, sun and what casts the shadow.
I hope you will work with it some… ❤
I do shed tears, these days
I also shed dreams too
I dreamed, last night
I also shed tears too
I think…yes.
I dreamed that I walked lands crying
and my tears fell on red sands glistening
my tears
my tears on red sands sizzled
because I had no shadow,
they had no shadow
and then in that glaring sun unbridled,
that staring star unfiltered
they became pearls
of white
and ivory
and pink
they
became pearls
of My Mother,
the Mother of Pearls
and then I saw,
Her, walking there,
sowing in tears
and reaping in pearls
with nary a diamond
in sight
and She turned to me,
She bid me pick them up
and take…eat…and I did
and where they lay
the sand was gone
and green grass jumped lush
into my eyes with verdant glee!
And the pearls tasted like honey
and the pearls
became glory within me
and I rose up on glory,
I rose up in glory,
glory within me
and glory in the air
and I saw my shadow,
distant and crumpled
and pinned to the ground
for always by arrows
and spears and the knives
of those children
of red sand and shadows.
And just as I began to wake
I realized that ever
would they gather there,
around that shadow
pinned and empty
of all save their vitriol and hate
while I walked free but achy
across the red sands,
with no shadow
between me
and that stark sun
except for the glory
that’s given by pearls
plucked from green grass
so verdant that used to be
red sand so hot
on which was shed precious
tears without shadow.
So I wake, each time
I wake and realize
I do not need a shadow
to stand between me and the sun
and some something
to tell me that I am, I am.
I am.
I just need those tears
shed on sands red and glaring
become pearls from my Mother
to wrap me in glory
and glory wrapped in me
and no shadow my shadow
forever
and pearls
(and nights…it is strange
to wake and find the wet
residue of sorrows dried
and digging at the corners
of my eyes),
(like tears).
(last night…it is strange
to wake and find the dry
remnants of dreams moist
and pressed, pushing into
the spaces between me
and my pillow)
(like dreams).
(my tears glistening,
not the sands, they lay leering,
skulking, glaring flat and angry)
(the ones in my dreams,
the ones with no shadow)
(the tears and me,
not the sands and dreams)
(my tears)
(like the armpits of abalones,
who also learned to live
without shadows)
(my tears,
not the abalones,
or the red sands,
or the shadows)
(born of tears shed on red sands glaring,
tears glistening and without shadow)
(not shadows or sands)
(because diamonds have shadows
and slinky songs and glittery platinum
brittle best friends)
(the pearls, not
sands and shadows)
(like shadows flee daylight)
(and clear thirst-quenching
shadow-clearing life)
(and the pearls of my Mother,
not the sands and shadows)
(not to day,
not in night,
I wake to me)
Waiting For The Winter Drums
Blood Red Sunsets smothered by the sea
Parting birds flying south in songs of sorrow
Deep sad hymns are birthed deep within me
sung by longing winds unto tomorrow…
The hawk screams and jumps, …
Source: Waiting For The Winter Drums
Heart And Henna
Mark my heart with loving henna
not with needle-inky hate
let me feel your brush-sienna
early, lasting, long and late
Worry not that it will fade
victim of time’s ceaseless flow.
I am inside, tender-la…
Source: Heart And Henna
To Skim Thru Night With Me
To Skim Thru Night With MePOSTED ON NOVEMBER 1, 2015
I skim quick thru the darkling night
I skinny along those fissures deep
and rough faults in thick dark.
The sable satin curtain parts
and I slide thru, slide thru alone
and hot with dark-fire smoke.
My eyes flash flash light to light
and gleam within the velvet night
and promise there’s an end.
But you must strip off layers, yes
you must there disrobe complete
and scrub away the past
to skim thru night with me right here,
to skim thru night with me.
Source: To Skim Thru Night With Me
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