Category Archives: Love

The Resurrection of Autumn-Trees

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it was autumn and me bound
tight with scratchy ropes and lies
that could not be easy-parted
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your stricken look
of compassion golden-sharp,
like lightening stooping down
you set me free, and started

a fire in that late autumn land,
so cold, so sluggish in the tepid sun
and languishing towards winter
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given up to
given over to
inevitability
and sliding
down

that
gentle
poison
slope
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my arms free,
my legs burning,
those ropes away
did fall from me
and your eyes,
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heaven’s lightening strike
strike my heart in fire
and my skin burning hot,
glowing passion

radiating out
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and the creeping cold
fleeing backward and the sap
running back up from the earth
and into trees thru the branches
and leaves falling up
and then connecting
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and autumn’s
peacock splendour
blooms from
mono-drabness

and all around us
earth sings in our breath
synchronized together
and your hands
on my skin
like irons in
the fire
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and your eyes
glitter brown and soft
and all at once
my sun and moon

as trees wave
and breathe
and summer rises
from the grave and spring
Sings into the air
in playful winds
and carefree winds
and ceaseless winds
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and we come
and we go
without a
trace
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and after,
you…me…us
laying there
and autumn
sighs and bows
and thankful for
another moment
present and it slides
away, gives up its ghost
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and winter comes, quietly
comes to claim her prey
with tender frosty kiss so cold
concealing unrelenting blade
so unforgiving, bloodless,
without pity and me?
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I, so young then,
and now so old
remembering the resurrection
of the autumn trees so glad
as the flakes
of snow float down
like tears of joy
come to an end
and become still
symphony of sorrow
and now I leave
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forever
on the wind
and free

on the carefree wind
and in the cooling dirt.
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Sorrow Is

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sorrow
is the
most sensitive
of all created
things

(aye the
question lingers,
hangs, remains…
who created
sorrow?)
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Sorrow has taught me much
of Holy Ground and tears
and coming times when
people realize that we
know nothing about
life until we know
sorrow and
sanctified
ruddy
dirt.
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Sorrow
is such holy
ground and those
who do not learn to
walk there know nothing
of what living truly means
and that Life’s sacred truths
most precious are drained from
sorrow’s silver cup and learned in sorrow’s
frozen icy grip, so stark, lacey, frosty filigreed
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Sorrow is a
wound that bleeds when
any hand but that of love
touches it and even then
must bleed again,
though not in pain
but finally in
tenderness
and healing
evermore
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A Handful of Memory

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it was a village
no longer existing
it was a laugh
that echoed that village
and hung in the air
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like smoke from a fire
extinguished in nightfall
and drifting in winds
and lonely midst stars
while crickets and frogs

lament as it faded
and pebbles and diamonds
all heaped up at random
and sticks and steel swords
all jumbled together
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useless in the corner
to argue, debate
about fighting or walking
together, together
to some better future…

my hair is a crown
that glows with the past
and shines in the night
as I take my courage
and face what may come.
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a handful of memory
a bucket of love
a torch lit in faith
and standing on hope
my face set like flint

my heart is a mountain
adorned with the night
a beacon, a presence
I swell from the earth
and kiss the soft skies
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The Pain And The Poetry

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“If your pain sounds pretty,
it doesn’t seem so bad.
If you use beautiful words
to describe your sadness,
people may line up
around the block to read it.
See it. Hear it. Fall in love with it.
If people don’t know better,
they might think they want it.”

— saintly-sinner

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The Place Where All Horizons Meet

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“bring me
the horizon”
you said…

as if horizons
were singular,
just some
pearl, some
place to
go.
tumblr_n2rlthrgkx1qb30dwo1_500you show what
you don’t know
when you asked,
you don’t
know
me.
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“I am horizons” I said
and rose my sun over
my mountains, casting
crimson crowns in
delicate dewdrops,
hanging pearls on
silk-stranded soft edges
soft, all my edges, all my
vast untrammeled lands
met together, met together
on my skin translucent.

(or, is it in?
in my skin,
transparent,

opalescent, white,
unmarked,

untrammeled?)
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translucent skin
trammeled skin
tattooed skin
my skin
(my skins)
unstained and stained
all at once and only
by the shadows of the past
marking me indelible
in shadows playing
hide and seek with shades
tumblr_o4q9jrKTyG1trdezwo1_500(on my hide,
in my hide
so pure and
so unblemished
but only on
the outside)

shades that
lurk and lurch and loom,
arising from some world of
yesterday revolving ever in
my mind, in my
imagination, in
my tears that run
everlasting down my cheeks
in waterfall kisses
of grief…
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and that horizon where past
and present and future
meet in shadows,
in kabuki dancers
dancing ever on my skin
(tattooing)
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and I feel its pressure deep within,
the coming presence of a moment,
a moment sacred, a pregnant moment,

it feels so light,
it feels so heavy,
it sets me free
and paralyzes
with crippling fear
and aching purpose

in me,
the place
where all
horizons meet.

 

“The Art of Blessing the Day” by Marge Piercy

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The Art of Blessing the Day

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let’s not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends’
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.
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always on the outside

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the dishwasher blasted on, heat and water and sound…white noise and clean water jetting against the dishes until their bones were bleached, picked clean and dry.

in the kitchen, the sound of women laughing, easy-talking and including one another wafted thru the air, and reached back back back to me there, in the dish room…and outside.

outside
always outside

there was one who used to talk to me a lot…but got too naked a view of the broken tumblage within me, the shards and jagged edges of my soul and the way that my emotions (amplified by brain trauma) are at times a runaway train with no options but the wall at the end and the carnage of the full speed collision…and so she pulled back…

way back so that she does not even greet me by name anymore.  just the casual nice-nice.

i brought it on myself, i guess.  i don’t have the cotillion dress manners and savoir faire…i am all “big-girl” hips and belly and shoulders and thighs and voice torn by testosterone and ruined…

they will never really know how outside i am, and how could they?  they have no clue there is a side known as out cus they are in.  always inside.

but i listened, savored, much like a peasant would look on from afar at revelries in the distant high castle, and felt good that there was happiness and joy in the world.

but i missed my quiet and solitary kitchbah turned loud and crowded kitchen…

and then i heard Mama whisper to me…it is the lowest place…the place of least honor…it is the loneliest place that She haunts, and it is there She takes up residence.

and so i embrace it, and hang on.

i give thanks that i am here…and can hear…and can bask in the glow of the bright suns around me.FB_IMG_1447349130732

 

That Never-forgetful Wind

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some say the wind forgets what it touches,
forgets what it tastes, what it pushes
but I say the wind in the branches and rushes
and rippling the water with fingers and tongue
never ever forgets anything.

in the air that it pushes are draughts and elixirs
the mineral walls that it scratches and itches
are under its fingernails rakey, ah trickster
wind tasting and touching and saving and twitching
and never forgetting a thing.

and I find in me a wind, echoing that one
that tosses the stars around like they are dust
and my wind finds everyplace, my every cranny done
sparkly or plain or shallow, it simply must
always remember whatever it knows.

some say the wind forgets
but I know different.
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Me Moon

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when you speak of me
you speak of weeds and brambles
thorns, nettles and stoney ground.

when you think of me
it’s craters and dark
and bare landscape stark
and lacking curves.
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I am gardens, moon, roses, sea.
I am me, in bowers and blooms
and labyrinth beds of unusual growth.
I am small trees and tall firs 
fragrance stirs, honey bees

I am Grace in the echo
of the moon’s deep wells
I am tides reaching and running
yearning and aching

I am reflected light
soft yet bright
sometimes yes often no
but always…always…
always aglow
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Please…think of what you know.

the endless ache of bones
the songs sung in your marrow
the shadow in your eyes
the light that holds your heart

think of who you know

vertigo
when gravity gives up
finally worn out
in my grave insistent
persistence at breathing.
tumblr_o46w3ckPYT1s93t2co1_540And why…yes, this is important
the why of me
dancing on desolation
rhyming in respiration
overthrowing tables of treason

and though it is dark,
it is not night, My Love,
no.
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it is the season of silence
that speaks, that sings
sings in me garden
sings in me moon
sings in me roses
sings in me sea
sings in me
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A Seascape Moment

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the careless sowing of seaweed
in the currents, in the tides
in and out and out and in and in

the fog clinging melancholy
to its ever love green heart
hills, bristly beneath its touch

the singing needles verdant
joying in the glimmering sun
glancing off the bright dancing waters

the artful accidental masterpiece
of a world random in Intentioned Love
and the soft mercy of knowing eyes

and you, me, a part of everything
apart from everything
and everything in its place
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Sturm Und Dreck

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Do you see it there?
In the sky?

Look up, and let
your heart free fly

That dull boat floating
right at your feet

Is just the mere reflection
of that airy Ship of State

And if you

just

let

go

you can board her decks
and sail away, away, forever
free from sturm und dreck
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The Fog, The Earth

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i think fog unwraps itself
to show what lives beneath
takes off its clothing graceful slow
removes its wispy sheath…

and naked the earth stretches out
languorous and sure
and becomes whole as I look on
my hurt heart’s ever-cure

Marking Time

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i’ve been marking time since day one
day by day by day by day by day
and for each spin around the sun
i carve a line within

i haven’t figured it all out,
not quite, not yet, not all
whether those lines mark the way
out of these bars or just pass the days

but now they are my act of faith,
my memorials stark and blue
and some day i’ll slip between them
or simply pass thru to you

i am marking time, my countdown to you

Like Blossoms

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I fall in love with
you, like cherry blossoms fall
utterly to earth
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in the wind my kiss
wanders, floats, and my desire
aches to find its home
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in your arms always
if not, I will fade away
hoping in the dark

On My Way To Trinidad

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I saw the eagle soar that day
on my way to Trinidad
to walk from sidewalks, shops, trinkets
to redwoods tall and shady deep
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That eagle, beak hooked, gleaming bright
a yellow barb to hook the sun
and pull it there behind its flight
into the always never-end

of trees, and fogs and oceans song
of silences and sounds of streams
I was on my way to Trinidad
and melancholic bitter-sweet
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Here Among These Ruins

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I spend a lotta time out here,
in these ruins made so soft
with moss and time’s unceasing flow
that rubs away the razor edge

and dulls the sharpest aching grief
that haunts and sanctifies those things
amidst the stones that sing of glory
here, abandoned and now gently

haunting precious mourning here

among these ruins
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At The Rim Of My Soul’s Furthest Reach

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There’s a universe inside me, bound
between my soul-yearn’s furthest reach
and my bleak body’s dullest beach,
a nexus edge, of light and dirt
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Bright pin-prick sharp stars pierce my heart
and shards, a thousand brilliant shards
release their shattered broken song
in full throat glory greater than…
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and I swallow my tears, my pain
and my hurt too and hope this gain
this extra gravity jars loose
those stars from my deep skies inside
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and shoot them streaming fiery
and hopeful and without limit
thru endless skies within my soul
until they finally hit that wall
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at the horizon where my body
and my spirit dance…just at
the limit…and if they, perchance?  Should MEET?
Oh…the Fireworks!! The GLANCE!
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And then shall the night finally
become complete and my soft eyes
shall finally close and come to rest,
my heart shall at last breathe it’s best
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there…
at the rim
of my soul’s
furthest reach
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“All Means All”: A Meaningless Circular Statement

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I love words…they are so powerful, so magical.

They are alive, they pulse and glow and they do things and go places that you might not mean for them to do and go…and this is especially the case when we use them carelessly and just spew them out because we can.

The biggest problem we face with words is that we forget that they mean something…and when we do that, we set them free to impose a meaning in a situation that controls and distorts reality from what is consciously heard on the surface of the words.

For instance:  saying “everything is red” is a meaningless statement, by definition.  “Everything” means all conceivable existing things without exclusion”…and thus, red would not exist, because how could there be any state of being or place of perception that was other than red and thus giving meaning to red as something distinct and identifiable?

We only know red in contrast to other colors…thus, it is impossible for “everything” to be red.  The more accurate statement would be “It was red as far as the eye could see” or some variant on that approach.

Recently, I heard someone posing a so-called logical argument that “All means all”, and thus there was no need to delineate who is included in “all”…imprecise shortcut thinking that ultimately is lazy and sloppy given this society we live in where “all” has meant white anglo saxon and protestant for about 300 years.

“All” needs some defining additions, some inclusive categories, because in America (alas) we have lived in blatant contradiction to our incredible founding documents…and in the church we have followed the way of the culture and turned out the poor, the needy, the wrong colored wrong gendered wrong orientated…

So what does All mean?

Let’s define it with something that says “included in our list, but not limited to just this list”…yeah, intentionally worded in an awkward way, because there are some really beautiful crafted statements extant that can be adopted…such as the great ELCA “Reconciling In Christ” statement…it gives specificity and depth to the platitude “All means all”.

As to the fears of “being branded?”

I think it would be pretty cool to be branded with the ideals of RIC to the point that when people saw me coming they said “Omg here comes that Charissa…she is branded with the Reconciling in Christ position that all are welcome to come to Jesus!”
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I Like The Rhythms When We Love

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i like the rhythms when we love
the way we move in time as one
and yet distinct and separate
and yet not separated

they come, the movements, just like waves
we wash up on each other’s sand
and drink up each one’s offerings
from shallows and from fathoms deep

and fingers move like lacy spray
and arms and legs like breakers sure
and hearts like rocks, like booming waves
and souls like everlasting sand

yes…
i like the rhythms when we love
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Enough Water

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“A tear is enough water to float a desire to God.”
— Charles Spurgeon

Oh God it is on oceans that
I float my heart to you,
my heart tragic and Titanic
and full of broken dreams

my tears feed every ocean that
ships sail upon so free
and so, will my desires, prayers,
and longings come to Thee?

as the passenger disembarks
and clambers from the boat
so I distinguish me from my
desires, they mere ships

to sail the oceans of the heart
to catch those winds so strong
and carry me home to You, God…
for this I ever long.
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Lingering

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in the forest, thru the mists
under grey clouds on the moor
I wander, wander…I linger

even though my time
here has passed and
so has day become night

and I a woman of the night
in all its mystery and splendour
and thus imbibe its secrets and its wonder

yet do I loiter…here in the forest
near the old house once filled
with glory and light and music

but now just an empty shell
under grey clouds on the moor
in the forests thru the mists

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The Blood Of Its Escape

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the cry of the old house crawled out
between the bars and scrabbled
hard up the frozen-bone branches

it wrenched itself from the icy
grip of frosty-crystals and leapt
into the wind

into freedom

but the blood of its escape
remained running everywhere
and that lock still snikked shut

tight against the chain
and those cold long links
that stood arm in arm

against freedom
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while the blood of this effort
was left in trails
smeared everywhere

in gory evidence of how
you turn it down over
and over and over

true freedom

 

 

 

Afloat In Holy Black II

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in the silent frosty middle
you know the place, it dangles
from a frayed and rotted rope
by its twisted, broken neck

never climbing to the heavens
never rising, never sinking
finally to hell…suspended
still-born in the dead black moment
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struck hard by fiery unjust suffering
lightening bolts of frozen mystery
electric silence of a God
who seems to become floaty-fog…

…and go missing in that moment…
that cold and lonely hour of greatest need.
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And Defiance?
And Hope?
And Memory?
And Wrath?

Or Mercy?
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God’s absence…ever-present metronome
clicking seconds tangible
but measured in life’s lurking horrors,
haunted concentration camps

shrieking dust-wreathed empty chairs
silent tables lacking breath
just one long open exhale
lasting always occupied

by aching absence of the Loved ones
gone…just gone…replaced by absence…
lurking pervert, shadow present
of God Absent in the hanging

in the hollow hanging black…
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Or is it
Holy Black?  Yes.
Afloat in Holy Black.

In the times of Holy Black…
This Holy Black when God seems absent
in our need, we are too small,
inconsequential lost in mystery

I ask where is God? Where am I?
Where is Divine Mercy Sweet?
How can I (or anyone)
Slip that rough coarse choking rope?
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I go forward
They are not there,
backward, but
I can’t perceive Them.
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When They act on the left,
I cannot behold Them;
They turn on the right,
I cannot see Them.

And yet I find in anguished cries
against God’s absence, They are present!
Present in my blank assumption
that Their Silence equates absence

and tenacious faith in God
who seems so distant from our pain,
and silent to our acrid cries,
and absent from our acid world.
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In the face of certain suffering
how else can I affirm God’s presence
in my midst except by taking
issue with injustice in this moment

of God’s long apparent ringing absence
God’s abandonment in the midst of towering suffering?
My protest against God’s pressing pregnant silence
would be deprived of dignity and meaning

if there were no Presence behind the Silence.
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mercy and justice are enthroned
in a higher heaven still
and in this Lenten season,
in our hungry self denial
as we blindly grope around

in that towering Spiraling Darkness
of our own imperfect vision
and our wakened apprehension
of our God, we will to wrestle
with God’s absence so we can come

to experience the presence
of God in a different way
not that hanging purgatory
twisting in the idiot wind…no
Us and God…Afloat in Holy Black

“I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye has seen you.”
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On The Way To Scarborough Faire

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by a frosty window, cracked
just a bit to let the roasty room
(and our toasty toes) sip some
air so fresh and crisp and clean
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that air, smelling salts cast up
and out and in by the sighing seas
that rose and fell contentedly
as you lay there…asprawl by me
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our night so many years ago
and yet it never happened
except in our hearts twining
(or in mine anyway, cus
I am allus pining for what
has never happened but could have)

and me saying “I am in love with you”
and you asking “does that mean I love you?”
and me answering with lips, with tongue
and you opining with moans, and lungs
yours, mine, in, out, heave, sigh
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and the seas…so content
and so restless
and so content
and so restless

there on the way
to Scarborough Faire
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It’s On…

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it’s on the naked branches
stripped bare by winter lashings
frozen crushings and dim light
dark night and the howls and owls
and the lonesome silent music
of lost longings and long waiting…
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it’s on the roof built solid
so snug against the cold
and cupping all the golden warmth
that glows inside the heart
and sings inside the soul
of Spring returning fast…
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it’s on my face that Mama splashes
all Her Love, Her Grace and Peace
She beautifies my ashes
She oils my grieving heart
She clothes me in Her Raiment
and purifies my spirit

and I sing once again
reborn and free again.
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Demure In That Sunset

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you looked out on our landscape
the one we saw outside
that just mirrored the one
we share between our hearts.

you said that it was beautiful
and though I did agree
I said nothing, and did defer
demure in that sunset.
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the winds blew cold, freezing
like un-freeze-able ice
that twisted round our toes
and nipped sharp at our nose

but it did not seem to phase you
there in that beauty sprawled
as stars began to sing
and blood began to bring
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you to my yearning soul
that never will be whole
in this night breaking bright
we held each other tight

and then our lips did meet
the wind paused, then attacked
and drove us closer still
love you I ever will.
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In The Still Hush

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in the hush, in the still hush
of the dying day, the waning day
see the sun, ohh the setting sun
shining rays, rays trickling
down the winds, on the breeze
to the beach, in the reach
of ocean waves, wild waves crashing
to the sands, the sparkling sands
in the cold, the rush of cold air
all around, and fresh in us
on that quiet, quiet darkling
winter evening.
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A Gulf So Imperceptible

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the distance between you and i
is the same as that distance
between myself and me
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a gulf so imperceptible
two souls that intertwine
and yet a smokescreen intervenes
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and my heart never to be touched
my inmost parts so liquid, so creamy
laying fallow, uninhabited
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thinness, membrane thinner than
a butterfly wing, or maybe even
just one molecule thick
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but never can be broken thru
never can be jumped across
to stand there with you
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Blessed Meek

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Hemingway said that one should write
hard and clear about what hurts

but what if what hurts isn’t that
which stony lays heavy and dark?

what if tend’rest touch and rest
is what hurts deepest, what hurts best?

intimate soft whispers, silk
and lacy heart of cream and crunch

quiet whispers over head
of breeze on branch, what brutal punch

is gentle beauty, soft and blurred
by grateful tears, my precious pearls

slipped down my velvet slick white cheek
I write for all we…blessed meek.
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I Burn So Free

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Unmoored in the white expanse
chained by air and frozen flats
white as far as eye can see
and just one speck revealed there…me

red on white, no blue in sight
carmine bold against the night
a blood smear there upon that face
so cold, so neutral…blooming grace
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I burn there in this gelid place
and nothing here to burn but ice
that smothers every spark and glow
and so I turn my heat high…slow
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and steady, burning every flake
and fleck of frozen haughty glance
I use as fuel your silences
and melt the emptiness of chance
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that random stark coincidence
of when you turn and look my way
but lend me not even a branch
to burn, just more cold arctic grey
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It matters not, I burn my me
I choose to be a fire hot
and brighter than the silent white
I burn the ice…I burn so free
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My Warm Song Ever Out

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Grey charcoaly puffs
hurry past my face,
red-rubbed raw
by the same dog-winds
that chase those whinny clouds

over head,
over mountains short,
steep and rocky rumbled
raised up stubborn
not a whit like
those poofy powder puffs
that drop down low and

poof

puff

phooph

over thistles, scrub, leaving
their rainy powder wet and steady
on the sharp and sternish moor.

I cannot tell which I’m like more:

the puffy mists hurried, harried

the stubborn hill ready-rough

the moor, thistle-bound and stark

I walk on, and breathe
the cold air in and blow
my warm song ever out.

Afloat In Holy Black

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it’s a thousand points of light
stark against the black
reflected in my eyes
refracted in my heart
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a thousand thousand times
in gold, in yellow hues
embedded in the sable soft
stuck in molassess skies

amber warm and endless sloe
i feel the tête-à-tête
vibrate around me, in me too
and I begin to know

that I will never fade, burn out
or disappear in black
for I’m a thousand points of light
afloat in Holy BlackThe stars on the ceiling of the vault. Mosaic (mid 5th)

Take A Chunk Outta Me

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while you draw your hard lines
and box with your words
i struggle in time
with the death-rattle birds

and thoughts like hyenas’
gibbering glee
as those dead zombie jaws
take a chunk outta me

Hopeful In Darkness

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Even though you are dieting
even though you have chosen
gluten-free sugar-free vegan
and no-carb no-larb no spice
no me…I cannot help myself

it’s who I am, what I am
hopeful in darkness
so close and so soft
and the quick quiet sounds
like a grey purring cat
shining mutely in black
and eyes glowing with love

as I measure and stir and I dream
of that sure future that maybe comes
but likely will not
yet I bake, and I smile and I love
a lot

Merely Tossed On Currents

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They brush,
just brush up against,
in currents, drawn close,
and enter inside
my soft tender places
and I think they’ve found
their way there, by choice
and thus become company,
constant companions…
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when, well
really they merely
are come here at random…
in currents.

I try
to latch on and hold
what just isn’t there
and then there are thrashings,
and pushings away…
and silences,

which I
despise even more,
with utter abhorrence
and horrified hushéd
held breath and no oxygen.
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The lesson must then
be learned once again,
that lesson I’ve learned
again and again

the lesson that it,
it is always again
and never at last,
no, it’s never at last.

Eventually, yes,
I can stick with
the smart strategy
of the open hand
letting goodness  just flow

and when
those who float there
on the aimless swift tides
wash in?  Simply flow
and when they wash out,
when on waters they go,
well there is nothing else
that happens to currents
and what’s in them…no.
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How many
waves have these rocks
been washed in to date?
Each one in shape
and form, like, and yet
different and rolling and
rushing and coming and

then boom!! and boom!!
and thunder and boom!!

And then
shatter-spray…splash!
and then?  There’s just water
(no wave), withdraw…and
recede and return…and
remain, waiting wet
for the next…
and the next…
and the next…
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til the
rock finally wears down
in ever-come waves
and gives up the ghost
(holy and profane)
and rejoins the sand
(the dust of the heart
of the earth hung in space)

midst the
stars in the dark
and the songs in the spaces
and heaven awaiting.
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Lacking Intoxication

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your words are like
a frozen lake thawing
in spring not much
and now just
floating there

all burbly ice cubes
clinking against shores
like chips kissing
a cocktail glass
and yet lacking
intoxication

you are undecided
if you will thaw
or just sit there
while fish wait
for you to figure
it out…you out.

You
out

Horizon Beckons: Passages From A Journey Painted in Haiku

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This morning I feel like reblogging my own poem.  I write a lot, and sometimes gems get buried in all the driftwood.

I love this…from the title to the last word it is all in Haiku.


Source: Horizon Beckons: Passages From A Journey Painted in Haiku

Jane Siberry – Love Is Everything (Harmony Version) 

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Maybe it was to learn how to love
Maybe it was to learn how to leave
Maybe it was for the games we played

Maybe it was to learn how to choose
Maybe it was to learn how to lose
Or maybe it was for the love we made

Oh, love is everything they said it would be
And love made sweet and sad the same
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out, aren’t you?

You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving

Maybe it was to learn how to fight
Maybe it was for the lesson in pride
Maybe it was for the cowboys’ ways

Or maybe it was to learn not to lie
Or maybe it was to learn how to cry
Or maybe it was for the love we made

Oh, love is everything they said it would be
And love did not hold back the reins
But love forgot to make me too blind to see
You’re chickening out, aren’t you?

You’re bangin’ on the beach like an old tin drum
I can’t wait ’til you make the whole kingdom come
So I’m leaving

First he turns to you, then he turns to her
So you try to hurt him back
But it breaks your body down
So you try to love bigger, bigger still
But it, it’s too late

So take a lesson from the strangeness you feel
And know you’ll never be the same
And find it in your heart to kneel down and say
I gave my love, didn’t I?

And I gave it big sometimes
And I gave it in my own sweet time
I am just leaving
I am just leaving

Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything
Love is everything

 

Museum Pieces

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They aren’t the same
without your eyes.

My poems, I mean.
They sit like museum pieces
once living and lustrous
but now flat and lifeless
and pinned to the wall
by the absence of eyes
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your eyes
in particular.
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but they
(your eyes and my words)
miss each other

like ships in the night
calling to each other
but passing slow blind
and I miss you terribly
in our existence
of presence
so absent
and me on the outside
with only
my words
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Words Like Poetry

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sometimes words,
in and of their
individual selves
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ring like poems
of the highest order
in the dark night
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and language broad
stretches, blanket-like
across the heart
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so those words
can shine and sing
in their entirety
creetown__eyjafjallajokull_sundown_by_coigach-d2oamdkwords like
“Glasgow Cloisters”
or “Cairnsmore Horizon”
glasgowcloisters1_by_coigach-d1laamvand “Autumn Blood Mist”
or maybe even
“Loch Deep Still Water”
autumnblood_by_coigachEach word a poem
in its complete
voice ever ringing
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Lavender Singing Borealis Heart

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I sat down in lavender fields last summer.
I sat in the sun in the southlands of France.
The wind tossed my hair playfully in its tenderness
made it lift, gleeful delightedly laugh and dance
with fragile soft petals of swift amethyst
and quick to return to the baking brown earth.
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I stood in the icefields surrounded by cold trees
and singing to stars in the High Northland woods.
The wind threw the lavender into the skies above,
dancing on stars and singing in the spaces that
stretch between stars in eternity there and here
just before it fell back into my heart.
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My heart,
my lavender singing
Borealis Heart

And Gold All Underneath

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Behold, the darkness thick and lurking, growing
like ennui in my soul, in my heart doomed and waiting
in this long moment, seemingly forever
it will remain, this painted grey, this second…
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this minute is an hour is a decade
and I exist here…floating in the nothing, growing-shrinking…
it defines me as some-thing…no…as Some-one
whose breaking renders her unbreakable…
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The growing darkness lurking, insubstantial,
The river Ennui flowing out to nowhere, to everywhere
The shocking joy and wonder also shining, in
This painted grey, and gold all underneath.
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A Poem By Susan Spileki

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I like this poetess so much.  This poem touched me in a deep core…I am posting the poem, and then linking to her original post as well.

Shyly, X. Tries Her Hand at Poetry the Morning After

Four hundred nights I must have watched you sleep,
The dying fire catching the gold in your hair.
Your sweet breath rose and fell and rose again
With the rhythm of your dreams I was not in.
I did not see you clearly, not at first.
Experience makes innocence seem weak.
Not until you fought beside me did I see
That you had steel in you and your own light.

You were a secret I felt I had to keep.
I could not ever let you catch me stare
When you, eager, scratched the parchment with your pen
Or dutifully cut our dinner, gill from fin.
But it was the long spring nights that were the worst,
As I lay by the fire, cold and bleak,
Knowing my desire could never be
More than a whispered dream of warm delight.

I could not know how time would make you weep.
The violence of my life you chose to share
Would take your light and heart and try to rend
Them apart, a battle you could not win.
Your pain, my fault; because of my past, cursed.
What changed it all was tragedy. We are Greeks.
We never take life easy. You and he
Married, deflowered, widowed: one day, one night.

The poets say that what we sow, we reap.
I had to make it right. I could not bear
To see you in such pain, my more than friend.
My vengeance had little glory, was messy, thin,
A deed I had to do, although perverse.
And after, it was hard for us to speak
Of any of it. The silence between you and me
Crashed through the trees behind us like a kite.

It took a few more months for you to steep
In your grief, to face the morning air
Without mourning his reaching of life’s end,
His power over you and its long romance.
You threw large stones into the watercourse.
You say you did not dream. Tears on your cheek
Kept my hand from touching your knee
To “comfort,” a self-deception I had to fight.

Then, one evening I heard you moaning in your sleep,
Crying out my name, demanding more!
You were tearing at your clothes and then
Reaching for me. I felt my whole world spin.
I touched your face. I thought my heart would burst
As your eyes flew open, blushing that I could see
All of you now seeing all of me

Finally! At last! And then, all night…

by Susan Spilecki 2015
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https://buildingapoem.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/the-problems-of-the-epic-fantasy-fan-poet-reportage-character-and-style/

Her and Me and Your Futility

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When you shattered my heart
delicate globe shot thru with
tunnels and annals
and columns and canals…

when you stormed at me
on me in me with your
stoney snow of bitter black
granite and jagged icy nuggets

of frozen flecks so broken
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She reached with fingers eager
to bleed upon the bloodless drained
edges of my torn and shattered soul,
fingers white and tender to the slash

and picked each cutty-edgy razor piece
up off the quick-sand floor
and put them all together, jumbly
but Her pattern knowing, more

than what I was before
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And then She made a hole thru which
the eye can see, the heart can hear
kaleidoscope music and dance
of Her and me and your futility

and so I spin now, caught in moments
stark, or velvet, or even gentle fuzzy
and simply refract light from the
million shattered pieces reassembled

in mosaic magic, kaleidoscopic and supreme.
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I Am A Cello

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I am a cello
alone in my beauty
inhabiting curves

like mountains inhabit
the space all around
so bright, luminous

and longing for hands
and legs all around
and the touch of fingers

on my strings tuned just so
like winds on the faces
of those shining ramparts

of stone, ice and lichen
that fall to the earth
in splashes of granite

and music like lava
slowed down by indifference
but still singing loudly

under the rainbow
across those tuned strings
and across my heart

for I am a cello

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In The Ups and Downs

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I’m so glad I found You
(or did You find me)
here in the ups and the downs

The stairs are the same
the doors lead the same
in heat, in the dust and the brown

You carry those weights
responsibilities
like water jugs, like tambourines

but still find Your way
to find where I am
and give me Your heart, Your heart clean
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