Category Archives: Redemption

A Journey Inside

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One thing I catch a lot of grief for: I have not travelled internationally. There are a lot of complicated small reasons, and one large one…namely, that activity is the purvey of the privileged and powerful and wealthy, and I am none of those things.

I also am a bit nervous about it, so there is that.

But other than Mexico (Tijuana) and Canada (various provinces), I have only travelled the USA.

But in my region? Likely I know the roads better than most people and areas intimately and in detail…and it never ceases to amaze how there are discoverable territories right here under our noses while we fly across oceans to skim the surface of a place and then think we are seasoned travellers and oh so chic and diverse…

Here is a quote that sorta sums up what I am driving at:

“There is also a deeper, archetypal layer to [Brendan’s] journey, which resonates with our own inner Pilgrim—the part of ourselves drawn to make long voyages in search of something for which we long. This is the inward geography of the journey, and one where we may physically travel only a few feet or miles, but where the soul moves in astronomical measure.”

— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics 

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Hidden In The Language

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I am tired of the surface and the shit, I am tired of facades and phoniness

I am leaving for the day, into myself.  If you wanna know where, listen to this and follow the clues

Across The Blooming Sky

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i stand watching
that train rushing
flying by fast
and furious
ethereal

everyone on it is thin,
transparent and afraid
to just step off and grow
thick and green and
gravitational

spinning across
the blooming sky
and singing in
the solid dirt

 

Medicine Woman

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Medicine Woman Listen
to your truest self
clearer than new water
and your wisest voice
humming ‘neath the surface

Medicine Woman Trust
yourself with tenderness
softer than snowfall
and give yourself
the gift of grace
like tender moonglow
peeking thru
the darkest clouds

Medicine Woman Heal
in the shining
pregnant present
by walking thru
your shadow
hollow past
unafraid to
look into the heart
of this becoming

Medicine Woman Believe
in yourself enduring
like wind, your inner strength
like rain, your divine Know
awareness like the stars
the Promise of Beyond

Medicine Woman Imagine
your glittering goals, resources
diamonds, move toward them
in waves, sails raised
in those winds
creativity your calling
and your deepest well

Medicine Woman Celebrate
your Holy Years believing
your inner self, remember
your outer self as well
is beautiful like trees
that dance in glory time
with hands raised to the sky
in greens touching the Blue

Medicine Woman Love
yourself like mountains
love the clouds, the sun
and value vital friendships
of other truest women
all of your Bright Days

MEDICINE WOMAN Listens to the needs of her truest self and wisest voice Trusts and respects herself with tenderness and grace Heals in the present by walking through her past Believes in herself and her enduring inner strength with a divine awareness Imagines her goals and moves toward them using her resources and creativity Celebrates her years believing her inner and outer self is beautiful just as it is Loves herself and values the friendships of other women in her life:

The Back Of Forever

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i long for it
the feel of that
soft silk, hot
from the press
smelling of spice
and hints of
far away orange
scrawling over scarlet

the summer breeze
which sings of forever
but implies coming sorrow

and hear it
there in around
the dry and straining
vines digging in
stealthy red earth
jory loam and chocolate
windblown loess laurelwood

and long
i sit long
for it,
that wind
from the back
of forever

and here and gone.

A Whole Bucket Of Water

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three women
are left widows

Ruth
Naomi

Orpah
(hers a different story)
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one left (missing tooth in the wind’s mouth)
one bereft (missing river in the bank) and
one rooted in the cleft (present)

Naomi without water
on fire with despair
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Ruth without a plan
on fire in the air
choosing simply never leaving
just simply remaining…

there
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no matter what the cost
allegiance to the weakest
boasting in the vulnerable
feeding the dessicated
and comforting the desperate
and calming those who rave

when women stand together
for the sake of one
no matter what the cost
they stand, they hold…they save
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it reminds me of the marvel
the wonder and the mystery
of Jesus in humanity
at home in shared adversity…

we all of us “Naomis”
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As Jesus walked among us
“the very least of these”
and chose to share our horror
and chose to face our death
and bears now on His body
the marks of His great love

He shows God’s solidarity
He is our loving Ruth
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The Difference Between

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the difference between living and dying
can be found in the difference between
the Grand Canyon and the Milky Way
Another way to say it is

mutual dependence
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Living               Mutual Dependence               Dying

We need the solidarity of the reaching skies
in swathes of silk and shades of grey
to close that gap completely
all the way
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Solidarity…
Mutual Dependence…

trump cards over torture and unbridled ego…
habits that engulf so many with such ease and lack of effort

Adversity sometimes coaxes out
the best and the most beautiful
in human beings but only if
the sky can partner them
thru the gap
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between

that unrelieved thirst
that threatens to engulf

and the utter madness
of misdirected sanity.

Ah…and the skies like banners unfurl
The Difference Between
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On Living The Gospel

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It is not so much our slogans and statements, our creeds and commitments as it is the way we walk them out with our flesh and blood.  Documents are empty hulls of potential…and every single day that we truly live those commitments we give them flesh from our flesh and blood from our blood.
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The challenge posed by staunch commitment to broken people is that you then will have dealings with broken people.
This can be troublesome if you unconsciously expect that broken people will live and act unbroken. If you dribbled a crystal globe, and it shattered, and then when you touched a piece and it cut you or poked you, the challenge you would be facing would be full blown in how you reacted to being cut.
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That is where the reality of creeds, statements and slogans truly emerges…the ones who react in shock or outrage or horror are the ones who thought that globe was a basketball. The ones who recoil in horror or anger or disgust are the ones who believed it was a soccer ball.
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That is the distilled essence of walking out the Gospel: realizing that it is a message that attracts the hungry, the lost, the broken and it is not the creed which transforms but the living Presence of Christ IN that creed that does the work of healing and restoration.
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Which means to live the Gospel is to be inconvenienced, to be confronted with wounds that stink and are infected, to change the emotionally and spiritually incontinent…and to do it in patient joyful tenderness.

Someone can make their point with stern words and terse actions…it is not hard whatsoever to understand a point that has been made…and someone else can walk their love with gentle hands and consistent presence, and then ask for whatever they want as the broken heal, and slings are discarded and casts are cut off and the lame begin to walk.
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And then…deeper…closer…at the pulsing core…the revelation that is couched in those words from the cross “Forgive them Father…they do not know what they are doing.”

Those words have such compassion and understanding in them…they assume that most people would do good things if they REALLY KNEW the impact their troubling actions are having.

It’s such a good thing that we are coming to the place where we can even see that our statements and commitments and creeds have a unique calling to be expressed in our current climate…

it’s an even better thing when we count the cost…

it’s the best thing of all when we keep going and the word(s) become flesh.
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Currents & Tides

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there is a tide, red and rough, a red tide
there is a sea current deep and dark blue
they twist together on Time’s spinning loom
or are they the needles that Fate clacks together
to spin out, to weave our quick times?
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deep in my blood flows a tide and a current
twining in red and in blue and the echos
and rumours of beauty are driftwood in me
remnants from dream islands not yet discovered
but whispering of That Place where All Is Well
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and the ancient and old, the fearful and bold
walk the earth in my blood or sail in the blue currents
to woodlands and hills and to mystery legends
returned in the Hope and the Promise of paradise
tidal and twining insistent in me
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and Roses

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sometimes I wonder about my life
here in darkness, here with bones
here in this hole in the dust.

who knew that a hole could be full
of anything but blank and black?
It’s full of me, and full of bones, and back

lifted, arched towards the sky
an umbrella raised to shelter some
deep work of resurrection and roses.

and roses.
Incarnate Dead
Roses, and Holy Saturday
that is my life, caught between
the knitting needles of time and its end…

hung, strung, in one
big long wait in darkness
and no sound and no breath.

outside, I hear rumors of things
like stars wheeling and cards dealing
and people crying, lonely sighing

and roses.
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“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

 

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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Crushed In Switzerland

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that illusion is breaking up
like ice squeezed tight and crushed
in the fists of inevitability
and spring

there is no such thing as neutral
in a world pulled tight, pulled taut
between that endless winter
cold and bleak
and ravenous in black
consuming every weak
meek heart and undefended

and the coming
time of harvest
when all things
are marked
paid in full
and the ever-day
dawns without the sun
and sings unto the moon

“olly olly oxen free!!”

But you, like the ice
must be broken up
must choose to become
either water, or air
or forever frozen
in evil’s horrid grip

You must become
crushed in Switzerland
and thus set free forever

In The Heart Of My Heart

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there is a small living fluttery thing,
inside me, inside my heart.
in the heart of my heart it dwells turbulently
colored yellow and red and green tufted wings
all hidden in browns and lonesome strange things.

it pummels against the bars of its cage
inside me, inside my heart.
in the heart of my heart it aches and it bleeds
from its rushes and thrashings at bars that won’t break
all the loneliest ache of my soul.
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if i could discover a lost sacred knife
and cut my way into my heart
in the heart of my heart i would slice, i would gash
a bloody doorway rent with one razor slash
so that bird could take wing at long last.

crystal slim blade and dark russet wings
inside me, inside my heart.
in the bosom of my heart twine two holy things
the one who beats at me, the one that cuts free
in the heart of my heart of my heart.
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Between Shadow and Reality

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Your cannon eyes thunder without a sound
and the incoming scintillating round
whistles to me, till I look just in time
to get knocked backwards
into Kingdom come

you know, that tenuous tenebrous
gold-lined twilight of the soul.
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It’s not nearly so glamorous
(or as agonizing) as that place
St John got so cross about.

This is the place that sits
on the dusty outskirts
of that land he called
the Dark Night of the Soul.
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The wind blows across the mouth
of those cannon eyes and I swear
that in the mindless cheeping
of the springtime frogs I can hear
John Wayne out-shouting
John of the cross, declaring

“there’s a new sheriff in town, pilgrim!”
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The laws and logic of this place
hang in that suspension of being,
where soul and body swim
and are different and liquid.

Sometimes you eat the temporal
and sometimes the temporal eats you
while eternity is always hard to bear.
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Shell-shocked and alone, I remind myself
that the logic of God is so different
to the logic of humanity.

Yet I still chase after shadows
a haunting enticement of so much
substance without being and
the substance of myself.

where reality lies
and where shadows seduce.
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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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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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RECongress “Transgender Lives in the Church” Talk (Transcript)

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Wow.

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever read, and I cannot recommend it enough. Please please PLEASE take the time to read this.

Thank you Anna…brilliant and beautiful like you.

Such A Long Way Home

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I have such a long way home
such a long league of the sea
the last one, longest of them all
as I swim home to my True me.

I have come so far across
the desert sands so red, so hot
no water any where to dip
my tongue, my pen, my deepest thought
But here I am, the sand and sea
embracing in an endless dance
where there is both and neither here
as I transform in this last chance

to swim the promised depths, my home
in waters full of mystery
I have such a long way home
but I will get there, true and free

“That Is A She”

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window
my home lies
deep in the forest
near the roots
of the mountains

it is a space
from which eternity
pours effortlessly
right alongside sorrow,
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longing and giving
and receiving,
that one unity
of space and going

to and from
that receptive deep
opening within
passing from
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this world of woe
to a deep place
that’s not a place
but the echo

of my home
deep in the forest
near the roots
of the mountains
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Salty Faithful Circle-Heart

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The seasons of my heart are on display
thru the rain-flecked windshield
and the squeaky blinks
of the wiper blades

thru the tinted window glass
underneath electric humming singing
of the sleepy crickets sleeping off
a sunny lazy hangover day

thru the tines of the thrumming rake
so red like my cheeks and sharp
like my nose running to the tune
of winter’s coming tramps
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thru the falling snow so silent
against the dark so thick, transcendent
pointing to the circle never-ending
the seasons of my ever-changing heart
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thru the wonder and the hope
thru the suffering and love
thru the dying and the crying
thru the healing and the rising

salty faithful circle-heart
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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.
Цифровая репродукция находится в интернет-музее Gallerix.ru
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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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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That Line?

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that line?
right there.

the one stretching out
from somewhere to nowhere

i crossed it
but not just stepped across

on dancing feet
i danced across

and caper on its grave

That Sacred Mountain

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“I reckon she tours 45, 47 weeks a year” he drawled
that soft spoken voice crawled out of wiry limbs
and a throat red and wattled and jiggly while he
wagged his chin.

“Why, she may clear two hundred thousand a year”
and those words drew my eyes lifted, my ears
and I couldn’t decide if he was more
Richard Farnsworth or Robert Duvall or
just a one-off salt knowing everything about nothing.
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“What’s it gonna take, til she strikes it hot, clear
and becomes the next Joan Baez?”

I stifled my own mirth, jammed it deep
like musket balls tamped down the barrel
of an old long-rifle and lowered my gaze
like the sharp winter moon bending to earth
to harvest tides and turns and yearns.

But when she came out she was clothed in midnight.
She wore night sky round her shoulders adorned
with stars golden and shimmering in arpeggios, waves
rippling, flowing as she mounted the stage all gawky
adolescent walking into high school for the first time,
all snowy egret eternal and established and impossibly thin.
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Thin, lined with years like irrigation ditches dug
by needy and loving hands from her dirt and her face
a sharp, flat smooth blade fierce, angular and unrelenting

until she sang, and
Mama picked her up and
she became more diamond brilliant and
turning than tossed tomahawk whirling fast.
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She spoke
of the Sacred Mountain,
she spoke
of Blue Lake
and the Holy Hallowed
ground made ready
by the steady
devoted padding footsteps
of the people of the lake.

Her voice was red,
red smears on blacks and deeps
crimson moans in velvet folds
and bright cardinal ever song
over the burlap of everlasting deep.
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Snow, rain, wind, beauty
swirled her round and fell
from her slopes in glitter-jets
and flocky-flecks and cloudy bunches,
fell to our listening hearts
yearning in the darkness.

And my tears fell as I heard her,
tasted her in this present sacred singing moment
while she spun her tales right down the rails
and into our true heart amber and yearning
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and I recalled the Sanctuary she built for me
from her pain and need and naked suffering trust
that temple of holy hurt that I dwelt in, grieving
mourning the coming loss of love and sweet devotion

I dared not leave that place then
I did not want to leave this place now
but she reeled them off and some brand new
and rose from that folding chair grander
than any sovereign throne fashioned
from naked blades or fragrant petal

RedRedRedRedRedRedRedRed

And like a mountain
just up and walking off
she strode, spare glorious
slopes cloaked in snow
and feet clothed in rain
and wreathed in wet and

the blossoms of many trees
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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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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.

I Am Eve

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shhh…let your words speak silence
between the worlds I travel in
while holding sacred tension
in my loins, my heart and core
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do not knock me into knowing!
I must dance, delicate and light
in order to Unknow and enter
Mysteries Highest, Deepest Delight.

I mustn’t find my way to answers,
rather, forget to remember them
and lose my questions in the
silence spoken silent
and resounding.
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I am not ignorant,
I am not naive!
I am not foolish…
my name is Eve
and I am crown
to all creation
and forging trails
unknown into what
he knew and
then discarded and
I must simply
thus Unknow.
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Standing on the diamond threshold
at the pearl crossroads
living emerald heart
and pulsing ruby blood

My body is the gateway
and my soul’s forgotten
questions and the music
playing deep within
celestial night.

I am Eve.
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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)

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

Truth And Declaration

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Fire races
thru the velde
across my heart,
and our communications,
conversations give way before
those sooty hot and greasy flames.

We run,
we must accept
the invitations we are given
to relinquish our agenda in the burn
and let our swelled importance and our egos
be consumed once and for all, there and finally gone.
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Invitations
to strip down and get
to what is most important….

At the river
we see our plans
are not as important
as we think they are, and we?
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We are not
as important as
we think we are…are we?

And so
we turn around
and face the hungry flames
and rather than our headlong run
we dance and rise above on fire, on tongues
of fire, on amber tongues of truth and declaration.
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Meditations On Suffering

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The journey difficult and hard,
black and blue and bitter cold
upon the road thru long days old
and vales of death and darkness.

In hardship and travail we walk
and most of us will quit before
we reach the end, and yet that end
is still a mystery so vast…
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It strikes me that of all the ways
to make appeal to human hearts
They chose to magnify the cost
and left rewards as afterthoughts.

What exactly is Their point?
What is promised with this pain
and sacrifice…and…what?  Comes next?
More mumble mumbo turbo trouble?
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Fatigue and hardship hand in hand
in times of darkness shared in light?
Not the cheery words that humans
think they need and want, but turn from.

Jesus looked at His best friends
and told them that in this hard world
they could be promised suffering
and then He spoke a miracle:

“Have courage, My dearest friends,
faint not! For I have overcome
the world and all that is there in”
And pain’s denied sour last say!
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Somehow the Son of God joins us
within it all and thru it all
So what exactly is success?
Is it simply winning? Tell me!

Because something shines beneath!
Something lurks Gold and Beyond!
I smell victory past defeat
and virtue is its own reward.
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The Forest Has Swallowed My Name

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The forest has swallowed my name, my face
Just like so many things before me
I entered the woods with my heart full of grace
but the forest just gulped and *poof* without a trace
I was lost, deep inside a birch tree.

I like to think it’s the same, just the same
as with so many things, just perhaps…
It mimics when God came to us, Incarnate
and They chained Themself to us both early and late
in the wood of our grim dark collapse.
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And so now we wait, here in the wood deep and dark
We share all things in this broken wheel
Them and us and the tree
and what was and will be
Bound together forever we kneel.

Sometimes I come out of the forest, I do.
I walk in the world full and free.
But the wood and the God go with me as I walk
And They soar as I wander like some Divine hawk
Cus the forest, the God, swallowed me.
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You Who Accuse…

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…you say that I think I can do what I want and pronounce it all forgiven by my belief in my “make-believe god”?  You say that I think I can justify whatever I want and call it a “Road to Damascus” experience?

You think wrong.

You will never know the depth of the pain and sorrow for each and every time that I have fallen short…

…and you also will never know the hurt and pain you caused me with your false accusations of abuse and physical harm, your violent anger and threats of murder…your false memories and placing words in my mouth that I never said or even thought…

You will not have a way of knowing that even in your falseness I see that as my own fault because I did not do a good enough job to birth you into wholeness and understanding of truth…and instead, you go on forever about things that are so insane as to be befuddling to me.

No.  I am blood guilty of sins of commission, and sins of omission as well.

But I place my faith and my trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and in His Cross…and I ask Him to see me thru.
I trust Mama to Defend me, Advocate for me, Sustain me, Console me, and Comfort me.
I will do so all of my days, no matter how good or bad I was each day, no matter how deeply I fail or how high I fly.

This will never change, though I hope and pray that I will, continually becoming more like Jesus’ Lovely Heart by the Grace of God poured out liberally.

And there are others too…who read here like Nicodemus…you from the past, who used to come out into my working environment so you could criticise me, call me unsubmitted, tell me how I had no rule over my soul, and basically oppose every thing I attempted…I know you read here and think me tragically deceived, fallen away, or (one dude, you think this) in the clutches of “sexual sin”…

you think that being transgender is an act of sexual fulfillment, which absolutely cracks me up…like, I guffaw when I consider your ignorance and assumption.

You all have missed me in the midst of your judgement.

Here is me:  this song forever, along with the other ones I have posted this morning.

If you want to understand me and be in my heart, you must understand and accept these songs.  Whether or not you adhere to the songs is not my concern…that is up to you and your own convictions and choices.  I seek to love and accept you regardless, from you who say you dreamed of murdering me for years to you who shake your head and waggle your beard because you have judged me outcast and shunned.

Sometimes I need to make these declarations.

Today is one of those days…and I am still here…like Papillon…I am still here…clinging to the precious Bleeding Side of Jesus.

 

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/

Burning Thru Revelation And Gold

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somewhere beyond
‘life as usual’
somewhere…
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fish may be learning
to see the very water
in which they are submersed…
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it’s a gift they seek
to give themselves,
a gift fleetingly
consuming time
and space like
ravenous gilled
furnaces burning
through revelation
and gold…
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a scaly examen
looking backwards
into a future
coming hard
round the bend
and thus having
open eyes in this
lurking present
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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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Born of Bud And Blossom

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Amongst the thorns so sharp and bristley-bitter
and nestled in the crackley canes and stems so brittle
I sprang from buds clenched tight with fright and gripping
their green possessive cloaks around their high strung hearts
so pink, so red, so soft and velvet fragrant
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The sun pried without mercy, without quarter
and his hot fiery fingers plucked and pulled
and deep inside those shrouding shawls veridian
the pulsing surging petals pushed back hard
and cracked the sticky emerald shells of shame
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To blossom in the air renewed by wand’ring winds
and sway and dance, be wooed by every chance, to bend
low to the ground and then high straining for the heavens
releasing me, the fragrance strong, unquenchable
of grace and beauty, peace and love and joy.
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Yes.  I was born of bud and robust blossom
that fell away and left me hanging here
a kiss upon the cheek of summer memory
a promise in the winter of the spring
a herald of the Love of Heaven’s King.
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On Mountain’s Face

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Across its face the river ran
all liquid grey and velvet-slate,
fell down the cheek of hanging cliff,
around the lakey eyes of blue…
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And out the other end it flew,
soft down on downy breasts of green,
thru meadows and thru softest thatch…
The river gathered fertile force

and ran down legs, insistent as
the wind that pushes clouds around
the world in days, it poured out fast,
it ran down mountain shins…at last
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it reached the heart of deepest seas.
It reached the inmost core of me.
It fed me with its journey-feast
and quenched my thirst to be set free…
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And then I my me offered up
beneath the summons of the sun
to become clouds pushed round the world…
And then, on mountains, me unfurled…

To fall and feed with heaven’s grace
And run again on mountain’s face.
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The Final Coming Thaw

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I am floating on free seas held captive
in the ice of your remove and shrewd appraisal.

My heart passion like living rock moving
red and liquidy, red like plasma pulsing
scorchy and inexorably drawn in hungry
longing for the icy stillness of you.

And where we meet, I melt
you, steamy/dreamy, and yet
you run quick-cold to the reaches
and rime-rimmed rocks and reefs…

And there I sit, captive in you
and waiting for the thaw of Love
to be finally completed.

Sanctuary– For JD

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Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!

 

This Speckled Star-lit Night

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Ohhh Love,
it longs with me for thee
even though we’ve forgotten
thy name’s shape and feel and sound
and the way it breathes in me,
the way it speaks to me
in whispers, like wind
whispering between the clouds
to speak to earth
in breaths from beyond
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like the way
you touch my ankle
when we sit upon
the floor there,
by the fire
in the speckled-star-lit night
gathered close
outside the house
just like a mama bird who nestles
down so gentle on Her chicks…
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I miss you terribly
and ache so,
ever in this moment.

City of Bones

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Barcelona,
oh City of Bones
laying hot and dry in the sun
beating down on streets, on tombs
and tiles so red over white and so hot
and shimmering radiant still,
oh ye bones!
barcelona_above___revisited_by_coigach-d9h3eegBarcelona, City of Bones
Baking before the gates of the Sun,
I sacrificed my purity for thee, such as it might be
(my purity, not my sacrifice)

Purity…
of thought,
of mind,
of heart and soul,
purity of
song and deed
and strong intention.

Barcelona, my sacrifice
so droll, so dirty is actually
sterility masquerading
as purity and thus is merely

the absence of jazz,
the absence of spice,
the absence of that
jagged noise of exultation
and thus there is no
purity and nothing
quite acceptable
enough.
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Gladly do I lay it there
(my sacrifice, not my purity)
on the bony altar of your burning eyes
hung there above the freezing flames
of your sharp haughty sniff and thus
do I seek sanctuary in the fires of
your hunger, games appeased and satiated.
Image 002 And these words I leave
(my longing words so red, so sharp)
along the edge of your wet teeth,
hard teeth so white and glistening,
and there, blurred,

there they mingle
with your breath,
with the liquid you
and thus become
inflammable and ready
to leap up like the Phoenix
to take their ease in air and be
us, there, us there
be us there in the air.
Rise

And this city here,
right in plain sight and swaying
in the salty breeze blowing in stiff
off the racing aching blue seas,
this City of Bones dancing on air

with my words
there in air
like banners in the wind,
like thirsty golden kerchiefs
flying midst meteors, comets,
midst stars in the night

flapping in the solar flares
and furies of the sun and lapping
up the finest purest beams
of silver, argent grey moonlighttumblr_nw4iwesgqi1s2clnyo1_1280

And those fires
(of the night)
my words those silver fires
streaking, shooting across
the vast expanse of velvet
black thick nothing, silver flames
curling, licking at the bones
of the City hanging
in the deep dark void
shimmer And the music rounding there amidst
those handy banners sounds like owls
talking soft and hooty in the wind-torn branches
and our hearts are slender limber flexing long flagpoles
and we fly our flags of love like maidens flying
tokens for our champions…tumblr_o03sa8dubM1unv2uco1_1280Together we all

(words and banners and bones)

shine upon your battlements

Barcelona
City of Bones
tumblr_o0nbw71noA1r2zs3eo1_1280