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Tag Archives: Poem
‘Neath Marvel Skies
I sit, quiet in morning, in a fuzzy gold dawn of…yet another.
This day, like them all, like none before, stretches out horizontally
(my cramped and sleepy legs), stretches out vertically
(my free unfurling soul), hums with eternity’s pulsing center
and calls my name with its wafting breezy mouth.
My heart pulls, rises with the sleepy sun and warms
to its task of pulling me up to the easy estate of becoming.
Flowers send fragrant potions in answer to beckoning
gestures from cloudy gentle giants floating in graceful skies
bluing up for warmer dances coming when the sun opens its eyes.
There is a space for you here…beside me on this soft and leafy bench.
But you must turn a quarter turn, and step three times to your left and hop,
and fall up out of that dreamy safe sameness and routine slumber.
You must say the words and rub that dull and tinny lamp
that stands beside your desk, your bed, your chair, and then…come here.
The air shimmers, blades and branches sense your approach, your desire.
They lean, beckoning, they sing and lark in this breezy vibrant dawn.
There is quiet at the heart of this singing day, but deeper, within that quiet
burns an ever-flaming core of wonder-song, facets flashing, gleaming, fiery
like some magic carpet woven from Auroras and last night’s wild starry strays…
I wait in the quiet, I wait in the core, I wait ‘neath these plush and pearly-gold skies
swimming before a broadening emboldened sun. I wait for you…
I feel you turn, your first, second, third step, your hop…
I see rose air displace and bulge and nearly tear,
I hear that lamp purring ‘neath your eager hand!
And I join the flowers, blades, branches,
birds to herald your arrival, here ‘neath marvel skies!
Bury My Head in the Sky
My wet red heart beats in time to music
flying in soaring skies and wonder-winds…
it is my womb, my temple and matrix,
at long last no more a stranger to myself.
Contractions, pangs, contraction, pang…
beating out my birthing, my being, my life,
long brownly-buried in dry dirt dusky,
deeper than an ostrich can see on its best blind day!
Strains, arpeggios, wildly dance and swirl
in bluey blasts and exultations and voices lift in high chorus
and wallow in jammy joy, crooning to me, babe in transit
from womb to shiny bearing-burst to tomb.
I, halfling of becoming, in and out of grave ground,
fidget fast and twiddle and twitch, touchy and unleashed
and free soon flying and yet bound, sommat
still in cloddy clutches of dust to dust.
But here…in this middle earth ethereal and having boundaries not yet charted…
I glance with gleaming glad eyes all round and see the ostriches burrowed down
and crammed, obliviate wings futile and folded and settled, serenaded
by secure and intentioned monotone unknowing.
I lift my voice and my words, and they drag dirty distressing fingers
from the tender white curve and arch of my throat
and my song squirms and heaves and lurches forth from fleshy grave
to live again in light and take its place in that Thundrous Sky Music Throng!
Words, familiar and yet never heard or said or sung spring
glad and fresh and ageless from my lips, and my yearning theme flashes brilliant
and dances on voices and notes, sings of birth and never wonders why
but simply shouts resounding “Bury my head in the Sky!”
Perspectives on Procrastination
Doggerel has a certain junk-food appeal to me at times…and other times it just crowds into my head, like the Kool-Aid “Man” in the commercials, busting thru the walls of meaningful metaphors and symphonic similes and aristocratic assertive absurdly abundant alliterations!
“BOOM!! DOGGEREL GIRL ON THE SCENE!” giggles
Here is a poem that was inspired by comments about procrastination…I feel that procrastination is an indulgence of the lazy moment…so here is some doggerel style poetry: Doggerel poetry is the indulgence of the lazy poetic moment!
And yet on that Day when you’ve run
the race, and when your life is done
you’ll think of lazy days and sun
and of last night and that song’s fun.
Essays live but briefly here
and haunt us pre-birth with a fear,
and dread of birthing them is near
when all they are? Pain in our rear!
So lift up laughter as you write
and scribble smart things, neat and tight
and while you create, let your sight
fix on that Day of vast Delight!
(oooohhhh…doggerel is such sweet sorrow!!! LOLOLOL)
🙂
Love, Charissa
An Armful of Loneliness
As you wandered,
boppin and beboppin
to the buzzy sounds
that breathed into your ears
the codes, the messages and melodies
of the age,
your earbuds
wrapped around you,
wrapped you in snaky coils.
You were royalty,
rich in plumage and
arms full of
your booty plundered
from the aisles and
displays of the latest…
cool, collected and sure.
I smiled and nodded
with sparkle eyes and hope,
and you saw,
flared your nostrils
as you caught
my prole-parole
scent and manner.
You graciously tipped
your china-delicate chin,
white and chisled
and went on your way,
arms full, head full, ears full…
of what? Trinkets? Treasure?
But I followed at a distance,
careful and sideways
so you wouldn’t see,
and when you trembled,
when you sighed,
when your heart
rose unbidden and cried out
“Is this all, is this all”,
I heard your subsonic scream,
and dogs howled.
And then I knew that
what looked like
an armful of wonder
was only
an armful of loneliness.
The Black of Night: A modern psalm after David
Sometimes, in the black of night, haunts and ghosts of long ago
return and bite me…in the heart.
Their teeth, no form or body, sound slashy and ugly dull discord
and pierce me, hurt me, haunt me and my soul runs panicked and stampeded.
Their corpusant claws, red wreathed and skin-ister
slash my gut and leave their venom of panic and despair.
I groan, under decades of their torment, and futiley
stopper my ears with torn fingers and tears.
“Miscreant! Blight! Dark Blemish on dark night!
You are nothing! You should die! You are ridiculous and alone!”
And they also say other things much worse.
I writhe, squirm, and cry out in desperate agony,
and have never known anything else but to stand and endure.
Even when it is poison-pitch-black, I remember You Mama,
Your promises and Your comfort, which has preserved me.
And in the morning I rise, exhausted, defeated, and torn
but still, my “no-matter-what” is intact and strong.
Jaws aching from grinding anxiety and heart dripping
the blood of wounds and the sweat of grim life, I tremulously sing
You are my refuge and my strength, and as the troubadour sang
I will follow you…and see Your goodness in the land of the living!
Judge Me Not
This poem (or is it more just verse?) is attempting to say that if you ever find yourself looking at the outward actions of someone and coming to a conclusion about their motive or heart, it is a dead giveaway that you have unconsciously or consciously begun to trust in your own self as the source of righteousness and goodness, and have poised yourself as the standard of measure…otherwise how would you come to such a conclusion about the person’s heart??
A wise man told me once, “We judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions.”
Wow. So true, right? No, instead, when you are filled with the wonder and majesty of the glorious work Jesus FINISHED when He became our sacrifice and ransom, and when you truly grasp that when you say Yes to Them it is no longer you who live, but Christ in you, and that ALL old things are passed away and you are a brand new never have been creature that is a human being incarnating Very God…well, then…you are free, to simply be Their Ambassador of Love and Mercy and Kindness.
Love Mercy
Do Justly
Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa Grace
Judge me not by the deeds I do, e’en if they tower tall
Or if they glower and echo failure and show all the ways that I fall
Judge me not by my actions, for actions only tell a part,
Judge instead the Deeds of Them whose works show the True Heart.
The True Heart gives, in lavish ways, compassion, joy, and grace,
It knows our frame, that we are dust, and knows we lost our face,
It responsibility takes for every step astray
And makes a way for us lost sheep to run from night to day.
When actions you look only at, you show the god you trust,
Your own soul’s will and naming good, your own judgement…your lust
To at the core be your own captain, commanding your own soul
And God’s Name becomes vanity as you crash on ego’s shoals.
So judge me not, for I will fall beneath your scrutiny
But look instead at Lady Grace, at Jesus, at the sea
Of Love unceasing, perfect and fulfilling all the law
Indwelling life in me…judge Them…and then kneel down in awe.
When The Well Runs Dry
Sometimes, when the ache of the world
conspires with my own, and twines with terrible tedium,
my faith is stomped into a mudhole and kicked dry
and left for dead.
I lay, limp and without vigor,
dull and without sparkle
and I watch the forest denizens draw near hopefully,
wanting to drink of clear and glittery waters sweet and cold
But something smells off…me…fetid wounds and sores clotted and festered
smelling of fever and sorrow…and death?
So they slide away as if to not be seen, nor ever to have known
this well once so lively that is struggling and ambushed by thieves.
But I see them go, having crossed the road first
to avoid being sullied by the silly and sick well
that is failing to provide accustomed sustenance.
And I wish for just a drop…of water from another well?
My Samaritan? Are you out there? Can you follow your nose,
endure the stench of sweat and sorrow and despair?
Can you take me to That Inn, and pour oil in,
Just a kind word, when the well runs dry…
Becoming
Dirty with me,
dirty with Your love for me,
You plunge Your tender hands
into the messy miry clay I am.
You grip,
grab,
grapple, and
pedal,
whirling me,
spinning and scattered
becoming
moving from
Your heart to me.
…becoming…
Becoming?
Mama,
with pain pulsing, and
Ache throbbing and
that void crying within?
Becoming?
Mama, with
the spin and
the pull…
And WET! Ugh!
You drench me, and
drown my
Objections
(which meander forth like mewling kitty-cries)
in floods of word,
of blood-sacred and red,
of water alive…
Til I am soft and tender too,
and moldable by You.
I cannot but trust You,
Mama, Faithful Potter,
busy and intricate,
tender and tough,
Teacher and Creator.
Yet Fire awaits, I fear…
no, I know.
Fire to dry,
to bake,
to cure,
prepare…
And then use,
filling and pouring,
and all the while
Feeling
Your hand on me, and
Your life in me,
and seeing flowers
bloom and blossom…
so my Mama,
take me in hand,
and redeem my days
in Your Becoming.
My Heart’s Dirge
I woke today,
again,
and sad.
Fingers clenched,
toes curled, and
palms scarred
by my fingernails’
cruciform
crescent tattoos.
Another day of longing…
wash, rinse, repeat.
I had hoped
that someone
would notice my pain,
feel my heartache,
care for my sorrow.
But no one did,
lost in their own
worlds of hurt.
I was glad and sad
when I declared in faith
and many liked that.
To encourage others is good.
But when I was open,
transparent,
silence held court and
there was nothing…
no words,
mute embarrassment at
my open vulnerable mewlings?
Distaste for naked cries?
No hand to take,
no smile to receive…
My Daddy told me,
when I was little,
and mourning
“Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep, and you weep alone.”
I always hoped
he was mistaken,
but I think
he must have
been right.
I’m gonna press on,
give my smiles,
my words,
my hands,
such as they are…
I’m stubborn that way,
I guess.
Song of You
(this was written in 1979…and I just found it, and I was struck that it might well have been written to myself, hidden and lonely and imprisoned in all the things that I was bound by…shame, loneliness, distrust, abandonment, alienation…and all that in the midst of a life that appeared to be vital and outgoing and faithful and fruitful!
remember Constance…be kind to every single person you meet! You never know what burdens they carry, and what the pebble of one word might do, with eternal effect.)
Song of You
I see you
not with my eyes
but with my heart
a face no darkness can consume,
no light can outshine,
with me always through-out time.
I hear you
not with my ears
but with my eyes.
I hear what lies behind the syllables
I see them, feel them deep inside
words you could never speak or hide.
I am touched
not by your hands
but by your thoughts,
feelings caution can’t erase
nor careless caprice…
you give me peace.
Declaration
In the midst of pain, lonely ache and terror,
in the midst of the grasping clingy gloom and
thistley despair raining in cold fire around me,
I choose to lift my eyes up, lift up my heart,
lift my lips up and again resolve to sing and give my
pearls of praise in offerings of trust…and faith…and standing.
Resolved: to stand, weeping though I may be, but not to turn back,
not to be silent, stand and wait. Wait. wait.
For the Goodness of the Lord to rise again, and again.
I recall the old song:
“We’ve come this far by faith! Leaning on the Lord, trusting in His Holy Word,
He hasn’t failed us yet! Oh, we won’t turn back, we’ve come this far by faith!”
This is my boast…that They are faithful, and will work and will and do
in me to Their Good Pleasure, and I shall not be left bereft
come what may.
Amen.
Any Act of Silence
You say “You there! I’ve caught you at it AGAIN! BREATHING!”
so I try to hold my breath
but that too has its own punishment
Like any
ACT OF SILENCE
Hymn in the midst of Shame and Sorrow
Hold me close, I beg Thee.
Never let me go,
though I pull like wild horses at Your tether.
Wrap me in Your love please!
Tender, tough, and total
as it presses me and puts me back together.
Father, You have reached me!
Taken me back home, into
Your house that is the essence of Your Heart.
Jesus, You have breached me!
Leapt the walls and plumbed the gory
depths of death and caused shame to depart.
Oh Mama, my Help and comfort,
You are healing, changing,
breathing in me Hope and Joy and Grace on Grace,
So hold me close, I beg Thee!
In Your wonders and Your Love,
so someday I will look upon Your Wondrous Face.
Can’t Cry Hard Enough
The shell is brittle…
like dry bones fallen like leaves
from the table of bone.
It clasps,
grasps, and
feeds on my
gristly gasps
with my every breath,
every sob…
…and I can’t cry hard enough.
They must be pierced,
these bone-shield
prison walls that comfort
and secure me safe.
She is knocking…
knocking over my defenses
and my usual.
But it hurts so…
…and I can’t cry hard enough.
Discovery’s pain is surpassed
only by the pain of hiding,
and what terror there is
as She sees,
and knows.
She reaches,
and grows,
and tears me
out of myself
into Life…
…and I can’t cry hard enough.
“Today’s tears are tomorrow’s treasured triumphs, ‘Rissa!”
shouts my Mama,
Lady Grace,
Queen of Grace,
Heart of God
to God & man.
She promises victory,
and being,
and glad Joy…
…and I can’t cry hard enough.
I Heard the Moon
I heard the moon today,
amidst the clamour
inside my face,
behind my heart.
It was spinning,
spinning, lost
and dark, flashing
between earth and sun,
baking, freezing,
baking freezing.
She had no green, no gold.
She had no food…but
worst of all…she had
no voice.
No voice,
to tell of
endless sojourn
hours, of blazing
hot and ever-cold
and only moments
in between, on the cusp
of congruence
and…
and…
and,
well,
she had
no way
to tell
what the
and is.
But I heard her,
the moon, today,
in my bones’ ache
and in my throat’s clench.
I heard her in my teeth grinding
and biting my lip bloody
to stifle my own
absurd and
desperate
groan.
Like the moon,
I circle, spin, and
move from pole to pole,
and find moments when I am
on the cusp of congruence.
My pain
her voice…
I heard the moon today.
Stuck in the ruins
Today dawned golden, blue.
Birds sang up the sun and
grass gracefully beckoned time
to snuggle in
for the day.
But inside me
Dawn hid
her apple cheeks
and a wind
howled thru the hollows
of my sad soul and my
heart ached like hungry teeth
gnawing on glass,
and rock
and foil.
And time?
Stomped in,
laid down
and settled over me,
raptor
piercing air
in screaming dive
to lay claim
on me
its prey.
I am aching and
stuck among these ruins,
and yet
I must press on.
Gold Glints and Smoke
sitting in firelight
your face
a shadow
the little
gold glint of
your ring
fingers of a hand
that whispers softly
at my nape’s hair
smoke blowing
in the winds
of wind
A morning stroll in my neighborhood
I was noticing
the rows, the order,
pretty enough…
splashes of
purple and pink
and blue and red
and yellow…
but the order
made me dizzy!
My mind
tried to smear,
to blur,
to mix them
again
ordered
but not in
order
rank and file.
Yet her furious
digging and stabbing
at everything that was
“not order”
distracted me,
clods flying
as if from between
a gopher’s brown legs!
Her mouth
grim as Patton’s
as he intently
urged Rommel
to the grinder,
she stalked
and tracked weeds,
rocks and sticks.
I scurried by
with my head low
and eyes straight,
lest she start
on me next!
Around the corner
I was back
to my yard,
a sprawl of
Western Oregon tangle
and blackberries,
wild strawberries
and everywhere
ferns ferns
FERNS…
The tweeties
flit and dart,
the robins rule
with bright wakefulness
and the stray cats
wallow in daubles and
puddles of warm
golden light
(seemingly somnambulant
but staring steely
thru slitted eyes)…
and beds here,
tousled and frumpy made,
and beds there,
letting any rooted thing declare
if it be flower or weed
(this bed knew
that “weed”
was a label made
by “Dictator Order”)
and tall oaks
gathered round
the fire ring
to watch their
cast-offs become
the wine and bread
of many a bonfire.
I know
she hates my yard.
She tries to
shame with sarcasm
and damn
with faint praise.
I get it…I do.
She gets unsettled
when control frays.
But I love it.
It comforts me
in its balance,
in its flavour
and in its eversong of liberty.
All The Angels Are Singing (Original Christmas Song circa 1994)
This is a song I wrote years and years ago…the girls were young, and in our family Christmas is a big deal…intentionally so. In fact, I think that any of you would love Christmas if you ever were to celebrate it with us. But that is a post for the holiday season. I ran across this song in my files I am slowly combing thru, and it made me remember when my girls and I were skipping thru the mall, in Nordstroms, I think! And we were singing it at the top of our lungs!
lololol!!
They were wearing Christmassy things, and I was doing my best with what I was allowed, in a velvet crimson vest with silver buttons embellished with lion’s heads. People stopped and stared, and then we heard applause in our wake…but us? We didn’t care, and skipped along caught up in the joy and wonder and excitement of The Hope of Glory making His appearance at last, in the flesh!
It is in waltz time, uptempo and rolls along like angels’ songs raining down! And if I recall correctly, I believe that the text I used was the wonderful Isaiah 9 passage, with some helper verses thrown in!
All the angels are singing,
They’re singing a heavenly song!
For unto us a Child is born,
Emmanuel is His Name!
Those who suffer in darkness
Shall walk in His marvelous light,
For He has shattered the covenant with death
Emmanuel is His Name!
Chorus:
Singing Glory to God
And on earth, peace, goodwill to men!
Glory, Glory to God in the Highest!
Glory to God in the Highest!
Glory to God in the Highest,
Glory to God!
The government rests on His shoulders
For He is Almighty God!
Wonderful Counselour, Prince of Peace
Emmanuel is His Name!
He’s the Everlasting Father,
The Dayspring from on High!
Arise, shine, for your Light is come,
Emmanuel is His Name!
Chorus:
Sky
kites
again
kissing
it
goodbye…
standing
still
in
it
A Typical Moment
Buttered rolls
are the Whole
of the morning
porcelain chairs
glare at noon
My tea is Water and Wine,
she is mine
in the morning, noon, and nite
She is my delight
Poem Is
When Comes the Done
I’m impatient!
I want The Done!
Yeah, yeah, bread must bake,
after yeast casts its spells magic,
after grain finds glory in the grind,
after the scintillating silver scythe slices,
after the struggling stalks stick out of tight earth,
after the silent seed settles in furrows,
after the rough plough rips,
after the vision.
True becomings rise
from granted goings,
so I sit, wait, and ask
that Grace keep flowing
Fragrant on the wind
In the field,
damp with dawn’s ablutions
in lakes, and mists
the wheat waves,
sways, whiles away
the time passing,
time dancing,
time light and lilting,
time ponderous and paunchy…
always the time…
And always the wheat,
ever returning to die
and rise again
and die and rise
undefeated and always
dancing its tango
with time.
And the moon watches,
and glows with delight
from dances of her own
in the bright and starry night.
She has been filled
and emptied
and filled again
these eons,
these mere minutes,
these seasons…
And always
she delights in sparking
wheat to rise,
tides to turn,
and the sun
to take heart
and shine again.
Into the field,
for the first time
in this river, this grind,
a graceful clear bright chime
blooms fertile,
lush life flourishing
midst flowy flux
and flowers poke,
they peer,
they peep out,
and then more boldly
they bloom and blossom.
At long last
the wheat connects and
the moon embraces and
the Promised Final End and Graces
of All Journeys wafts fragrant
on the wind.
Being Us Two
So it be
between
us two
a giving
be our taking
a making
our unmaking
a doing
what we undo
What I Want To Say
It’s as simple as it can be.
I’ll leave the clothes off my words
and address you nakedly as anyone can
each one was perfect–
that is what I want to say–
perfect
the perfection found
only in Loving.
Do you understand?
It seems against everything we know and
It seems against everything we believe and
It is true.
To say “I love you” is a humiliation
It is the Absolute Narrowing of Possibilities
And everyone, down to
the last person
Dreads it…and wants it…
For only in narrowing is found
Endless Widening Freedom
“Wadded with stupidity?”
“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch, (London: Penguin, 1994),
Do you find this quote describing you at all? Once in a while? Frequently? All the time? Never?
I know that Mary Anne Evans, writing under a male pen name (a different post altogether!!!), describes a dilemma for us, and I think everyone knows, knows it deep down inside…feels it.
Here is the dilemma: if you allow yourself to really see…if you are living so as to strengthen and establish eyes of the heart and soul that truly see, then all the wonder and glory and brokenness and tragedy and beauty swells in sound and presence so as to be a magnificent and overwhelming symphonic tide! Standing on the beach of perception, and staring out at that vast and glorious sea, every living thing a player in the cosmic orchestra. But, this life is costly, often lonely, and can be overwhelming, especially without companionship…and companionship worthy of the challenge, and not “crabs in the bucket” who will pull you back down into the miasma with them.
The alternative: choose to not be overwhelmed by simply stuffing “cultural cotton” in your ears! Music, video-oriented media, fashion, objects, hobbies, the list goes on…even friends and family can serve to “dull the roar”.
Sadly, you do indeed become spiritually blind, spiritually deaf, and thus inevitably spiritually dumb, …and then you walk, the living dead thru a wonder world, having eyes and not seeing, and ears and not hearing, and a tongue stilled from the soul’s truest longing to sing in gratitude and wonder at the living and vital home we have been given.
I think that Ms Evans was a bit cynical, and who could blame her given the sorts of barriers and prison walls she was thrust into as a woman in that time…I’m not so sure that we “wad ourselves with stupidity”…but I do think that she accurately describes the results, when we choose not to engage our world with living hearts and souls: we become stupid in the older sense of the word, and stumble zombie-like thru our days, miserable and hungry and desperate to consume anything that looks living, only to infect that with our death, instead of being infused with its life.
No wonder zombie themes are so huge in our culture right now!
Here is an exhortation: take a chance, and make a change…if you need to. Set your heart on higher things, and actively seek to see, to hear, and then finally to speak! Ask someone to work within you…She has many names, and will never turn away a true request made with humble heart. And then practice some form of expression as your outlet.
Hey…why do you think I love poetry so much? This whole thing is one Amazing and Wonderful Poem!
Blessings to you this day, and oodles of love, peace and joy as always shmeared with mounds of Grace!
Charissa
Watchman’s Duty (Song 1982, when I was trying to be scary and significant! lol)
Was walkin down an alleyway and darkness gathered round,
I spied a slicked down rebel and he looked me up and down.
He had the cut of one who’d slashed all ties with the old ways,
He looked at me like a rattlesnake appraising new found prey.
Suddenly he waved at me with something cold and black!
I turned around and I was face to face with a modern maniac!
His pistol whispered in my ear of burning funeral pyres,
And then he pulled the trigger! But the weapon didn’t fire!
Chorus:
I’m standin on the city wall and I see war at hand
It won’t be some forsaken spot, it’s here in our homeland.
I blow the trumpet’s warning loud, this moment you must seize!
Cus violence is like VD it’s a sociable disease!
The man, he stepped back with a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes.
He said he was just practicing for the coming dark’s demise.
He said “This life is war, and you will learn that war is Hell.”
To hear him talk you’d never guess that we was all livin so well.
“World War 2 has never stopped!” he cried in desperation.
“This so called peace you hide behind has just been intermission!” He said
“Shoot or be shot! Survival of the fittest, you ain’t got a choice!”
I might be wrong, but I think there was panic in his voice.
Chorus:
Then the man he walked away and left me on that street,
a vicarious participant in his desperate retreat.
I put aside all lesser things to face the alley’s mouth.
Somehow I knew it’d do no good to migrate further south.
Seven days went by before I saw that man again.
This time he was the newspaper’s hot front page specimen.
The headlines screamed into my eyes “MAN MURDERS SOCIALITE”
Then the column droned out horrors of that fateful night.
With loaded gun he’d followed a girl home from a restaurant.
Then he shoved her to the ground, his face twisted and gaunt!
He shot her in the back one time, she gave a piercing cry,
She sat up gasping–then she fell–in pain she bled and died!
I testified at the man’s trial to a room of fearful folk
I said “His act was one of hate–it’s time that you awoke!
And looked around, your affluence is but a dinosaur
Cus many here among us seem to think that life is war!”
Chorus:
And I’m standin on the city wall and I see war around me!
It ain’t in some forsaken spot, it’s here in my own family!
Battle lines are being drawn, you must prepare to fight,
For mercy, justice, love and truth…….
……or we’ll just fade into the night…….
(painting by Kristen Beck: please support her however you can!)
Grand Mall Seizure (from my “punk rock phase, 1982)
I was rambling thru the mall on the move to avoid them storefront snares.
Watchin people cruisin by me wearin those “as advertised” hypnotic stares.
Some of them looked like machines, and some of them were worn out by their Calvin Klein jeans
But me I just kept runnin from that sugar coated FM radio blair.
I fought thru hordes of folk who’d tear the shirt off your back over in Sears.
A bunch of bargain basement bounty hunters gibbering like a flock of auctioneers.
I saw a girl who looked like she was panicking, then I discovered that she was just a manikin!
A plastic Venus Fly Trap catchin human flies to feed her profiteers!
Chorus:
They were the victims of a Grand Mall Seizure!
Epileptic captives of a false scheme of leisure!
If you worship them golden gods of pleasure,
you gotta swallow your tongue and start doin’
The Grand Mall Seizure!
See that red faced man a-hustlin by moppin his forehead with his handkerchief?
He don’t know where he’s goin he’s just like a lemming leapin offa cliff!
That woman eatin chocolate Lady Fingers? She has forgotten she has value, not a memory lingers,
Of a time when humankind was more than micro-chip computer hieroglyph!
Can’t you see that you been mauled by them big boys up on Madison Avenue!!??
They pulled them alligator t-shirts over your eyes with their magical television voodoo.
You swallowed their bait hook line and sinker, and you been duped cus you refuse to BE A THINKER!
And you ain’t really in a mall at all, you’re in Consumer City Zoo!! And you’re the victim of a
Chorus
Song for the Prodigals: Back in Your Love
When the dark night surrounds me, and I can’t find my way thru
Across the breakers like a beacon–You call my name and bring me back to You.
In the raging storm You calm me, with a pure love like I never knew,
Like a tree, You give me shelter, You comfort me and bring me back to You
Chorus
Back to Your Love, Back to Your Light
Back to Your arms, You make it all right!
Back in Your Love, Back in Your Light,
Back in Your arms, You make it all right
when I come back to you.
In the heart ache, in the sorrow, it seems like there ain’t nothin true,
And I can’t even face tomorrow, but there ain’t nothin else to do.
That’s when Your sweet sweet love comes tumbling down, tumbling down,
to resurrect me from the tomb
You light the flames of Holy Passion, and then You draw me ever back to You. (Chorus)
Coming Back Home (A country lament, sung waltz-style. Summer 1997)
(written while studying the parable of the prodigal son…we are all that prodigal, profligately wasteful. But the worst thing is that some end up being the older brother…prideful and haughty and stingy with love and grace and forgiveness.
And who would I aspire to be like? The one heart here that is tender and kind and generous.)
I’ve been on the road such a dusty long time,
felt the heat of the sun fill my head with cold chimes.
And freedom ain’t all that its’s cracked up to be,
cuz Your tough tender heart’s far away, far from me.
And I’m longing to see You, and look in Your face,
and listen to Your laughter filling my lonely place.
But I’m on my own now, so I howl at the moon,
and remember when You told me ’bout the dish and the spoon.
I’ve made lotsa money, but not many friends.
It’s a hard thing to figure–where one starts and one ends.
The wind blows so lonesome thru a heart I thought free,
and it rattles the memories of You loving me.
So I cling to the hope of Your welcome to me,
and I’d rather be Your slave than be lost but free!
So Master…no…Father…I surrender to You,
and I’m coming back home, I surrender to you.
Like A Seal Upon Your Heart (a song of Devotion, April 1993)
(This is a simple chorus, a song of devotion. I wrote this for our home group, and we would sing it as I strummed the guitar and led the chorus. I can’t play any longer, as the arthritis plays hell in my hands…but when I found this, jotted down on the back of an old church bulletin, it was indeed a pearl saved by Mama, and given back to me.
The interesting task of processing these all now, looking back with eyes that know my tender woman’s soul trapped inside this testosterone ravaged body, well, so far it has had the effect of helping me to embrace that I was not insane then, however crazy I felt.
I freely admit that it was lil songs like this that were all that kept me going.)
Set me like a seal on Your heart. Wear me like a ring on Your finger.
Give to me Your love that is stronger than death,
and set me like a seal upon Your heart. (Chorus)
Carve Your Name into my heart. Write upon my life with Your finger.
Hold me to the cross my love, and pierce my ear forever,
and carve Your Name into my heart. (Chorus)
Let me know the beating of Your heart. I will give my life for Your pleasure.
There is nothing in this world that I desire more,
than just to know the beating of Your heart. (Chorus)
Chorus
For I love you, I love you!
With all my heart, with all my heart,
Yes I love you, I love you,my Beloved, I love you
The Wings of His Desire (A song, written in 1997 for a famous friend)
Well I see that you been walkin cuz that Cadillac broke down
But the desert won’t surrender for a dollar or a crown,
And the crowd is back the road a-piece just a-waitin for a ride, while you are
Fixing your eyes on the sky
lookin for that fiery chariot ride
to come and take you sailin’ on the wings of His desire.
The glitter and the grime have blurred the boundaries of truth
In that ghost town full of souls who search for fountains full of youth,
And the flashback memories of the branding iron’s searing sneer
Haunt your spirit like a curse
from a Pharisee’s gold-lined purse, and your heart is
Longing for the wings of His desire.
Hey Friend! Don’t you realise that He held you up to them, like a mirror!
Yeah, it’s you they stoned but it’s them they hate!
The stench of their hypocrisy just chokes their life away…
Hey Friend! Don’t you realise that He holds you in His Arms, you are His child!
Yeah it’s you that He was crucified for and ever does the sweet perfume
of His love fill the air you breathe…
So remember this sage fool’s advice as your pilgrimage unfolds
Let down your hair, Rapunzel! Cast away that pot of fool’s gold!
For angels cannot suffer, but they can’t taste of love’s sweet wine, and it is
Better that you have your being, spun out like a precious tapestry
Suspended on the wings of His desire.
Hey Friend! Lift up your eyes again and let the wind blow back your hair
Take courage once again for the stones they throw in a twinkling will
become the bricks of His steadfast love for you…
And the songs of praise shall rise again like a golden phoenix from the flame
And the prophet’s mantle will again rest on your shoulders like His Name
And it is better that you have your being, sung like a precious melody
And it is better that you have your being, sung like a precious melody
And sheltered by the wings of His desire.
Summer 1997
Oregon
River (1982)
(This will be the last of several posts of old old OLD poems!! I marvel at the changes, the reductions and growths, the increases and diminishments, and always that distant empty place in the poems that is no longer there in what I write…sooo strange to me, these words so familiar and yet as if written by a stranger. And so I was…a stranger.)
the river in its abundance
all about us, as we stood
on a warm rock to wash
slowly
smoothing with long
sliding strokes
our soapy hands along each other’s
slippery cool bodies
quiet and slow in the midst of
the quick of the
sounding river
Our hands were flames
stealing upon quickened flesh until
no part of us
but was
sleek and
on fire
Notes on the Third Year (1984)
(note: this poem is the genesis poem of a previously posted poem
My what a vast and measureless way we have traveled…and still here, in the present, and in our love!)
I have considered writing you
anonymous love letters,
fearing that my voice has grown
so familiar you will no longer hear it;
fearing that I talk too much
or that you listen with one ear (how silly of me!),
fearing that when I sing my best
there is no sound in the air;
fearing that you consider me the world’s
most accomplished maker of amazing,
silent, useless faces…
Three years in the making–Dear Collaborator!
This should be a love story!
Yes, it is.
It really is.
Haiku #9 (1981)
face in quiet night
softly holds the fire glow
in her smoky eyes
catching her portrait
in gold-glist’ning harvest moon
her very essence
she smiles quietly
lovely effortlessly free
laughing in the night
The Simplicity (1981)
I hide behind the simple things
(not the easy) so you’ll find me;
If you don’t find me, you’ll find the things.
You’ll touch what my hand has touched,
our hand prints will merge…
the august moon glitters
in the kitchen
like a tin-plated pot
(it does this because of what I’m saying to you)
it lights up the empty house
and the house’s kneeling silence,
always the silence remains kneeling.
Every Word is a doorway
to a meeting–one oft cancelled–
and that’s when a word is true:
when it insists on the meeting.
Rhythm (1981)
In bed, half asleep
I listen to you moving
“to and fro” around.
Hardly Poetic
Hardly the Grace of gesture
(or is it the gesture of grace?)
Still,
they are rhythms, and yours.
Clean, efficient, with a style
I’ve come to recognize
They Move Me More Than The Sound of Many Poems.
Lesson (1979)
One thing I have learned…
to be content
with the
size
of truth
Dreams of Resurrection
dreams are like roses,
giving up treasure
in intricate fragrant
delicate layers.
A Heart’s True Home
Composed and circumspect she walks
twixt times, twixt places and spaces,
inside, outside, hither and yon thru low valleys
and casual embraces.
Grey skies snug down and nestle around
her quiet composed aching soul,
for they noticed her sighs and longings for someone
to come and complete and make whole.
Hugged by the sands and kept in the crook
of the far horizon’s safe arms,
Her treasure lays there…in the shimmery air
just before, just beyond bitter harm.
So the snuggly grey clouds settle velvety soft
and kiss gently on her longing cheek,
and then gracefully lift having blessed the sad rift
with gifts greater than all tongues could speak.
Worlds, realms, and tangled realities torn
are the territories she roams.
And just maybe…glad someday…she finds her desire,
and at last her heart finds her True Home.
Until that far day she will welcome the Grey
and its precious and bright silver lining,
She walks glad and in Beauty set free of dull duty
and free from her long lonely pining.
Many Paths and Peace
Deep, in a tangled wood, damp,
sodden in velvet dew and drenched, perfumed
with cedar, with pine, with fir
and oak.
I have hunkered down here,
comfortable and peering out,
into the distant and clear cultivated field
with its timorous tractors trailing
droning beetle-like scrabbing and scritching
thru metal lined throats.
Deeper in, one can get caught,
snared and snagged in the brackish brambles.
They clutch with needle-lined palms and
infect with greedy lassitude and
seduce you to stay, and become
part of the ever-tangle.
But here, in the copse on the edge,
I am free to nudge a bit deeper
into the tangle when I am low and tremulous, and
free to step out to the clearing and
wave my red-cape soul at that android bull
and holler out…
I love to linger here,
wrapped in my blanket and
huddled down with simple things.
Crunchy yeasty baton of pungent
bread broken, and chunks of Dunbarton Blue
growling explosive bass lines of
musky-meaty-briny-cream intertwining
the tangled wood’s sweat in the heat of the sun, and
simple thick garlic sausage, hard and chewy
and satisfying.
Day passes, and I sip strong dark roasted coffee soused with cream
and peaty scotch, and let its tides stir me, calm me, open me…
And I hear the throaty gurgle of the deep tangle calling,
and I hear the scuttling hurly-burly stylings of distant throngs…
and the birds, surfing that in-between gulf, smudging that line,
that threshold with magic singing seamlessly weaving
a spell of sound, of longing, of contentment…and wistful peace.
And I wonder at what I hear.
I wonder how long the oaks have sat,
humming oaky thoughts that transcend
the transient Kingdom of human history?
I wonder if the Oaks sang the vines awake,
or did the Vines, pregnant with fecund waking
sap and summer, thrust up and reach with their
familiar and low-rhythmic song to wake oaks and
taunt the tangle with merry fingers waggling
and grateful and greedy and hungry
and content?
Later, in the early soft gloaming I rise from my
den of antiquity and ancient comforts.
The tangle, the clearing, the fields and fowls
… and the vines…
have pierced me, are in me,
have made me one of them now,
one with them, and I amble home
full of many paths and peace.
I am shaking
Constance, I am sitting, stunned!
I have been editing Spitting Bones and I am trembling at the emotions it has evoked within me.
Waves of tears well up from my gut, and overflow in fear, and then in anger…
and then finally tears that turn to tears of joy.
I do not really know where this poem came from. I awoke on Sunday morning with that phrase
…spitting bones…
ringing in my ears and I was all discombobulated, but I knew it was a phrase of power and portent and would grow into a poem.
I think this poem will unfold itself to me for a long season. For now, it shimmers as something hard-won and safe,
but glitters as something glinty-eyed and still not tame!
What the heck is going on with this one, Constance? I like it…I fear it…I treasure it.
Spitting Bones
I remember the bones…smooth
with the thick patina of reverence and religion.
Pushed thru the bars of my crib, one by one,
proffered by priests and priestesses
frantic in the grip of their god.
Their god of two faces, only two…
and bones, always endless bones.
I cried fearful and turned away from
the face their god thrust into mine,
wrathful and hungry to eat me,
and spit me out as bones.
I remember the birth of days, endless continuum
of spitting bones (they fed) forced into my heart
by fingers of dread and violation.
Their food was wormwood, was fungal,
was necrotic and charnel charcuterie,
it was bones thrown, divining that
never-never-land, that future of failure
and folly-laced affliction offered
as communion that roundabout me
all partook of, eating the body and drinking the blood
of a god breaking them all for itself!
Wretch that I was, east of Eden and hungry,
alone and spitting bones.
But the days when my cradle concealed
only an ash heap desolate and bleak in the wind,
and the nights where my bars branded themselves
into my soul to make me their always-prisoner,
began to be cracked by winds, by tremors, by thunders
and by storms, always storms railing,
leaving me soaked to my bones
and raw from my bars,
but slick and wet, ready for birth.
And even as I had spit the bones of that god
bitter from my velvet mouth, I reached,
and gripped hard, and wrenched in desperate anguish
until at last those sharp teeth
(that hungry god’s unwisdom teeth)…
those brands burnt sizzling into my heart tore loose!
Bloody and gore spattered, glistening
with dread power draining, diminishing.
I welled up my outrage, my despair,
my affliction and conjured from them
alchemal ancient power and found my niche,
found my mission spitting bones!
And now?
I sit on downy green mounds,
on high hills become mountains!
I forage in fields of gold, omnivore
and gleaning food from gods forgotten,
gods ignored, from Grace Herself
Who is bounty and variegated victory!
And I eat, freely, with no fear or terror
of the old god who died and cannot rise again!
I draw strength from the meat of complicated cuts
that must be cured and marinated and braised off
until they loose their grip on gore and their poison is annulled.
For all my days, I will be one who can consume all things
and grow to grace others and thrive,
eating the food… and spitting bones.
My Heart of Hearts
The dawn, peach fuzz on this dripping peachy day,
smelled like juice dribbling down my chin,
and musky yellow perfume.
Your earrings flashed in the sunbeam sneaking thru the blinds
Your eyes flashed, lamplights of love sneaking thru my blind
and gleaming like that cat Cheshire.
I intended to rip my heart from my chest
but it came free eager in my hand
which was covered by yours (I had not noticed that happen)
Fell from me like that peach
with groaning, heavy relief and ache
into your waiting basket (I was the only one there)
You carried me to bed, and there we sectioned our fruit
and fed each other with fingers, slick and sticky
and smelling of the peachy summer day
And we drowsed, and woke to find our hearts grown again,
except mine was now you, and yours was now me
Oh my Heart of Hearts, My Heart of Hearts.
My Heart of Hearts (sans images)
The dawn, peach fuzz on this dripping peachy day,
smelled like juice dribbling down my chin,
and musky yellow perfume.
Your earrings flashed in the sunbeam sneaking thru the blinds
Your eyes flashed, lamplights of love sneaking thru my blind
and gleaming like that cat Cheshire.
I intended to rip my heart from my chest
but it came free eager in my hand
which was covered by yours (I had not noticed that happen)
Fell from me like that peach
with groaning, heavy relief and ache
into your waiting basket (I was the only one there)
You carried me to bed, and there we sectioned our fruit
and fed each other with fingers, slick and sticky
and smelling of the peachy summer day
And we drowsed, and woke to find our hearts grown again,
except mine was now you, and yours was now me
Oh my Heart of Hearts, My Heart of Hearts.
Comments on Creation’s Communion
I rarely take the trouble to interpret my poems for you, Constance…I think it is part of your own pleasure as a reader to dig in and chew, or to imbibe deep and feel the intoxicating buzz later when it enters your blood and sings its song there…dare I even insinuate it is also your responsibility as a poetry lover to allow it to disturb you, or trouble you, or even flummox you until you suss it out?
My poems are hidden inside themselves very frequently. They are one thing on one level, multitudinous other things on other levels, they are always the same unless one word is read with different meaning and all is transformed…
…hey I am a transgirl, so is it any wonder that my poems are like me, someone hidden inside something? Giggles!
Anyway, I want to provide a bit of background to a few things: First of all, I want to tell you what happened after I birthed the poem, and began to go back to clean up my baby, dry off the afterbirth, feed and nurture it to vitality. I immediately began to adjust the women-seasons metaphor. Everyone knows that Spring is the gay and skipping girl, flouncing boldly into Old Lady Winter’s mouldery austere house, throwing up the windows and letting the stale and leaden air out!
Right? WRONG!!!!
The poem did not give that contented groan (like my doggie when I scratched her secret spot) as I attempted to edit! No…it went Dustin Hoffman under Laurence Olivier’s drill in Marathon Man! Screamed in horror, fear, and outrage, it did!! So…I went with it, and actually I love the way it turns the expected and familiar on its head, and it challenges our ideas that each season is representative of a different stage of a woman’s growth (for to me, the seasons have always been feminine)…it poses the notion that each season has a complete cycle within itself, and in its usurpation of the fading queen, it dooms itself to the same overthrow! That clash thus takes on a fascinating depth and the iterations of metaphor grow in multiplicity.
Secondly, the word haint is an old slang word for haunt found generally in southern and rural locations. Consider the variety of meanings layered in haunt, and understand that application of haint. It is also a funny contraction of “have not” and/or “has not” together with “ain’t”…haint. So ponder the reference to places as that contraction, and the elevator begins to move rapidly in its own directions thru the poem. Lastly, haint eventually took on the connotations of a scary-mean woman, or an evil bitch…and thus the poem circles around on itself (even as the seasons chase each other endlessly in a game of Tag) and references the women mentioned in the first stanza, and the whole understanding of who is the biddy and who is the bouncy flouncy Queen B gets tripped topsy turvy. It plays back in to that cycle of usurpation.
When people see me, they “see” me…and then if they spend any time with me with open heart, they SEE me…that is how my poems are.
I invite you to reconsider this poem with these clues…perhaps it will help with this one. I quite like it, but only time will tell us if it an unruly towhead that gains dignity, gravity and gusto as it grows…or if it is a juvenile delinquent that is hellbent to be the lovechild of Meatloaf and AC DC!!
Blessings, Charissa
and High Mountains.
Always High Mountains beckon me…
years of riding their stringent intractable slopes,
dizzying switchbacks,
and punishingly friendly gradients….oh High Mountains!
Sweat and tears my offerings,
and fitness and expiation
the blessings They bestowed upon me.
How I long to share with you these feasts,
deep and austere
On this Golden Gravid Spring Day
Creation’s Communion (without images, for flow visually as a poem)
and High Mountains.
Always High Mountains beckon me…
years of riding their stringent intractable slopes,
dizzying switchbacks,
and punishingly friendly gradients….oh High Mountains!
Sweat and tears my offerings,
and fitness and expiation
the blessings They bestowed upon me.
How I long to share with you these feasts,
deep and austere
On this Golden Gravid Spring Day
Creation’s Communion
Today…somewhat grey, overcast
strewn with intense undercurrents of lurking blue…
the panties of summer hidden under
prim and proper petticoats of spring,
the Old Biddy!!
Spates of lacey rain which pretend to be huffy tuffy winter rain,
but her joy and laughter caresses as drops light onto vines,
and perfume the earth deliciously.
Smells of loamy soil and green gritty saps running,
and flowers broadcasting fiercely and fragrant!
Birds serenade along, as earth and sky, lovers always,
vie and embrace, and join,
and then retreat to their corners of creation between rounds…
lovers rounds, music rounds…and sounds.
My heart walks, LEAPS into favorite territories, and haints…
moors and hills and lanes…
forest tangles and rows…
moors and hills and lanes…
forest tangles and rows…
and High Mountains.
Always High Mountains beckon me…
years of riding their stringent intractable slopes,
dizzying switchbacks,
and punishingly friendly gradients….oh High Mountains!
Sweat and tears my offerings,
and fitness and expiation
the blessings They bestowed upon me.
How I long to share with you these feasts,
deep and austere
On this Golden Gravid Spring Day
On Notice!
Let the powers know
that I am being found,
am finding myself
and I am glad, and scared,
and soaring to depths, heights
hawking my way
through chasms and
slamming into depths and crevasses and
then piercing velvet dark
frosty air, rising, rising,
an eagle golden and free.
Let the Tetrarch know
that I will step forward
in grace and upon grace
a wounded-healer to be.
And let the Prideful Patrons and
Practitioneers of Patriarchy
be put on notice:
If the sword of the healing-wounder
should ever bless my grasp
with its blue-bejewelled hilt and
silver redemptive sharp blade,
I will wield it with
remorseless pity, and soft relentlessness!
I will the rivers and seas follow,
to overcome by giving way.
And let the humble hear,
let the lost perk up to the echoes
of turtledoves and
the heralds of hummingbirds
and the buzzing of many drowzy
busy bees that Mama has
opened Her hives, and
honey pours once again
to all those
famished and forlorn.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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