“Richard Rohr tells us that when we move through life in a driven way we are being propelled by the ego.
When we allow ourselves to be drawn forward, lured ahead by what shimmers, we are moved by the soul’s desires.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Self-Study Online Class ~ Earth as Soul Care Matrix: The Wild Heart of Ministry
You
woke me
and I didn’t even
know I was sleeping
inside dead wood and
splinters waiting for
a spark or a coal
from Your
altering
Altar
The hate and ignorance
of the petrified forest
is matched only by
Your manifest mercy
and glorious grace.
And now I am awake
and walking free
in living flesh
I’m a butterfly carved of bone
white, bleached, sun-baked bone
my wings are just my lungs
spongy-red and wet but free
inside my chest is open space
soaring chasms awaiting light
butterfly, bone, breath over breadth
I’m a butterfly carved of bone
)
I am diamonds in the night.
I don’t believe in boredom.
I think it is code for
something else,
and I simply
choose not
boredom.
I laugh when
I see people
cultivate a
“bored look.”
I hope
the only time
I look bored is
when I am laying
in my casket, waiting.
In the 57 years I have spent on this planet, I have taken communion tens of thousands of times.
The most recent of those times was at Pride in Portland Oregon on June 19th, 2016…served to me by Pat Christiansen while a gypsy troupe danced to insistent almost militant drumming behind us…
I closed my eyes as I took the elements, just as I always do, and looked to Them to see Them, to taste and SEE that the Lord is good…and I saw the Sacred Flaming Heart Icon…pulsing…beating…THROBBING…in time to the militant drums, and I was certain that this is the heart of the Risen Lord who wears the Two Edged Sword and Eyes like Fire…
The Heart was pulsing…pulsing…PULSING…
There was a frame around the Heart, and it was getting bigger…and it was pushing against the frame.
The frame began to splinter…and then at last, the Heart gave a MIGHTY PULSE and burst the frame, shattered it and splintered it, and then grew bigger and bigger until it utterly enveloped me and I knew it was off to the far reaches of everywhere.
The nightclub’s name is Pulse. The city is Orlando…which means “Famous Land, Land of Renown” and lesser meanings of Times of Importance.
I find the entire experience prophetic and insistent…and I wonder…
…are you going to stay inside the frame? The Heart has left, departed…gone outside the city gates.
Are you going to sit and imagine Jesus coming to earth to kick ass on all the people you do not like…yunno, sort of like the Pharisees did and when Messiah showed up and punched them square in the conscience they got so mad they killed Him?
Or are you going to understand that God is stirred in Mercy and Compassion to the point that those things become the consuming fire of Light and Love and each thing they touch responds according to its matrix of being…if it is true it becomes pure and if it is not it simply is consumed.
Stand with The Sacred Pulsing Heart. The time is now.
If you wanna be in the “next move of God”, it isn’t with the so-called prophets and evangelists who seek after gold dust and commit adultery on a mass scale while the crowd has what amounts to a spiritual cluster-fuck.
No…it is in the highways and byways, where Mama compels to come in, and the Heart races to rush out.
you’ve been running canyons
looking for yourself
that beautiful wild girl
who sat there in the dust
and wrestled with that trike
while others just looked on
(they had forgotten joy)
and cursed you with perspective
above and to the right
that made you second guess
and work hard in the night
to be the perfect one
and get them off your back
for good, for evil too
but it just distanced you
and gave you space to run
in canyons made of bones
along your Sangre River
still looking for yourself
alive and free and wild
well, Baby, you have found her
she thrives though she is short,
and though sun’s rays are slant
they still can peek down deep
to feed you evergreen
I have always seen you
I see you still, here, strong
and still, delicate, fragile
and still indestructible
growing wild and free
I dashed this off…
well, actually it just
shouldered its way
from my soul
and forced me open
and muscled forth.
No…
it is not polished,
or even much good,
but it is insistent
that it wants to be…
just as it is…
unfettered,
untamed,
unedited…
on fire and fierce.
let its blood
trickle across your tongue,
down your throat to infuse
you with starfire unquenchable,
with the seeds of birth that come
when nebulas collapse
so that new stars
can be born.
Will you let
something new
and unkillable
catch fire
in you today!!??
Will you rise
up unshakeable
though ye tremble,
undefeatable though
ye weep?
Yea, weep
and mourn,
grieve and wail
on the mountains…
and drink this philter
as you pour your tears
like rain upon these bloody
sands so desperately needing
the touch of falling stars to ignite
the birth of light again in this dark night!
Carry this fire inside
you, Prometheus returning
to those gods weak and beaten
and frightened in a pulsing night
cowering before their creatures
unfettered and held hostage
to hate and darkness…
bind it to your forehead
bright diadem of Hope
and going past the fallen
crumbled thrones of old gods
doddering and wetting the bed
of their comfort and ease…
and hail
to the Halls
of the Risen Lamb
slain and shining ever
in Love, our Sun/Son/Lion!!!
We march
on Saturday.
We march
on Sunday.
Friday,
though you be bitter
and seem so final,
you are nuffin to me!
I have fought
thru 5 decades
of Fridays
to get to this
time and place.
And
I see
Abraham shining…
I see
Martin and Martin
there, glim’ring…
I see
Susan and Harriet and Joanna…
Joan and Hildegard,
Thomas and Peter
and John…
I see them,
a sea of those
gone before
who beckon,
exhort…
Yes, weep…
pour it out,
and then
TAKE IT UP,
your tears now
jewels of fire
and precious
and eat them,
living coals
feeding the fires
of new stars
in your souls…
I await you
in the streets of life,
and I shall never
be silent,
I shall never
stop or waver…
forward!!
Onward!!
We have come this far by faith,
and we shall not turn back now.
See the enemy posture…
covering that cowering fear
as we loom, our faces bright
and fair with Love
and Mercy and Justice
our diadems and Mama
and Jesus Avatar of Love Eternal
our Sovereigns…
I await you.
This is your time.
Come out this weekend, ye privileged!
Cast your crowns in the gutters
so they can find purchase and grow
and their roots tear down
the walls of Massa’s farm.
Come.
Out.
Ye.
Shining.
Chosen.
Singing.
Ones.
I await your sacred steps.
I saw the stars fall in the night
it was dark and closing in
as I lay paralysed and still
and shivering in deathly fright.
In waves and showers down they plunged
as sable curtains tore and trembled
in the hand of some great evil
threatening to eat the sky
But somehow, each one shot to me
and landed in my shaking soul
and burned within me fierce and fell
and banished fear and made me whole
Until I burned with stellar fire
and shone in gold galaxy gleams
my heart a starfield bold, untamed
for Mercy’s greater than hate’s schemes!
And so, though Nebulas collapse
let them fall fast to this earth
into your open mouth and heart
Not for destruction, but for birth
Of new stars brilliant, unshakeable
that shine with Justice and with Joy
Children born of grief and ash
Who rise above hate’s cruel slash
This is our birth, our ne’er turn back!
A thousand stars, a million dreams,
A myriad songs and voices shout
We burn bright…our light…
will never…never…burn out
It is the “Beyond”…that place we all know deep down in our core exists…is there.
To argue it does not exist assumes its existence in order to even have ground to stand on ontologically.
It is what I am striving to touch, pierce, and funnel back here in my poetry…and I call it “Poetry” with a capital P…and it is a place and a state and a thing and a flow all at once.
“In cultivating photography as a contemplative practice, the camera becomes a tool to develop our ability to see more deeply, clearly, and truly, beneath the surface realities of the world around us and into the sacred presence shimmering in the world.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
i sit in winds
and let my shawl flow
loose around me
and lifted like wings
and as it unfurls
the hard ground exhales
and i become light
as i sit in winds
my heart rises up
when liberty sings
though limbs sit so still
though limbs sit in winds
the wings of my heart
soar high as the sun
and over the moon
there, sitting in winds
I feel your fingers
in my folds and
my fine feathers
ruffling, riffing
sometimes ripping
for your pleasure
folding me and
creasing me
until I do not
recognize
the shape
I’m in.
Turning this way
twisting that way
tossing hither
touching yon
then you show me
origami, I’m your
living origami
here today and
gone tomorrow
Ohh
how you
carry it gentle
in your faithful heart,
your treasure precious
and hidden from yourself
speak it out loud, exhale in blue
let your truth breathe, sing
of how its blood runs
true and rings with
with only ever
you
Trusting is just such a powerful challenge
to lay down my life without knowing for sure
it will ever get picked up again…by…anyone.
a potent surrender to God (and to others)
that commends my only possession (that’s me)…
to the Hands and the Head and the Heart of all things.
A turning away from the will to possess,
from power and reflex to cling and to clutch
with brazen heart, hard face and bravado whistling…
afraid in the night of the Breaking Day Coming…
the willing embrace of a breaking that gives birth
to wholeness and health…well…trusting is just such
a challenge
Hearing
stained wooooh
strained whooosh
rise, fall, push, pull back
quieting and moaning,
crying, sobbing, groaning
creaking and repose
the wind asks…
whyyyyyyy
whoooooo
whhhyyyy
ohhhhhh
sigh
It’s that question
that drives us skimming
across Lake Life edgy
bobbing in the troughs and crests
yet never to the sandy shore
and glowy fires merry.
It’s that rough splinter
in our minds digging
all the time and all around us…
why…
why
You see
Stories are descended from
on High like waterfalls and
we are born too, like
waterfalls flying
from the stars
cascading
down to
here
into this world
starkly unique
and populated
with stories,
pregnant with
multiple meanings
(us and this world/one not one)
Here I am on the edge
of the gleaming twilight
nudging, jostling my life
in waves and I’m still wondering
what it’s all about…
I think it’s about a Splinter from
some Bloody Beam so Ancient…
Our minds are splintered, peppered,
made numb with pressing inquiry
The first thing I remember
about this world
and I pray it
may be the last
is that I am
a stranger
in it,
at once a glory
and a desolation.
That’s the only thread
of consistency I can detect
in my lakey leaky life,
alone before a mind-boggling
array of options and
burdened by both
the responsibility and the authority
to reach some conclusion
that isn’t totally and completely
rooted merely in myself
(where’s the joy in that?)
Life itself is its own exile,
and its own inevitability,
but that does not lessen our grief
or alter the fact of us in the whirring
midst of that sighing windy whyyyyy
Life became history and history
becomes legend and legend
begat myth and myth begets
merging slowly with unknowing
and unknowing bemoans
“it was all forgotten…”
(which infers remembering)
“real but forgotten”
(real and forgotten)
and passed and past…
but the echoes
the echoes
echoes
the echoes of our distant past
and our essential vital nature
still call out to us in wind,
in wind and waves
in dreams.
And They are calling us in wind,
in wind and waves
in…
These Forgotten Stories Haunting
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 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 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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
it was autumn and me bound
tight with scratchy ropes and lies
that could not be easy-parted
your stricken look
of compassion golden-sharp,
like lightening stooping down
you set me free, and started
a fire in that late autumn land,
so cold, so sluggish in the tepid sun
and languishing towards winter
given up to
given over to
inevitability
and sliding
down
that
gentle
poison
slope
my arms free,
my legs burning,
those ropes away
did fall from me
and your eyes,
heaven’s lightening strike
strike my heart in fire
and my skin burning hot,
glowing passion
and the creeping cold
fleeing backward and the sap
running back up from the earth
and into trees thru the branches
and leaves falling up
and then connecting
and autumn’s
peacock splendour
blooms from
mono-drabness
and all around us
earth sings in our breath
synchronized together
and your hands
on my skin
like irons in
the fire
and your eyes
glitter brown and soft
and all at once
my sun and moon
as trees wave
and breathe
and summer rises
from the grave and spring
Sings into the air
in playful winds
and carefree winds
and ceaseless winds
and we come
and we go
without a
trace
and after,
you…me…us
laying there
and autumn
sighs and bows
and thankful for
another moment
present and it slides
away, gives up its ghost
and winter comes, quietly
comes to claim her prey
with tender frosty kiss so cold
concealing unrelenting blade
so unforgiving, bloodless,
without pity and me?
I, so young then,
and now so old
remembering the resurrection
of the autumn trees so glad
as the flakes
of snow float down
like tears of joy
come to an end
and become still
symphony of sorrow
and now I leave
forever
on the wind
and free
on the carefree wind
and in the cooling dirt.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
And 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.
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
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
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
i’ve been marking time since day one
day by day by day by day by day
and for each spin around the sun
i carve a line within
i haven’t figured it all out,
not quite, not yet, not all
whether those lines mark the way
out of these bars or just pass the days
but now they are my act of faith,
my memorials stark and blue
and some day i’ll slip between them
or simply pass thru to you
i am marking time, my countdown to you
here
here quiet
here quiet in the rain
in the dancing rain
the water
washes clean
the water washes all things
clean in the rain
and so
and so my clothes
and so my clothes no longer fit
at all in the shrinking rain
so I
will clothe myself
in veils and showers
of rain fresher than
the brand new spring
and older than my skin
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
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…
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…
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.
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
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
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.
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.
Remember Litter-Mate…the fact that they other and police you affirms your authenticity!!
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, 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.
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.
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.
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 moonlight
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
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…
Together we all
(words and banners and bones)
shine upon your battlements
Barcelona
City of Bones
I am the bristly nest from which the great blue heron springs.
I am the stones upon which stinging ice-churned runnels ring.
And there, those fires hot from which the Phoenix rare takes wing.
I’m scintillating embers, coals ablaze and life giving.
They named me foul pale heretic and laid me down to rest,
outside the white-washed churchyard walls, outside their ruddy fold.
And there my hot blood flowed rich-red to feed their bloodless grass,
I deep red died upon that emerald sward of murder bold.
And I do let my bones peek from the curtain of my skin
and thus do I me nourish every living thing herein
with my authentic self and my unconquerable song,
my passion unquenchable and my me a sacred throng
of birth from death and life leapt up in winds, in rain and dew
I am nest, stone and embers singing always clear for you.
and thus it is unholy ground is cleaned, hallowed once more,
and every living thing’s communion, ever opened door
From far out in the center
of the naked lake
A Lost Loon’s Loud Lament
Echoes the cry of someone.
My love, we did not arrive at this place
To remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like trees.
Trees are broken in winter and start again
Drawing up from
The Great Root.
Like Trees
We live again.
Sometimes frost grips limbs
once lean and limber in the wind
now long grown stiff and creaky
and I hear them crack and groan
in those sticky clutching fingers
cold and frosty, fingers
cold and frosty.
Sometimes ennui (cold)
grips my soul (grown old)
and in its grip I groan
(groan old) and my soul
(my waiting soul) runs
around my heart and
around my heart
as the clock’s tail
ticks and twitches, chases
its tail like a cat relentless,
(useless) and that (waiting)
that frosty cold difficulty of waiting
remains there clinging tightly
in the fading day.
But Advent…
Advent
Advent comes again
and gives her gift.
In the cold and dead of winter,
trauma seems to sting much deeper,
and healing for the broken parts
of my life…and the people that I love?
Seems so much harder to obtain…
When it comes to these things
things so staggering and important,
healing, peace and goodness
on the earth, freedom from suffering,
well…waiting is hard, so hard and painful.
But in these moments I’m remembering
I’m troubled in soul and looking
for something transcendent, greater
than the hurt and pain and suffering,
something, someOne warm enough
persistent, faithful, warm enough
to breathe on us
to break the ice
and give us life
Long familiar sweet hymns play
wherever I go, I remember
I am poor, imperfect, waiting for
the God Who comes down,
Comes Down, God With Us
Emmanuel! Hosanna!
In the Highest Holy Fire!
and I feel again
the gentle nudge
of a knock deep
at the door
of my small
and icy lonely
heart.
Advent is the time of waiting
waiting for the One (the One)
Who embraced body, embraced sorrow
Came to show us all the fullness
of just being home, present, and real.
And we are long reminded in
our cold dolorous longing
what we’re longing for actually
a Who, Who, Who we long for,
God…always coming nearer to us.
I have found a place
inside (in Advent, inside you)
that place where once
you die, you…
you come Alive…
A place where pain
and pleasure weigh out
just the same
and all that’s left
is only Love,
And every sorrow touched
by the wild gold Promise
that in this very place
(of waiting)
Jesus has been born
(is born)
and will be born
again and again,
and again
breaking thru
that icy grip
thawing out
our longing hearts,
melting all
our sin and deaths
so we can
laugh again.
Reblogged on WordPress.com
Source: IRISH THANKSGIVING
It was a year ago on this day that I read this poem, and I am struck just as strongly today as I was on that day a year ago…by this work of such stunning power and beauty and longing and fulfillment.
Melissa Shaw Smith is a poetess that I respect immensely, and a woman that I aspire to be like. I have never met her, except thru her work, and thru a few emails in which she graciously allowed me to bloviate opinions about her work which in hindsight seems to me a bit like the 2nd grader who can do the times tables up thru her 5s talking to Madam Curie about the wonders of science!!
No matter…Constance, if you think my poetry is any good, just know that it is as if it were a child’s lego creation side by side with El Capitan compared to Melissa’s work.
Mel, if you are reading here…I love this poem with the marrow-bones of my tears.
Much much love…
Charissa
Uncanny, peculiar,
uncomfortably strange,
I tend my fires and tell my story…
the story of
this quirky girl
overly-intelligent
and stuck in time
that is not time, so
unreconciled to time
so bound up in its realm.
I am strapped there
on Your wrist (watch)
a condor in a cage
passing from quick present
to some furious future
and thus so fast becoming
dim, and dark, and past
and wondering if I am
ever? present?
ever a moment?
ever a significant occasion
or an immeasurable quality?
I want real time!
time which breaks through
with a shock of joy
like a leap into Crater Lake
on a snowy New Year’s morning,
time where we are completely
un-self conscious and far more
real in some eternal now
I thirst for a moment jeweled!
a moment
so sweet or magnified
it seems to stop time
but doesn’t because time
becomes a point so limply moot
and thus no longer dirty moat
between me and my true self
And here I sit, beside time’s bonfire
and sparks fly up
and away so quick
to join the stars
and glimmer and
I poke at this fire
hot and tender
and tend it…
with my tinder
and wonder how to be
here in this already
and not yet, between
That Eternal Now
and this one,
and the One
Who There Inhabits?
wonder how to be aware
of life while I am living it?
wonder how to limp courageous
and relinquish all control
of self and self awareness?
wonder how to laugh courageous
and look for glory
in the storied
wonder of the ordinary?
wonder how to live courageous
and be surprised by One
who dares draw near?
wonder how to love courageous
and take off rings and watches?
I burn calendars and open
my heart uncanny,
strange peculiar…
to see eternity in
the midst of time
to go to Bethlehem
today and everyday
in this time and place
where glimpses of the eternal
come quiet, unexpectedly
they come and they upset
our every notion static about time
and all we discover there within.
I open
my Uncanny Peculiar
Uncomfortably Strange Heart
to the story of All and Ever
ending Never
I choose
to live somewhere between
the already and not yet,
caught and held
by the One who
dwells within Outside.
And so the fire burns away the moments
And we must choose our portion:
whether here we tarry or if
we choose to journey
Pregnant by some God
To Go To Bethlehem
Look up, arise
my Peculiar Love!
You tumble still
wracking rocks
wrenching ravines
clawing cliffs
and scratching
with nails broken
and bloodied in the plunge.
No…I have not left
your side, your side
(it’s only bruised, Love)
so vulnerable to that lance
and the stinky rough
warhands of that coward
masquerading as a shepherd
covering for a rapist
And on that note remember
He who lays by your side
He who took the lance
He who went all the way
coming to common terms
with loss
blind as wind…
But I float now…see?
You will too soon…
And this is waiting…
there…and so I lay these words of care
upon your lips like mountain blood
white and clear and clean and cold
to slake your thirst with sop
(not hyssop)
of beauty, healing, Promise…
Oh my Love…my Love Peculiar
the day will come to
Arise
and join me in the Liberty
you prophesied when you spied
your baby’s heart eternal.
Be yourself only
different now
somehow
with all
that
grief.
In case you ever
thought that
you were just
a being, just
a humble
presence
you are not just
anything, you
mean something,
more than that
you mean
everything,
because everything that
means something
beats inside
of you.
Blood Red Sunsets smothered by the sea
Parting birds flying south in songs of sorrow
Deep sad hymns are birthed deep within me
sung by longing winds unto tomorrow…
The hawk screams and jumps,
grabs clawfuls of fading blue sky,
rips them loose from the fabric
of the dimming day…and then
away….jpg)
While the red alder sees and sheds tears
in gold showers of dry rustly leaves
that spin and sigh and softly sing
a falling lament, a longing ode
to summer past and gone…
All is falling upon the cooling soil
waiting for the winter drums
waiting for the winter drums…
time is the greatest distance
between two distant places…
me then. me now.
Today I am grateful
for that excruciating
powerlessness I felt
over and over
again and again
as a young child
and I would just cry
and cry and just cry
and I would just try
and try and just try
to summon some presence
in the midst of such absence.
Today, I know how to
think differently, how to
give up, how to
lose hope without (how to)
losing Hope.
Then I was empty,
and full of a void
inside the abyss.
Today I am flexible
dynamic, resilient,
I am a willow
and never an oak
and my golden harps
which were hung
on my branches
forgotten and rusty
are now soft being
strummed by Hands
not yet seen playing
songs of resilience.
Today I feel grateful
for knowing incredible
unutterable sadness,
washing in ocean waves
of the world’s sorrow
and my growing awareness,
of dissolving, surrender,
of letting go over
and over again.
All my jagged pieces
pulled out and untangled
untwisted unwrapped
washed clean of the muck
so healing can commence
How about you, Constance? What transitions are you facing in life?
They are worth the suffering.
If you hear people from my past speak of me.
Keep in mind they are speaking of a person
they don’t even know any more.
those pieces you gave me
so jagged, so bitter, so shocking,
and time faithful and patient,
and your heart time’s ally
and washing them in your tears
(those pieces)
until they’ve become worn
and smooth, savory, building blocks
and yeah, badges of honor to a heart
broken and rising?
*those pieces*
see how they fit inside me?
see that place with eyes all around
and ears attached to eyes
and hands cradling, treasuring,
and no mouth in sight?
__no_words__
see my heart welcome them,
those pieces?
they have joined my treasure room.
and written above the door they live in
is this word:
Precious
ima walk beside you
and carry them (you)
and give them back to you (them)
as you need to spend.
sometimes buying forgetfulness
sometimes buying remembrance
im so glad to be your friend
my friend
Ho! You who are broken
in your maddening, modern conformity,
squeezing into the oh too tight tenny shoes
that pinch your toes and chirp at your soul!
Listen…take off your shoes and wander.
Aimlessly. Abandon agenda!
Give up your goals (just for a moment)
wander with no purpose on purpose.
After all, there is so much to do
that you cannot afford to not wander
away from the overflow days
and the many demands on your time and attention!
Toss out your check list and check yourself instead
and spend time pursuing
the unplanned quick moment
right now…in some eating, and drinking,
and wandering…
…from paths and from business
and rest, and withdraw
and pray with your passage
from boardroom to garden.
See the fat flowers
frolicking violet
hear the bees rockin
in time to the wind
listen for stories
and look at the birds
and see the white lilies
give life and give strength
and thus rescue your being
delivered from doing!
Stop to notice
let your thoughts
prayers rise and fall
with your breath
and your step.
Wandering is
purposeful work
without purpose
done on purpose.
Marshal your forces, you protectors of the crown,
send your dogs running, your dogs of dreams,
your dogs howling, full noses of my fur, my pelt!
Bring on your hunt, your horses in full gallop
and chase for all you’re worth, your lust and fear
of free blood running red, and full, liberty’s blood!
Your coats, scarlet! Your smirks, affixed with tax,
and become terrible twisted rictus in your sweaty efforts
to hunt this free fox leaping, yipping, dancing on the dawn!
They shall come to me, your dogs, and wriggle ‘neath my touch!
They shall hear my dog-whistle words, too high for your dull ears
but so keenly attuned and pitched to their own straining hearts!
And they shall call to their comrades, your horses, who will alert and thrill
and leap into the air to gallop freely there…and you unhorsed…you laying there
upon the blood-stained grass of yesteryear…
Your time is up, for we are come to hunt you down
and tear that red coat straight away right off your back
and tossed into the sky, our banner free unfurled and our war cry…
No Longer! Not Anymore!
I remember that hard day,
the day I turned to stone,
how my heart filled with such dismay
horror-struck to the bone.
Words floated in the smoky air
and zeroed in on me
and stung me in my fleshy-chair
word-wasps and angry bee.
I broke out, far down the road
so many years gone by
and there laid down that heavy load
of stone, beneath blue skies
and put on my warm softest flesh
and bloomed in my true form…
me, grown in stable gender-creche
and at last here…reborn.
I lit myself on fire last night,
so deep within the forest green,
deep in the dark, and black with night,
this full sloe night of birth and dreams
and true becoming in earth brand new.
I found the heart of that deep secret wood
and there in its tough-tender core that lay
so quiet, t’was forever winter and brilliant
and glad in the glade and the still and the snows
and the frozen mists wreathed round that door (Her Door)
and crystal light skittered in ice jewels that glittered
on burnished ground gritty, substantive and pebbled
and real…real like me…and that Ancient stone table
awaiting me waiting there, and charred remains…
hinting at that dazzling “forever-more.”
There…in the frozen deep heart so pure,
so true and alive in that rooted green wood
that beckoned me step into it with my courage
and my heart, my faith and my love,
my faith…in love and in Grace.
Why, you ask?
Why did I immolate my tender heart,
and my teary soul?
Because…
I’ve grown tired of misuse,
I’ve grown weary being taken
there, for granted and discounted,
not allowed to breathe or be…
and so I lit myself on fire
with the living breathing flames
and unbecoming sticks of me.
Why? Because…
The river called me, bid me come,
the fields wooed me to walk in them
amidst their wheaty woven tresses
and their rustly whisper blessings
words so urgent, speaking of
the needed fires that would burn
deep in the forest, fires of love
and burn me straight down to the ground
where Phoenix waits, my lost and found…
because the stars swam overhead
and flew across unfathomable deeps,
because the fox ran on the night
because its paws tattooed me sweet,
because the fires beckoned me…
I lit me there, me…blazing bright.
There, in the flames my starved soul
it did remember its deep song,
words springing full in fiery dance
and I sang there in my one chance
to reclaim me…
and my own knowing of myself
and knowing this Divine Romance…
I came,
ghosty, buried, squirming there
outlawed by law, thus qualified
to call out Law once and for all,
as mere smoke drifting in cool night air
and dissipating…then disappeared!
OH! How I burned!
I danced in red flames fundamental,
so elemental and essential
in the drum beat, and embodied
in the whistle, in the call
and hue and cry, in fragile beauty
and in loss and in the cook-fires
and the dreamtime, when bereft and full of longing
OH…I burned there…
OH…How I burned!
In the forest…
In the snow…
I burned there…
Burned for Her…
I burned for me.
I’m not going on without me any longer
and I’m not a mark, or soft sweet honey pot
for strange predacious thrusts of others, NO!
I know when things must die, must die
…and when those things must live.
I’ve learned to walk away,
I’ve learned to stay
as the watcher and the knower,
oracle and visionary and intuitive gold maker,
as creator, quiet listener, inspiratrice, clever inventor,
and a guide to vibrant life that lies so deep in the deep green wood
and that same life it glows in me, it grows in me and goes beyond
me always and no matter what may matter, what may come,
Come what may, come my way…
That was last nite…
the fire of my bones
Today I have me risen…
and walk the path of crones
I am centered, un-apolo-getic,
rooted in the truth and all that I am now is…
is raw and wild
with ancient knowing
of the blood
so fiercely flowing
thru the rivers
and the streams
in the creek-beds
of my bones.
Today’s the day
to rise from ruins
(necessary ruins precede my rise).
Today’s the day to burn away,
the old that is just not aligned
with truth that feeds
those fires hot
and fuels transformation.
All of the animals gathered and watched
what they thought was a glorious sunset
on the horizon, that far lost horizon.
But it was just me, burning, on fire,
and all ruins falling and Phoenix arising,
cus I lit myself on fire last nite.
I lit myself on fire…last nite.
There’s deep green truth
in the spectral grey heart
of this ghastly pale notion
haunting our desperate minds:
our own truest blue heart
is most deeply discovered
in desperate ragged edges,
jagged, sharp, contrasted,
in tight precipice moments
(both high, and oh so low).
It’s on those thresholds,
in those moments
of “life”, of dismal death,
weighted and full moments
where indecision and decision
wrestle for supremacy,
where comfort lulls,
boredom deceives,
and indifference dulls…
Tell me, what’s the essence of a heart
delivered from this life lived badly
to a certain death well-died?
And there and back again
into life lived and risen
from the bony spectral grip
of that small death called
cowardice?
Iris Fox ©2013 Gretchen Powers all rights reserved
I think it’s memory,
(and of course courage
to forget what is dead
and press on in pursuit
of those matters that matter)
to bravely (courage)
recall (re-member)
those things long ago
when first love was
fresh, free, fragrant…
that gives us perspective
to risk a decent death
and choose to lay down all
in hopes that we will rise
before the Great Rising.
It’s when we remember
in poised precipice moments
that we can see most clearly
how our affections flow
and what and who we are…
But:
what we remember deeply,
all that we have ingrained
into identity assumed
(like costumes for the play)
it’s far more likely we’ll recall
when crisis, pain or comfort make it
hard to remember anything,
the deep memory will hold against
temptation of forgetfulness in
“the Forgetful Green.”
If we refuse to actively remember
the story in which we participate,
(moments where God
has acted mightily,
the times humanity
has learned in tears
of reality and immortality,
of the autonomy of God
even in this)
then in sickness and in health
undoubtedly we will forget
that memory even is a thing
in this world that’s forgotten
and bids us forget as well.
Lay aside the panaceas, cure alls,
life supports, and take up courage
to embrace a good death given
Die a Decent Death, in faith
that such thing does exist!
What is a good death?
The question’s asked and answered
by people who mourn and lament,
who weep at gravesides lingering,
who live and die and live as those
who follow That One gone before
in boldness and then risen high
above the false finale of
the gasping gaping grave!
A decent death, a certain hope…
I think it’s memory…
I think it’s memory.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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