18 Sunday Mar 2018
And what are those skills
sitting,
unkempt, ignored, without mastery,
in the ashes
much as you’d like to abandon them there?
Only your gifts, the spells and support
needed, castable with no other’s voice or hands,
the workings for which you were born to suffer
and give.
Step, rich and slow, into your place.
A gyre of vultures, forty strong,
turns ’round at the base of the mountain
pushing remembrance of how small
you’ve been playing it, and
how large you now must be.
20 Tuesday Feb 2018
A conditioning of impotence,
reaching for the salt when another swipes it first,
mounting silence in heavy boots, step upon step,
crags of volcanic history ignored by all
but you.
Buttons pop in flights of frustration,
and the weight of carrying baggage,
generations of status quo,
threatens to break your back
until
the ludicrous heart-heaviness and surge
for a real place in family becomes visible
for the impossibility it is.
Pitching the straps off your shoulders,
searing sight of that graveyard of the forgotten
rising skyward
into memory, you shake your head
at the Sisyphean absurdity,
turn around
and walk away.
02 Friday Feb 2018
And when Fear comes knocking?
Or, more likely, bamblarkblasting its way in,
do you invite him to sit down,
notice her nebulous sucking barbed wire darkness,
and surrender yourself to the visit knowing
something important will be learned?
Come, come Fear, welcome,
enter and offer what brings you through town-
you might say
in honor and awe of,
out of respect for the guest with power
to leave you shivering, quivering
and yet more able to walk on
with starlight in your eyes-
have yourself a cup of tea,
You must be tired.
28 Sunday Jan 2018
The mendacity of the Father,
the for-your-own-good, you’ll-
understand-one-day,
spank you on the ass ruler of the house,
might there not be another way?
Look the white shark in the eye and see
what he claims to be is none other
than the abuse he forgets
once brought him to his knees.
Question where you came from,
you may find there’s a curse
invisible, iron gripped,
you alone can shake off.
Pain, unaddressed, is only fed
to the next generation who cling,
cling to the same pedagogy
that poisoned your once Free spirit..
Now’s the time-
reclaim it.
03 Wednesday Jan 2018
Through the night, and every inch of its darkness,
you keep trying to get home.
Missing buses, the next being the last
before a no service emptiness of midnight.
And the priest you met was no priest behind that supermarket,
but a desperate man wearing inside out shirt
with black short sleeves and shabby collar.
Waiting, waiting, wanting and anxious
with one goal in mind,
standing alone at the bench eager
to get to the end of the line when you can start walking
a long stretch of highway
in the wee hours
to a home that no longer exists
yet is the one place to which you know the way.
11 Tuesday Jul 2017
To the fierce woman–
not the girl, whatever the age, trying to look pretty,
to be nice,
not the girl in the woman’s body aiming
to be desired, seductive, adored, heroic, cool, mysterious,
No, no-
To the fierce woman who knows the song of her own heart’s beat,
who cares not about how she appears, but about who she is,
who isn’t reaching for the next best outfit, witty comeback, title or
right answer–
To the fierce woman who walks how she walks,
talks how she talks,
ages as she brilliantly ages,
sees how she sees and
loves how she loves,
my God, Welcome.
Welcome to this world.
You
are
needed.
29 Saturday Apr 2017
there’s a place between.
of occupying the holiness of longing,
of seeing
that wanting
is for what we don’t have.
while sensing
what is
is more than enough.
it’s a suspension bridge-
rope strung between two islands-
and how the wind does
make it sway.
10 Friday Mar 2017
If suffering is the path laid down for us, by us
stone by stone,
How might we love
not only each one but
the trying burden of laying them
on the surface of this Earth
(could as easily be the moon. still, it’s not)
for our own feet to walk upon?
If meaning is found
simply
in carrying our suffering
in devotion
– not as martyr, but pilgrim
with full unknowing of why,
or even how-
to the making of a life,
by virtue of its having been given,
then
might we lean into the expectations
life holds for us
and do right by them
by our own true Selves-
that Essence buried
beneath all the heaviness requiring our backs, hearts, hands
which knows what it is
to burn brightly
for no reason
what
so
ever?
.
.
* with thanks to Viktor Frankl
31 Tuesday Jan 2017
Eyes heavy from reading news,
a seemingly apocalyptic caravan of events
and, yet, spirited fires light here, there, and there-
in me, in you, over the next hill where soft glow flickers.
Hours on the phone, speaking up, speaking out, thanking,
and yet another heart lifts during great challenge.
Tend to that fire consistently,
have water always near to temper and moisten,
eat of earthen foods to slow, slow
into the long journey ahead.
All are precious in this global transformation,
take another’s hand in yours in pure reminder.
16 Monday Jan 2017
Shy at the gate,
toss your head, flip your tail,
switch ears, twitch nostrils-
a fine tension builds,
keep with it.
Shimmy your skin and whinny, yes,
a whoa-what’s-happening kind of alarm.
Stay with it.
That gate’s got words for you,
and not of a sort your brain’s going to comprehend.
They have teeth, and dirt, and a strange wind to them,
which may be the reason for the fleeting,
repeating
blood chills, maybe.
Rushing to run misses the opportunity.
Kick the temple bell with an eager hoof if you have to
but know
this place between,
at the gate before god knows what and you,
holds the field of promise.
Hang in, possibility calls you far,
far from the familiar.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 