Category Archives: pain

Emptied streets

04 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in adventure, community, courage, dark, global, light, offering, pain, poems, poetry, song

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A man walks beneath black umbrella,

Calla lilies bloom in the rain;

A woman stands at the kitchen window

staring out with soapy hands and sponge,

singing,

“And you look at yourself,

pacing the cage…”

The playground is taped off in yellow tape,

A child speeds home on scooter with no cars in sight,

“All the spells I could sing, it’s as if the thing is written

in the constitution of the age…”

Grass is greening, lungs ache,

and hearts are breaking,

“Sometimes the best map will not guide you…”

Stay strong and bend, be well

We are in this together together together

We are all pacing the cage–

Not alone not alone

As we walk thin line between birth and death

Now and here

Now and here

Together

Not alone

Hold that thin line dear,

Dear,

Hold it dear.

Days long

29 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in change, Infinite, learning, Loss, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, the road, work

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Days long

become years

and one most loved becomes a harm,

and through protection and confusion you seek

understanding of drastic change,

and the heart must learn

Safe? Not safe?

Safe? Not safe?

While you search blindly for pillar of heaven,

with eyes playing no part in this pilgrimage,

Heaven rests closer than the newly loud beating

in your chest..

so it goes and on it goes and through you go

asking for direction to the River when it has sunk

far underground within life that continues on

always always life continues on

beyond twist, injury, death and journey toward Spirit

alone.

November 3

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in change, learning, mystery, offering, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, receiving

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Is it true that time changes?

Not here, but there, not past that imaginary line

but an inch before it.

Waking today brought an altered number

on a clock

yet Sun didn’t hiccup or falter.

Who are we to roll such dice?

Upon opening my eyes today

I’m living out a past pain through new labor.

Which is true–

the old pain, the fresh effort?

November 3 offers lost agonies returned,

a dawning, growing prayer

and broadening recognition of space

expanding into the Grandmotherly arms

of a beckoning,

wrinkled

and rollicking humor.

Woman, shave your head

08 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by in beauty, Body, break out, home, honoring, learning, Love, movement, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, strength

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Got long hair?

Got any hair?

Woman, shave your head.

And collect the assumptions hoisted upon you,

the ones you weren’t quite certain,

but now you know,

have been dragging you down.

Belly scraping the road.

Woman, got long hair?

Shave your head, and learn how confused

perceptions and expectations of you

are.

Where you may have been pretty, attractive,

desired,

suddenly the sight of that is gone

and people, most people, don’t have a clue

how to respond, how to comprehend–

But you were pretty.

You were attractive.

You were desirable.

Watch them turn their eyes away, unable

to look at you.

Hear them,

hating what they see and can’t understand,

say, “You look so…different.”

The least offensive, yet unasked for, comment

they can make.

Woman, got long hair?

Shave your head,

and discover what assumptions shove you low, in place,

a shallow ditch where you have been put.

Some react in adoration,

others with titillation, however briefly,

or with shock envy disbelief disgust.

Woman,

if ever you didn’t fully get it,

not in the tautness of your sinews,

how the appearance of a woman is believed

to belong

to the public,

that it is open invitation to

critique judgement opinion desire and rejection,

stick a personal act of transformation,

like dynamite,

within social view.

Woman,

if you want to know not

what others want you to be

but the stuff you’re made of,

Go,

Shave your head.

Scars

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in becoming, Body, break out, change, death, honoring, learning, loving, nature, pain, poems, poetry, story, the road

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Scars

attest to bridges crossed battling dragons,

to threatening rivers entered

that pushed at knees, sucked at ankles.

To deep mountaintop scree, ragged, sharp and steep where

falling

meant death and dismemberment.

We were there,

we know,

we learned.

Yours lay upon your body

differently

than mine;

equally, they shape us.

Scars pulse out of step with the rest.

Each must be attended to,

honored,

for what they give,

for what they gave up.

Now

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in abundance, adventure, becoming, courage, devotion, discomfort, dread, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, learning, movement, mystery, nature, pain, poems, poetry, release, stillness, strength, transition, welcoming, work

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He slams the door behind him.

You think, Good riddance!

When next your heart stops and breath catches,

out comes a gasp, What have I done?

Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes

from complete sense to non-sense,

and it is on that iceberg of moment

(and each drifting ice island following)

when wondering, Is this true?

might most gather you back together in a form

strong enough,

wise enough

to hold all the sensations and feelings

threatening to tear you to pieces

to be with Now,

an actual fullness of Life

for which you have the grandest capacity.

This day

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by in aging, becoming, Body, community, fear, honoring, learning, Loss, nature, pain, poems, poetry, transition, work

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This day he walks slowly,

approaching in nearly a shuffle.

Handing me a candy- the kind once known as penny-

saying, this aging stuff, not so easy.

I used to think, he shares with a soft shake of his head,

I could stay a perpetual teenager. But not so.

His health, not good,

the poetry, music and culture

having always fed him

no longer enough.

Or so it seems to him, on this day.

Clutching a small handled paper bag, one somehow

always carried,

he steps away, looking emptily into distance

not physically there,

leaving me with a golden,

foil covered chocolate coin never to be eaten

and an appreciation for his difficult facing

of what he long imagined

could be outrun.

The mendacity of the Father

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in break out, change, courage, family, freedom, learning, movement, pain, poems, poetry, release, Sight, vision

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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.

Her own

21 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in adventure, aging, beauty, becoming, Body, break out, change, discomfort, freedom, honoring, learning, movement, pain, poems, poetry, welcoming

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At forty

she felt seventy.

Experience’s weight

had sunk posts deep into the landscape of her being.

Ache and limitation, an undertow of fatigue,

confusion at the seeming permanence

of the uninvited, the resisted,

lead this human to take possession, fully-

and for the first time-

of a life unwritten, free of guarantees,

and her own.

Entirely her own.

Her landscape now is a garden,

loved and wanted, with posts that may disappear.

Or not.

With their origins recognized, appreciated,

and their presence finally respected,

perhaps a hammock will be slung between them

in honor of spring’s arrival.

Not exactly

17 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in abundance, adventure, aging, beauty, becoming, change, Deliverance, discomfort, freedom, gratitude, honoring, joy, learning, listen, Loss, mystery, pain, poems, poetry, receiving, release, wonder, work

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It wasn’t through torn paper

blackened shoelace

or scuffed wall 

that I found You.

It wasn’t the constant push

circulating fear

or I-must-do-betters..

not even the inch between 

the sidewalk and me

plus a bruised knee.

Not exactly.

Add the non-starts,

regimented dreams,

what’s-wrong-with-me’s,

attempts to fit when fitting fed starvation,

and the broken heart- birthday after birthday-

with one shattering

nearly beyond recovery

that, finally,

I found You.

The joke being

that I’ve carried You in me

since before the first sunrise.

Except now,

when I say hello

I can hear You answer.