Garden of the Gods

When I read the email interdict
something finally clicked.
Forbid me to meet and laugh
and tease, deny as frivolous
conviviality on which the soul feeds?
The pressure’s on to be
a callous cog
on the ruthless wheel
building the soulless world.
We’re trained we must not be
the being bursting
with creativity. No, we must
bow to the needs of survival–
pay the bill to stream
carefully crafted scenes
the only way our soul can feed.
Today I sing my own decree,
follow my intuitive nudges
dance with my grumbling grudges
and dreams about how it should
be–the shoulds that keep me
blind and deaf. The music’s
now! These groaning trees,
this patch of snow, the bit
of blue and white as the gray
grows to include a vastness
cursory glances ignore.
And I embrace poetry
and warm gazes, holding
hands and awkward hugs,
invitations unfolding
and when I can’t be with you,
I’ll be with me, glorious
wild woman spinning free.

Inspired by: Convivial, Frivolous, Pressure and Can’t. and this soul-food photo from an earlier time, a hike in Garden of the Gods, near Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Soundcloud recording here.

Someday I’ll Wish

When man up is extinct
and we escape the patriarchal
clinch, embrace instead
what’s rarely said in macho
bravos–lunatic fringe
simply a piece of our
extended tapestry–in short,
when we appear just as we
are, with deep respect
(the long neglect of hope
suspect when we must always
correct some fault that’s deep
within our ancestry) when
that day is here
I declare
the evolutionary leap
the shift is in the air
we breathe and suddenly
we see the edgy intricacy
of our imperfect beauty
simplicity when we
bowing, stunned, aware
there is no better you
the one that we receive
and care, unplumbed
perfection when we dare
admit the hidden pieces
the critic sighs,
looses and releases.

Inspired by: Rarely, Extinct, Hope, Clinch and the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt Man Up, the last movie I saw.  Once again, the demand to create a stream of consciousness post stretched me beyond my comfort zone.  And I’m glad!

Soundcloud recording here.

Money For Old Rope

The path to crisis is boulder-
strewn difficult. One must
strenuously avoid the
temptation to do nothing–
that is, they say, when evil
triumphs. Beware any
chance to sit in silence
clear the inner murmuration
of starling-thoughts flying
intricate patterns of karmic
misperceptions. Try and try
again! Do! Move like a murder
of crows as the tempest
feeds on your panicked
activity. Onward, to the
breaking point! Trouble looms
and brewers, we foment
with such good intent, and yet,
our trajectile initiates from
hate, the very rules we seek
to dismantle. This is more than
we can handle.

We set down
the old-world tools
curious, unsighted
to receive what now
has newly lighted.

Inspired by: Triumph, Crisis, Nothing, Temptation and this photo taken in 1890 of my great-great grandfather visiting his son in Colorado.  Do we carry the old ways in our genes, or do they carry us on a wave of preconceptions?

Soundcloud recording here.

In The New

Winds of change are in the air
so I’ve cut my hair. The long

days of witch-braids are done.
It’s time to have some fun,

a flirty swinging bob.
This new heartthrob

left silver ringlets on the cutting floor.
Shhh. Hear me roar.

A quadrille (44 words) written for #94 Roaring In The New–a prompt with perfect timing as I celebrate my new ‘do.

Soundcloud recording here.

I Arrive

At the big box store I recognize
a wailing child–new to my eyes
and yet I’ve sung those notes,
tightly buckled in a cart, mother
engrossed and boggled so ignores
the tiny being’s outraged roars.
I pause to give my presence, meet
the tearful eyes, witness her hiccupped
surprise. We look. It’s clear
there’s nothing to be done
or said. We’re here. The gift
of my expanded space and her
receptive face. She’s heard.
I see she’s vital in this day-
light chance encounter. She
was frightened when compassion
found her. I hold her gaze.
They move away in sudden
silence. And now what guides us
is the warm regard that says
we are together, there’s no
alone, unheard, unseen; there’s
deep embracing presencing.
Her power recognized–she changed
my way! Alerting me to the web
and what’s in play
the echoes sing just underfoot
opening to the new input
we choose connection, we embrace
each other with true affection.
Arriving home, I put on paper
the steps that surely wake her.
I hear you. I see you.
Your heart is true.
Your voice is strong.
Nothing to say. Nothing to do.
We simply step as we belong.

Inspired by: Paper, Daylight, Vital, Boggle, an amazing course session in Conscious Healing, a crying child at the store and memories of my own cries (shown here, in the middle of unhappy brothers when I was six months old.)

Listen on soundcloud here.

My Island Temperament

Bali Ha’i may call you any night, any day. In your heart, you’ll hear it call you:
“Come away…Come away.”~Oscar Hammerstein II

Of all the lusty lives I’ve led, I favor these,
touched by the magic waters of the south seas,
my inhibitions shed, and I slipped out of time
to stay. Though people there I seemed to’ve left
behind, in fact our hearts are ever intertwined.
We reach across the miles in dreams and
notes, photos enclosed. No story ever told
really grows old. It winds inside the places
where I sat, the headlands slippery and wet,
waves crashing o’er my prescient head still
smell the salt. I burned those memories, a
treasure thread to keep–knowing I must go
and yet return in sleep. My blood
and lineage pulled me back to roots
unsettled in the stolen land so how
could I stay and steal again, when home demands
I make amends? The worlds are spinning
through what’s real, captured in this love
I feel that like a creeper or an invasive mint,
I set down roots by dint of poetic intent.
And though I’ve leapt across the oceans
every life I’ve left behind continues
in the new soil
in me and I in you the web expands
with each small truth
brush strokes with knowing hands.

 

Inspired by: Lust, Temperament, Brush and South Seas.  Featured image: my favorite coconut grove in the Guajira Peninsula.  (I changed the form after great feedback from the wise Judy Dykstra-Brown.)

Listen on soundcloud here.

Heed

One must recondition the entire system of reflexes that constitute habit, so that neither habit nor sensory stimuli nor the influence or suggestions of environments, thoughts, desires or purposes of other people can interfere with the function or execution of your intuition or your relation between your inner self and that universal “something else.” That must come before all else — “or else,” in the final transaction.~Joseph Sadony

At the crossroads lit in garish
distress, my inner GPS indicates

a turning in my journey
no chicanery, vain query

is it so? Intuition knows
what the senses never expose

humans blithely blind
and still below our feet, all

beings meet. Our heads
are in the air, our hearts

encased, untouchable.
We’re numb to being

vulnerable. The universe expands
inside our brains like shifting

sands. We all create a web
between our ties

multidimensional space,
our intentional lace sacred

geometrical and obviously
you’re skeptical even though

you feel the sweat trickle
from stones at night

out of sight. Reality is no
word on a page, no thought

spinning. Tune in.
Squint past the neon signs

obliviating the next step as if
our only choice is to trace

the hate-pattern written in our
genetic face. The signal may

be quiet now, but heed.
The more we listen,

the more we yield to lead
in our most basic dance

where we open our arms to what
we’ve always labelled pure chance.

Inspired by: Chicanery, Sweat, Garish and Turning.

Soundcloud recording here.