Archangel Michael Clearing Prayer

I'm moved the share this prayer with you. Several dear friends shared it with me, and I use it regularly. I usually don't utilize these kind of tools too often, and yet find this one very helpful.  I think of it as a clearing tool. 

This needs to be read aloud, and then you tap your thymus (at your sternum) three times then touch your bellybutton :) Please use it if it resonates with you, with my blessings of love.

Archangel Michael Clearing Prayer

I, _________ , call in the highest energy of
Archangel Michael's fifth dimensional tube of Light.
I thank you, Archangel Michael,
for placing this tube of Light over me
in this lifetime, in all lifetimes,
all planetary systems, all solar systems,
all alternate worlds, all alternate universes,
all parallel worlds, all parallel universes,
and all space and time
by the force and grace of God.

I thank you, Archangel Michael,
for using your sword of Light to completely clear me
of all attached energies, all negative energies, and all attached entities
from my cellular memory
and from all other parts of my being.

I thank you for transmuting these energies
up through the fifth dimensional tube of Light,
to the fifth dimension,
where they can be transformed into their highest form of Light.

Should I have any attached energies
that do not wish to go to the Light,
leave me now and go somewhere safe within the Universe
without harming anyone.

I thank you for infusing all voids within my being
with unconditional love and Light.

So I speak and so it is.

I am receptive to this protection and clearing.
(tap thymus 3x and touch navel)

Four sacred medicines

The Medicine Wheel

Physical Quadrant

Tobacco is the first medicine given from the Creator. It is in the East and represents the promise that the Creator is always willing to listen. Yellow is the color, spring is the season and childhood is the stage of life.

Tobacco is the first plant that the Creator gave to the Anishinabe people. Three other plants: sage, cedar and sweetgrass are held sacred by the people. Together they are referred to as the four sacred medicines (Muskiiki). The four sacred medicines are used in everyday life and in all of our ceremonies. All of them can be used to smudge with, though sage, cedar and sweetgrass also have many other uses. It is said that tobacco sits in the eastern door, sweetgrass in the southern door, sage in the west and cedar in the north. Elders say that the spirits like the aroma produced when the other sacred medicines are burned.

Sacred tobacco was given to the Anishinabe so that we can communicate with the Spirit world. Tobacco is always offered before picking other medicines. When you offer tobacco to a plant and explain your reasons for being there, the plant will let all the plants in the area know your intentions and why you are picking them. Tobacco is used as an offering, a gift, and is an important part of Anishinabe ceremonies.

Mental Quadrant

Sweetgrass is in the South and connected to Mother Earth. It has a shiny and beautiful side as well as a plain side, representative of youth. When sweetgrass is braided, it cannot be pulled apart. Likewise when your body, mind and spirit are solidly connected, you will be full and strong in your personal life. Red is the colour, summer is the season and youth is the stage of life.

Sweetgrass is the sacred hair of Mother Earth. Its sweet aroma reminds our people of the gentleness, love and kindness she has for the people. When sweetgrass is used in a healing circle it has a calming effect. Like sage and cedar, sweetgrass is used for smudging and purification.

Emotional Quadrant

Sage is in the West. As we move into the adult stage of our lives, we always exit through the West and sage assists in that journey. The smell of sage is intended to attract the spirits’ attention. Black is the colour, fall is the season and adulthood is the stage of life.

Sage is used to prepare our people for ceremonies and teachings. Because it is more medicinal and stronger than sweetgrass, sage is used more often in ceremonies. Sage is used for releasing what is troubling the mind and for removing negative energy. It is also used for cleansing homes and sacred bundles carried by people. It also has other medicinal uses.

Spiritual Quadrant

Cedar is placed in the North. While Mother Earth sleeps, cedar stays green, symbolizing that Mother Earth still watches over and protects us. White is the colour, winter is the season and Elderly is the stage of life.

Like Sage and Sweet grass, Cedar is used to purify the home, it also has many restorative medicinal use. When mixed with sage for a tea, it cleans the body of all infections, cedar baths are also very healing. When cedar mixed with tobacco is put in the fire it crackles, this is said to call the attention of the Spirits (manitous) to the offering that is being made. Cedar is used in sweat lodge and fasting ceremonies for protection, cedar branches cover the floor of many sweat lodges and some people make a circle of cedar when they are fasting. It is a guardian spirit and chases away the bad spirits. 

Thanks to: http://www.chippewaheritage.com/1/post/2012/03/four-sacred-medicines-muskiiki.html

Axan's prayer at dinner tonight

Thank you creator for this beautiful food, and nurturing us so we can live in peace.

afterglow

gives me chills in summertime

Two Countries by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow

when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel

of singleness, feather lost from the tail

of a bird, swirling onto a step,

swept away by someone who never saw

it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,

slept by itself, knew how to raise a

see-you-later hand. But skin felt

it was never seen, never known as

a land on the map, nose like a city,

hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque

and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.

Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.

Love means you breathe in two countries.

And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,

deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.

Even now, when skin is not alone,

it remembers being alone and thanks something larger

that there are travelers, that people go places

larger than themselves.

from the JUST WRITE AND CREATE file

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case. ~ Chuck Close

English Romantic

 Remembering a line from P.B. Shelley I adored in my super-romantic high school days - "Soul meets soul on lovers' lips" - I went trolling and suddenly remembered how much I love this man's writing, different as it is from the written aesthetic by which I'm normally floored. What a wonderful reawakening!

THE EARTH:
   I spin beneath my pyramid of night
   Which points into the heavens, dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
   As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
   Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth
      keep.

THE MOON:
   As in the soft and sweet eclipse,
   When soul meets soul on lovers’ lips,
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
   So when thy shadow falls on me,
   Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,
      Full, oh, too full!

by Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822)
from Prometheus Unbound

THE INDIAN SERENADE

by Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822)

ARISE from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,

And the stars are shining bright.

I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me -- who knows how?

To thy chamber window, Sweet!

 

The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream--

And the Champak's odours [pine]

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

The nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart,

As I must on thine,

O belovèd as thou art!

 

O lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast:

O press it to thine own again,

Where it will break at last!

even after all this time...

#30 the end

This is the end of new beginnings

false and mushy promises that ring in a high tone, 

full of hope and farce, lacking in action or truth

This is the end of tuning in on an idea,

a way to articulate that moment or way of being,

and slavishly returning to it to frame all that comes next

This is the end of personal development

as a concept, and a true beginning of allowing,

opening, screaming, crying, and finally, really laughing

#29 poem for a man I didn't know well enough

The long dark lashes half-mooned,

those black pools scattered with sparks

appearing, then disappearing,

a wide bright white half moon curving 

the other way, completing the circle,

edged with a jutting canine echoing his father's,

showing a questioning teasing skeptical 

joyfully deliciously devilishly wonder

and the perfect beauty of our human imperfections

A quiet bear hug, focus attentive 

on the moment like a little one, spirit strong

springing and flowing over the fluctuations of time

and his melancholies, resolute,

an unbelievably ancient long jaded face 

animated with the joy of living, and wondering

When he left too soon, it seemed,

his family doesn't deserve these sorrows,

these gritos again sounded to the thunderclouds

And sister friend found her words of response in this,

not soothing but in the way only of truth,

that ego is that which doubts and questions and refutes god,

that our faith is more than blindness, it's surrender to the unknown

including a surrender to what seems wrong, out of place, too soon,

undeserved. How do we know he didn't chose that very moment? she asked

Work with that very person to help him leave this plane?

Why would he want to go? Why leave his family with these gritos?

The last time I saw Berto

he was removed, dreamy, grounded,

he wanted to be allowed his space, but not disdainfully.

So I thought, though now I wish I would 

have gone to get that last bear hug.

He who said that his big brother, who took his own life,

could help us more from the other side.

How can we say it is not divine order,

even as we cannot see that it is?

#28

a day behind but a dollar up

how perfect when I took a children's trip

into the world of musical theater

and fell into wonderland,

witnessed the white rabbit in me

scurry and hurry and worry and

get nowhere, but he drew the whole world 

with him into a magically alive land 

full of irreverent wonder

coming back up through the hole in the tree trunk's roots

the journey complete

it's also just begun

#27

some people hang their mornings 

on the idea of a new beginning

while the radiance of day shines 

clarity on the night before

in the present, that luminosity reveals 

deeper understanding of the dark path 

we walked down to get here

at the lake side

so that our view of our recent footsteps 

is woven into right now,

to be turned around in wonder 

and enjoyed as much as the 

sunny day and cool water

#26 scum

the tide brings out all the scum

the bottom feeders start wondering

how those big rainbows of fish 

near the light taste, and slide eerily up into 

worlds where their ways clash against 

every surface, stirring up tornadoes
in smooth sand paintings,

breaking up zen schools of one mind fish

and sparking to the surface, blinded,

as these creatures can't see in light -

so unaccustomed to its truth they are

#25

new ventures await

in the opening of tomorrow's eyes

and the butterflies of tonight's core

peeking over the edge into the darkness

discerning forms like cloudbusting on a windy day

keep those eyes open, until relentlessly

they close

#24

How is she still breathing?

She never knew she could without him

on this earth, beside her or away from her, 

but somewhere, breathing. 

Having been told that only birth and death are a guarantee

She looks around and can name one more, the deepest sorrow

of losing one's person, other half, touchstone, reason, heart.

In the wailing of grief, it is hard to remember

that all are connected to you, have gone
through this, in a way
How is it possible that all the people walk around

so screamingly torn apart so they no longer 

occupy three dimensions, and yet they walk.

All those she thanks who have come before her,

each one sent up this cracking, tearing, hollow,

explosion through the entirety of someone,

or many someones. Each left a hollow hole forgotten

as now she feels the wisdom of what's really left behind

over time, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders,

whispering in her ear, even as she never gets up again

in this moment.

The giant gray moth, who whipped his wings
around him in a fan dance before dive-bombing
into soft things all around, dove into his last light tonight,
the candle on the ancestor altar por la Virgencita.

#23 nothing

the best thing to do is nothing

all the time, every day

second best is have your plans

but let them dissolve into nothing
when they can

nothing is the great act of doing
things which seem logically unproductive
analytically consumed with inertia
but in truth, are not things at all
in truth, these anti-acts of nothing
are the glue that holds all life together,
allow the blooming of generations,
the real reason life continues to recreate itself,
the positive proof that we are all connected
and life is wonderful, and there is more to do
than run, run, run from it

there's making art, appreciating beauty,
making love, appreciating a friend's presence,
making peace, appreciating the quiet within
making pathways with no destination,
appreciating the wildness of the earth and ourselves

#22

the slenderest of crescents

low slung on the horizon

over the sinuous mountains of hips

she promises a new beginning

#21

The spirits laugh

at how the living

call ourselves that, and envision 

their airy light beings, removed from this world 

by an impermeable barrier keeping

the floating from the solid

In the canyon valleys

spirits' echoes sound and play off

the human voices laughing

coyotes gathering their hooting howls

the wind making their rushes by plants taller with each spring day

water weaving their slight but steady path through arroyos

the sound of a mirage of ancient village women walking down to the creek

is a sound of murmured conversations and a vision like an anti-shadow

a reflection of the glint reverberating off the pool of eyeballs into the hot springs

and beaming out again in the form of an ancient aunt

walking down the dirt path, wearing the way

where one day truck tires would be inspired 

to make one too

not separate from any of these elements

or others, the spirits play and dive in and out and through

catching an ear here, the side of a shoulder there

alive and not just airy

or light

#20 cracking open

cracking open

not at the seams

right in the middle

everything falls apart 

and falls away

making space for a new day

that's what the coming sleep hopes

as it lets its worn eyelids fall

its tensed muscles give in

the dream of marriage, career, 

family, passion and purpose

seems to not be what it seems

and the subtle sensations

of dreams that whisper

at the edges, the seams

will come into being

carrying an endless array 

of questions relentlessly persistent

to drop them off the cliff's edge

and continue up into the dark mountains

not to the warmly lit saloon

or cold clear campsite under the stars

or even to the inertia of the driver's zoom

up that dark mountain road 

only into the mystery of what lies beyond

moving towards true north

only because that's the way to go

the only way to go home

though home isn't north

only the momentum towards getting there

#19 my things

i've always had a thing for necks

and collarbones, red hair,

the arch of feet and the shape of toes,
aching soulful singers, poets floating in a cloud,

great intellects that excite and invite, a touch like silk,

a passion unswayed by emotion

or the presence of interesting people

no one's going to run off 

with all of my things

not all at once

i'll be feasting on the delicious many

and opening up to be feasted upon
in a reciprocal sustainable delight,
another one of my things,

for whatever remains of this life


ok one more sardonic haiku...

irreverence is
a virtue, see between blind
faith and chastity

#18 décolleté

summer's simmering

readying the senses for

a hair-raising hide and seek

the season's array of décolleté wear 

draped lovingly over these 

vibrant parts of her

trumpeting her heart,

expanding her voice

and the tall thin lines 

chords which dive from the skull and jaw

into sumptuous circular horizons

to invite a reclining feast

never want to end with a peek 

over into the other side

when plush presence 

is fully here, here

* According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, décolletage (or décolleté, its adjectival form, in current French) is a French word which is derived from decolleter, meaning to reveal the neck or, more literally, "without a collar." The term was first used in English literature sometime before 1831. In strict usage, décolletage is the neckline extending about two handbreadths from the base of the neck down, front and back.

#17 sardonic haikus

there's something that sounds 

so wrong about bowling for

kids to help them out

why must you kiss some

you know what's down there don't you

in your position?

sardonic haiku

can't keep my mouth shut and then

nothing nice comes out

where is spring's flower

when I want to knock you down

or upside the head?

happy trees thank you

Bob Ross for reminding me

of beautiful cheese

#16

the quagmire of contradiction

in a family of intellects and bookworms

a less analytical creative dreamer who submerges 

occasionally into the great mystery is a lightweight

to sit in the discomfort of opposing thoughts

is nothing, really, but to sit in your mind

not with a three hundred sixty degree view

being human and all that's impossible

but with a pretty good scan of 

at least the horizon ahead,

jagged, uneven, rolling up and down,

as the horizon never foretells the path

as it shows all the potential ways to go

discomfort is a signpost pointing towards

an area where perception has exceeded 

the boundaries of beliefs and thoughts, 

is pushing up on through, 

though the gateposts

are still up

so the tension 

is uncomfortable

a good thing

to have signposts

on the way

#15 I can't resist

"Temptation..." gargles through the jukebox speakers

in a way that could make only Tom Waits sound clear

The dark wood beams and brick of the bar peek

into the bright lantern lit dining room

where families absorbed in their good life ignore

the eyeballs rolling around the floor,

peeking up the skirts of girls

who choose to still not know better 

and into the hearts of the weak-willed,

finding the easiest dinner catch,

and striking bravado in the the inflated chests

of men without a bone in their bodies

The eels swim around each other

throwing stinkeye and squinty sidewinder eyes

and raising antenna of an ear for an opening

Tired professors refute every drunken argument

with the casual wave of a suggestion for a better research model

and the desperate boost up their fading confidence

with continual reminders of 

the joy of hedonistic debauchery

so they can ignore their desperation

If only a fool knows what temptation is

the rest of us, well we hope that's us,

sit in it, admiring its views, 

caressed by its contradictions

Having given ourselves over to it

in body, while mind and soul were

on a smoke break together

we've come to know that its draw

has much more to feed us

than its fulfillment

#14

the nights are long and rich

with rushes rising and subsiding

feeding the tabula rasa as it fades

again into nothing, open to sound 

or heat or line to mark the time

daytime's shadows give pause

to a raucous rush of noise lacking

meaning, order for order's sake

while the natural world, collective mother

falters in the shade and dry, under highway signs

and clouds of gathering chemical blowoff

and at the still point after wake, before sleep

the old woman hums, the busy mother

sings a soft song that swirls down the drain

the boys sighs, the bulk of man groans

diving again into the way out and in

friday the 13th

i wanted to write a blues song

of love lost from a child's dream of family

but a gospel uplift rang out instead...

Where is the dream? 

Sweetness and childhood magic

don't have to be banished

though the path is tangled 

the story, not straightforward

when mom and dad aren't Cindy and Charming.

There is still a soft miraculous place called home

there may be two, or more.

Strong people bigger than you

will hold you in your best light,

with most respect, and help feed all parts of you

so you can grow, grow, grow,

a vibrant medicinal weed,

a flower of waving direction,

a root hearty and deep.

And from that place, we grow, grow, grow

til one day we're the big people

facing our little ones with most respect,

kneeling humbly to their tiny greatness,

and walking the path together, 

finding how the tree struck by lightning

still grows as long and strong,

just in a different direction.

#12 guerrero pequeño

the gold-gloved boy with the midnight blue helmet

landed a punch in my son's face

behind his black helmet, he never winced

he didn't step back, but threw his arms up

kicked out a leg, his eyes sharp

never leaving that boy's form

this warrior is little now

dabbling and exploding through

all the lessons which grow 

the pathways in his brain, the peace in his heart

his calm stance, unflickering eyes

he who seems so small among those his age

is greater than the ocean inside, 

he knows he's strong like the ocelotl,

the jungle's messenger doesn't need to be king

his wide circle knows a wise diplomat, 

the charming kind who never has to put some down 

so he feels up, but uses well his wit 

and perception to ease the whole room,

the whole world.

and when he was two he liked to say,

'I'm peacemaker,' again and again,

with that mischievous toddler delight diverted and

summoned by a calm knowing inside

little warrior's next steps
will be some kind of gift to the world
that only he can reveal
with strength and grace

#11 mirror ease

I soothe many souls but never my own

how I wish I could feel that ease

oh someone's going to take care of me

soothe and bathe my body with delights

stimulate and challenge my mind,

always with a resolution that feels

somehow peaceful, even in

the middle of absolute contradiction

someone's going to ease up to me through the nights

and hold me just how I love,

whose every touch will be perfectly soft

and fierce, both together, at the right moment

I will be at ease because this person gets me

and when the telepathy's off,

she will rise gracefully to a recovery

of our merging

and I will meet her

and so we can just be

and so may I meet me beyond the mirror

my self that I project on my vision of a perfect lover

is already here

#10

dammit i'm tired

thank goddess haikus exist

or what would i do?

#9

Could you really know how much I love you

in the ways that poets and philosophers comb 

out this deep high divine love,

articulating the nuance, essence, idiosyncrasy

of this merging, growing, beautiful heart

that binds us so freely

In your moments of doubt, when the world is dark

do you really wonder if the love that surrounds you 

is within you, for you, kissing 

your footsteps, whispering for you to grow,

do you really wonder if it exists,

is it possible, or is the reassurance that thing, 

maybe that one thing, that brings you back

to yourself, so to hear it spoken

is to remember

one soul comically separated into two bodies

magnetized to lean into one another

soften into wrapped arms

breath into breath

and even the hardened skeptical

perhaps even literary souls

wincing at another tiresome love poem

will be moved to hear 

softly, ethereally, gutturally

whispered, through cries of

sorrowful joy of reconnection of what was once

spiritually but also physically one,

"I love you mommy."

#8

RAGE against the machine that gave a man reason to hate parts of himself

and those parts again when he sees them outside him

Rage against the machine that says find a babysitter when your child is sick

Rage against working all day and all lifelong

to try to buy your health back when you lose it

you may still be young

Rage against the machine that finds derivative justification

for seemingly endless cycles of violence

against humans, animals, all beings and our mama earth

Gives us reason to scream 

Fuck that I won't do what you told me!

And then we see that we're screaming 

at another human being who

has chosen to be the machine

Rage against the machine in myself 

the part I chewed up and took in,

festering inside like a man I never wanted there

A violent cancer

The pill we swallowed in the desperate hope it would make us better

When all along, the love inside is there

And shines, sometimes more brightly, through the rage

the poem a day pressure is getting to me

"Behind again,"

that bitch with the stopwatch says.

I wonder how she'd feel if I picked her up

and punched her down into a tiny little ball

and stuffed her into something really small

besides my head.

PAD #6 a lil late

Whiskey stole my poem last night

The hummingbird's thirst endless 

Forget nodding heads like you was too cool

My fella Jersey-spirited girls 

nodded booties and shook walls

over the waft of North Carolina barbeque 

Conversations ranging from 

the philosophical foundations of the American military

to parenting with the airplane oxygen mask theory

to declaratives negating some man's chance with some woman

to what small town gossip has been ripping up
our ideas of what we do

and some revealing tidbits about
what makes us quiet

and what makes us wiggle

This poem was not brought to you courtesy of Maker's Mark

#5 Aunt Teddy and Villa

Aunt Teddy was here before the twenties roared,

before voices leapt off the screen

Just after New Mexico and Arizona became states of the union

she passed through one of them

an ingenue not yet twenty

to make a film forever gone

that helped fund Villa's revolución

The history books will never find aunt Teddy

to be Villa's hermana verdadera,

will never really tell the story of northern Chihuahua 

in the mid-teens of the last century, a hundred years ago

Imagination declares that Villa was fierce and abrupt

Teddy bold and observant

and they worked together

oh yes 

trabajaron juntos

pad #4

I write cuz what comes out of my my mouth unthinking discombobulates me

I write cuz making sense of the world is like being a cartographer

I write cuz my modesty prides itself in having an art that's nearly impossible to make a living off of

I write cuz I'm not as narcisstic as a musician plus I can't sing in tune

They tell me 'Spit poet!'

Well I already spit whenever I talk

like grandma Shirley and Nana, great-grandmother Eve, did

so maybe I can put that saliva to good use

Will I get something off my chest?

Will I change the world just a little bit?

I speak cuz words move things

I speak cuz I'm from Jersey

I speak because egos wrapped in towers of power rarely chose to listen

on their own

4.3.12 his totem animal is a woodpecker

The woodpecker's last tree

hums softly as the red-crowned fellow

zips over to his next exploration.

To him a vast adventure will be had,

mysterious nuggets of nourishment will be found,

as he proudly continues his regular tap-tap-tap.

'But I know' thinks the tree,

'That he leaves holes in the being that offers him food,

his rhythm is regular but lacks a rich texture,

and he cannot go that deep.

How could he that leaves holes

in those who give him sustenance?'

Expecting no answer, the tree hums,

gathers sun, lifts water slowly up her roots,

feeds and gets fed by and dances with

the many beings in the world of her body,

Rich, deep and whole.

The new holes on her body 

tell the story of her life,

Rich deep and whole.

poem a day #2

ode to you for not being in my life

So many thanks to those who are not my friends

any longer

As I breezily leap past others entangled 

in your narcissistic neuroticism

Sit back and drink tea in the sun

while others struggle to stay awake

through your neverending lectures 

about bands no one has ever heard of,

and for good reason, but somehow

that makes them oh so special to you

I am grateful that you discovered

how much you can't be around me

enough to shun, lie, judge and

even become indifferent to me

So that in my infinite hard-headedness

I could still realize that you were only stimulating

in all the wrong ways

Breathe deep and laugh voraciously

as I realize I will never again breathe in

your particular brand of superficial

Thanks for not being here.

If you show up I really don't care,

as long as you go on your own way,

your favorite way anyway.

poem a day #1 - can I really hang? we'll see

4.1.12

the night slides slowly and smoothly

a rowboat through the lake of dreams

ripples breaking through the perfect mirror of 

the starry starry sky, alive with the dark

underneath this subterfuge of calm beauty

in beds little hearts beat at top speeds

and words and tears of deep sorrow

odes to old times in young eyes

perfectly beautiful memories, full of forgetting

golden and bright regardless of  

the fights that punctuated those days 

with flames relentlessly

but this yearning back from big sleepy sad eyes

keeps a slightly bigger heart up 

through the night, beating at top speed

speak your mind

Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

http://globalgrind.com/news/rep-bobby-rush-kicked-house-floor-after-wearing-hoodie-photo 

transition

Transition. Not as in the sweet rift of evolution and transformation. Not that feeling, no, not the chrysalis of change nor the terrified gut like you're at the top of the roller coaster about to come roaring down.

This is transition, as in birth. The brick wall. The place of 'I cannot go on,' when you really truly know you have to, that there is no other way. The baby's not going back in. Even if it ends up happening by surgery, that baby comes out. Even if the most awful happens and the baby dies, he's still coming out. Even if you die, that baby's still coming out. Usually when mamas feel this way, they're dilated to 10cm and are about to start that home stretch of pushing, a heave-ho for some women, or a grueling marathon for some, like me. Either way, at transition we're close, so much closer than we've been, and that's when it feels impossible. We feel more than doubt - deep despair. Total stark hopelessness.

I've never felt quite this way when I was not in labor. Actually, I didn't quite feel so wholly this way even in labor, though I have witnessed women going through it. 

I feel it now. I appreciate that my boys are with me, constantly showing me why I have to go on. I also sometimes wish I could just take care of myself in this moment. I wish I could let it all go and dive and hit rock bottom with the force of will and gravity together. I do not want to do that to my children. I do want to do it for myself.

After being responsible for some time, I want to be irresponsible. I want to go tear shit up, I want to not care, I want to not be good. Like Mary Oliver says, 'You do not have to be good," and I say 'Hell yeah!' even though she didn't mean it in that badass way. She meant in it in that sanctimonious derisive viewpoint way, equally important. But why not be good? Why be 'free' of the things I most love? It's like when I used to give myself weekends off from my yoga practice... Why give myself time off from something that makes me feel deeply good?

Despite these struggles, the young plant takes root and rises to the light. At least she does if she'll ever go to sleep during the dark hours so she can rise during the light ones.

time to get out

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”
― Edward Abbey

glitter

I stood there, hair curling around my cheekbones and collarbones

Lips red and pursed in coyness, hip cocked out with a flared elbow resting on top

And he flashed a smooth blue-eyed glint, took his gun out of the holster,

Whirled it seven times around, and shot me straight in the heart.

Shot me down! Ouch. I was extremely pissed.

I stood up staggering, bleeding and boiling.

An entire fortress popped up around me,

Starting with a guillotine bladed gate

Guarded by a muscled little man with a poisonous tongue.

Full of a pretense of innocence and confidence, he strode in

Dubious yet persistent in crawling through the maze of

Torturous hallways, vicious gates,

chambers where the hollow of the winds hide

while fiery beasts fly shrieking from dark corners,

All fiercely letting intruders know to keep away or fight like hell.

Somewhere deep within this guarded complex

Rose a tiny creature, flying out of the dark center, buoyant with glitter.

And not the glitter that’s sprinkled on the cheeks of those

wishing for more magic in the world by glowing on the outside.

From deep within her was a freely given enthusiasm for this beloved life

That whirled so relentlessly from the perfect center of her being

That it began to generate heat, which fizzed slowly into a spark,

Creating a light and a glow that burst through all available pathways in her body

And showed up at the surface, on her skin, as an incredible glowing glitter.

This little winged one came down from her flight up

Hovered in front of the tallest loneliest spire of the fortress

And gave it the slightest tap with her foot,

A kick of a tap, pushing the lone holdout of the heights

Just ever so slightly

Over.

And then, a domino fall of cardboard cutout structures

ran through the whole complex

Each gate and torture chamber and dark doom room

falling over faster than the last

With simple thuds and mushrooms of dust

Which settled quickly

Leaving only a stark spacious horizon

As the little creature dove into my heart,

which had stopped gushing with blood

And was sucking all that blood back in,

taking any lost entrails with it

Until it had healed up

leaving only a tiny glitter of a scar right in my perfect center.

Facing the shocked blue-eyed boy

Who had been prepared to battle the fortress

in defense of his view of the insignificance of this speck of human being

Offensive to his sense of what he deserved to be near,

This iota of my being burst out of its mold

with the clarity of a star among many

in the mountain night sky,

floating solid,

Surrounded by the expansive cloak of

profound serene mysterious dark space

Connecting each significant speck, in numbers beyond counting, to one another.

I felt nothing but calm, and told him, ‘Just go’

But then a deep dark tickling from within my most hidden corners

Burst up through my lungs

with a beloved joy leaping up to surf  the air of my breath

And I joined my voice to say, “Thank you,

Thank you for shooting me down and bringing up what rushed in

So I could be left here raw and alive in the center

Standing on the ground, surrounded by the beautiful spacious horizon.”

That radiant line of earth meets sky
began to glow as it always does to start each day

And the blue-eyed boy backed slowly into what was left of the dark night

Hand on his holster, throat choked into quiet by a truth he wasn’t ready to say,

And disappeared into the darkness, only to be found again, or to find again

Or wherever his feet did take him.

The first ray of warmth soared into my feet

And lovingly moved up my back

And I stood there and soaked in the electron teeming life

Of the vast space around and within me.