Monday, February 25, 2013

The Balance Is a Mystery


The moment exists, and slips my grasp
today as it does on many------

as present bliss is lost in time 
that will not be detained, even if I resist the flow

some unseen force is moving through me
and I question if the current knows the stream------- 
or if consciousness can recognize living as it seems

is simple awareness reality and living just a dream?
or is the truth of being alive somewhere in between?

human born, we're born to see ----------

the balance is a mystery, 
a cosmic dance-----
Siva gettin' down, gettin' up, gettin' on, gettin' free!

destined for more than a meal and a mate
we must daily choose our fate and feel the power of the stream------

for we are carried, after all.

yet, its up to us to paddle and not to drift
for ultimate enlightenment

     © Gerry Sackett, 2013


Moormans River, Sugar Hollow
Photo by Tony Russell




Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Just Call Me Lazarus


A people born wearing their funeral clothes,
we don't even know there's a stone. We sit in our grave, 
dirty feet, dirty cave, and trace patterns into 
the ground. The sweat of our brow drips in rivulets;
a salt-imbued lie of release. A taste of the sea, 
of a river, a spring, of a well we're too haughty to drink. 
We think we're so rich in our tatters. We think 
we're so bright in the dark. We think we are kings
in our coffins and schemes like this is the best that
we are. Like there isn't a voice small inside us. 
Like there isn't a breath in our lungs. Like there 
isn't a world waiting just out that door if we'd
only stand up and explore. Like there isn't a man
calling out to us. Like we don't hear our name in a
prayer. Like we don't see the stone for the lid 
it's become on the room we see fit to call home. 

I no longer choose to abide this. I no longer want to
subside. I want to be strong and impassioned and 
torn by the wind and His name and the horn. I
want to be fashioned for battle. I want to wear
armor and light. I want to sing hours and hours on
end with no ceasing in day or in night. I want to
feel roads underneath me. I want to drip words
from my tongue. I am done with the silence, the darkness,
the violence, that my evil days often had sung.
I no longer revel in drunkenness. In sculpting my
face to a norm. In starving and fighting, in lying
and hiding, in valuing how I perform. We need to 
rely on the 'other'. That power found outside our own.
I need to escape, to find spirit, take shape- this 
tomb is no longer my home. I will resurrect. 

          © Sarah Fletcher, 2013

The Resurrection of Lazarus
St. Paulinus in Welling
from Wikimedia Commons

Monday, February 11, 2013

Child’s Play


She seems to me the epitome of what destiny was meant to be.
Recently, she has been challenging the frequency her brain's been traveling,
enticing the sweater of thought to come unraveling.
Third eye's released, striving to ignore hazy doors that open into cold reality.
Burning knowledge like it grows on trees.
She's 
skipping rocks on media brooks,
knocking rooks off blatantly bent balance beams,
landing on nimble feline feet,
Freedom Rides down crooked slides, a heady high created by dopamine.
Dancing through her dreams bow visions of veracity;
as tempting specialties become dishonestly concrete.
Fabricated forgeries spread thickly,
like honey on warm bread straight from love's own bakery.
Slow to face charming truth, we imprint our opinions discretely,
directly influenced by the economically replete.
We accept only the agreeable beliefs,
facts fussily side-stepped, rendering them obsolete.
Meanwhile,
Dice St. Deities treat themselves to dance with immortality
through Babylon's natural tantric heart beat
while tracks separate colorblind concrete 
from monotone bricks created to calm Uncle Tom's irrational fears of the sweetly disillusioned elite.
His vessel shows the wear of time as repeat beatings still have the stub of his wings bleeding.
Attempting a resurrection of lost meaning,
lessons form themselves like wine from twisted grape vines.
Only with the fermentation of time can we freely revive honesty.
Tempting visions drunkenly painted on torn tapestry tease the mind with hazy imagery.
When dreams at last are given release, we find the fallen king recuperating sweetly,
residing among Hawai'ian tides, his heart is tied from distance over sea, 
his cravings for familial connection appear obsolete
due to the importance of breaking free from the prison of self induced disease.
Meantime she's stumbling through closed doors, breaking through screens, and running away from responsibility.
Carrying children within worried womb, daylight's gleam
forces glazed eyes open though her instinct is for eternal retreat,
hiding beneath sheets has become as second nature as crying to christian savior when in need.
More than once now God has aborted the ones created to give her someone she thinks will never leave.
She misunderstands that consuming for two requires her to actually eat, 
and through this we find haunting familiarity between
current proceedings and mother's erratic routines while raising the one called she.
Culturally cut off from her elders, even minimum wage seems to be out of reach.
If only this floundering girl could make it out to sea,
perhaps joining her fallen angel father could calm the storms; set her weary mind at ease,
albeit he is living on the beach. 
As romantic as that image might seem to you and me,
it is stability that is needed for this filter fish, while high tides flow and recede.
She is tuned into the Earth Mother's sensitivity,
and wonders why she is drowning when Gaia's heart beat is becoming more fleeting. 
And I am reaching, reaching.
I am trying so desperately, asking for wisdom that continues to elude me.
How can this scattered ohana once again become a "we"?
What will it take to help this lost Goddess to succeed?
Where is the answer we all so desperately seek?
It seems so hard to accept our own potency, 
because that frees us from self induced captivity.
I pray for you, child, may you learn the lessons you so obviously need.
May your cravings for something to nurture turn into nurturing received.
May your hunger be satiated, and your worries all relieved.
May you continue taking breaths, and may you learn eventually to breathe.
I pray the browbeat expressions prepare you for what you will eventually be,
As I am of the mind that every experience is the planting of a seed.
And baby girl I truly do believe,
When the garden you are growing blossoms, 
the bounty will be beautiful indeed.

© SABRe, 2013

Feuerbach's Gaia
from Wikimedia Commons


Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Last Train of My Childhood Dream


In this tunnel
where fear is an animal
smothering me
with unbearable fur,
I feel earth tremble
as if an ocean,
trapped beneath trees and rocks,
is pounding hard
against roots,
the way my heart hammers
against its own roots of dread.
I have heard the same roar--
tornados thundering toward me
like stampeding buffalo
until terror slams me awake.

Now this darkness
opens its one bright eye.
Light that does not mean hope
drives the future 
at me fast,
your death a black train
filling the space
between me and escape.

© Jean Sampson, 2012

Locomotive 45212
Photo from Wikimedia Commons