Childhood Memories

It was a bunch of mulch piles,

I think,

our fort. 

But perfect. 

We even built a bathroom,

and kept it freshly stocked with

leaf toilet paper. 

Sometimes,

the newspaper shed was unlocked.

We'd climb the 

mountain stack,

and slide to the bottom.

The ink,

long dry,

wouldn't stain our knees,

just drench the stale air with its smell. 

Once,

in the woods,

we just sat down and started digging.

We weren't pirates that day,

but still found a treasure horde:

old mason jars, chipped porcelain, leather shoes, a calcified stirrup.

We'd perfected how to climb 

their fences

without barbed wire snags. 

And we knew just how 

fast to run

through the field to still have time

to avoid the cow patties. 

At our creek,

we'd swing from the tree branches,

and catch tadpoles in the murky water.

At our river,

we'd slide off the rocks,

mermaids. 

© Miranda Hogan, 2013

At Our River
Photo by Tony Russell

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

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

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

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

Look at Me

I invite you to look at me.

Really. Look at me.

Close your eyes.

Let your mind see what they would never let you.

See beyond these walls made of flesh.

Peer through the open doorway of this corporeal tabernacle.

Like a child, stealing a glimpse of some forbidden secret.

I ask you 

To look at me.

Really look at me.

Come to that place where my hidden me awaits your inquisitive you,

That place inside us where fears toss and turn,

Where passions live and burn,

Where God’s fingertips can be seen plucking at heartstrings.

Look at me.

Look into me.

Learn me.

Recognize yourself in me and myself in you.

Understand that inside of us burns a brilliant moon,

Watcher of dreams,

Stirrer of souls,

That perfect yet simple light

Desperate for a release.

Longing,

Longing to be seen, if only for a moment.

Give in to it.

Let it show its true worth.

Let yours find, glowing inside me, its equal.

In that inner solitude within each of us where a little piece of the universe has found for itself a dwelling place,

We find ourselves.

Truly aware of what, who, and why we are:

Supple sparks flung from a singular seminal flame 

Truth from beauty, and beauty from truth,

Musician and instrument,

They are as one.

Here I stand:

A hopelessly flawed masterpiece

Molded by the hands of my father, under the watch of my mother,

Anxiously offering myself to you.

You need to just look at me.

Join me.

Know that there are days.

There are days when I feel like I no longer know myself.

Know that, like you, I too have my coarse edges,

Glorious imperfections,

Giving this world something to grasp onto.

Giving us all something to grasp

Onto.

Share this with me.

See what I see.

Feel my thoughts, like an idle breeze or a familiar presence.

Wed your curiosities to my peculiarities.

Let that life-giving breath of God that whispers in each of your breasts find its echo reverberating in mine.

I need you to look at me.

Understand that this dance,

It cannot be danced alone. 

Understand that the space between you and me

Is no bigger or more meaningful than the space between the oceans,

Or between the days,

Or between the fingers, on the hands

On the hands that raise us up.

Join me.

Like the streams join the rivers join the sea,

Join me,

Where I end and us begins.

Listen,

If we want, we can take a stroll through a dream.

With bare backs and naked feet,

Forget all the things we carry by day;

Move beyond the visible.

Leave your understanding behind – like that last fleeting thought that slips your grasp as sunlight coaxes you from slumber.

Unfetter your raw self.

Flex those muscles which we seldom use.

Contort and squeeze your inner dreamer into the spaces this world tells us we cannot fit.

Through the keyhole, past the dam, lies the real world.

We will find us there.

We will find us there.

If you would join me…

© Axel Cooper, 2012

View Through the Keyhole, at Cooper's Wood
Photo by David Antiss from Wikimedia Commons

Paradelle for the Rio Grande

I walk down to the river each visit home. 

I walk down to the river each visit home. 

Always thinking of the flow of life.

Always thinking of the flow of life. 

I visit each flow home thinking always of 

Of life to the river walk down the 

Following the path of the Rio Grande. 

Following the path of the Rio Grande. 

Where we once played amongst the cattails. 

Where we once played amongst the cattails. 

Cattails of the Rio Grande played once. 

Where we, following the path amongst the 

I remember once swimming there.

I remember once swimming there.

The current strong, the mud rich water. 

The current strong, the mud rich water. 

Remember I the water mud current. 

Once rich swimming there strong the. 

I visit swimming the life current. 

Cattails of the Rio Grande of home I remember. 

Where we played, always thinking of following. 

The water once amongst the rich. 

Each flow there strong. 

The mud walk down the river path the to. 

© Anne Cressin, 2013 

Santa Elena Canyon rises above the Rio Grande
Photo by Blair Pittman, EPA
from the National Archives and Records Administration