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

Christmas Day in the Workhouse

It is Christmas Day in the workhouse,
And the cold, bare walls are bright
With garlands of green and holly,
And the place is a pleasant sight;
For with clean-washed hands and faces,
In a long and hungry line
The paupers sit at the table,
For this is the hour they dine.

And the guardians and their ladies,
Although the wind is east,
Have come in their furs and wrappers,
To watch their charges feast;
To smile and be condescending,
Put pudding on pauper plates.
To be hosts at the workhouse banquet
They've paid for — with the rates.

Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly
With their "Thank'ee kindly, mum's!'"
So long as they fill their stomachs,
What matter it whence it comes!
But one of the old men mutters,
And pushes his plate aside:
"Great God!" he cries, "but it chokes me!
For this is the day she died!"

The guardians gazed in horror,
The master's face went white;
"Did a pauper refuse the pudding?"
"Could their ears believe aright?"
Then the ladies clutched their husbands,
Thinking the man would die,
Struck by a bolt, or something,
By the outraged One on high.

But the pauper sat for a moment,
Then rose 'mid silence grim,
For the others had ceased to chatter
And trembled in every limb.
He looked at the guardians' ladies,
Then, eyeing their lords, he said,
"I eat not the food of villains
Whose hands are foul and red:

"Whose victims cry for vengeance
From their dark, unhallowed graves."
"He's drunk!" said the workhouse master,
"Or else he's mad and raves."
"Not drunk or mad," cried the pauper,
"But only a haunted beast,
Who, torn by the hounds and mangled,
Declines the vulture's feast.

"I care not a curse for the guardians,
And I won't be dragged away;
Just let me have the fit out,
It's only on Christmas Day
That the black past comes to goad me,
And prey on my burning brain;
I'll tell you the rest in a whisper —
I swear I won't shout again.

"Keep your hands off me, curse you!
Hear me right out to the end.
You come here to see how paupers
The season of Christmas spend;.
You come here to watch us feeding,
As they watched the captured beast.
Here's why a penniless pauper
Spits on your paltry feast.

"Do you think I will take your bounty,
And let you smile and think
You're doing a noble action
With the parish's meat and drink?
Where is my wife, you traitors —
The poor old wife you slew?
Yes, by the God above me,
My Nance was killed by you!

'Last winter my wife lay dying,
Starved in a filthy den;
I had never been to the parish —
I came to the parish then.
I swallowed my pride in coming,
For ere the ruin came,
I held up my head as a trader,
And I bore a spotless name.

"I came to the parish, craving
Bread for a starving wife,
Bread for the woman who'd loved me
Through fifty years of life;
And what do you think they told me,
Mocking my awful grief,
That 'the House' was open to us,
But they wouldn't give 'out relief'.

"I slunk to the filthy alley —
'Twas a cold, raw Christmas Eve —
And the bakers' shops were open,
Tempting a man to thieve;
But I clenched my fists together,
Holding my head awry,
So I came to her empty-handed
And mournfully told her why.

"Then I told her the house was open;
She had heard of the ways of that,
For her bloodless cheeks went crimson,
and up in her rags she sat,
Crying, 'Bide the Christmas here, John,
We've never had one apart;
I think I can bear the hunger —
The other would break my heart.'

"All through that eve I watched her,
Holding her hand in mine,
Praying the Lord and weeping,
Till my lips were salt as brine;
I asked her once if she hungered,
And as she answered 'No' ,
The moon shone in at the window,
Set in a wreath of snow.

"Then the room was bathed in glory,
And I saw in my darling's eyes
The faraway look of wonder
That comes when the spirit flies;
And her lips were parched and parted,
And her reason came and went.
For she raved of our home in Devon,
Where our happiest years were spent.

"And the accents, long forgotten,
Came back to the tongue once more.
For she talked like the country lassie
I woo'd by the Devon shore;
Then she rose to her feet and trembled,
And fell on the rags and moaned,
And, 'Give me a crust — I'm famished —
For the love of God!' she groaned.

"I rushed from the room like a madman
And flew to the workhouse gate,
Crying, 'Food for a dying woman!'
And the answer came, 'Too late.'
They drove me away with curses;
Then I fought with a dog in the street
And tore from the mongrel's clutches
A crust he was trying to eat.

"Back through the filthy byways!
Back through the trampled slush!
Up to the crazy garret,
Wrapped in an awful hush;
My heart sank down at the threshold,
And I paused with a sudden thrill.
For there, in the silv'ry moonlight,
My Nance lay, cold and still.

"Up to the blackened ceiling,
The sunken eyes were cast —
I knew on those lips, all bloodless,
My name had been the last;
She called for her absent husband —
O God! had I but known! —
Had called in vain, and, in anguish,
Had died in that den — alone.

"Yes, there, in a land of plenty,
Lay a loving woman dead,
Cruelly starved and murdered
for a loaf of the parish bread;
At yonder gate, last Christmas,
I craved for a human life,
You, who would feed us paupers,
What of my murdered wife!"

'There, get ye gone to your dinners,
Don't mind me in the least,
Think of the happy paupers
Eating your Christmas feast;
And when you recount their blessings
In your smug parochial way,
Say what you did for me, too,
Only last Christmas Day."

George R. Sims (1879)

An 1845 newspaper illustration which accompanied an article
about conditions inside the Andover Union workhouse,
where starving inmates ate bones meant for use in fertilizer.