The other thread by thread makes beauty more naked

Penelope and Odysseus as One Person

One wants the world. The wing of dawn
beats in him: More! More!
The other never stirs from the loom.
An ancient rhythm repeats:
“Less—less—
the real traveling is inward.”

One loves storms and clouds,
says death is a skyless country.
The other prefers trees,
says death is a cloud of leaves
where at last we understand
the sayings of the wind.

One asks why rest—
the horrible gallop of minutes
will trample us if we stay.
The other stops to caress
a single plume of grass;
leans to petals glistening with rain.

One craves extravagant words,
says to a love, “Enchant me.”
The other thread by thread
makes beauty more naked;
weighs a shiver of sunlight,
the stream closing around the hand.

One lets the first smudge of light
erase all dreams,
now as useless as daytime stars.
The other gathers dreams
like lost feathers,
the sky a nest of horizons.

A membrane of memory
grows between them,
a tapestry of tides and tales.
The wave and the shore,
they breathe one breath,
a sea, a story of return—

the moon in a fisherman’s net.


Ionna-Veronika Warwick

I Declare Myself Now for Joy

A beautiful poem from Erica Jong that reflects my own desire to declare myself for joy this coming year...

I, Erica Jong, in the midst of my life,
having had two parents, two sisters,
two husbands, two books of poems
& three decades of pain,

having cried for those that did not love me
& those who loved me- but not enough
& those whom I did not love-
declare myself now for joy

There is pain enough to nourish us everywhere;
it is joy that is scarce…

Unhappiness is cheap,
Childhood is a universal affliction.
I say to hell with the analysts of minus & plus
the life-shrinkers, the diminishers of joy.

I say to hell with anyone
who would suck on misery
like a pacifier
in a toothless mouth.
I say to hell with gloom…

Doom is cheap
If the apocalypse is coming,
let us wait for it in joy…

I resolve myself for joy.

If that resolve means I must live alone,
I accept aloneness.

If the joy house I inhabit must be
a house of my own making,
I accept that making…

No joy-denyer can deny me now.
For what I have is undeniable.
I inhabit my own house,
the house of joy…

The soul is contagious.
One man catches another’s
like the plague;
& and we are all patient spiders
to each other.

If we can spin the joy thread
& also catch it-

If we can be sufficient to ourselves,
we need fear no entangling webs…

How to spin joy out of an empty heart?
The joy-egg germinates even in despair.

Orgasms of gloom convulse the world;
& and the joy-seekers huddle together.

We meet on the pages of books & by beachwood fires,
We meet scrawled blackly in many-folded letters.
We know each other by free & generous hands,
We swing like spiders on each other’s souls.

The Power of Your Intense Fragility

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
-e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing



(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

The Sweet Confinement of Your Aloneness

This is the kind of poetry that rips my heart open in the most exquisite way.

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond Love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that doesn’t bring you alive

is too small for you.

~ David Whyte

* * * * *

Tonight I am sitting in my sweet darkness. I have moments of feeling the confinement of my aloneness. I have become so resistant to being alone. I didn’t use to be this way. Before my marriage I became very comfortable as a single mother and did all kinds of things that brought me joy when I was alone. I loved those too rare moments when I had the house to myself and could indulge in anything I desired. Yet now I am uncomfortable on my own, questioning that somehow I am less because I am not in the company of others. Between 7 years of living with someone and 2.5 years of participating in my glorious community I have become addicted to the validation of relationship.

But I do think there is more to it. Here’s an interesting question – am I having difficulty being alone because I’m having difficulty knowing what I desire?

Alone means that I can sing my heart out to any music I want.

Alone means that I can dance without inhibition.

Alone means that I can read and write without external distraction.

Alone means that I can make art (I can't even remember the last time I made art just for my self and the sake of creation).

Alone means that I can focus on my self and my connection to the All through spiritual practice, ritual, divination, and journal writing.

I know that I desire meaningful interactions with other people more than anything else. And I don’t experience much meaningful connection at work, where I spend so much time, so I drink up what I can when I can. But I can not have a balanced life if I do not spend time on my own, putting energy into other activities that nurture my soul and all of who I am.

How different would life be if I was doing what I desired for work – connecting meaningfully with other people? It’s what I always hoped for in non-profit work, but family survival drove me into administration (where the better money is), which rarely leads to meaningful connection. It’s all about information management. I desire to be creating and delivering programs that hold space for or facilitate transformation in people.

The thing is that I can't make the transition to the work-of-meaningful-connections without spending time on my own to develop the foundation of delivering this work to the world, whether through the Imps or through my own business or both. I cannot create the work and the life I desire if I am spending all of my free time socializing with others.

It's time to accept the sweet darkness, to see the freedom in my aloneness and discover what truly brings me alive.

*

(P.S. I actually wrote this post a couple nights ago, but my internet at home wasn't working.)

Image Source: Alone in the Dark by Vaclav Sirc

Beannacht (“Blessing”)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

– John O’Donohue

* * *

I used to send this poem out with all of the art blessing packages I sent for The Conspiracy of Blessings, but I had forgotten about it. So grateful the Universe brought it back to me.

* * *

Image Source: Laramie Sasseville

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

God speaks to each of us
as he makes us,
then walks with us silently
out of the night.

These are the words
we dimly hear:

You, sent out
beyond your recall,
Go to the limits
of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

Everything Is Waiting For You

Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely, even you, at times, have felt the grand array; the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

~ David Whyte ~

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.



The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

– Rumi, Translation by Coleman Barks

***

This is my favorite Rumi poem.

Storm

Your kiss is the wind, beautiful girl.
Don't tell me you have to go.

I'll stand on my toes
on your toes
just to reach the rice paper of your eyelids

just to lay my fingers across your throat.

Your hands are tide-licked bone
and I must confess

I'm a little afraid
of how easily we could
blow away.

Or how easily we could snap,
tangled as we are into that space between two heartbeats -
my fists locked around your bird bones
and your teeth clenched
on my ear.

I wouldn't mean to do it, but
you see, I've just discovered
this vein of cruelty running through me.

I always mean to touch you tenderly,

I always try! But your skin, somehow,
begs for bruises

and the hurricane of your sobbing
is such an enchanting sound.

Tell me, please, that when I drink away your rain,
your smile will come out,

you'll assure me that I read
you right,

let me kiss your typhoon eyes.

~ Andy I (also known on Fetlife as Yandy)

I Imagine God Loves in Multiplicity

Holy Moral Dilemma

There is promise here, in this paired place,
of a safe ease without the buzz
of what next, what if, if only.

And yet here, I am sometimes restless.
As if my soul is wired for action, for split
second love and last minute partners,
adventure in each turning.

As if I am alive only
when I walk the edge
of maybe.
As if certainty
is certain death.

And I think to myself:
do I have "commitment issues?"

Perhaps I commit fully
to not knowing.
the way a warrior
commits to battle--
with my life.

Or the way a monk
commits to God,
in each holy moment
with no expectations
for exclusivity.

How special we make each other
when we promise to love
in twosomes, as if we
are the last pair on earth
and our narrow love
will save the day.

I imagine God
loves in multiplicity,
and with no conditions.
That God has figured out
that there is more than
enough of her to go around,
that love is never
in short supply.

I can't imagine God
saying, sorry,
I'm taken.


November 9, 2009 By Lori Lothian

i thank you god

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

~ e. e. cummings

Self Portrait

Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong -- or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying "this is where I stand."
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.

~ David Whyte ~

(Fire in the Earth)

may i feel said he (delicious poetry wednesday)

may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she

(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she

(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)

may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she

may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she

but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she

(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she

(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)

ee cummings

(Delicious & Sexy) Love Poem

Speak earth and bless me with what is richest
make sky flow honey out of my hips
rigid mountains
spread over a valley
carved out by the mouth of rain.

And I knew when I entered her I was
high wind in her forests hollow
fingers whispering sound
honey flowed
from the split cup
impaled on a lance of tongues
on the tips of her breasts on her navel
and my breath
howling into her entrances
through lungs of pain.

Greedy as herring-gulls
or a child
I swing out over the earth
over and over
again.

~ Audre Lorde


PS I am going to calendar Wednesdays to be Delicious & Sexy Poetry days from now on. I will hunt for high quality, sizzling hot poems to share with you. I have found that sharing a really good poem with a lover now and again is a great way to express my feelings in an unexpected way.

Significant Piece of the Puzzle

where you came from
(poem for my daughter)

i.
the words came home today
unexpected, though i knew
they were inevitable

they didn’t knock at the door
they stumbled in
awkward and young

“I want to know about my dad,”
you said , six years old
unable to know what you are really asking

ii.
i tell you...

the thin but short legs
the round little butt
the Buddha belly

they are his

the rosebud lips
the soft brown hair
the swirl of ear

they are mine

the golden skin
the gray-blue eyes
the spirals of curls

they are yours

iii.
i tell you...

the remarkable temper
the bug-eyed glare
the exaggerated sins against you

they are his


the need to please
the easy tears
the ability to lie with a smile

they are mine

the screechy whine
the hypochondria
the desire to be center stage

they are yours

iv.
i tell you...

the charm
the leadership
the ability to inspire

they are his

the intelligence
the fierce independence
the obsession to learn and create

they are mine

the natural comedy
the gymnast tendencies
the touch that can heal

they are yours

v.
i do not tell you...

the prison walls
the ability to rape
and to murder

they are his
and he will not give them to you

the invisible scar
the gun against forehead
on the night you were made

they are mine
and i will not give them to you

the innocent smile
the easy laughter
the life free of violence

they are yours
and we will not take them from you

* * *

I wrote this poem as a hypothetical rather than literal handling of the situation. I told her what was age appropriate at the time, knowing that I would tell her the full truth one day. She is 14 now, has seen this poem and is aware. She is secure in knowing that I have no negative feelings about her presence in my life.

I will tell more of this story, and how it has influenced my evolution towards the Imps, in the near future.

Autobiography by Poetry

I Know (For Virginia Woolf)

I.

“Five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate,…”

when you grow up
eating white beans
and ham-hocks,
peeing off the back porch
of a condemned house
without plumbing,
and wearing your mother’s
wedding dress
for eighth grade graduation,
self confidence
is as unattainable
as your own room

when you birth
your first child
at the age of seventeen,
learn neither friendship
nor romance will
play in your sandbox,
and survive on three hundred
a month and food stamps
to earn your diploma,
the dream of composing poetry
is as impractical
as a prom date

when madness
creeps in to take
your wits hostage,
a naïve choice in a lover
leads to his gun
in your bedroom,
and your second child
is conceived in rape
rather than love,
freedom of mind
is as hopeless
as a safe place to sleep

when your days become
blurred snapshots,
writing research papers
while nursing at midnight,
picking lice from your
daughter’s corkscrew curls,
and crumpling into bed
alone and weeping,
the power to contemplate
is as unlikely
as finding a devoted father
for your children

when winning bread
means struggling
to keep poverty
from possessing your family,
success entices you
to give up your imagination,
and the american dream
attempts corporate
conquest of your heart,
your greatest power
lies in your courage
to pick up a pen and write


II.

“…a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself.”

my stories are not
hidden behind wiggling
door handles,
my insights strut between
silly songs and giggles
with my babies

my stories are not
opened with brass keys
tinkling on a silver ring,
my brainstorms swirl and burst
among homemade bubbles
in the back yard

my stories are not
bound by scrawls on paper
or pixels on a computer screen,
my tragedies bleed from
tiny fingers with splinters
and paper cuts

my stories do not
wait for a quiet room
to reveal themselves,
they run naked through
my house and office
when least expected

my stories learn with me
that privacy is a luxury
a mother must demand
after so many years of interrupted
movies, meals, showers,
and sexual tanglings

my stories gather in my lap
each day as the sun sets,
where I kiss them one by one,
tuck them in a pocket
of my heart and whisper,
“Our time will come."

* * *

This poem was written as part of a submission to a competition for a writing grant for women, in response to Virginia Woolf's quote about a woman needing a room of her own and an independent income in order to be able to write.

If I Were Brave Enough

Alliance

“You have to make an alliance
with your anguish,” he said,
“not wage war against it.”
And I thought of all the fists
I had shaken at misfortune: games lost
because the shot clock ran out,
a good meal scorched in a forgotten oven,
money dropped on a dress worn only once,
the bully in 6th grade, the math test in 9th,
the wrong outfit at Halloween.
But of course, this isn’t what he meant.


If I were brave enough, I’d tell you how my heart
has raged for love, stretched thin as a high wire.
If I were brave enough, I’d tell you
how my body has been fighting to stay upright
on every precipitous downhill the city
throws at it. If I were brave enough,
I’d climb into your lap and weep with longing.
All I can say is that any attempt at beauty and hope
is land-mined with failure.
And so the perilous track-making begins.
Wending our way through,
there are possible clutches at sunlight, at windows, at yes.
We are each of us inches from death.
We are each of us inches from life.
We are each of us inches from one another.

-Maya Stein