instant graitification

sun up, moon up now

end of addiction – no pain

friendly fire kills

silent meditation

find joy in waiting

so you never have to wait

for joy.  the moon turns.

 

Janaury 15 -One Year, One Day at a Time – Poetry

My life is so dramatically different than it was just 15 days ago when I committed to writing, One Year, One Day at A Time.  I am writing two books and this blog and I am more deeply connected to myself and the world than I have ever been.  I can see the sunset, the mountains, the desert, the ocean, the Mississippi river and the world beyond.  I see all this and more though my own words, my own imagination as they have been given to me by Divine Light.  My life is a gift, each day a morsel of bread to savour with the wine I drink.  My children are stars in the sky and my lover the moon.  I taste the bitterness of disappointment on the tongue of delight.  I am engulfed by the sun and consumed by the night.  I dwell in the Soul of the Divine and he/she in me.  May your light and mine meet where the sky settles into the earth, where the water laps over the shore, where infinity meets the bedpost of desire. I am light.  I am love.  I am joy. To bed ye scoundrels, to bed.  May the dark cover of night comfort and nurture your sacred dreams for you alone carry the light reconciliation in your heart.  May you awaken to the drum of creation pounding against your chest.  May the fire than burns in your belly consume you, and move you beyond the veils of limitation.  One.  We are and ever will be One within ourselves and in each others arms.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

Alone in my room.  I sit on the crumpled green shag carpet, staring out the window.  A stately oak tree extends its bony fingers in my direction.  A full moon, playing hide and seek in the fall foliage, winks at me.  I see the moon.  The moon sees me.  The moon sees the one I want to see. 

Who, I wondered, did I long for?  I was certain, God had designed someone just for me.  I was fourteen years old when my father told me, “There are hundreds of fish in the sea.”

“No, daddy, there is only one special person for me.  Only one.”  He silently shook his head and went back to reading the newspaper.

White Coral Bells, upon a slender stalk   Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk .  Oh, don’t you wish that you might hear them ring?  That will happen only when the fairies sing.

Humming, I walk barefoot, tip-toeing around the lily of the valley plants in our front bed.  Their little bells dance in the sun light.  God sits, smiling on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.  I am with you. Your life has meaning, purpose.  Never give up.  When you are sad, talk to the flowers and the trees.  Walk outside.  Listen to the wind and watch the clouds move across the sky.  Know I am here.  I believed him.  I kept an eye out for signs along the way, a bee hovering over a sweet pea on our back fence;  the sound of Exodus resounding as my grade school orchestra played for the spring program; the stories of Camelot, William Tell, Clara Barton, The Boxcar Children, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew; all the books I read, late at night with a flashlight under the covers; my fourth grade teacher who encouraged me to write and Brooks Ramsey, who marched with Martin Luther King and introduced me to Paul Tillich.  Signs of hope along the way.

I see the moon, the moon sees me.  The moon sees the one I want to see.  Me.  I wanted to see me.  All those years of searching for meaning and hope and healing.  What I wanted most is what each one of us longs for, a closer walk with thee, the “thee” being God, the Divine Mother, Eternal Light alive and shimmering inside me.  Wikipedia defines intrinsic value as the ethical or philosophic value that an object has “in itself” or “for its own sake”, as an intrinsic property.  An object with intrinsic value may be regarded as an end or  end-in-itself.  I, you, every living person is the alpha and the omega.  I am my own doppelganger. “Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find   Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Matthew 7:7).  Have faith in something greater than yourself and by so doing you will find the answers to your dreams.

Look for yourself in the mirror. I see myself in the mirror of my writing.

See yourself in the eyes of the homeless man who asks you for change.  Hold a child at your breast, breath with them.  Gaze into the eyes of your lover.  See their soul reflected in yours.  Dance.  Sing.  Make your family and friends more important than your job and the money you make.   Thy will be done.

Survival

Sitting cross-legged on the green crumpled carpet of my upstairs bedroom, the moon anoints me.  I worship at her feet, meditating on the light and the promise of better times.  At thirteen, I already know the horrors of combat; the effects of post traumatic stress riddle my mind and body.  My stomach rolls with anxiety, my heart races and my eyes cloud over with muddy tears.

May I be safe. There is no safety in the house of a pedophile, a rageaholic, a psychopath.  Every corner screams danger.  The basement steps descend into Dante’s inferno.  Those to the attic beguile and later torment, their steep ascent leaving permanent scars, battle wounds for which there will never be a purple heart.

I am woman, hear me roar. I try, but none respond. The face of the moon shines on mine.  I know, somewhere in the depths of my being, I will overcome.  I will escape these horrors.  I will make a life for myself.  I begin with words and music.  When I hear the notes of Exodus rise from the body of my violin, my heart soars to the heavens and beyond.  I play to survive.  I write silly poems, prose, plays, puppet shows, and the like.   The pages of my diary abound with dancing goddesses who like ancient, fecund idols have thrown their bodies to the earth waiting to be choreographed by the princess moon.

I have a secret life, the one in which I am Sleeping Beauty soon to be awakened by her daring prince.  I am Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella, Maid Marian, Guinevere.  A perfectly formed psychophrenic, my grandiose fantasy life offers me succor and gives me blind courage.  Leaving my bedroom means walking into the war zone.  Unmanned drones lurk behind every door.  My overworked, abused stepmother, eyebrows raised, rushes out the door to work.  Grandma stands at the kitchen stove, vacant eyed waiting to brush my knotted mane.  Father, perpetrator, sleeps, but his presence permeates the air we breath.  Will he be here when I return from school?  Where can I go to avoid his attention?  He feigns love only to permeate my frail body.

I must be strong.  I must not let fear destroy me.  I will survive.  School is my salvation.  My friends, who know nothing of my personal Hell, offer me respite.  I eat at their houses.  I spend the night.  I play and laugh and dance.  There are moments of brilliance enough to get me through the long, harrowing nights.  And the words….the songs I sing as I walk beneath the giant oaks, the poems I read, write and recite, and the books I devour, all promise life.  There is a world beyond this place that “they” call home.  Respect yourself.  Do what you need to do now to survive.  No matter what it takes, do not give up.  No matter what the cost, no matter how many fall in battle, no matter who is left behind, you will get out.  I did.