POETRY
MYTH AND SHADE (Click HERE to listen!)
I’m cheating on Society.
With Sunday dreams and honeybees
Bossa nova clouds, wide Catalpa leaves
Willow branches swinging low
They’re singing songs of love,
Just for me.
Dahlias, poppies, Queen Anne’s Lace,
Oh how sweetly we embrace
While over the mountains the sea surges deep
Anticipating the eve of my return.
Apple orgies intoxicate
Their boozy breeze obliterates
My clinging to what once was true
Dissolving ill-wed contracts
Into the unswept blue.
Here.
Here is where I shall remain
With my new lovers, Myth and Shade
Eyes awake to a world re-made
A world in need of nothing
Fully ready
For full-bodied surrender
For soul-filled celebration
Of leaf and bud and feather
This one precious life that leads forever
Oh my dear mistresses,
I will follow your dare
Any-every-where.
THE WAY WE LOVE (click to listen!)
Infinity’s pastries we are
Buttery layered lovers of God
Some crunchy, some bittersweet
All of us nutty in our embrace
The Divine’s sweet tooth propels us Towards
Imploring: Bite in!
Use both hands!
Lick your plate.
Now is no time to diet
Nor for reducing the fat in your secret-recipes
Love large!
Love as only You can.
Drench yourself in honey
Roll around in the violets
Scoop yourself up with a sugar-coated spoon
And serve.
We are all hungry for the taste only you can give.
Please! Do not worry about the crumbs you might leave
In your lover’s beard
Or if your batter is free of lumps.
There is no time to waste!
There is no right way to kiss
All lips open the Beloved’s door.
“This is how I love” whispers your tongue
So why not open wide and belt it out?
The trees are already humming along
Shamelessly draping their embrace
Over the earth for all these years
And what do you think those insects buzz on about?
Stirred as they are by the sun’s sweaty song
Or the waxy gardenias
Luxuriating in their own luscious scent
Listen: This is the way I love.
This is the way,
Love.
I'D RATHER GO BLIND
- for Allen
I don't want to lose my blindness, a dear friend says to me.
I'm seeing baby faces in everyone I meet
Precious little love lights shining through my haze of clarity
No, I don't want to lose my blindness, I hear him say to me
As I begin my rainy drive home alone
Turning my eyes down low so as not to see
The man shuffling his way homeless down the street
Oh this daily blindness, this shift of reality
Can keep us safe in bondage or soften boundaries
A rush of God Bless! or a held breath silence
Creates the world between you and me.
No, I don't want to lose my blindness, the moon she says to me
I'm turning bright this fearless love light so you can truly see
The deep down magic, the molecular madness
Our hidden unity.
For this global blindness, this mistaken reality
Can keep us fear frozen or melted tenderly
A reach of sweetness or a push away,
What does your heart wish to say?
No. I don't want to lose my blindness, this mysterious yes yes
That keeps us shining bright.
Oh no, I don't want to lose my blindness, this secret kindness
That keeps us close tonight.
WINTER BREAKS
Winter breaks
And my heart too
Soft and tender shoots
Bursting, thirsting towards the shining
And even the snow delights in the melting
Of this meeting
While inside
The mountains sigh
As their winter coat is lifted
And their silent song is carried
By the birds once more
The river smooths her gown
For the heron’s landing
And we are all folded in
The silence of her silvery charms
Content in our yearning
Easy to be
Gathering mossy poems
To nest in quiet branches
Gentle and safe
Like the arms of a sweet-lipped lover
Spring calls.
A NEW APPROACH
Some people pull on it gently
This rope to heaven
Others hoist themselves right up
Neverminding the burning
These days I just stare at it
And hope to start a fire that way.
Remaining earthbound here
I think I need a new approach.
FIGHTING LIONS WITH FEATHERS
How to Keep It All Together in “Times Like These”
The only way I know is to not.
Rather, to let it all go. Let the heart break over and over
To reveal that it can never truly be broken.
Let the soul fall down, dig deep
To unearth the shards of fear, of shame, of doubt, of fury
And then invite the world wholly in
Invite the world to melt in
To finally and holy dissolve in
To the sweet amber core of our heart’s treasure
Where we are all one.
Hold me gentle, hold me close, won’t you?
HAIKUS FOR JANUARY
Ice breaks off branches
My beautiful boy vomits
Work remains undone
Icy bamboo bows
Smoke caresses frozen sky
The cat’s paw twitches
One narcissus blooms
Searching stacks for Taj Mahal
Keeping hope alive
Silky dresses hide
Snowy tracks hint of robins
Wool socks must be found
Wind cracks icy leaves
Sea turtles somewhere swim free
The liquor store, closed
LOVE LANTERNS
So delicate we all are
These great big soul-lights in paper thin bodies
Little lanterns of love
Burning ourselves out
Getting knocked over by the wind
Soaked in the rain
Staying lit as long we can
Arising with that great ah! of the heart
The catch in the breath
From somewhere beyond
Magic is shining out of unexpected places
Grumpy faces
Rippling ducks
Worm-fed robins
Rosemary branches dusted with liminal blue buds
Not sure yet if it is comic or tragic
These storied lives we lead
That is the real joke, so they say
Believing we started our own flame
Chose our colors
Could do it better
Than this magic light show
This festival of dreams
This tender glow
We call life.
GREEN WIND MAPLE SONG
Unseen music unfolds my heart
Embarrassed to be seen
So still
I remain embraced
By spring's secret song
It rains.
THIS BLOSSOMING YES
So I’ll throw open the windows
To dream of you.
Nothing to hide.
No way to inside,
This bursting, this twinkling, this knowing
All April new, yet older than the truths in my head
Those webs spun of possibilities
To assure me, as I lean on a shimmer, that I won’t fall forever
And now I think becomes I know and I see how I never knew before
Because it is not about clarity of sight or checking of lists
It is about this blossoming yes,
That vines in and out of doors and tumbles down walls
That fills the air with its everlasting lushness
Paying no mind to words or fences
Kissing the dirt with its petals
And lusting after the rain.
ONE DAY
One day she left it all.
For the mere scent of a gardenia.
No man attached.
No plan attached.
She just up and left.
For her body could no longer bear
Winter or
Stockings
Or the all too infrequent and oddly jagged dance of the Western world.
Even lilac wine could not keep her here.
No.
Thick air
Unabashedly seeped in perfume and sweat and dirt.
Air too full to move.
Her body
Her soul
Her life
Required this.
What will become of her?
One day.
THE ROSES -by Mary Oliver
"All afternoon I have been walking over the dunes, hurrying from one thick raft of wrinkled salt roses to another, leaning down close to their dark or pale petals, red as blood or white as snow. And now I am beginning to breathe slowly and evenly – the way a hunted animal breathes, finally, when it has galloped and galloped – when it is wrung dry, but at last, is far away, so the panic begins to drain from the chest, from the wonderful legs, from the exhausted mind.
Oh sweetness, pure and simple, may I join you?
I lie down next to them, on the sand. But to tell what happens next, truly
I need some help.
Will somebody or something please start to sing?”
SECRETS OF ROSES (Yes, Mary! ) - by Shelly Rudolph
To vine and sweet soft in the wind
That is all that is needed, here beneath the sky
Touching sand to fingers, elements breathing
Clearly clearly through.
Roses undoing my strings, my straps, my bridle.
An unbridled woman finally breathing, honestly sweating
Singing the secrets of roses
Out loud.
The petals hear the call and shimmer out with their brightest bow
Loving the show, the attention,
The sun cannot resist and joins on in,
Coaxing an even tastier fragrance out
While underneath we tingle and blush from his advances
Chests pounding from deep within
Singing the secrets of roses
Out loud.
Unbridled women finally breathing, finally singing the songs of roses.
Wild roses. Wild roses. Wild roses.
TRUTH BE TOLD
Today I find myself, lost.
Searching for faith
Pawing through my bags of promise
Searching for tricks
To tame the mind, to soothe the soul but
Truth Be Told
I just want to lose it all
I just want to dance all night and drink too much
And fall in loose inappropriate love
Again and again and again.
Yes. I just want to lose it all
Because Keeping It Together is much too hard
And how can it be so hard?
When I should/could be blessing every moment
That I am free to walk my own self down
This great good luck garden path.
Yes oh yes. I know what I should know.
I know the foolishness of squandering any - every moment of This.
I know the shame of drowning in a sea of my own making.
I know by heart the story of the mermaid who forgets to swim.
And yet, and yet..
Today I find myself sinking.
I find myself, Lost.
Grasping for my Mary Poppins remedies
But they ain't working no more, no mo'
I just want.
I just want to lose it all
At the hands of an over-perfumed, over-endowed languid lover
Who knows how to lead.
TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY (THAT IS THE QUESTION)
The words behind (pull me close, take it off, let us steal away)
The smile
The words beneath (why do you, why don't you)
The questioning pause of my hands
To fly or not to fly
To hold or not to hold
To lie or to lay it
All the way down
To be the I behind l
The words the smile
The questions the flight the trials
Well, that is the end of the question.
The Lesson: The Stillness
Still us
Yes, let it
Let it
Steal us all away
FULL MOON FAILURE
Feeling like a big ol' zero in the sky
Yes. A full moon failure lights my way, shining bright on down
As life goes on by
Me, with empty hands that show for nothing
but debt foolish dreams might have beens
spun out soul sonnets that lead nowhere
even though I Know that there is no where to go.
Yes. I know that I should know.
I know that I should now.
But I am not now-ing.
I am lamenting, I am spinning
With the moon
A big ol'
Zero, she and I.
THE OTHER SIDE! (SAYS THE CAT IN THE HAT)
The other side
Is inside, is outside
Is nowhere to hide
Breath-ful alive
The other side is love
Is you!
The Longing the ache the failure road takes us there
In the most momentous tiniest nowhere leap
Suddenly
On the other side
Rest in peace
Now! before the body is broken
You are what you seek
We all "know" it's true
We do we do
Go through the full moon failure
to the other side and
Now
Speak that sweet moon language
True.
SIGN PAINTERS
Poets, saints and sages, for all their glory, are merely sign painters.
“Always Open,” “Never Closed,” “Welcome,” they write.
Their styles may differ - Kabir scribbles with neon and sends arrows flashing,
While St. Francis prefers a delicate sepia tone,
e.e. cummings can be found pasting together scraps from the yard
While Rumi is out front drunk on wine, drawing circles in the sand.
Still, the call, the direction, the invitation remains the same.
And no matter how many signs one deciphers
Or how dazzling they appear, aglow in the night, after a very long drive,
They will never give you the nourishment or rest that you hunger for.
For that you must go inside.