Dreaming, Fear, Fate

The dream is always the same, though it occurs less frequently. I awaken, within the dream, to find myself in a house I don't immediately recognize; somehow I know it is the house you and I shared. I know without knowing how I know. All I want is out.

But none of the doors open to the outside. They open into the room where I was just standing, or to other rooms and hallways. All I want is out.

I don't know how long I spend futilely opening doors, perhaps it varies each time, before I give up and accept that I am trapped. There is no way out.

Afraid to Love

Afraid to Love

I turn away
and close my heart—
to the promise of love
that is luring.

For the past has taught
to not be caught,
in what is not
worth pursuing—

To never do
the things I've done
that once had led
to my undoing.

~ Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure

Something in the Way

O wild torrid consort, lurid breath of my beating breast,
Thou from whose unseen absence desire fled.
Lies cold, haunted like a ghost from our uncharted past.
I remember, afternoon sun bleeding gold, and hectic red,
Pushed and pulled, desire; refusal denied! O thou
Who chariotest to my dark wintry bed;
The winged perfection, the arrow, the blow.
Trumpet blast within its song a dirge, until
Trembling, motionless, I lie listening to
The clarion of the dreaming earth, and fill
Silent memory. Memorized perfection still.
Filled living, flesh and blood, smooth and frill:
Wild joyous which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!



* In imitation of Shelley's “Ode to the West Wind.”

The Spirit is the Lightening in the Light of an Eye

The Goddess said: 'Spirit, through Spirit you attained your greatness. Praise the greatness of Spirit.' Then Light knew that the mysterious Person was none but Spirit.

That is how these gods--Fire, Wind, and Light--Attained supremacy; they came nearest to Spirit and were the first to call that Person Spirit.

Light stands above Fire and Wind, because closer than they, it was the first to call that Person Spirit.

This is the moral of the tale. In the lightening, in the light of an eye, the light belongs to Spirit.

The power of the mind when it remembers and desires, when it thinks again and again, belongs to Spirit. Therefore let Mind meditate on Spirit.

Spirit is the Good in all. It should be worshipped as the Good. He that knows it as the Good is esteemed by all.

You asked me about spiritual knowledge, I have explained it.

Austerity, self-control, meditation are the foundations of this knowledge; the Wedas are its house, truth its shrine.

He who knows this shall prevail against all evil, enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven, for ever enjoy the blessed Kingdom of Heaven.

From The Ten Principal Upanishads, translated by Shree Purohit Swami and W. B. Yeats.

Seemed Important for Some Reason

Koi No Yokan- Japanese // the sudden knowledge upon meeting someone that the two of you are destined to fall in love.

Onsra- Boro // loving for the last time; that bittersweet feeling you get when you know a love won’t last.

L’esprit de escalier- French // the inescapable feeling you get when you leave a conversation then think about all the things you should have said.

La douleur exquise- French // the heartbreaking pain of wanting someone you can’t have.

In education, with its codes of rules emanating from a government office, with its large classes and fixed curriculum and overworked teachers, with its determination to produce a dead level of glib mediocrity, the lack of reverence for the child is all but universal. Reverence requires imagination and vital warmth; it requires most imagination in respect of those who have least actual achievement or power. -Bertrand Russell, 1916

Writing a Love Poem

Sometimes it is a thing
you set out to do
walking--
the right of way
in some forgotten land.

Sometimes it is a thing
given--
mementos

one, two and three

and then the good-bye.

Today it is a thing

floating--
the motes of dust

in the space between us.

Tomorrow it is

released

an exhalation--

mantra or chant--

less than

yesterday, more

than tomorrow.

Coal

By Audre Lorde

 

I

Is the total black, being spoken

From the earth's inside.

There are many kinds of open.

How a diamond comes into a knot of flame   

How a sound comes into a word, coloured   

By who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open

Like a diamond on glass windows

Singing out within the crash of passing sun

Then there are words like stapled wagers

In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart—

And come whatever wills all chances

The stub remains

An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.

Some words live in my throat

Breeding like adders. Others know sun

Seeking like gypsies over my tongue

To explode through my lips

Like young sparrows bursting from shell.

Some words

Bedevil me.

Love is a word another kind of open—

As a diamond comes into a knot of flame

I am black because I come from the earth's inside   

Take my word for jewel in your open light.

"You must do battle with Eros"

The Elements

By Alice Notley

 

You must do battle with Eros       I am

more worried about space, pressed for details

collapsed in chaos with my sword holding up the sky the

girl said. They cared not for love lying ever that they loved

But I your leader wounded in gender and bleeding

for Eros fought it away from my true beginning as now.

Always climbing that hill in several ways.

One goes past the Baptist Church and through the ugly

trees, houses I only visualize in dreams

you have no right to pursue me to my origins man

as bipolar as the one candidate, forgettable

as the other. We once lived in a postwar barracks blue

heated by a black stove of assumptions

Eros a youth admits no equal; Aphrodite the slut;

Chaos is whom I admire that keeps forgetting

love in favor of this terrible mixity I am

for example ... these poems. Out of the pre-beginning

a different beauty. They want you to confess

something like in church, that a man will

save you. But I am your leader savior and poet

I am your general out of the desert thee

most ardent void precursor of love

Eros approaches again not the man but quality

sculpted genitals arush with the words

of unreason: I will never die. Which I is I

if I can remain chaotic I’ll tell you who you are

that you’ve never anticipated, but know

the only one. Without a thing. To be is not

to have; nor to belong; nor to have been born.

You are not the child of earth. Beauty still thy name.

“For the artist there can be no arrival. An artist must always be in crisis, always in transit, always vulnerable to devastating and exhilarating contact with art.” ~ Joyelle McSweeney

Poems that Go!

I love this project so much. Born Magazine I miss you!

Flying with Fear

Tom Robbins on Life, Love, and Magic

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”

“Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.” 

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.”

“Oh God, are there so many of them in our land! Students who can’t be happy until they’ve graduated, servicemen who can’t be happy until they are discharged, single folks who can’t be happy until they’ve found a mate, workers who can’t be happy until they’ve retired, adolescents who aren’t happy until they’re grown, ill people who aren’t happy until they’re well, failures who aren’t happy until they succeed, restless who can’t wait until they get out of town, and in most cases, vice versa, people waiting, waiting for the world to begin.” 

“Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.” 

 “Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.”

“When two people meet and fall in love, there's a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it's usually too late, we've used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It's hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay.”

“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words 'make' and 'stay' become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”  Still Life with Woodpecker 

“Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death.”  

“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.”

“Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.”

“Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.”


~ Tom Robbins

Most of the time...

“The issue returns with insistence: how do we change mentalities, how do we reinvent social practices that would give back to humanity—if it ever had it—a sense of responsibility, not only for its own survival, but equally for the future of all life on the planet, for animal and vegetable species, likewise for incorporeal species such as music, the arts, cinema, the relation with time, love and compassion for others, the feeling of fusion at the heart of cosmos?”

~ Felix Guattari, “The Ecosophic Object,” Chaosmosis, p.119-120

Summer Rain

Amy Lowell, 1874 - 1925

All night our room was outer-walled with rain.
Drops fell and flattened on the tin roof,
And rang like little disks of metal.
Ping!—Ping!—and there was not a pin-point of silence between
    them.
The rain rattled and clashed,
And the slats of the shutters danced and glittered.
But to me the darkness was red-gold and crocus-colored
With your brightness,
And the words you whispered to me
Sprang up and flamed—orange torches against the rain.
Torches against the wall of cool, silver rain!