Poems/Poetry – Page 9

General Interest, Guest Writer, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

Making for Home

Posted on August 22, 2014August 22, 2014 by The Bardo Group Beguines

Originally published in ARTEMISpoetry, Issue 12, May 2014 and posted here with the permission of the poet, Anne Stewart, and the publisher, Second Light, network of women poets

Will you be taking the dark path?
The one that doesn’t feel right?

Where mostly you meet no-one
but, once, a man with bounding dogs
who race at you, only to collapse
in snuffles and wags when you drop
to greet them, knowing a friendly hand
is the best way to test or bridge a gap.

And do you still see the huddled man,
who breaks from shadows ahead?

He stops short, fumbling with his clothes.
A man you’ll set light to if he races at you,
but he doesn’t. He’s just caught short and cowed
to find a woman knows. He nods, moves on.
You welcome the swathe of safety he cuts.

Why do you take the dark path, knowing
its silences and hiding places?

Its voices of men in the underpass
where running wouldn’t serve you,
forward or back?

But on the long way of the rat-run roads
are men in cars who screech past; men in cars
who stop and park ahead then don’t get out
and drunken men in packs, looking for more,
long after chucking out.

And who would race outdoors on hearing
nothing more than a muffled shout?

But the path is only a path. And the dark
is only time and time of year. So you take
the dark path, listening and ready,
not ready to cut your life to fit
the ‘what if?’ embrace of fear.

– Anne Stewart
© 2014, poem, Anne Stewart, all rights reserved; ©2014, photograph, Jamie Dedes, all rights reserved

ANNE STEWART (poetry p f page) ~ Anne’s poetry is much published in anthologies/magazines. Her awards include the Bridport Prize and Poetry on the Lake’s Silver Wyvern (Italy, 2014). Her first collection is The Janus Hour (Oversteps Books, 2010). “ … varied, dominated by its music and a sense of quest for survival, for the light behind the clouds. Mercurial, like a Fellini film.” Katherine Gallagher. A review of the book is HERE.

Anne is the founder of poetry p f and she’s the Poetry Society’s ‘Kent North West’ Stanza Rep, a Past President (2011 – 2013) of Shortlands Poetry Circle and Administrator for Second Light Network, whose website, Second Light Live, she designed and runs. She co-edited (with Dilys Wood) the pre-launch issue, Issues 1 to 4, 8 and 11 of ARTEMISpoetry, a biannual journal devoted to women’s poetry, and contributes reviews/articles on a regular basis. She was the visiting poet at a London care-centre for two and a half years.

grief, Jamie Dedes, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry, Video

Done . . . and not done yet . . .

Posted on August 21, 2014August 19, 2014 by Jamie Dedes

I watched it all over my friend’s dear shoulder,
that time of living while dying and celebrating ~
like a garden snake ~ the shedding of the skin,
the detritus of material man with its hungers and
wild, woody creative soul, sketching ruby-jeweled
memories in sand to be blown like a Tibetan mandala
across Timelessness . . .

while he,

lone monk,

gripped

by systems on systems of hospital wiring, billing,
approvals, and laws around funerals and burials,
estates, plans, and proposals for headstones and
the where, when, and how of a memorial service,
the left-overs of his life to be sorted, stashed, stored
or sent to the right people in the right places.

Done!

… as though there had been nothing. No one.

– Jamie Dedes

♥♥♥♥

NOT DONE YET

Dedicated to everyone who is living with dying. That would be all of us.

A Taiwanese advertisement based on a true story.
Inspiring. Give it a chance. It will make you smile … and maybe shed a tear or two.

JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity and to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are: Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.

With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.” I am the poetry liaison and a member of the Core Team. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again) is in the lead position and the Beguine Again collaborative and The Bardo Group are coordinating a consolidation of the two groups.

“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge

find yourself, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry, Video

How To Be Alone!

Posted on August 20, 2014August 19, 2014 by The Bardo Group Beguines

The video was uploaded to YouTube by tomasisms and is the work of Andrea Dorfman. The poem was written by Tanya Davis, poet, writer, musician. Thank you to Michael Yost (Michael’s Lair) for sharing this one with us.

Buddhism, General Interest, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

Encounter with Te-Shan

Posted on August 12, 2014August 12, 2014 by Jamie Dedes

cold winter winds
carry the voice of Te-Shan
intruding on my solitude
free yourself, he says ~
while working, work
while resting, rest
….buji*

the birch outside my window
waves her leaves in the wind
celebrating her emptiness,
free of all anxiety

*buji ~ free of anxiety (no mind in work, no work in mind; that is, not self-conscious)

Te-Shan was an eighth century Chinese Chen (Zen) Buddhist teacher and scholar of the Diamond Cutter Sutra (aphorism), known as Case #4 of the Pi-yen-lu koans (riddles). Case #4 is “Te-Shan carrying his bundle.” As the story goes, the Master Te-Shan left his monastery in the north of China and headed south to challenge some teaching that he deemed incorrect. He was dedicated in both his scholarship and his tradition. On his journey, he carried with him his treasured bundle, the Commentaries on the Diamond Cutter Sutra.

Along the way he met a merchant selling rice cakes by the side of the road. She was an old woman and we all know how dangerous old women can be. The old woman asked him what scriptures he carried that were so precious to him. When he told her the Diamond Cutter Sutra, she asked, “Doesn’t the sutra say ‘past mind cannot be held, present mind cannot be held, future mind cannot be held? Which mind is it that the Master would wish to revive?” The old woman’s pointed questioning left Te-Shan speechless.

Shamed and defeated by this uneducated old woman with her street wisdom, Te-Shan returned to his monastery. It is said that he was unable to resume his teaching and spent the next days immersed in meditation. He soon achieved enlightenment and, as a result, burned all his writing and books saying:

“To plumb the greatest depth of knowledge would be no more than a piece of hair lost in the vastness of the great Void. However important your experience of worldly things, it is nothing – it is even less than a single drop of water cast into the Void.”

The Diamond Sutra or the Vajra Cutter Perfection Wisdom Sutra emphasizes the Mahāyāna Buddhist practices of non-attachment and non-abiding.

© 2012, poem and story adaption, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Illustration ~ the frontispiece piece of the Diamond Sutra “the oldest known printed book in the world” via Wikipedia and in the public domain

With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.” I am the poetry liaison and a member of the Core Team. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again) is in the lead position and the Beguine Again collabrative and The Bardo Group are coordinating a consolidation of the two groups.

grief, Joseph Hesch, Mortality, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

Rules of the Game

Posted on August 11, 2014August 11, 2014 by Joseph Hesch

The rules of the game
are set in stone.
You can read them
written on each slab
out there on the field.
The great game is summed up
in four numbers on one side,
and four on the other,
of a grooved hyphen.
Funny how those hyphens,
from end to end,
are the width of an N or M,
but a life may be wider
than a thousand thousand alphabets
or as narrow as an I.

You think of these things,
the unwritten,
the randomly ordered
string of letters,
of words, of stories,
of a life lived in
what seems like a hyphen,
a momentary there to here,
then to now,
once to once,
when you sit by a deathbed,
in front of a casket, or
at a graveside.
That’s where they post
the rules for all to see
and no one’s ever broken.

– Joseph Hesch
© 2014, All rights reserved

JOSEPH HESCH (A Thing for Words) is a writer and poet from Albany, New York , an old friend of Bardo and a new core team member. Joe’s work is published in journals and anthologies coast-to-coast and worldwide. He posts poems and stories-in-progress on his blog, A Thing for Words. An original staff member at dVerse Poets Pub website, Joe was named one of Writers Digest Editor Robert Lee Brewer’s “2011 Best Tweeps for Writers to Follow.” He is also a member of the Grass Roots Poetry Group and featured in their 2013 poetry anthology Petrichor Rising.

Poems/Poetry, poetry, Spiritual Practice, Terri Stewart

Sacred Space in Community

Posted on August 10, 2014August 10, 2014 by Terri

I am currently away at a retreat. While here, I have been reminded of the importance of community. This community is working together towards a goal of having an imagination emporium. A physical space where the community gathers to imagine ways to transform the world to a more just society.

I thought, “We have that!”

The Bardo Group imagines peace and justice every day. And we walk with each other even with our diverse geographies.

That is Sacred Space.

by Lynda flickr.com/just1snap (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) — by Lynda flickr.com/just1snap
(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Today, I would like to invite us all to build something together. Words that imagine justice for the lost, the least and the lonely. I am sure there is an official name for what I am proposing, but I am going to call it “communal haiku.” I will start us out with a haiku and I invite each reader to respond in their own way. Each of us building on the gift of one another. Sacred Space in community, building a gift together that imagines a transformed world.

This is inspired by a reading from on Hebrew scripture, Isaiah 25:6-10. Reaching back and including another community!

Celebrated wines poured
into cut-crystal goblets.
Prisoner’s freedom.
…
What comes next?

Shalom,
Terri Stewart

Charles W Martin, Photography/Photographer, Poems/Poetry

pandemic…

Posted on August 9, 2014August 6, 2014 by slpmartin

i’m having
difficulty breathing
these days
the air is heavy
with the ash
of funeral pyres
so many souls
cast into the four winds
from every
corner of the world
women and children
old and young
even those whose life
has not yet begun
wrapped still
in their mother’s womb
i’m having
difficulty breathing
these days
the air is heavy
with the ash
of funeral pyres
battles raging
while the funeral pyre ‘s lit
they cool not
before the next soul
ascends to the pyre
while war’s fears
again fill the air
no time to dry tears
just more
flames ushering souls
i’m having
difficulty breathing
these days
the air is heavy
with the ash
of funeral pyres

CHARLES W. MARTIN (Reading Between the Minds) — earned his Ph.D. in Speech and Language Pathology with an emphasis in statistics. Throughout Charlie’s career, he maintained a devotion to the arts (literature/poetry, the theater, music and photography). Since his retirement in 2010, he has turned his full attention to poetry and photography. He publishes a poem and a photographic art piece each day at Read Between the Minds, Poetry, Photograph and Random Thoughts of Life. He is noted as a poet of social conscience. Charlie has been blogging since January 31, 2010. He has self-published a book of poetry entitled The Hawk Chronicles and will soon publish another book called A Bea in Your Bonnet: First Sting, featuring the renown Aunt Bea. In The Hawk Chronicles, Charlie provides a personification of his resident hawk with poems and photos taken over a two-year period. Charlie’s lastest book, When Spirits Touch, Dual Poetry, a collaboration with River Urke, is available through Amazon now.

Charlie’s long awaited Aunt Bea Collection is out. He says, “Bea In Your Bonnet: First Sting is a collection of germinal poems featuring Aunt Bea. Aunt Bea’s voice is one I’ve heard almost every day of my life. Family observations, lessons, and advice given to me and every other family member who had the good sense to listen. Her homespun philosophy most likely will not be found in any collegiate textbooks or for that matter in any local town crier newspaper catering to city dwellers. Indeed, she has a different way of viewing the world; a bit old fashion, sassy, and steely at times but a viewpoint which has engaged my imagination and heart. I sincerely hope you too will find some morsel of wisdom in her personal observations and interpretations of life’s events, but do watch out for her stingers.”

Mya Schneider, General Interest, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

The Real Mrs. Beeton

Posted on August 8, 2014December 6, 2014 by The Bardo Group Beguines

Isabella Beeton (1836-1865), known as the first and "best" cookbook author — Isabella Beeton (1836-1865), known as the first and “best” cookbook author

Originally published by Second Light Live in ARTEMISpoetry and shared here with the permission of both publisher and poet.

Heaving her enormous bulk onto a bookshelf high
above my bed, then pushing until she was out of sight
took all my strength and it didn’t dislodge her from my mind.

But I rebelled against the weight of her disapproval,
shut myself away every morning in that small room
of my own, the room which is me, to let imagination

run wild as brambles and grasses in an untended garden,
coaxed visions into scribblings on paper until desk
and floor were littered, until unblinking as owl eyes,

words stared from my screen. Of course, the moment
I emerged I came face to face with her large a life
on the landing. For years this matron, large-bosomed

and with a voluminous knowledge gathered from decades
of managing a household, followed me around tutting
because I hadn’t blanched or basted, couldn’t pluck a duck.

She snorted at unruly children sliding down the stairs,
at dust rollicking along skirting boards, rounded on me
for failing to keep a properly stocked linen cupboard.

Then the day I found out this paragon was Isabella Beeton,
a young woman who instead of devoting her life to home
and family like other Victorian wives, travelled by train

with her publisher husband to his London office, wrote
books fat with information, mostly magpied from other books,
about household management, became a money-spinner,

an authority for later generations. I also learnt she’d suffered
several miscarriages, bore two children who died in infancy,
two who survived, died herself after the second –

thanks to Mr Beeton’s syphilis. Yet for years books
in her name continued to appear. The matron’s ghost
still persists in my mind but what troubles me is Isabella.

For all the thousands of pages this woman produced
in her short life, the real Mrs Beeton didn’t leave
a single word about what she thought, felt, endured.

– Myra Schneider

MYRA SCHNEIDER (Myra Schneider’s Poetry Website) ~ Myra’s long poems have been featured in Long Poem Magazine and Domestic Cherry. She co-edited with Dilys Wood, Parents, an anthology of poems by 114 women about their own parents. Myra started out writing fiction for children and teens. We first discovered Myra through her much-loved poem about an experience with cancer, The Red Dress, which she generously shared with readers here in our Perspectives on Cancer series in 2011.

Currently Myra lives in North London, but she grew up in Scotland and in other parts of England. She lives with her husband and they have one son. Myra tutors through Poetry School, London. Her schedule of poetry readings is HERE. A video of Myra’s interview at Poetry East in London is HERE. The sound leaves something to be desired, so ear-buds or earphones are helpful. Other videos are of poems: The Red Dress and Goulash. Myra’s Amazon UK page is HERE and US is HERE.

Myra’s eleventh poetry collection, The Door to Color, will launch this September by Enitharmon Press, UK at their gallery in London.

Liliana Negoi, Meditation, meditative, Mortality, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

once upon a time we were

Posted on August 5, 2014August 4, 2014 by Author

the things that were never said
still hibernate like some embryos
inside my voice.
the sounds that i never heard
are already perverted with ether
by the time they reach my hearing,
but everything can wait.
nine zero one.
the world doesn’t yet ask me to be alive,
the world doesn’t yet need my eyes searching,
raking through layers of light for the purpose of movement,
the world can still postpone the infusion of quotidian
which i can have,
acid,
next to the coffee cup.
the world is still far away,
at about the moment when it chose to be held in arms of sand,
not knowing other ways to protect its smallness –
and my words struggle between silence and burning,
hiding me yet from light,
protecting me yet from sand.
but too many things strive to enter my eyes all at once,
too many wasted lives flow their unlivingness
just a brick away,
and the wooden pillars of citadels feel their capillaries rotting.
“once upon a time we were”
but what if we weren’t?
what if the “once” is truer than what the story says?
once i believed that each of us
lives only in someone else’s dream,
and when that someone wakes up, we die,
and our life is suddenly cut by the blink of the eye of a random person –
and i wonder,
how many lives have i ended myself by waking up in the morning?
and how would it be to spend all our lives
searching for the one dreaming of us,
and then, in our last moments, to beg that one
to not wake up?
and why wouldn’t he wake up?
what dream so beautiful would we offer to him
so that he would sleep some more?
nine zero two.
the clock screams green at me
while at the tip of my foot the tango born in the evening
pulsates residually,
just like the dirty pearly taste of shadows
walked upon on the asphalt of a random street.
in tones of crème brulée
morning invades my senses, ignoring them,
and i open my eyes and end some more lives.

– Liliana Negoi
© 2014, All rights reserved

LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romanian curcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows , Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. She is also the author of a novel, Solo-Chess, available for free reading HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.

Poems/Poetry, Spiritual Practice, Terri Stewart

Sacred Space in Mental Illness

Posted on August 3, 2014August 2, 2014 by Terri

A while ago, I was a Spiritual Director at a women’s prison. While I was there, one of my clients had a mental illness. Entering into Spiritual Direction was interesting because it challenged me to think about G*d in ways I had never thought of. Here, I had a client who was clearly seeking “something more” but was afraid of “voices” in her head. Huh. In traditional language about the divine, I often speak of a “call” or a “nudge” or “voice” that comes from elsewhere. Now that elsewhere can be internally or externally, but it is still quite separate from the logical thought processes of my mind. The question became, what do I do if I am afraid of trusting any voice other than the logical thought process? How do I imagine the divine?

The product of my imaginings were twofold. My imaginings produced a poem called “ghost town” that is an exploration of what it means to be a seeker with a mental illness. This led to the realization that the only trustworthy things were concrete, visible, and available. And this is okay. It too, is sacred space.

And so I offer to you, “ghost town.”

ghost town

small, still voice of wind,
tossing my tumbleweed-thoughts
that roll through a ghost town.

here, my safety has been
abandoned to the rats and mice
that hide from revelation,
distrusting that light
so much that they will not stay
and visit. the locks and guns
have been jammed by mud-caked
memories of injustice,
in the sheriff’s office.

the hollow-hallow notes of the
player-piano silent
except for the collapsing
frame that drops pieces of itself
crashing onto the discordant keys,
creating a nightmare sound of
happiness twisted into grief,
twisted into a mockery of joy,
in the saloon.

the telegraph does not speak
into the future, the wires
have frayed and disconnected
from the source of consolation,
reality has dissolved letters of love
or news of the war and the
beloved sears & roebuck catalog,
in the post-office.

the ghost town disgusts me.
especially when the wind is
blowing and changing all that
i know into something unknown
ripping the roof apart and causing
the cacophony of noises to come
in from all directions telling
me, what? untrustworthy voice!

so small and still or
so big and booming

telling me to tear the walls apart
bare-handed until my fingers
become bloody stubs and
yet you insist that i see you,
listen to you, the wind destroying
the small community of barn owls
and bats that i have built in my
ghost town. i do not want to hear
you. the owls and bats are my
saving grace.

Terri Stewart, Dec. 2010

General Interest, Nature, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

Summer Dreams

Posted on July 30, 2014July 30, 2014 by The Bardo Group Beguines

Seasons for all themselves don’t mean
What they once did. I’ve not grown
Out of them, rather more into and a part
Of them with a deepening I’ve not had.
Not to be dramatic, only matter of fact.
A time when each season meant differences
In things needing to be done is done for me.

Those needings now need to be hired out
To those whose labor is not tenuous
But filled with stamina and a resilience
More nimble than my unsteady willingness
To mount a ladder and repair a rotted soffit.
I am not enfeebled by a long way yet. It’s just
My work’s more now a tooled thought inside.

I. Autumn is my season of perfect cadences.
In it the heart and mind are at peace.
The slender line of equinox orchestrates
In harmony circumspect participation
Of the four elements that make us part of
An earth fully aware the year is growing late.
Each day a ballet full of import in the air.
Walking, my feet in step with my breathing.

The feel of the first chill-quicken’d bite
In my lungs, holds my concentration close
To what matters. – The wideness of the sky,
The attitudes of clouds, the ‘V’ of flocks flowing
Rather than just in flight, how trees enflamed
Allow a lone evergreen among them to be seen,
The moment, at sunset, when the countryside
Gives the day over to night in sighs
And all the secret names of things are revealed
Then quickly forgotten by the feel of a world
About to relax and make itself ready.

II. Winter has become a year all its own.
It tastes on my tongue of a cello
Playing cascades of suites by Bach,
Continuing one after another without stop,
Each deep lowing expresses the joy
Of a universe still expanding in awe.
Yet, still I’m rooted firm to earth’s orbit,
Knowing it would be simple to only let go
And suddenly traveling at light’s speed,
Leave all fears behind, bound by gravity.

I think it’s what it must have been like
To be Einstein embraced in his reveries,
Questioning the knowns and doubts,
Accepting the unknown and finally,
Having no doubt about coming back,
Slipped the thin atmosphere surrounding
The world delicately drifting in space.

III. Spring’s a flowery mutation all primed up;
A glandular mix of the sacred, the profane
And the pagan; Mardi gras madness—beads
Thrown out to bearing breasts with drunken ease;
Carnival gluttony stumbling into Lenten ash, and
Sacrifice. Ending lined up for the confessional
Ritual of Good Friday, still hungry yet, for more.

Yes, the rest’s more like a note left by winter,
The ground saturated with meltdown, into mud;
For me a season of cynics and sarcastic smiling.
When I was young in the sixties and it was all
For politics and sex, love bruising imaginations
Cut to the heart with the hot knife of living,
All caught up in the under currents of renewal
Expecting the world would change by our love.

Though, too, to be honest, my appreciation of
This season, is how it binds the rest with promise.
Always, some part of its fertile dance is woven
Into the cloth of days unfolding of what’s to be;
Always, with the thread of hopes to come.

IV. Summer’s world is seen from the pitcher’s mound
Long before the crowd arrives. Slightly raised,
Closer to Home than any base, surrounded
By the green grass and raked red clay of possibility.
It is warm roundness and all light rolled out
Into lengths of days. An awakening of all there is;
Opens with clear fields of vision, mowed wind gusts
And dark thunder. A dry in your throat that is not
Thirst, but unquenchable anticipation.

Summer is body time – inside, outside, under
The fingernails dirty. It is Walt Whitman singing
America, while imagining the sweating bodies
Of young men, watching them swim naked,
Diving off a Brooklyn pier. It is a season
Demanding no quarter and giving none back
Except the secrets of Pleasure’s alchemy
Turning spun gold into the smell of memories.

It is a world of short close nights tipping
On a horizon’s infinity, gentle and tender. Full
Of all one can take from this earth if one chose
To leave it– more than, much more than that.
It is the season we first learn how dreams
Become the things they are, books opening,
Revealing every page at once; all the things
We can do and cannot do and can do them anyway.
Above all other importants. Above all else,
Summer dreams it is summer; it dreams itself.
What it is about, with a great consciousness
—All of its sinews, bones, muscles and blood in focus,
To see the object of all its exertions at night’s end
And the next day’s beginning; deep breaths filling
The heart, mind and soul with a pure, deep sleep;
The un-desperate, quiet sleep of summer dreams.

– Mr. K.A. Brace
Excerpt from: To Travel Without a Map: Poems; Mr. K. A. Brace, 9781493643004: Amazon.com: Books

K.A. BRACE (The Mirror Obscura) ~ With this work we introduce a new guest poet. K.B. (as he is popularly know among bloggers) is 61, lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his three dogs and four cats. He is a graduate of The State University of New York at Buffalo where he received both a Bachelor and Masters of Arts degree in English. While at the University he worked with Mac Hammond and Irving Feldman and was winner of The Arthur Axlerod Award for Poetry. After graduating he entered the hospitality industry and did not write for the next 35 years during which time he never considered himself not a poet stating that “a poet is one who has written a poem and may never write another.” Coinciding with his turning 60 he suddenly began writing again and is in the midst of finishing his eighth collection of poetry. He works assiduously for at least 10-12 hours 7 days a week at his writing. To Travel Without a Map is his first publication of a book length collection. His style is eclectic and his interest in modern myths and the tiny filaments of our humanity that connects us to one another are the centerpieces of his work. His poems are always surprising both in their crafting and their messages. He considers himself a ‘readers’ poet.

To Travel Without a Map: Poems; Mr. K. A. Brace, 9781493643004: Amazon.com: Books

Charles W Martin, Peace & Justice, Photography/Photographer, Poems/Poetry, Poets Against War Week

your eye for an eye…

Posted on July 24, 2014July 23, 2014 by slpmartin

there are no brave souls
only those who seek vengeance
so death’s army grows

Essay, Poems/Poetry, Spiritual Practice, Terri Stewart

Sacred Space in All That Is

Posted on July 20, 2014July 19, 2014 by Terri

I am not quite done with the reading I wanted to do to create the final posting in the series of Sacred Space in the body, so I am going to share this recent post I wrote over at BeguineAgain.com.

…I was, I AM, I will always be…

Really, that’s the definition of the Holy Name that G*d passes on to Moses. This infinitive form of the verb “to be,” makes me think of even more! Reaching my fingers back through time and forward to the future.

Couple that with the declaration in the book of Genesis,

Let us make humans in our own image! Male AND female G*d created them

Lawrence T. Richardson expanded a bit on this. Instead of our traditional understanding that would be more of male OR female, G*d created them, it is male AND female. He is a transgender, queer-identified pastor, someone who has been created both male and female and claims both. Pastor Richardson talks of transgender people being the epitome of G*d since they are both male AND female rather than either/or. Now, I don’t really agree that there is a hierarchy of being most made in the image of G*d, but I do agree that the great I AM is embodied in all people.

One of the things I love about physics is the discussion of matter in regular plain-old Newtonian physics. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Therefore, the dust that we experience has always been, is, and will always be. The things we breathe and touch that make us sneeze fits, have always been, are, and will always be. We are all connected through earthly and cosmic stardust (to dip into Carl Sagan’s language a bit). We, through our connection to the divine and through our connection to physical matter have always been, are, and will always be.

How can I not feel holiness, sacredness, the divine if we are not all connected?

stardust shimmers

ten thousand light years ago

birthing new life

It is at moments when I reflect on all that was, is, and shall be, that I feel fully connected and grounded in the Sacred Space in All That Is.

from the Hubble Telescope Infrared Horsehead Nebulae — from the Hubble Telescope
Infrared Horsehead Nebulae

Shalom and Amen,

Terri

Originally published at http://www.BeguineAgain.com

Photograph from the Hubble Telescope, Creative Commons License

…

REV. TERRI STEWART is Into the Bardo’s Sunday chaplain, senior content editor, and site co-administrator. She comes from an eclectic background and considers herself to be grounded in contemplation and justice. She is the Director and Founder of the Youth Chaplaincy Coalition that serves youth affected by the justice system. As a graduate of Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry, she earned her Master’s of Divinity and a Post-Master’s Certificate in Spiritual Direction. She is a contributing author to the Abingdon Worship Annual. (The 2014 issue just released!)

Her online presence is “Cloaked Monk.” This speaks to her grounding in contemplative arts and the need to live it out in the world. The cloak is the disguise of normalcy as she advocates for justice and peace. You can find her at www.cloakedmonk.com, www.twitter.com/cloakedmonk, and www.facebook.com/cloakedmonk. To reach her for conversation, send a note to terri@cloakedmonk.com

Liliana Negoi, meditative, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

all aboard the jasmine train

Posted on July 17, 2014July 16, 2014 by Author

metallic trails carry along them
the afterlife scent
of knowledge and will

no need to pull the emergency brake –
we’re all just
a splendid soup of souls
from which sometimes drops
creep within the spoon of god
and he feeds the earth with us

sanctity overdue –
once in a while
(or more than once in a while)
expired souls
find their way by accident
on the shelves of reality,
and we blame god because
we forgot to read the labels
and we hurt…

but in the end
the thorns on which we prick our fingers
could be nothing else but
the pins and needles from god’s palm…

Nature, Poems/Poetry, Victoria C Slotto

The Seed–a Sestina

Posted on July 14, 2014July 13, 2014 by Victoria C. Slotto

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies it bears much fruit.
John 12, 24

The Seed

Such joy we find, in spring, to plant a seed,

to tuck it deep within expectant earth
to wait, in hope, for summers verdant growth,
the offspring of apparent winter death,
a promise that we, too, shall know rebirth
when we, at last, have spent this fragile life.

You ask me why we long for lasting life?
Perhaps you’ve never sown a lowly seed
then seen that nature nurtures its rebirth
unnoticed, ‘neath the skin of Mother Earth.
So small this grain—defying endless death
while flaunting its capacity for growth.

Each seed, endowed with all required for growth
still needs attention to sustain its life,
thus lending meaning to apparent death.
They languish for both sun and rain, these seeds,
and nutrients—the gift of fertile earth,
then time is all that’s wanting for rebirth.

Does not your soul expect its own rebirth?
Does grace not foster spirit’s gentle growth?
And it is not our goal while here one earth
to search for meaning in these days of life?
Tend carefully the soil that bears the seed
and have no fear of your impending death.

The seed, itself, surrenders to its death
so that a flower or tree may know rebirth.
Such beauty shall be born of humble seed
embarking on a journey of new growth.
Thus is the cycle known to every life
that’s clothed in form while dwelling here on earth.

Too short the days we wander here on earth,
too soon we face inevitable death,
so each and every moment of this life
give cause to ponder our sublime rebirth,
to free ourselves for such abundant growth
that we fulfill the mission of the seed.

While here on earth prepare for this rebirth,
for it’s through death we shall achieve new growth.
In losing life you flourish, tiny seed.

The Sestina:

A sestina is, for me, a fun, but challenging form to play with. It is a double tritina, using six, rather than three line-ending words. The secret is to choose words along a thematic line, then see where they take you. Should you want to give the form a whirl, this is the pattern: ABCDEF; FAEBDC; CFDABE; ECBFAD; DEACFB; BDFECA. A tercet concludes the rhyme scheme: ECA for ends of lines, BDF in the middle—thus, BE, DC, FA. Just for fun, try writing it using a meter, such as iambic pentameter.

– Victoria C. Slotto

VICTORIA C. SLOTTO (Victoria C. Slotto, Author: Fiction, Poetry and Writing Prompts) ~ is an accomplished writer and poet. Winter is Past, published by Lucky Bat Books in 2012, is Victoria’s first novel. A second novel is in process. On Amazon and hot-off-the-press nonfiction is Beating the Odds: Support for Persons with Early Stage Dementia. Victoria’s ebooks (poetry and nonfiction) are free to Amazon Prime Members. Link HERE for Victoria’s Amazon page. Victoria’s poetry collection is Jacaranda Rain, Collected Poems, 2012, Beautifully done.

Writers’ Fourth Wednesday prompt is hosted by Victoria from January through October. Victoria’s next Fourth Wednesday writers’ prompt will post at 12:01 a.m. PST on July 23. Please join us. Mister Linky will remain open for seventy-two hours so that you can link your response to this blog. If you find Mister Linky too cumbersome to use, please feel free to leave your link in the comments section on Wednesday. Victoria and Jamie will read and comment and we hope you will read each other’s work as well, comment and encourage.

General Interest, Jamie Dedes, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

swallowed whole

Posted on July 12, 2014September 24, 2019 by Jamie Dedes

“I suspect there will never be a requiem for a dream, simply because it will destroy us before we have the opportunity to mourn its passing.” Hubert Sibley, Jr., Requiem for a Dream

we of the blue work-a-day Mondays,
stale “Pastor says” Sundays
and Veterans’ Day at the mall
where manufactured dreams are sold
they’ve fitted us with iron lungs
the muscle we use is not our own
our scripts are poorly written
our poems stillborn, our music silenced
by Madison Avenue, by financiers
and politicians, some teachers,
some preachers too
and entertainment news …
like carnival barkers, they hawk their wares
material addictions, stoked jingoism …
……for this …
we barter our minds, betray our souls
……Chumped!
we are swallowed whole.

Beauty, Jamie Dedes, Nature, ocean bliss, poem, Poems/Poetry, poetry

caressed by a white-lighted wrinkle in time

Posted on July 10, 2014July 10, 2014 by Jamie Dedes

a bountiful dawn breaks along the beach,
the salty air rousing me out of bed to a
good morning dressed in silken pale, in soft
pastels, like violet and peach and the seduction
of a blue-green ocean that sighs with its ebb tides
and with its surge, it roars on slivered winds ~

between the whiles, how pleasant this tender verge,
*softly caressed by a white-lighted wrinkle in time**

With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded and host The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.”

Poems/Poetry, Victoria C. Slotto

Nurture

Posted on July 8, 2014July 8, 2014 by Victoria C. Slotto

The ants rush toward sweetness. I take away the melon, but first I spill a little melon juice on the counter.
Mary Oliver
Sand Dabs, Eight

Nurture

A drop of Buddhist grace seeps in my core.
I hesitate then spray to check those ants
but guilt ensues, weighs heavily in my soul,
Yet, should spider dare invade, I squash.

Last week I wept—a neighbor’s trees chopped down.
I wept for feathers scattered in our yard,
for eggs unhatched, abandoned in their nest,
for grazing cows and sheep, doomed to be slain.

And do we know for sure grain feels no pain?
That brainless lobsters know no suffering
when dropped in boiling pots for our delight?
Does life exist to feed on other lives?

But soon enough I, too, shall go away—
my life snuffed out much like a candle’s flame.
And so the cycle’s endless rhythm flows,
as well it must make room for seedling’s growth.

– Victoria C. Slotto

Will you be taking the dark path? The one that doesn’t feel right?

Where mostly you meet no-one but, once, a man with bounding dogs who race at you, only to collapse in snuffles and wags when you drop to greet them, knowing a friendly hand is the best way to test or bridge a gap.

And do you still see the huddled man, who breaks from shadows ahead?

He stops short, fumbling with his clothes. A man you’ll set light to if he races at you, but he doesn’t. He’s just caught short and cowed to find a woman knows. He nods, moves on. You welcome the swathe of safety he cuts.

Why do you take the dark path, knowing its silences and hiding places?

Its voices of men in the underpass where running wouldn’t serve you, forward or back?

But on the long way of the rat-run roads are men in cars who screech past; men in cars who stop and park ahead then don’t get out and drunken men in packs, looking for more, long after chucking out.

And who would race outdoors on hearing nothing more than a muffled shout?

But the path is only a path. And the dark is only time and time of year. So you take the dark path, listening and ready, not ready to cut your life to fit the ‘what if?’ embrace of fear.

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

while he,

lone monk,

gripped

Done!

… as though there had been nothing. No one.

♥♥♥♥

NOT DONE YET

Dedicated to everyone who is living with dying. That would be all of us.

A Taiwanese advertisement based on a true story. Inspiring. Give it a chance. It will make you smile … and maybe shed a tear or two.

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

cold winter winds carry the voice of Te-Shan intruding on my solitude free yourself, he says ~ while working, work while resting, rest ….buji*

the birch outside my window waves her leaves in the wind celebrating her emptiness, free of all anxiety

*buji ~ free of anxiety (no mind in work, no work in mind; that is, not self-conscious)

Shamed and defeated by this uneducated old woman with her street wisdom, Te-Shan returned to his monastery. It is said that he was unable to resume his teaching and spent the next days immersed in meditation. He soon achieved enlightenment and, as a result, burned all his writing and books saying:

“To plumb the greatest depth of knowledge would be no more than a piece of hair lost in the vastness of the great Void. However important your experience of worldly things, it is nothing – it is even less than a single drop of water cast into the Void.”

The Diamond Sutra or the Vajra Cutter Perfection Wisdom Sutra emphasizes the Mahāyāna Buddhist practices of non-attachment and non-abiding.

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Seasons for all themselves don’t mean What they once did. I’ve not grown Out of them, rather more into and a part Of them with a deepening I’ve not had. Not to be dramatic, only matter of fact. A time when each season meant differences In things needing to be done is done for me.

Those needings now need to be hired out To those whose labor is not tenuous But filled with stamina and a resilience More nimble than my unsteady willingness To mount a ladder and repair a rotted soffit. I am not enfeebled by a long way yet. It’s just My work’s more now a tooled thought inside.

I.

II.

I think it’s what it must have been like To be Einstein embraced in his reveries, Questioning the knowns and doubts, Accepting the unknown and finally, Having no doubt about coming back, Slipped the thin atmosphere surrounding The world delicately drifting in space.

III.

Though, too, to be honest, my appreciation of This season, is how it binds the rest with promise. Always, some part of its fertile dance is woven Into the cloth of days unfolding of what’s to be; Always, with the thread of hopes to come.

IV.

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

there are no brave souls only those who seek vengeance so death’s army grows

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

metallic trails carry along them the afterlife scent of knowledge and will

no need to pull the emergency brake – we’re all just a splendid soup of souls from which sometimes drops creep within the spoon of god and he feeds the earth with us

sanctity overdue – once in a while (or more than once in a while) expired souls find their way by accident on the shelves of reality, and we blame god because we forgot to read the labels and we hurt…

but in the end the thorns on which we prick our fingers could be nothing else but the pins and needles from god’s palm…

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Such joy we find, in spring, to plant a seed,

to tuck it deep within expectant earth to wait, in hope, for summers verdant growth, the offspring of apparent winter death, a promise that we, too, shall know rebirth when we, at last, have spent this fragile life.

You ask me why we long for lasting life? Perhaps you’ve never sown a lowly seed then seen that nature nurtures its rebirth unnoticed, ‘neath the skin of Mother Earth. So small this grain—defying endless death while flaunting its capacity for growth.

Each seed, endowed with all required for growth still needs attention to sustain its life, thus lending meaning to apparent death. They languish for both sun and rain, these seeds, and nutrients—the gift of fertile earth, then time is all that’s wanting for rebirth.

Does not your soul expect its own rebirth? Does grace not foster spirit’s gentle growth? And it is not our goal while here one earth to search for meaning in these days of life? Tend carefully the soil that bears the seed and have no fear of your impending death.

The seed, itself, surrenders to its death so that a flower or tree may know rebirth. Such beauty shall be born of humble seed embarking on a journey of new growth. Thus is the cycle known to every life that’s clothed in form while dwelling here on earth.

Too short the days we wander here on earth, too soon we face inevitable death, so each and every moment of this life give cause to ponder our sublime rebirth, to free ourselves for such abundant growth that we fulfill the mission of the seed.

While here on earth prepare for this rebirth, for it’s through death we shall achieve new growth. In losing life you flourish, tiny seed.

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

a bountiful dawn breaks along the beach, the salty air rousing me out of bed to a good morning dressed in silken pale, in soft pastels, like violet and peach and the seduction of a blue-green ocean that sighs with its ebb tides and with its surge, it roars on slivered winds ~

between the whiles, how pleasant this tender verge, softly caressed by a white-lighted wrinkle in time*

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

The ants rush toward sweetness. I take away the melon, but first I spill a little melon juice on the counter. Mary Oliver Sand Dabs, Eight

Nurture

A drop of Buddhist grace seeps in my core. I hesitate then spray to check those ants but guilt ensues, weighs heavily in my soul, Yet, should spider dare invade, I squash.

Last week I wept—a neighbor’s trees chopped down. I wept for feathers scattered in our yard, for eggs unhatched, abandoned in their nest, for grazing cows and sheep, doomed to be slain.

And do we know for sure grain feels no pain? That brainless lobsters know no suffering when dropped in boiling pots for our delight? Does life exist to feed on other lives?

But soon enough I, too, shall go away— my life snuffed out much like a candle’s flame. And so the cycle’s endless rhythm flows, as well it must make room for seedling’s growth.

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Will you be taking the dark path?
The one that doesn’t feel right?

Where mostly you meet no-one
but, once, a man with bounding dogs
who race at you, only to collapse
in snuffles and wags when you drop
to greet them, knowing a friendly hand
is the best way to test or bridge a gap.

And do you still see the huddled man,
who breaks from shadows ahead?

He stops short, fumbling with his clothes.
A man you’ll set light to if he races at you,
but he doesn’t. He’s just caught short and cowed
to find a woman knows. He nods, moves on.
You welcome the swathe of safety he cuts.

Why do you take the dark path, knowing
its silences and hiding places?

Its voices of men in the underpass
where running wouldn’t serve you,
forward or back?

But on the long way of the rat-run roads
are men in cars who screech past; men in cars
who stop and park ahead then don’t get out
and drunken men in packs, looking for more,
long after chucking out.

And who would race outdoors on hearing
nothing more than a muffled shout?

But the path is only a path. And the dark
is only time and time of year. So you take
the dark path, listening and ready,
not ready to cut your life to fit
the ‘what if?’ embrace of fear.

A Taiwanese advertisement based on a true story.
Inspiring. Give it a chance. It will make you smile … and maybe shed a tear or two.

cold winter winds
carry the voice of Te-Shan
intruding on my solitude
free yourself, he says ~
while working, work
while resting, rest
….buji*

the birch outside my window
waves her leaves in the wind
celebrating her emptiness,
free of all anxiety

Seasons for all themselves don’t mean
What they once did. I’ve not grown
Out of them, rather more into and a part
Of them with a deepening I’ve not had.
Not to be dramatic, only matter of fact.
A time when each season meant differences
In things needing to be done is done for me.

Those needings now need to be hired out
To those whose labor is not tenuous
But filled with stamina and a resilience
More nimble than my unsteady willingness
To mount a ladder and repair a rotted soffit.
I am not enfeebled by a long way yet. It’s just
My work’s more now a tooled thought inside.

I think it’s what it must have been like
To be Einstein embraced in his reveries,
Questioning the knowns and doubts,
Accepting the unknown and finally,
Having no doubt about coming back,
Slipped the thin atmosphere surrounding
The world delicately drifting in space.

Though, too, to be honest, my appreciation of
This season, is how it binds the rest with promise.
Always, some part of its fertile dance is woven
Into the cloth of days unfolding of what’s to be;
Always, with the thread of hopes to come.

there are no brave souls
only those who seek vengeance
so death’s army grows

metallic trails carry along them
the afterlife scent
of knowledge and will

no need to pull the emergency brake –
we’re all just
a splendid soup of souls
from which sometimes drops
creep within the spoon of god
and he feeds the earth with us

sanctity overdue –
once in a while
(or more than once in a while)
expired souls
find their way by accident
on the shelves of reality,
and we blame god because
we forgot to read the labels
and we hurt…

but in the end
the thorns on which we prick our fingers
could be nothing else but
the pins and needles from god’s palm…

to tuck it deep within expectant earth
to wait, in hope, for summers verdant growth,
the offspring of apparent winter death,
a promise that we, too, shall know rebirth
when we, at last, have spent this fragile life.

You ask me why we long for lasting life?
Perhaps you’ve never sown a lowly seed
then seen that nature nurtures its rebirth
unnoticed, ‘neath the skin of Mother Earth.
So small this grain—defying endless death
while flaunting its capacity for growth.

Each seed, endowed with all required for growth
still needs attention to sustain its life,
thus lending meaning to apparent death.
They languish for both sun and rain, these seeds,
and nutrients—the gift of fertile earth,
then time is all that’s wanting for rebirth.

Does not your soul expect its own rebirth?
Does grace not foster spirit’s gentle growth?
And it is not our goal while here one earth
to search for meaning in these days of life?
Tend carefully the soil that bears the seed
and have no fear of your impending death.

The seed, itself, surrenders to its death
so that a flower or tree may know rebirth.
Such beauty shall be born of humble seed
embarking on a journey of new growth.
Thus is the cycle known to every life
that’s clothed in form while dwelling here on earth.

Too short the days we wander here on earth,
too soon we face inevitable death,
so each and every moment of this life
give cause to ponder our sublime rebirth,
to free ourselves for such abundant growth
that we fulfill the mission of the seed.

While here on earth prepare for this rebirth,
for it’s through death we shall achieve new growth.
In losing life you flourish, tiny seed.

a bountiful dawn breaks along the beach,
the salty air rousing me out of bed to a
good morning dressed in silken pale, in soft
pastels, like violet and peach and the seduction
of a blue-green ocean that sighs with its ebb tides
and with its surge, it roars on slivered winds ~

between the whiles, how pleasant this tender verge,
*softly caressed by a white-lighted wrinkle in time**

The ants rush toward sweetness. I take away the melon, but first I spill a little melon juice on the counter.
Mary Oliver
Sand Dabs, Eight

A drop of Buddhist grace seeps in my core.
I hesitate then spray to check those ants
but guilt ensues, weighs heavily in my soul,
Yet, should spider dare invade, I squash.

Last week I wept—a neighbor’s trees chopped down.
I wept for feathers scattered in our yard,
for eggs unhatched, abandoned in their nest,
for grazing cows and sheep, doomed to be slain.

And do we know for sure grain feels no pain?
That brainless lobsters know no suffering
when dropped in boiling pots for our delight?
Does life exist to feed on other lives?

But soon enough I, too, shall go away—
my life snuffed out much like a candle’s flame.
And so the cycle’s endless rhythm flows,
as well it must make room for seedling’s growth.