Out of Office

5 minute travel poem...

Put me on a plane

Plant my itching feet in scratchy sand

a glass of excess in my hand

Get me on a bus

Throw my toes in dewy grass

eyes on glassy sky, walking fast

Take me in your car

Pour my sores in the rear

somewhere far I'm outta here

Precedent study

Looking only for poems with music that moved me, I found this... 

Studying the meter and the way words strike sounds on the tongue

(The first thing I was was sheer air // And the locked drops rising in dew // Limpid as spirits)

Love Letter

Sylvia Plath

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter--
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chisled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I was was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

un-alone

Alone: OE. All/ wholly one. 

Though by myself today, I was not alone. With me were Gix, and our new friend Franca, who flew us through sea town and by bays on a seaside road in the cold. 

Today I expected would be just like the others these past several weeks, months - a period of comfortable solitude, often by myself, but not alone/ lonely.

A balanced life requires that we be ok with being by (with) our self and also being with others. Crucial to this is the understanding that "being with an other" shouldn't be seen in binary opposition to "being alone" but rather as one form of "being with others" and that the concept of alone is not helpful, since we are always at a minimum by (with) our self.. 

But today the wind forced itself, cold and sad into my heart, the gulls laughed at my optimistic attempts to fly free, and the salt air stung an internal wound that apparently hasn't yet healed.

I pedaled harder.
Kept pedaling up the tough hills, honoring the challenges that lead to a sublime flight on the other side....


NB:
I notice that I have used the word "solitude" almost as if it is neutral. Like many English words that originate in  French, it has less of a visceral impact than the Old English (German) counterparts. [Eg. compare viscera (F) and gut (OE)]

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; ... if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. 

Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Idea," 1818

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=visceral&searchmode=none

Featherweight

The words alight upon my palm -

Five Gouldians, lumine

This shimmering dance, a hopeful gleam

"We can always begin again"

 "We can always begin again" - Jack Kornfield
http://www.jackkornfield.com/

My writhing witness

Song with Mary of Magdala I (draft)

Draft. Pieces in place but still torturing me....Telling a story yet maintaining the music... aligning concept and craft... The imperative of architecture...

Said Mary:
 
Even I, Mary Magdalene was loved

For my corporeal sin I

Was forgiven, anointed

In scripture appointed

A place at Jesus' side.

Said I to Mary:

That story was only pernicious fiction

Gloved Medieval sex affliction so

Your name conflated with whore

Celebrated

We all went along for the ride.


Yes, said Mary:

My seven demons quietly cast
From a biblically accounted past
Pursue me still, mythic 
Grown monolithic as
The love of redemption abides.

Cried I:
Your story Paul emancipated, But 
Mine now a noose, my post desecrated

Discipled by hangman, by jury

By unyielding fury from Prophet's fear! 
A story of sin that misguides.

Said Mary to him:

Her story configured by external hand like mine

Through sleight of pain and graft of man

Encumbered by a catholic bent

You threw the hermeneut's perfidious cant! 

I ask you: 

The greater fiction hers or yours?

The one she wrote with financial cause

Or yours, imagined, paranoia born

Cast through eisegesis a

Woman scorned!

As he loved me, weft of sins untrue,
Reflect love: what would Jesus do?

Garden of Leaflessness

Gix' first pix (unaltered): I took my new baby out for a walk in the Common today. We felt like tourists, him strung around my neck like that. There wasn't much to see we decided, til I saw the shadows below, crawling over equally matted roots, and remembered to look up.

Happy with Gix. Excited to see what the future will bring the two of us...

My Garden 

Holding its sky tightly in its arms, the cloud,
wrapped in its cold, damp sheepskin.
The garden of leaflessness is alone,
day and night, with its pure, forlorn silence.
Its instrument the rain, its anthem the wind.
Its clothes is the cloak of nakedness.
And should it need a garment other than this,
the wind has woven many a flame of gold warp and weft.
Let it grow, or not, whatever wherever it wants,
or does not, there is no gardener or a passer by.
The garden of the downhearted,
does not await the arrival of any Spring.
If no warm beam of light emanates from its eyes,
and if no leaf of a smile grows on its face,
who says that the garden of leaflessness is not beautiful?
It foretells of conifers touching the sky,
now asleep in the coffin beneath the earth.
The garden of leaflessness, its laughter is tear-tinged blood.
Eternal, aloft his wild-mane yellow horse,
swaggers therein the king of the seasons, the Autumn.

Mehdi Akhavan Sales (not sure who translated, but best of the translations I've found online)

Imperfect Offerings

Photo: Devdutt Shastri, our man in the Mission

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

From Anthem, Leonard Cohen.
 

Invitation

Come play with me tonight.
Leave your cloaked corner
Sterile in cold light
Come play
Come play
Take up your shelved sitar
Surrendered in my dishonor
Forsake your unjust ire just
Come to me and play.
Dance with me tonight
Crush the lies that cleave us
Defy the curse that grieves us
Spin out time to see us
Magic as we play.
Laugh with me 
Grasp the soul between 
Let the night redeem 
Remember love,
Lets play

The Wind Will Take Us

Forugh Farrokhzad, one of my heroes. Poet, woman, persian. If only we could read her work without translation.

The Wind Will Take Us

In my small night, ah
the wind has a date with the leaves of the trees
in my small night there is agony of destruction
listen
do you hear the darkness blowing?
I look upon this bliss as a stranger
I am addicted to my despair.

listen do you hear the darkness blowing?
something is passing in the night
the moon is restless and red
and over this rooftop
where crumbling is a constant fear
clouds, like a procession of mourners
seem to be waiting for the moment of rain.
a moment
and then nothing
night shudders beyond this window
and the earth winds to a halt
beyond this window
something unknown is watching you and me.

O green from head to foot
place your hands like a burning memory
in my loving hands
give your lips to the caresses
of my loving lips
like the warm perception of being
the wind will take us
the wind will take us.

Forugh Farrokhzad
Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak
The Persian Book Review VOLUME III, NO 12 Page 1337

Stradivarius Arrested

(a song, of sorts)


Stradivarius arrested
for insolent joy
of splayed strings
shackled
the rack employed 
shame her
bout, her neck
the way she played
him
sentence swiftly
misleading, strained.

fallen,
crest forward
something flayed
what we wove in her 
notes
she hadn't played.
she never strayed


Stradivarius singing
ignominious wail
of severed gut
strung up
waist impaled
take her 
rest, caress
your chin replayed
your
wanton reading
misled, mis-portrayed

risen,
scroll forward
time justly displayed
what we wove in her 
notes
she hadn't played.
she never strayed

My Cupped Hands

Since beginning work on myself I often draw naturally, unconsciously into a position: arms slightly extended to my sides, rounded as in a broad embrace, hands relaxed, palms up, fingers slightly separated, open to the universe.

This I shared with my daughter today - a way to open her body, release her anger and overwhelming feelings, receive positive energy from allah, or god, or the universe - whatever she would like to call the Creative that cares for us. "Thats strange" she said, unconvinced.

In this position of embrace my palms have evolved, or have they always been? Sensitive receptors to energy, emotions, lightly picking up insights, gentle answers; small things that help others mostly, but also myself. Understandings for good, never of evil.

Since beginning work on compassion, my hands are more often cupped together before me - without thought, without intention - a gesture of supplication and of asking probably picked up when at mosque years ago. Into these cupped hands insights drop and wisdom pools. Not that I can always decipher meaning, but I feel the warmth or the coolness, attended by a peaceful awareness of truth. 

Since knowing him, my cupped palms have collected more active knowledge, communicated with louder physical sensation. Exacto blades jabbed in scattered pattern, flashing silver as they stood pierced upright into my flesh: knowing, knowing...  I know whom he is with one day, or what he is feeling. I know his truth even within his confusion. I don't know him very well, but I know him intimately. He is my Shams, I would whisper, if sun were in fact moon - but I suspect I am his. 

multiple blades that pierce my

palms fuse as crucifix nails one
to each hand: the lotus blooms,
a tattoo to you, my art, my
compassionate sacrifice.

Love's Burn

Aries Horoscope for week of March 1, 2012

 
At one point in his book The Divine Comedy, the Italian poet Dante is traveling through purgatory on his way to paradise. American poet T.S. Eliot describes the scene: "The people there were inside the flames expurgating their errors and sins. And there was one incident when Dante was talking to an unknown woman in her flame. As she answered Dante's questions, she had to step out of her flame to talk to him, until at last she was compelled to say to Dante, 'Would you please hurry up with your questions so I can get on with my burning?'" I bring this to your attention, Aries, because I love the way you've been expurgating your own errors and sins lately. Don't let anything interfere with your brilliant work. Keep burning till you're done. 
(Source: "A New Type of Intellectual: Contemplative Withdrawal and Four Quartets," by Kenneth P. Kramer.) 
Rob Brezsny, www.freewillastrology.com

Catharsis, Greek κάθαρσις   cleansing, purging

Cathexis,  Greek κάθεξις   holding, retention

Our urge to cathect with an other, one other, re-form the uterine, the maternal connection, both drives our search for "love" and undermines our understanding of what love is. (Or: my search, my understanding.)

I, you, she, we.

In the garden of mystic lovers

these are not true distinctions

Rumi 

Expurgating this visceral-emotional drive and learning of love: this has been my work. This, behind the "errors and sins" along the way that are neither costly nor deadly, that are par for each course, that hoist us from one level to another as we learn; this work is my Dantean paradise.

So to burn as catharsis. I burn my points of cathexis; the pain that attends this fire is an internal not eternal suffering. With promise of an end, the pain is that of becoming-released, of childbirth, of a phoenix renewal, not hell's slow infinite burn, the fearful unknown at death's pyre. 

It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright? 

Leonard Cohen "Joan of Arc"