Category: Prayers

Of Ruins & Resurrections

CARA MIA

 My angels wring no hands together…

No palms clasp in prayer, no eyes downcast,

My angels do not wear robes of saffron & rainbow

Or tilt their heads, listening to prayers

My angels are bare-breasted,

Afire, ululating atop mountains

My angels are ridge runners

Light-footed & glowing.

My angels are powerful,

They carry spears.

They have no time for the puny wants of men

The small prayers of old women…

They carry orders from God!

They drive us on with buffeting wings

Like northern winds, they bite & tear our only flesh

With unholy voices they demand & command that we also

Become angels, they

Cry out to us in terrible thunder, rumbling

“Get there & do this & DON’T YOU DARE GIVE UP!”

Don’t you even THINK about that

I am behind you, these are my teeth & claws,

Don’t you dare but that you dare all for love!

 

SCREAM

I do not go gently into this dark night

I plant my feet & my hands against the doorframe

& I scream for the devils of hell to surround me

To give me strength to fight!

Even though the angels have not yet given up on me

I need the kind of raw power used when devil fights devil

I need the kind of atomic strength

And nuclear decision-making ability

That blows apart unaltering planets &

the worlds where small-minded people dwell

for this is not me,

I am Eternal Survivor,

I am the basket weave trunk of the royal palm

Dancing in the Category Five hurricane of now.

NINE MONTHS FROM CHRISTMAS

The morning breaks open

Like a dozen eggs dropped on the floor

As my conjurings arise from their yolky mess

Of raw & yellow ooze,

I will derive a sunshine of words such as has never lived before,

From ruin to resurrection,

Back to the light from which my soul began.

I know now I did not arrive on a sunny day,

Sequestered in a sweaty room while my mother dreamed of the beach,

I rode in on a storm that breathed darkness

Into blankets of rain

Shadows threatening all alive.

I know this, how?

Storms create days that enliven my soul

I speak poetry as though reciting nursery rhymes

Every stick a sign, a message,

Every hope a dream of worlds

Daring to be spoken aloud.

LA MER

I walked to the beach to cast myself upon the water:

A crust of bread for fishes to devour

For gulls to scrap over

For salt to consume.

I walked to the water & I walked in

And the water spoke thusly:

Get out of here, leave me now!

I am not your sin-eater,

You have nothing to do with me

You are here to partake of me as friend? Lover? Confidante?

A sequestered cloud upon which you walk at will?

I wish none of your molecules dissolved in me,

I want no DNA from you, no “sharing”

None of your mud-thoughts to cloud my pure waters

 

I want none of your shit-ass perspicacity

I am pure, as you were before you took all this upon yourself

& decided to carry it as a life.

 

Now, if you want to come in here, get clean

Go out & fix up the world,

That’s a diff’rent story:

Then I’m all yours, Baby.

Enter at will.

SAID SMALL, FROM THE CORNER OF THE ROOM

I don’t know anyone else will ever hear these as I’ve said them

I do know that when they went through me

They were filings roughening a smooth surface

Acid drippings across my soul, ripping shreds of my life to raw,

Rendering me impossible to live with

Untenable to remain with

Beautiful only in the way of a volcano is…

Lava scraping away a mountain is…

In a way all terrible & delicate & tender, a rendering to ash.

I know I will never be forgotten for the world herself has heard these words

I’ve cried them all aloud today, bowing to the rain

I watched her take them in, smeared across her face,

like runnels of tears, a striped tattoo

Or the scars of strip-mining

And I knew these words were never mine,

Nor belonged to me,

But only sliding across the furrows of my brain

To elide from my face, finding their way

A blind man headed downhill

Surrounded by mischievous goats.

They were only a blessing for I could not bring them to be a curse

To use these to destroy would implode the world.

would destroy civilization

But then, we have never been civilized to our memories…

(For Christ’s sake, we have not ever had civilization

Tho we pretended, pulling & tugging on just the one string

Till the whole thing unraveled

As we hung onto each other’s throats

Ignoring the scrape & itch of the hunting knife

Sliding between our ribs.)

We have always shaved our dreams to blood

Too closely down, pushing into places they should never go

Where others come upon them unaware

& leaning in to see them, all are burned.

ONE ENDING TOO MANY

My broken halo is scattered at my feet.

I tore it off my head this morning, I stomped it but good

I will no longer be the representative of God’s grace

Having turned into her most terrible wrath

In a day when my beauty no longer sustains who I am

My face a roadmap to new lands & languages,

When my breasts stand no more, but flat

Against my chest like twin sacks of rice

I know that I am old. I have accepted this

Because old is only on the surface, never reaching the inside

Where the bright of me lives

And the soul of me dwells

And the answers to every question I ever asked

Glow like sparks in a fire of my own making.

I will not give up.

 I will always be here, doing this

And I will have done forever.

As You bring me forth each day,

Awakening again to earth,

It will be to dwell in the past I have created,

Through the future I have not.

I am a ravine down a sharp shale hill

You can ride me to the bottom – woohoo!

Or you can scale me to the heights – Aha!

So here you are, God, here y’are,

I don’t want it anymore!

Just can’t handle it.

Just don’t want it.

Here’s the soul – take it back

Do whatever You want with it.

I don’t care

Give it away, bury it

Stick it with the stars & make it shine

I really don’t care.

The life you gave me

Has been too beautiful for words

And the life I claimed to live

Has at times not lived up to this

And the world around me that was fine

Has turned to bargains in thriftshop windows.

But you know I wore them out my own damned self.

I put them there,

Here you go, God. I am but Your face in this world…

I have moved oceans & torn down heavens,

I have grown trees & plowed meadows,

Digging up Your holiness & scattering it about

For others to find.

I’m done now.

I’m done.

(To be blinded with blessing is not the worst of a life

It is a one more in a world of one mores.)

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

For the price of a tank of gas, America lives

Lives in its cars & campers & broke-down trailers

Still now, with not a round tire among them.

And who has done this to us?

What heinous crimes are committed against us

That we are washed up on our glorious beaches?

Bent & twisted, medically unsound, mentally unfit

From wars not of our making

From meds not of our shaping

Whitened by the salt of our tears

Twisted by fear & lack…

How do we overcome this?

O come, God! Bring us into our living aloft as angels.

We will bend the light no more, pour it out upon us as love!

 

Seeing the Unseen

Wake up to the grave every day

Wake up to radical choices

Of health

Prosperity

Abundance

Because these are what the world wants us to have

And know that no other reason is needed.

If fear or complaint is your home page

Click on the menu called “Prayer”

Watch for the submenu “grace’ to use as a

Superglue

Eliding all extraneous borders into seamlessness.

Stretch for something you can walk forward upon

Something solid, not heavy like pavement,

But supportive & gracious to feet

Think on how long the wood speaks to us

After trees are made furniture. Think how it

May have longed to be a bureau or a stair.

We can no longer afford to waste even this

Intangible energy breathed at us…

Awaken to only THIS day, for none will ever be so again

Put out your super-natural antennae

Listen for hoofbeats, watch for omens

If you’re one to create your world, plan it for good

›_______________

I watched a short video accompanying a longer article about Jesus. In the video, He is shown as a man in white robes striding towards the camera. I am directly entranced by this video. I bookmarked it to watch again.

Towards me

I have a framed picture on my bureau:

A magazine cutout purporting to be Jesus

In a white robe with a red sash…

Walking towards me.

And this is where it will get strange for some people,

So, if you are even the least bit strange, stop reading here, please.

I knew this image to be so familiar for I had seen it in real life.

In my waking reality, once upon a time,

I saw Jesus striding towards me,

Pacing up the road ahead of any entourage

Eager to arrive at a home, to table, clean & at rest: a meal.

I knew that Jesus sent His essence out ahead of Him

I knew the first image was His wish to be with us

And that I still had time to prepare

For the moment He would fill His shadow

At my door,

Smile up at me, from my table

All of us, Arrived, at last.

›_____________

 

I’ve waited a long time for JOY to become my habitat.

I needed to recall that Joy is set up beyond earthly constructs

So as to be accessible at all times.

I needed to remember Joy is entirely individualized

Apparent only on those terms

Entangled in these constructs

Enabled by fearlessness.

Joy is light, it smells like reflected sunlight

when you pass through high grass, tasseled & be-stemmed.

Don’t waste a bit!

Always put it down in the exact same place…

Or set it up as your default state.

You see, first you get through Hope

Then Faith

Then Love

to Joy.

(Once you’ve Joy, all else drops away.)

›___________________

I declare a General Amnesty for myself!

I did all of it so far & didn’t even have the full story

(Conventionality wears off early

If you’re set aside young.)

Recovery isn’t to be trusted,

Fitting in doesn’t feel “organic”

Comfort = Alone.

I find my pardons along the roads I travel

And I’m open to bridges.

Habituate Joy

Joy

I have waited a long time

For Joy to become an unconditional habit

Perhaps I needed to re-member it slowly.

Joy is entirely up to the individual

Only apparent on their terms & caught up in their constructs.

Joy is the sweet smell just before awakening, maybe yellow

Light honeysuckle air.

I need to pull out my pack of Happies

Smoke them over a coffee

Breathe them into me & again out.

I need Joy to be my default; my go-to on life.

First, I found hope, then faith, then love

Once discovering how to work these lower gears

I get to shift into Joy.

 

Clocks: damned if I do or don’t

Time has grown slippery

I no longer seem to have a grip

On my days, dripping from the calendar

Like sugar crystallizes & drips from cheap candy.

I hold my calendar with both hands,

Writing with the pen between my teeth.

In memory, time always seems to have

Been wrapped in clingfilm, making me hack

At the packaging to get to the product.

 

Off Grid: different day

I put away the electronic leashes

Just outside satellite range

Time eeled off the devices, heading for the tall grass.

 

DARK HATS

There needs to be a general Amnesty

For not having the true story all this time

But we promised to remain conscious

If it came down to bread & circus; we swore!

I find pardons each day

I bridge any gaps I find

Between unknowing & learning

 

Interrputions

I’m better at recognizing what I don’t want to do.

I recognize an initial resistance-reaction to interruptions;

I understand the value of interacting with that, though.

I act to disassemble & set that equation aside.

Releasing the knee-jerk automatic response

Artfully changes the landscape

The future is served by service

“Carpé diem” ended yesterday!

 

New Screen-Saver

Open up to grace every day

To new choices of health, abundance, re-programming

Get those icons of “fear” & “illness” off the home page

Click “awakening”

Click on “cosmic”

Double-click “divine love”

 

Each day: a step to heaven (poems)

God-Mother / God-Father

 Bear down on me

Birth me into all You wish me to be:

Coming towards you

Coming into me

I know you celebrated before I

Was even conceived

I can see you turning spindles of names

{prayer wheels}

Until you turn my name

Into your breath of me.

My name: both appointment & anointment, I Am.

 

CoINcidence / CoinCIdence

Seems to be the emphasis can go either way, one being an

Immature Synchronicity,

The other an alignment of two paths.

 

Coincidence is not coincidence,

They cannot even exist in the same plane

Without interfering with each others’ warp & weft

Not to mention homeostasis.

 

They are, perhaps, a law of similars, called

In from the Jesters’ Universe …

After you toss your life at the wall or

Find a way to re-begin from where you are.

 

Keeping From the Eye of Horus

There are better things to do with my time

Than live in any rebellion

Past the stone walls of who I claim to be

Unilateral inner boundaries

 

Free to be the postage stamp home.

Attention does need to be paid

[Got cash?]

We can’t afford to miss much more than we already have,

Before the change of chance & chance of change

Diverge in some lonely wood.

 

In the same moment, when we cannot either breathe,

We are connected by a fiercely fiery sending:

“Watch me, Baby, just watch me!”

 

The highway of life is a toll road, indeed.

 

Cosmic Volunteers

We are the vols & sometimes it’s not to be believed:

stuck in the laundromat instead of a lifeboat.

Each episode we get to retool the set.

We arrive here curled into a fetal spiral

So well-salted, we match the ocean.

The rest of your life is the Unfolding of it.

An origami of an Avatar.

Some familiar clues / cues

(like enough for an army to follow.)

Status points for not opening the Guidebook.

Eyes Open. Tulku.

 

 Almost

Another of those words

Hanging overhead like

Campfire smoke

Aromatic, heady

Ready to clear into tomorrow

Of the deed done today.

 

You Call This A Mind?

 But everything is right there, on the surface.

Don’t you put anything away?

More likely, you put it down without thinking

(Sometimes I lose major organs that way.)

I entered this Life with a full wall of medals

Later stripped one-by-one

I’ve done my time(s)

I personally have only two thoughts left

The You

The Me

 

Here, Put This In Your Heart

All the texts

Say, “you can’t take it with you.”

You mostly get to keep some essences,

Ones with evocative & menacing overtones.

The heart is about long-term Memory

Your heart is as big as your God

Who tucked you in between the angel’s wings

With a touch to your cheek, saying

“Don’t you miss a minute! I’ll expect a full report!”

 

 Dubious Honor

I may be the only person on earth who has, yes, here it is, forgotten how to ride a bike.

 

Make This Viral

 I want to be there when the grandfathers tell their peace stories.

 

“Where Have all the Flowers Gone”

Half-light morning,

I cross the bridge over a rushing Percha Creek

Glancing into it, mid-stride.

I see three young bucks,

Heads twisted over shoulders

Rumps all twitching in time

Not till they face forward

Do I see the burgeoning racks

Still in velvet, flaring in the little light

As, springing onto the low bank, they disappear.

 

But, Really, I Love You

I conclude two Italian women cannot talk to each other

Without taking turns at being child, maiden, crone all in one conversation:

Whoever is speaking is in charge…

 

 

 

Walking Rain

Our Father – Another Update

Hey Dad –

You live in the best place possible to increase joyous experience & productive certainty!

Your name alone is meaningful to me, as are Your works in bringing about the world that Mom envisions.

May all You do be in aid of life & creation…please keep us to making improvements!

It is Your fulfillment to see the entire world productive & happy, more connected to activity expressing Love.

For here is the dwelling-space of Your children: we of Your accomplishment, fulfillment & amazed pride.

All You do sources Life at its best-lived level.

To You we bring our disappointments, all that limits our positive growth, our mistakes in this Grand Experiment; anything at all that doesn’t engender Joy. Erase these from our being that they may be replaced with Lovinkindness.

From You we learn how to be innocent of error. Light up the best roads for us to follow. Encourage our hearts, flow through us into each other with Your empowering grace.

Amen.

The Prayer Flags

Share their messages with us all

Trembling with shredding edges…

Praying to a heaven which (if I may loosely paraphrase)

Seems hell-bent on descending to reach us.

The gods finger the fringe

Thumb the coded symbols with diamond fingers

The flags send messages to the itinerant saints

“Forgive these humans who are never beyond Your forgiveness.”

Choose what you will say: hang your flags to pray.

Dear Mother Death,

When you see my soul wandering in your flowered fields

Catch me up, won’t you, please?

Fashion me into a hard rubber ball

Bounce me for the delight of children

For the elastic jaws of dogs

Place me as a leaf atop your highest tree

That a bird may sing to me in passing, wing me with a feather-touch

Open me as a shrine, put a candle within,

Set me gently into a baby tumbleweed blowing bravely uphill

Place me as the flat tongue of a tubular bell

Calling down the valley for all to enter prayer.

Grow me as a sprig of brilliant purple on the sage-gray desert

Toss me into a great black thunderhead

Trailing rain over mountains thirsted for weeks

Or, failing these, just sit me on your lap & watch me glow.

Water-Wind

All in place; nothing missing

And just in time

For now the wind rises in the north

Arranging itself upon a current whistling over the edges of my ears

You always start the same: a spatter-sprit of drops carelessly flung

Against the glass door

From friend to fury, drops burst like small bombs

Then comes that burr of thunder

A mighty split of light forking the sky

There are messages all over the horizon

Runic reveals beyond Revelation

To one such as me, quietly seated

On the inside, looking out with a cup of tea to hand,

Book laid aside for real-time drama, 3-D life

A dance of elements to rhythms I can only ponder

As I sip.

Poets Throw Dice

Of words

Sixes & ones

Sevens & fours

Chance & circumstance

Conspire to frame the day.

 

What we see is up to us but not ours

Miracle or meddlesome

A beginning of ends

No moment lost

As dice are tossed

We write as does nature

Lines on leaves

Runes on water

Words on winds.

We join gamers

Reporting back to divinity

Invisible & reckless

Trapped or galloped free

Ev’ry blank page a sensuous invitation

We shed blood to write with if no ink is at hand!

Meditation of the April Fool

What is it I want to be, want to do? Where do I wish to live my life & why? When will it happen?

I want to use more of my brain. Be more capable, more endearing, more endeavoring. How do I do this? I wish to move forward because the open arms of God await me. I crawled to God, toddled, walked, ran & now I once again walk a paced cadence, stepping lightly into Light.

So come & move me, God. Come breathe on me like the wind that you are, that wind of change & surety bringing me safely into port from the seas of self where I sailed so long. Come, God, I am headed up the path from the sea to the Garden. Will You not join me in the cooling afternoon? I can loan you my cloak if you are chilled by the descending night. I am warm in the space of Your smile, basted in your most Gracious Presence & I wait here at the end of all that is for the beginning of all that is to come. Please take a moment to show me the achievements which draw me closer into Your embrace. I promise now, my God, I promise my life to You, if You will take the strand of divine DNA I represent & work me into the Plan wherever I fit.

I feel as though I never knew You before as I do now. And, to a point, this is true. I also feel I knew you beyond eternity, before beginnings & I love the thought that before I was even born You knew me well, you knew my name. I have been a nightlight in the darkness but I’m headed now into lumens & luminosity as have been never before been seen in my corner of Your world. I am poised to step forward into limitlessness. This is where Your garden grows best, no?

So, You are my prayer now. I shed all doubt, set aside all fear, call angels into my train as I bow my head but only to see the path more clearly. I await Your finger under my chin to lift my face as we behold Each Other. Press me into service, God, express Your Self through me, sing in my soul as the birds build a nest & sing to their eggs. I am the potential of all You would have me accomplish; I am the cause & because of You, also the accomplishment.

Re-create me, Lord, for Your image is all I encounter in every moment. Show me all that I can do for You; the world would have it so. Enlighten me to what comes after Love for it is merging with the Godhead as I reach out to include those around me in Your ineffable joy of recognition.

Thank You for blessing me so!

Love,

Carol