Poetry

the old bones of the past

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autumn autumn leaves blur close up

~of Michael

We talk over the old bones of the past,
The way people sitting beside a campfire
Take a stick and poke the dying embers of flame
Licking the last log-remnants
Burning in the night air of endings.

We sigh over how it makes sense now
The scenarios once locking us all in blindness
Show themselves clear and sparkling
As light dancing on water
Their jagged-edged episodes
Blistering clear in the light of passed time.

It is how a mother and daughter pick through the past
Of a husband, father, grandfather – his absence
Like a leaf we hand back and forth
Turning it over and over again
Examining its veins and edges and discolorations —

As if this examining will somehow tell us
What made it turn loose and drop from the tree.

 

~Photo by Valiphotos on Pexels.com

 

 

 

the God of your Soul-Self

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books on the table

Walking toward Photography in search of
a How To book that isn’t there — I turn
toward the whispering shelves of poetry–
Hafiz, Billy Collins, Rilke, Rumi, a chorus
calling me to take them home. I do.

A million sparkling lights of hope and
friendship — voices, voices, voices calling
out a hum of knowing, living, being. Yes!
This chorus of light vibration wisdom is
the Holy Ground of libraries and bookstores.

I often tried to explain to friends:
On bad days or during times of sorrow,
I walk into a bookstore and ask God —
Help, give me the words I need to hear.
And He does. And they laugh, Yeah – Right!

And I further tried to explain the science,
the physics of vibration, energy, contraction
Einstein’s universal laws lived out in reality —
but they couldn’t understand my language.
I explored the topic in deep sharing:

Everything is energy and movement — atomic.
Voices in books are the writers Being with
me in conversation, friendship, vision.
The books are just un-bodied people I know.
But, my friends laughed — Yeah, okay! And,

I stopped trying to explain with explaining.
The God of your Soul-Self will come to you
in the way you can know Him, love Him.
He will meet you in the Space between
longing and faith and call you Home.

Each thing carries Him inside it.
Each breath a confirmation.
Each need an answer to Union.
Each cry a step closer to Wholeness.
One — into many — into One.

The spectrum has many colors
but there is only one Light.

 

 

~Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

Adventure Days

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scenic view of mountains during dawn

 

 

“Awake, Oh Sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
~Ephesians 5:14

 

 

 

 

We fall into the place of forgetting
how precious the living is, the deep joy
of ocean breeze across heated skin,
the sound of a bird chirping, singing
gratitude for Grace and sunlight, life
a precious flowing river ever changing

us. Most people, falling into dark sleeping
memories that plague our hearts losses
with all that was, is gone, the past “we”
no longer the “we” of now. These quiet hours
alone in desperation, crying to our Maker
until Mercy pours light and hope and love

down from the heavens. Then, a friend comes
and brings new Adventure Days of hope,
bright laughter, we are playing at life again
like a young child unaware of time, moving
into a new us, a new future, a new phase
of living, growing, becoming whole – Reborn.

These are the gifts we give from deep heart places
where God shines treasure and hope and love
outward, from within us, until everywhere we look
there is gleaming joy and the birds are singing —
Awake, Oh Sleeper, Awake! Rejoice and Live!

 

 

~Photo by Simon Matzinger on Pexels.com

like the wave loves the ocean

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ocean wave

You sing me songs through the air.
You say every word I’ve cried to hear.
You run to me when I long for you.
You put your normal life on a platter
Toss it into the sky, Turn
And hold out your arms to me.
Your circling spiral of energy
Tornado and whirlwind breeze
Heat, turning calm, knowing
All at once in my soul
You hold me, meet me
In the space of vast seeing
A place both foreign and home
In this instance (we are flowing)
Like the way we breathe —
Sometimes with knowing focus
Other times    Naturally-unaware
That life pulses through us
With us — Is us.

I love the way you love me
Like the wave loves the ocean
and the ocean loves the wave.

 

~Photo by Simon Clayton on Pexels.com

the heated promise of a new day

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flight landscape nature sky

Sunset comes in the bright fire
of disappearing earth and atmosphere
meeting like lovers
like hushed voices
and loud laughter
fall, roll, tumble
in lovemaking and tenderness
cream skin caress
hot frantic need to
touch everything within you
heart, soul, mind, spirit, knowing
Being Love
consumed in fire
the cool darkness holding
the heated promise of a new day
and an I love you vaster than time.

Meet me at sunset, my sweet Beloved,
at the portal of life becoming Divine.

 

 

~Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Google Photos Reminds Me in Backup

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summer-reflection-timothy-easton

~of Joey

 

Four years ago you were sitting
in a white Porsche Boxster with me
taking pictures, recording videos
of the handsome boy who stole my heart.

Three years ago I was driving
an Audi convertible around and wondering
what bar you were getting drunk in, with whom,
taking selfies for Facebook in a smile masking truth.

Two years ago you were gone
back to the ground that grew you
and I was 30 pounds lighter and looked old
and anorexic in the photo I sent to my daughter.

One year ago the newest girlfriend
found me on Facebook, called and messaged,
sent videos of the drama and pain and I knew
that my grieving was easing under the light of truth.

Today, I woke up dreaming of the warm loving arms
of a man whose heart is Sacred and Holy
and I decided after coffee and writing poems,
it was time to erase your pictures from my phone.

we argue over the meaning

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We argue over the meaning of poetry —
he is from the formal school of
Show, Don’t Tell
and though I don’t disagree
with this teaching premise,
I am trying to explain poetry
as speaking your truth,
poetry as living Oracle.

I let the argument go,
it fades away and I know
he too will soon fade away
from my life
because the argument means more
than the effort to understand
that poetry is powerful —
it can join or sever at will.

I was a perfectionist writer
for years, hours spent editing
one simple line – but now
I let the words live their life
without so much interference,
trusting the inner voice of truth
to do the work of speaking
something valid
on the blank page of time.

 

~January 2020, Myrtle Beach, SC

in the air of bliss

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I read Hafiz — No —-
I absorb Hafiz
as I have absorbed Rilke, Rumi, Gibran
as I have soaked up Christian Scripture,
The Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita, The Sun.

You — singing to me
asking me to dance
for years now — forever.
Yes — are you ready?

Do you think I am finally
brave enough to take your hand
step away from the ground —
There is no longer earth beneath my feet
anyway. I have been falling in you
for years —
Do you think I am
finally?

Yes. I would love to dance with you.
Forever in your embrace
groundless and free.
Movement unfolding
in the air of bliss.

 

~September 2019, Myrtle Beach, SC

words

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Words are not big enough
full enough
words are not powerful enough
magical enough
words are not strong enough
light enough

To explain, describe, convey
You in Me, in Oneness, Being Holy.

But, Oh
how they want to be
more than they are
do more than they can
show everyone truth
become being itself

Oh, how the poems
so desperately desire
to be the flow
they try to speak.

 

Pain of War & Living

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flight sky sunset men

~VA Hospital, October 2019 (Thank you for your service)

 

These halls, these chairs, these walls
encasing whispered moans
and memories of wars
and those gone soldiers
that never made it home
to America, to sit here, to wait
on the doctor to see them
at the VA Hospital in Charleston.

I sit feeling, hearing the tones
of pain play like the keys
of a piano, dark and light —
Some pain a deep recessed dark.
Some pain a bright hard gash
of bright light open wound oozing
under the cover of wrinkled flesh
pale aged splotched skin
that holds the soldier of twenty
wrapped deep beneath the disguise
of age and time.

The waiting room of marbled browns
deep wood tone trim and calm colors
built to settle the mind and remove
the pain of war and living.

 

~Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com