Medicine Wheel

The Medicine Wheel is becoming.

Dreaming indigenous form

Creative directional aid

Blind inner act of power

Gathering stones in the midday sun

I’m sure I look crazy to some

To the few who even notice

I hear their howls of laughter

I feel the biting cynicism

Perhaps I am crazy

I know I am dizzy

If only from desert heat and dehydration

I break from this circle to replenish

Still it calls me back

Seeking those closest to me

In my own backyard

Standing my ground

Searching for meaning and purpose

Assembling a semblance of truth

Some of the rocks sing to me

“Pick me. Pick me. I want to play.”

Some are too stubborn to move

Others hold their angry heat

And burn the palms of my hands

The circle widens

My own search ripples outward

Gathering from the front yard

And the abandoned lot next door

Leaving no stone unturned

A datura flower wilts in the sun

Trumpeting hallucination of tears

Trailing my own footsteps

Mirroring my altered vision

Buried treasure, an old coin or two

A piece of purpled glass

A bit of bleached bone

They’re buried there.

The Medicine Wheel is becoming

Showing the beauty way

To who knows where

No one sees the inward progress

Searching for a way back

A way out and forward

Returning to Self.

(c) 2012 

Part-Time Job Search ~Brian McGackin

Wake up, log on, you're life's a mess:
you're on Craigslist hitting refresh.
It is boring you to death,
this part-time job search.

Though all your savings have been spent,
you know your 'rents won't help with rent.
Feeling it'll never end,
your part-time job search.

You're an adult now so don't you think it's cruel?
Forced to take jobs you had back in high school.
JCPenny by day, Chili's by night;
working overtime just to get by.

If I'm with friends and I see you
at Best Buy for an interview
I'll pretend you're shopping, too,
it's not a part-time job search.

You'd do undercover security at the mall,
or work a country club polishing golf balls.
You would take some data entry if you could,
but they won't hire you; your resume's too good.

I've got something I must tell,
you're not alone in low-wage hell.
I've been doing it as well,
a part-time job search.

I get excited when I see
job openings at Dairy Queen;
at least I'll get some free ice cream
from this part-time job search.
Sad to be on a part-time job search
You and me: part-time job search.

Facebook Love Affair

Let’s have a Facebook love affair

It’s the latest thing, have you heard?

You’ll friend request, I’ll accept

Then hang on every word

You’ll stalk all of my photos

And my friends list too

Where in the privacy of my home

I can do the same to you

We’ll comment with discretion

Exchange a few fun pokes

You like all my cat pictures

I LOL your stupid jokes

Let’s have a Facebook love affair

We’ll never have to meet

You can make funny comments

On the pictures of my feet

We can have a private convo

To escape the noisy crowd

And tell each other secrets

That we’d never say out loud

I’ll PM you my number

But you’ll probably never call

Instead we’ll just post funny things

Upon each other’s wall

We can share our sexy pictures

The kind that makes one red

And cause one’s thoughts to roam

While sleeping alone in bed

We’ll engage in playful banter

Spiced with bawdy veiled allusion

And cause our friends to shake their heads

In baffling confusion

We’ll have our first disagreement

Over you liking that other girl’s status

And how many jokes can one tell

About the occurrence of flatus

Let’s have a Facebook love affair

Until the bubble bursts

And be the stronger of the two

Who clicks on Unfriend first

(c) 1 April 2012

The Humming Bird ~ Emily Dickinson

A route of evanescence
With a revolving wheel;
A resonance of emerald,
A rush of cochineal;
And every blossom on the bush
Adjusts its tumbled head,--
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy morning’s ride.

My Beloved … 
is a harsh and punishing winter wind
Pushing my hot buttons
Testing my love
Testing myself to stay
True to myself
Amidst the howling and growling
I do not run from the mirrors held up
I do not worship the paucity of praise
But humbly sit at those harrowed feet
Intent upon sweet aphorisms falling
From a storm's colossal egress.

(c) 5 February 2012

Having known love, I will allow all things to come and go – to be as supple as the wind and take everything that comes with great courage. Life is right in any case and my heart is as open as the sky.
~Kama Sutra

Fly to You

I could fly to you right now
On wings of broken promises
Yet somehow continue to walk
This solitary white path
Bone stripped of flesh
Shrouded as a wraith
Like the flustered dove
Of a soul’s departing
Spellbound pristine naked
Coming before God
To claim this mount and ride
From here to the heavenly
Spheres of the Moon
Leaping into chasms of longing
With blind optimism
And the blood-orange
Dawning awareness
Of a consciously embodied life
Smelting the burning illusion
Of a penitential separation
With the flood of orgasmic waters
To drink from the cup of knowing.

(c) 2012

Poem for Saturday

Dreamy cerulean mists
Awash in moonlight
Between the veils
Between the sheets
Cock pierces the milky dawn
A secret group of two
Building foundations upon chaos
Ripped from syntax of parallax
Voracious visions of me
Consuming you
With mandala eyes
Concealing …
… Revealing …
Healing …
Tying you up
Letting you down
Kinky kismet daring
To sip and sup
These rosy hips
Unsanctimonious vessel
Sacred waters
Left hand of intuition
Take away pain of suffering
Concupiscence and lechery
Taken aback by your affrontary
Sweet mystery
Dark desire
Carbon dating
Ordinary time

An ember glows ‘neath layers of ash
Whispering, “Never is a very long time….”

Saturday, 14 January 2012

(c) 2012

A Ritual To Read To Each Other ~ William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

(image: Dark lovers by sifudragonfly)

Haiku

Upon arrival
Ultimate destination
Do not curse the road

Because I Love You ~ by Terri Plewa

Because I love you
as a friend
or as a lover
as The Friend
or as the Beloved,
I will give you privacy.

We blast so wide open
in LOVE.
There is a violence
in some that comes
after the blast.
A violence that says
“You must stay open to me
all the time.
You must tell me everything.
You must give me everything.”

But no.
This is not love.
This is invasion.
And when Love blasts,
so much shows up.
Maybe we don’t
want to share it all.

Know this,
Dear One,
we are under
no obligation
to share the riches
of our hearts.
We are under
no obligation.
We always have
a right to our privacy.

Love is to say,
you can have the privacy
of your Heart, Dear Love.
It is yours, yours, yours
not mine.
I love you.
I take what you choose
to give.
Each offering
a sacred treasure.

We all need
a place
to hide
sometimes.
You needn’t lock the door
of your heart.

I will not take
the treasures
of your heart
for granted.

I won’t barge in.

~Terri Plewa

Permission to share graciously granted by the author. Please visit her blog.

Chocolate childhood memories
Hints of some dark, rich future unknown
Sweet wetness melting languid
It goes down merging within
The child-woman
Touch this softness, pure white
Tactile dream that smells of clean linen
Clothesline, sun-dried
Swaddled in that reverie
The earthy scent of that wood
Where I got lost that summer
The timbre of that caliginous night
Spent alone, like every night
Of this dreamscape calliope
The rush of alchemy
Bittersweet, as life’s melting
I go down
In soft white
Like the sound of snow under boots
Touch this softness that is me
Before it melts into memory.

(c) 19 November 2011

No Expectations

Haiku

A dream arises
Like mist from a lake at dawn
Departs in silence

Too Sweet

Late summer blossoms float
Upon the surface of your pomegranate wine
And pour out like words
Onto the lips of another autumn
The taste of that dark fruit lingers
Yet not to pass again
In just this same slant of light
Of an Artemis Huntress Moon
Should under the crushing weight
Of broken barking boughs
These golden apples fall
Silent as an offering
Within this soft, sable night
Carrying the too sweet scent
Of yesterday’s transcendent dream
Passion suppression detrimental
Restoration of faith required
Shape shifting serpent arise the eagle
Brought low in order to be exalted
Emptied in order to be filled
With the radiant sun of spiritual love
Prana rises in the spinal core
She is the secret church
Containing hidden truths
Listen to that small voice
That speaks through the veil
“The only way out of this labyrinth of darkness
is by the inner light of self-illumination.”


(c) 2011

Sitting

Sitting, mindful
Upon an aerie of observation
Contemplating the unseen
Brooding over fragile
Eggs of possibility

Sitting, not in judgment
Not rushing to change
Sitting in the shade
Of a more favorable sun
Rotating like musical chairs

Sitting in meditation
At the blue lotus feet
Of my Divine Mother
Chanting the sonorous murmur
Of a heart’s secret yearning

Sitting, sitting shiva
Silent, woeful lamentation
Mourning the death of ego
Rending the heavy shroud of sadness
To rise from these ashes of burnt offerings

© 2011

(artwork: Knowledge by Alex Grey)

(Un)chosen

The Pisces Moon skitters across
A black slickery sky
Dousing my hallucinatory dreams
In wet, hot perfumed ambergris

Confront this inner darkness
And liberate the mask of ego
Allow the disparate forces
To come together
In the natural harmony
Of an equinox balance
Toward that Libra Sun

Releasing my heavenward arrows of aspiration

For if I am to focus the mind
I must face my fears

Fear of failure

Fear of isolation

While an alabaster heart
Pours out emotional desires that
Only frustrate the dance of two lovers
At their alchemical wedding

So look carefully at choices
As we don our intuitive wings
Thrusting the Ace of Swords
Into the air of analytical mind
Remember where it falls

This blinding truth eclipses all other lies
When one path is chosen
Another dies.


© 2011

Haiku

Golden sky morning
Quiet time meditation
Peace fulfill my day

The promise of April has melted
Simmering in the exquisite empty
Of an August forlorn in despair.
Effusive emotions erupting
Slow rolling magma of desire
Scorching fertile ground
Under a blaze of quiet recoil
Where seeds of passion restrained
Linger in recondite stance
Awaiting the recrudescent dawn
Of an eternal spring.

(c) 2011

Rabindranath Tagore, 7 May 1861 ~ 7 August 1941

I know the day will come
When my sight of this world shall be lost.
Life will take its leave in silence
Drawing the last curtain before my eyes.
Yet stars will still shine at night.
And mornings rise as before.
And hours will still leave like sea waves.
Casting up pleasures and pains.
When I think of this end of my moments
The barrier of the moment breaks,
And I see by the light of death
Your world with its careless treasures.
Rare is its lowliest seat.
Things that I have longed for in vain,
And things that I got -- let them pass.
Let me but truly possess
The things that I ever spurned and overlooked.