A Chinese New Year transition poem

This past year of the snake has carved fractures - chasms into my heart allowing a painful clear light to shine through
Fallen idols
fallen heroes
Loss
I know truth more clearly now
More totally now
Know myself more clearly and totally now
Embracing the new moon
The new year
My new self

The leaves sway The branches move With the wind With the change...Flexible Loose Non static... We struggle... We so often stiffen/Fight the flow/Fight the rhythms of life and change

Nature shows us change is all that is constant...rhythm...change...seasonal.... We must learn to be open to this Bending like the leaves and branches of the oak in my yard Grounded/strong/ Flexible reaching for heaven and the light and rooted to the earth

withdrawl

I feel the need for things in life
My man's love and arms
My friends' and children's laughter and conversations

My practice
Is this all devotion?
Bahkti love?

We are guided by our heads so often
The busyness of life...the business of things
The day to day
Perhaps it is in our times of devotion to love that we find our true meanings?
Our true selves?
The connection to the heart?

Or perhaps we are all addicts?
Ever searching for that connection we felt when in heaven?
When in our mother's wombs?
In our mother's arms?

Aging

Aging. 
So often resisted
But must be embraced, cannot be quelled
Much like labor
An inevitable process
We have to experience the whole thing
The whole human process

we must, though, pamper our bodies thanking them for their life time of work, 
accepting their changes and working from that place

Maybe

Maybe sometimes there is no solution, no answer, no working it out
Maybe sometimes there is just the lesson and walking gracefully away
Maybe that really is what it's all about? Letting go of right and sometimes
letting go of people and the resolution of the relationship

The sound of my heart

If you were to press your ear to my heart you would hear a cacophony of echoes of experiences. A discordant rythm of time, space, rhyme, and experience. The hard lessons, the well worn experience of repeated mistakes and heartaches chiming against the beauty of the love, the overwhelming joys, the moments of tears, both shed in joy and sorrow tinkling throughout in bursts of sharp sweet piano notes, with a bass line of gratitude for all of these sounds, all of these times, and of these experiences, adventures, and hardships....this symphony would leave you with an ache for more.. like a newly quit smoker, who just aches for that one more drag.

Love
любовь

Love in cyrilliac, on my ankle
Why?
Love in any language is beautiful
Amore...hatar...carino....liefde...αγαπώ

But cyrilliac reminds me of a love from a man that was
Pure and honest
Commited and fun
Adventurous and safe

fear and anger

These brothers, they coexist in a dark corner of the mind

A corner of protection of self
I have noticed brother fear is usually the first to appear, then their cousin sadness, and then the protector anger
Anger does what fear and sadness cannot.
He externalizes, turns the fear and sadness to the outside and often gets us into trouble

My two friends

you are so much alike

i realize i love you cause you are so familiar

two peas in a pod as it were

two grapes on a vine

I can express my shadow self with you both

the Self that was there before and through this life

sure we have a soul contract....

similar lessons from both

similar feelings for both

similar withdrawal from both

similar joy and sadness with both

love both my girls

for all eternity

lifetimes to come

but maybe we should lay off the wine?

sheople

you know them

they are unquestioning

unexamining

unthinking

you know them

they follow the herd

the shepherd

the trends

not their heart

their gut

their inner guidance

sheople

it is a created word from my teenage son

a word that is so fitting, so amusing

a word that describes people who are clouded as the taoists say

a word that is judgmental at its core, but oh so descriptive

Fear

Of being unloved
Of not being kind and loving enough
Of being left out and missing the fun
Of unconditional love not existing
How do friends just fade away?  Men...
Of being taken advantage of
But yet...
I enjoy my alone time
My life...without these people?
Without you...

Changes have come

Self love, I would like me

Letting go

I have grown past bonding over our pain
I want to bond over happy
Over love
Over growth

I have to let you go
Cannot take your pain in
Cannot be made to feel sad/guilty/unaccepted for my happiness

It makes me doubt my happiness
Makes me doubt my gut

I want to fall into the safety, the good ness, the love

I choose happiness, love, light

I send you with compassion that I will always have for you

Happy Birthday

Today is the anniversary of you entering this physical realm

47 years ago, your sweet soul came to play, to experience, to love and be loved

Your mama must have smiled so bright to see your deep warm eyes, feel the warmth
and love in your heart

You are a kind gentle soul, you exude a peace, a grounding, a warmth

You have raised and loved your children, lived a full life, loved, learned, 
stood by people in hard times

You have welcomed the beauty of nature and song

You have brought happiness and love and a gentleness to those you meet

You have assured great customer service to the people of freehold

Cheers to you my capricorn lover
I raise a glass of  chilled vodka to your life, your presence
You, and your contribution to the light and happiness of the world

the back jacket of a book on love...doodles of thoughts

I want to fall....fall...fall...freely into love

fear blocks my heart, my path

my heart (or maybe it's my mind?) puts up wall, whispers warnings, suspicions i should have-falsities, untruths

the object is to protect this vulnerable part of me

my heart, his heart too

but my heart is wiser than my mind, it sees through this to the other side of the fire

knows truly that there is depth, safety, warmth there

that this fire of love, and passion is not danger, but transmutes

like gold ore into precious metal, sand into glass

this fire will warm us, keep us safe from the demons, the wolves, the hate and coldness of the world and wilderness

this love is the truth, the mind will learn to accept as the heart grows

The clock on the ceiling

Taunts me
Every hour as I roll over to look
Reminding me of the sand man's abandonment tonight

My beautiful man lays next to me
Eyes peacefully closed. Watching as a landscape of dreams dance in his head
A low rhythmic snore

Reminding me of my lost ticket to the land of nod
Perhaps winkin and blinkin  in their wooden shoe are concerned about my late
arrival?

The rain outside is so peaceful, so comforting, keeping me company while the
clock on the ceiling and I have this game of love and hate

My lover occasionally reaches for me, a loving gesture, warm and comforting. 
A further invitation to join him in his rest, his dreams, this magical place of
our creation that I once again cannot reach

Perhaps tomorrow I will only see the flowing blue lights of the clock in the
ceiling at 630am

The two below were for my grandma

Dry sack
On the rocks in the summer
Up when its cold

How my heart feels now with out you


Baba

U were like durga
The great mother
Misunderstood like kali
Loving like saraswati
Your poems silly, but poems still

You broke ground
You cared for your kids

Your final pen stroke?
Sparse, and finally allowing all to work it out their own way

All of us lost without you
Even if they don't know it