HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

"Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place."

I dedicate this poem to my 2 daughters,

 

THE TYPE
by
Sarah Kay

If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,
You can let them look at you.
But do not mistake eyes for hands or windows of mirrors.
Let them see what a woman looks like;
They may never have seen one before

If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,
You can let them touch you.
Sometimes it not you they are reaching for;
Sometimes it is a bottle, a door, a sandwhich, a Pulitzer, another woman;
But there hands found you first.

Do not mistake yourself for a guardian or a muse or a promise or a victim or a snack.
You are a woman;
Skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweat.
You are not made of metaphors, not apologies, not excuses.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,
You can let them hold you.
All day they practice keeping their bodies upright.
Even after all this evolving
It still feels unatural;
Still strains the muscles, holds firm the arms and spine.
Only some men want to know what if feels like
To curl themselves into a question mark 
Around you;
Admit they do not have the answers they thought they would.
But some men will want to hold you
Like THE ANSWER.

You are not THE ANSWER.
You are not the problem.
You’re not the poem, the punchline or the riddle or the joke.

Woman,
If you grow up the type of woman men want to love
You can let them love you.
Being loved is not the same thing as loving.
When you fall in love,
It is discovering the ocean;
After years of puddle-jumping,
It is realizing you have hands,
It is reaching for the tightrope,
When the crowds have all gone home.

Do not spend time wondering 
If you are the type of women men will hurt.
If he leaves you with a ‘car-alarm’ heart,
You learn to sing along.
It is hard to stop loving the ocean,
Even after it has left you gasping, salty.
So forgive yourself for the decisions you’ve made,
The ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night.

And know this,
Know you are the type of women who is searching for a place to call yours.
Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place.
You are a woman who can build it yourself.
You were born to build.

 

Czeslaw Milosz On Prayer

 

       You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.

All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge

And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,

Above landscapes the color of ripe gold

Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.

That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal

Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'

Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.

Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,

Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh

And knows that if there is no other shore

We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

 

Art by Noell S. Oszvald

I'll Try To Make More Mistakes...I Won't Try To Be So Perfect

INSTANTS

If I could live again my life,

In the next - I'll try,

- to make more mistakes,

I won't try to be so perfect,

I'll be more relaxed,

I'll be more full - than I am now,

In fact, I'll take fewer things seriously,

I'll be less hygenic,

I'll take more risks,

I'll take more trips,

I'll watch more sunsets,

I'll climb more mountains,

I'll swim more rivers,

I'll go to more places - I've never been,

I'll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,

I'll have more real problems - and less imaginary

ones,

I was one of those people who live

prudent and prolific lives -

each minute of his life,

Offcourse that I had moments of joy - but,

if I could go back I'll try to have only good moments,

If you don't know - thats what life is made of,

Don't lose the now!

I was one of those who never goes anywhere

without a thermometer,

without a hot-water bottle,

and without an umberella and without a parachute,

If I could live again - I will travel light,

If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet

at the beginning of spring till

the end of autumn,

I'll ride more carts,

I'll watch more sunrises and play with more children,

If I have the life to live - but now I am 85,

- and I know that I am dying ...

Jorge Luis Borges

 

Photo: By Isabella (me!)

Taken in Helsinki, Finland

Original and edited-All Rights Reserved

I AM NOT by Czeslaw Milosz

 I Am Not

 

I am not, and I do not want to be, a possessor of the truth.

Wandering on the outskirts of heresy is about right for me.

In order to avoid what people call ‘the serenity of faith,’

Which is, after all, merely self-satisfaction.

 

My Polish compatriots have always liked the language of ritual

And disliked theology.

Perhaps I was like a monk in a mid-forest monastery

Who, seeing from his window a river in flood,

Wrote a treatise in Latin, a language entirely incomprehensible

To peasants in their sheepskin coats.

 

How ridiculous to deliberate on the aesthetics of Baudelaire

Amidst the crooked fences of a little town

Where hens rummage in the middle of a dusty street.

I used to turn for help to the Holy Mary,

But I had difficulty recognizing her

In the deity elevated into the gilding of altars.

"Reality would burn. And I do not like it much"

 

 

 

Because you're not what I would have you be

I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

Seeking mirage where desert blooms, I mar

Your you. Love, I would like to see

Past all delusion to reality

Then would I see God's image in your face,

His hand in yours, and in your eyes his grace.

Because I'm not what I would have me be

I idolize two Ones who are not any place,

Not you, not me, and so they never touch.

Reality would burn. And I do not like it much.

And yet in you, in me, I find a trace

Of love which struggles to break through

The hidden lovely truth of me, of you.

 

 

From: The Irrational Season By Madeleine L'engle

 

 

Photo-key to heart By nikaa

Today

IN A DARK TIME

In a Dark Time 

 

BY THEODORE ROETHKE

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

 

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

 

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is—

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

 

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

OF THE KINGDOM OF THE KINGDOM

   

If you will let people be wrong,

   
most of whatever love is
   
may begin. Justice will hang
   
all of us yet. Waft mercies
   
the guilty may walk on when
   
truth grows absolute. The trees
   
from which we shall dangle then
   
are everywhere. And since
   
not all trees can be cut,
   
all men may hang. But once
   
let love in, mercy out, ah, then
   
a bird song may defend us,
   
a mote -- can you dream it? -- heal!

Photo:Samantha*May- beyond the darkness 
Poem: John Ciardi From "In Fact:

 

With nightingales of dawn, I cry songs, woes of separation

 

 

Separation

May none be shattered like me by the woes of separation;
My life has passed by wasted by the throes of separation.

Exited stranger, lover, heartsick beggar, mind bewildered;
I've shouldered brunt of Fortune and blows of separation.

If ever separation should fall into my hand I will kill it;
With tears, in blood, I will pay all the dues of separation.

Where to go, what to do, who to tell my heart's state to?
Who gives justice, who pays out, for those of separation?

From the pain of separation not a moment's peace is mine;
For the sake of God, be just, give the dues of separation.

By separation from Your Presence I'll make separation sick,
Until the heart's blood flows from the eyes of separation.

From where am I and from where are separation and grief?
Seems my mother bore me for grief that grows of separation.

Therefore, at day and at night, branded by love, like Hafiz,

With nightingales of dawn, I cry songs, woes of separation.

Hafiz of Shiraz

Translator:
Smith, P. (1986)

Melbourne: New Humanity Books.

And For Bea, the Girl in Red: I have great faith in all things not yet spoken...

 

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken...hints of hope, hidden whispers in the November Wind

 

 

Child in Red 

Rainer Maria Rilke

Child in Red

Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.

Rainer Maria Rilke

For Hero: Exposed on the cliffs of the heart...Now She knows...

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.

Rainer Maria Rilke

How To Be a Poet (to remind myself) by Wendell Berry

   How To Be a Poet   

by Wendell Berry

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

ii

 

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

 

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

 

PHOTOS:Back to the start by  Gabriela Camerotti 

A Day by nevertorun

Cold Hands by Gabriela Camerotti

by Hanna L.