|
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ July 2010
This month’s poem is dedicated to all beings in and around the Gulf waters. May these times inspire us to be force fields of creative words and acts that clarify and heal. Let us not, for another moment, hold “at bay” our joyful soulful sounds.
Giant whale shark swims past a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico,
southwest of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site.
Research scientists are tagging the giant animals to study their fate in the wake of the oil spill.
Jubilee
Come down to the water.
Bring your snare drum, your hubcaps, the trash can lid.
Bring every joyful noise you've held at bay so long.
The fish have risen to the surface this early
morning: flounder, shrimp, and every blue crab
this side of Mobile.
Bottom feeders? Please.
They shine like your Grandpa Les' Cadillac,
the one you rode in, slow so all the girls
could see. They called to you like katydids.
And the springs in that car sounded like tubas
as you moved up and down. Make a soulful sound
unto the leather and the wheel, praise the man
who had the good sense to build a front seat
like a bed, who knew you'd never buy a car
that big if you only meant to drive it.
Gabrielle Calvocoressi, from Apocalyptic Swing. © Persea Books, 2009.
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic use only
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ June 2010
This poet has a great take on superhero and fairy tale figures.
After reading this, you’ll want to revisit some of those characters
and give ‘em a new twist for a bit of subversive fun.
How about a Snow White with seven dreamy Paramours,
an endless supply of juicy fruits, and a witchy step-mom who gleefully sets it all up?
Happy almost summer!
--Krayna
Kryptonite
Lois liked to see the bullets bounce
off Superman's chest, and of course
she was proud when he leaned into
a locomotive and saved the crippled
orphan who had fallen on the tracks.
Yet on those long nights when he was
readjusting longitude or destroying
a meteor headed right for some nun,
Lois considered carrying just a smidgen
of kryptonite in her purse or at least
making a tincture to dab behind her ears.
She pictured his knees giving way,
the color draining from his cheeks.
He'd lie on the couch like a guy with
the flu, too weak to paint the front
porch or take out the garbage. She
could peek down his tights or draw
on his cheek with a ball point. She
might even muss his hair and slap
him around.
"Hey, what'd I do?" he'd croak just
like a regular boyfriend. At last.
Ronald Koertge, from Fever. © Red Hen Press
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic use only
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ May 2010
Oh, beauty divine! This poem stops me in my tracks. May you be moved by all the wonders in your world! Very merry May to you! --Krayna
The Two-Headed Calf
Tomorrow, when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass.
And as he stares into the sky, there
are twice as many stars as usual.
by Laura Gilpin
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ April 2010
May the force of Love awaken in you in such a way as to be utterly unmistakable, sweeping thorough every chamber of your Heart, and spurring you to glorious acts of anarchic love.
Most happy and wildly exuberant Spring blessings to you!
The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1486
Spring Vow
We will love like dogwood.
Kiss like cranes.
Die like moths.
I promise.
By Larissa Shmailo
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only
|
-
Hello my dear....here are some thoughts your dream of falling through stained glass ceilings inspired, and it is connected to dreaming in the Four Worlds, from a Kabbalistic Perspective. You fall thorough each successive layer of glass....shattering but not breaking. There is also the Lurianic (early Kabbalist) idea of creation...which I'll need to forward later...but it may speak to you as well. Hope you find this helpful! It is a fabulous dream! Perhaps you are flying? Love, k
Dreaming in the Four Worlds – a Wee Look Through the Kabbalistic Lens
There is a correspondence between the four-letter name of G-d, YHVH (in Hebrew, Yud, Hey, Vav, Hey) made up of only aspirant consonants, so the sacred Name can only be “pronounced” through the breath (or as Yah), AND, the four worlds, known as Assiyah, Yetzirah, Beriah, and Atzilut, which connects Body, Feeling, Thought and Soul, respectively. The Four Worlds, like the Four-Letter Name, are not separate, but rather interconnected, holographically. With the “marriage” of the upper Yud/Hey and lower Vav/Hey, Heaven and Earth are united.
World of Atzilut, or Emanation; corresponds to the upper Yud
Realm of Soul; Element is Fire.
The realm of pure infinite being-ness, unlimited possibility or potential; the pregnant void. The Soul is rooted in this world. Associations include Soul; fire, non-dual reality, silence, completion, inclusion, essence, Oneness. This is the transpersonal world, the collective unconscious, and beyond the realm of “my story.”
Questions for the dreamer may ask in this realm: What is the overall, universal teaching about how G-d or Mystery is at work in our world?
World of Beriah, or Creation; corresponds to the upper Hey
Realm of Pure Mind; Element is Air
This is the symbolic world of contemplation and emergence of pure thought and knowing, which is connected to the will to create and creative functioning. Healing in this realm involves claiming innate or native intelligence and harnessing the power of thought and intention, as well as seeing what is, rather than what we wish or think should be. From this realm, “something comes from nothing.”
Associated with mind, air, patterns of meaning, realization of continuity, reality pointed to by poetry and art, wonder, intuition, drams, visualization, prophecy, portal of numinous truth.
Questions for the dreamer may ask in this realm: What is the revelatory aspect of this dream, the AHA!, where the dream points to the “mind-melding” with the Divine, a synthesis of ordinary and divine mind that the unconscious is attempting to bring to awareness.
Yitzirah, or World of Relating/Feeling/Formation; corresponds to Vav
Realm of Affect; Element is Water
In this realm, the raw materials of creation successively manifest as the world of multiplicity unfolds, so this realm addresses unfolding embodiment. Yitzirah is connected to speech and affect, the subjective world of vital feeling. Associations include affect, water, heart, nuance and sensitivity, synchronicities, interdependence and relational issues, awareness of emotional attunement, mortality.
Question the dreamer may ask in this realm: What archetypes, symbols, rhythms, and patterns does the unconscious suggest in the dream.
Assiyah , or World of Doing and Actualization; corresponds to the lower Hey
Realm of the Body; Element is Earth
In this realm, the physical is predominant. Our Essence (Atzilut), Pure Thought and Knowing (Beriah), and Feelings and Expression (Yitzirah) find their expression in the world of embodiment and action, which means working through barriers to actualization and self-realization for the Soul to find expression in this world. Associations include body, earth, objective world, concrete reality, senses and breath; awareness of creation.
Question the dreamer may ask in this realm: What are the tangible elements in the dream that have significance/symbolic meaning.
This comes from a teaching by Rabbi Marcia Prager and was augmented by Estelle Frankel’s work from “Sacred Therapy.” If there are mistakes, they are mine and mind alone.
Blessings, Krayna
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ March 2010
If you had (or have) qualities that others could not appreciate, and said qualities, upon being tested, nevertheless grew like untamable wildflowers and weeds, then this poem’s for you! Have a very merry month!
--Krayna
Diagnosis
By the time I was six months old, she knew something
was wrong with me. I got looks on my face
she had not seen on any child
in the family, or the extended family,
or the neighborhood. My mother took me in
to the pediatrician with the kind hands,
a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:
Hub Long. My mom did not tell him
what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.
It was just these strange looks on my face—
he held me, and conversed with me,
chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother
said, She’s doing it now! Look!
She’s doing it now! and the doctor said,
What your daughter has
is called a sense
of humor.
Ohhh, she said, and took me
back to the house where that sense would be tested
and found to be incurable .
Sharon Olds, from One Secret Thing. © Random House, Inc., 2009.
Copyrighted material, for educational/therapeutic use only
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ February 2010
What a month! Ground Hog’s Day, Mardi Gras, Purim, Chinese New Year! Wow! A veritable explosion of carnival energy! A while back some famous dudes, wrote:
“Let your freak flag fly!”
So go on…enjoy those marvelous eccentricities in yourself and those who people your world…find fresh new meaning in things your find mundane or taken for granted. Make the world a place where adventurous play abounds!
Photo from Wikipedia: Carnival
SPACE ALIENS FOUND PERFORMING IN CARNIVAL FREAK SHOWS
In 1920, my great-aunt Jane
hopped a midnight freight
and ran away from home
to sing on a New York stage.
She was only sixteen.
The family took her photograph
off the grand piano
and never again spoke her name.
Later, they grew lonely for her voice.
At sixteen I shimmied down
the same drainpipe Jane had used
and took off to see the fair.
That’s where I met
the light-bulb boy from Neptune,
the lizard woman of the Moon,
the human razor blade from some galactic swirl
and other artists of the weird.
All of them had hopped
midnight rockets off their worlds.
All artists come from outer space.
Like my great-aunt Jane,
they’re just looking for some place
where gravity won’t hold them down.
So, parents—let your children
have their voices. Let them
have their feathers and their flesh.
Let your daughters and your sons
have their pens, their paints,
their music and their hearts.
Let them tattoo jackals on their thighs
and dance with the lawn furniture.
Let them drum so loud that the sound
shatters watermelons in your garden.
Ask them to play on,
because these children come from Mars.
Tell them they’re welcome here on Earth.
Tell them it’s good to be strange.
Tell them they don’t need to hop that freight.
Doug Gray ~ Copyrighted material, for educational/therapeutic use only
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ January 2010
Happy New Decade! Happy New Year!
Here is a fabulous recipe!
Read poem. Follow directions from start to finish.
Digest. Enjoy.
Then read again; add fresh ingredients from your own recipe.
Share when cooked. Eat with gusto! (Feeds multitudes.)
Blessings of love, joy and good humor, now and all year long!
--Krayna
Da Capo
Take the used-up heart like a pebble
and throw it far out.
Soon there is nothing left.
Soon the last ripple exhausts itself
in the weeds.
Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.
Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.
You may do this, I tell you. It is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.
--Jane Hirshfield
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ December 2009
What tender memory is evoked by this poem that can warm you during December’s cold nights?
Oranges
The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bring against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
~ By Gary Soto
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ November 2009
May you allow sweet darkness embrace you this month and surprise you
with gifts as of yet unimagined.
--Krayna
Sweet Darkness
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~ David Whyte from House of Belonging
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ October 2009
Harvest what you know: what three things do you need to be able to do to live in this world?
Love during this wonderful season of the year,
Krayna
From Beth Patterson's collage work "Douglas Firs were our Sanctuary"
In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Mary Oliver from American Primitive. Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ September 2009
Pablo Neruda was a prolific poet and endlessly imaginative man. His poetry reveals the spirit of a lover – impassioned, generous, earthy and potent. He is at home with himself, his body, his sexuality, the natural world, and the fertile dark . This poem delights and quiets me. I savor the tender intimacy and strength of this love song, as a taproot into my own depths, where I bask in the light and the dark and am nourished.
May it be so for you, too. ---Krayna
XVII
I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
Illustration by French Toast Girl
Pablo Neruda, from 100 Love Sonnets (1960)
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ August 2009
What are those permission-seeking questions, to which you’d love to receive an unrestrained:
“What I’m telling you is Yes Yes Yes.” What if you bestowed permission upon yourself, as this poet does with such humor and aplomb, to ask and live all manner of questions with playful humor?
My spunky 77 year old mother, Ann, has recently done just this, and in so doing, has inspired
a whole lotta folks! She and God conspired so she couald clear the decks for a Really Big Adventure. In the Spirit of Lightheartedness and Humor, I dedicate this Poem of the Month to her! May we all live the wondrous Yes and may every question be a portal awakening wild possibilities!
God Says Yes to Me
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
Kaylin Haught, from “In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop” by Steve Kowit
Copyrighted material, for educational/therapeutic purposes only.
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ July 2009
Mary Oliver, with her knack for mining the details of daily life and the natural world, composes poetry that can blow the ol’ circuits and bust through walls built of oblivion. As you let the power of this poem sink in, you just may fall in love her questions,
take them to heart
and bless your one wild, precious life!
--Krayna
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver – From House of Light, 1990
|
-
Poem of the Month ~ June 2009
It could happen to you, too. You could be laying around in the long green grass gazing up into the treetops, or wandering down a street on a very ordinary day,
or chopping veggies for dinner.
Yup, it could happen… anywhere, anytime. Just don’t forget to take her hand.
---Krayna
When I Met My Muse
I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.
~ William Stafford
Copyrighted material, for educational/therapeutic purposes only.
|
|
|
|