chthonic poem
The 365days photos are piling up, indicating that I’m not posting enough here. I like to peruse my archives seeking inspiration, and I regularly discover things written in the past that had gotten filed away under ‘forgettery’. This one from 2006 needed a fair amount of editing, so it’s partly new again.
This is one of those channeled, deep, talking-to-me-as-much-as-anybody-else type pieces that tend to baffle the part of me that just isn’t that smart yet (partly why they get filed away for so long). As much puzzle as poetry, it can take me years to own a particular piece. When I do get it, though, they tend to make a profound kind of sense.
While there are a lot of levels, verse 2 of seems appropriate for this global warming conference in Copenhagen.
Your Suffering Savior
Body, breath, life isn’t cheap
lion in jungle crouching to leap
Boogie’s in the shadow, she never sleeps
So mothers, kiss your kids goodnight
This electric dark draws nightmares
too stark for sweet child minds
who always should stay safe and blind,
and aren’t you Momma’s precious babe?
So nevermind, ignore your will
To live, to seek, to speak the truth
The scaredy cat is on the loose,
Fear the feared, fear the feared!
Weird it is that you are not
the one in charge, that others
barge into, hurry to serve
and seek guidance from,
but this is the world that Is,
and you are not the shining star
You were at the start,
Farther in as you grow older
everything around grows colder
but within, the heat increases,
like in a stove when it’s stoked
and the air flow is open but
why heat the room when
nobody’s home?
Your life is ready, you are ready,
but the world out there moves
slower than you know,
as slow as ice ages,
glaciers and craters on the moon.
Soon is not soon when
you wait and wait to create the life
you are ready, want to be ready for.
The door is always open
except for the one in the dark hallway,
locked up tight, cold as bone, full of empty,
dust and crumbled stone,
alone alone alone in there
is the one the only one left out,
without whom you are bereft now,
the one ignored shunned
and wholly denied,
including that she exists.
In time, when it is right,
when time itself unfolds toward you
spreads like a red carpet under your bed
and creates a path that is glory
the story will be told of
how this prisoned crone
was escorted like a queen
to her throne, to roam
the corridors of power,
and re-formed them into
flower-fettered bowers
Where faeries were freed
to weave tapestries of delight.
this queen is now lost and gone
and deep and slow within, and she holds
so much of you. This work is cold
and alone and until
you are ready on all levels
(and that will take longer
than you want),
you are stuck with the
patterns you wove
in the beginning,
when you were both weaver
and web and the future looked good
because you were not yet
forced to live it.
Feel your feelings,
live the tale as it unfolds inside,
find the powers that can heal and help
you and yours to open the doors,
and find the locked one
Go patient and slow for she is shy
and terrified of sensory input
and she delicate beyond belief.
She needs that you go slow
That’s the only speed she can sustain
as she clambers gravid
from her scattered tombs,
graves, barrows and
watery deeps
so cold,
stone
bone
alone
December 10th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Awesome! Would love to hear this read at a slam sometime. A new classic. I could hear a song within it somehow, poking out now and then, like in the first stanza.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Ooh, maybe… (the song). Yes, I can certainly imagine reading this at a slam, though it still has a few rough places, rhythmically speaking. Thanks