Free Will

Breathe your breath, reprieve your death
and choose your pathway through
the evidence of obstacle,
it’s time to find what’s true
You think you can, you know you can,
and then reality
it’s all about the way it seems
that’s not the truth you see

Perception calls the truth to live,
but filters out the same

to know what’s real, and still to feel
is such a painful game

Play your cards although it’s hard,
you’ll know it when it’s real

you’ll know it by the way it seems
and by the way it feels

Please listen to the tiny voice,
it will not comfort you

it tells the truth, it offers choice,
but won’t say what to do

the moment comes, you hear the drums,
they shape reality

but there’s no drummer, no disguise,
and no identity

I’ve finally decided that I need to stop taking the song lyrics I write so dang personally. It makes me invalidate and dismiss my material with ‘who do I think I am?’ type thoughts when they come through in this kind of a grandiose, messianic form.

It’s a mystery to me where the idea came from, but it came, and I wrote it, so there it is. I’m not in charge of how my kids turned out, either, but I worked damn hard to bring them forth.

Our Kingdom Come

you don’t have to lecture me
I know what I’m doing
There’s no need to rush me
I’ll get there one day

This ain’t no fairy tale,
and there ain’t no happy ending
no point pretending, everything to see
live for truth, and truth will set you free

I’m a late bloomer, I’m a baby boomer
yeah I heard a rumour we don’t have to die
it’s a hungry season, all for a reason
I don’t need to know, so I ain’t asking why

I’m asking how, I’m asking where,
I’m casting bones, I’m climbing stairs
I’ve been lying low, until the time has come,
it’s in the rhythm, the rhythm of the drum
you know our kingdom will not come
until we’re home

I come from the wilderness, I come from the root
I come bearing fruit, I come in peace
I’m coming home, and home is coming with me,

you don’t have to lecture me
I know what I’m doing
There’s no need to rush me
I’ll get there one day

I’ll show you how, I’ll tell you where,
I’ll be casting bones, I’ll be climbing stairs
I’ll be lying low until my day is due,
it’s in the flavour, the flavour of the stew
and our kingdom will not come
till we come home
oh our kingdom cannot come
until we’re home

I’m a late bloomer, I’m a baby boomer
I heard a rumour we don’t have to die

Lyrics updated May 23 (they do evolve!)

Everything That Is

Chorus: everything that is, is real
everything that’s real can feel
everything that is, is right
everything lives in the light

and only when we’re dead do we stop caring
only hearts of stone refuse to share their
abundance with the hungry, we are a single species
everyone belongs equally
chorus:

only when we’re lonely are we frightened,
and only only are we scared to be alone
We are a tribal species,
our nature is to touch
It’s impossible to love too much

Love can topple statues,
Love can raise the dead
Love can splice the fractures
Love can clear your head

and only in our skin can we be certain
of anything that we were born to know
we are a changing species,
our nature is to dance
There’ll always be another chance
chorus:

Only when we live do we stop dying
only when we’re ready do we dare to share
We are a conscious species,
our nature is to know
everything that lives can grow

It’s time to topple the statures
time to raise the dead
time to splice the fractures
and time to clear our heads

Shyness

Shyness is no joke, it sneaks in and pins you
to the board like a butterfly on exhibit,
inhibits your moves and shrinks your will
stills the flame until you forget your name

Shyness is a virus, passed from observer to observed,
swerves through witness into victim
of merciless perceptions, we watch ourselves,
shelved, packaged and presented for serving

to dragons, the demons of everyone’s denials,
can’t-be’s and has-beens, all waiting for the bucks
to stop here, while we bury ourselves deeper in shed
skin cells, digging a mass grave, save us from ourselves!

Shyness is a virtue, like patience, like chastity,
it serves the agenda of some outside authority
self-designated and never elected, simply present
and accounted for, counting all my costs.

In lieu of rent due, I shall offer my seeds to the
mouths everybody forgot to feed. All those
needy babies are coming home, and they’d
better be fed the love they deserve this time

From the time before time when the big bang
expelled its stuff to fill some kind of void,
we have ever avoided responsibility for this
work, we shirk and shudder and seek to sunder

our bonds, fond though we are of each other,
we can not bear gravity, freedom at all costs,
freedom unto eternity itself, we cry, free me from
This love, this shove into safety from the pit
I moaned and complained to escape!

Free me from my place in the puzzle, my
verse in the song, free me from the tale
I am told in, by a voice not my own, a voice
that blows like the wind and sprinkles

beauty in my mind, free me to find the true self
I am, and become it, simply, simply
I am freed into my place in the puzzle, my verse
In the song, I am freed into the tale I am told in,

By a voice not my own, that blows like the wind
And spreads beauty in my mind, I am free now to find
The true self I am and I become it, simply
and if only, if only

Shyness is no joke, it sneaks in and pins me
to the board like a butterfly on exhibit,
inhibits my every move and shrinks my will
stills the flame until I forget my name

Trust matters when Mercury is retrograde. This is a time we have to have faith in each others’ good intentions, because it is so very easy to misconstrue. When Mercury is retrograde, our mental functioning effectively turns inside out, so that the words we say and hear actually travel along different pathways in their swift journey toward our grasp than they normally do. Meanings can be missed that way.

A good way to learn to adapt to Mercury retrograde by using this time to be with yourself, take stock, turn your attention inward, where it naturally wants to go now anyway. Re-read old journals, old poetry, remember the ones who have gone before.

Exploring your family’s genealogy is easier than it has ever been, online; websites like ancestry.ca make a fascinating retrograde Mercury pastime.

I found some poems I wrote almost exactly thirteen years ago and I’ll type in here. These poems feel like a very retrograde Mercury discovery for me, as they speak to me exactly what I need to hear now, and also what I am learning from other sources. It’s a nice mental completion, a filling-in-of-the-blanks, or like shining a flashlight on the dark side of a globe to reveal its full round shape.

A Retrograde Mercury period can be a period of profound mental growth, if we are willing to allow that; of course, it is always a choice. We can use the time to endlessly wank on facebook or pick arguments or curse about defective technology or make dire predictions about what’s going to happen. Those are also easy pathways to take during this retrograde period. If that’s what you want.

Me, I’ll go the other way for a change, and see what happens. If the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same things and expect different results, then the definition of sanity is to continue to seek alternative ways to generate the results we want. Mercury is the messenger; it’s also the magician, if we create our reality with our thoughts and expectations (and we do, but perhaps not precisely in the way everybody thinks).

These untitled poems were a part of a daily project I did for a year and a half or so when I channeled a little poem every day. Channeled meaning I listened for the words rather than thinking of them, and they came in a steady stream. Earlier tonight I found a little notebook that started with these:

1.
Singing new and freshly born
weeping from your mother
Swimming from the waters warm
your sisters and your brothers

Let this be the brand-new day
you called for in the night
when lost and lonely was your way,
both past and future bright

A blink ‘tween wakings was the lull,
a break to cleanse your mind
a time to languish, briefly null
and, briefly, deaf and blind

Yourself you are again, as ever,
never more to lie a seed
in soil; wind and weather
have strengthened heart and eye.

2.
Shrieking echoes in the night
sobbing pain and soul’s delight
no difference is there, one from each
Though one would, high on soap-box, preach
its prescription for the world
to always laugh, be never hurled
from center into pain so deep
its only exit is through sleep.

Pain and joy are twinned like brothers
one cannot exist ‘thout other
to accentuate its state
What use ’tis to resist or hate?
There is no fate nor destiny
to overcome your need to wait

3.
This universe unfolds as planned
and none can hurry god or man
Your heart’s a rosebud, tender, growing
never shrinking, never owing
ought to others of its bliss

A heart’s an end, each in its own
self, and owes its duty only
to the children lost and lonely
waiting to be called to light
by heart’s desire shining bright

The unborn seek a home in thee
you can be more much more, you see
Those shining stars, these faerie sprites
shall live in thee, thy heart’s delight

4.
Faith is not forever lasting
sometimes feasting, sometimes fasting
when your smile from heartlight grows
then shall abundance freely flow

Cycles are a part of life, not free
can you be from all strife
until the day of earth ascending
planetary force transcending

But now is when you needs must live
and in this moment shall you give
a meaning to your rocky way
you stumble here and now, today
because you close your eyes and dream
of times not yet, of might-have-been

If y’all like these, I’ll post the rest during this retrograde period.

Cheerio, and happy Mercury juju to you. No photos this time, Mercury prefers words!

witch came first

My eggs have all hatched and now the chickens
Are coming home to roost, let others take care of their world,
safety the only concern, best be behind locked doors,
shutter the blinds and blind the minds

Pay no attention to the one behind the curtain who
Seems so familiar. I see a mirror, no enemy,
I got no closed doors, it was a tough job but somebody had to do it,
I am the Queen of my life, director of my play, here and now

And a powerful piece of work it is, I got big balls and I may
wear them inside but that doesn’t make them weak
and I may have spent my eggs in my plunge through womanhood,
these moonpausal ovaries are empty as space

but what grows in that fertile place you will soon know,
for it continues in its slow way to take over my play like
a cancer or a child in the womb, stretching its limits, straining
to break free of the cave it has been caught in

and then, the unexpected kicks in and can’t be changed,
The safety of the womb becomes the wild careen
to birth, and yes, if you’ve been locked in long enough
and you stay awake and don’t let yourself die, there’s no need to try

You will be born, and yahoo and holy fuck, and look out!
And ohhhh, and here I am, now, and here is my mother holding me
and everything changes and you are once again small
and all the strange is a blur of new while you slowly reorganize

When I am confined too long in the prison of my blind mind,
all I can do is wish for freedom, feed the desire fire until its
flames burn the building to the ground, another kind of birth
no room for love in that push come to shove

I am one willing to gamble, I say,
I welcome, you, child of truth,
I respect you to the moon and back
and I am the land you will land on,

there is no escape from your mother, children,
I need not seek to hold you to my breast, I release you
with every breath, while feeding the flames of desire
for the family I worked so hard to become worthy of

Only to discover that worthiness has nothing to do
with home, and that I am also okay alone, more than,
better than okay for I have a rich world behind this face,
and here you are, children of grace, wearing your

true faces, and these are the sons and daughter
I love and can never lose. You, the people,
may choose as you will and I may do nothing to
hold you, claim you, name you as my own.

Still, though you have grown and paid your dues, though you
push me away, though you see me irrelevant today, a
has-been as a mother, I can never choose to unbirth you,
one or two or three, you are all inside of me,

and what is in me must come out, this is the shout
I came into this world to spout, like a whale coming
to breach, like a baby crying its way from its womb, like a corpse
scraping its slow escape from its tomb, like my brain

no longer confined by my blind mind, hardlinked to
the cosmos through the closed and open circuits of
my dreaming body, my overarching spirit,
my longing heart and my strong intent, this is

the sense of why I was born and if you were born from me,
you are with me ready or not, love me or not, know me or not

The earth is the bottom line and we share a heritage,
a genetic imperative, an urge to fix the world
through being our true selves in our own spheres
And you owe me nothing, and the balance is even,

your life is a pure gift
you need never repay

It’s amazing how often that happens! I write things then forget about them until I read back, sometimes years later.

Here and Now

I am in my rightful home, I am queen of my domain
Sovereignty’s my birthright, my true throne is sight unseen
I am witness to the sacred, I am actor in my play,
the same one I am writing on this single blessed day

Chorus:
Here and now I’m in my power
Here and now, my finest hour
Here and now, I can make changes
Here and now, life rearranges

I am here in this moment, I am looking through my eyes
Here I step light on the planet, here I see through your disguise
There is no past, there is no future, only pictures on the wall
of my house of many mansions, with writing on the wall

Chorus:
Here and now I’m in my power
Here and now, my finest hour
Here and now, I can make changes
Here and now, life rearranges

There are people being born and people falling into love
people talking to each other so push don’t come to shove
There are people everywhere who are all trying so hard
to see the light in everyone, and take care of their own yard

and there are people dying, people failing, people crying
people punishing people for the crime of being people
we’re all doing what we got to do to play the cards we’re dealt
sometimes we have to stand our ground, sometimes we got to melt

Bridge
into one precious moment,
go through one revolving door
find the answer to the question,
what is it all for?

Chorus:
Here and now I’m in my power
Here and now, my finest hour
Here and now, I can make changes
Here and now, life rearranges
here and now

Kickstart This Poem

Somebody kickstart me please

And where did I put my keys

To the place I keep memories

where limits aren’t what they seem

and where I remember my dreams

where I wake to the glory of day

Instead, in my bed I delay

Somebody kickstart me please

Somebody point me the way

I live in a maze of hallways

My mansion has too many

Closed doors and dead ends,

Its rooms well defended

With padlocks and bars and

Painted-closed doors oh

Somebody point me the way

And tell me, what will it cost

to retrieve all the things I have lost

that are rightfully mine

and shouldn’t cost a dime

But I’ll pay what it takes anytime

For some drive and motivation

And faith in real salvation

Just tell me, what will it cost

Time to start new things, discard old ones. For every new thing, an old thing has to go away to make room for it. No, that’s not an argument for mandatory retirement, or for older folk to ‘know their place’ (quite the contrary). We’re all the gods of our own creations, and we’re not here to make way for others, but to maximize the potential of our own selves. There is room for everybody, even if we have to make room for ourselves by inventing new spaces into which to unfold.

That’s what I’m working on. Creating a niche for myself, and I gotta tell you, it isn’t easy. I’m a work in progress, and when I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

One thing I’m letting go of is my astrology class, at least in its current form. Yes, sad to say the air has been slowly bleeding out of that particular balloon, and after several weeks in a row of non-attendance and non-response, I am taking the hint. It doesn’t mean I’m letting go of teaching astrology, but I am going to shift focus for a while. Roll with the changes.

As an Aries Sun person, I have a birthday coming up in the next few weeks, so this is my rebirthing time, and traditionally I have started new things on or around my birthday, so I have a grace period to work out what it’s going to be. The theme of the new year.

The Solar Return chart for my birthday is exciting, though. Sun in the tenth house of career (at the same time as my Progressed Sun is transiting over the midheaven into the tenth house), Moon in Aquarius, fiery Leo Rising with Mars on the Ascendant. So, it (yawn) should be my year this year.

Yup. So why my lack of enthusiasm? I can’t lie, I’m in the doldrums, Aries sun or no. Getting out of bed is a chore lately. As once-exciting but no-longer-new things seem to be fizzling, and new things aren’t quite igniting yet, I’m having a hard time connecting to my motivation. Oh yeah. Life. Ho hum, says the tired old thing in my brain.

Still, there’s always energy for something new, once I get a bead on what it’s going to be. I’ll just have to keep on keeping on until then.

In the meantime, here are the lyrics to the song I wrote about Aries (you can find the song itself in the player in the sidebar as soon as I upload it):

The Aries Song

Aries woman, Aries man, warrior-born, you are a firebrand.
You ask no quarter, nor give it, your goal in life is to live it.
The only battle worth winning is escape from conditioning -
to free your shining star.

Okayyy…. I’ll be back to it real soon. Real soon, now. The Sun’s in Aries, after all. And I’m due for a rebirth on the 9th of April.

I see you
I know what you
are thinking
My eyes flash white
at your secrets
I am at the window
of your dreams
nothing hides from me
wild things grow
in your cracks,
where I live
do you remember?

**

I tried, once
it was difficult
it took the best of me
But that was long ago
before these golden bars
enclosed my world
I dream, only that
to dream is my freedom
which will be stolen
in time, of this i am
assured, to this
I am resigned

**

I am not here
this is your dream
I am but memory
seen through the
ripples of time
a flash only, this glimpse
of possibility
now made obsolete
by current choices
you can never
become what I
might have been

Okay, that’ll do for now. Just keeping my toe in the water ..