i thought i knew
was on a path
it led into this cavern
crammed with golden strands
woven by fate-spiders
no passage here
this end is dead
i must remain
wrapped in tangled webs
i read my future
in their weavings
oh! such mysteries resolve
(more…)

The parameters for the poems are arbitrary; I look at the photo and write from the voice that I hear from that particular face, the emotion expressed, and I stop writing when I’ve come to the bottom of the photo. It seems to work out pretty well so far.

do not disturb me
for anything less
than a change
in fundamental
laws for
the way it has been
has killed me
too many times
there must be room
for my heart
(more…)

It’s a little past the New Year, but I feel like taking on another daily challenge, or as close to daily as I can manage (giving myself lots of rope). My photography project (the arty self-portraits) for this year is to focus on expressing emotion through the photos.

That seemed to invite joining poetry with the photos, which serves the bonus purpose of keeping me writing. Here’s the first few installments.

frozen heart

Sad eyes
gaze quizzical
from bluezone
distances
hope froze over
long ago
and now
nothing ever happens
her veins have changed
from hot flood
to lacy traceries
no more beating heart
(more…)

[update] as I’m prone to do, I’ve rewritten the lyrics fairly extensively after the first round… this version is, I think, pretty close to its final form.

It’s the Capricorn New Moon tonight. As I hoped, I found a song to write for Haiti.

The Story in My Head

there’s a story in my head, and this is how it goes
we start at the beginning, go as far as we can go
and we grow in all directions, and we struggle for our pay
like a mismatched collection of scenes from a pointless play
and it’s too much work, too hard, I give up
and then I die

there’s a story in my head, and this is how I know
the end is the beginning, and what I see is so
and what I dream is real, and who I am is how I feel
and you know that you should let me, you should let me be real
it’s too much work, too hard, I give up
and then you die
(more…)

written at midnight Christmas Eve…

Beneath the Christmas Branch

Beneath the Christmas branch
I linger on the eve of magic promised long ago
Still waiting for wonder to stun me into
waking from the dream of lack and fear,
I put in time until Santa is proved
or until I die, whichever arrives first

Will a burst of colour explode the sky
into faces and flowers, reflections of
Powers long thought lost, faeries flitting
between motes of light so bright (more…)

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? (more…)

I haven’t forgotten. What a shock it was, all our fears manifest at once. Fourteen young women, massacred for no other reason than being female! We were rocked to the roots by the proof of the pudding of fears our generation of women was fed, to wit: ‘don’t dare pursue your dreams, you’ll be killed if you do‘.

(In case you’re American or too young to remember, you can read all about it here.) Murder sucks for any reason, but random, gratuitous slaughter of the young, ambitious and promising is particularly horrifying.

The tragic irony of Tempest Gale’s murder in November just a few weeks before the twentieth anniversary of the Montreal Massacre just serves to stir the pudding. But dammit, change must come.

I recorded this song last night. It’s raw and rhythmically ragged, but a powerful version, I think; I was alone in the room and feeling emotional at the time. I wrote this just after the Montreal Massacre.

Actually, it was on the following International Women’s Day. Anne Cameron had come to Hornby and given a rockingly powerful talk at the Hall, after which I went out and bawled my head off in my car then wrote this song.

It hurts to sing, because after twenty years, so little has changed. Still, so many pointless losses, so few gains, politically speaking, socially speaking. Oh, women now have the right to go die with the boys in the sands of Afghanistan, I suppose. It was never my ambition to be Sgt Rock.
(more…)

Last night, I came across a poem I wrote back in 95… the title grabbed me with its reference to the wind (Tempest + Gale = wind).

I was in a Pluto square at the time and in a big rage at God (or whatever masquerades as God in most organized religion), pumped up, feeling like death couldn’t hurt me.

“Come and get me! Yeah I said YOU, chickeenn…’ the poem said.

Then, I got scared, put the thing away and never did anything with it. I know, I know.

Personally, I feel sure that if I die, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay right here, enjoy my body as it melts into the earth, still aware but slowly expanding to become one with her.

It’s happened to me before. Every past life regression I’ve done (three, with three different hypnotherapists) has taken me back to that same experience. I’ve *never* ‘gone to the light’, whatever that means. It feels alien to me.

It’s probably because I’m fey. The Church used to claim that the fey folk have no souls, which just means they don’t separate from their bodies and go off to some other place, they stay and change form until they reconvene in another time and place.
(more…)

This may have been the first of the poems that Tempest’s death has inspired… Peter posted it on his Facebook page the very next day. With his permission, I’m reposting here:

Force of Nature

Gale force winds blow the teardrop rain brutally
Sideways, like the course of many hearts today
No teapot will contain this Tempest, it is too big and wild
And freer from fleshly constraints than she would choose
For she inhabited her Earthly clothes more fully
Than hundreds of less vital storms
And blew your house down time and again
Stiltwalking and stomping across screaming stages
Commanding our attention with an ever-opening voice
Plucked banjo strings or electric squalls
Goose down heart obvious under that windy bluster
Which the elements at hand could never obscure
Blowing open doors to rooms we would never otherwise enter
Taken out at twenty five, so achingly alive
Was planning to live forever
Today the dinosaur puppet skeletal remains of our façade
Crack and crumble to dust
As we entrain with her and float boneless
In tidepools of grief

by Peter Cloud Panjoyah

for Tempest Grace Gale

I am pixelated,
lacy fronds of frost encasing
the heart of my matter
etched in stone patterns of grief
for she whose existence
we all depended on
now ruthlessly bereft
of future

she, robbed of life;
we, denied the gifts
she had still to bestow

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Tempest Grace Gale
Feb 5, 1984 – Nov 17, 2009
murdered in paradise

Hear her music on myspace