song

surrender

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I demand
your full and complete surrender.
I cannot afford for you to
smuggle in your idols
your entanglements of control,
manipulation, histories of lies
and poisons served to you
by the destitute.

Now! to love!
unconditional and sweet
beyond all being, beyond us,
beyond; a terrifying depth
that will elude us, often
and yet in longing,
lure us in
a fire, a fountain, a fullness
luminous in being
generous in hope
a truth of grace

I see your fear.
know it, intimately,
as my own.
I cannot concede my ground
however angry you become,
not having things your way.
The terms handed down to you
are a prison for us both.
I won’t sign. Your self-pity
doesn’t move me.

I choose love.
I choose love for us, again and again and again.
I will hope for better things. I know you long
for such.

I see your weariness, long depletion
of your heart until
you barely felt its presence
heard its beat.

I hear it.
I hear it echo from the future loud and strong
I hear it magnificent and wild and good and free.

Heart, be free!
Release yourself to love!
Brave heart, choose hope once more!
Shake off your disillusion!
Sing, hope, dance!
Your fears are mere impostors.
Rip up the twisted contract
full of woe.

I hold my breath, the hush of all creation.
Will you,
in triumph,
surrender?

spring, dry ground

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a time has passed, days
we are long acquainted, and yet
separate

desolate, oh desert,
dry of tears and dust of weeping
endless plains
pains

heat of long despair
nothingness of prayer

colonising silence
I struggle to give voice
to my love’s song

deep and full within me
bubbling, turbulent
sweetness, warm and cool
a rain stored centuries
for you, hope

a stirring,
yet prisoned

break through,
ancient hope of truth,
beauty and delight,
break through

silence, hard and fierce
refusal,
my love’s song,
discouraged
deepens

a stirring
yet prisoned

distillation of sweet days
flowers, birds and beauty
resdolent with meaning,
moments bathed in wonder
atoms dancing, molecules
in song,
renewal’s promise
eternal
a sea, a stream, a storm
a purity of force

suddenly a rushing
unbidden, a fierceness,
filtering a crack, sudden, sudden

silence

a spring
ancient spring
I effervesce my wealth
raucous with abandon
liquid laughter
embraces stale silence
to life
baptises austerity
bathes pains
flows, flows, flows

Note: this poem is a work in progress and, interestingly to me, encapsulates in its in-progress state the very tensions intended to be present in the image of the poem that came to me this morning. I hope to come back to this image and poem at point with greater completeness. But for now the very representations of my own inner state of fullness and frustration evident in the not-quite-working feeling (at least to me) of the poem are wryly comforting.

sea singing

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sea singing
carries from the depth
express in
jubilation
joyous in the day, the night

sea singing
shadows shift before me
open up in wonder, your heart,
your soul

rent the sky with longing
joy tears
a rift in pains
hope, hope anew

light, a faint initiation
rites a hymn of potency
a song a song a song

weave a thread of laughter
shadows mourn no more
luminous becoming
fulfil fulfil

sea singing
oh to catch this in a shell, to listen
evermore evermore

Note: this is the third poem (/song) in a series written to Divenire by Einaudi played by the poetess after a long absence. Title of an abstract watercolour in the same colours as before.

patient stars on a passion sea

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I am a sea for you, and all my
other realities, hang
longingly, waiting

an intensification of the waves, tender pink,
growing moody, faint mauve hues, rose absolue,
crimson interdit
almost red, almost dark, almost night, almost
dawn

roiling, I lurch another night
unknowing, other
to myself and to those who know me
daytime

a restless wakening, a dreamless
depth, a haunting utter knowing
beyond, beyond

the stars arrive,
intensification of light
patient, delighting
eternal, vanishing,
shine singing

vanquishing
the sea the sea, it wrestles
warm, hot, cool, chill within me,

I hope, I pray

Note: This poem was written in response to an abstract watercolour painted to a recording of myself playing Einaudi’s Divenire. I played this for the first time this morning having had no access to a piano for the previous three years. It was full of mistakes, hesitations and interruptions, but beautiful.

away

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I have been 
away.
What can I say?

Except that, maybe 
you have too, haven’t we 
all, lost ourselves,
all our bearings,
signs we once thought we knew
scribbled over, what was it that it said there,
once upon a time?

What is this new strangeness
to which we are becoming
accustomed?

Can I continue to haul
my hopes along this wild path?

Will you?  Will you haul along beside me?
Or will you drop your dreams 
imperceptibly, numbed by the 
exhaustions, numerous and wailing,
hungry and afraid, eating you
alive?

Perhaps if we
sat down a moment, here?
yes here.  Bare scrub it looks, of course

it always does.
Rest, imperceptibly a stillness
creeps over
the pains, furies at injustice, which,
of course, must take hold, but must
not,
must not turn sour.
Stillness, friend, and rest
mere moments as a dew descends, hush.
Soak your wounds in wonder.
There is just enough

to keep going
til morning,
as still we are alive

I am away, yes,

but here