Ghosts

I was raised by two men

who I've never met.

Their absence

made them ever more prominent

in my life than their live counterparts.

I did not know

this until this very moment.

Their ghosts raised me.

Bestowed upon me

are the unlived fantasies

and unseen dreams.

The sin of the parent

is to fail movement

due to cowardice.

A violation

of the honor of parenthood.

Do these phantoms haunt only I?

Does the cohort arrive at the same conclusion?

I suspect ne'er a thought is held for them.

Can one release a legacy

Or is it bound to you from birth?

sometimes it feels like this...

there are no more words

like money i spent them all

there are no more thoughts

like energy they are worn out

there is nothing left

but a bad feeling i can't shake

it shows up now in my dreams

so visceral it has become

as if the shock scarred itself into me

i can't reach you

i do not impact you anymore

i hold no importance

we were never real

Sweet Silence

In the sweet silence of your absence

I am free once again

I return to myself

In the sweet silence

I connect deep within

In the sweet silence of assumption

I am discovering the real strength

that freedom holds

In the quelling of fear

behavior shifts

I settle into my own place

I have limits too.

I never seemed to have them before.

But now I see and have started in the past weeks to honor them.

There is only so much I can take

in my romantic relationships

in my friendships

with my family.

I only notice the limits

when I am drained

when I am out of balance

when I need a break and

mostly when an uneven relationship is in front of me

When I am not receiving the support

I so openly and forwardly provide to some others

In the last two weeks I stood up

my spirit said ENOUGH

and I walked away

from my crutches

I went quiet

and I went loud

I regret neither

I honor myself

when I say

I have limits...

Honor them

Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.

~Rumi

I sat in therapy on Thursday and shed my skin.  I took all the veils off because that is the place we've finally reached and I stated my case, one after another, and at the end she said what I would have wanted to hear in the past, what I wanted to hear now I guess except now I didn't have to hear it anymore because I knew it, felt it on my own inside me and trusted those feelings.  Tonight I sat in Avery Fisher Hall and listened to the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra open with Brahms' Violin Concerto in D major and was transported back to a waiting room, to an office, to memories of a person whose colorful vitality and essence make my heart feel whole.  And all these memories came flooding back of a past over a decade ago and the safety deposit box that held my tears, hopes, dreams, sorrows...that held me.  If there was any way to stop time in that place so that I could visit that office on a regular basis I would.  These memories have been on the edge of my perception the last few days after an old college friend sent me an article that referenced that place.  And those memories juxtaposed next to these other thoughts about my more recent past provide two stark differences of how people "care" about you and what that care looks like.  When I think back to that place, that neighborhood holds breaths of mine from vastly different ages....preschool, kindergarten, 2nd grade, eighteen, falling in love for the first time, turning 21, and I sit and wonder now will I ever meet a man who will actually care and want to know all this about me, those things that make me hold my breath for an extra second.

Poetry Thursday

It is truly amazing

a bizarre work of art

how we hurt ourselves.

It is transforming

when we see

how we've transformed

because our urge

our yearning

disappears.

like the soft wisp

of a wing against the wind

you may slightly hear it

rarely...and by accident

it is there ever so slightly

but your overwhelming sense of peace

is so loud

it deafens everything

even love.

After reading some Rumi I wrote this...

There is a truth
deeper
than the truth
I live in now.

But i've fought
and explored
and gone deeper
and deeper
I say.

But the truth is
that underlying the feelings
lies another truth
a deeper truth
a truth that makes
the unanswerable questions
moot

beyond the action
beyond the why
or how can he be this way
there is a truth

the tanglement
will never become solved
by my pulling the strings
this way or that

maybe when i play
puppeteer
the strings become
all the more entangled

my truth is
it does not matter
at all
what you do
or why you do it
all i can glean
is what rises
within me
and what
it is
i seek

and under mine
and other's dramas
the truth whispers
it is there
always there

many surround
all around
with blinders they
rigidly keep on
only to lash out
when someone
tries to see
beyond them

it is time now
to sleep
to rest
so tomorrow
i come
with full faculties
to hear
and face
the truths i hear

I love Rumi

Be With Those Who Help Your Being

Be with those who help your being.
Don't sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.

A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.
If you don't try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it's too late for all you could become.

Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots
and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?

Translation by Coleman Barks

a little ditty

May love find you at a precious moment

May you unwrap it to find

peals of  laughter

sensuality of contours

petal softness

fun, cute, wondrous

I tried writing a poem tonight, but it got all tangled up.  So instead I'm sharing another poem with you titled "One Boy Told Me" by Naomi Shihab Nye.  If I ever have kids I would love to do this.

Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now 
 

~David Whyte

Breaking open

I'm reading Elizabeth Lesser's Broken Open.  I've been "reading" this for some time now.  This entails picking it up for some reading material on the subway and reading the introduction, putting it down when I get home and then picking it up again weeks later and reading the same passage again.  Do I sound like a retard if I say I think I'm not reading this book because I think it addresses exactly what I'm dealing with, because the introduction alone has passages marked of phrases that resonated with me?  Things like "veneer of perfection" and "going to sleep". 

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

~Rumi

A Poem I like

Faith

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

- David Whyte

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
- by David Whyte

The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

-David Whyte
(source)

A Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

-Rumi

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried. But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
~ Mary Oliver

Poem

Time flows through my hands like water
I rush to secure my grasp but cannot hold it
This moment is all I have
Past moments flood through my head
Wishing I could change them

I move forward
Alone
In the place I'm supposed to be now
A tear falls

I have reached the small peak of calm
But know this trek is longer
I pray that I will not obstruct the path again

My thoughts swim back to a smile that warms me up
and the sadness comes
So I come back to this moment
to remember this is where I am to be now

I am good
I am alone
I have given up what did not serve me
And life took away the rest
I miss those that are no longer here
All I control is right now.
------------
Wrote this poem in early March and had since forgotten about it, but was reminded of its sentiments recently so I thought I would post it.