Canyon of dreaming

 cruel harsh canyon of dreaming waits

view across the steeple chase

minds own winding road of hate

these memories so warm and chaste

heavy lull of well worn years

 chosen path of salt and tears

 melodies not played for fears

that natures beast would rise

so gallant came the wind and rain

beating, thrashing out thy name

this garment from my dew lost frame

goes dancing in the heather

if i were ghost not man nor foe

the dancing breath of you would know

i am the singer of the low

the festive mountain frame

go now into the dead of night

amongst the forest soft and light

amongst the dead forgotten frame

of a melody without a name

Prancing

Prancing through the thickets foe,

dancing, leaping gentle doe.

The crystals of the sky,

slip into night,

forming a frosty voice,

of glimmering white.

Singing low, singing high,

soft and dreamlike lullaby,

cradle memory,lost at sea,

cradle song,

 has yet to be.

dancing, singing, free and true,

lifted up, into the blue,

everlasting brilliant sky,

dancing, singing, joyful, I.

mortal

melodic ocean

hear my prayer

across the vast continent

across the heart

mortal 

you are the dew of the sun

evaporated across the plain 

the essence of time
reflected in your face

deva

songbird

elemental

flown towards spring

there is a song in thy heart

that tears down rapture

unveiling 

truth 

as soft as vapour

riding unto the wind

amid the airstream shine

is a hollow voice

in the wilderness 

speaking

the hem of the fabric of life

is woven sorrow

and woven joy

wrapped in particles of love 

reach out your hands
towards the sun
for the flames harness
all

Hope

wrap me 

coiled sheaf

the grace of god has fallen from your eye

 i am withered with memory

withered but not worn

in my hair are garlands 

that were shorn 

from the heads of angels

 within the cup of knowing

held in its vast wilderness of joy

 now severed from the branches

that once marred these walls

 searing melody

i have seen the answers 

of my heart

 hope 
restored

Incisors

They come for me

their sharp little incisors of hate

waiting at the gate of time

as rabid newts

swimming in the sea of fear

grey limpit suckers

attached to feet

clinging to rocks

as the waves wash over

as tidal currents pull me into segments of loss

loss

that dies on the breath of dawn

loss that wheres a hat

that has no name

winding down the sun

from its window

breaking up light

with a hammer of spite

go forth into the dream

with a torch in thy hand

let the beacon be lit

for rain to wash away the sorrow 

i weep

Trapeze

My sadness quakes upon the shore of being

these perforated edges

torn 

piece by piece

worn

from wearing smiles

and running from death

Lessons circulate above my head

teaching first the rudiments of a day

the A, B, C

of me

this is were I'm at

heavy bludgeons make their blow

as lead weights

they hold me in a state of fear

which defines my speech

defines my walk

defines my heart

in longing

i am performing now

the high trapeze

somersaulting into a perfect pirouette 

of guilt

The child inside of me

is quaking too

for she knows sorrow long and true

she has worn all of its guises

from time

to time

she smiles

then forgets again

her truth

Where my heart roams free is guarded by these thorny spires

the silent retreat lies hidden from view

hidden from its own reflection

I lay down my head upon the seat of love

to guide me to the river

i call truth

lead me down

lay me softly

tread here lightly

i am as brittle as a cuttlefish bone

as a shard of light

retracts

into the spaces in between

i sleep away

the pain with a bow

 

There is a song

There is a song on the wind

calling me home

calling my heart to open its wings

to fly

There is a song on the wind

calling my name

with the bones of my ancestors

i am scattered 

into life

There is a song on the wind

calling me to love

to open my arms

to enfold wonder

to know its gentle rains

There is a song on the wind

calling me to surrender

to humility i fall

amongst the leaves and shoots

amongst the roots of the yew and the oak

i fall

There is a song on the wind

calling me to beauty

whisperings, melodies

the heavenly choir of angels sing

brush past my cheek

as a feather falls 

from its wings

There is a song on the wind

calling me to dance

dancing dreams into starbursts

dancing fears unto the night

dancing spirit to fly

out into the universal flow

where all of love is cradled in a bough

of a soft tree

This is where your song will find me

This is where the song will be

and so the war comes to the beat of the drum

Grimy 
boneless fingers

foraging beneath the overcoats

the wrath of the young

has no warrant here

amidst the fallen

 frames

of half bled men

the sturdy robust chancer

found wandering

without a name

for when the rain came

so did the silent beat of the drum

the war song

of mans last hope

drummed into earth

as ash

no name shall follow us here

for the earth cannot answer

with love

the earth can only answer with cries

of the night

child bearing screams

that carry life

through her veins

born out

into spite

yesterday

yesterday

followed by night

the cradle

years rolled by

of woven blood

forgotten rule

lay in mud

 dire cosmic dream

of an eon lost

 waves of god

and wanderlust

 salvaged edge

hardened steel

 blade that bled

 cu roted wheel

 heart of truth

soldered steed

seeds of change

blown on a breeze

here lies sorrow

here lies greed

here lies foolish

wanton deed

lay them out 

for truth to bear

witness forth

thy soul to share

 now in freedoms breath are we

billowed out for us to see

the new dawn

brings us home 

as we are born 
as we are grown

The goddess of the night

The darkness swings its mighty pendulum

spins the clocks into unfettered sleep 

 stillness of the moon is awakened

owl flies swiftly

silently unto wisdom

she moves

her cloak, the black silk of night

grants shelter

protects trespass

her song caresses the veil

washes away daylight

elemental voice of the deep blue knowing

her senses dance

ebb and flow

in the sway of the moon

sweet arrow

rested at her side

the sacred blood of the forest

 

Her soft clad walks upon times mantle

bracken cracked and heather grew

the heart of flight

the trip and fall of light

rest still upon the heart of man

She sees what the heart of man does not

she hears the distant cry of the pine

the fallen slumber of the night

is pierced by their cries

Awaken 

child of the sky

and of the moon

Awaken

child of the peat

and the bog

Awaken 

child of the ocean

and the tide

Awaken 

child of the flame

and the hearth

Rise up and remember your name

Physician, heal thyself - the warriors path

Lately, I have been trying to pinpoint exactly when it was that i started to wake up.  By waking up, i mean when it was i started to question the world around me and see myself for the first time in my own eyes. I mean, its not like i just woke up one morning and  realised that we are all particles of love and that we are dreaming this whole shebang. 

 

My life has been a series of events and unpeelings, of knowings and unknowings, a winding road that weaves its way like the mighty serpent of creation itself, cleverly and with finesse.  After each lesson, a skin is shed from the cosmic snake of our own beings and we are closer to the collective consciousness of love.  Each lesson is a homecoming.

 

Awakening doesn't really encompass the experience i am trying to describe, i prefer to think of it as a remembering.  Remembering the truth that has been with us since our beginning,  Remembering that lives in our energetic bodies, as DNA lives in our genes.  Remembering, that trickles slowly back to life.  

 

Remembering the truth that we are full to the brim with love and light and that the rest of which  we call reality is matter.  Solid, clumpy and rounded matter, that has its own place and beauty and that thus enables us to experience wisdom from form and personal relationships.  Matter that gives us purpose and drive, passion and virility. Matter that has given us bodily experience in a universe filled with light.  The universal symbol of Yin and Yang, is of light and matter.

 

As a child, i knew instinctively to commune with nature, when i was sad or in pain, i would sit under a tree and let my sorrow seep into the earth below.  The trees were my healers, my comforters and my custodians.  Music, another teacher of mine, introduced itself to me as a nine year old girl, it allowed me to voice the light inside me that i couldn't see in the mirror, it soothed and it vibrated joy into my world of grey. 

 

As a teenager, amidst the working class, comprehensive school jungle that i was busily navigating my way through, poetry found me.  And just like that, the remembering accelerated.  Through the poetry that i began to write, a powerful voice began to emerge, a voice i couldn't fully comprehend, but was intimate with. This voice was kept to myself.  Locked away in my room, i would sing and write and weave a world that had no resemblance to the one outside of myself.  This remembering, was a lonely experience and i felt that my peers around me and my own family would never understand the depth of my new found mystery. 

 

So i dreamt, wrote and knew but kept my remembering inside. My body and the world around me became a clumsy vehicle in which i found it increasingly hard to navigate.  I began to loathe the world of matter and that included my own body.  I carried the weight of mental, physical and sexual abuse and saw matter and the material world as the enemy.  I raged war with what i saw in the mirror, i waged war with the world.  I sat, day after day, falling deeper into feelings of alienation.  This vague and foggy resentment manifested in my body as apathy and my own power turned inwards from anger into self loathing.  Adolescence and my early twenties were the battle torn years of my remembering. The training years of the warrior that lives inside of me.

 

My remembering ambled along at a seemingly even pace until i became a mother for the second time, then it exploded like a meteor shower across the blackness of night.  I was literally thrust out of my body by the energetic forces of nature and was reminded that i was nature. I became the lion headed goddess, the great mother, the weaver of creation.  When women become mothers they are reunited with the divine goddess. We are chaotic and beautiful and  we are both light and matter in perfect unison.  Even death itself becomes spectacular. 

 

Everything just accelerated after that and i went through one initiatory episode after another, remembering, suffering, stumbling, learning, raging, growing, loving, knowing, its was like a speeding train running right through the core of universe, and i was part of that universe, for the first time i knew that i was perfect part of that universe, in my imperfection.

 

The road to self awareness is a rocky and seemingly narcissistic one at times.  Peeling back the layers, each one a moment of profound understanding, strips away our adapted selves and reveals truth. Stumbling across ones own ego can send us spiralling into a whirlwind of fear,  anguish and self loathing, followed by a good dose of delusional thinking and denial.  To face ourselves in the mirror and piece by piece remove the layers we have spent a lifetime building up or acquiring, means looking our own mortality squarely in the eye, it means we have to walk through our own demise. Death is our new best friend. 

 

Death is the purpose to life, it is the charge in our battery, the reason to grow, the cursor, marker or point of reference.  Death itself is the energetic epicentre of the universe.  To understand it, means confronting ourselves and our deepest held beliefs and fears.  Death is not the enemy, fear is the enemy.  Fear is the burden of our age, fear represents the misuse of matter and the glitch in the system.  When each and every one of us walks through our own fear, and collective fears, then we shall have nothing left to fear, then we shall truly remember just how beautiful everything is.

 

To really now others, we must first know ourselves.  We must be the warriors of our own hearts. 

were there is love

hold my hand

all is not lost

for love in the binding fluid

that flows through

us

into the vastness

we call life

each teardrop of dew

each memory forsaken

is never wasted

even the heavy clay boot

of men marching towards 

us

ruthless 

sod

we are still one

holding on

to the world 

our mother 

as she spins

us out of time

seemingly casting us 

out 

as nets

to catch the rain

were there is love

there is hope

where there is love

there is strength

where there is love

there is life

where there is love

there is reason

hold my hand

through the stormy sea

healing will come

when the sorrow is done

A healing prayer

the drip of soul

from cradle to grave

unheard 

 unexpressed

 voice of the slave

 mother weeps for her unkept soul

she holds out her hand for us to remember

 children of yesterday rise out

from the ashes of greed

burning wounds

heavy hearts

the gentle ones look on

soothe souls with love

heal wounds with patience

unite us in fellowship

so once more our sweet nature

can bloom

within the embrace of our mother

Prayer to the ancestors

my feet are soft upon the still beating heart 

of my love

tears fall for the forgotten dreams

of the ones that came before I

the ones that stood on this fertile shore

 cried life into its veins

dear beloved 

lost 

at sea

i am here 

to hear your call

calling you

home 

to the shores of your dreams

where memories dance 

and play out their melodies

song of my fathers

my mothers

my sisters

my brothers

day of my soul

for i remember you each in turn

in this soft remembrance of years

honouring 

i walk your footsteps forth

to the oak

to the yew

to the fields of golden barley

i lay down my heart

for your sweet embrace

Pandora and her box

i am a half lid

dreaming 

sitting

waiting

as a bespoke pearl

the dreaming never ends

creating 

woves of gold

in silent reverie

yet the whole is an illusion

for we are stardust

explosions

of light

reflected in the sun

 mastery of chaos

 harnessing of form

holding 

pinning 
down of prisms

watch them dance between our grasp

as sprites

holographic 
particles of love

Slow walk home

Take me to the shores with still winds, I walk bare footed on the body of your heart, softly i roam, on the slow walk home

lost at sea

holding my hand up to the light of the window

observing its mass
I am detached from form
deliberately held apart
from ownership

i have staggered to stand
without hands
to hold
yet the truth be told
I am repelled by hands 

even my own

I am driven down
deeply

plunged
by the tides of

my heart
which roam fearfully
untethered

 i am not of earth

but of water

the sea is my mother

she sways me out unto her raging tides

crashes my head repeatedly against rocks

in her attempt to crack open my shell

unwavering in her desire

i am washed upon foreign shores 

i cannot call home

 thus i walk ghostlike
pale

she smites this apathy with torrents of foam and froth
violent crescendo of power
chastises me savagely with storm

forces me under the belly of the whale

til i reach her womb of silence

here in the deep blue nothing
i see all

here i die

the moon

her sister

assailant
leads this dance
to the place of the great unknowing

yet the great sea hag repents

and i am to breathe again her salty air

and drink life
from her salty cup

the water seeps into my ears

soaks my brain in brine

squishes the laborious fruits 

that were born of thought

over and over 

I am enveloped
in froth

wave after wave washes me to the shore

and the open mouth of god

Ingots

Hell bent on retribution

the ingots shine from the murky mire

still wearing residues of fire

Forgotten trove

long worn out hopes
lay beneath the cool rippling stream

waiting forlorn

to awake from the dream

here now, in the dimly lit day

they gleam

washed away sorrow

beauty craves light

from their weary bed

they rise

tis the ending of the night

wylde roots - 2009

wylde woods

halved

quartered

broken into segment

for harvest

wylde dreams

sold to invention

for necessity

rules

wylde spirits

divided

scooped up

without thought 

or consequence

wylde souls

wavering on the edges

of the trees that

still stand

firm

martyred roots

old seeds

grown wise

weep for these our brothers

as their trembling spirits

are forced from the earth

and brought to ground

Gaia's breath

i heard it said

that love is king
yet i am dead

the weeping source

the wounded knee

the crag

the fortress

you and me

my arms unfold

smooth 

each fibre torn

in my embrace

you are reborn

a soldier

sinner

holy knight

the moon is fixing

stars tonight

dancing here

spurning on

laughing

spinning

moving from

i am she

that cradles youth

the secret knowing

the primal truth

rest your head

upon my lap

adorn thy heart

with natures sap

listen heart

hear my prayer

 seeds are scattered

here and there

in the air

i whisper so

haunting

dreaming

weaving flow