Song for Little Mother

Mama-zhiNga!

When I came to help,
You had eyes to see
Past skin to heart.
You called me, "Niece".
Every day I am grateful.

You told me what your father said
As he was passing to Spirit World--
"Always help your people,"
He told you.
Now, you join him.

Watch from the top of Star Bridge,
Make sure that I
Always help the people.
It shows little respect
To learn but not to follow.

When you see WakoNdi-zhiNgi,
Ask Him to give us eyes to see
Past skin to heart
So we have a chance for peace.
Every day I will be grateful.







In tribute to Viola "Tina" Walker Promes, a member of the Omaha Nation who passed into the presence of Jesus on March 27, 2010, from her adopted niece.

Heart

Creator, hear my voice!

I see the pictures you paint and the songs that you sing all around me, but I cannot feel the love from you that I know is in them.

It's as though someone has taken the heart out of me. Remember its shape, and the rhythm of its drumming and build it again in me.

Then, Wacondi-zhingi, you can dance for joy as I love you from a child's heart that is soft and new~another gift from your Father.

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(from Wikipedia): "Dissociation is an unexpected partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s conscious or psychological functioning . Dissociation is a mental process that severs a connection to a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Dissociation can be a response to trauma, and perhaps allows the mind to distance itself from experiences that are too much for the psyche to process at that time."


"In that same hour He rejoiced and gloried in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have concealed these things [relating to salvation] from the wise and understanding and learned, and revealed them to babes (the childish, unskilled, and untaught). Yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will and choice and good pleasure." (Luke 10:21 AMP)

For Christmas 2009

Remembering....
The steps near the end of the porch:
A refuge from being alone and misunderstood,
A place to watch heaven filling earth
In the art and harmony of life everywhere.

Reaching....
From a cave at the edge of society,
God emptying Himself, alone and misunderstood.
In the desperation to recapture perfect love,
Priming the flow of life from heaven to earth.

Resurrecting....


Merry Christmas!

The Becoming

I breathe in The Becoming
Who breathed into me
In the beginning, changing
A corner of eternity.

I glimpse The Becoming
As through a glass darkly.
The color is still true
And bright enough to see.

I hear The Becoming
In a small voice that I perceive
Sending me toward daring
With assurance I believe....

He is imaging again
The dream that He did not duplicate,
The secret that He reserved
To bring to me and intimate.

In the night,
He is flame again,
Refusing to let die
What He began.

A road in a dream
Straightens along the way
Toward the familiar sound of music
In a faintly stirring day.

In the cold,
A tree the color of fire
Blanketed seed on hard ground
So the new stand will spring to life.

Death's color was bold
But still served the cause
Of regenereation; the snow
Wept brith waters from its thaw.

In this awakening,
Green comes softly through intimidation
Of stony earth; wings of butterflies unfold like hopes
Stirring from the still chrysalis of imagination.

Wrapped in all of this reminder
Against the threat of futility,
I defy the doom of tormentors
To see, hear, and believe.

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This piece started with the image of the chrysalis in Stanza 9. I wrote it with a certain human condition in mind: opposition so fierce and persistent that leads to a crossroad of trying to go on despite the weariness, or giving up and going down in despair. Nature itself teaches us that, on this earth, the trappings of death can actually be part of the mechanism that brings new life, and shouldn't cause us to cast aside all hope that God can indeed do a new thing. Here, He's represented as The Becoming, on the presumption that the information that I received on The Becoming One being a more accurate translation of I AM THAT I AM is correct. The imperative of life and creation still prevails in the end.

I think it's ironic that the inspiration first came in autumn (I encountered the tree casting maroon leaves in the cold wind not long after the first image developed), and it finally all came together and insisted on being written right before spring. Although I've got some discomfort with the cadence of the poem, I think the message is important enough to pass on, however imperfectly it may be packaged.

"I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." John 12:24

Mosaic

I.

The arms of my childhood stretched from the window of the chapel,

a cavern long cleared of benches and other trappings.

Only waifs and wayfarers found it,

who had fled for sanctuary from the arm of the flesh

striking out in retribution

against the failure of fate to fulfill dreams,

as expressed in such transgressions as soiled shoes

and unsatisfactorily completed chores.

Christ's banner called, "COME UNTO ME,"

no matter how deep the fall from grace:

through lost Little League games to failed tests

to dates that traded up to shun disappointment.

Evidently, He did not see it,

or at least was not so startled.

He always reached; He always called.

II.

I could now see the top of the window sill,

full of the dust of stone, of me,

and of those before me whose legacy was retained below mine.

Christ reached in the half-light as a dove mourned and mist fell,

causing the whole window to weep.

How did this quiet place understand

the momentary light affliction of mortals

finding that filling larger shoes did not equal stepping into invincibility?

Shadows in the corner drew my eyes~

I didn't see the stone,

but heard the ring and dance of glass across the floor

through the throb of adrenaline,

and the clicking as it skipped to a resting place out of sight.

It was forgotten in the distress of random color

that had lost its form that lay across the floor.

The window still wept, I wept,

and the dove still mourned.

I sifted through the shards, touching some familiar form,

red trailIs spreading through the tears of the window,

and the window's requiem.

III.

Light broke through the heavy air,

the clouds spent in the mist.

The laughter of the sunlight on the ceiling

in greens and blues and reds shed long before that day

had not been told that Christ lay shattered.

Perhaps it saw what I had not~

as I lifted my gaze to the stream through the window,

I saw that He still called, "COME UNTO ME."

He called still!

I remembered kindly coaches,

invested teachers,

and just-friends who resisted the scorning

of those fancying themselves our betters and critics:

a mosaic of similar tesserae.

The had colors like to Christ's,

who knows that the broken speak more freely

because they have flown from their original framework

to fill a larger place.

The dove mourned one last time that I had not seen Him as He was,

and fell silent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Free verse allows a pivotal moment in time to be set up and all of its colors and textures examined in-depth without concern that the couplets be forced to rhyme. Sometimes happy accidents of rhyme (red/shed) or alliteration (failure/fate/fill and freely/flown/framework/fill) occur naturally as the narration unfolds.

A Chicken, A Kaleidescope, and the Pottery Barn

There was a hen with a tube of mosaics
That made watchers cry, "Goodness sakes!"
So it caused some alarm
At the Pottery Barn
When a salesmen showed how well chicken bakes.

Where should I begin? The limerick above was a case of rising to a challenge to compose, with $10 on the line. I probably won't collect the prize; somehow, getting a chicken and a kaleidescope to converge at The Pottery Barn is its own reward.

The dare came forth on a message board thread about Edward Lear that was a spinoff from a thread about tears that was a spinoff from something else. Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat" was quoted, as well as several poems that I'd never encountered. He felt pretty free to improvise when trying to get couplets to rhyme. Our crowd can do some improvisation of its own, since there were several other things going on that had nothing to do with Edward Lear before we got to The Pottery Barn. I still haven't figured out how the chicken and the kaleidescope made it into the conversation.

Today, a friend who makes his living by his right-brained wits and I discussed the role that commissions by patrons played in both classical composition and art. In that day, royals and other wealthy folk rather than publishing companies and record labels came up with the cash to fund these projects. They probably offered opinions on how they wanted the final result to sound as they signed the cheques. The creative juices would have to find a way to flow down the given sluice.

There are still instances where composition is called upon to take a certain shape. A regular feature on The Mac Davis Show involved the star sitting in front of the audience with his guitar, attempting to instantly put together a verse from odd suggestions called out to him. One instance in particular must have really made an impression on me, because I still remember the lyric.

The topic was bleu cheese.

What happened was as follows:

My cheese fell in love with my banana
As sometimes cheeses do.
This morning, I ate my banana.
Then, my cheese was blue.

Let's hear it for the flow of the juices down the sluices!

The Road

The earth is green beneath me,
The sunlight clearest gold.
The breeze teases me forward
As I start off down the road.

I find some scattered stumbling stones
Of which I was never told.
Signposts shake in angry winds
As I stumble down the road.

The miles compress my shoulders;
Memories make a heavy load.
My knees give way beneath me--
I have lain down in the road.

I see the tracks etched deeply,
As though cut while pushing through a flood.
Still they stretch on out before me....
It's time to move on down the road.


"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart....Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 'Make level paths for your feet,' so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." (Heb. 12:1-3,12-13)

Torch

From dancing to free-falling
With strength already spent,
The signal fire of victory
Becomes a torch for the descent.

When do the depths take over?
When does darkness eat the light?
What is left but sleeping
When surrounded by the night?

Sundance throught the lattice
Opens forward-looking eyes.
Sundance on the water
Calls me to rise and come outside.

Strong, like Sun above,
Soft, like mother's love.



Ps. 139:8
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

Is. 50:10
Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God.

John 1:4, 5.9a, 14
In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness....The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world....
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Rom. 8:37-39
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.


What a thought: God carries a torch for us when we've fallen out of love with our own existence, from which we can reignite!

Hut One, Hut Two....Haiku!

I posted this half-jokingly on a strange message board thread, and it didn't quite go over. I thought I'd try to pass it off as serious art here instead.

Unrequited

I, the empty room,
You, the absent resident.
The light burns unseen.

Nebraska in Winter

Nebraska in Winter


January fills the waning afternoon.
The sun has closed a gray curtain
Against the cold, the flat water is already
Lying still in its bed.

The windows are wrapped in freshly tatted lace.
It glistens as the porch light reports to stand sentry.

In the morning, the sun grins broadly
He must be thinking a little of summer!
I'm late, and dash outside, coat open
And the prank is sprung.

Cold hands shake as I close the coat snugly.
Sunlight watches from the snow, laughing as I run.

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Football playoffs are a necessity to keep tourism from dwindling to nothing in January.

Collected....

Collected...A Poem for a Black Vase

I greet you brightly
Though as a curiosity and a dark enigma.
I am open enough
To display a good handul--a respectable collection!

I extend to you
Too much miscellania to list!
I bring them fully:
The whims, fancies, edicts and truths, with their far-reaching origins.

I hear laughter
Telling me that my dirge is not mournful.
I hear sighing
Telling me without words that my comedy is an exasperation.

I recoil the offering,
Tucking in like a show horse conditioned for the ring.
I become still,
Tending the secret garden silently behind closed doors.

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The vase was actually a simple glazed black vase that had been used as a pencil holder. It had a hand around it that seemed to be offering you the vase when the fingers were toward you, and withdrawing it when the fingers were turned away. That contrast, along with the fact that it was black on the outside and white on the inside, led to the contrast between the first two and last two stanzas, and the alternating use of "I" and "T", which is a symbol of the revelation of "I" being banned or fenced off. A discussion of the internal censor that plagues writers actually inspired the train of thought; the vase helped to shape it.

The reference to the show horse being tucked would probably only make sense to another horse nut. That show ring posture is called "going collected", and the use of that image was inspired by the title.