Poetry

“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” 
~Plato

My Poem on this Mother's Day

Why
Would I Not Know
the Color
of My Own
Hair?

Brown
   to
Grey,
What would
My Driver's License
Say
If I went to the DMV
Today?
Young
   or
Old,
Where am I
on this Continuum
Today?

When my Heart Glows with Love,
I am Forever Young,
Timeless,
The GrandMother of Everyone.
                    (Diane; May 12, 2013)

Anger

it really is up to you, what it will be.
are you going to fly in skies so blue
or suffer and slump in misery?

is your heart where you are, honored one?
breathe and remember, breathe and remember,

there is prayer for the soul's journey.
Sun meditations keeping your heart's rhythm
for you,
'you, who are the source of all power,
whose rays illuminate the whole world,
illuminating also my heart
so that it too can do your loving work.'

Dimensions

If all time is eternally present 

All time is unredeemable. 

What might have been is an abstraction 

Remaining a perpetual possibility 

Only in a world of speculation. 

What might have been and what has been 

Point to one end, which is always present.

-TS Eliot 

Content

Content.
Looking at the pigeons kiss
  fly above rooftops
Cats resting on each other
  fur glistening in the hot sun
Sandalwood smoke rises.
I sit here
Myself teaching me to be.

Cook Book

Melting down is an experience which happens to everyone from time to time. It's a breaking point. Whether it builds over a long period of time or just happens all at once, it breaks us down and melts us to the most basic of ingredients. At the time, they seem to be negative ingredients such as fear and despair yet, even these break down into the building blocks from which we are solidified. The fear melts down and becomes surrender. Surrender melts down and becomes peace. Peace then melts down to become harmony. Once we are in harmony, we are one with everything; we are whole. We are solidified again yet, this time with different ingredients because we remember the bitter taste of fear. It's like adding too much spice to a dish. Next time, you know to add less and counter balance it with another spice. Take what life dishes out; fulfill your hunger and be full again.

Tablets

Isn't it funny, how the things that I think,

  feel like they're written in permanent ink.

But a lie is a lie, is a lie, is a lie,

  and the truth is unbounded like the wide open sky.

The past, it is gone and the future's unknown.

  I'll switch to a pencil and stop chiseling stone.

-Brian Sweeny

Dream

Sit with lovers and choose their state.
Do not stay long with those who are not living in the heart.

Rumi

Three to Five Servings

"Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow."


-William Blake

Spy Glass

Without emptiness
How could you find space?
Without noise
How could you find silence?
Without want
There is nothing left to be found

We

Freedom will bring truth;

Truth will set you free

Through the act of meditation

We effortlessly seek truth

We effortlessly find wisdom

Though wisdom

We realize

We are already free

A Poetic Contribution to "V Day: One Billion Rising"

Woman-Child of Mother-Earth

The sense of something
Echoing inside of me,
Wanting, longing to be free
To express
What is me,
And let all see
The Womanliness
That I possess.

The Heart is all
The power that be.
Let me love
Passionately;
And soft, tenderly—
   The mother towards the child;
And sweetly, innocence—
   I, myself, the child.

May my heart of Love
And my passion of fire
Unite—
The warm furnace hearth
Burning in me,
Protecting me
From the harm
The spirit can receive
If it steps out
Into our man-world
Too meekly.

The fire and the passion
Heat my heart.
My heart burns
With the fire-love
Of a mother
Fighting for the life
Of her child.

I am fighting for the life
Of the Child
Of the Mother
Of the Earth.

This Earth-Child,
In my, our, custody,
And all of us, her daughters,
Armored messengers be.
Our heart-power
Is not available for the fight—
Our armor is too tight.
We cannot leap flames
From our Hearts,
Until we start to unpeel
His armory from us, from me.

My weapon is
My burning, flaming heart.
My protection is
The Earth’s flow within me,
And the Universal Light around me.

My soul is with the All.
My human heart,
God/dess’ messenger,
The flame
That I must allow free
So we all can join
Life’s family,
And Earth can simply be.

The Amazon Warrior
Armed with Love,
Nothing more,
Begins her conquering.

Please, come join me/us.
Time is running short.
Our Gaia is crying.
Our Love can set her free,
And in so doing,
You and me.

                                 (Diane Shavelson 1991)

For Information: V Day: One Billion Rising

Usefulness in nothing

Thirty spokes converge on a single hub,
  but it is in the space where there is nothing
    that the usefulness of the cart lies.
Clay is molded to make a pot,
  but it is in the space where there is nothing
    that the usefulness of the clay pot lies.
Cut out doors and windows to make a room,
  but it is in the spaces where there is nothing
    that the usefulness of the room lies.
Therefore,
  Benefit may be derived from something,
    but it is in nothing that we find usefulness.
~Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching

In Light I'm Meant

Traditionally, it was said that rolling boulders up hills or carry pales of water helped one achieve a state of enlightenment. These things are props for the mind to play with while it settles; like putting a baby to sleep with a rattle. Yet, these props soon start to feel empty and all that's left in the end is you. You might feel naked without them but take solace; you are meant to be naked in this light. Enlightenment is as simple as a baby's rattle. Can you hear it?

Star Light

Sometimes, the most important lessons are understood by the silence within.

"When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."

-Walt Whitman in 1865

Mind Games

The wind, it is blowing

from where? I don't know.
It's bringing a change,
who knows where to go?
Do we fight to keep our ways?
Do we fight to make them change?
How do we know what's for real,
and what's just in our brains?

Is there a god?
A big man with a plan?
Or is it all up to us,
to do what we can?

I've never met a person,
who knew anything at all.
We pretend to have answers
so we don't feel so small.

The birds in the sky
and the mice in the shed,
have much more to offer
than the stuff in our head.

-Brian Sweeny

Concentric Circles

“You will walk differently alone, dear, through a thicker atmosphere, forcing your way through the shadows of chairs, through the dripping smoke of the funnels. You will feel your own reflection sliding along the eyes of those who look at you. You are no longer insulated; but I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald from his novel Tender is the Night

Drew Dellinger: Hieroglyphic Stairway

A long term perspective based on responsibility to our great great grandchildren. A stunning recitation by a powerful poet.

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Text 'Messages'

"It's acceptance; complete surrender.
I fully believe that God is in control and that I am powerless.
It's a relief in some ways to not be responsible.
Not that I'm good at this.
I struggle every day. Every moment of every day to not give up.
But really throwing a fit and saying I can't do this anymore isn't productive.
I really have no other alternative. I HAVE to go on.
And surrendering to God makes it possible.
I also try to remember not to fight against "it" but fight for what I find the most challenging.
Like peace, sanity, acceptance.
I cannot do this life on my own.
I have to turn it over to God.

Do the action and your heart will follow."

-Laura Manzani in a text message protaining to life's stuggles