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Riding the currents
sleeping through storms
treading water in the dark
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sparks of harmonics
fly from my pen
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my hand
the sentient animal
of my heart
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An older poem …. words float and land. improvisational rhythms. their own kind of precision. different relationship each time. they’re just there….perhaps have always been
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Artist: Turner
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I once took a lover
Substantial as the undertow
He sang…
He sang my pulse a metronome
As mermaids surfaced mesmerized
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He showed me between his strong legs
Thick hairs, long soaked in the moon
Permeated with his strength and compassion
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To love and be loved is evermore
His words becoming the flesh of dreams
I moved like seaweed in his tides
Undulate and grounded
Melding with the cello of his landing
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Compelled, the spirits
Shuffling wistfully in dust
Remembered their names
Became eager for color
Incanted lullabies
Spellbound by our heat
As it rose to claim them
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Proud, my body animal
Went to ground bearing seed
I became witness and thunder
Rounded and swelling in storms
Unfolding broad wings bearing rain
A haloed tunnel of bone and cusp
~
All forgotten in the first cry of birthing
As in this moment my world split in two
And continued to divide into ocean and land
Both realms indigenous to the lost souls of Man.
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Artist: “Whispers” Monique Passicot
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There is nothing ambiguous about loss
it fills the spaces left behind
a tenderness that registers the slightest wind
so vulnerable it stops breath from breathing
in sudden recognition of how hard it is
to fill space when empty
waking each day turned inside out
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There is nothing ambiguous about loss
That sharp clacking of stone upon stone
leaving a path of shards
the hidden gravity that shades the color blue
Where memory seems more than skin
translucent but barnacled…
a legacy of the light of dead stars
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There is nothing ambiguous about loss
it separates the cut edges
opening abrasions with graveled hands
where hearing is more sensitive than sight
as music evokes both acid and balm
and the heaviness of dreaming
is carried in weary flesh
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There is nothing ambiguous about loss
I am ever present in its deep grain
comprising the growth rings
through which side branches grow
I have become something other than I was
something less something more
while separated from beauty
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This seemingly inexhaustible thirst
redeemed in the breath of wildness
each inhalation responding
each exhalation my wordless prayer
In animal distress
I bend low at the stream
Silent, listening…. I drink
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Photo credit: http://amolecularmatter.tumblr.com/
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The city’s crows peck and skewer carrion
selectively choosing between the perennial litter
left sodden and desultory in the winter rains.
I watch their darker shapes swoop about
on mite plagued wings
Curious and feisty feet hopping
through bony limbed trees.
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I’d like to think we share
a similar response to the litter,
to this common visual insult,
despite our differences
of foot or beak or choice of cuisine.
They caw at me as I toe debris to the street,
summer’s occasional litter bagging I tell myself
improbable now in the drenched and cold.
~
Above me their black wings
posture and flex in raucous recognition.
I know they’re looking at me.
They’re intelligent birds
They own this side of the street
They recognize faces…
Startled I wonder what they see in mine?
Is there a password for this?
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pencil sketch: j.h.white
Winter Solstice 2015
Every December for the past few years I’ve curated a storm of snowflakes from white paper. I’ll accumulate a blizzard eventually. Try as I may, because they’re small, I’ve never been able to duplicate the same snowflake twice.
Each year seems to have a certain design theme…a defining scissors Rorschach test of sorts. Some years they’re gracefully hypnotic, one year like a child cutting with blunt scissors. Last year the flakes looked more like an archaic language waiting to be deciphered. This year I wanted to branch out and so I added glue, a pencil and a little paint.
There’s not enough peace in the world to feel giddy this year making paper snowflakes. Not that there ever has been enough peace in the world, but lately peace seems more fragile. I’m aware of the families sleeping in tents and under trees along the roadside. I think of the children as I draw.
I’ve also been daydreaming about the absolute quiet of snow. I wonder, what would it be like if the entire world experienced a few days of absolute quiet?
Drawing collage by j.h. white
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Tepid fleshed, soft and juicy.
we move through
the microbial stew
with
winged thoughts,
hearts that prism lightning
and
opposable dancing thumbs
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“A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.” – Marie Curie~~
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Grazing
our lips meet
in wild fields
~
Before sailing
into
a jungle
of beastly
delight
~
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“Passions that quicken your senses, fulfill; quench the thirst of lonesome years! Yet the sun has shadows, learn to control your will; to enjoy life long happiness, not tears! Wait! Rise to the stars above & thrill! Arouse the very flames of life! Sweetheart, kiss me: Hold still, hold still!”….. Excerpt from Dr Bronner’s original rant.
Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap … http://www.subgenius.com/updates/5-99news/X0007_BRONNER.txt.html
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“The human microbiome (or human microbiota) is the aggregate of microorganisms, a microbiome that resides on the surface and in deep layers of skin, in the saliva and oral mucosa, in the conjunctiva, and in the gastrointestinal tracts. They include bacteria, fungi, and archaea. One study indicated they outnumber human cells 10 to 1.”
Human microbiome …. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome
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Drawing and poem … j h white
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How many times will I shed raw and return?
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Or is it a stronger current
amorphously assembling and deconstructing
as I unwittingly rally
behind the porosity of thought
the seduction of words
~
I am a small planet
a symbiotic microbial world
~
My peripheral orbit
flings so far in its trajectory
that now
the axis is nearly invisible.
~
I can only feel it…
Imagining
this bright nucleus of love
teeming with life…
~
Tantra involves a very powerful substance, which is buddha-nature, or our enlightened nature, eating us from the inside out rather than being reached by stripping away layers from the outside.
Crazy Wisdom by Chögyam Trungpa
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“If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.”
― Charles Bukowski
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Poem and sketch by j.h.white. …..I am aware that microbes are single cell organisms. In representing my relationship with them in this series though, I prefer immersion without thought, surrendering to the imaginative, perceptual and sensate possibilities. Symbiotic microcosmic navigation amongst my tribes….xxoo
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I want to understand my part is in this tragedy. I see these images every day…..the white suits, the latrine green or bubblegum pink plastic gloves.
I stare at the photo from NBC World News. I’d googled face masks worn in epidemics after listening to an NPR broadcast about the Liberian aide workers who have taken the job of bringing in the dead. How does one comprehend such a thing?
I decided to draw one of the photos…to find the spaces between the forms…to make this intimate in some way. It becomes a meditation as I concentrate on the crisp plastic suits, the individual postures of the men, the dark slits behind the masks. I breath in, paying attention to the act of drawing what I see.
I breath out. I begin to feel I am breathing for the aide workers who are praying that they remain protected within those suits.
I breath in. I breath out. I feel as if I am breathing now for the ones in the bags. The ones who are no longer breathing. I breath to ease their passage in death. I breath for the loved ones, the children left behind. I keep breathing and concentrating.
I begin mixing the colors for the gloves. Zinc white, phthalo turquoise, a little Jenkins green. I’m almost finished. While applying the paint to the gloves, however, I am overcome. I watch as all my own sorrows rise to the surface. I realize now that sorrow is simply sorrow. I am unable to separate one sorrow from another.
But through this experience I have learned one personal way to be with what is happening in the world I live in and am a part of. Each moment as I breath in, as I breath out, life presents itself. This becomes my prayer….my quiet revolution.
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Here is the link to the NPR (National Public Radio) episode. It’s one of the more human articles and well worth a look.
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You may have seen this inspired piece written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It says so much and so well about these times we live in. My hope is her words spread like wild fire in dry grass and we all see the signal flames.
Poetry of Light 