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 Mar 2016 Nirvana
Emily B
messenger
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
Emily B
I think
if the Hawk
is a messenger
between heaven and earth
then, Sometimes,
so am I.
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
Emily B
I saw a question
in your eyes
the last time we walked.

I can’t remember
the sky
ever shining bluer.

I wonder, if, somewhere
under passion-colored leaves
you found an answer.
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
Emily B
a co-worker just confided that i am a better cook
than a colleague who considers herself an expert in the field.
much surprised, i didn't think in my year tenure
i had shared enough of my kitchen
to make an impression.
apparently it is the simple things,
that count in life.
i am reminded of the old lady
giving instructions to the young housewife,
to make good butter you must first have a
good brown or mouse-colored cow.
and never feed it turnips.
i won't go through the entire list of thou shalts.
but it must be true
when we shine heart on the fruits of our labors
they will in turn nourish and enrich
the hearts that love us.
a draft
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
Emily B
to do list
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
Emily B
today i washed out the tall pack basket with the canvas straps
tomorrow i will start a game of hide and seek
throughout the house and barn
to fill it with all the detritus of running
an 18th century kitchen

1. the cast iron pots all have to be burnt and seasoned
2. locate my tomahawk, i will need that, the frontier is a brutal place
3. spoons and utensils and s-hooks
4. the wooden bowls and pottery mugs
5. the mint tea i collected from the garden last year and dried
6. staples, like corn meal and salt, all in period appropriate containers
7. receipt books, because recipes were unheard of
8. the seeds i saved, can't remember what they came from, just from the area out of the garden where i collected them -- guess that will be a surprise for later
9. vessels for collecting water
10. spinning wheel and wool roving, though it won't fit in the basket

I guess that's a start. Maybe now I won't dream that I come to the fort completely unprepared for the first day of the season.
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
Emily B
STAY CLOSE, MY HEART -- RUMI

Stay close, my heart, to the one who knows your ways;
Come into the shade of the tree that allays has fresh flowers.
Don't stroll idly through the bazaar of the perfume-markers:
Stay in the shop of the sugar-seller.
If you don't find true balance, anyone can deceive you;
Anyone can trick out of a thing of straw,
And make you take it for gold
Don't squat with a bowl before every boiling ***;
In each *** on the fire you find very different things.
Not all sugarcanes have sugar, not all abysses a peak;
Not all eyes possess vision, not every sea is full of pearls.
O nightingale, with your voice of dark honey! Go on lamenting!
Only your drunken ecstasy can pierce the rock's hard heart!
Surrender yourself, and if you cannot be welcomes by the Friend,
Know that you are rebelling inwardly like a thread
That doesn't want to go through the needle's eye!
The awakened heart is a lamp; protect it by the him of your robe!
Hurry and get out of this wind, for the weather is bad.
And when you've left this storm, you will come to a fountain;
You'll find a Friend there who will always nourish your soul.
And with your soul always green, you'll grow into a tall tree
Flowering always with sweet light-fruit, whose growth is interior.

(translated by Andrew Harvey)
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
Emily B
my world changed today
and nobody has noticed
yet
i don't like change
don't deal well
with upheaval
with letting go

even when it is needed

but at least there are words
and time has a way
of erasing memories

a year from now
no one will even remember
i once filled a chair
during the night shift
being able to see that you fulfill a certain time and purpose doesn't make it any easier to accept when folks move on, i guess
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
The Dedpoet
Where are you poet?
You poetess?
I search and become everything:

A pen of the sun's fire
Writing on a slab of jade,
I come face to face with all poets,
The roots of their soul dividing
Themselves dissolving into words
Writing the passionate fire sitting
On pillars of clouds,
A thousand moons surrounding them
Each like some serpent god,
They write the darkness like
Guardians of the night,
A stallar vertigo into the words,
They become like flowers
Of the Resurrection and in a lightning
Flash I am on a terrace of gold
Watching over a field of flora
And the storm's of April's pains
Comes to them each as a moon
In the sorrowing takes each word
And swallows them into verses,
They are the testament of wounds.

And still even more,
All are alone in the abyss they all share,
One man stands tall and says,
"Alone with everybody!"
He smiles as each poet places themselves
In a whirlpool of time,
They find a moment invisible
And make it a mirror,
It reflects forevermore the broken
Images of their past, they piece
Themselves upon a verse of shadows,
A verse is born and a piece of them
Stays in the past.

Suddenly there are those who live,
They are reborn from the womb!
They see daylight in the sorrows
And find happiness in clusters,
A perfect memory where the man
Loved the woman, her touch is like
An immortal fire burning into the focus,
His touch is a cascade of rose petals
On her naked body......

The young poets gather,
The defeat the circular days,
Fantastically naive and flamboyant,
Their moments flare like a sun's
Lost kisses on  magnetosphere's outer
Skin,
The procession of new pain
Fills the paper as they write an ancient
Language unbeknownst to them,
Their blood to papyrus, Sanskrit's
Unified language.

I see the poet's in their middle years,
Strong flavors mixed with heavy grief,
The clandar Is splattered in blood
While their dream sails away in paper boats
Sinking in the sea of forgotten hope,
They sculpt words of deep guts
That penetrate my spirit,
Time becomes a race against their pens,
Their fire blue into the jade
And life is lived on a string of theorise,
They become enlivened in the children,
Enormous mouthfuls of hope
Arisen from soils of regret,
And the perfect words ripen
Like a midsummer's harvest,
They spontaneously eat the fruit
Of life's labors and digest words
With seeds for the planting of more.

I turn my face in my search and see
The years turn golden,
These are the poets with life full
In experience and they write like
Youth writes, but written already
With eyes of indecipherable experience,
Their wounds are closed but written
In fresh blood, I could not understand!
They burn and are not consumed,
Their words are eternal in
Endless galleries of Picasso like
Verses, the words penetrate
Leaving me hopeful and confused.
I wonder if I would ever write
The light and the darkened like
They that balance both....

I find all poets in the middle of forever,
I see their walls of frightful memory,
Their home for tomorrow's bloom,
The self knowledge turning in
On itself and becoming wisdom,
They drown themselves in clarity,
Cling to audacious hope,
Remembering the nocturnal nightmare
Of the past, they are endlessly broken,
Always fixing themselves in words.
And I wrote a poem for them in
My mind:
    
        Poets, you little gods,
        The fire of life in your pen,
        You write the existence
        Forevermore on a slab of jade;
        
       I see the souls and angels
       Reading a book of every poem,
       I see God reading to understand
       His strange and wondrous creation
       Called the poet.
For all of you poets.
 Mar 2016 Nirvana
mikecccc
What a Disney shape
life is no circle
life has corners
for hiding
and pointy bits
for stabbing
not sure what shape
that is
maybe
a sharpened triangle.
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