simply says it
via Project Happiness on facebook
Listen to You Can Close Your Eyes – Anika Larsen & Jessie Mueller http://youtu.be/8USVXvRUKoI
life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the month “April, 2015”
Today!
This is why we survive the winter
The world shows off
Flowers are bursting color
Flaming forsythia frames the river
Fuzzy trees and bushes make me squirmy happy
The sky beams blue
The water waves joyfully
The sand gladly greets,
us with our winter legs
(except for the hardcore tanning bed crowd – already too brown for the rest of us)
little girls and their tattooed fathers pick up shells and rocks
to fill purple buckets of heartwarming, serious cuteness
coconut oil floats deliciously on the warm breeze
I can’t stop smiling
Spring has sprung
Let love begin
AL 4/29/15
shine on
This poem is not meant for you
unless you too have been
underground
choking on your life’s debris, and
playing peek-a-boo with death seriously
then the surprise of ten thousand buttercups
out of nowhere on every side where they’d
never been before on my daily walk
might have had the effect on you it did on me
because suddenly
I wanted to understand how these particular
flowers came to be—the whole evolutionary
history of mosses, ferns and angiosperms,
the miracle of photosynthesis and
history of mosses, ferns and angiosperms,
the miracle of photosynthesis and
DNA, not
to mention the longings of the Milky Way
to reflect itself in the form called flowers and
in these buttercups, which seemed like a
visitation from the sun, urging me to tell you, in case like me you had forgotten
we are the universe’s latest way of blooming.
🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼
Untitled [This Poem Is Not Meant for You] by Willow Harth
Listen to Coldplay sing Fix You http://youtu.be/pY9b6jgbNyc
☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️❤️
photo sources @ www.pinterest.com/al513
buzzing
If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that joy is not a constant state, but a low grade buzz that sometimes roars and other times purrs, but that it is always available to sink down into, if I’m feeling the ache that makes for tears or the ache that makes for celebration. – Jen Lemen
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
Jen Lemen says my poetry-prompt word of the day – buzz –
as she reads my blog and responds.
I love Jen Lemen over at ‘Hopeful World’
http://hopefulworld.org
I missed my word as I read it the first time,
I missed my word as I read it the first time,
not mindful of today’s word,
because I was still stuck in yesterday’s word ‘vine’.
Then there it is, with a Lemen-y flair…
My heart leaps to attention
I fly right there to find it
Copy the sentence…
Smile
yes, ‘joy is a low grade buzz’
along with
peace
love
harmony
they all live under the same everyday rooftop
once you understand them
allow them in
they are your friends
constant companions
making life balanced
glorious
stable
the foundation made of jewels
gold
strong rock
like granite
storms come and go
the buzz stays
and becomes the music we dance to
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
ACL 11/14/13
My heart leaps to attention
I fly right there to find it
Copy the sentence…
Smile
yes, ‘joy is a low grade buzz’
along with
peace
love
harmony
they all live under the same everyday rooftop
once you understand them
allow them in
they are your friends
constant companions
making life balanced
glorious
stable
the foundation made of jewels
gold
strong rock
like granite
storms come and go
the buzz stays
and becomes the music we dance to
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
ACL 11/14/13
Listen to The Muppets sing Ode to Joy
http://youtu.be/VnT7pT6zCcA
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
a few months ago I was Jen Lemen’s apple cake angel 😇 https://lifeacousticandamplified.wordpress.com/?s=apple+cake&submit=Search
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
blue skies
Close the doors.
You’ve already paid your dues.
Light the candles. Breathe
the Lilly of the Valley, the lilacs
in the vase. Reach for a pen.
Take a couple sheets of
parchment paper. Stretch.
Do Chi Gong. It seems obvious,
but sit down. Close your eyes.
Reach into the abyss. Tap into
the divinity, the Oversoul,
the Muse of the Mind. Let
your thoughts spill onto paper.
Let’s pretend you are the newest star.
Rescue your mind from a ditch.
Be aware a certain absurdity attends
outside the door. Awaken.
You are the healing waters.
Close the door, but don’t close
your mind. Come find your
own blue sky.
Listen to Willie Nelson sing Blue Skies http://youtu.be/sGZDwxnjG1g
Photo by Fisherman Dan @Branford, CT
we are all
We are challenged to love the unloveable
Do good to those who hate us
there is only one way to get this done –
To see myself as I am.
It is what it is.
I am the other.
I am the unlovable.
Only I know how much this is true,
full of lies and ego.
I want to fight my way to the top,
crush those beneath.
I want to do things my way.
The earth to revolve around my desires.
Under my self-pleasing ways,
I am afraid,
because I know the truth.
Yes, I am the unlovable
yet I am loved
I have experienced this love
and it has changed me,
at least parts of me,
I should say,
It is changing me…
daily
I have been overwhelmed by grace,
drowned in the goodness of love,
I have been overwhelmed by grace,
drowned in the goodness of love,
resurrected in loves fire.
It has allowed me to see my imperfections,
accept them,
even laugh at them
and challenged me to
admit the truth,
to change,
to open,
to die,
to become vulnerable,
to love myself and
to love others,
who are the unlovable as well
It has allowed me to see my imperfections,
accept them,
even laugh at them
and challenged me to
admit the truth,
to change,
to open,
to die,
to become vulnerable,
to love myself and
to love others,
who are the unlovable as well
Only love can mend a heart
only love can break it in two –
or into a million pieces,
then turn it to gold
in order to allow this love to flow through the broken and scarred,
to heal the world,
wounded healers all,
by sharing this same great love
this loves which loves us all
Yes, we are all the unlovable
by sharing this same great love
this loves which loves us all
Yes, we are all the unlovable
yet we are loved,
just as we are.
😈😇👿😇😈😇👿😇
ACL 8/28/13
just as we are.
😈😇👿😇😈😇👿😇
ACL 8/28/13
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
What haunts us are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others. – Maria Torok & Nicholas Abraham
sometimes.
I don’t know what to say.
sometimes.
The very words catch behind
safe guards of emotion.
sometimes.
Speech refuses to commence.
sometimes.
Words pool behind the locked door. Waiting.
sometimes.
I lay and pray the words you don’t want to hear will dissolve inside me.
sometimes.
Silence fills the outside air.
sometimes.
Inside air is thick and muggy,
like the rain forest
or Savannah in August.
sometimes.
I go to sleep with heavy lungs,
weight of the unspoken hanging like the world between us.
sometimes.
ACL 6/19/13
Listen to Sara Bareilles sing Brave http://youtu.be/QUQsqBqxoR4
🙊🙉🙈🙊🙉🙈🙊🙉🙈🙊🙉🙈🐵
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
settling in to happiness
What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?
First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears
And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.
But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.
What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world
To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?
O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions—
Like Hafiz.
💑💑💑💑💑💑💑💑💑
What Happens by Hafiz
Today I want to greet joy
Without a trace of protection
I want to open my eyes to the light
Without a blink of dread
I want to look at my past
Without a whisper of shame
I want to look at my future
Without a hint of fear
Today I want to dance
Without pausing to think
I want to belly laugh
Without caring who hears
I want to open my arms
and twirl in the sun
Until I fall breathless
free to be myself
full of the joy
that I open to allow
completely letting go
Without even a smudge of suspicion
or an instant of hesitation
ACL 3/4/13
Listen to Stevie Wonder sing For Once In My Life http://youtu.be/3oZClso_yUQ
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
organic 🌎
We begin in the dark. Within.
Life.
Love.
Joy.
Invisible. Visible.
Grief.
Pain. Suffering. Healing.
Faith. Trust. Peace.
We grow and learn organically.
Evolution. Beginning. Ending.
Revolution. Courage. Strength.
Resolution. Passion. Alive.
All things come in their perfect time.
Longing. Loving. Belonging.
All things come.
Herky-jerky. Flowing.
Our choice.
Freedom.
Creativity.
Beauty. Kindness. Truth. Hope.
Are those gifts with wings
living in our hair.
Hovering around our shoulders.
Kissing our cheeks.
Wiping away our tears.
Birthing our songs as we rise from the ash. Flying.
As we live the dash.
In between.
Birth. Death. Visible. Invisible.
Connection. Miracles. Mystery.
Nature. Seasons. Harvest. Compost.
It’s who we are.
Dirt. Dust. Clay. Organic.
Earth.
ACL 11/19/13
https://m.facebook.com/WatercolorFlowers
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. Genesis 1:31
humming
One old man keeps humming the same few notes
of some song he thought he had forgotten
back in the days when as he knows there was
no word for life in the language
and if they wanted to say eyes or heart
they would hold up a leaf and he remembers
the big tree where it rose from the dry ground
and the way the birds carried water in their voices
they were all the color of their fear of the dark
and as he sits there humming he remembers
some of the words they come back to him now
he smiles hearing them come and go
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
Parts of a Tune by W. S. Merwin
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.
People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.
Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People wont even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.
People wont even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.
Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.
Any Morning by William Stafford
Listen to James Taylor sing You’ve Got A Friend http://youtu.be/xEkIou3WFnM
Quote/photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
life: acoustic & amplified 