life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the month “July, 2015”

dancing…Β 

 

 Music is playing, 
music with an aim, produced,

music of collusion and desire,

insistent and sexual.

Hard not to move with the music.

Hard not to fall into the rhythm,

seduce and be seduced.

But don’t slip on the blood 

on the floor.
Other music plays,

silent, within.

Different feel, different band.

Music of a beating heart,

melody of tumbling water,

lullaby whispered for a lifetime,

song of hearts set free.

The Beloved cuts in.

β€œMay I have this one?”
No one to impress, only to offend.

No one to dance for, only with.

Dance.

Let joy move you,

even in the face of evil,

let love move you.

Before the guns, 

behind the prison bars,

on the gallows, dance.

Dance on your own grave.

When they threaten you, dance

the other dance that at last

will consume them as well.
Unseen, though you know within,

the Beloved takes you in steady arms.

Dance.
__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»

 

 the story of your name is written in my book, your beginning, the moment where you felt you ended and I begin. That is your beginning, child. 
 

You begin where you end and I begin. 

 

And the story keeps writing, child. After beginning there is adventure. After beginning there is trust and falling and catching and believing and choosing and waiting. There is much waiting and beginning again. 

 

Your story running right off the page with Me.      – Loop Devotional from Gather Ministries 

πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»

Listen to Lee Ann Womack sing I Hppe You Dance  http://youtu.be/RV-Z1YwaOiw
πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»πŸ’ƒπŸ»

photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

  

soul listening

  
The intellect wants a summary meaning – all well and good for the purposeful nature of the mind. But the soul craves depth of reflection, many layers of meaning, nuances without end, references and allusions and prefigurations. All these enrich the texture of an image or story and please the soul by giving it much food for rumination.                                                           – Thomas Moore

 

 You’ll know you’ve made the right decision when there is peace in your heart. Stop listening to what the world says you should do. Start listening to your own heart. There are only a few people in this world who will stay completely true to you, and YOU should be one of them. Listen to your own voice, your own soul, too many people listen to the noise of the world, instead of themselves. Deep inside, you know what you want, let no one decide that for you. β€” Unknown
 

 Where does that singing start, you know,
that thin soundβ€”almost pure light?

Not the birds at false dawn or their song 

when morning comes, feathered throats

warm with meaning. A different kind of music.
Listen, it is somewhere near you.

In the heart, emptied of fear, 

stubbornly in love 

with itself at last, the old

desires a ruined chorus,

a radiant bloody choir.
Where does the singing start?

Here, where you are, there’s room

between your heartbeats,

as if everything you have ever been

begins, inside, to sing.

❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️

A Summer’s Singing by Lorna Crozier

Listen to D. H. T. sing Listen to Your Heart http://youtu.be/C4HJ0zfZ-EM

❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️❀️

photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

Love has feet that walk it through time.Β Β  Β  – Jeff Brown

 

 Every choice is always the wrong choice,
Every vote cast is always cast away-

How can truth hover between alternatives?
Then love me more than dearly, love me wholly,

Love me with no weighing of circumstance,

As I am pledged in honour to love you:
With no weakness, with no speculation

On what might happen should you and I prove less

Than bringers-to-be of our own certainty.

Neither was born by hazard: each foreknew

The extreme possession we are grown into.
πŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’ž

Whole Love by Robert Graves. Public Domain.

  
Listen to Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville sing Don’t Know Much http://youtu.be/WmuJ0us63GQ

πŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’žπŸ’ž

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

questions that don’t go away…

  

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest
breathing

like the ones

in the old stories
who could cross

a shimmering bed of dry leaves

without a sound,
you come 

to a place

whose only task
is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.
requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and
to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,
questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,
questions

that have patiently 

waited for you,
questions that have no right 

to go away.

πŸ‚πŸπŸ‚πŸπŸ‚πŸπŸ‚πŸπŸ‚

  Sometimes by David Whyte

 

Listen to Norah Jones sing Things You Don’t Have to Do http://youtu.be/mdyQCRgtDhM 
πŸ‚πŸƒπŸπŸƒπŸ‚πŸπŸƒπŸ‚πŸπŸƒπŸ‚πŸ

Photo sources found on www.pinterest.com/al513

today’s choice

  
Listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd sing Free Bird http://youtu.be/iEAn9dNavT4

  

Happy 4thΒ 

  
I’m reading a book on hope

which sounds like I’ve taken up tatting

old fashioned and harmless
hope is unpopular

even Buddhists diss it telling us to live

in one awful moment at a time

and these days almost everyone wants to be a Buddhist
hope is hard to grasp when your imagination’s

grown fat on darkness

like the thick underside of a mushroom
tragedy is grand scale

predictably beautiful in its way

hope is hokey

imperfect full of stumbling little acts
the way a strand of neighbors standing in the rain

on the shoulder of Highway One American flags

in their hands and homemade signs:

Peace is Patriotic

can make another strand start up

even in the imagination
standing on a curve of the coast highway

where the land seems to fall away

into the open mouth of the ocean

their bodies like flags

waving sloppily

steadfast in the downpour

πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ       
How to Hope by Katharine Harer – with thanks to Rebecca Solnit for her book, Hope in the Dark

πŸ’™β€οΈπŸ’™β€οΈπŸ’™β€οΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

Listen to Los Lobos/Grateful Dead sing This Land is Your Land http://youtu.be/zM18HENqNbk

❀️

But the day is past. The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.

John Adams

July 03, 1776 to Abigail Adams 

read full letter at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/john-adams-to-abigail-adams-2/

   
 

interesting conversations (grade: C-)

  
HAMLET: To be, or not to be–that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep–

No more–and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep–

To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. — Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! — Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

πŸ™€πŸ™€πŸ™€πŸ™€πŸ™€

Read more at http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_001.html#q445B8QYR85jGYt2.99

 

 I think of difficult days
Days I struggle to stay alive

To keep my head above water

To put one foot in front of the other

To stay hydrated in the middle of my water works
I think of days of joy

When everything sparkles

When I say hello to the bright-eyed me in the mirror

When I am so glad I’m alive

So connected to the whole
I think about the moods of nature

The sunny days

The gray days

Days of angry storms

or gentle raindrops

Days of extreme
Just like me

Extreme weather

caused by my energy

the energy around me 

environmental and

relational factors
personal forecast

Todays weather calls for

Sunny outlook

with occasional clouds

a few showers through out the day

wine at sunset

moon full tonight  

with a dream or two of your kisses

 still warm on my lips

floating through

Waking to a great day tomorrow 

until I see you again

  😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

AL

  
Listen to Amos Lee sing Soul Suckers http://youtu.be/zqidM_U9rgU

β˜”οΈβ˜€οΈβ˜”οΈβ˜€οΈβ˜”οΈβ˜€οΈ

photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

   
  

picture thisΒ 

 

 a photograph 

a memory

a poem 

a song

a kiss

a touch

a slap

a smile

a frown

a gift

a breath

a pause

a word – 

of love or hate or truth or lie 

   all vivid pictures 

memorials in a lifetime

of moments never to be forgotten

snapshots of a single frame in time

just a shutter-length

a stutter-length

an eye-lash blink

never to be here again –

yet never to be gone –

always within us

they live forever

we live forward 

becoming the collective 

of all these moments

 as we grow

with each opportunity

we choose to become –

more or less –

we gain courage 

we live with integrity

with truth. 

or we remain hidden 

afraid to let go of what’s gone. 

we make these choices every instant we live – 

every moment ours to decide:

to be,

or not to be? 

yes, Mr. Shakespeare, 

that, is still, the question. 

AL 

  

Listen to Rosemary Clooney sing Sway http://youtu.be/eWI5tyS_sTg πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜πŸ˜˜

Top photo by Fisherman Dan @ Branford CT

bottom photo source @ www.pinterest.com/al513

πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™

There was nothing there when I heard a voice.

Haven’t you had a strangeness like this?

I did not respond right away, ignoring it,

and its restlessness increased.

I chucked it off as imagination.

Haven’t you ignored queasy feelings?

Perhaps it was from the empty fields,

but there was stillness in the grass and air.

This uneasiness followed me into the car

and went with me.

When stillness is so quiet, nothing is heard.

There was nothing in my house.

Nothing in the sky. Nothing in the isolated miles.

The voice persisted.

Ever ignore something that refused to be ignored?

It was telling me to enjoy and love.

The message was everywhere it needed to be.

All I had to do was listenβ€”then it was everywhere.

πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™πŸ’™

When Stillness Is Heard by Martin Willitts, Jr.

nothing is worth more than this day! Β Β 

  
Your life isn’t behind you; your memories are behind you. Your life is ALWAYS ahead of you. Today is a new day. Seize it!       – Steve Maraboli

  
  

Listen to Frank Sinatra sing The Best Is Yet to Come http://youtu.be/TOyeyOEmFtE

πŸ’πŸ“πŸŽπŸ‰πŸŠπŸπŸ‘πŸŒπŸ‡πŸ‹πŸ

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

  

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