life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the month “February, 2016”

extra special

  
An extra day —

Like the painting’s fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots. 

An extra day —

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.

An extra day —

With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much —
just one day’s worth, exactly.

An extra day —

Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day —

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

💌

February 29 by Jane Hirshfield

  

 

Catch that poem 

 

 Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

– Mary Oliver

 

 Running to Catch a Poem: Remembering the Poet in the Story 

Poems came to me

As if from far away.

I would feel them coming,

I would rush into the house,

Looking for paper and pencil.

It had to be quick,

For they passed through me

And were gone forever.

💫

– Ruth Stone, “Fragrance” (in her last collection “What Love Comes To”

💥

As a poet myself, I feel for Ruth Stone, because thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert, Stone’s mode of chasing poems like runaway horses is favorite, but few have read the poet herself or even remember her name. It’s well worth seeking out her work and noticing, along the way, how she rose above a dark river of grief and pain, especially after her second husband (also a poet) hanged himself from a door in the family home.
Oh yes. Then there are two delicious further revelations in Gilbert’s account of how she heard it from Stone. When a poem got away from her, she felt it galloping away, “searching for another poet”. Then sometimes she would manage to grab an escaping poem by the tail, and would feel herself pulling it back. “In these instances, the poem would appear on the page from the last word to the first – backward, but otherwise intact.” (Elizabeth Gilbert, “Big Magic”, 65.)
Many of us dreamers know exactly how that works, as we pull back dreams by the tail as they run away. How many of the dreams that escape go searching for another dreamer?

💫

Robert Moss

 

photo sources found @ http://www.pinterest.com 

🌟
http://www.mossdreams.com

http://maryoliver.beacon.org

 

 I string words like pearls
Knotting silence between each one

like silk thread

in a jewelers skillful hands

long strands or chokers

strategic placing of diamonds

where needed

sometime a sparkling featured

brilliant jeweled pendant 

always taking special care with the hardware

the finishing is the most important

must stand up to daily use

easy for right or left hands alike

then a final polish before bagging

when each piece is complete

💦

AL
 

do a little bit more

 

I hope you have a great day

I hope you know I love you

I hope you love me in whatever way you can

I hope you see the miracles today

I hope you make good choices

I hope you find peace

I hope life blooms again for you

I hope the lights lead you home

I hope you see the shining possibility of the future 

I hope you always remember 

😘

AL

  

 One day you will find the thing
You are meant to love

And it will whittle you down

Make you lean of excess

One day the tattered baggage

You’ve been carrying from place to place

Will get set down on the side of the road

With hardly a thought

One day you’ll decide you’ve had enough

Of the shackles chaffing your ankles

And you’ll walk out of them

The ties that once bound so tightly suddenly slack

One day you’ll be nothing but sinew and bone and burning passion

All claws and wails and sweetness and strength

A wild thing

A thing that’s found its home

🏡

One Day by BRANDI REYNOLDS

 

photo sources found at http://www.pinterest.com 

talk to the birds    

  

http://www.StripyArms.com
👐🏻

It’s all connected –

All the love,

All the loss,

All the joy,

All the pain. 
The world is made of God. 

We live in the ocean of God’s breath, 

His very words. 
We are all artists. 

We all speak creation. 

Our words are our greatest art form,

make sure they create a masterpiece. 
God is love is life is truth is word is love is –

every little thing is connected to each other.   
Everything I really needed to know 

I learned from the ocean and the trees. 

The mountains introduced me to the angels. 

Acorns were my very first teachers,

the finest flock of seagulls are my most recent.

 

We are the temple. 

We includes the universe we find ourselves in. 

We are brothers and sisters to stars and starships. 

🚀

AL

  
 

   

 

cake days 

 

 I think of how cakes are so great for celebrating with the jubilant, and how they are so great for offering a little sweet in the midst of sadness. Words are good, but sometimes they fail, and when they do, there’s always cake.

It really is as simple as that.

🍰

read full blog at link below:

http://theartofsimple.net/sometimes-it-really-is-as-simple-as-cake/

  

It’s a place where God

is doing things out loud. 

Throaty passion blaring

from hot speakers. 

There’s crazy, messy, earthy energy,

colorful and a little smudgy. 

Where grace, cake and mercy

    laughs, dances and flows freely. 

Right in this river of life. 

        Everyone there knows –

‘grace is all we got

to make it through another day’

There’s an honest acknowledgement

that we got nuthin’

– and I mean nuthin’- 

to make us worthy

except 

to accept 

that we all already are

beloved. 

And that my friends

makes it rare and beautiful. 

a very hard place on this earth

to pull yourself away from. 

🎂

AL

  

We live in this era.

This blog just found me!!! Makes me deliriously happy! ❤️

Dots&Thots

We live in an era where we can hardly tell the difference between right and wrong.

We live in an era where love is nothing more than a four letter word.

We live in an era where you are judged upon how much you weigh.

We live in a era where people like or hate you based on the number of instagram follows you’ve got.

We live in an era where a mascara and a lipstick can get you your prince-charming.

image

Well.
And sadly, thats the bitter-sweet truth of the world we live in today.
Uh-uh wait.
Are we even living in the first place?

I really don’t know.

Mahek Mithare

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What is our relationship to that which is larger than us?    – Mark Nepo 

  
Picasso, when asked if painter’s ideas come to him “by chance or by design answer: “I don’t have a clue. Ideas are simply starting points. I can rarely set them down as they come to my mind. As soon as I start to work, others well up in my pen. To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing… When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas”.

 

   
  

  
Thank you, in advance. It’s what I desire. 💞

willingly

 

 It was heartbreak that showed me the courage of the feminine. The gift of having your heart smashed open by love and its related disappointments is that you remember what its like to feel everything again after days, years, lifetimes spent below armour. Through enheartened eyes, we see the courage it takes to stay in the feeling realm. We reward emotional armour because it allows us to ‘succeed’ in a survivalist world, when we should be honoring those who have the courage to remain emotionally receptive and open on the battlefields of life. It took me this long to realize that remaining heart-centred in this world is the greatest achievement of all.
💞

   – Jeff Brown

  
Courage, dear heart!
These gifts we bring

an open heart 

an open mind

empty hands

a love song pure

a life lived grateful

an eye for your beauty

a ready smile

feet quick to help the fallen

kind words spoken

a porch for sharing

a welcome hello

a warm goodbye

simplicity is hard to achieve 

yet the best things always are

❤️

AL

  
 

find photo sources at http://www.pinterest.com 

keep building  

  
Mark Nepo tells us to, 

‘put down what doesn’t work – 

so that we can find what is sacred’. 
What worked so well yesterday, 

may not work today. 

We wear out our structures of known truth, 

the frameworks of what we use for living,

for healing. 

Let them go,

trust in the new architecture – 

modern, 

with our personal, classic twist. 

We are always becoming. 

Watch for the signs of structural failure, 

build the new bridge, 

delight in this magnificent design,

those amazing cranes hanging in mid-air,

strong, foundational columns,

the rusty, hard rebar of our personal growth,

rising from deep within the waters muddy bottom, 

creating the new skyline of your life, 

welcome this new place of crossing. 

It can handle rush hour,

or heavy foot-traffic. 

Continue the build, 

always creating with the future in mind,

before the old fully implodes underneath our feet. 

🏗
AL
 
  

 

Oh yes! 

  
What a great day! and now this gift from Richard Rohr!! 

Unlearning as I go today! 

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