Todays weather calls for
Sunny outlook
with occasional clouds floating through
a few showers always possible
through out the day
daisies sure to peek out of the green grass
just to smile for me
wine and laughter at sunset
moon tonight
full of you
with a sweet dream or two
and more than a few songs
sure to drift through me
continuing on
into my sleeping hours
Waking to a great new day of promise tomorrow
🔁
Amy Lloyd (AL)
It’s happened
time and time again…
yet this time more so
than anything,
capital…ANYTHING…
ever before.
don’t you think it’s strange,
how a shared pancake can be life changing?
it was the opposite of the final straw.
it was the catalyst for the rising curtain of the beginning,
starting a chain reaction of Biblical proportion,
a new free-fall dive
into the inner deep,
silence tearing up the very foundations
of the ocean floor,
of this life lived on the dangerous edges
of the radical cliffs of self-examination.
Seven days of seismic eruption
creating volcanic activity so great
that dreams,
long gestating in the souls womb,
burst forth –
born,
ready to scream in their own voice,
into this wonderful world.
as if no longer able to remain
hidden inside their clay container.
Seven days so extraordinary
they have changed my world
as I have always known it.
uncovering the naked bones of my foundation,
exposing the shadowy villains of my learned weaknesses,
giving me new strength to heal those newly uncovered,
rotted, shattered places.
in this place of my own choosing
I walk, choosing to be soft,
in spite of the gripping fear.
I choose vulnerability as my guide forward,
into the fury of places I have long avoided.
somehow, all of this,
including not knowing much of things
I dearly wish I knew,
brings me hope for the brilliant future
of this long-awaited life,
no longer holding back
but fully, wholly, inhabited,
at this current phase of growth,
as it should be
when we fall completely,
head over heels,
in love.
🔥
Amy Lloyd (AL)
I am learning a new thing
I am digging deep into my belief systems
My very foundation –
the thing I learned,
the thing I wanted,
from the very beginning.
The very thing I have based every decision of my life on for 51 years,
has crumbled,
discovered hidden and rotten
under every good thing I’ve attempted to build.
I kept wonder why my fabulous additions
kept falling down around my ears…
now I see the gaping ground fault,
the illusive, sinking sand,
which I must release and repair.
It’s very difficult.
It’s extremely frightening.
It’s supremely challenging.
My new thing goes against the grain
of everything I’ve ever thought,
dreamed,
done…
since my very earliest childhood memories.
It’s been so very expensive.
Life built.
Time spent.
Dreams bent.
All washing away
as I open my hands and allow
a new firm foundation
to be built
as the levee breaks
and carries the remaining sinking sand
forever away…
times…
they are a changing!
At the end of your chanted path,
where the desert becomes the sea,
when you arrive your
songs are already here.
They greet you with silence
and you learn your name.
The rainbow curves toward darkness.
The surface of every sphere
tilts into its vacuum, pours
a golden yolk into raven wings.
Now make a new body of your brave
annihilation, weightless as a flame.
And tell me, dancing tongue of fire,
don’t you prefer the night?
Blackness becomes you.
🔥
Alfred K LaMotte
When the sooty corners of our dark night
absorb into porcelain skin at last
leaving it a whole new shade of refined
When the geese in their skeined wedge take another enchanted voyage across the endless blue
When we wake up to this new day
loving life in spite of all that has gone before
When the one who loves us allows us joy in our exile
until we are ready to break our silent bread
When we allow the challenging heaviness of our limiting beliefs to enter into our arena wrestling until we have achieved Olympic gold
When we trust the great freedom of what has brought us to this very moment
When the wine of our heart
in it’s purest burgundy of bubbling merry or deepest sorrow
pours clear and jeweled in its crushing
When we give away freely our best crimson to everyone we meet at this royal wedding
When we finally recognize the truth that there is no journey of arriving
there is simply life
this grandest celebration of skin touching skin
the sharing of moments
the wonder of storytelling
the ancient ancestral linage of our tree-relations
the wonder of teaching and tasting and exploring
coffee and kisses and learning any odd/old/new thing with the ones you love
then we have arrived at our true work
the why we have sought so desperately to uncover for so long
lying crumpled and useless in the trash can
as we, a bit drunk, on our own exquisite vintage
make love to the world in blissful ecstasy
shhhh…there are new songs playing
listen…
just listen…
to that saxophone…
In this world
I’m so glad there is you
🎷
Amy Lloyd (AL)
No matter how dark the clouds seem, they are only clouds. The sun is always shining, the sky is always light blue. The clouds are just droplets of water, gathered together to tease people who don’t remember the truth.
– Chris Collins
“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.”
— from LEAP by Terry Tempest Williams
With Leap, Terry Tempest Williams, award-winning author of Refuge, offers a sustained meditation on passion, faith, and creativity-based upon her transcendental encounter with Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval masterpiece The Garden of Delights. Williams examines this vibrant landscape with unprecedented acuity, recognizing parallels between the artist’s prophetic vision and her own personal experiences as a Mormon and a naturalist. Searing in its spiritual, intellectual, and emotional courage, Williams’s divine journey enables her to realize the full extent of her faith and through her exquisite imagination opens our eyes to the splendor of the world. READ an excerpt: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/191447/leap/
Most of life begins with a whisper ..a sigh that slips through the unconscious mind, the bridge between human and divine… raising the bar… giving us jiggle room to live a different kind of life…..there are no notes any more. Wisdom on paper, wisdom in blood.
Nothing more than thin layers dividing land from the sea, a clear lane that resides between ethereal sound and make believe. Peter Pan, a ship in the sky, a way to live enchanted, before the mystery flies over…beyond the eye…and heaven looks like…feels like…sounds like…smells like…a way through where nothing is divided.
Breathing God takes concentration, purity runs like…peach juice down the chin; laughter from a child; finding honey on the tongue as ordinary …dressing in robes no one can see, and purple, drapes nicely in the heat of the day…some will say it is only play, and a new day begins with thin sheets of invisible…wide roads of possible, milky white and radiant.
Stepping into, standing beside, claiming victory, ignoring nothing other than the speed in which you die. Born for this…
to be alchemy and dreamer all at the same time… tantalized by burning through layers while walking the streets catching whiffs of perfume…Julian of Norwich no further down the road than a few hundred years and I can still hear her saying…”this God of yours walks in mysterious ways, I’ve heard it too….” and the sunrise begins to taint the Nebraska sky…a slight puff of cloud coverage begins on the edge, a yellow hue…prayers slip through the heart space, between kingdoms of glory and powers of might…I call on all the guidance that waits nearby…and another holy day begins. The world within the world.
Beauty,
Donna Knutson
I step softly into this day
a bit raw
a bit salty
I sit with my understanding
I stare into the abyss between
I uncover the wound to feel the morning air
I gently touch what is exposed
I sing over it
I let it go
I allow this hard thing to be the right
I do not see it all
I see enough
I walk forward with my longtime companion,
Beauty, in all she is,
attends my walking,
never disappoints,
she keeps my heart soft,
gives me hope in the smug places.
I am ever aware and grateful
🌸
Amy Lloyd (AL)
…and in the time remaining…all I wish you is love…
Everyone is having a hard time. Everyone is insecure. Everyone is hassled. Everyone is tired–we all need more sleep. Everyone wishes he had more courage, more money, and better social skills. Everyone wants more glamour in his life, and we all desperately need more laughter. Few can figure out how they ended up living the life they lead. Don’t be misled by flippant talk; it’s a battle for everyone.
🔥
– Joshua Halberstam
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
—
Alone With Everybody by Charles Bukowski
in the world between worlds
where the shimmering abstract
holds all the secrets within us
words are absent
no scripture exists
there are no definitions
as there is no need for such things
in our eternal knowing
we are ever-being known
the mystic colors of God fill us
unseeable in this earthly realms obscured vision
they hold us there
where we don’t need to be understood
or understand anything
we are simply
all we could ever hope to be
we are the lover and the beloved
eternal love
eternally loved
complete
You in I
I in you
one
until the scab scraping
demand of this waking earth
this illusion glazed moment we choose to serve
pulls us completely blinded
into a day in a life
pushes us ass-backward
into the harsh reality
of jaded time
of hard-earned, hard-learned experience
of continually disappointed expectation
of broken hearts, once tender
of broken dreams, once beautiful
broken everything, once whole and healthy
and instead of fighting for our very lives,
we put away our dreaming space,
as if it were somehow the wrong
we decide we’ve learned the truth –
that love hurts –
though what we’ve learned is trickery –
because true love sets us free
and so we surrender to
the soul-sucking zombie apocalypse of our addictions,
our chosen favored forms of slavery
as the children of chattel always do
not knowing our vast worth
our royal bloodline
our supreme destiny
we clothe ourselves in useless, flimsy armor
our only known defense.
we use fools gold
cheap drug store variety,
Madison avenue, false-advertisement protection,
these rabbits feet of proclaimed luck,
these traps of anger, arrogance and pride,
against the barbarian onslaught
of what we have been brainwashed to accept
as important
the carnivorous eating of our flesh
by the demands of our own complex making
focused only on our foolish collecting of silly objects,
overrated treasures and pleasures
as we ignore our need for love
choosing instead to battle
the cannibals salivating at every corner
waiting for us to stumble and weaken
so they can take our place at the top of the illusive list
of whatever sort
we have entered into
as our arena of competition
eventually they will toast to their victories over us
with our own fresh, falling blood
pouring from the golden goblets we ourselves had taken from another
we accept it as normal
as we attend to the business of forgetting
who we are
pretending to be full
as we starve to death
in order to get just a little bit more than those waiting
for what will never satisfy any of us
lusting for salt
even as we faint from dehydration
we live, lonely, in empty mansions
forgetting all that makes a house glow
is the home light burning inside of our other to warm our bones
in order to impress those who will never truly know us, love us, or want our best to be honored
in order to arrive at the end of our hourglass
dragging what we will not be able take with us…
we trade our chance to be truly remarkable
to create singular intimacy
we see our chance to find gardens of happiness,
to build something as mind boggling as the seven wonders,
and we choose to ignore it
as we continue on.
too busy, too consumed,
to stop for a moment,
just one moment,
to take off our shoes,
fall down and worship…
to allow the lover into our heart –
as though love isn’t important enough for the likes of us
why do we go about wasting our opportunity here?
how can we awaken to the highest and best within ourselves?
how can we choose to lay our hearts bare in vulnerability?
how can we empty the deepest motes of fear and isolation?
why do we trade love for ash?
why would we ever do such a thing?
why?
Let us return again to where we began…
the joyous place of our belonging
to the passion and wild danger inside our freedom loving hearts
children on Christmas morning
full of sheer wonder and excitement
at the beauty of who we are
passionately in love with our created uniqueness
the fullest colors of our self unleashed
living worship eternally under vast blue skies
shining from our highest place,
with the extreme audacity,
the sheer wonder and glory
of our calling as love
pure love
I in you
You in I
as we
the many
become
the one
💞
Amy Lloyd (AL)
Many of us seek that which we will flee if we find it. I have seen this time and again, both in myself and in others. We seek, we search, and then we find a calling or a relationship that is a perfect reflection of our yearning and we turn away and go back to seeking, almost as though the light of our true-path was too bright for us, too vulnerable for us, too real for us. This is a pattern that we have to recognize and heal or else we will never stop looking for what is already there. True-path is not always around the next corner. Sometimes it’s right under our feet…
🛤
Jeff Brown
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
~Erich Fromm
the Oracle of hope and happiness
writes in words you can understand
to fill your heart with the assurance
that the sun will rise again
the Oracle of hope and happiness
lives with the authority
of one who has been to the dark side
and returned, like the dove, with the news:
all is well
the Oracle of hope and happiness
speaks with wisdom
only words most needed
to guide you to the next step on your path
encouragement towards freedom
the Oracle of hope and happiness
delivers messages of love
from the Source of love
from the Voice of love
from the inside out
the Oracle of hope and happiness
gives everything away freely
nothing hidden that you seek
fruit easily picked
the Oracle of hope and happiness
wants to ease suffering
diffuse anger
inspire the work of ushering in joy and all good things
the Oracle of Hope and Happiness
knows for sure love is love is love
is love is love is love
is love is love is…
💞
Amy Lloyd (AL)
* thank you Steve, for naming me the Oracle of hope & happiness, I am honored by your naming
The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep!
⏰
– Rumi
Your secret plan
You work in me powerfully
revealing stone by stone
Your kingdom within
Deep calling to deep
I am the eternal explorer
ever changing
ever learning
ever exfoliating
ever new born
ever new adventures
ever thresholds of becoming
ever doorways slightly open
revealing what they reveal
usually just a glimpse
ever fog veiling or
unveiling the next stair on the ever-circling staircase
Your calling is for keeps
unrelenting passion
till the cows come home
till the fat lady sings
and the stars go blue
ever calling me higher
to be my best self
It’s a wonder I can’t easily explain
It’s really all wonder
It’s not my natural way
to keep freely stepping into this magnificent way
to freely surrender my stubborn heart to love
but I have no choice
I have been shown love beyond my humble understanding
I can only stumble imperfectly
but wholeheartedly
in my attempts
to respond
I do it all for love
💞
Amy Lloyd (AL)
Spending time with myself
a day apart
alone
(sort of….I’m never really alone)
I sing my soul
I confront my blocks
I challenge my status quo
I confront my ambivalence
I shake the foundations of my acceptance
I shatter long shadows of my shame
I resolve erroneous stories
I let go of my need to stay the same
I enter my griefs
I accept my feelings
I forgive my failures
I write my treasures
I talk to my people
I connect with the world beyond my knowledge
I laugh…just because
I move into new freedom
I express my thanks
I smile and smile because of you
the sheer ecstasy that you are my friend (humming a little tune here)
Then I keep letting you go and letting you go
I destroy expectations
I combust my wanting
I celebrate my freedom
I explore how it will feel to have a structure
my structure
a home of my own
that important moment
I delve into my desire for a circle of true accountability
I call into being this right time for like minded friendships
responsibility in its highest and best format
I rise to meet my new
I give away my longing for the familiar
I slash the tires of my comfort zone
I conjure magic
all kinds of magic
I walk into this new room
the theatre of my making
hung with velvet curtains
the colors are mystic and navy blue
I am ready
I am willing
to bear this new badge
of courage
to assume the custom role
only I can fill
to step into these shoes…
designed just for me…
I love new shoes…(happy sigh)
central player of this fabulous life
I’ve been given
for this very time and place
I walk center stage
content with my integrity
proud of my accomplishments
prouder still of my strength of doing right
doing the hard things
of my open heart
my truth-filled speaking
which, sometimes,
brings silence to the room
I have done the work
I am prepared to preform
my calling is sure
leaving everything else far behind me
I saddle up
I put my game face on (Michael Phelps Style)
grace drips down my back
puddling around my feet
love clouds surround my going
like dust clouds of glory
keeping pace with my steps (Pigpen shout out)
I acknowledge the truth
I didn’t want to be here
hopes illusion lay dead
I didn’t know how I could go on
I challenged my very existence
I refused to save myself (I acknowledge my own sheer foolish audacity and ruthless trusting of Love)
and in doing so
I, somehow, saved myself
arose on the wings of the glorious morning
I bow to your wisdom
I thank you for this moment
this day of acknowledgement
this touch
this state of being just so
this satisfaction of discord
this testimony of salvation
this pilgrimage of miracle
this pathway of true glory
this victory of faith
this resolution of the awkward
this life of waterfall grace
the lighting bolts of my own thoughts
the thundering intensity of my own worded quotes
hanging chad of my living
scale of justice balancing in my favor
karma smiles at this boomerang harvest of goodness
this resurrection of Phoenix
rising and rising (there should be birdsong here)
this burning bush of unrelenting passion
all this is
just me myself
burning away
stripping away
chipping away
throwing away
breaking away
continual discovery
uncovering
excavating
reclaiming
becoming
I AM
All is well (shhh…do you hear the fireworks here?)
🔥
Amy Lloyd (AL)
life: acoustic & amplified 