I could write a book on that…
I’ll write a poem instead
I’ll condense the whole story
into a few lines
a word
or two
and
there you have it.
The End.
📚
AL
find sources for blackout poems and quotes @ http://www.pinterest.com (search/blackout poetry)
If you have one hour of air
And many hours to go,
You must breathe slowly.
If you have one arm’s length
and many things to care for,
You must give freely.
If you have one chance to know God
And many doubts, you must
Set your heart on fire.
We are blessed.
Each day is a chance.
We have two arms.
Fear wastes air.
🔥
Freefall by Mark Nepo
photos found at http://www.pinterest.com
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
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
✨
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
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
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
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. 💞
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
photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT
I place on the alter of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
🌀
– John O’Donohue
Excerpt from, ‘A Morning Offering’
TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US (US) / BENEDICTUS (Europe)
In the space between breaths
It can be gone
A months worth of words
Erased with a fingertip
A 12, 30 even 60 year marriage over
With 4 words spoken:
I want a divorce
A home with all it’s possessions
Destroyed in a matter of minutes in the fury of nature –
Fire or storm
Life
Love
So fragile
With no guarantees
Of longevity
Or comfort
Begs to be felt
Now
To be counted for the sake of goodness
This is the only moment that counts
The only thing eternal
Don’t wait
Take a deep deep breath
Of the spirit that is giving it all
Say thank you
For the only gift that matters
The only thing that remains
All else can be destroyed
When nothing else remains
What is this eternal gift,
given new every morning?
Love
💖
AL
quote photo sources found at http://www.pinterest.com
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
💓
Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert
We are often surprised when love falls apart. It makes no sense to us—how can something so beautiful turn so ugly? But we should not be so surprised, because few of us are ready to hold love safe. Few of us are trained in the art of love. The entire world has been organized around masks and defenses. Adaptation and disguise are our specialty. But love is a different world—an unmasked, surrendered landscape that few of us have explored with any great depth. It’s easy for most of us to articulate concepts, but to hearticulate feelings is another planet altogether. We are only at the beginning of an enheartened way. We haven’t
downloaded the ways of the heart. We are learning as we crawl. Best we stop beating ourselves up when it doesn’t work out. There is so much left to learn.
💓
– Jeff Brown
excerpt from Spiritual Graffiti
photo sourcs found at http://www.pinterest.com
life: acoustic & amplified 