life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “music”

perhaps 

 

 We talk about balance…
as if…

we can actually achieve such a thing

in this, 

the odd numbered trinity-teeter-tottered

kaleidoscope of a heart, soul and mind

living within the human pie crust 

we name skin!
It is our work

our great career –

to keep opening to the liquid mystery 

of living in this very moment. 

Free will choice,

our supreme gift –

our supreme curse. 
Oh, yes, 

we want things fixed. 

We want to know,

to define truth,

to arrive and settle,

to judge others through our personal lens,

to be right, of course. 
How do we live with the reality of ‘seeing in part’,

through a ‘dark veil’,

with just glimpses of the light in the night sky,

we fish in the darkness,

trying to catch one small piece of a star at a time,

just to have it burn out,

leaving us to go back and try again?
This is the life of the seekers, 

the mystics,

the warriors,

who have been seized with the firm belief –

that life matters. 

That love is the way to healing. 

That there is always more of God to be had. 

The mystery gets bigger with each illumination. 

The balance comes from allowing it all. 

Good. Bad. 

Joy. Sorrow. 

Sickness. Pain. 

Poverty. Wealth. 

Even the broken path,

the truth and the lies,

have eternal divine purpose. 

Our task to 

learn,

open,

love,

trust,

forgive,

heal,

move,

sing,

dance,

create,

keep letting go,

keep changing,

be present,

through it all. 
We dream the large dreams of living into our best selves. 

We focus intently on each small task before us. 

We think,

We listen,

We give,

We receive. 

We speak, when necessary. 

We walk daily in vigilance. 

Letting the legacy of each day stand on it’s own. 

We live knowing our next choice is always our most important….

and so it goes

and so it goes

🌀

AL

   


Sometimes you have to leave 

what you think you know

behind.

No one ever really wants to do this.

Knowing things

can be very comforting.

All day, soul whispers

what I need to know.

I don’t hear her

until I lay aside

cherished beliefs and assumptions

until I dare to be with the not-knowing.

And then. . . . 

Well, that’s the risky part, isn’t it?

There is no telling 

what living an ensouled life

might ask of us.
~Oriah “Mountain Dreamer” House
So this is where I am in writing the book, “The Choice,” -on the great plain of not knowing, offering myself- pen in hand- anyway. Each day, the darkness yields to the light, and words hit the page, surprising me. This is what it’s like: the light coming again and again, the darkness making the illumination breath-taking.

  
 

   

  
 

find photos at http://www.pinterest.com
 

prep work

 

    
  

   

   

   

   

Ready. Set. Go.  

what is music?

 

 within the spaces between silences
there grows a green vine

with beautiful fruit

hanging

luscious

calling

healing

bountiful 

filling

loving

living

deep

juicy

running down our chins and elbows

until we fill with joy

and laugh with delight 

until we face our sorrow

and allow our salt to run and heal our wounds

until we feel what we need to feel

and let these emotions have their way with us

until we embrace this mystery 

and open our arms to life
this, 

my friends, 

is how I define my life’s most important word:

music

🎼

AL

the very most grand adventurous  perspectives 

  
But for my hand, as unattempted yet,

Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.

Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail

And say there is no sin but to be rich;

And being rich, my virtue then shall be

To say there is no vice but beggary.

Since kings break faith upon commodity,

Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.

        – Philip the Bastard from “King John” (2.1.592)

 

People don’t like love, they like that flittery flirty feeling. They don’t love love – love is sacrificial, love is ferocious, it’s not emotive. Our culture doesn’t love love, it loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without paying anything for it.  

      – Matt Chandler

  
 time wears down 

as life takes its anguished toll 

of strained shoulders and weary back 

from the unyielding pressure of anger’s mighty weight

lash of black eyed look,

the demon,

lying in wait, 

blame unleashed

words stripping tender heart skin 

of the vulnerable 

innocence unprepared for attack

leaving hope in shreds,

shame cocks its hat sideways 

flames of passion freeze in place

ice, brittle, cutting

fills veins,

painful, 

slicing to ribbons

destroying all goodness in its path

wounds with nothing to hide

nowhere to hide 

Only you can change this –

you CAN change this!

I know for sure…

you can…

if you choose to…

God only knows 

if you will 

🔹

AL

  

  3 spectacular wishes on this day…for every day
love

home

music

AL 5/13/15
Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

– B. C. Forbes 

in a blue sky day    

  
Woke up mid-dream

last night

(last night = wee hour morning)

Awakened by 

broken sad mourning
My whole life 

this date has been a celebration of life

My dad’s life – 

a soul who entered this realm November 24 – 

74 years of love ago
Today, this date brings tears

and morning mourning

Followed by blue sky

Up on the red roof

Fully alive

Generating compost

Organic buzzing be garden community possibility
Lost key

Kitchen studio 

Boots on ladders

Roast beef sprout ciabatta

Pirates of the Carribbean 

Stories of lobsters racing in

crusty rolls of butter
Once, years ago, I found my too soon gone Grandma 

Today, in a swing overlooking a river

graced by such beautiful bridges

touching sky whilst grounding feet

step by stepping ever overwater

beneath sky, 

I felt my daddy…
I sensed him smiling down upon November

gently holding my heart

and I couldn’t help but feel

the way he gently 

firmly let go

of my pink stripe 

banana seat bike

as I rode down the hill 

of Kosta Drive

all those years ago
That moment I knew he knew

I could do this myself

And gave me the beautiful gift 

of setting me 

and my bicycle free. 

🚲
Robin OK  

Muse of Collaborative Completion + Visionary for Creative Collaborative ReTREATS

What is your incomplete creative project? Let me help you breathe it to life!

Phone: 513-659-3356

email: laughndream@gmail.com

website: laughanddream.com

💜

Don’t miss the 5th annual Creative Collaborative ReTREAT, Sep 30-Oct 2, 2016! 

Website: creativecollaborativeretreats.com

email: creative.collaborative.us@gmail.com

   
    
    
    
    
    
    
 In a day of goodness

We splashed this city all over outselves

Stopped to smell the lingering roses

Went home happily full from our adventures

Life is bittersweet

full of separation, loss, grief, and hurting hearts

full of friendship, adventure, kindness, beauty and truth

I love you

I miss you

I hurt

I laugh

Life is good

💞

AL

  

I want my grief

to be brilliant, fast and gone. 

Like Mozart. Or Stevie Ray. 

Like fireworks. Boom! Flash! 

Ooh, ahh. OK, done. Let’s go. 
I want my grief to be brave.

Hurts more now, heals faster, 

Grandma said, pouring salt 

On a skinned knee. 
I want to stand up to grief,

Stand it down, like the 

Tiny man, big tank 

In Tiananmen Square. 
Because. Because if I am brave,

Bold, salty, open enough 

The tank, the bleeding, the tears 

Will stop sooner. I tell myself. 
But grief laughs. Humbles me.

I lose keys, break cups, get lost. 

Asked at CarMax Why are you

Selling this car? I burst 
Into an embarrassment of tears.

A friend says, One doesn’t have grief,

Grief has you. 

We wrestle, to the mat. I’m pinned. 
But sometimes I break free.

Break patterns instead of dishes. 

Start to write myself a new story, 

To fling myself toward yes, 
Begin to say, Oh. Now this. . . . Observe

What life brings. Reframe. Say, 

I’m not wrestling grief,

We’re dancing. 
So, I put my right foot in . . . 

And turn myself about. 

💔

I Want My Grief by Peg Runnels

some things are sad

  
      
Every now and then
we leave off our pious yearnings,

and even our righteous ire,

and sit down to the hard work 
of being sad for the world.

It takes guts, 

God knows—

not anger but sorrow;

it tires prophets and psalmists alike.

The wolf that cries in the long valley,

the sea that chants its lament

over and over with sighs and tears,

the hermit on sore knees,

 
the angels at their posts

taking turns offering up their 
aching hearts,

even Christ weeping,

they can’t do it alone.

In the end

 it is 
the broken hearted

in whom we find 
the deepest companionship.

We come away wet with grief

yet oddly strengthened

with the fibers of hope.

In grief for the world 

we touch its worth.

In sorrow we find each other,

and there, 

the substance of joy.

Weird, isn’t it, 

how that alone

is the healing balm we ask? 


__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

 

“Only he who cries… is permitted to sing…” is what Bonhoeffer said. 
Only those authentic enough to lament, are authentic enough to love. 
When everything is stripped away and you have nothing left and in all your bare vulnerability, there is communion with God. 

– Ann Voskamp 

💙

I am bare naked 

Down to my bones 

Even my comfortable skin is gone 

I shiver as the cold blows through me 

I have cried many tears 

My song has been watered to full growth 

Being alive does not come without cost 

We love

we lose 

we grieve 

We lament 

We love 

We commune 

We learn 

We choose 

to continue to make the choices

to love

to bring the song 

that fills spring with joy 

and the whole world 

With light and love 
AL

  

da da da dada

 

I’m not asking for permission
tho I thank you for your good intentions in the giving

I surrender to 

life

voice

purpose

passion 

healing

love

music

breath

spirit

joy

peace

you do what you want

with, or without, permission,

I won’t mind 

just remember:

I won’t go down without a fight

da da da dada

da da da dada

da da da dada da da da da…

just play your funky music

and keep on dancing

💞

AL 

(with a little inspiration from my friends) 

Listen to Serenity Fisher sing Rose Red

  

in this time

  
Hokusai says Look carefully.

He says pay attention, notice.

He says keep looking, stay curious.

He says there is no end to seeing.
He says Look Forward to getting old.

He says keep changing,

you just get more who you really are.

He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself

as long as it’s interesting.
He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient,

every one of us has a body.

He says every one of us is frightened.

He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.
He says everything is alive—

shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.

Wood is alive.

Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.
He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books.

It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.

It doesn’t matter if you sit at home

and stare at the ants on your verandah or the shadows of the trees

and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is life living through you.

Joy is life living through you.

Satisfaction and strength

are life living through you.

Peace is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid.

Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

🌳

by, Roger Keyes is an American professor of East Asian studies. This poem is apparently his cross-media translation of the art of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) into poetry.

  
the stones are alive

the stones speak

tell stories of my life

sing me love songs

respond to my touch

grow warm when I’m near

glow with my compliments

smile with my encouraging words

blush as they rest against my skin

absorb my secrets

reveal my favorite colors

are perfectly comfortable with themselves –

hot or cold

polished or raw

the stones never argue

always tell the truth

give with no demand

accept themselves as beautiful

never question that they are 

amazing,

valuable,

beloved

just the way they are 

just the way we are
AL 

  
  

  

  

just a thought

  
My life was the size of my life.

Its rooms were room-sized,

its soul was the size of a soul.

In its background, mitochondria hummed,

above it sun, clouds, snow,

the transit of stars and planets.

It rode elevators, bullet trains,

various airplanes, a donkey.

It wore socks, shirts, its own ears and nose.

It ate, it slept, it opened

and closed its hands, its windows.

Others, I know, had lives larger.

Others, I know, had lives shorter.

The depth of lives, too, is different.

There were times my life and I made jokes together.

There were times we made bread.

Once, I grew moody and distant.

I told my life I would like some time,

I would like to try seeing others.

In a week, my empty suitcase and I returned.

I was hungry, then, and my life,

my life, too, was hungry, we could not keep

our hands off our clothes on

our tongues from

💃🏻

My Life Was the Size of My Life by Jane Hirshfield 
   

… and if what I desperately think I want doesn’t happen…God, and life, are still good…
😘

somewhere in New Jersey…

  
‘I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.’ 

‘I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!’

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

 

this morning began at 4! I’ve been on my adventure for a couple hours now. This post is at my first Starbucks stop (chestnut praline latte, how I love thee) more posts and poetry as I go today… ❤️

   
    
 http://youtu.be/dBN86y30Ufc

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