NoPoWriMo 4 - My heart is a shrine

For day 4, a love poem.

My heart is a shrine, it seems,
loves come and go like pilgrims.

Some come seeking solace,
some to unlock the joy in their hearts.

And yet others come with footsteps heavy with sorrow,
and I wait for them to undam their pain.

Until release comes in torrent upon stormy torrent,
all pain washed clean by blessed tears.

And yet what can I give,
but the God that is within me?

This lamp of love you have lit with your hands, Oh Lord,
and sheltered it from innumerable storms.

My song of praise is my only offering,
and my heart lifted up in gratitude.

~~~

Sunbeam

(100 word flash fiction)

Family gone, career over, there was nothing to live for.

And so, she stood at the bridge, the portal between this life and the next. Above her, dark clouds rolled. The sky was already in mourning.

The office farewell gift, a brooch the colour of sunrise, felt heavy in her hand. As though pinning her down, inexorably, to the fabric of life.

She felt a tug on her sleeve. A teenage girl in tatters. A baby on her hip. Begging.

Inside her heart, gears shifted and moved. A sunbeam shot through the clouds.

“Would you like a meal? A home?”

~~~

Friday Fictioneers flash fiction for the photo prompt below -

PHOTO PROMPT © The Reclining Gentleman

The power of awe - tanka

What's a poem but

the shell around the heart being

split open by awe

beauty comes out of hiding

and love does a little dance

~~~

Tears of the Moon

(100-word flash fiction)


“These are tears of the moon.” Alice’s voice is tremulous.

Jenny snorts. The seven-year old cynic, who no longer believes in Santa.

“The moon is sad because dolphins are dying.”

Jenny stops in mid-snort when she notices the tears in Alice’s voice.

“And whales too. And … and polar bears.” Alice’s tears are as clear and glassy as the drops on the leaf.

Then, 10-year old Jenny with her ‘Save Alice’ campaign, trying desperately to save a dying Alice.

Now, at 16, firebrand and founder of the organisation ‘Tears of the Moon”, valiantly trying to prevent wanton killing of animals.

~~~~~~~~~

Second story submission for the Friday Fictioneers photo prompt below –

The wounded heart - tanka

I do not know when

you impaled yourself in me

daring, unflinching

the wound has been bleeding 

nothing but exquisite joy

~~~

Creative February 19 - Passion of Christ

(written as a collection of haiku)

from near and afar
they all came to hear you speak
tempestuous words

smouldering coals they fell
into hearts devoid of hope
setting them afire

little by little
there grew a conflagration
of souls impassioned

souls awakened
powerful force, rulers realised
they had you killed

but you unquenched
like a forest fire spread
your love blazing bright

from heart to heart
burning away the dross
leaving only love

showing us all
that to be Christ-like is
love, nothing but love

~~~

Poem of the day : The Kiss

 

by Robert Graves

Are you shaken, are you stirred

    By a whisper of love,

Spellbound to a word

    Does Time cease to move,

Till her calm grey eye

    Expands to a sky

And the clouds of her hair

    Like storms go by?

Then the lips that you have kissed

    Turn to frost and fire,

And a white-steaming mist

    Obscures desire:

So back to their birth

    Fade water, air, earth,

And the First Power moves

    Over void and dearth.

Is that Love? no, but Death,

    A passion, a shout,

The deep in-breath,

    The breath roaring out,

And once that is flown,

    You must lie alone,

Without hope, without life,

    Poor flesh, sad bone.

~~~

Just love

“It matters not who you love,
where you love, why you love,
when you love or how you love.
It only matters that you love.”

~John Lennon

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

Love all of Creation

Love all of Creation
The whole of it and every grain of sand
Love every leaf
Every ray of God’s light
Love the animals
Love the plants
Love everything
If you love everything
You will perceive
The divine mystery in things
And once you have perceived it
You will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly
More and more everyday
And you will at last come to love the whole world
With an abiding universal love.

~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The embrace

Lying in a field

on my side

my lover -

the one I seek but never find, the one I yearn to know but am denied -

lies down behind me.

His body cloaking mine

I feel the warmth of breath against my ear,

I feel the press of lips upon my cheek,

I sense him waiting.

And as quickly as he appeared,

he is gone.

I awake from this dream

with the familiar sense of longing,

frustration from

denial of desire

that seems fated to know no home.

And then it strikes me -

all these years I’ve believed myself to be waiting

upon another,

when all along you have been with me

here

closer than my breath

under my skin

acceptance and love perpetually on offer.

And it’s not me waiting

but you.

Awaiting my recognition,

my receiving

what has been held out to me,

accepting the gift

I never believed was mine to claim.

Until now.

Spring awakening:

love and birdsong fill the air,

robins mad with a passion

that envelopes me.

I will no longer

deny what calls to me

now

I am ready to roll over

and give myself

completely

to the embrace.

~ Lisa Hofmann

From the site http://dandelionseedsanddreams.blogspot.com

The Beloved

My Beloved, a patient lover, waits for me,
while I, like a busy housewife,
scurry about to finish my chores,
to settle the affairs of the world,
to put aside the calculations of the mind.
When I still my hands of their constant activity
and my mind of its constant fluttering,
there, I behold Him in the silent cavern of my soul.
His smile is the gentle unfolding of a dreamy full moon,
His gaze makes me forget myself,
cast aside my identity, my selfhood,
and dissolve into His all encompassing embrace.
In that sacred space, I know myself as Him,
I always was and will be. We are one.
He laughs at my forgetfulness
and rejoices at my remembrance.
My Beloved is always all there is
if only I would open my vision and see.
I look around and see Him everywhere,
in the dazzling sunlight, in the bumbling bee.
From faces distorted in pain and anger,
He smiles gently up at me.
Waiting patiently for the remembrance
of a Beloved they somehow fail to see.
But I must remember and I must see
that the Beloved, He dwells in me.
My Beloved has the luminescence of a million suns,
my Beloved is me.

~~~

Silence thickens

An awesome poem by Julie Daley.

Silence thickens

I can so relate to it.

Why it is wise to worship a woman

A post I found fascinating ...

Why it is wise to worship a woman

Dads

This post was so touching it moved me to tears ...

Dads

please pause to ponder

Zara gaur farmaiye ...

Christmas is almost here, and contrary to popular belief, Xmas is not about Santa Claus or Xmas trees or plum puddings :) Xmas is about a cool dude called Christ who was so cool he asked us to follow only one rule and that is that we must love and only love, no matter who (friend/foe, black/white/brown/yellow, same/diff caste /community/country ....

So maybe we would be doing the good ole heart a big favour this Christmas by finding some time between the Jingling Bells and the opening of presents to look within and find all those things that prevent us from loving (our emotional heart-blocks) and maybe letting go of them, so that our hearts can do what it is meant to be doing - going dhak-dhak over everyone :))))

Like the other cool dude Rumi said "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it".

Cool season this, of loving and letting go ...

Love :)

Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. 

- Hafiz of Persia

Khamoshi

aaj yuunhi anjaane mein
hum ek baar phir bichade

kehne ko bahut tha lekin
pankh kate the alfaaz ke

na udh paye, na gaa paye
bas laut aaye kuch khamosh se

dafn kiya jab saari baatein
tab jaana badi der se

awaaz-e-dil bayan hoti hai
iss gehri khamoshi mein

~~~

Love is Being

by Native American poet Janet Marie Rogers

I would not pretend
to be someone I’m not
to make you love me
for fear
you may love
the illusion
more than me.

Love is BEING
listening to silence
content in our skin
knowing we are
the very thing
that Created us
in love.

Silence becomes us

I rested, gently,
against your presence,
as sunlight would against stone
or wind-whispers against water,
silently.

Into that fragrant space,
we dropped our unsaid words,
as the moon would its beams,
or the gul-mohur its flowers,
soundlessly.

With the silence, they merged
like the river and the sea.
Where were you, where was I?
into the silence we had melted,
willingly.

I found, then,
that the sky had entered me
and stretched for eternity,
and yours was the music that danced,
joyously.