Spoken word poetry

Three amazing spoken poems ....

Aloneness

"Aloneness and silence are two aspects of one experience, two sides of the same coin. If one wants to experience silence one has to go into one´s total aloneness. It is there.

We are born alone, we die alone. Between these two realities we create a thousand and one illusions of being together - all kinds of relationships, friends and enemies, loves and hates, nations, races, religions. We create all kinds of hallucinations just to avoid one fact: that we are alone. But whatsoever we do, the truth cannot be changed. It is so, and rather than trying to escape from it, the best way is to rejoice in it.

Rejoicing in your own aloneness is what meditation is all about. The meditator is one who dives deep into one´s aloneness, knowing that we are born alone, we will be dying alone, and deep down we are living alone. So why not experience what this aloneness is? It is our very nature, our very being." 

~Osho

 

Wake up. Day calls you

Today is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me :) And I got this wonderful poem sent to me. What a wonderful gift and an awesome way to start the rest of my life ....


Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
Root it out of the glum
night and the darkness
that covered your body
for which light waited
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
simple will to be
a pure slender virgin.
Test your body's metal.
cold, heat? Your blood
will tell against the snow,
or behind the window.
The colour
in your cheeks will tell.
And look at people. Rest
doing no more than adding
your perfection to another
day. Your task
is to carry your life high,
and play with it, hurl it
like a voice to the clouds
so it may retrieve the light
already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more


by Pedro Salinas

Translated by Willis Barnstone

Wabi Sabi: The Magnificence of Imperfection

Cheryl Hunter shows that a simple story, well told and presented, has tremendous potential to educate, entertain and impact people .....

A powerful talk with deep meaning.

Being solitary

An Excerpt from The Stations of Solitude by Alice Koller

Philosopher Alice Koller explains the benefits that ensue from solitude and the creativity that is birthed there. Here is an excerpt on nurturing.

"I surround myself with silence. The silence is within me, permeates my house, reaches beyond the surfaces of the outer walls and into the bordering woods. It is one silence, continuous from within me outward in all directions: above, beneath, forward, rearward, sideward. In the silence I listen, I watch, I sense, I attend, I observe. I require this silence. I search it out. The finely drawn treble song of a white-throated sparrow is part of it. Invasions of it by the noise of engines are torments to me.

"This is my solitude.

"I do not cloak it among other persons, and I know how it appears. No sign of submission, in the eyes of most men; too assured, in the view of most women; not properly respectful, to the gaze of all those in authority. I have become that third gender: a human person, the being one creates of oneself. I fell in love with my work, became fiercely protective of my freedom, started to make new rules. In this, Sartre is surely right: persons are not born but made. The choice lies escapably within ourselves: we may let it wither away, or we may take it and run."

Night - haiku

 

I miss the night sky
that invisible net
that snagged the stars

~~~

the sickle moon reaps
a thousand laughing souls
put away your tears

~~~

a lone cricket
punctures the night
looking for light

~~~

the early koel
pokes awake the sleeping dawn
call by strident call
 

~~~

the Ides of March

the night pulses psychedelic
with lightning strobe lights

I wait for the drum rolls
but the sky is strangely silent

in God’s own country
in the land of hartals

it seems the God of Thunder
is faithfully on strike

as fields high with grain
ripe for harvest lie torn apart

by the unruly fists
of an angry Wind God

I think then of the Ides of March
how Caesar ignored the warnings

in the flashing light I look for
the writing on the wall

I hope it’s not ominous
I hope the Earth has forgiven us

our Caesar-like greed
our clawing, controlling maw

now parched and cracked
and thirsting for rain

praying to a bereft Rain God
now crackling in anger

flashing in fury
pointing sparkly fingers

at us who have robbed
our sons and daughters

of their unseen paradise
taunting, it is only just

that Caesar should die
so that the Earth may live

~~~

The Old Man and the Sea - Animated

In 1999, Aleksandr Petrov won the Academy Award for Short Film (among other awards) for a film that follows the plot line of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella, The Old Man and the Sea (1952). Petrov’s technique involves painting pastels on glass, and he and his son painted a total of 29,000 images. Rather incredible.

Awesome!

My Kindle book is FREE today

Today, my Kindle book of poems  'In praise of sparklets' is FREE on Amazon. 

If you were thinking of buying, this is the chance to get it for free :)

Reviews would be welcome.

~~~

How to be soulful

“You have the need and the right to spend part of your life caring for your soul. It is not easy. You have to resist the demands of the work-oriented, often defensive, element in your psyche that measures life only in terms of output -- how much you produce -- not in terms of the quality of your life experiences. To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution.”

-Jean Shinoda Bolen

Silence

I am not experiencing silence/peace.
I am silence/peace experiencing the experiencer.

~ Cesar Teruel

60 of the world's happiest facts

60 of the world's happiest facts

Cool!

We Are One - The Science of Interconnectedness

Awesome article!

We are one - the science of Interconnectedness

Males were once females too

A very interesting animation on a known scientific fact -

The science of how we are all female

3 o’clock

3 o'clock
empty cafe
just me staring at a guy
staring into space

his thoughts crackle
into the summer air
nervous
hopeless
jobless
debts mounting
coffee going cold
no cash for a bun

while pastries shine
behind the glass
beckoning

I think of Jean Valjean
and his stolen loaf

and hope floats in
on a stray sunbeam

maybe just maybe
this man will meet
his Bishop

~~~

(written for the Bentlily prompt - go to a cafe and write about a person there)

The bleating sheep

the river flows placid
clattering over the pebbles
as cicadas tone down
their fervid cadences
and quieten for the night

on a tiny patch of farm
across the road
a sheep bleats into the night
I worry about it,
is it thirsty? is it hurt?

it strikes me as odd
that I worry about a sheep
while in parts of the world
people die of hunger
and children get robbed
of their souls
bit by bit day after day
by abuse

I keel over with helplessness
by the enormity of it all

“answer me, you answer me”
I beseech an unseen God
“surely there must be a reason”

‘you tell me’ he retorts right back
“why human beings are so intent
on hurting one another.
why do they lock up the love
that is their real nature
and embrace fear, you tell me”

I keel over in defeat
silenced into submission
by the stark truth of it

“maybe your creation is flawed
maybe you wired us all wrong”
I use a rallying point

“maybe you prefer to be blind
else why would you court darkness
when you are in reality
nothing but pure beings of light”

“so how do we begin to see?”

“stop thinking and just be
realise who you are really”

I am floored by the simplicity of it

The sheep has stopped bleating
the cicadas are quiet
a resplendent full moon
admires its shimmering image
on the singing rippling water

The Unity song

Dusk 2 - haiku

day’s fiery flare-up
at the prospect of leaving
sets the sky afire

night laughs indulgent
tosses a handful of dusk
wins the round hands down

but Day she awaits
on the other side of dusk
the fight continues

transient are we
but eternal meeting places
dawn and dusk be

Dusk - haiku

birds wing in to roost
trees get smudged into greyness
I wait for a knock

the knock never comes
as shadows climb up my walls
azure fades to black

behind closed eyelids
the sun blazes brilliance
dusk a long way off

~~~

Haiku Heights / Dusk

Death - haiku

the clock’s second hand
chops away bits of life
until none is left

~~~

the river meets death
when it merges with the sea
yet it willing flows

~~~

if death had a voice
it would be melodious
soul suddenly free

~~~

Haiku Heights / Death