Placebo Love

Wow, this is getting personal...as I get to know more and more of you guys are reading I somehow care less and less that I'm essentially baring my soul here. Guess that's what writing worth reading is.

In any case, this was written this afternoon over a hot chocolate in a bookstore. My professional life is in complete upheaval at the moment...when God stirs the nest, He really goes to town. I'm equal parts scared, angry, excited, determined and confused. I feel like I should be crying every hour or so yet have such a sense of peace and joy that I'm even getting annoyed at *myself*. Seriously - who is THIS chipper when big stuff is going down?

So anyhoo...I was writing out a whole list of questions in my journal to do with avenues open to me at the moment. Pretty much every word screamed out "God...WHO AM I???" "Who did You make me to be? What's Your dream for me?" "Gimme a hint, here!"

Partway through writing out the list of questions, the follwoing lines started coming to me and I felt compelled to write them down, shape them. They felt like lyrics, though Borders really isn't the place to start humming, so I've no idea if there's any music behind them...shall soon see.

In any case, it's about being in a codependent relationship. Is it Christian? Yeah, sure, absolutely. 'Christian' doesn't necessarily have to mention God by name or fit a certain mould. God's Word sheds light on the things of the world, gives you wisdom to see clearly and to understand what everyone else is fumbling around trying to fathom. Codependence is trying to fill the God-void in your heart with another person...and it ultimately leads to death...something I hope this shows. Reminds me of what happens when galaxies merge (bet you didn't think galaxies had interesting social lives).

Enjoy.

M

Placebo Love

If the jagged edge of your disease

fits the curves of mine,

we join hands to spiral down

the depths of this placebo love.

........And your steps become mine

........And your smile tumbles down

........In my heart with no end

We stand in each other's shadows

To find rest from the glare

of the dream we each once were

Drops become cups

of bitter potion that we drink

to toast this life of ours

........And my steps become yours

........And my smile echoes down

........The walls of your heart

I look to you to find me

And find you looking back.

We tossed each other our own souls

And somehow missed the catch.

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revelation

Your strange poetry sings to me

In eddies and currents out of rhythm, you dance

Suddenly, all revealed, you ebb and leave me with everything

On a platter. I am Salome and I am undone

.

.

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from dust

Ashes fall from my lips to crumble over new earth

Hands dug into things of old that sweep away at the touch

Breath comes to surround [but first takes away]

To look backward is to see what is lost

I cannot.

In me, my life cannot touch it

Colours do not fall on the grey

I rise, it stirs the resting cloak.

What falconry can take this dust and call it to rise again?

Not mine, not my own. I rest

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She

She blew in from the North, soft and supple and with a hint of dew about her. She came to the heart of things to see the promise of men - to fit into a crevice in the churning City and move with its rhythms, a part of Something Greater, she thought.

Tumbling through in a slipstream of bustle, a fragrance clung to her - promises of mornings breaking in whitegold and green, of days yoked apace with breath and sigh and meander, of the sky's dying embers falling to the west, ushering in dusk and rest under a jewelled veil.

She was not of this place.

The City drew itself around her, coiling with a thousand outstretched arms, parched to the fingertips.

She met the first touch with the wide-eyed simplicity of her home - yielding to unfixed expectations, stretching out in kind. Bewilderment came with the sting of the blow.

Her assailant withdrew as quickly as he had come, the outline of his tread etched deeply on her once-unmarred surface. Another and another came until she could no longer be lifted high on the wind, so strongly did she cling to the unforgiving ground beneath her.

Autumn came to paint its sunset across her features and vermillion settled over her like a final cloak. All suppleness gone, only the lacework of her frame remained to show the world what she once was. The dream for her life in the City crumbled away with the last of her garments.

Yet here in the open, in time that was to be her last, gentle hands raised her form high and placed her delicately within the pages of a Book.

The gentle hands were small, they let go of the Book in a moment of youthful exuberance and it fell, tumbling to the ground, to soil that parted and covered all with a moist, dark womb.

Yet there was promise in this seeming grave where all sound and light were extinguished with heavy thickness. She stirred to a fragrance that whispered, even here, of whitegold and green mornings.

When the first shoot pierced her heart she saw with it the promise of things to come. Tendrils and rootlings slowly danced around her sleeping form and caught her up in their sweep onward and upward.

Emerging to the cool kiss of air as a part of Something Greater, she saw the City once again and danced before it, unafraid. Every delicate part of her was now held aloft in a crown of verdant glory.

She rustled and sang her song of whitegold and green mornings as the City lent its ear, the Book nestled deep within her with its promises pressed safely against her heart.

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Spin

(NB: Difference between edited and unedited writing. This is unedited, straight-to-the-page stuff. Doesn't flow as well, eh? Want to take time to edit it but also want to leave it here as a contrast. Might edit and re-post to show the difference one of these days...)

When I look back to the stormiest times, I don't recall the tempest itself. I am lost, almost smothered in a tapestry quilt of emotions, snatches of thoughts. Words aimed angrily. Misapplied logic and misdirected suspicion. Interpretations knowingly skewed, but my own, so defended with impenetrable pride.

Details, so important at the time, lose themselves in the inky mire that was my heart's state - the only facet to stain my memory with any permanency.

I recall long walks to favourite places, my mind a cinema screen playing scenes and conversations half recalled, blurred and blended with conclusions I would have preferred. I am always the hero. My cause is vindicated in this private screening room, personal mistakes omitted and varnish applied. There is vaseline on the lens.

Months, sometimes years later, I pull the dusty reels off the shelf of memory and replay them. Time dampens the blows of embarrassment as crisp images play. I no longer edit to favour myself. Realisation is like a cold knife pressed against my heart, safe in dispassionate acknowlegement, dangerous only should it turn to condemnation and unnecessarily cut where past damage is past and new wounds are not required.

So now I turn to one who saw with open eyes the whole tableau, within and without. A master conductor who weaves a symphony with every sound he is given - those ordered, tuned and polished or those mis-played, broken and shrill. Each passes through gentle hands that touch in deepest places and reshape in ways unimaginable.

I hand over the memory for inspection, wincing. My expectations race before me and return to snap like so many small jaws, announcing a judgement that has only been passed in my own mind. But then, an unexpected question.

A probe requests broader recollection, draws me to the space between that time and this.

And there, where was once a chasm forded only by the bitterest winds, something stands. An organic form of fluidity, strong as granite. A form whose core was circumstance, decision, and consequence, that was tempered by recollection and re-forged by repentance. Fired in the kiln of past tempests, it stands immovable. The winds now blow around it and are slowed by its stature, valleys at it's base provide safety for new life to stir.

I rub my eyes and am in the present again to look afresh at the tempest around me. Its walls are sheer with fury and movement, its threats whispered out of the tumult daily. I note the detail, but see beyond it. I sway gently with the current of emotion, but don't let it carry me off. Peering intently, instead, through the walls of the tempest itself, I catch glimpses of clay-covered hands beyond and my heart is strenghtened to know all will be well.

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Orwell's rules for writers

via http://humachine.us/post/35789308/no-i-am-still-not-over-the-pens-but-here-is-a

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Prayer

If I somehow could

the words would intertwine

And rise to you.

An ascending column

Dancing in the ebb and flow

Of time

Of space

Eddies and wisps formed

........by my breath, from yours

Hope rises with a question

.........anticipation

....................and release.

I am poured out, and rise to you.

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