Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Right Here

2/26/2023

- In gratitude to K & G

Stop moving. Stand in
one place – this place.
Breathe slowly; in, then out. Repeat.

Repeat again. Let your
shoulders sink and relax. Unclench
your jaw; slowly close your eyes.

Listen for your heartbeat; really
listen. Feel it pulse in
your fingertips.

Lessen expectations. Under-do all your
efforts. Requisition the time
for your soul

to catch up. Lean
into the wind; feel it
like a tree and test the ground.

Learn to trust the resilience.
It would be treason
to move quickly – left or right –

from this place. It is alright to be exactly
what you are, who you are, where you are.
Right here, right now.

- Dane Anthony

Sweet Darkness

1/22/2023

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

- David Whyte

Dangerous Prayers

12/11/2022

Our Lady Prays Fire
painting with blood and henna by Xochitl Trout

Deliver us, O Truth, O Love, from quiet prayer
from polite and politically correct language,
from appropriate gesture and form
and whatever else we think we must put forth to invoke
or to praise You.

Let us instead pray dangerously –
wantonly, lustily, passionately.
Let us demand with every ounce of our strength,
let us storm the gates of heaven, let us shake up ourselves
and our plaster saints from the sleep of years.

Let us pray dangerously.
Let us throw ourselves from the top of the tower,
let us risk a descent to the darkest region of the abyss,
let us put our head in the lion’s mouth
and direct our feet to the entrance of the dragon’s cave.

Let us pray dangerously.
Let us not hold back a little portion,
dealing out our lives–our precious minutes and our energies–like some efficient accountant.
Let us rather pray dangerously — unsafe, profligate, wasteful!

Let us ask for nothing less than the Infinite to ravage us.
Let us ask for nothing less than annihilation in the
Fires of Love.

Let us not pray in holy half-measures nor walk
the middle path
for too long,
but pray madly, foolishly.
Let us be too ecstatic,
let us be too overwhelmed with sorrow and remorse,
let us be undone, and dismembered…and gladly.

Left to our own devices, ah what structures of deceit
we have created;
what battlements erected, what labyrinths woven,
what traps set for ourselves, and then
fallen into. Enough.

Let us pray dangerously — hot prayer, wet prayer, fierce prayer,
fiery prayer, improper prayer,
exuberant prayer, drunken and completely unrealistic prayer.

Let us say Yes, again and again and again.
and Yes some more.
Let us pray dangerously,

the most dangerous prayer is YES.

- Regina Sara Ryan

Jump into experience while you are alive!

12/4/2022

The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment
in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being search for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest
that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

- Kabir, translation by Robert Bly

The Worst Thing

9/11/2022

Photo by Harper Kendall/IG

The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.

The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.

The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath.

- Chelan Harkin

The Second Music

10/24/2021

"Ophelia" by Sir John Everett Millais.

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.

When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.

- Annie Lighthart

Life's Longing for Itself

7/25/2021

In honor of Silas, my first-born child,
who leaves home this week
to heed Life's calling...

Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He also loves the bow that is stable.

- Kahlil Gibran

Senseless Perfection

5/9/2021

Chalk by Kirsten DeBoer. Used with permission.

Things don't happen for a reason
Sweet child
No
Life doesn't need a reason
For happening
It simply blooms forth
With breathtaking chaos
Rains down on you
With senseless beauty
And immeasurable heartache
You can make up stories
If you like
About why things happen
The way that they happened
You can close one eye and squint
To make up patterns
You can tell stories of
Tragedy
Or perfection
Curses
Or blessings
Or you can simply stand naked in
The rain
You can realize nothing
Will ever really make sense
Not if you're really honest
Not if you're truly listening
Nothing happens for a reason
Yes, this is the truth
This is it
There is nothing else
But your own heart
Plunging
Into reality
Your own heart
Drinking down
The eruption of stars
That is this radical emergence
Of soul in body
Of breath meeting sky
Maybe
There is nothing else to look for
Maybe it didn't work out for the best
Maybe it isn't an unfortunate mess
Maybe no great spirit is helping
Anything go your way
Maybe
Just maybe
Life unfolds
Relentlessly
With no holy plan
Maybe
It is sacred
Just as it is
Its power and innocence
Require no justification
Its perfection requires no meaning
Maybe nothing
Means anything
Other than what the Rose
Means
When it blooms
It means
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am

- Maya Luna

Timber

3/28/2021

"Salt and Light", Works on Copper
by Sara Honeycutt

Fortunate is the hour
when you stumbled and fell down into this.

Never stand again.
On your knees remain
where the earth is,

where the fire is ever-ready
and the air ever-clear,
water, and the stones of God.

For the Woods of Error are
the words of the real,
chosen for us as

the color of your soul.
Lie where forgiveness lies,
make love to that.

For there is nothing else
but gratitude, which is what
all your longing was for.

-Bruce Moody

Please bring strange things

3/14/2021

Thunder Woman and the Big Moon
by Sandy Eastoak. Used with permission.

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.

-Ursula K. Le Guin