Rainbows

I think 
you know
our parallel
realities;

not of our time
or in our time,
these days
we don't take time
to notice the rest.
It's all grey;
the color here
is ours.

It stretches out,
two arches lined,
the double rainbow
of our hearts.

Honeysuckle in the Well

Honeysuckle

There was honeysuckle in the well,
a promise.

A thyme bush
that didn't die
or all the things
I didn't tell you yet.

When I stop wanting
what I don't want
I swear,
I'll call you.

When our dreams
align or the
cedar strives or
the morning glory vine
opens on a day
brand new
I thought was old,
I'll tell you.

It isn't time yet.

There was honeysuckle in the well,
a promise.

Late Summer Flies

Late summer flies

too many goodbyes
leave me hard up
and breathless yet breathing.
I'm cleaning.

There're spots on the walls
not enough calls
and an absence,
a longing,
retreating.

Maybe I'll start
making rhymes with no heart
that are empty
and don't stop
repeating.

Maybe I'll call
this beginning of fall
and rolled up in a ball,
I'll keep bleating and slowly
receding.

I don't usually start a post with a poem, but today I wanted to. Because I wrote it yesterday while I was cleaning my kitchen and it expresses my current frustration better than any witty introduction might.

So I know there are cycles in life, and that this is the end and the beginning of one for me, and that I just have let things go and flow and wait for the new, but this is hard to do when all I want to say is: this cycle sucks.

And don't you dare ask me about my dissertation.

And modesty is overrated. I've been thinking about confidence, and how I need it, in order to do the things I want to do, to have the things I need, and how I just don't have it now, which is probably why I can't get any work done. This cycle sucks.

I actually feel like I can't do anything, and this poetry blog becomes just another rant, which is not what I want it to be. I have been writing a lot of poems, what with all the feelings I've been feeling and letting flow, or rather leak, so that is one thing. But I'm not sure these kinds of poems, these, my-chest-is-about-to-burst-and-snot-is-everywhere poems, these "I can't stand it anymore and words are no good but I've got to get something out and down or else I'll drown" poems are the best kind.

Here is something a friend posted the other day on our favorite social network website:

"We talk much too much. We should talk less and draw more. I personally should like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic Nature, communicate everything I have to say in sketches. That fig tree, this little snake, the cocoon on my window sill quietly awaiting its future - all these are momentous signatures. A person able to decipher their meaning properly would soon be able to dispense with the written or spoken word altogether. The more I think of it, there is something futile, mediocre, even foppish about speech. By contrast, how the gravity of Nature and her silence startle you, when you stand face to face with her, undistracted, before a barren ridge or in the desolation of the ancient hills." Goethe

So maybe my poems are like sketches and that is a step in the right direction, but decidedly, I wish I was more like "organic Nature". I wish I talked less, that there was less noise around me, inside me. So, I'm working on peace of mind and simplicity and silencing my head. Ah, yes, that is what I can focus on, instead of the numerous rants of my multiple personalities. I wish I were always in touch the world's "momentous signatures". For now, I feel trapped and obsessed with these small things, these late summer flies.

I do want to say I am very grateful for friends. I know I am not alone as I go around and drone, towards the eventual end of this cycle that sucks.

Mistress Modesty

Modesty, by Giosue Argenti, circa 1866

I've been thinking lately about modesty, humility. It has been coming up a lot in my I Ching readings. In the I Ching, there are two hexagrams which deal with modesty. One is hexagram 15, earth over mountain, which is about how the low is raised high, and the other is 57, wind over wind, about the cumulated product of small, persistent actions. 

Modesty is also a part of hexagram 2, the receptive, earth over earth, and a fundamental virtue of the female energy, the yin, the receptive energy in the Chinese understanding of such things.
I'm a self-schooled I Ching reader, so it seems strange to talk about it here, but it keeps coming back to me as a message so I thought of sharing it. I even got it recently on my Yogi tea label, in German, "allow others to be better than you," or something like that.

So this is a real good summer for humility. I have not written as much as I wanted to. Humility. As the need for me to finish draws ever nearer, I feel less and less up to the job. Humility. I am in love with someone who does not want to be with me. Humility. But somehow, like the I Ching says, all this humility brings, and you may have guessed it, abundance.

Why does humility breed abundance? Because when something doesn't value itself too much, it can receive. Maybe that is why, financially, things are a bit easier at the moment.

But it mustn't be a false humility. And it isn't a passive modesty. Modesty is persistent, and doesn't stand back. So this idea of an active modesty is a bit tricky. But I like it. It is a bit like getting off one's high horse, looking around, breathing in, and doing what one thinks is right anyways, despite, even though, the winds seem to be moving against you.

I link it to the Temperance card in the Tarot. I like Temperance. She reminds me to go slow, that I have wings, but that I can't always use them. She is carefully pouring water from one cup to another. All this takes time.

So a part of humility that I am learning is that things take time and that I can't rush things along with my own little human mind which wants to get things done or have things a certain way.  

Why do I want things a certain way? Well, that brings me back to humility because the reason I want things a certain way is that I think I know best. But I don't.

So there can be a lot of humility learned in daring to take a look at one's self, honestly. Part of humility is being in touch with reality.

I'm glad though to be leaving all my humiliating realities behind next week when I go up to the mountains. Up there, I'll sing, and I'll feel really good about myself, but sort of out of myself too, so the feeling good won't go to my head. It will be great. It will be cool, and I'll just disconnect. But before I do, I'll find a poem I wrote for you about humility:

Wind writing poems

The wind is writing poems today, 
the wild and futile kind. 

I am writing poems today, 
the hopeful silent kind. 

Is the wind taking your soul away? 
Let it stay, let it stay, 
a little more, a little more. 

Is the light out in your breast? 
Let it rest, let it rest,
a little more, a little more. 

Do you struggle at the reins? 
Lay them calm, lay them calm. 

Let go and love is all the same,
lay them calm, lay them calm.  

Well, in all my typed poems, I didn't once find the word modesty or humility, not surprisingly. What do poems have to do with her? They're all about assertive yang energy, the being of a writer. Think of Byron and his many mistresses, or the desire to publish, be well-known. But I rather liked this one, and it seemed to fit; a timid poem, moving forward repetitively.

The Green-eyed Monster

Out of a relationship, I'm thinking about what I want from one and how I am when I am in one. I'm also thinking about if I have to be in one, or even if I want to be in one. It is a good distraction from finishing my thesis.  I'm thinking about jealousy, and just read an interesting article by Emma Goodman on the Green-eyed Monster. 

So I'm also thinking about anarchy and polyamory and reading about what other people want or at least what they want to call themselves. I don't really want to call myself anything, and I feel rather veil-like in the face of all these opinions, an observer or a phantom. Not in society, outside, not in anything.  

I've restarted writing again, or started again rewriting, but I'm also taking care of very practical things. Good procrastination too? Summer, singing, and seeing friends, the solstice came around again, the world is breathing out now. Here I go too. 

I wonder if I have a poem about the Green-eyed Monster. Actually, it sounds like me, the green-eyed monster, born on a Wednesday, a child full of woe, with green eyes. I'm knitting myself a halter top with wool I spun. My hair is long, and perhaps, at the bottom of the lake, it would go green with algea, and the wool would turn to green and my skin too, I'd be a mermaid. A green-eyed monster mermaid. 

I know I don't want to tell people what they should do, or how they should be. And I know I don't have any answers. But I'm learning, I'm looking inside, which is good to do now and then. 

I've been jealous before. But I haven't always been. I think I've thrown away all my poems about jealousy. Feelings of betrayal, as Emma says, do not lead to beauty. But I still believe in fidelity, so I'm practicing fidelity on myself these days, summer days of getting things done.

Fidelity as Freedom

Fidelity first is freedom,
the promises we made.
Once we lived in Eden,
pushing against the glade.

Fidelity is memory,
the ivy on the vine.
At least we will have known it
when it comes the time.

Freedom is fidelity,
each one has the key;
though we may not choose to turn it
though we may prefer to burn it
or simply throw it in the sea.

A Spring Day's Gaze

VERONIKA KLANCNIK 1974 - 2005

May has been very busy and I am down to posting once a month, a rather lamer version of the blogger that I am. I have been doing some wonderful things and enjoying the full energy of spring which gets me up at 6 whether or not the alarm is set. I love working at a university in a park. I loved coming to work one morning and seeing the new green leaves on the horse chestnut trees which had popped out like magic overnight. Then they were blooming, and I loved the sweet smell of the flowers as I passed under them on my bike. Today it is warm but there is a little breeze, and the smell of the lake has begun to grow stronger. I saw the bright red wink of a brown bird's tail in the park this morning.

Spring and summer role around and I think of my friend Veronika who died too young as her birthday and the anniversary of her death approach. In the Middle Ages, churches celebrated death as the real birth day. We don't think so today, and who knows what kind of world we move to when we die, but I like to remember her around this time, as the sun moves into Cancer and everything feels soft and smells sweet. The sky is pink in the evenings and light when I awake. 

I first met her in the park with the chestnut trees and she softened my arrival in Geneva and became my first friend here. I wish I could have known her longer. Once we waded in a kiddie pool in a dark park, high on champagne or each other or strawberries or the weather or whatever; I like how this season brings these memories back to me. I've written other poems for her, not sure this is the second, but there you have it.

Veronika 2

How nice to find your gaze
in somebody else's eyes
or is it something around
the mouth or is it a shared
intellect? I don't know but
what's missed usually reappears,
a tender boy I once knew
whose body I see in a man
I crossed paths with in the cafeteria.

You were there too, maybe
in her way of stepping
or in her round face or in
the space between her eyes,
but yours were blue.

That came out today and all I had to do was arrange the lines a little. Difficult things are easier in Spring.

April My Darling it's Spring

I think this poem speaks for itself, speaks for me.

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april (yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)
when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)
when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

Dancing mountains, little fish swimming and climbing, flowers like faces, birds diving, giving and having and living, but not keeping. And the word "gambol". I am feeling thankful for poetry, and for e. e. cummings.

On Friday night I went to hear Carol Ann Duffy, the British poet Laureate. It really was spring, and the room was warm, and the lighting was bad, but she read and I was moved. It was poetry being poetry. She read poems about wives and school girls and I was glad to be there with my friends. I bought a book of poems for children. She signed it and I gave her my green pen.
 

Empathy for vegetables

I realized I'm an empathetic vegetable buyer. What this means is that, in the grocery store, if I haven't been able to go to the market, I buy vegetables that are slightly past it in order to save them from being put in the trash. I feel bad for the vegetables that have begun to turn brown in their plastic and turn down other, fresher specimens, in order to rescue the tired vegetables, the unwanted ones. 

I am not sure what this says about me. It maybe says something about how I react and interact with our current consumeristic society, but it makes no sense since I have little money and should really be investing in my health and well being by buying fresh vegetables. Maybe it says something about how I feel in grocery stores, slightly overwhelmed and confused, even with a list. Or it may just speak to my love of vegetables. One can also better understand why I don't often buy meat.

In February I was still sick, but happier. Now it is March, almost spring, and I have energy again. The sun came out. The hole turned itself around, I started noticing trees. I got more work. I'm feeling productive. My dissertation still waits for me to pour over it compassionately, but somehow, I'm more interested in saving past-it vegetables.

A friend gave me plants which I have placed in my office, bright greens on a pale green formica desktop. I want to post a poem that involves the color green. I had a birthday during a warm week of springlike weather, though it's still early, pre-spring.

My grandmother painted mountains

I said to you in the morning
this day is beautiful,
the grey air, the mildness, a pre-spring you said,
we couldn't see the mountains.

The green moss on buildings,
or how things beautify themselves with age.

That is a nostalgic poem, but I'm feeling less nostalgic, these days. The past seems less of a burden, and more something... to feel empathetic about? Even vegetables die, I can't save them all. 

Once a vegetable market made me cry.

When the vegetable market made me cry

All the beauty of the world dispersed 
like fruits and vegetables at market.

Gatherings of color and wood,
paper, a way under the trees.

A smile from an unshaved man
through the bus window,

but no barriers, no distance
and understood all the beauty of the world. 

Well, I tried to put that into words.

Moving Forward

January felt like a black hole; a sinkhole. I observe, I don't fall in. Here we were not writing, we were trying to get out of bed. We were trying to move forward.

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

In this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, there is a feeling of falling upward which I admire. Reading down the lines, the poet falls from the sky, yet the reader moves upward, the image of standing on fish. This past month, though I felt like I was falling downwards, I also had experiences which brought me upwards, or made me feel larger in knowledge of myself, moments when I saw myself more clearly, when I grasped something I hadn't seen before. There were angels in this movement, so I wasn't alone. Moving down, I often felt lifted up. Winter stretched from white sky to white sky and I could have been above or below. The deeper parts of my life are opening, but sometimes the going is slow and painful. This poem reminds us of reversibility, when down is up, and up is down, and how there is an equilibrium to reach where there is clarity and harmony, a peaceful mind despite a constant cough and dripping nose. 

I lost my voice, but know it is a chance to feel how I speak and sing in a new way. I feel my throat.

Louise Hay links throat problems to fear of change in her book Heal the Body. I suppose I am scared of change, like most of us. I don't like it. They changed the tram lines and I wanted to complain along with the entire city. They added a preposition to my favorite bus stop and I wanted to protest the first time I heard it. I found it irritating. Then there are the larger changes I fear in my life. Letting go of the past, of loved ones. I have anxiety about what will come next which makes me unable to be in the moment and appreciate what I have. I lose productivity. I look inwards only. Looking back, looking forward, I miss what is in front of me now, which is often sweet, bittersweet in February, and makes me cry. A weepy month for saying goodbye, though I'm not even sure to what. To myself I suppose. An old version of myself I already miss. But holding on to it makes me sick, so I purge and clean, go over the reasons again, watch it drop away, far below. In the spring I'll be new again.

The Only Ever Constant Change

We choose what we will call it,
Chemicals or Sense,
Dumb Individuality,
Science or Intent,
Will or Intuition,
Helplessness or Force,
The strength is in the giving,
The subsequence of naming,
Despite the Truth of course.

A special thanks to Helen for the Rilke poem and to all my fellow fish.