bloodteethandflame

A life in threes

Tag: sometimes I just need poetry

July 7, 2019

Month for Loki, 6: Trickster (poetry)

A lovely poem about Loki by Sophie Oberlander:

 

Trickster

by Sophie Oberlander

“I never sought You.
Those places deep within my heart were far too burned and scarred
To let You in, hard like misshapen stone.
Or so I thought. But I gave much
The first time I hung on that Tree.
Not enough, by far, but just enough to shatter that wall of stone
The barest fragment breaking free.
I heard Your whisper, but turned aside my face
You could not be speaking to me.
I felt Your gentle touch cradling my wounded spirit
As You cradled Odin,
His body bloodied, His spirit on fire beneath that Tree
Long before I climbed its branches.
Was it through Your laughter that You taught me to love You?
Or through the tenderness of Your caress?
I have seen a face of You that few bother to see.
I have felt Your burning passion, gentle and tender beneath the Tree.
Brother, Lover, Friend,
No image of God quite prepared me for You.
You eased away my terror with Your wicked cavorting,
Making a broken child laugh by playing the fool.
I have seen Sigyn’s quiet contentment,
And the love behind Your games.
I no longer understand the trepidation in which others call Your name.
I have seen Your other face too,
When You took me to Your daughter’s realm.
I have seen You, locked in ecstasy,
Summoning up Her wards and wights for me.
My heart’s stone did not so much break
As melt beneath Your flame.
I have tasted Your rage, Your fury at my hurt,
Reveled in the darkest glee
With which You opened the gates of Niflheim to defend me.
No one told me how much You cherish Your children.
I have seen You, Trickster, weeping in anguish
Every one of Your children’s’ wounds piercing Your heart.
And I have seen You in battle, Odin’s equal,
Though Yours a far darker art.
I have heard Your song,
Far sweeter than I ever knew it could be,
As You took my hand, and led me from that Tree.
If it Your stories I cherish most, as we walk Bifrost bridge,
Dancing patterns amongst the stars.
You placed my hands upon the web, and taught me songs to weave.
As I hung for Asgard, through You, for Hella’s realm I reached.
I know how You are feared, or mocked, or thought long bound.
But I know too, it was Your hand guiding me
Through my darkest despair and pain.
And how can I fear Your deepest love,
When it is the freedom of my heart I’ve gained?
Loki, now it is Your burning that I seek.
Let us mingle songs beneath the Tree,
For I adore the flame you have ignited in me.”

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June 11, 2019

Sometimes I just need poetry.

~~ The Journey~~

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.~

~Mary Oliver

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October 1, 2018

Deeper.

Deeper

 

Written by Jacob Ibrag

 

It feels like sinking.

Like you’re trying to break the waters

surface with every kick your body delivers.

You remember that panic causes

more panic so you try to remain placid.

Deeper.

You think about love and if you really

had it.

If it was really love then why hasn’t it lasted?

Maybe if it was real love, you would’ve

already been found.

And if it was real love, how could it ever die out?

Deeper.

You try forming

a symbiotic relationship with the water, letting it take you so you can become a part of it.

You’ve always belonged here.

Deeper.

You let go, giving up the fight.

Remembering

that it was all in your head as you wake up in the middle of the night.

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July 14, 2018

Month for Loki, Day 13: A Prayer for Loki (poem)

Sharing a fun little poem that I found on Pinterest:

 

A Prayer for Loki 

a poem by Victoria Verney

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July 6, 2017

Month for Loki, Sixth: Ritual (poem)

Last month, I began reading Elizabeth Vongvisith’s Be Thou My Hearth and Shield: Prayers in the Northern Tradition, an excellent collection of prayers and poetry she edited for Asphodel Press in 2009.

I’d read some of the reviews on Lulu, and as one reviewer put it, ‘This book is excellent! It sits at my bedside as I read the prayers daily…..‘

As I have found myself doing that very same thing, I could not agree with zir more.

This is an excellent book, one which I would highly recommend to anyone who seeks to connect to the Norse Gods, let alone Loki.

And today, for my sixth post, I’d like to share this heartfelt prayer-poem by April Ragan, which resonated with me deeply:

Ritual (for Loki)

What need have I for chants

When every rise of my lungs

Breathes for You

A hallowed hymn.

What need have I for music

When every beat of my heart

Drums for You

A sacred tattoo.

What need have I for dance

When every gesture of my being

Moves for You

In a rhythm of devotion

What need have I for magic circles

When every piece of my soul

Burns for You

In a consecrated ring of flame

What need have for these accompaniments

When the essence of my being

Is a life-long ritual to You.*

❤

Loki, Kalari Stance, uploaded to flickr, shivarea31

~~~

*Elizabeth Vongvisith, editor, Be Thou My Hearth and Shield: Prayers in the Northern Tradition, (Hubbardston, Massachusetts; Asphodel Press, 2009) p. 125

 

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February 26, 2017

Poem

This lovely poem was shared by a friend on my social media feed this morning, and though I was skeptical that its words ‘could change one’s life,’ I will grant that its overall message is rather profound one…and personally relevant.

(Thanks Sarah!)

~~~

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

– Jelaluddin Rumi,
Translation from The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

 

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February 13, 2016

One Word.

I know that this may come a little late, as it is nearly mid-February, but this is my second year of doing My One Word.

While last year’s word was definitely Allow, my realization of this year’s word proved to be more subtle… but no less profound than Allow had been.

Though, unlike Allow, I didn’t grasp my One Word as quickly this year.

Actually, this year’s word is actually a compound word:

Self-Love

I have come to realize that I have been avoiding working on the concepts associated with Self-Love for a rather long time.

Though, in late January, it became quite clear to me that as much as I thought that I’d done pretty well learning how to Allow myself to feel and to act (rather than react) and to build upon other shadow work I’d done over the last year, there was definitely an aspect of that Allow shadow-work that I’d been avoiding.

And I got the impression from Them that I could not afford to ignore that aspect anymore.

Thus, I discovered that Self-Love was the missing piece.

buddha_love_5240

 

~~~

Or, as They have often impressed upon me:

No one is going to love you exactly the way that you need to be loved, so you may as well learn to love yourself.

 

~~~

Tom Hiddleston reads Derek Walcott’s lovely poem, Love after Love:

 

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.

~~~

 

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January 25, 2016

Here.

Here’s another subtle nudge from the Universe that came across my Facebook feed yesterday:

 

imhereiloveyou

Sometimes the words that I need to hear (to read!) find their way to me

and for that

I am grateful.

~~~

I especially love those final six words:

And nothing will

ever exhaust me.

 

Hail to my Beloved!

❤

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January 3, 2016

Sometimes I just need poetry.

As I have had company these last four days, I have not been able to post this lovely poem from The Daily Good, as sometimes I just need poetry.

(If you click in the link below, you can listen to the poet, John O’Donohue, read this poem aloud, along with some rather lovely imagery.)

Beannacht: A Blessing for the New Year

–by John O’Donohue, Jan 01, 2016

For Josie

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

[Note: “Beannacht” is the Gaelic word for “blessing.” A “currach” is a large boat used on the west coast of Ireland.]

 

 

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December 11, 2015

Poetry: I need…a red dress.

“What Do Women Want?”

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

I want a red dress.

I want it flimsy and cheap,

I want it too tight, I want to wear it

until someone tears it off me.

I want it sleeveless and backless,

this dress, so no one has to guess

what’s underneath. I want to walk down

the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store

with all those keys glittering in the window,

past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old

donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers

slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,

hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.

I want to walk like I’m the only

woman on earth and I can have my pick.

I want that red dress bad.

I want it to confirm

your worst fears about me,

to show you how little I care about you

or anything except what

I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment

from its hanger like I’m choosing a body

to carry me into this world, through

the birth-cries and the love-cries too,

and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,

it’ll be the goddamned

dress they bury me in.

(1954, from Tell Me)

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