alchemy of flame

lost in a labyrinth of mirrors
the lives I chose not to live
tease me with their gold-red glitter
and against their glazed silence
the cries of long-faded passion echo
suffering and joy indistinguishable

where is the thread to guide me?

I have been seeking that tantric alchemy
that transforms the bitter almond tang
of old love’s pain into rich bright mead
now the drink simmers before me
its scent brims with sweet intoxication
saying wisdom has tempered the poison

does temptation cloud my seeing?

in the crucible metal shivers and curdles
before melting in consummation
to be shaped by the whim of the vessel
into which it once chose to throw itself
the first hot breath of that forging
traces my skin with sensual intent

should I give myself to the fire?

This started with a readwritepoem prompt about other lives… and took off in an unexpected direction.

The photo is Goblet of cognac, originally uploaded by Andrejs Jegorovs.

Ocean

When I watch myself reflected in your eyes
Why do I see an ocean, surging deep?

What is it that makes you fear to set sail?
My waters run deep – but they are not cruel.
I caress many shores – yet endlessly return
with the constant loyalty of the tides.

I am no foam-born goddess. Just a woman
who knows her light too well to hide in fear
The wave-glitter is not a stabbing searchlight
Just my mind’s joy calling you to dance with me.

Meantime, my loneliness is oceans-wide
salty with my tears of longing for a man
who can surf the rip-curl of my beating heart
and come safe to the haven of my embrace.

Why do I see you staring like a grown man
clutching waterwings in a clammy hand?

 

The photo is Mermaid in the Ocean, originally uploaded by snuglyteaddybear2007.

I want a shell…

Once I thought it was strong and good
to drift naked through the world
making a virtue of vulnerability
a naturist beach of honesty
And I thought it was weak and timid
to crave a shell to hide my softness

Yet the wind is cold and the salt sea bites
and seagulls hungrily circle
And everyone needs a shell at times.
But…

I want a shell that is light as a bubble
that does not weigh down my dancing

I want a shell that is strong as diamond
that protects me when beaks attack

I want a shell as transparent as crystal
with curtains I can close and open

I want a shell that fits me perfectly
that neither cramps nor outpaces my growth

I want a shell that allows my light to shine out
and still protects it from being drowned

And I want a shell where I can sit and sift
all the wonders of the worldwide ocean.

 

This poem is a response for the call from shoretags- the hermit crab poetry housing project, which Dana (from mygorgeoussomewhere) has been working on. It kicked off a poem which develops some themes from earlier in this blog (e.g. my posts on masks and fears) about getting the right balance between protection and openness.  The poem started with just the last 6 stanzas… which do rather stand alone, but I felt it needed some sort of prelude to put all that in context.

The lovely photo is blue shell, originally uploaded by peteypatriot.

What we thought was true…

We thought it was a sign, the sudden
shattering of the sky. The screaming prophets
scrying doom in lint balls scraped from the darkest corners
of their mystic pockets.

We thought it was a sign, the flying out of orbit
of the world; but maybe it was just a storm becalmed
in a cup of coffee, sipped by normality on the fields
of Armageddon.

We thought it was a sign. Yet in the street
slow traffic still gangles past the doors and windows,
fast bolted against the ominous black sea
of superstitious feathers.

We thought it was a sign, but the crones tell us
it’s not the sky above us we should fear.
Instead, we should fear our own unstable witness
of this unwilling moment.

We thought it was a sign. But later – if later comes -
we will know it was only the skreeling of fear
prophesying its own dreadful fulfilment in the confusion
of our lonely hearts.

This started life as a chain poem on the poetry collaborative. 14 poets each contributed a line, and we were then invited to do our own revisions of the original draft. This is my revision – click here to see the original poem and links to other people’s revisions. Many thanks to  Jo, Dana, Leslie, Rethabile, Dave, Nathan, Blythe, Christine, Susan, Whirling Dervish, Schmutzie, Kay, and Jessica for their inspiring creativity!

Speaking out… and listening

How do you get the right balance between speaking out for yourself, and being open to what others say?

I have a tendency to be far too open to the opinions of my friends, too sensitive, too willing to take them seriously regardless of whether they make sense or are fair. I forget that people have their own reasons for saying what they do, and often these reasons have nothing to do with me. Sometimes I’m so busy contemplating what others have said that I ignore what I’m thinking or feeling. 

It leaves me very vulnerable to the opinions of the people I trust. I often get to a point where I trust their opinions far more than my own, which is unhealthy. This sort of trust led to be me being deeply hurt by the things my ex said as he was falling apart. Because I believed him when he was describing my weaknesses, to the extent that those weaknesses became real where they didn’t exist, or worse where they did exist. Believed him when he said that my fears were all from my side, had no basis in reality and that I shouldn’t expect him to help me deal with them. Believed him when his “energy readings” were giving him completely misleading perceptions of me and my intentions.

Of course it eventually did become clear to me that his perceptions of me were deeply influenced by his own turmoil. But why did it take me so long to see this? And when I did challenge his views, why did I do it so mildly and quietly, rather than fighting back to defend myself?

To some extent there’s always a degree of fear in speaking up for yourself. But it’s more than that.  Why do I not trust my instinctive and emotional reactions? Why am I so afraid of getting angry with people? Why am I so reluctant to challenge other people’s views of me and things important to me? Partly because I have very little experience of doing so successfully. Partly because I genuinely don’t like to hurt others. Partly because I like to find compromises, intellectual truces where we can all be right.

But I know that I have changed. I’ve seen what happens when you don’t listen to yourself, when you allow yourself to make one compromise too many. I’ve realised that this is a way of shielding your own beliefs from arguments that might change your mind. I still prefer to speak with a voice that is gentle, and the rhetoric of snark is very foreign to me. But I am learning to be firm. To insist. To question. To demand. To respect others by disagreeing with them, rather than by tolerating them. To speak out as well as listen.

Maze

I wander lost in the maze of my life
Not knowing which way I want to go
Not knowing how to get there if I did
Not even knowing if it’s already too late
If the choices I’ve taken so far mean
That some of the exits I might hope to find
Have already been blocked long ago.

It’s dark down here between the walls
Lonely too. Sometimes I see others passing
Eagerly following their Ariadne threads
But when I seem to find a thread of my own
It vanishes into a dead end, leaving me
Crashing headlong into the blank wall
With the force of my enthusiasm.

Some days I sit still, unable to face
Even the simplest choice of forking paths.
Sometimes there are better days,
When I stride out positively. But it’s hard,
Being so wearily lost for so long,
To keep starting again, seeking new hope
And losing it again in the maze of my life.

But though the maze is infinite and dark
I am not trapped in a prison cell
Still I have the power to walk
To try to create out of confusion and fear
A path out into sunlight that I have found.
It’s dark down here between the walls
But still my hopeful feet keep walking.

I wrote this in a dark time a few months ago, but decided it was too depressing to publish. I revisited it again while going through old drafts, and thought that it did capture something very real to many people in this day and age. With the addition of the last, more verse, I feel it’s worth sharing with the world!

Awkward doubts – two poems

Awkward questions

I was once a rather quiet sceptic.
Tolerant of others’ cherished illusions,
(even those that seemed rather septic)
and unwilling to provoke confusion.
Why should I dampen their enthusiasm
with awkward questions and doubts
that might perhaps reveal the chasm
between what their faith made them shout
and what, meanwhile, I quietly thought.
But it always seemed that their credulity
was far too easily bought.
And having once let faith make a fool of me,
I know that faith that’s blind is no harmless charm
and I’ve heard too often of beliefs having effects that are fatal.
(If you doubt that belief can do active harm
Consider Nicaragua’s mortality rates – maternal and pre-natal).
So I find I must, politely but firmly, refuse
to tolerate sermonising in dissenting silence
(however good may appear the sermon’s news)
And so, without resorting to violence
I now ensure my doubts get said.
I try not to let dogma thrive uninterrupted,
or tacitly permit narrow-mindedness to spread.
And though it can sometimes seem disruptive,
I won’t believe someone’s words just because
they claim that they have seen the light.
When someone preaches fanatically about the wonders of Oz
I’d rather mention their emerald specs than be dishonestly polite!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Doubt and fear

Even when my eyes were damp with tears
You wouldn’t hold me close. Left me lonely.
I, the sceptic who wanted to believe in you.

For you feared my doubts would interfere
With the strange things you needed to believe.
You, who told me I was afraid of what was true.

But it was not my awkward doubts, but your tearing fears
That in the end were fatal to our love. How we grieved!
We, who had not imagined the pain our love could turn into.

And so you rejected me, and disappeared
To chase your illusions uninterrupted. With only
They who would not challenge your strange world view.

Mere differences of opinion can’t tear friends or lovers apart
It is only fear that has the power to choke the loving heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These two poems were written for the Friday Five at Poefusion – to write a poem including the words sceptic, awkward, uninterrupted, fatal, damp.

The first one is roughly clerihewish – deliberately using clumsy or eccentric rhymes and odd line lengths, which seemed to support the idea of awkwardness. The reference to Nicaragua was inspired by this article.

The second poem is more or less a sonnet – though the rhyme scheme (ABC ADC ADC ABC EE) isn’t typical. And I’ve thrown in a pronoun pattern too. I did wonder whether it would be better to use just the first twelve lines without the “moral” at the end – what do you think?

Though they may seem very different in mood, there is a definite connection between the events in the second poem and the attitude expressed in the first.

Nude

Sometimes life just strips you bare
With cruel words or thoughtless actions
The barren ache of a lover’s “don’t care” 
The flaying words of heightened passions.

Sometimes life just leaves you huddling
Turning your back on life and light
Hugging to yourself the sorely troubling
Anguish of your lonely plight.

Sometimes life sends you nights spent alone
Fighting the nightmares with hands cut raw
Staring into darkness as blank as bone
As your thoughts obsessively worsen the sore.

Sometimes life, like some mystic rite
Demands that you strip yourself totally bare
And face the darkness of your inner night
To discover the limits of what you can bear.

Sometimes life, through suffering, shows you
That nude can be both strong and frail 
As, through exposure, your courage grows, you
Learn naked warriors can still prevail.

 

This was inspired by the monday mural at poefusion – the evocative image above uploaded to photobucket by ncajayon4.

Truth and fear

(A wordle cloud based on the top 100 words in this post)

I realise that I’ve been writing a lot of posts that in some way relate to the truth – to the struggle to see what is true rather than what we wish to be true, and to be honest with ourselves and with others. I thought it might be a good idea to explore what I feel about truth.

I am in the slightly odd position of being deeply committed to an end goal of personal and spiritual growth (tolerance, honesty, compassion, freedom from fear etc) that is similar in some ways to that which is praised by religions. But at the same time I find the supernaturalism of religious and new-age beliefs fundamentally alien, and their approach to key issues like truth and fear unhelpful at best. Which doesn’t leave me much in the way of reliable guidance for the personal growth that I am seeking. Or indeed any help with defining what exactly I aspire to.

But let me try anyway. One of the things I am seeking is a resilience in the face of the problems that life throws at me – not a permanent happiness, but an emotional buoyancy. A state of mind that deals with problems and obstacles with the minimum of pain and misery. (This ideal owes quite a bit to the non-supernatural elements of buddhism)

Part of that process is about overcoming fear, which is often both unnecessary and counterproductive, and replacing it with a confidence and acceptance. And another part of it is about truth – seeing things the way they are. Because I’m curious to know the truth, and because I feel that honesty, integrity and openness are all valuable characteristics of the person I aspire to be. And because if our beliefs lead us to make false predictions about the world, we’re in danger of being unnecessarily prepared for the problems that arise, or of dealing with them inappropriately.

I also value truthfulness as a great tool for identifying and overcoming fear. From my experience, it’s almost always fear that makes me reluctant to see or speak the truth, so working to overcome that reluctance, or at least defy it, can help me to overcome that fear.

For me the work of moving away from fear and towards truth is a vital part of my life at present.

When I feel I am tempted to lie, I try to ask myself, what am I afraid of? When I feel afraid, I ask myself, why am I afraid, and what is the worst that can happen? And I try to decide whether the fear is of something real, or something imaginary. If, as mostly happens, it’s imaginary, I try to do exactly that thing that I’m afraid of. I don’t always manage it – it’s amazing how easily the mind dreams up excuses why it’s not necessary on this occasion! But step by step I am working on my fears.

And similarly I am trying to eradicate the prejudices, biases and fears that are the biggest obstacles to seeing what is real. I keep trying to remember that, although I believe that every one of my beliefs is correct, is is, in practice, certain that I believe something that is not true. Which doesn’t help me to identify which one it is, but it’s a useful principle. (It would be great to be able to swill out my brain with some sort of epistemological plaque detector, which would stain the areas of false belief so that they could be removed with energetic brushing). But it’s a useful way to counter the pride of having to be right about everything all the time.

It’s also helpful to remember all the different ways in which we can be wrong about things, and how difficult it is to really get at the truth. I’ve recently watched several youtube clips of Derren Brown (e.g. this one) which demonstrate very neatly how easy we can be to fool, and how misleading our own experiences can be. (I recently tried dowsing with a pendulum, and it’s quite shocking how strongly it appears that an invisible external force is involved, even when you know intellectually that it’s nothing of the kind!) It seems that humans work in such a way that we arrive at beliefs easily and quickly, and change our minds reluctantly and slowly – I can’t help feeling the reverse would be more useful!

One of the most inspiring websites I know is The World Question Center, which includes a collection of short accounts from 165 people about issues on which they changed their minds. Some of the changes are really significant, others smaller. But what I find inspiring is the courage with which they have been prepared to put their beliefs to the test and say “I was wrong”. And in reading their accounts, I don’t think the less of them for being wrong – I think more of them for admitting it. Which encourages me to try to feel the same about the scary idea of being wrong.

One of the most important ways in which I’ve changed my mind over recent years is this: what people believe really does matter, because it affects their behaviour, and a “live and let live” relativistic attitude to the beliefs of others is dangerous. It also cuts us off from putting our own views to the test – indeed, as I argued in a previous post, I think one of the attractions of relativism is that we don’t have to put our own views on the line and accept that we might be wrong.

For me discussion is a crucial way of putting our beliefs to the test and learning more about ourselves and others. But for a discussion to be real, all parties have to be willing to discover that they’re wrong. And that is a rare attitude for people to have, particularly on issues that matter to them. Pride and fear all come into play and bias our view of the evidence despite our best efforts. Which, yes, brings me back to fear – indeed it seems hard to separate them!

Moving towards truth and away from fear is a daily challenge, and some days I feel I’ve made no progress at all. It’s a hard slog. But it seems to me that it’s a fascinating and important journey.

Though, I could be wrong, I’m afraid….

Opening the door

 

“Don’t you ever say never to me!”
She thinks to herself. The forbidden door
Opens to the defiant squeak of the key
And horror sweats cold from every pore

For a stench arises, cloying and rotten
From the heart of their marriage – evil denied
But once seen, too hideous to be forgotten.
Truth bleeds from the key and her soul is dyed.

Returning hoofbeats! She turns to flee
But is frozen like a fawn as the hunter returns,
And sees in her eyes what she cannot unsee.
On the brink of slaughter, she finally learns

That beyond the door of fear’s dark night
Lies the truth that gives the strength to fight.

 

This sonnet is based on the tale of Bluebeard. It is very much influenced by the way the story is told, and interpreted, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women who run with the Wolves – in an early blogpost I included several extracts from her description that resonated with me. In the poem, as in the original story, the woman does manage to escape at the last moment, though in the poem I have suggested that she saves herself rather than awaiting rescue by her brothers.

The first line comes from one of my favourite films, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe – it’s a war-cry for women refusing to be constrained, which I couldn’t resist using here! The original tale of Bluebeard frequently suggests that the woman is wrong to be curious, and that the discovery is a punishment for her disobedience. Which is strange, as the alternative was to remain in blissful ignorance that she’d married a murderer… presumably up until the point when he got tired of her, when her innocence and obedience would be no protection whatsoever. So I wanted to make it clear that her motive for going through the door was much more to do with courage and defiance than nosiness!

The poem also reflects my (thankfully less bloody!) own experiences of being reluctant to confront the truth in a relationship, even though confronting that truth is the only way to protect yourself from being hurt.

Oh, and the rather creepy photo of a keyhole, was taken (in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh) and uploaded onto flickr by davydubbit.