shed your skins,
their undersides
are covered with art
you have been making
in the dark,
your own lascaux
how deep
will you dare to go ¿
— march 2, 2007
discovering lascaux
Tag: shadow work
when were you born ¿
filling out a form,
i was asked
when were you born ?
there was no room to answer,
i was born a thousand times
yesterday alone,
i am being born right now,
do you not see the blood
do you not feel the contractions
can you not hear
the endless mother-cry
of healed and broken joy
— december 20, 2007
my anger came back
my anger came back —
the bastard moved into my basement :
he wants to tell me my story again
can i be a patient friend ¿
let him say his peace ¿
open my hands, like a priest
saddled with a self-absorbed parishioner
and say :
“tell me about that” ¿
i need him to stop his complaining
he had me on the run today
i got nothing done today,
i was just jerking around
letting him pull my strings
maybe if i listen
maybe if i can breathe my frustration away
and hear what he has to say
the bastard
will go away
— September 11, 2005
In a Dark Time
(by Theodore Roethke)
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood —
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks — is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is —
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
shadow work
i am emerging into wholeness
through shards of brokenness
i seem to long to watch me
nearly-not-survive —
i dodge life-ending fragments of my past
in bullet time
i am the actor,
i trained the actor,
i am the finished scene
i am behind the camera, watching me
not-knowing what the end will be
— September 25, 2008
i hope that i will someday see
(with apologies to ogden nash)
i hope that i will someday see
that every they becomes a we
indeed, unless the theys all fall
there’ll never be someday at all
— Oct. 23, 2008
