Category: poetry

Featured

We are being Lived

                             Unknown .
Banafsheh   photographer unknown

 

“You are an ocean in a drop of dew, all the universes in a thin sack of blood.

 What are these pleasures then, these joys, these worlds that you keep reaching for, hoping they will make you more alive?”

 Rumi

 

WE ARE BEING LIVED

Eyes closed
Touch the quiet
Embrace
Drum beat, matching heartbeat
Turning…..
Music becoming flesh
We are being danced.

Eyes open
Hear the sounds
Listen
Earth beat, touching heartbeat
Turning…..
Sounds becoming words
We are being written.

And in the dance
the words
the longing and desire
Turning…..
Watch
Love becoming life
We are being lived.

westcoastwoman© 2019

 

 

Welcome

DSC_2267
photo of painting westcoastwoman.  artist unknown

“Ring the bell that still can ring
  forget your perfect offering
  there is a crack in everything
  that how the light gets in.”
  Leonard Cohen


Welcome

Broken open, breaking light
stripped of illusion
naked, alone
Strength arrives
dressed not in resistance
but surrender
give in, not up.

Welcome.

Open wide,
this dying to be born
burning to be forged
watch with new eyes
the Light
move towards the
“crack in everything”.

©westcoastwoman

 

Featured

“the Parade of our Mutual Life”

IMG_0459

It was a year ago today that I set up this site (as I was reminded by a Congratulatory! email) a year since my finger hovered over the pink ‘publish’ button and I somehow got the courage to touch it.

A year that started by reading the words of Others ….. that being the great gift.  Stumbling upon writer after writer whose words spoke so deeply and honestly I felt ‘broken open’ and that opening allowing more of my inner world to be exposed.

One site led to another, it felt like climbing on a large web of linked consciousness, each writer working in their own corners writing words that only they could release .
I started to hear this as the ‘collective human howl’.

Joy, pain, darkness and light all being expressed individually and in perfect unison. A virtual worldwide Salon of sorts where the doors are always open and swinging both ways, all ways. Everyone welcome….so grateful I stepped through the threshold.

” it is important that awake people be awake” William Stafford

DSC_2328 2
©westcoast woman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Without Despair

 IMG_0077                        IMG_0069
photo credit westcoastwoman “Rock formations Newcastle Island”

“Write a little everyday, without hope, without despair“* Isak Dinesen

Without Despair

Rough, yet ever so gently
Water on Stone
washes in, out
softening edges of
Body and Breath
Slow inhale
Surrender
Audible sigh
Release

Water on Stone
Stone to Surrender
Surrender to Release,
Sweet longing, caressing
our lives carved open as
“without hope, without despair”*
we float, we whirl,
a single leaf riding
a wandering stream.

©westcoastwoman 2019

 

Unknown-4
unknown photographer
Sculpture “Break through from your Mold” Zenos Frudakis
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 

 

Fully Loaded

DSC_0239photo credit westcoastwoman

“We drag expensive ghosts through memory’s unmade bed”    Paul Hoover

Fully Loaded

Coming, ‘fully loaded’
sporting this years options,
last years designs
illusions, gimmicks, tricks…
all previous short cuts
eviscerated, overhauled, upgraded.

New thoughts, emotions,
technologies implanted and borne
on hands and knees moving
forward in darkness,
trusting, begging, opening,
blessing, praying for release.

Duality blends into
hope of wholeness,
Reuniting shards of
repressed memories,
rolling out the newest model
of one’s unlived lives.

No cherry picking of
options that appeal.
Movement forward to
one truth, this roll out
is all or nothing
large deposit, no refunds

or prerequisites.
Operation best suited
to those experienced
with similar models.
Not for beginners,
a ride you will never forget.

 

 

Purgatory on Parade (Street Photography 2)

DSC_1902
©photo credit westcoastwoman

 

A wandering agnostic amongst a sea of Easter hats

no hat to call my own, moments captured

hardly convey this half way house,

this purgatory on parade.

Turning, Turning…

I move through cobbled streets

and find no spot to settle

a restless dog rotating above it’s bed.

Salvation is offered

at the tip of a blue laced finger

I pass, move forward …

but give an upward glance

as Magic forms above

on this Louisiana morning.

© westcoastwoman 2019