Sister Lunacy
SISTER LUNACY
Shall we dance, shall we spin and wheel, hesitate, advance,
stall and recover, whirl like maple keys, and blow
the ashes of the starmaps we burned like passports
out of the palms of our hands to shine like dandelions
on an eye to eye level with the light they bloom in?
Sister Lunacy, I watch you uprooting your garden usefully
and shaking the stars out of the clumps of grass
as if you caught Medusa smuggling diamonds in her hair,
and I say such is woman when she forgets to be aware of herself,
and the goddess comes down to earth with dirty fingernails,
a gazelle in rubber boots. And no flower of the field,
no planet in the sunset, no eyelash of the moon over a barn
quite adorns the twilight the way her numinosity does.
And I want to take her by the hand like a binary star system
and circle one another like two hawks in the sky
until the night cools and the loons pack up their keyboards
and the stars work the graveshift on into the early hours
of the forthcoming dawn as if the end of all their labour
were extinction in a deluge of light
that doesn't recognize any of them by name. Shall we dance,
shall we let the picture-music carry us away
like a word that hasn't hurt us in a long time,
shall we gather wild rice in the holds of our birch bark canoes
as if we were threshing jewels on the shallow end of the lake,
or do you just want to walk the Road of Ghosts with me awhile
and see what blooms along the way, sunflowers and waterlilies
opening up like observatories and prophetic skulls
with a penchant for looking at things the same way?
Sister Lunacy, be kind to the mandalas and paradigms
I bring you like dreamcatchers woven of spinal cords
like tree rings of heartwood, ripples of rain, the net of Indra
where you mark one jewel and they're all marked.
Or as Jesus said, insomuch as you do it unto one of these,
you do it unto me, and everyone thought he was special.
As if he owned gravity and everyone had shares.
It's a radical act to come like a sweetness to ripen
the heart of a human that's stayed green too long.
Just as you and I know madness is the quickest way
of never getting it wrong and if you're going to argue
do it in song, don't exorcise the answer
out of the person who possesses it and bid it be gone.
You can't post a bond against a ghost.
Myriad guests of the mind, but seldom a host to speak of.
And Sister Lunacy you speak as if you were letting
a thousand voices all at the same time use you
as if they had no other mother tongue of their own,
and somehow it comes across as what you had to say.
So I'm asking you now. Do you want to dance,
do you want to bend space the way a body moves,
reshape the universe in its own image, abberate
a few wavelengths into falling out of synch like damp hair licks?
And I'd remember to remember that only horses sweat
and read your aura by the glow of the hot dew on your face.
After the last lifemask comes off, nothing but space.
Nothing but imaginative room to move as if there were nowhere
we needed to go and we didn't feel bad about it.
We just went off into the ongoing like everything else
that's looping and coiling its way through time,
a fragility of the air, caterpillars swaying in the wind
at the end of a fishing line tied to the allure of a butterfly.
Don't be fooled by the vertebrae, everyone's flying kites
at the end of a long spine when the air revs up.
You can see them tangled in the powerlines of their ancestors.
Sky burials without altars. Road kill. Cheap cremations.
The whole panoply of the tragically absurd.
But here, sister, here volcanoes still strew
islands in their wake and the birds keep arriving with seeds
and coconuts still wash ashore like prophetic skulls
you're free to believe or not, and the air tastes like emeralds.
Here you could mentor the stars in their myths of origin
as you made them up to honour some quirk in your character
and they began to speak of you as their dark mother.
And nobody need know what you mean when you spoke to me
about those things that encroached on your silence inside.
I know how to listen for dissonant sounds in the night.
I can hear the falling of a single eyelash of light
when the moon goes out, the footfall of a spider on the stairs.
Sister Lunacy, should I take your hand, shall we dance
to the picture-music that overtakes us unawares,
you with your dark tears, and mine so far in arrears?
PATRICK WHITE
poem by Patrick White
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Little Sister
Words and music by rick nielsen
Well Ive been around here for way too long
Its really time to go
But theres reasons for my madness
Though it doesnt show
I sit and wait and contemplate what am I gonna say
When the telephone rings I hear her voice
She speaks that special way
Alright now, little sister
Wait all night for the call
Shes alright with me
Shes so hot, shes on fire
Oo little sister
Fills me up with desire
Oo little sister
Sun goes down when she gets up
I dont think I can get enough
Little sister, little sister
Little sister, little sister
Somethings flowing through my veins
What it is I dont know
Its a three alarm fire in my heart
Hope it doesnt show
Call the doctor, call the judge
Justice of the peace
Pluck this flower in full bloom
This relatives no niece
Alright now, little sister
Wait all night for the call
Shes alright with me
Shes so hot, shes on fire
Oo little sister
Fills me up with desire
Oo little sister
Sun goes down when she gets up
I dont think I can get enough
Little sister, little sister
Little sister, little sister
Im at the crossroads waiting for a call
Back against the wall again
But Im not just expecting anyone
When I get the call that says it all
She says yeah (robin, Ill be right over)
Shes so hot, shes on fire
Oo little sister
Fills me up with desire
Oo little sister
Sun goes down when she gets up
I dont think I can get enough
Little sister, little sister
Little sister, little sister
Oo, I like it when you talk dirty to me
Shes so hot, shes on fire
Oo little sister
Fills me up with desire
Oo little sister
Sun goes down when she gets up
I dont think I can get enough
Little sister, little sister
Little sister, little sister
(repeat to coda)
song performed by by Cheap Trick
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I Should Lie In The Sun And Melt Into The Grass
I should lie in the sun and melt into the grass.
I listen to the bikers throttling up like chain-saws.
I sit here urgently trying not to pollute time.
A poem's got one foot on shore and one in the boat.
Let Atlantis rise or sink as it will. I can wait.
Even when it's calm, my heart is an idling storm
and every third thought is a voodoo doll
as it sees itself on the inside
behind the eyelid of a visionary eclipse.
Nothing to worry about. I'm not going to put
the eyes of the telescope out for looking at Lady Godiva.
Look at me tracking myself all over this paper,
mouse and bird letters in the snow at the base of a juniper.
How human it is to forgo yourself for a future that doesn't exist.
God, I wish there were more fireflies in my life than street signs.
Do you see the lack of meaning in how things are understood?
Thought will get you as far as a frog on a lily pad
but once you get there it's easy to see it's the lily that shines
in a whole other realm of language
that everyone understands but no one can speak.
I watch the honeysuckle burn the gate I came through.
I note the blue eye shadow of the damselfly
applying herself like a cosmetic pencil to the heavy petals
of the wild roses tangled in the fallen birch.
What a shock it would be if I were to take off my lifemask
and you were to discover me infinitely closer to you
like a dimension you hadn't detected in your awareness
than the light is to what you see when
you're sitting up in bed alone in the dark at three in the morning.
What a world, hey? What do you make of it?
The marvel and the horror and the mystery
and the way destiny manifestly unrolls like a lottery
for every living thing on a planet that occasionally plays
Russian roulette with the asteroids, and our tiny part in it all,
this mere speck of nothingness that can embody
in its formless spaces within, the superclustering of galaxies?
And the pain and the anger and the sorrow and the fear
and the way things change and disappear
as you look for the forms of your expectations everywhere
and everything's either an approximation or consolation
of what you can see so clearly, it burns the air?
I should lie down in the sun and melt into the grass,
but forgotten among buildings here, I am unbound
and not even the dead are as free as I am right now.
The whole universe is one big solid insight
where inanimate things are just another mode of motion
sitting in the room like Latin, dogpaddling in space and time,
and I'm tucked under your eyelids like a loveletter
you weren't expecting in a language that could read you
like any one of the seventy-two scholars of the Septuagint.
I've been listening to you for lightyears like leaves
listen for the wind and the rain and the moonlight
and what you have felt about being alive
to say hello and sing farewell, has been my feeling,
and when you have wept at the intransigence of angels
and the generosity of their expansive interventions,
I have been humbled by the eyes of my own exaltations.
And my feet swept out from under me
like an undertow of shadows on the moon.
Sister Lunacy, who can stand in the light
of these intensities and immensities for long
this vertigo of stars and skulls, bells and scars
without reeling in the delirium of simply being here
to witness them as if they somehow depended on us
to embody them in our hearts and minds and voids
as if they were no different from us than we were,
all waves of awareness the wind blows up on the ocean.
The imagination transforms everything in to us.
The stars reek of the eyes that have gazed up at them
like pyres and telescopes and censers, it's
in the hair of a comet like the smell of a lover,
it's what makes the meteorites as kissable
as the head of a snake to the lips of a gentle enemy.
Sister Lunacy, my heartfelt muse, my dark-side dakini,
what have you been dancing for all these years?
Have you been pearldiving among the castanets
for a moonrise in the mouth of a seashell
that could sing to you like the ocean you're lost upon?
You're the station every seeker gets to
on a pilgrimage he doesn't know he's taking
where he damns the consequences and blessings alike
and enters into the spiritual life as a rebel of compassion
as he addresses himself to what's arrayed before him
as if there were only one voice between himself and another
like a bridge that flows, like a star
that doesn't drown in your eye like a firefly.
And if there were anything I could ever say I was
it would have to be this just as it is, this
endlessness I keep being poured out into
as if my heart were the only waterclock I could live by
and disembodied space the only medium
that could accommodate my shapeshifting adaptations
like goldfish coming to the surface to feed on the stars.
Sister Lunacy, the moon reaches down to the roots of the river reeds
and the catfish thrive among the wild rice in the shallows,
and eyes in the darkness high overhead, as if
someone shattered a mirror into a billion bits of awareness
see you standing on your barren precipice
and long to know what it is you're thinking.
In order to understand you must become the thing itself.
You must abdicate your own presence to be
remotely at peace with the world, it's a strawdog anyway,
and it burns too fast to be much of a lighthouse.
And o my darkness, there are so many skins you have yet to shed
like the moon trying on a wardrobe of water
laying her gown across the lake like an early frost of sequins.
I shall come to you at first as a premonition
as lightly as a cloud touches the mountain, an aberrant insight,
a synchronistic intuition of our simultaneity,
and in your breath my breath shall be an atmosphere
and in your eye my eye shall lavish the most intimate of stars,
and in your blood my blood shall be the poppy and the rose.
Sister Lunacy, even after the house has burnt to the ground
my passion stands like a blackened doorway in the rain
and though I look at you through a broken window,
the moon is whole, and the sky is not torn or bruised.
poem by Patrick White
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Summer Time Love
I’m sorry, you’re not the girl for me
I know it might be wrong, but I’m in love with your sister
Do you recall when we barbecued at the beach,
Your sister was wearing a swimsuit, she’s so beautiful.
Your sister’s got that angel effect, it can’t be helped
I’m falling to her, I’m losing restrain
I’m sorry, you’re not the girl for me
I know it might be wrong, but I’m in love with your sister
Do you remember when we were at the theater,
Your sister was sitting next to me, she’s so entertaining
Your sister’s got the sunshine effect, it’s so scenic
I can’t get her off my mind, I’m addicted
I’m sorry, you’re not the girl for me
I know it might be wrong, but I’m in love with your sister
Do you remember when I drove your sister to school,
Your sister was in my arms for the first time, she’s so captivating
Your sister and I took off, we didn’t get back till the next day
I’ve fallen for her, I lost all ideals
I’m sorry, you’re not the girl for me
I know it might be wrong, but I’m in love with your sister
Do you remember when I vacationed with your sister,
Your sister was in love with me for the first time, she’s so perfect
Your sister’s got the marry me girl effect, it can’t be rejected
I’m chained to her now, I’m impassive
I know it might’ve been a waste, everything that I aimed for
I’m in love with your sister and It doesn’t matter anymore,
I don’t know how to confess this to you, I don’t care
Can’t you see that you’re just not the girl for me?
It might seem like a temporary fantasy
I know it might be wrong, but I’m in love with your sister
poem by Aiden Florence
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My Sister my sister
My sister holds me tight
My sister kisses me goodnight
My sister knows when I’m mad
My sister helps me when I’m sad
My sister is so smart
My sister has my heart
My sister loves me lots
My sister ties the knots
My sister is here to stay
My sister I have until this very day
My sister I wish you well
My sister yes I can tell
My sister asked if I lied
My sister knows if I’ve cried
My sister has moved away
My sister is in my heart to and will always stay
poem by Emilie Jackson
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Human Zoo
Well you just step right up, you sexy thing
Tell me whats been goin on in that funky little brain
Come dance with the devil
You want it when its gonna cost you
cause nothing comes for free
When youre living in a human zoo
Chorus
Dance sister dance through the human zoo
Youre such a mess now, girl
Look what theyve done to you...
In the human zoo
Look what theyve done to you
All love lost, in a fit of rage
Sell your soul for revenge and seal your fate
Welcome to the nightmare
Ive been expecting you
Say anything you like, baby
Just dont let me hear your point of view
Chorus
Dance sister dance through the human zoo
Dance sister dance through the human zoo
Youre such a mess now, girl
Look what they done to you...
In the human zoo
Look what they done to you
Look what, look what they done, baby
They made a mess of you
Harmonica solo
Bridge
Hanoi rocks and saigon rolls
Just drop the bomb then watch it explode
Sign of the times read too young to vote
But old enough to die for you
We got the medication you need
Just dont let us hear your point of view
Chorus
Dance sister dance through the human zoo
Dance sister dance through the human zoo
song performed by by Poison
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My Perfect Sister
MY PERFECT SISTER
My perfect sister holds me tight
My perfect sister kisses me goodnight
My perfect sister knows when I’m mad
My perfect sister helps me when I’m sad
My perfect sister is so smart
My perfect sister has my heart
My perfect sister is good and nice
My perfect sister holds me at night
My perfect sister loves me lots
My perfect sister ties the knot
My perfect sister is here to stay
My perfect sister I have until this very day
My perfect sister I wish you well
My perfect sister yes I can tell
My perfect sister asked if I lied
My perfect sister knows if I’ve cried
My perfect sister has moved away
->My perfect sister is in my heart to and will always stay
poem by Megan Sandifer
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My sister dont
My sister please dont cry
My sister dry your eyes
My sister don't end your life
My sister your not his wife
My sister he's cold as a snake
My sister he's just a fake
My sister everything will be better when you wake
My sister Ive seen the pills you take
My sister he's full of lies
My sister don't even try
My sister your the one everyone likes
My sister don't start a fight
My sister it ends tonight
My sister I need you, don't end your life
poem by Jackrabbit Krjs
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Sister Midnight
Pop/bowie/alomar
Calling sister midnight
Youve got me reaching for the moon
Calling sister midnight
Youve got me playing the fool
Calling sister midnight
Calling sister midnight
Can you hear me call
Can you hear me well
Can you hear me at all
Calling sister midnight
Im an idiot for you
Calling sister midnight
Im a breakage inside
Calling sister midnight
Calling sister midnight
You know I had a dream last night
Mother was in my bed
And I made love to her
Father he gunned for me
Hunted me with his six gun
Calling sister midnight
What can I do about my dreams
Listen to me sister midnight
You put a beggar in my heart
Calling sister midnight
Youve got me walking in rags
Hey where are you sister midnight
Can you hear me call
Can you hear me well
Can you hear me at all
song performed by by Iggy Pop
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Dance Unto The Light
Dance unto the light,
Sway to the sounds of time,
Watch the angels bright,
As they dance within your mind.
Dance my friends and sway,
To beauty, to laughter, to love,
For this is the most perfect day,
A perfect gift from above!
Dance unto the light,
Catch the stars bright,
For perfect are the angels love,
From the One Most High above!
Dance, dance, dance
As the music plays on,
Dance, Dance, Dance,
As we listen to their song.
Dance unto the light,
Star light, star bright,
Watch as the baby is born,
On a most glorious morn?
Dance unto the light,
Catch the stars so bright,
Yes He died on a tree,
But He died for Victory!
dance unto the light,
We dance unto the night,
The song has been sung,
For He has finally won!
poem by Katrina S. Lucas
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The Day She Was Born
I remember so vividly the day you were born
That day seemed like it would never end
I prayed you would come to the world safe
and I prayed my mother would come with you
I prayed and I prayed
The first time I held you in my arms
I felt the power of a sister bond
your face glowed with a divine light
the prints on your palms were delicately printed
there were soft stroked of curly black hair decorating your tiny head
When you opened your dark brown eyes
I then realized who I was holding in my arms
My sister, own sister
my little sister
On that day I vowed
to protect you with all my life
to provide you with life
and to be with you all throughout my life..
poem by Sinigdha Biswas
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A Sisters
A sister is someone who leads you when you are having a problem.
A sister makes you laugh and cry.
A sister is someone who likes to fight with you.
A sister is the one who stands with you in all your ups and downs.
A sister makes you remember who you really are.
A sister sometimes makes you cry when they are very sad.
A sister is someone who is always there for you through all the laughter and tears.
A sister is real.
A sister never will pretend.
A sister is someone like you whom I treasure everyday in my heart.
poem by Kayla Fraser
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The Black Swan
When the swans turned my sister into a swan
I would go to the lake, at night, from milking:
The sun would look out through the reeds like a swan,
A swan's red beak; and the beak would open
And inside there was darkness, the stars and the moon.
Out on the lake, a girl would laugh.
"Sister, here is your porridge, sister,"
I would call; and the reeds would whisper,
"Go to sleep, go to sleep, little swan."
My legs were all hard and webbed, and the silky
Hairs of my wings sank away like stars
In the ripples that ran in and out of the reeds:
I heard through the lap and hiss of water
Someone's "Sister . . . sister," far away on the shore,
And then as I opened my beak to answer
I heard my harsh laugh go out to the shore
And saw - saw at last, swimming up from the green
Low mounds of the lake, the white stone swans:
The white, named swans . . . "It is all a dream,"
I whispered, and reached from the down of the pallet
To the lap and hiss of the floor.
And "Sleep, little sister," the swan all sang
From the moon and stars and frogs of the floor.
But the swan my sister called, "Sleep at last, little sister,"
And stroked all night, with a black wing, my wings.
poem by Randall Jarrell
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I Was The Child of The Night
I was the child of the night
Dark is my father
The moon is my mother
Star of stars was my sister
I was the child of the night
My father is a symbol of fear and helplessness
My mom is the charm
My sister is the beauty of the night
I was the child of night who afraid of the dark night
Mom, please tell to father i would not like the darkness
But my mother said, need not be afraid, my daughter, my light will always protect you from the dark night.
I always give you a glimmer of light in the darkness.
And see your sister, she was very beautiful among the dark of night.
My daughter, the darkness is tranquility.
Many people would like stay in it although it will make them are scared and helpless because
They are find peace in the darkness.
My Little Sister X
my little sister, is the best sister you could ever wish for
my little sister holds me tight at night
my little sister kisses me goodnight
my little sister knows when i'm getting mad
my little sister knows how to me happy when sad
my little sister is a star xx
poem by Dannielle Farrell
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Itylus
Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,
Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,
The soft south whither thine heart is set?
Shall not the grief of the old time follow?
Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth?
Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?
Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,
Thy way is long to the sun and the south;
But I, fulfilled of my heart's desire,
Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,
From tawny body and sweet small mouth
Feed the heart of the night with fire.
I the nightingale all spring through,
O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
All spring through till the spring be done,
Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,
Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,
Take flight and follow and find the sun.
Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,
Though all things feast in the spring's guest-chamber,
How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?
For where thou fliest I shall not follow,
Till life forget and death remember,
Till thou remember and I forget.
Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,
I know not how thou hast heart to sing.
Hast thou the heart? is it all past over?
Thy lord the summer is good to follow,
And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:
But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?
O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,
My heart in me is a molten ember
And over my head the waves have met.
But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow
Could I forget or thou remember,
Couldst thou remember and I forget.
O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,
The heart's division divideth us.
Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;
But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow
To the place of the slaying of Itylus,
The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.
O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,
I pray thee sing not a little space.
Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?
The woven web that was plain to follow,
The small slain body, the flower-like face,
Can I remember if thou forget?
O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!
The hands that cling and the feet that follow,
The voice of the child's blood crying yet
Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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A Sister Poem
A sister is someone leads and helps you when you have a problem. A sister makes you laugh. A sisiter makes you cry. A sister is someone you fight with. When things go wrong between us.A sister makes you remember who you are.A sister makes you cry when she is sad.A sister is real. A sister is who you want her to be. I then save place in my everyday in my heart. written 8/28/08 Posted 12/10/08 Deciated to my sister Helena
poem by Susie Sunshine
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In The Nameless Realms Of My Mindlessness
In the nameless realms of my mindlessness
where everything that could be said
has been spoken
without being understood
the multiverse keeps repeating itself
like the decimal point of an incommensurable.
The needle of an early sixties record player
worn down like a diamond with cataracts
in orbit around a black LP of the old celestial spheres
still trying to waltz to the picture-music of their chandelier tears.
I'm expanding the available dimensions of poetry
to give myself more lebensraum
without goose-stepping across Russia
as if I had a golden egg up my proverbial.
I conquer in diaspora like the stars.
And I don't really care
if anyone believes me enough
to understand this
but if they look into my mind
without a mirror between us
they'll find their own
as clear and unique and homeless as space.
And the darkness that scrys
their prophetic skulls
will conform to the lines in their face
like a love poem
deep in the heart of the night
when it's raining crystal balls.
And the dirt on the window
that was drawing all day
people the size of its thumb
will show its masterpiece to the stars
to be hung like a new constellation.
And the green bud who cut
her throat on the moon
to free the rose in her voice
will speak to her lover
like a scarlet ribbon
around a gift that she meant to send him.
And you who judge these affairs
as mere rumours of the heart
will come to know
what longing means
when fact falls in love with art.
In the nameless realms of my mindlessness
there's a room that is waiting for everyone
to show up like a door.
And in the vastness of this mental state
their feet are the threshold and floor
of the last address
of the nightbird in the tree
that waits for the moon like mail.
And you can hear its impassioned reply from here
like the kite that just flew out your window
to solo on its own.
If you look the dragon in the eye.
If you're not afraid
to stand like a stranger in your own doorway.
If you're fanatically desperate enough
to thread the eye of the needle
like a noose in the knot at the end of the road
where the world stands on the shell of a turtle
waiting for the big moment to make a move
taste this thornapple of your own madness
and I shall make a gift to you
of my freedom and solitude
and everywhere you walk
like a nightwatchman
lamp in hand
the candle will not be lost
on the long road it's been following like smoke
and gold will pour from your wounds
like bliss from the ancient ores of your sadness.
I shall not take you by the hand.
I shall not allure you in the wilderness.
I shall not walk beside you
like a mountain or a lighthouse
or reassure you when it isn't
that it was all just a dream.
In the nameless realms of my mindlessness
there are no holy wars
among the godless telescopes
trying to explain what they don't understand
by quoting sacred books
like laws they make up
from the prophetic gossip of man.
There are no teachers.
There are no guides.
No signs.
No starmaps.
No cosmic paradigms
to snare the psyche in its thesis
by reassembling all the pieces
like a butterfly in a spiderweb.
But I will offer you this black pearl
of a new moon
like the primordial atom
of a spontaneous beginning of your own
and from the wellspring of the first moment of creation
you will know the agony
of the inspiration
and the expanse of the abandonment
in making a world
where all things lead away from you
like stars and people and water.
But you will feel deep in your heart
the intimacy of a stranger's gratitude
for the immeasurable giving
of an inexhaustible abyss
that's been going on for lightyears.
You will stare at the hair in the brush
in front of the mirror
where your dead sister
used to renew her virginity
and you will call out a thousand names
as if they were all the echo of your own
clones on the telephone
but none of them will answer
the same voice twice
until you're alone with the Alone
and there's no need to ask.
Here you will recover
the crazy wisdom of your lost clarity
like the comet of a long forgotten memory
that will come blazing back into your mind
and gazing up at it
like a sign from your sister
you will realize
the original nature
of your own mind
is the engine of change
in this world of time and passage
and to have been conceived of once
is enough to outlast eternity.
In this space
the guest does not lament
the lack of a host
but understands it
as the apex of grace
to make him feel completely at home
by leaving him alone
to make it his own.
Does the dream age
into a waking adage of bone?
Are you tempted to wake God up
when you're sleeping alone?
Are you screaming so high
you're breaking eardrums like wineglasses
but no one can hear you
like a dogwhistle
that calls nothing home?
You can't cling to your misery here
like a voodoo doll
you raised as your own assassin.
There are no bullet-holes in the mailbox.
And no one gives the dice
a second chance.
Like the wind
when it's wild in the trees
there's an address
but no identity.
And no one's an orphan
because there's nothing to belong to
that can let go of you
as if you didn't exist.
The raindropp isn't separate
and the river isn't one.
Between the moon and its reflection
between the candle and its flame
between the person and their name
between the chaff and the grain
there's no distinction.
No one lucid.
No one insane.
And if there's a routine to follow
it's that there's no path
that leads away from you
that isn't the spontaneous discipline
of the effortless mastery you were born with.
Inspiration sets up its tent
like the capstone of a pyramid
rooted in wind and sand.
And there's no way to explain it
because there's no one
who doesn't understand.
In the nameless realms of my mindlessness
the deserts aren't a way of counting stars.
And whether you look up at the sky
or down at your feet
the light can't be measured
in the wavelengths of snakes
that aren't on the same frequency as your eyes.
There's only one law of physics here
and that's
that everything is a complete surprise.
poem by Patrick White
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Sister of Heart
Sister of heart
Sister of soul
How can I tell you
what my mind knows
To explain my reasoning
Is a distasteful seasoning
Sister of heart
Sister of soul
Sister of mind
that is unknown
When I am falling
It's you I am calling
To ease the pain
You keep me sane
Sister I love
I hurt as well
I cause pain to swell
in your heart
Sister I know
we don't always see
each other perfectly
But try I will
endeavor I shall
The laughs and love
I'll never forget
the day we met
Sister of mind
Sister of soul
It's you I shall always owe
My gratitude
My protection
Sister of pain
I will share mine
and take yours far away
Sister of anger
Hatred is fine
but keep close in mind
also is forgiveness divine
Forever or longer
I will not let our differences
change our hearts
Forever together
sooner apart
Sister of soul
Sister of heart
poem by Sareeah Keelyn
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Psalm for my Sister
I will lift my eyes and smile as I give thanks to my sister.
My radiant complicated sister, who is more than my sister,
she's my friend.
I will thank the good lord above that we were children together
I rejoice to remember playing house or barbie dolls.
Our secrets, our surprises, even our fights.
I feel deep longing for those days when we were little girls together,
Life hungry, each fighting her own battle,
Yet supporting each other against the world
My sister, my beautiful sister.
Thank you for this women who shares my parents
My past, my blood, who see's me whole, the beginning long ago, and the person I am now.
My sister, who's faults are so clear to me but dear to me, just as my faults are to her.
Yet for all the differneces and the miles that come between us, we still battle the world together.
I laugh for the joy of my sister,
and sometimes I weep for my sister,
I long to comfor her and hold her close
Dear Lord please watch over my sister
the sister I love so much.
1994
poem by Sharon Reniff
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Not Imitating Anything Within Myself
Not imitating anything within myself. Not
cloning, replicating, or even confining
the same seeds to the same plants, endlessly
spiralling through space like a galaxy or a hawk,
drift, release, and disperse, condense and shine,
shudder with motherlodes of lightning in the ore,
let the light turn back on itself like a solar flare
or an ingrown hair, let the presence show me
the absolute purity of its absence if it must,
and that which is greatly unknown retain its sublimity.
I seek nothing. And find it everywhere. I make
no appeal to the silence to make something happen
for a change, as if it had a mind of its own
that didn't come with an explanation or an alibi.
Neither indictment nor confession, I'm not listening
to the stars through the black walnut leaves with my ears.
Three blocks away the teen agers sound like
white water in a small rapid, and the heavy night air
can barely keep its eyelids open, and though
I've lived here before they were born,
I am always the occasion of a stranger
who takes note and moves on down some deserted avenue
or path through the woods where the moon
and the stars appear more luminously invigorated
as they were before the town began to smoke them out like bees
and they dimmed to mere chalk dust on a blackboard.
I give a military salute to the lamp posts of the Imperial Guard
and go into exile like Napoleon. Je me souviens.
I will make no more wars upon my solitude.
I will walk with Sister Lunacy, my strange companion,
and we shall return our shadows to the darkness
like the feathers of two birds of prey renewing our wingspan
just to wheel on the wind like figure-skaters no one is watching.
Not to aspire. Not to long. Not to fulfil, acquire, or achieve.
Simply to act boundlessly as the smoke from a fire.
As the breath from our mouths on the afterlife of a star
that was a great arsonist in its time,
as the ashes of the bridges it crossed will tell you
in words of white phosphorus that will burn through your eyes.
Sweet absorption into the darkness on the other side
of seeing, I leave my images and metaphors behind me
like a man who's just wandered off the job
leaves his tools as they are, and follows some intuition
lingering like the fragrance of a night out of time in the air
that means nothing sustainable to anyone but him.
poem by Patrick White
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