Tag: healing

Wisp dreams

their dreams were wisps of smoke
            they prayed for rain
                   through the understated mahogany of the trees

the dotted stars faded in the morning 
           but the wisp prayers still hung in the air
                   unable to be blown away  in new gusts of wind

only the softly falling drops that finally came three months later
          finally washed away the answered prayers
                   like salt being washed from a wound

the cleansing rain awoke a new dream
    this time reflected in puddles that would last until the rain stopped
          and the new dreams echoed into the sky
                  with the rays of the sun.

stillness

stillness halts and lingers
ignoring the fantasy of truth
ignoring the framework of deception
and puts me on my guard

I cancel the stillness with an obscene amount of mental motion
my stillness feels like boredom
so I break its bonds 
and think I’ve found freedom

but until stillness can be still
fleeing it only leads to an illusion of freedom
a sticky web of the subconscious
that knows what it wants but keeps forgetting 
simple steps

be still everywhere
except your breath
be still-breath-be free

Be free of ugliness 
 of never ending cyclical motion

let stillness linger
find freedom

Shrapnel 2

On paper and in person she was as small as a mouse
and still she tried to make herself smaller

She wished to shrink to a speck of stardust
infinitely small
but also imbued with powers contained
in the nascent universe inside her

One day she went into her mind
and did not come back out again

Instead she became stardust.
Her dream of becoming a speck came true

But that was not the end of her story…..

She became a seed planted in a new place
and all that there was left to do
was to expand.

She sang the body electric
She became the stars
and her own new multiverse under her own terms

Like shrapnel exploding
she exploded into the biggest planet 
anyone had ever seen

Her power was compassion
and no one could ever make her feel small again

We are all made of stars.

shrapnel number 1

The strength of weighted words
measured for resonance
and chosen for impact
hit their mark

the armor did not hold
and the sting became a wound
where these words pierced her

It wasn’t so much that she was called a name
it was whose voice was used as the weapon
to deliver this name that became the bullet

now she spends the wee hours 
picking out shrapnel
which she is forming into bullets of her own

the map

my heavy heart
is swift of foot
but somehow lies dormant

under red sands
and marbled skies
for many many sunsets

fried over 
it’s hard to recognize 
the scars
after they bake
in the sun
for years and years

one scar bleeds 
into the next
until they form
a picture 

if you examine
the picture 
at different angles
it’s both a secret symbol


and 
a 
map

a map 
back down
to where
the sources
of scars
lie buried
in the sand

shattered owl

shattered owl why do you weep so sweetly
attend to your broken feathers 
that stick out like shards
waiting to cut
the next one to come near you

let your sorrow seep out slowly
not in a gust of words without mindfulness or compassion 
or without kind attention to the strength of their candor

concatenated tears can be beautiful prisms in the moonlight
once you see the beauty in them 
use their strength to heal your mournful yowl

there is strength in tears 
but 
pain does not need to be our proverb

Weekly Reading – July 18, 2021

The Page of Swords – A Key to Innovation

This week in one of my personal readings I drew the Page of Swords using the Tarot of the Divine. This card can be the harbinger of new ideas coming from a place of wit and optimism. The story behind the card in the Tarot of the Divine is that of Princess Parizade – an Arabic folktale.

A quick summary of the story is that Princess Parizade and her two brothers were set adrift on the river by their mother’s jealous sisters. A royal gardener raised them, but one day passed away and they weren’t sure who would care for them. One day Parizade was kind to an old woman who let her know about three magical objects at the top of a mountain. In order to reach the top of the mountain they would have to ignore the taunts of spirits, for if they didn’t they would be turned to stone and never reach the top. The two brothers insisted on going on the journey without Parizade, but they were unable to ignore the taunts and turned to stone. Parizade tried next. Using all of her courage and her own “Medicine”, or ideas, she decide to stick wax in her ears so she could not hear the taunts – she climbed the mountain and as the taunts came she laughed at them. She reached the top of the mountain and received the three magic objects that allowed her to heal her brothers, heal the Gardner’s garden, and discover their true lineage and return them to the home of the Sultan. It was then that they were reunited with their mother.

I decided to pull some cards from one of my favorite Oracles – the Literary Witches Oracle – to understand the page of swords further, and what I needed to unlock it. I pulled Maria Sabina who knew a thing or two about healing medicine. She was a powerful shamanic healer who used psilocybin as part of her medicine, as well as the power of her poetry. She lived in the mountains of southern Mexico.

I find it interesting that I pulled an “old woman” from a mountain with a magical story to help understand this since that’s exactly what happened in the story. Even more interesting that it emphasizes non-traditional medicine and healing a key to unlocking your own innovation.

This week I encourage you to use your own non-traditional medicine, what ever that may be, to find keys to innovation. Maybe its innovation in your own healing process, maybe its innovation in how to help others heal. Maybe its storytelling and poetry as medicine that unlocks new ideas for you.

Whatever that is trust that medicine, and you will find your own magic objects at the top of your own mountain.