Just Rewards

I can’t say…
Because I have never
been rewarded
It may be
I may never be
Or it may be
I have
been

Half asleep at 3am, I wrote these two short poems, rising into you and it’s me. After, a word image appeared in my mind and wouldn’t leave me til I captured it on paper. (See image.)

rising into you

Carissa, Carissa,

Carissa, Carissa,

what is weighing you down
so much?

By the second verse I had the noticeable feeling of not wanting to continue. By the middle, I just kept writing because I was in a channeling flow with that knowing, otherly voice, but was keenly aware this “poem” was not at all poetic:

I'm in a room
My stomach is full
and I'm not cold

I don't have enough money
for a new timing chain for my truck
My doctor can't tell me
what the pit
in my stomach is
the pain in my heart
or why my genitals hurt

I'm a Hatchet

I chop down
trees
to make books.

Some call me
a Murderer
Others call me a
Life Giver.

1.

In my old job
In my Old Life
I said Everything
And Nothing at all.

In my New Life
my goal
is to raise the bar
to slightly Above Nothing
the sacred Sweet Spot.

Henry’s Sky, like most poems, I vaguely remember writing because of my altered state—and being driven by a force deep inside me or far, far away—or both.

Yes,
you could say
I knew the man
We’d walked many
miles
Not all at once

mind you
in many pieces

This particular piece
I met him at his truck

The writing of this poem is emblematic of how I write 99% of my poetry. I woke up in the 2 o’clock hour with 3-5 dream sequences fresh on my mind that were lucid and memorable, poignant and movie-like. Out of the norm, I did not have a first line or verse present itself, but it was the dream sequences that impelled me to rise.

I wrote this poem in my head, upon waking, in bed, while on retreat at The Whidbey Institute. It began with what I thought at first was a 1970s rock song verse.

When

I found

the meaning

of life

I said

I said

life

in the

universe

…

A longer poem that builds to a powerful affirmation of living a courageous life:

“A real reading
is in the Church of Nature–outdoors

a real reading
comes from the Church of God–in the Soul

a real reading
is from the Church of the Heart–deep inside”

Somewhere in my late teens I wrote my first poem. I had zero interest, and little schooling, in poetry. From this beginning, poems spontaneously poured out of me in finished form. At seemingly random times and without titles.