This week's  Sacred Song Space Challenge:  What gets in *your* way? Is it medical, emotional, organizational--just plain old time? What sucks the joy and saps the life out of--well, life--for you? This is your chance to kick its ass. Tell your obstacle or obstacle what you think of it (or them), where to get off--and how you are fighting or plan to fight back".


  I have heard it said that love starts with one's self...my conundrum - what happens when even the most basic  component of one's body commences a revolution...causing pain, blindness, confusion and paralysis...when these bastard neurons hijack all the other better parts...causing mayhem, discontent and disorder...I tell you - it is bad enough to lose beauty, youth and grace, as one ages...bad enough to lose family, friends and lovers to accidents and other misfortunes...but when the body attempts it's hostile take-over...when your bathroom has become a miniature pharmacopoeia...when neurons mis-fire like an epileptic, drunk...whilst doing ballet around an oak tree, daubed in blue and howling at the moon, simultaneously...then this has become a battle I am tired of fighting...one that I have decided to concede...let the neurons have their vainglorious victory...let them have the spoils - my broken body...

art - Henri Matissa

I wrote this poem, after contemplating, how thirty years of poetry, essays, drawings, were destroyed by a flood...it took me about three years to start writing again...unfortunately, due to the MS, I was unable to pick up a paintbrush...I had sketches, pencil, and charcoals of my kids, when they were babies...all gone...



paper clumps float in my basement
ink smeared, fragmented, indecipherable words
sitting on the steps
i mourn my drowned words

Sacred Song Space - http://sacredsongspace.multiply.com/journal

art - http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/inscribing/images/wosenePaintingLG.jpg

Disclaimer - this is a poem, and not my autobiography; it is part of the Sacred Song Space weekly challenge.




there was no need to wave wands
conjure spells or mix magic potions
I did not languish lupine under pale full moons
nor speak in mystical tongues
no depressants were dispensed
late night drinking, crying and man bashing
with friends, was avoided
I did not vacillate between telephoning you
and damming you to perdition
nor did I spend nights oscillating between a false bravado
and Ophelia like vapors
I simply stopped 
hating you
one breathe
one memory
one heart ache
at a time
and began
to love
me

art - http://www.gobc.ca/media/members/member_608_3.jpg

This is very much a work in progress...I belong to a lovely poetry group, called Sacred Song Space...

hmmm...I like experimenting with different poetic forms, from other cultures. Please forgive my awkward attempt, at a flor y canto. What is a flor y canto? The Aztecs had a developed a form of oral poetry, referred to metaphorically as "in xōchitl in cuīcatl" (the flower, the song), which was often sung to music. The Aztecs did not rely on rhyme but on a delicate balance of accented and unaccented syllables and a vast symbolism that reflected their culture. They also established "Houses of Songs" in order to train young poets and conduct various poetry contests.



I have secret dreams and hopes
that are sacred perhaps
to no one else
but me.

I have a fancy for freedom
mine and yours
a hope that visionaries
will be treasured and respected
instead of mocked or assassinated
a reverent reverie
for divine believers.

To be a dreamer, a  sacred  seeker
can be dangerous
ask King, Gandhi,
Sa’id Hamami* and Deyda Hydara*,
Jean Léon Jaurès *, Bernadotte af Wisborg* and Óscar Romero*
let us not forget Anna Lindh* and Annalena Tonelli*
or Bettina Goislard* and Agathe Uwilingiyimana
all these dreamers, hopers and sacred singers.

We have sought insights and sacred dreaming
through pharmacopoeia
the soma of the Hindus,
peyotl of the ancient Mayans and Incans,
hashish of the Arabs,
the opium of Asia
honored sibyllines*, oneiocritikoi*, seers and augurs
when they told us
what we wanted to hear
excoriated them for failed prognostication
let me tell you a secret -
we are all born with the possibility
of being seekers, singers, sacred dreamers
one just needs to find the sacredness
within.


FYIs:

1. Sa’id Hamami - he was assassinated in London on January 4, 1978, by the Fatah Revolutionary Council, led by Sabri al-Banna (also known as BU NIDAL). His crime was seeking peace between Isrealies and Palestinians.

2. Deyda Hydara - was a co-founder and primary editor of the Point, a Gambiannewspaper. He was also a correspondent for both AFP News AgencyReporters Without Borders for more than 30 years.Hydara was an advocate of press freedom and a fierce critic of the government of President Yahya Jammeh, who has been openly hostile to Gambian journalists and the media. On December 16, 2004, Hydara was killed in his car by unidentified gunmen; two of his colleagues were also injured.

3. Jean Léon Jaurès - French socialist, radical activist of the French left. Founder of l'Humanité. Assassinated by the extreme nationalist Raoul Villain in 1914.By 1893 he was a Socialist, aligned with the Independent Socialists, but was never a Marxist, believing that Marxism gave undue weight to the role of material interests in history, and favouring a gradualist approach to democratic socialism.In 1894 Jaurès leant his support to the campaign to free Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew jailed for treason based on forged evidence and this cost Jaures the election in 1898.

4. Bernadotte af Wisborg - was a Swedish diplomat noted for his negotiation of the release of about 15,000 prisoners from German concentration camps during World War II.[1] In 1945, he received a German surrender offer from Heinrich Himmler , though the offer was ultimately rejected.After the war, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen by the victorious powers to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by members of the underground group Lehi while pursuing his official duties.

5. Óscar Romero - commonly known as Monseñor Romero, was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador. He later became the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, succeeding the long-reigning Luis Chávez y González. As archbishop, he witnessed ongoing violations of human rights and started a group which spoke out to the poor and also victims of the country's civil war. Chosen to be archbishop for his conservatism, once in office his conscience led him to embrace a non-violent form of liberation theology, a position that has led to comparisons with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Later, in 1980, he was assassinated by gunshot shortly after his homily.

6. Anna Lindh - Sweden’s Foreign Minister, who was murdered days before a key September 2003 referendum on the euro, while shopping in a Stockholm department store. She would say openly what other politicians might only say behind closed doors.

During Sweden's EU presidency she argued forcefully for human rights and called US President George W Bush "the Lone Ranger" for going to war with Iraq.

And just a few days before her death, she spoke out blaming the US and Israel, as well as Yasser Arafat for the crisis in the Middle East. She called suicide bombing atrocities...I greatly admired her...

7. Annalena Tonelli -  Italian humanitarian worker who ran a tuberculosis hospital for years. She was murdered in October 2003 in Somalia.

8. Bettina Goislard - worked  for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Afghanistan; a 29-year-old French woman, who was shot and killed in November 2003.

9.Agathe Uwilingiyimana  - As education minister she abolished the academic ethnic quota system, awarding public school places and scholarships by open merit ranking. This decision earned her the enmity of the Hutu-extremist parties. She was murdered in the opening days, of the Rwandan Genocide. Another woman, I admired...

10. Sibyllines - Greek and literally means: a the lifting of the veil), is a term applied to the disclosure to certain privileged persons, of something.

11. Oneiocritikoi, - a special class of diviners, who in ancient Greece were known as interpreters of dreams.


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