Tag: poetry

Passionfruit

On By J. Barrett LeeIn poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Image by Taka. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Life gave
what I took
for my own.

I learned
how to seize
with the hands,
how to tear
with the teeth.

I learned
what it felt like
to touch with the lips,
to press with the tongue,
to be surprised by how much
came out
when I broke the surface,
to be covered with sweetness
all over my body.

Now I know.
It’s complicated.

***

What I took
is mine.

I’m learning
how to build
with the hands,
how to hold nails
with the teeth.

Cleaning up
is never
as much fun
as messing up.

Construction
is never
as cathartic
as demolition.

Nails and wood
are not the same thing
as a tree.

They have no power
to give life.

I’m learning
what it feels like
to be covered with sweat
all over my body.

***

What I made
gave life.

It was an accident.
Nobody meant for it to happen
this way.
It just seemed like a good idea
at the time.

The hands that learned
to seize and build.
The teeth that learned
to tear and hold.
The facsimile of a tree.

I wasn’t expecting it
to be alive
when I broke the surface.

I was surprised by how much
came out
and covered me with blood
all over my body.

More forgetting
than learning
this time.

Not taken
for my own,
but given
by another.

Turn Aside

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Image
By Audrey from Central Pennsylvania, USA (Daisy Drops Uploaded by Fæ) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Turn aside to the whole on fire:

Consuming, consumed
Unassuming, assumed
And so, beyond consumption
And so, breaking all assumptions.

In stillness, an explosion
In silence, a voice
Chain reaction
Isness.

Thousands of miles, even millions
Millennia, maybe forever
Light and color in the mind
Take off your shoes.

Let them go
Let them be
Ice irradiated
Becomes humble

And some of it fell on me.

A Psalm of Lament

On By J. Barrett LeeIn poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Oxbow Bend outlook in Grand Teton National Park. Image by Michael Gäbler. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

To love is to live

with an open heart,

a broken heart.

To give of oneself until empty.

To not grasp equality.

To devalue oneself.

To give to what only knows how to take.

To be the apple tree picked clean.

To be swallowed by darkness.

To be spent but not touched.

To play the whore and the virgin at the same time.

 

He did it.

Don’t mythologize.

Don’t romanticize.

Don’t let him be dismissed so easily.

He is the cheap trick,

the unfulfilled desire,

the itch you can’t scratch,

the pain that passeth understanding,

the walk like blues.

He is dead,

and gone,

and never coming back.

 

Really? 

Is that what you think?

Son, you talk an awful lot,

but maybe you should listen:

 

An unfamiliar voice.

A deer crossing the road in front of me.

A chipmunk on his way to do something (apparently) very important.

A bee otherwise occupied.

Green.

Blue.

Grey.

Brown.

Hot breath, 93 million miles old.

Cold fingers brushing past my cheek and through my hair.

A passion play:

astir,

exploding,

in motion.

Seeds of new life:

Sarah’s laughter knocked loose after 90 years or more.

The atmosphere is full of it.

What is it called?

Where is it from?

I don’t even know,

except to say

everywhere.

 

All of this is not an answer,

except to a question

I have not yet learned to ask.

It is neither an ending nor a beginning.

It is only a moment.

Descent Into Sanity

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.

.

 

Note: I recently discovered that I unintentionally plagiarized this poem.  Call it a case of unconscious memory.  When I first wrote this post, I thought it was original to me, but then I went back and picked up the book Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr and found this same poem within its pages.  Oh, the embarrassment!  So, mea culpa: this poem is not original to me, but can be found on page 62 of Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr.  Apologies.