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Tag Archives: manifestation

Lit by Grace

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, form poetry, manifestation, seasonal verse, sonnets

burning-christmas-candles

Upon a mountain, ante-heroes feast
today, pre-eminent—no bullies, wimps,
or past tense lovers. Every element
is here, composed by fire and clay. The least
of us abjures reward and other gimps
like trying to please all. Our testament
unites! Divided hearts fear strategy,
but heroes true, we multiply—the more,
not less, the now, not then. Your politics
means nothing here; it’s positivity
creates, descends to valleys and the shore.
What happened long ago no longer sticks.
Lay down your righteous burdens. They’ve no place
amidst our celebrations lit by grace.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

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Hero

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

creating reality, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, manifestation, mythology, nagual, personal alchemy, plot devices, septime, seven stanza verse, subtle bodies, the hero archetype, writer's craft

hero_lemminkainen

A hero comes to me in dark of night,
mandolin strapped to his back, with shoulders
curled against the wind. Chinooks are moving
in. I think they may have blown him here,
though hard to tell. He moves with equal ease
through stillness, scaling walls in minor keys,
ignoring doors to broach this gate of mine.

My hero cannot be possessed. He’s mine
at best of times, a realist, nowhere
to be found when I have lost my keys
or sense of self. His breadth of shoulders
frames serenity while chaos storms the night;
he fends me from imagining dis-ease
and keeps my languid spirit moving.

On cloudy days, he plays mazurkas here
beside the fire until the pulsing night
surrounds us, and desires that I mine
with little hope by day spring free with ease.
My hero stands on solid ground of shoulders
that precede him. Our whole procession’s moving
toward an assembling One who holds the keys.

When I acclimate to ease
inside, I feel my hero moving
fully aimed to please the now and here,
delivering friends and lovers with the keys
to ships and fantasies, a diamond mine
without the cruelty. His silhouetted shoulders
steps ahead, he entertains no dark night

of the soul, adept at holding shoulders
loose, my hero is a player strumming keys
in octaves you can only hear at night.
His eyes and smile I have made mine.
The rest is me, a subtle body moving
with the cellular eccentricities of here
as best of all & better coming. He’s my ease,

the plot and action to my story keys,
reminding me, accept no substitutes! Mine
is the right to happiness by means of ease,
pursuit of joy. He is my rock, unmoving.
From him, I catapult and build us here
a cityscape of dreams. We love at night,
create by dawn the slope of light’s soft shoulders.

Through brighter times we are now moving,
he and I, receptive to the exponential ease
of Creation sprinkling across our shoulders
bold imaginations of the tumbling, lusty night.
Tolerate no whimpering fakes with rusty keys,
he quips. The hero’s role is yours and mine
to be enjoyed through mortals here.

The peace that’s mine brings more of same. The hero’s keys
to each with ease is given here, where comedy is moving,
masked, our shoulders squared encircling day and night.

~~~

This poem is a septime, a form of my own devising with seven repeating end words in seven, seven-stanza lines. The three-line envoi counts down the original 1-7 words, 7-1.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Lemminkäinen’s mother,
artist unknown

My Love and the Paper Boat

18 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Fun Rhyming Verse

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

contemporary mythology, Elaine Stirling, happiness is a decision, humour, interrupted rhyme, love, manifestation, rhyming couplets, romance, taking life lightly

paper-boat

I

My love built me a paper boat
to float upon the sea

across its flimsy hull he wrote
in script too small to see

with eyelash of an octopus
as brush, and ink of squid

the magic words to bring us back
when one sees fit to quit.

A magnifying glass I held
to that wee paper boat

attempting to decipher what
my love had sweetly wrote.

I thought I caught a word or two
but then came Mr. Sun

who lit what I had magnified
and burnt it into crumbs

of ash that blew across the sky.
Oh, crap, I thought, now what?

My love will have a fit when he
sees how I crisped our boat.

In fear, I found myself a clam
and asked if I could rent

his shell to hide myself until
I’d figured how to tell

the news. The clam said yes, but when
you’re done, be sure to leave

the shell behind for someone else
to find and hide inside.

Good shells, they don’t come cheap, you know,
and everyone’s afraid.

II

I hid inside my puny case
and read the daily news;

I texted friends and buffed my nails,
did anything I choose

and wondered why my love had not
come round to say hello.

I cranked the lid and peered outside
in time to see the tail

of Jupiter the Whale before
he swallowed everything.

III

The darkness here inside the gut
has no apparent end

and Jupiter can’t feel me when
I poke him with my nail

so I decide to sing about
my lover’s beauteous ways

his touch and smell, the smile he wears
when life is going well

and as I start to sing I hear
weird stirrings all around

that grow to voices, weak at first,
that rise, a mighty swell

and soon we’re all a-weeping ‘bout
the loves we left behind;

ahead is surely nothing, sniff!
but more, oh, woe betide…

discouraged by the swallowed mob
I wonder how to squelch

their ever-pining misery
when suddenly a belch

erupts that pours the seven seas
across new land—I’m free!

IV

This island with the coconuts
is big enough for two—

a sandy beach, a woven hut,
there’s nothing much I need to do.

The squid whose ink my lover used
to write has told the octopus

whose lashes have grown in,
exactly where I am, and lo!

before the sun has set, my love
arrives upon his boat

full grown, no longer paper, and
I see the words and laugh. What

happens next, we will not share.
You’ll have to ask the birds.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Of Boxes and Circles, We Built a Town

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ancient Meso-America, Carlos Castaneda, collective mind, double sestina, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, giant stone heads, higher ground, manifestation, Matthew Stirling, Mexico, nagual, non-linear cognitive systems, Olmec culture, reconciliation, relationships, sacred geometry, six syllable lines, the actions of creation, there is no separation

Olmec-in-Tabasco

You and I built a town
of boxes and circles
you will find on no map
and yet everyone knows
of the place, they still talk
though the streets are long gone
and we knocked out the lights,
fled our separate ways…
so why are they here, all
these hopefuls and dreamers?
What do they think they will
gain, remembering us?

Two random dots

We began, not as us,
no idea a town
would boom, spread and shine all
around. Uncertain will
doesn’t share what it knows,
so at first sight of lights
we ran in scared circles
clawing for hatches, ways
to escape; thus, the map
had begun while dreamers
crept in, by dawn were gone
leaving whispers of talk.

Pick-up lines

You were the first to talk
stirring echoes of us
from an era long gone.
To deny what one knows
when it’s true the delights
we once knew in a town
we can’t see, encircles
and reduces the map
to 3 or 2-D. Dreamers
try to give us their all,
but your will and mine will
resist in their own ways.

Pressure

There are so many ways
we could sing, think or talk
to bring heat to the lights
that create, never gone;
but push hates what shove knows
and there’s still no real us.
As stalkers and dreamers
we chase in mad circles,
asking, who lost the map?
learn intent, pray for will,
while around us the town
of the mind bends to all.

My, you’re square

My circle, your square, all
angling to find new ways
we can join what is gone
to what comes. As dreamers
we sketch in bliss our town
of infinite circles,
string theories, dangle lights.
All we’ve forgotten knows
to unroll the great map;
we see that we need us,
everything grows big, talk
and plans and schemes and will.

Sphere of no fear

Dear friend, say what you will,
for a time I heard all
you touched and felt, doggone,
that was fine! The dreamers
were pleased. At last, she knows
him; he knows her, circles
spinning into spheres, lights
across the budding town
spelled out your name. Our us
had the look of always.
We did not fear the talk
of stalkers with their map.

The swelling head

But routes don’t lie. Our map
of shortage and weak will
beneath the twinkling lights
was bleeding through. The ways
that would undermine us
flashed their naked parts. Town
criers laughed in circles
round us—hey, big dreamers,
how ‘bout you throw some talk
our way? Then you were gone,
siphoned off, drained by all
the superhero knows.

Cracks in the system

The best surveyor knows
the details of his map,
while speculators, all
we see is here and gone.
I chase the thrill; your talk
grows dull. I want dreamers!
They’re lusting into town
intrigued by the red lights
and tales we’ve strung. The us
we were has cracked and will
grow worse and die in ways
that spin us through circles.

Quick, do something!

Chasing you in circles,
partial attention knows
nothing, plucks at cheap talk.
We have both quit the town
we built and burnt the map
certain that our old ways
are buried deep, delights
we knew, cut off. Dreamers
claim they can see it all;
stalkers, their iron will
marches hell straight through us,
and all our strength is gone.

The gods are pissed.

With joyful wisdom gone
paranoia circles
sacrifice demands all
that we hold dear. The map
is rubbish; all the ways
that led to our sweet town
are blocked. You’ll find no lights
at night, the smarmy talk
of darkness feeds dreamers
with dread. Nobody knows
what happened to their will.
Angry gods, the new us!

Now look what you’ve done.

Cracked in two, them and us,
you with them—me, I’m gone.
I cannot count the ways
I do not love you knows
the truth, the deeper map.
Disregard the non-talk.
Still movement settles all
we dance among dreamers
plotting out new circles
designing a pre-town
beyond the ruined will.
Can you believe these lights?

Remains of the party

They dig through our smashed lights
carving theories of us
who appear to be gone
making sense of the map
its silent glyphs tell all,
but who listens? Who will
leap beyond easy talk,
feel on their skin our ways?
The we of us still knows.
We ride spiral circles
take tea with the dreamers
offer tours of our town.

Upon a time once, happily

Joy starts with us, the sensuous dreamers
adapting to ways of inclusion, the all
takes care of the lights and knows
our maps are never truly gone.
New love circles the borders of our town,
gentle will uplifting hopeful talk.

~~~

This is a work of imagination, based in part on early life experiences in the Olmec heartland of Mexico. Poetically, I’ve employed the form of a double sestina with six syllable lines (except for the envoi, final stanza). For me, this approximates the experience of creating a passage, then crawling through it. The selected end words won’t let you veer off, and if you’re lucky, they’ll shine different facets of themselves, like quartz crystal winking from a bed of granite.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image: Matthew Stirling and friends
in Tabasco, Mexico, 1940s, near an excavated
Olmec head (We don’t actually know what
the Olmecs called themselves, though
they must have been an amazing people.)

Septrois: Seven Kings

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry Newly Hatched

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

abundance, brave new business leadership, days of creation, Elaine Stirling, expansion, form poetry, genesis, Law of Attraction, manifestation, medieval French style, new creation, poetic dialogue, prosperity, seven three, vibrational reality

hagia-sophia

Septrois is my latest poetry form, borrowing the spirit of medieval French verse as it developed in the Aquitaine. Septrois is a neologue that blends sept (seven) with trois (three), referring to the original 7-line poem and three new lines added to each. Conjoined, the two numbers create a word play, sept rois, that translates as “seven kings”.

I’ll say more about the rhyme scheme and rules after you’ve had a chance to enjoy the 28-line septrois. First, though, here are the originating seven lines, the final stanza from “The Chambered Nautilus” by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894).

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

~~~

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
I have brought bricks and mortar,
blood and toil, artisans of high degree
whose love of heights replaces cruder vanity.

As the swift seasons roll!
Each hour blooms a year for me
through passages of time held light
my joyful course is stayed, feels right.

Leave thy low-vaulted past!
I’ve helpful souls who sweep away the night,
leave traces for the coming son and daughter
who, by your grace, bring freshening laughter.

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
encourage us to boldly reconnoiter
less with dramaturge and more with comedy,
hearts well tuned in earthy frequency;

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
with room enough for all to merry be
abandoning the urgency to rush we might
discover heaven orbits us, a satellite,

Till thou at length art free,
from pain and restless night,
accommodating easily new quarter
for seven kings, as one, your porter;

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
embracing the unknown as playful sport or
means to ever curious and hopeful be
of constant love, sweet whirling with delight.

~~~

How to construct Septrois, Seven Kings:
Begin with an original 7-line borrowed stanza or poem, which we’ll call “the genesis”. From each line or “day of creation”, write three new lines, “kings”, that enhance or converse with the genesis. From this ratio of 1:3 or 7:21, a 28-line poetic dialogue is created.

The rhyme schemes of the three added lines is as follows:
1. abb
2. bcc
3. caa
4. abb
5. bcc
6. caa
7. abc

The rhyme scheme of the genesis doesn’t matter. Only the 3-line kings follow the sequence. Their lines must also support the theme and link the stanzas logically, so you’ve created a unified or expanded poem with the joining of sept and trois.

I hope you’ll try a few yourself and have tons of fun!

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, from destination360

Manifestina, for the Solstice

16 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Folklore, Form Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

brave new business leadership, cyclical time-space, double sestina, Elaine Stirling, feminine mythology, Finnish pantheon, Finnish textiles, folklore, form poetry, Juhannus, Kalevala, Law of Attraction, manifestation, medieval verse, Midsummer's Eve, spinning, summer solstice, tales of magic, The Corporate Storyteller, vibrational reality, weaving

Finland rugs

In this beautiful week leading to Midsummer’s Eve, I thought I would share my first double sestina that I completed on the Summer Solstice of 2011. I was already hooked on the sestina form as a means of twirling the brain and dancing with a theme, and I’d read warnings on poetry sites not to attempt the daunting double version. I am here to tell you, they are FUN! “Manifestina” also came about by a dare from a poet friend, D. Russel Micnheimer, who suggested we each contribute six of the twelve end words, write our own double sestinas, and see what comes out. “Manifestina” took two weeks to write, and it was pure joy.

A Note on the Image: The rag rugs and pelts are in the attic of a family homestead in northern Finland. Some of the rugs probably go back 100 years, and that’s a real working spinning wheel. I’m delighted to share the attic’s treasures with you here, dear reader.

Manifestina: A Double Sestina in Four Parts

I

Until my inheritance arrived in a pine crate marked Fragile, I knew nothing of runes.
My godmother is dead. Her portrait hangs over there near the coleus. Her calling,
people thought, was wife of a pastor, obedient, still; velvet-lined offering
plates providing their sustenance on this vast rocky continent many moons
ago. Evenings, she spun near the grandly displayed leather-bound Bible, a cunning
parlour arrangement of handwoven rag rugs, upright chairs, designed for brevity,
for Pastori, away from the pulpit, was a man of few reaches, his nourishment
dependent on her lingonberry kropsut and silence, desponding for his fjords.
They met, so I’m told, at a picnic one Sunday near the Tapiola waterfall:
fiery young girl who loved to dance, Lutheran seminarian who didn’t, sounding
nonetheless to her eyes and ears like a hero of Kaleva, his Nordic levity
outshining the broody pall of her brothers. He was also very good at listening.

Now disassembled in front of the TV lies her spinning wheel. I’m listening
sort of to my lover on his smart phone bemoaning the inscrutable Dow Jones runes
that ruined his retirement and counting the months I have endured his waterfall
when, suddenly, the twelve-spoked wheel jerks in the box, an anti-physics levity
that makes me drop the phone and when I pick it up I hear her voice, “He moons
while you’re of solar ilk. Outshine!”—the hell? She speaks then of nourishment,
daily bread, though I’m too freaked to catch it. Yes, I have heard of ghosts calling
but the line is now dead, and then up comes a commercial for a seven-day Fjords
Cruise on a Norwegian liner with a land option add-on and a midsummer offering
of mystery and magic, which I’ve just experienced, though it’s already sounding
trite: a mini-tremor, trick of the eye. Still, I have unused holidays so with the brevity
of Internet, I book a solo cruise and hang the wheel to cover a stain: cunning.

II

Though I lie in pieces—sticks, a bag of bolts—my design remains cunning
though my spin has fallen still, hanging by a hook, I am still listening
to the whirr of incantations, rhythmic hand and foot songs, spinners’ brevity
drowned in complexities of this solar-maddened world, cooling moons
cast aside, their tide pulls forgotten, beams outshone, lunar nourishment
centrifugally emptied by empty spinning minds. I am of ash, mapped in runes;
simple etchings blessed have led me to this new restless owner, calling
out with the oscillating voice of the firmament, great world tree, offering
succor and sanction, sanctuary, sanity, for the sole purpose of sounding
humanity’s depths to the very toes of Helvetti, through rainbow and waterfall
rising from taproot to trunk to outspreading branches, leaving with levity
light’s upward push, right angled to the somber jagged thrust of fjords.

Over-deepened, semi-enclosed marine basins, the composition of fjords,
drones our doctoral tour guide, weathery and blue-eyed, of cunning
Viking stock, employed to enhance the ecotourists’ nourishment;
sedimentary sequences, glacial, deglacial, I resist the brevity
he assigns to beauty and aeonic movement, carved by moons
much wiser than the icon we conquered in sixty-nine. No longer listening,
I laugh midst the salt spray at a great skua’s cackle, magnificent sounding
of bird and sea when the land catches me behind the knees, calling,
an abysmal howl—human, inhuman, I cannot tell who is offering
this wilder maiden-bearing spin. Is such, I wonder, the nature of levity?

Upright my two maidens who support the construct of flyer and bobbin, runes
carved upon their limbs with a conjurer’s blade, they sing of waterfall
a thrumming nether built of wood gods, sprites and chortling waterfall
deities who in tandem reckless force rouse forests, fens and fjords
of the inner realm, incanting eight-fold trochaics of phonic brevity
that clack and whir through the flaxen arts, hear me sounding
feel me bounding, treadle-footed, wheel resounding—rhythmic runes
of an ancient race deglaciating, frozen through the ages, blood calling
out to minds gone porous and brittle, to seek infernal nourishment.
Revive the bones you cast, then cast aside. A gathering of new moons
awaits you, woman, eastward in a glade of birch and poplar, offering
truths of schist and calcite to obviate the old. But is she listening?

Seasick, I heave and wonder where and when I lost my cunning,
this off-center wheel, an elliptic wobble, was once fueled by levity
and is now grave, slick and sickened with false lubricants. Levity,
I remain persuaded, is no less a natural law than gravity. Water fall
water rise, fountaining. Even the roughest seas evaporate. This brevity
of vision, a toxicant, with each passing day is sounding
less and less like me. Emptied, I chart the bronze-edged moon’s
phases on the map above my birth, a pregnant gibbous calling
from an age that shunned the notion of lack of nourishment;
broadsided, my cosmetic bag spills across the floor: new runes.

At the edge of Tapiola’s waterfall, Kerttu braids her hair, listening;
tall and strong-boned, she dreams of majesty, of cool rugged fjords
and to join the west-sailing exodus. Well-crafted spinner, cunning,
she collects stones in defiance, builds secret cairns in offering
to all that heaves and grieves beneath her feet, exiled, offering
ignorance, refusing any yarns, spun or dyed, that offend her levity.
She entrances a Norwegian and drinks from his sexual nourishment,
though he turns out a shallow pool, his soul fast bound, his fjords
over-fished. To the scree of his holy scrip, she stops listening
and buries on the eve of their sailing a trace of girl-soul in the runes
of her homeland in hopes of reaching a consequent feminine, calling
across time, particulate, tumbled ashore by a truer god-sounding.

The postal bus drops me off at the village of my forebears, a cunning
pleroma of farms and birch groves, church and graveyard; the brevity
of commerce is restful to the eyes. Outside my one-room cabin, a waterfall
framed between shimmering aspens is stenciled through cut-out moons
silvering upon the screen door. At these latitudes, approaching solstice, the moon’s
lost her midnight prominence. I walk the forested paths of my godmother, offering
thanks, well-lit, for the respite from greed and bank towers. Beyond the waterfall
I find the bridge she used to talk about, laughing with unashamed brevity
where she kissed boys, braided grass circlets and sang loihturunot, old cunning,
poem-songs that spin new worlds into being; all this she remembered, sounding—

We gather in the Old Way, male Fennic carvers and chanters of runes
filaments of affection have conjured us; wide-open thought fields of nourishment
have summoned Ilkka, poet-singer of fame, and the Blind One, who’s listening
with the soles of his feet. Bonfires crackling, forearms we link in fraternal levity
to rebirth the heroes of Kaleva through pole star merge of Finn and fjords:
Ilmatar of air and light, seize her by the hand, we’re calling
Thor of fearsome thunder might, fuse her to the land, we’re calling
forth and back we rhyme the sequence, moons
in elemental frequence. Cast upon her now the cunning
spin the golden threads, the sunning, runes
we rock of blood and bone, waken Väinämöinen’s offering
turns he through us, burns he through us, wizard king of lake and fjords.

III

—as if it were yesterday. From across the bridge, a man approaches. Nourishment
I’ve brought, apples, bread and cheese, enough to share. Though he’s sounding
no footfall when his boot heels meet wood, I feel only calm—some waterfall
lunacy, no doubt. Flaxen hair to shoulders, he is tall and lightly bearded. Levity
from deep inside my belly shoots heartward. Welcome to ammo, he says. Listening
not so well, I say, what? Mmm, gjetost. He reaches out, smiling, man of brevity.

I hand him a wedge of goat cheese. Who are you, I ask, no stranger myself to brevity.
He sits on a fallen log and eats, regarding me in the way that men do, thus calling
to mind my godmother’s encounter eighty years ago at this very waterfall.
You’re not Norwegian and fond of kropsut, are you? I proffer him an apple offering.

Of Nordic race iambic seed, he says, of vanquished realms and distant fjords
created. Ammo, carried north by ancient Ugric tribes, is written in the runes
of your wheel that spins, meaning time of no time, agglutinating nourishment
to all that is and ever be. I am ennu pappi, oracle priest, the man of cunning
who tutored Kerttu in a spiral of this very solstice. His lyric speech sounding
like blue-green seas of juniper, I wonder whether o-priests are celibate. Moons
ago, he says, quatrinities spun freely in eternal ascension, keeping the levity
of earth and man in balance, dimensional monarchies, ever charged and listening
chopping blandishments and follies at their root. He pauses. Are you listening?
Me? What the heck are you going on about? I crunch into an apple: brevity.

IV

You are a pulse star blinking on and off. You are expanding fjords
upon a horizontal field, seeded and terrained by tides of thought-moons,
invaded, sadly, by false kings, ordinal descending integers, who demand offering
to a belief in continuity—not the ever-after, for happily, mind, is a cunning
truth—but the never-changing and its rank gravitational pull. This waterfall
brought on the Great Deluge that drowned humanity. I and others did a sounding:
all were dead, save Utnapishtim, who heeded, his three sons and Nature. Calling
upon Hel, fierce goddess of the lower realm, we, a delegation of nine, pleaded runes
scrip of wood and stone to reseed the flooded and now fertile banks of levity.
From her barge on rivers of magma, Hel seethed: I am the essence of nourishment, sending up continuous terra potentia to all. Yet all I see is malnourishment.

Here, he paused, silver eyes glistening, and I took his hand for I had been listening.
I picked up the thread. She asked us what we would give in exchange—her brevity
shot fields of ice across the earth. Panicked, I broke through the ranks, offering
whatever—we have means of paying! She looked at me and laughed, a waterfall
of lava. You, mortal, of water and clay? You are my creation, a spring surge of levity,
dust of my feet. No. I shook my head. I am your precreation, gifted with cunning.
Womb in exile, I have watched you spin the horizontal field, mapping out fjords
and firmaments. I can be your surety. Plant in me the seeds of remembering. Moons
will pass and when the world floods again to the point of deluge, I’ll heed the calling.
I will cast off the knots of forgetting, false banishment, to spin a new field, sounding
true depths of verse and converse, mother-of-all, your sacred loving art of runes.

Envoi

So now I am at home listening, and life, sweet life, is sounding
new, like it never was before. Fjords reach out boldly, majestic waterfall
cascades; the nourishment of joy spins out my hours. Fun-loving moons
pull me here and there, offering temptations; I appreciate their brevity.
No strings, only this moment calling the shots. Everywhere, I see runes
guiding me with levity, toward your smile ever-bright and cunning.

~~~

© June 21, 2011, Summer Solstice
Image: Lisa Bobechko, photographer
Dedicated to Kerttu Kyllönen, my godmother
who kept her passion alive for nearly 100 years

Untold, Untelling, Untellable Tale: Other Half

21 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

attracting abundance, brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, Law of Attraction, light bodies, Live in the Momentum, manifestation, Merkabah, myths and stories of the Wheel, sacred geometry, star tetrahedron, The Corporate Storyteller, triple sestina, vibrational reality

merkaba-weltkugel

So, welcome now to other half of space
in time untellable, a few parts still untouched
these planes and curves of tetrahedral night
through journeys have no end, they are not mine
or yours, they are—and timed precise to follow
neuro-logic beats from zero, empty, slow,
to speedy seventeen, the time it takes upon
initial thought to grow a system beam
of argument, to feel connected or alone,
deprived, inspired; better, worse. We fell,
some say, to density but have never been apart
and all that glitters (why ever not?) is gold
we seek with more than measurable eye
when led by starry realms, we see ahead
to all that is, to which we may add words
of sweetness and soft cushioning. No king
could claim the finer—all the while, the girl
who leads this tale continues to be born.

Soon, she started noticing while traveling, apart
from increased speed, that others sought to follow
her approach of conflict-free. Some touched
her feet; others tried to write her words,
which seldom worked; for what I say is mine
and you, yours; all the meanings that you fell
and tripped on were inherited; and thus the night
of suffering appears to jaundiced eye
to never end. However, our intrepid girl
moves on, approaching ever closer to the king
she seeks whose edifice is just ahead,
so close you’ll see the filigree of gold
around his bed. He sleeps alone
and sports quite merrily by day. Born
to natural abundance, he’ll sometimes slow
for pleasure’s sake, no other, and the space
he claims and freely reigns upon
is infinite. He thinks in exponential beam.

All you thought of him before to space
dust has returned, and what befalls, befell
our heroine has vanished too. For Now is born
continuous, which means that all I claim is mine
by saying so. To argue for assent is slow,
exacerbating loneliness, when alone,
All One, imagining is fabulous! Our girl,
her fable of ever-weaving tabulae of gold
is lifting her to heights ne’er touched
by any but the ecstasies, exalted beam
of graces, cubed, quadrupled. Words
fall short, though if we carry on, the eye
can lead us through immensities, a part
beyond, including sacred and profane. Follow
where untroubled leads, and joyful night
encompasses the day. You might well sit upon
the carpet known by Al-lah-Din, ahead
he was of his own time & thus became a king.

Too much of same perpetuates the slow
in thought streams that are born
a-fresh in dreams. With all being mine
our monarch too forgets that light of eye
must be renewed in ways apart
above, beyond the flesh and thence to beam.
One day, a young gazelle began to follow
him, fearless, even while he hunted. The king,
perplexed, left grain for her one night
and when he woke she stood alone
in his encloséd garden whereupon
he thought he’d lay a trap and so fell
at her feet to offer charming words
that always brought him praise and gold.
The tawny creature stepped back a space,
wide-eyed, recoiled when he touched
her, and to his disappointment ran ahead
into the woods. Of course, she is the girl

who, running, left behind footprints of gold
that worlds material spent until they fell
and wars broke out and angry words
became the currency that holds apart
what never was unjoined. Had he touched
her prints or gathered them, to follow
would have been impossible. Through space,
through layers, twists & coils, he closed in upon
his object of renewing desire, and the girl,
confused, knew not why she fled. Mine
has been to journey here; by cruel night
and day, I’ve shaken off insipid eye
and feeble thought, have mastered born
and born again, yet now this kingly beam
disorients and I feel more than anything, alone.
If I should stop, consent to what the king
might say or do, if I should slow
myself to let him run ahead…

She backed into a quiet space
dissolving in a way that few except the girl
had learned. To think she was alone
would be inaccurate. Countless others fell
before her to this state, newly touched,
unable to discern from practiced eye
of history a remedy for overwhelming beam
that led her to this voice proclaiming, mine
you are, without the tinge of slavery. Slow
and cautious, she crept behind, apart,
surrounding her pursuer like a mist to follow
and know better the nature of this king
whose dreams through every reborn
state included her, and all the gold
she thought and left behind at night
appeared to be the same prosperity upon
which he constructed kingdoms. Ahead
he ran. Not seeing her, he turned to words.

To you, who are my life, I am your king.
To think that I had everything, apart
from you, I could not know. If all is mine
and you are not, then futile are my words.
By thinking that for you I have been born
opens a chasm of impossibility ahead
that no current measurements of human eye
can see as real, apportions me a space
that if I could, through mastery of night
unfear what talents this young girl
displays, I’d move beyond palatial gold.
But isn’t this how kings and nations fell
before my time? Meta-states pursued alone
with neither cause nor rhyme, of touchéd
mind they are a sign. That I must follow
if you choose to lead I swear upon
this puzzled head to do, and beam
me with an iron cauldron if lazily I slow.

Too much of rank suspicion had the king
consumed through envy and competing space.
That infinite might rearrange if born
within new thoughts impelled the girl
to creep into his room at night
and stroke his arms and hair. He fell
with each successive dream upon
new planes with greater destinies, a beam
of light became his bridge, untouched
by mere solidity which moved too slow.
Allowing symmetry and wholeness of alone,
he learned pure imagery to build and follow;
crusts of centuries of shame from eye
and ear dissolved, replaced by gold
the pure vibration humans seek to mine
in ways corruptible and fevered. Ahead
lies everything, no need to stand apart.
The simple thing now, to draw down words.

The wedding feast became a part
foundational of all the holy books: mine,
yours, and every metaphor of eye
and ear to pluck or lend, their role alone
to amplify. For when the king & girl first touched
in full desire of awareness, thereupon
the limitless becomes inheritance. No night
so dark, no lies of hopelessness, though born
will live to overthrow the fulfilled king
whose partner, spirited and free with words
cavorts in lively play behind, sometimes ahead
of him to bring back caravans of gold.
And should you decide, one day, to follow,
leaving behind the unworkable and slow,
to meet unseen the brightening beam,
your tale untellable of not who rose and fell
will reach the eardrums of a certain girl
who soars, a comet, through galaxies of space.

Though apart we’ll never be, illusions of space
of mine and yours will link us like the girl
whose fixéd eye ensured the one who fell
would never be alone. Believe the lighted beam
that’s touched you will accelerate, not slow
the dreams upon your pillow that you follow
every night flawlessly to earthly and divine gold.
For these you were born. All that lies ahead
is promised by the king of infinite words.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image from merkaba-weltkugel.jpg

Untold, Untelling, Untellable Tale: First Half

21 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Form Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

attracting abundance, brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, Law of Attraction, light bodies, Live in the Momentum, manifestation, Merkabah, myths and stories of the Wheel, sacred geometry, star tetrahedron, The Corporate Storyteller, triple sestina, vibrational reality

merkabamusic_bandcamp_com

0 If this were proper time and space
1 I’d tell the tale of a brown-skinned girl
2 who rose and rose and never fell
3 a comet cross the sky, a beam
4 of light with trail too slow
5 to guide, could only follow
6 while she sailed on ships of gold—
7 but now I rush ahead
8 frustrated by the plod of words
9 reminded too there is a king
10 in all of this to riches born
11 a sultanate convinced by day and night
12 he’s right to place both hands upon
13 whate’er his fancy takes, thus touched
14 to lock and claim, I own, alone,
15 no need have I of ears and eye
16 the power to ignore is mine
17 divine, and thus to break apart.

17 Trouble is, what runs ahead
16 in minds and hearts like mine
15 and yours, perhaps, are tales of gold
14 not lead, what soothes the lazy eye
13 is the predictable, who wants to follow
12 dread to see where it may lead? Alone
11 is not our favoured state, we’d rather slow
10 what flies, to press what we have touched
9 in wax, the past; no brightening beam
8 can reach my version of events, upon
7 which more of same-same, night
6 and day must replicate, so the girl
5 in only certain versions can be born
4 and like I said, this time and space
3 may not be right, ego is king
2 here, all else lives apart;
1 you don’t want to know what fell
0 and all I have to give are words.

You could pause now, slow
your thoughts and read the beam
of numbers and lines upward upon
this page to the top. No one will follow,
no one will stop you. If still untouched
the tale I can’t tell will carry on alone
and those beings like you who never fell
will still be worth their weight in gold;
but I am here to represent the girl,
to recall how she decided one night
to vacate drudge and dungeon space
in search of the all-seeing eye
who travels somewhere up ahead
in places where it’s said one’s born
and born again. She knew no words
except, obey because you’re mine.
A slave, her daily toil kept her apart
and thoughts she thought kept b-rea-king.

Meaningless or meaning more, all words
around her smelled the same, ahead
lay shapes and motion beautiful upon
which she would lay her head at night
and dream of ladders built of gold
and litters of a mighty race born
long before or still to be—they had a king,
this much she knew and vowed to follow
every rung, though it might tear apart
flesh, blood and bone; no more the slow,
the tedious—if choice and grace are mine,
misplaced, I’ll trace again the steps of beam-
me-down that wakes me to a disapproving eye,
a world that shrinks away when touched
a misbegotten place that, reproducing, fell
and seeks that I should feel and fear alone
so it can buy and sell. Ptooey! spat the girl,
I am uncreating this abominable space.

Well, the thunder! Furies rose ahead,
behind, within, without, basting and slow
roasting the poor girl who dared of king
to dream. You think you’re not alone?
I know I am! She shrank beneath the beam
of light interrogating: you were born
and you will die and never does the eye
depart from watching you by night
and day for you ARE mine to mine!
But if I die, I’m not much use, the girl
to pain accustomed said, so based upon
your law you’d be wise to give me space
so I can live a long, long time and follow
your great mightiness & kiss your untouched
whatevers, I can’t see your parts apart
from this bright light, and words
they don’t mean much to me, I fell
at birth, so everything I think turns to gold.

She’d said too much, the silly girl;
now her captors looked ahead,
behind, to see what she had touched
but they lived in a dreary space
persuaded by the lack of things. Gold
was dear and hard to reach; the words
of man had lost their weight, they fell
like empty beetle shells to land upon
indifferent shoulders. No matter. Alone
the girl saw differently & crept away at night
between thunderclaps to find her king
who, in his harem, loved to follow
arguments when to one concubine he’d beam
and not the others, pulling them apart.
When something landed in his eye,
he rubbed but gave small thought to it. Mine
is the kingdom of the endless glory, born
anew each day, though some days are too slow!

Drawn were her weary feet to a certain king
in a marshy realm who’d seen ahead
of her arrival 108 slender threads upon
which a strange tale was adhering. That night,
he told his vizier that someone should follow
her, for she thinks capaciously, too far apart
and may be some sort of spy, whose eye
lights swiftly and departs, accumulating words
with which our reputation she may beam
across markets for good or ill. The king touched
the 108 lines of untelling verse, turning to gold
as he watched. To think an unassuming girl
could fabricate such wealth, traveling alone—
he’d never seen the like. In his kingdom, slow
ruled: methodical, traditional, what’s mine
in ways of thought and act since I was born
has suited well, and now this wee thing who fell
without consent into my sacred space…

Bring her to me! Slaves with bamboo beam
constructed a special littered cage upon
which the startled traveler was thrown, space
enough to sit or stand and peer with slow
deliberation. To what place am I being born?
she asked. No one answered. Waiting alone
in a vast pillared chamber lined with gold
lions, she wondered what and who lay ahead.
Eventually, her cage was set before the king
who walked around the quite ordinary girl
as if she might reveal by sleight of eye
her method with the story thread. That night,
he watched her sleep while wizards fell
to snoring; by dawn, she knew he isn’t mine.
My numbered lines of 108, to him are words,
but I’m not finished yet. Though what I’ve touched
I’ll take with me, no one from this land will follow
until I’ve put together what has been pulled apart.

And so upon a fresher path our traveler was born
with nothing in the cage but droplets where the girl
had slept, and the sorrowing, empty-handed king
staggered along the Water Margin, hearing words
of a strange new language that lay ahead
of his current capacity for ear, tongue and eye
to grasp. I drew you to me, yes, for the gold
& now you’re gone, but can it be you’re still a part
of me? Questions from the king like petals fell
along the meshéd way, and though she was alone
she felt continuous and lustrously the beam
of guidance meant for her…and now…and now, upon
which she could firmly without effort tread, slow
or fast or in-between, it mattered not; to follow
means to trust and love, and trust and love are mine,
she knew with ease. While resting in the night,
she dreamed perfection; days were touched
with joy and beauty lent her space.

~~~

To be followed by “The Other Half”

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image from merkabamusic_bandcamp.com

The Paradigm of Disinterest

20 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

George Bernard Shaw, imagine new models, Law of Attraction, London School of Economics, manifestation, new paradigms, paradigm is just a model, vibrational reality

Bernard_Shaw's_Birthplace_Dublin

Turn One

I know a man who claims
at every turn to feel a shift
of paradigm at which he shouts,
“Hurrah!” and posts with diligence
the micro-steps that lead him
to assert, we are all ___, oh,
yes, in truth, we are all ___!

I know a woman who survived
a great brutality and learned
to smile in a way that turns
the heads of lonely men; to keep
this rapt attention she displays
pictorial a sequence of herself
as ever prettier and nuder.

Turn Two

I do not know the boy who
watches while his father works
until he bleeds, and reads of
great oppression overcome by
monumental force; and when
the first recruiter calls his name
he comes, and thus becomes.

I do not know the girl who
learns at six to thrust her hip
in such a way that marketers
rejoice and post the units sold
that please the pension plan
investors who can no longer
sleep for fear of loss.

Turn One Again

I will not know the states
that bring about neglectful
compromise, increasing cut
and slash until the homeless
far outnumber corporate
bonus, and the rigor of
the mortis has its way.

I have forgotten like a
sieve what-all I’ve learned
of mock democracy and turn
the other cheek from god—
or is it gold—no, goldman,
that we trust! The sacks,
I’m glad to say, are empty.

Turn True

I stand as far as thought
can reach with memory
behind, deconstituting
paradigms that hold no
interest and investing in
their stead a place that
clearer comes with every
turn of phrase indicative
of plenitude that grows
from virtues of eternal
and expanding grace.

~~~

Note: The phrase “as far as thought can reach” comes from the 1921 play by George Bernard Shaw called Back to Methuselah. In addition to being a successful playwright, philosopher, and satirist, Shaw was a founding father of the London School of Economics.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
–photo of G. B. Shaw’s Dublin
birthplace from Wikipedia

Incantation for Large Projects

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Arcana

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Finno-Ugric, incantation, Kalevala, Law of Attraction, Louhi, manifestation, poetry, rhyme, rune singing, The Corporate Storyteller, trochaic meter, Väinämöinen, vibrational reality

rainbowthunder

The place of space the rhyme
of time and lure of pure they’re
coaxed divine from habiting
the daily fix of nothing wrong
and all is right in actions
that are fractioned whole
in one the swing relies on eyes’
horizon for the sun to rise
in time with every little
thing that flies in face
of parent and apparent and
a child who will lead us through
the turbulence and sing
us into opulence if that
be our desire and if not it
doesn’t matter for the babe
knows how to shatter every
obstacle that clatters in the
pestilence and virulence of
subjugating innocent momentum
is the starting gate of effervescent
practicums that go and come
and go and come with escalating
thunder drums and rainbows
with the promise of…

done oh yes oh done oh yes oh done oh
yes oh done oh yes oh done oh yes oh done
oh yes oh done oh yes oh done oh yes oh done

oh YES!

~~~

NOTE: The Kalevala meter of this incantation was practiced by shamans, both male and female, of the ancient Finno-Ugric nations, of whom Louhi and Väinämöinen may be the most famous practitioners.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

–Image from Amazing World
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