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~ because the waves and tumbles of life are only as serious as we make them.

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Tag Archives: relationships

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.)

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I Know a Love

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

abundance, Elaine Stirling, Law of Attraction, love poetry, new love, relationships, romance, sensuality, vibrational reality

IMG_0240

I know a love
that doesn’t show
or force his hand
who lifts this weighted
heart to kiss as if
it were a hummingbird
then sets me down
to go my way,
a muscled love
that rises like the mist
across a mountain lake
and feeds the texture
of my dreams with vast
realities to which I wake
and find the evidence
beside me, ever-growing,
in the shape, the touch
and smile, thrust of you.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Castles

20 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cycles of time and space, friendship, impermanence, movement, perception, poetry, reconciliation, relationships, romance, sand castles

castles

Everything I draw to life
begins with sand, a line
two points from yours to
mine, in waves we reach
and touch or fall apart, the
walls we build in times
between to fortress heights
and castle beauty reach
dividing me and you from
them or worse, my self alone
exiled, throwing stones that
once were bits of coloured
glass through which I saw you
spectral pure, a rose, and now
the grit of stiffened jaw my only
means, it seems, to breach
through walls that once were
lines of poetry we wrote
and read upon the sand.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Photograph by Lisa Bobechko, 2010

The Deviation of Azimuth: Canto IV

01 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Narrative poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

brave new business leader, Elaine Stirling, relationships, rhyme scheme of Dante, sacred geometry, serial poetry, terza rima, The Corporate Storyteller, unbalanced polarities

lake at night

The hour grew late and seven moons rose in
staggered phases cross an emerald skybowl
bright with stars but no Dipper to begin

my constellating search for the great Pole
Star. The night was cold, I didn’t care, mere
trifle, inconsequential to the whole.

Your greatest flaw on Earth is to adhere
to states of pain and to confuse friendship
with mutual self-absorption. Look here.

He brought me to a dark blue pond equipped
with access to shapes of light distorted
like dumbbells, one end huge, the other chipped

away to nothing, the small contorted
ends held all the weight, the inflated bobbed
with others of its like and disported

in a way that made my spirit feel robbed.
Bubble heads cavorted with arrogance,
while gravity of those neglected throbbed.

Voila, behold the sad and human dance
you call relationship, dependencies
where love has fled, they still retain the stance;

afraid of solitude, the tendencies
to push another down and hold her there,
or him, these form the weak polarities

that stimulate a market void of care.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image from CanItBeSaturdayNow.com

Ain’t No Good Ports of Call on a Mental Lagoon

17 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

awareness, choices, Elaine Stirling, ignoring the signs, poetry, prevention of abuse, relationships, self-worth

cruise_3

sweet lady, I hear
you’re taking a cruise
with a man you’ve just
met with a knack for
the blues, see you packing
your best, feel the breeze
of the swing of your
beautiful hips

in these days
leading up to the
launch of the ship
you grow younger
by years, all the
scars of the tracks
of your tears
melt away

while I hope that
your trip brings you
all that you crave

and that what I’m suspecting
is unnecessarily grave

I wouldn’t be much
of a sister now, would I
if I let you sail off with your
dreams on your sleeve
when I see where
he’s planted
the soul of his
wandering feet

ain’t no good
ports of call on
a mental lagoon

it’s not about saying
I’ve been where you’re
going, I haven’t

and it’s not that
we make the wrong
choices, we don’t

what we do is we pack
the wrong clothes for
the season, no screen
for the burns when you
reach the equator and
everything opposite
sails back to meet you

ain’t no good
ports of call on
a mental lagoon

but I know that
you’re going, so here
is a map of the eddies
and linns where the salt
ponds of sadness may
pull you too deep

and here is an
anchor to hold you
through storms, if you
stay in the center, lie
low, you’ll be safe

and finally I give you
this locket of ivory, the
scrimshaw inside in a
script he can’t read

of the truth of you

at the first sign
of blame, the first
indication that maybe
the blues he done wrapped
in his packet of charm
holds an asp

take your locket
to the captain
he’ll know
what to do

ain’t no good
ports of call on
a mental lagoon

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of vintage postcard from zazzle.com

Ballast

16 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by elainestirling in Poetry

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

beginnings and endings, Elaine Stirling, friendship, lessons learned, poetry, relationships

ballast_1

It was something like
protracted grieving, the way
we clung long after the initial
thrill or chill, pick your ill, they’re
all the same, a sort of monkey
cling with none of the affection
of a capuchin except for
picking nits.

I sometimes thought
we’d leaped straight into
the worn slipper stage, where
you only appreciate the warmth
when the floors are cold and you
can’t find the damn things. But
when you feel yourself to be
the slippers and you know
where you are, the grumbling
sets you wondering, wears a
body further down at heel.

When I think
instead of good things,
there were many, though we
scarcely gave them voice, I’m
less inclined, that is to say, the
ballast that I gave to him and
he to me takes on a new
stability.

In storms we have
no time to yearn for calm,
but when the calm returns
too much an aftermath is worse
the doldrums settle in, we splash
around and flail, kicking up a
gaseous sort of wind that
fills no sails—dear God,
we pray, retreating to our
corners just to quell the
bickering, where are
those gales?

And now the storms
have come again, their
vicious walls of water spiked
with stone are battering
raw flesh and bone;
I spent the night with
friends and jerrycans, the
bailing was good exercise,
if nothing else.

Sailing different seas
with mourning all around
us, I cannot see his boat
and so I send a quiet flare:
my ballast holds, I hope
you are afloat, my
crazy capuchin.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

The Freedom That Comes

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by elainestirling in Metaphysics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Elaine Stirling, letting go, prose poem, relationships, survival

Image by Alison Jones

Final entries from the log of bush pilot James Armitage, 34. Wreckage from his float plane was found September 14, 20__ in a wooded area near Copre Lake in northern Ontario, Canada. He had been missing for eleven days; the notes were written with the stub of an HB-2 pencil. Cause of death: hypothermia.

~~~

The freedom that comes from not having to hold an uncomfortable vibration calibrates instantly higher.

All of what happens and is happening involves infinite adjustments of detail by What We Really Are at non-physical levels. What manifests in daily life is the furthest extremity of these events with the twin channels of thought and feeling as our downstream propulsion—like the left and right pontoons (looking pretty banged up, sadly) of this Cessna 172.

I’ve reached the far end of a chessboard, and now I’m trading up. Even before this happened, I was free in every moment to launch a new game if I didn’t like the old one. Next time, I’ll choose opponents according to their ability to bring enjoyment. No more assholes!

Anyone who feels compelled to correct my interpretations is welcome to launch their own new game.

It takes two sides to maintain a tug-of-war, and letting go the rope, while it ends the match, is not illegal. The collapsing heap at the opposite end is temporary and will sort itself out. Every collapse does.

The lead in this pencil is almost gone.

Emily, I love you, and I’ll miss our arguments. No one could piss me off like you, or lighten my heart, or drop me to my knees in gratitude. You were my greatest adventure.

Tell Brianne and Matthew their daddy will come back to them in a new way when they’re older, and when they see me again, they’ll laugh. Ask them if they know how much I love them, and listen to their answers.

Tell them there is no death.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

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