Tag: poetry

Beating Heart — a poem

This is a tiny poem I wrote a while ago for a delightful blog I follow called The Alchemist’s Studio. It was for the “Name That Vase” event.  Check out the Alchemist’s beautiful exquisite raku pottery and also the delightful and interesting posts and stories  at:   https://rakupottery.ca/

 

Beating Heart

By Jane Tawel

4f56b79f2a4a13f484f69111ea96adf6

Is the blood that beats inside us all,

A result of Heaven, or result of The Fall?

Does my blood run red, or does it run blue?

And what of the blood that throbs within you?

If I could catch a beating heart,

Then that might be at least a good start,

To understand that what pulses in me,

Is perhaps the world’s greatest mystery.

 

Here – A Poem

Here

A Poem By Jane Tawel

October, 2019

 

Here, Autumn slips in slowly,

Like a mother, she checks her sleeping child;

Tiptoeing into our rooms

Letting lengthening shadows obscure her smile.

 

Here, Summer runs off swiftly,

Like a child late for a play-date;

She laughs away the poignant dusk,

As she fades from our view.

 

Here, the Spring is remembered sweetly,

And Time is an old woman rocking in her creaky chair.

And no more come the Seasons, but one.

It is always hoarding Winter now,

Here.

d7e9effc8cfffde6172eec182786a5b5

It’s All a Game Over Here

It’s All a Game Over Here

A Poem of Polarization

By Jane Tawel

October 2019

For the Hopeful and Hopeless both here and there.

75951a51584221.5908d05a6bcdb

“Flat Flags” by Paulo Capdeville licensed under CC by NC-ND-4.0

 

 

 

It’s all a game about winning,

Over here on this side of the pond.

And I wonder if you,

On that side of the blue,

(Whether you call it “mundo” or “monde”),

Have been led to believe

It’s alright to deceive,

Or if you, like I do, feel quite conned?

 

We’ve decided that athletes are all gods.

We treat senators like they are kings.

The fools entertain us,

While corporate crooks rein us.

Heaven’s reign’s in the void,

 With Earth’s greed on steroids;

And the preachers’ idolatry pains us.

 

I wonder if there you feel hopeless;

As I sometimes do under my flag?

Or do you feel the same onus,

To try not to vomit or gag?

 

If we’re going to make this world different,

To not play the game,

To swallow our pride,

to not aim for fame;

then it’s time to decide.

We can’t keep on ignoring life’s current,

Will we bet on the horses

Who keep Caesar’s stable?

Or invite all the needy

To dine at our tables?

 

I wonder if you too, can’t pledge to your flag,

When the world just keeps filling with more body bags?

I wonder if you’re tired of games that destroy,

The planet for Future’s small girls, beasts, and boys?

I wonder if over there, over the sea,

If you too would rather be choosing, with me,

Some new games, and new roles, and new consequences,

And a way to build more homes, not more cement fences.

 

Over here I want new ways of seeing each other,

Not on teams, but as families, like sisters and brothers.

Over here, it’s all rah-rah, and yay-yay for teams,

But I’m hoping that we who still dream greater dreams,

Won’t care about winning or losing and such,

Because in the end, games won’t matter that much.

 

When The Augurs regain

What the childish teams drained,

And the new world has gained, what’s now lost;

All those who bought and sold.

will lose all, to those bold

Enough to live for only soul-stuff.

 

And when those never picked

by the tricksters and slick,

those who captained the teams in first-class;

then the first shall be last

and all teams will have passed,

and the last, to the top will be flipped.

.

When Three only remain,

With Love ruling again,

With no flags left to fly

Then I hope you and I

Will no longer, ask, “Why?”

But instead hand in hand,

We will make a new land,

where the meek all are owners.

No more hungry. No loners.

We will all share our dreams

Without hate or extremes.

For those old teams, you ask?

  It’s Game Over.

Until We Fly – a poem

Until We Fly

by Jane Tawel

September, 2019

 

When we go

How slow

How fast

Nothing changes

Nothing lasts.

 

This life

like sleet, it

does not stick, it’s–

so fleeting.

 

The heat melts,

and melds with cold

The heart stays young

But body and mind grow old.

 

Death parades us

like the trained

Animals we are.

Reality, feigned us,

until–

We fly with stars.

 

depositphotos_179011628-stock-video-abstract-background-flying-stars-alpha

Verses 2-4 of A Mother’s Poems

***Verse 1 of these poems was published separately on February 10 under the title: “This Small Heartbeat”. These poems are for my thriving adult children.

 

A Mother’s Poems

By Jane Tawel

 

Verse 2- A Haiku

by Jane Tawel

February 11, 2019

 

Metaphors slide skew

When I try to write of you.

Only love will do.

 

 

Verse 3 – an Ode

 

Beyond and Above Aphrodite

by Jane Tawel

February 12, 2019

 

Now I, the geek,

Will mimic the Greek.

But Odes to love of children

Are false gilden, not real gold.

Or so I’m told.

 

I strive like Psyche

To see you, hidden from me.

And in the process, burn you

Then angst ‘bout why you flew.

 

Wondering why

And wandering nigh’

I hold coins in my mouth

To keep the devils out.

Yet before long,

My righteous strength is gone;

Opening forbidden boxes that you might see

A mother’s lasting love in me.

 

 

Ah, Aphrodite’s  love of child can not compare

To the cupidity of my every prayer

That you, my dear divines,

My treasures, as long as sun does shine,

Will find more Love, than all I’d give

And find True Love within you lives.

 

 

Verse 4

This is a poem I wrote several years ago that I thought I’d end these with for Verse 4.

Whoa

March 11, 2015

By Jane Tawel

To Justine, Clarissa, Verity, and Gordon

 

Whoa, slow down, where you galloping off to?

A second ago, you were a useless collage of limbs.

I had to raise your hands to clean.

I had to raise your head to drink.

I had to ask you questions then answer them for you,

You, without a word, or sound that anybody knew.

But I.

 

Whoa! Take care! You’re running much too fast.

You’re going to slip and fall — I know.

I’ve seen it happen in my mind

A thousand times a day.

Did you hear me? Can you hear?

Have fun! Be safe! Too fast!

Rely on me and all my knowledge present, future, past.

Love you.

 

Whoa…slow down… I missed what you just said.

I see the buttons, levers, gears.

My fingers fail where yours speed on.

I hear the words that used to mean

A different thing. A different thing.

Did I already say that?

You tumble forward, catch yourself.

I used to catch you when you fell.

I’m still here watching, waiting– holding out my helpless hands.

Too much.

 

 

You’re gone and I can’t hold you here.

My whoa’s are just my own.

Remember—no, you don’t, I guess.

I clutch the memories, now — no more.

I once held you, my baby, child–

And now you’ve flown,

A Pegasus with wings of dreams

Not flaming myths,

Not lullabies from me.

I’ll sing your story old and new

Not mine, not ours. All you.

I’ll never seek to slow you down again.

My joy in you and your bright flight

Is how I can explain these blinding tears.

Blurring my sight

Of your fast ascent.

Forever.

 

 

Looking Toward Today’s Resurrection

Looking Toward Today’s Resurrection

 By Jane Tawel

March 11, 2017

 

Today is my birthday. It is also, the 11th day of Lent 2017.   This morning’s birthday reading was pretty spot on to rev my old engine after a week of the, I am ashamed to say, what is often a usual panoply of exhaustion and worry and work and never enough time or energy yada yada yada. Never enough embracing of joy. Never enough embracing of hope. Never enough rejection of the specters of death and a full out hug of the mysteries of resurrected life.

 

On this my birthday, I read Parker Palmer’s reflections in The Active Life on resurrection. So as I reflect on the march–or rather awkward Macarena– towards returning to dust today, I also awkwardly lunge and slide toward the hope of today’s Resurrection. The duality of Lent is much like having a birthday at my age – one contemplates simultaneously one’s death and one’s life as one contemplates simultaneously Christ’s death and Christ’s Resurrection.  In this dual frame of mind, on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the homily was on Psalm 103.

 

Psalm 103 lets us know that just as Ash Wednesday “blesses us” with the remembrance that “we are but dust”, yet we are also blessed with the remembrance of all Jehovah has done in the earth’s creation and the world’ history. We also are blessed with the hope that God’s loving-kindness endures forever for those who keep His covenant.

 

At my age, you begin to keep telling others and yourself that old joke about another birthday beating the alternative, and so it was with irony and conviction that I read Palmer today about this human tendency towards often living actually preferring death to life.  Jesus talked a lot about this but we keep messing up what He was really saying.  I keep messing it up. So I want to share the words of greater thinkers than I. Palmer writes about a poem by Julia Esquivel.

 

“They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection”

by Julia Esquivel

 

It isn’t the noise in the streets

that keeps us from resting, my friend,

nor is it the shouts of the young people

coming out drunk from the “St. Pauli,”

nor is it the tumult of those who pass by excitedly

on their way to the mountains.

 

It is something within us that doesn’t let us sleep,

that doesn’t let us rest,

that won’t stop pounding

deep inside,

it is the silent, warm weeping

of Indian women without their husbands,

it is the sad gaze of the children

fixed somewhere beyond memory,

precious in our eyes

which during sleep,

though closed, keep watch,

with each contraction

of the heart

in every awakening.

 

 

Now six have left us,

and nine in Rabinal, 1

and two, plus two, plus two,

and ten, a hundred, a thousand,

a whole army

witness to our pain,

our fear,

our courage,

our hope!

 

What keeps us from sleeping

is that they have threatened us with Resurrection!

Because every evening

though weary of killings,

an endless inventory since 1954, 2

yet we go on loving life

and do not accept their death!

They have threatened us with Resurrection

Because we have felt their inert bodies,

and their souls penetrated ours

doubly fortified,

because in this marathon of Hope,

there are always others to relieve us

who carry the strength

to reach the finish line

which lies beyond death.

 

They have threatened us with Resurrection

because they will not be able to take away from us

their bodies,

their souls,

their strength,

their spirit,

nor even their death

and least of all their life.

Because they live

today, tomorrow, and always

in the streets baptized with their blood,

in the air that absorbed their cry,

in the jungle that hid their shadows,

in the river that gathered up their laughter,

in the ocean that holds their secrets,

in the craters of the volcanoes,

Pyramids of the New Day,

which swallowed up their ashes.

 

They have threatened us with Resurrection

because they are more alive than ever before,

because they transform our agonies

and fertilize our struggle,

because they pick us up when we fall,

because they loom like giants

before the crazed gorillas’ fear.

They have threatened us with Resurrection,

because they do not know life (poor things!).

 

That is the whirlwind

which does not let us sleep,

the reason why sleeping, we keep watch,

and awake, we dream.

 

No, it’s not the street noises,

nor the shouts from the drunks in the “St. Pauli,”

nor the noise from the fans at the ball park.

It is the internal cyclone of kaleidoscopic struggle

which will heal that wound of the quetzal

fallen in Ixcán,

it is the earthquake soon to come

that will shake the world

and put everything in its place.

 

No, brother,

it is not the noise in the streets

which does not let us sleep.

 

Join us in this vigil

and you will know what it is to dream!

Then you will know how marvelous it is

to live threatened with Resurrection!

 

To dream awake,

to keep watch asleep,

to live while dying,

and to know ourselves already

resurrected!

 

 

 

In my 7th grade English classes we have been studying poetry.  You would think they would moan, but they really get into it – reading it, dissecting it, and writing it. Here is one thing I resonated with that Parker says about his finding his way into the meaning of Esquivel’s poem:

 

The longer that one dwells on the poem, the harder it is to say exactly who threatens us with resurrection. The poem itself is like the kaleidoscope whose image Esquivel uses; each time you turn it a new pattern appears. So the poem imitates life, in which the “threat of Resurrection” comes both from those who dispense death and from those who have died in the hope of new life… If it is true that both the killers and the killed threaten us with resurrection, then we, the living are caught between a rock and hard place.  On the one hand, we fear the killers, but not simply because they want to kill us.  We fear them because they test our convictions about resurrection, they test our willingness to be brought into a larger life than the one we now know. On the other hand, we fear the innocent victims of the killers, those who have died for love and justice and peace. Though they are our friends, we fear them because they call us to follow them in “this marathon of Hope.”  If we were to take their calling seriously, we ourselves would have to undergo some form of dying.  (Parker 147-8)

 

It does take time to figure out meaning – in poetry, in literature, in science, in nature, but ultimately in one’s life. I am very grateful on this my birthday to have had so much time to try to figure it all out.  And I ask forgiveness for wasting so much time on anything that does not enflame hope, kindle truth, and stoke life– in myself and in others. Because that is what defeats death. Faith, Hope, Truth and Love are those eternal “dust-busters”. And they are available for each day’s embrace of Resurrected Life.

 

Our spiritual journey is one of testing and running.  We are put to the test daily to “figure out what it all means”. And we must run and not grow weary in hope. The paradox as St. Paul found, is that in Christ’s powerful death is also Christ’s powerful Resurrection Life. Lent is a reminder that we take up Christ’s cross daily in order to experience daily the Hope of Resurrection – His and Ours.

 

May today be a day when we embrace the journey of finding the meaning of our own daily deaths on our journeys to today’s possibilities for our own daily resurrection. The Good News threatens the world not with death, but with Resurrection and the hope of Christ’s resurrected life.  May today be a day when we too are threatened and threatening with resurrection.

 

 

 

 

POV #2 – A Poem

POV #2 – A Poem

For my friend, my husband, Raoul

By Jane Tawel

 

We stand shoulder to shoulder, necks stiffened by staring eyes.

They robbed us of our weaponry, so sometimes our fingers brush against the other’s,

like frightened moths caught in a moldy flour sack.

I know your love is mostly loyalty now, like any good person of your rank.

Mine has passed from need of care to need of life, and I troop on.

We shoulder on.

We soldier on.

I’ve served under you for twenty some years now, but the war position keeps changing on us.

Who are yon enemies, we love more than our own lives, those four

who seem  four thousand fighters in the heat of the fray?

We have lost so many battles to these beloveds.

Our arms hang slack, shoulders shivering in fearful exhaustion.

From where will the next onslaught come?

I see the grey smoky stains inerasable under your eyes.

My flesh hangs loose with womb weariness,

I, the mother of all wars,

birthing these adored combatants over and over again.

You want to abort the mission, sometimes, my darling,

I know. I know.

What a laugh they named it friendly fire.

The enemy’s reckless skirmish on the world, hurts more

than our taking a direct hit–

I’d welcome a slash across the throat sometimes.

You sometimes think of honor with a sword.

Your manhood shivers at their powerful nonchalance.

My war cry crones into the silence of their casual strategies.

There are days we comrades feel like pushing the other,  in the path of destruction

and turning traitor, like we used to do.

But our mutual still hemorrhaging  scars

have congealed us immovable,

a standing army of two, whether we want to keep waging or not;

we’ve both grown too old in the service to look for civilian careers now.

We have to die on the battlefield upright, giving it all we’ve got

against the pillaging hoard of four.

We shoulder on, we soldier on.

Our limbs tremble with the effort and all we want to do in these decaying dusks

is pull up our tents and retreat.

But, oh my love, my Captain!

In the throes, you have stood beside me,  shoulder to shoulder,

now taking a verbal bullet, now a lanced glance.

I wish my heart were purple–

I could offer it as a medal

in a card for you on Father’s Day.

Remember those four fateful mornings?

You unfurled the flag and charged straight ahead,

into the war at home.

Why didn’t they warn us? There are no surviving veterans in this war?

And we shoulder, soldier on.

We shoulder, soldier on.

I remember, Mighty Warrior, my husband,

oh, how I recall, when your touch was full frontal in the dawn.

Now we have to keep our eyes love-locked straight, two sentinels, side by side,

peering out for our  enemies that we treasure more than life

fearfully, anxiously you and I, volunteering for the night watch

keeping the door unlocked and safe for them

when they come home to crash for the night.