The interior of my being belongs to consciousness
And consciousness is a shape shifter
Sometimes it resembles a 5 year old
And at others, a woman of 33
All of this belongs to me, and yet isn’t entirely mine to control
It blends with memory and dreams of the future
What has been
And what is to come
And the words that consciousness uses are handed down one by one
Arriving here
Laid down in a paragraph
A sentence rolls out before me
I glimpse inner wisdom for a moment
And then it is gone
Scroll on, to the next post
A life living and giving its words away
One by one
And I’m just watching them go
and learning that I’ll never catch up
*this is the nature of my blog. I write poetry from the heart but whose heart? Mine of course, but what age and is this experience mine or one that I have imagined myself into either through a lens on the past or looking into the future. Or are the words of right now?
Someone asked in an email the other day “was this poem about your Mum?” (Falling Stars). It was a weird moment because (a) I write poetry without considering who is reading it and can’t, or I would constantly be editing myself and (b) where poetry comes from, where yearning or sadness or anger or doubt or any other emotion that pours itself into words comes from…is consciousness – it’s not something I question.
Poetry is a personal journey that is shared but not really discussed because it changes between writer and reader and given a lapse in time it changes even further – like a book which is read at fifteen will contain an entirely different message for the twenty-eight year old.
What I do know, and therefore can answer is this – life is poetry, consciousness is poetry and it has to be true to weave power over both the writer and the reader. Make believe lacks depth and the ability to resonate. Which is why fools and fakes are ignored and why children stop playing cups of tea with dolls. Make believe is unsatisfying to the soul.
Truth has a voice that once you tune into it, is so utterly shatteringly beautiful that you don’t want to listen to any other. You find that power within and you use it in your writing. Truth is poetry, poetry is truth.
I don’t want to answer questions on poetry, even my own, because where it comes from is a river, and as the saying goes, you never step into the same river twice – not even a millisecond after you have just done so.
Instead, the gift is to stand in the water of pure consciousness for a moment and whisper, “the water is clear, I see a catfish, the pebbles are cold and round beneath my feet, these words I know, are not mine to keep, and so I let them go,
next post”
…and an older post – I’m doing this because I’m often shocked by how many are behind me now, so I like bringing them forward
