Inner Compass

Poets and story tellers United asked : take inspiration from the title of songs in Florence and the Machine’s new album, Everybody Scream. I used Perfume and Milk

Inner Compass

What were you meant to do?
It is written in the scriptures
of your being.
Peel away some layers. 
Remove the debris
of expectations.

Devote yourself to
what is carved in your bones.

Still, the world looks away.

Droplets of doubt
weave into a mist of thoughts.
People already have
Perfume and milk
cars and coffee machines,
holidays and heroes.
Do they need me?

Trust.
You are part of the horizon
you move toward.
Pierce through the fog
knowingly.

One day
the rain will put on his bow,
the sky will open,
your spine will straighten.
You are what you do so much,
you dress yourself in it,
and the world
starts looking.

Wider than walls

the prompt for What's Going On:
Show resistance through art, joy, trust, and love.

Wider than Walls

When you struggle,
remember life is wider than the walls around you.
This remembering is the start of resistance

Beauty speaks
in trees leaning toward the sun,
in the quiet pulse of music,
in a poem opening its hands,
in the soft goodness of people
who forget they shine.
Lean into the arms of this world

The walls around our sadness are not stone
they are only mist,
lifting
as soon as light arrives,
as soon as colour spills on the flowers again,
as soon as warmth touches your heart.
This world will always meet you with light.

Like a nourished plant,
you grow
and there is something in you
that the world cannot break
and that is how you became
the beautiful creation
you are now

All of it is love,
wearing a thousand quiet faces.

And you
even on the days you doubt it
you belong
to that world.

 

Gratitude

Meaning of beautiful

Gratitude

Thank you

for lyric and starlight
weaving around my soul.

I dress myself
in the ocean.
I wash my thoughts
in its water
to receive clarity,
to see the beauty 

strikes of red, purple,
and white stitched
into the sky.

Longing has
a thousand pathways,
each one ending
in light 

in a single flash
of gratitude.

Sugar spun laughter

 The prompt for Poets and Storytellers United is food as a ritual

Sugar spun laughter

Once, every year
in the Netherlands,
three days of funfair,
the air sweet with
sugar-spun laughter and
Dutch potato salad,
creamy and cool,
olives sparkling
like crowns on soft-boiled eggs,
ham folded in silky layers
tomatoes bursting with juice.
Pickles, crisp and tangy,
hanging around hassle-free
in the salad.
Food, a ritual.

All day,
the house hums
with voices and footsteps.
Family arrives,
warm hugs and clinking glasses,
Come in, sit down, share a drink,
taste the salad,
let’s go to the fair,
and drink from the glass of joy.

 

The thread that shelters

 The prompt for what's going on is fearlessness or courage. This is my call for courage

The thread that shelters

When the world wanders
down a shadowed path,
forgetting the truth you carry within,

when its hands neglect
the pulse of what matters:
the breath of mother earth,
the thread between hearts
sheltering them

Keep your soul!
Let it roam unguarded
through the meadow of its becoming.
Let the mind sharpen,
yet do not let the world
bend you to its iron ways!

Remember the first light you trusted,
how it asked for nothing,
only to be seen
pure.

Imagine that light still holds you.
It lifts what’s real in you.
until it glows where the night
forgets to look.

And from this, courage comes:
the quiet rising,
the steady step forward
into the sunlit room
of your truth.

Bones and light

 The prompt for Poets and storytellers United is "We will invite you to find inspiration in this quote: “The most expensive garment you’ll ever own is your own flesh.”

Bones and light

My body, an expensive garment
a vessel I stitched with quiet light,
soft fabric worn by time.

A heap of bones, perhaps
but also, two legs that carry me
down winding paths of discovery,
where the wild whispers
my name

My arms, woven to embrace:
to cradle the young,
to steady the old,
to hold the world for a moment.

My mind, a tangle of threads
where I linger, weaving words,
sometimes losing myself
in the knots.

And when this garment is finally worn,
I’ll look back and say:
it was worth every breath,
every step, every touch,
every thought spent,
I'll leave it with gratitude