Battle Hymn

How is it that sometimes things can fall apart so easily?
All of the beautiful and pure intentions are right there, so close
And everyone is reaching out, everyone is trying
There's hungry children spread out across the globe
I can't think of one person who doesn't want to help
We all long for happiness for each other
Want to see love bloom
Freedom relished
We all want the playful exuberance of youth
To hold hands and sing songs without feeling shy
We're tired of murder and theft and broken hearts
Every person you lay eyes on secretly just wants to be comforted
For someone to cook them dinner and bring them flowers
Or even just to sit side by side with someone
On a balmy evening
And watch nothing and everything happening before their eyes
No one wants to hurt another person
Deep inside everyone in their truest, most innocent places
We all just want to take care of
And be cared for
We want gardens and time for ourselves to steal away and think
We want to create things
Like art, or truck engines or laughter
Everybody loves music, one kind or another
We all have our secrets, dark wounded places that still ache on rainy evenings
But each of us is so much more, so much more than those
How is it that the life we love can seem to thwart our best efforts?
Why does change have to take us so powerfully by surprise
And leave us gasping for air, hurt and startled?
Somedays I look around
And watch people yell at each other in traffic
People fighting in stores
Children screaming for attention and no one answers with affection
With patience
The whole world wants more and more and more
And each of us has less and less that we are able to give
Until the demand breaks us
Twists those vulnerable places inside of us that were trying so hard
And all that's left is an apathy, an emptiness
When we've learned so quickly that what you love can be lost
What you trust can be shattered
You can give yourself away and make no one happy,
Not even yourself
So people say they live for their children, so they can go to college
And try for a happiness that their parents couldn't find
And I just wish that they would live for life
I wish that we'd all stop asking each other
"Save me!"
I wish I could turn a little key
To the door holding your heart inside your chest
I could open it up for you
Smile into your eyes and say
"There! There it is. Everything you've been looking for, you had it all along."
I wish I could do the same for myself
Most days I'm like an infant
Overwhelmed, consumed in tears, crying
Because the tower of blocks I so painstakingly built
Fell at my feet, ruined
And part of me wants to blame the blocks
And part of me wants to blame me for even trying
But most of me
Wants to make a castle
Out of everything that seemed destroyed
So I will

Clocks

It's late at night often, when it strikes me

Just a little tap on the shoulder

To say that I won't always be twenty two

One day I will have crows feet

The longboard I go sailing through the streets on

Will belong to my children

I'll look at it and smile

As one does with things of the past gracefully surrendered

This morning I'm just beginning all of life

Without career, mostly without direction

One day I will age

It seems impossible now, that I won't always look just like this

I won't be able to move this fast

Run this wild

My spirit will go places further than my body ever has

Books will become much more gravely important

Long afternoons in the hammock

Inside the gardens

Lulu

Little lover of life

Will not be so little

Anymore

I dreamt last night that I had long, long sheathes of hair again

I had grown up

In some ways

I wonder sometimes, if we are looking at time the wrong way round

Maybe the Universe moves backwards

Until all that's left is soul and stardust

All of us children in a nursery held by the sky

I don't fear change now

Strange, to feel so old

When you've really only just arrived

Every day becoming freer

Sorting through this enormous technicolor puzzle

Learning over and over right from wrong

Light from light

Me from you

I won't always be twenty two

Someday the whole planet will be able to take one look and see

How long and hard I've laughed

And cried

Age is a number, as they say

A way of keeping track of the sun

And you

Dancing around each other

Smiling full into each other's faces

There was a time only a certain number of days ago

When I didn't yet know how to speak

Couldn't have written this here for you for all the gold in California

But I still can't tie my shoes properly

Certain people never lose that sparkle

God, I pray I'm one of them

Those eyes enormous, full with wonder at it all

Now those last forever

We are all great friends with time

If we could only understand him

No anxiety would flicker through us

We'd never ask why again

But just swim this current

All together now and always

Each in his different wave

But held by the same arms

Everybody waving to each other

Everybody shining

Peligro

Oh my sweet little journal, highest greetings upon you! I know usually I go rambling off into outer space in poetry format, but today my thoughts are a little more toggled up than poetry could sort out.

Lately I've felt very grandly like I don't have much control, or even much knowledge about the way my life is turning and changing. So many different areas growing and shifting! The girl that I used to be is still there, but she's becoming more and more every day, moving through time and space so quickly and discovering so very much indeed. I've become more aware of the vastness of life, even of simply the Earth. Everything is much larger, much fuller and richer than I could ever have imagined. The other day dearest Celly showed me a map of the Milky Way from way, way out in deep space and I was blown away by the sheer magnitude of it all. Countless, endless swaths of stars and in only our one tiny galaxy, which harbors our one tiny, planet.

Everything seems suddenly so fragile! I'm at a rather tenuous and trembling sort of age, the kind where I could feasibly be doing practically anything I would like. Ah, but what would I like best to do? That's where always I get impossibly stumped! School sounds magnificent, but so does traveling, and so does staying in my beloved Putney and carving out my own little niche here from the ground up. All things sound marvelous and terrifying. All of a sudden things that were vastly important have become minor details, and the things that I've been ignoring or hiding from for lots of time are suddenly out clear on the table and asking for my attention.

What to do, what to do? Who to be? All things are possible, every path holding goodness and challenge alike. There are so many things I could try, so many places I could go. All that life requires of me is that I go out into it. Maybe it isn't necessary to understand or even to anticipate the future, but to just go forward with a grin and a will to be transformed and to appreciate every passing moment.

Some things are certain. I love my beautiful, large family which is made of the most wonderful people a person could imagine. It's all very complex and complicated, and it doesn't follow tradition or even a sense of order, but it's a family all the same. No matter what I do, I have them all, and they have me. Some things change. All that pining that I felt very keenly for people I felt I had lost, has dissipated.
The other night I realized gently, that I didn't want to go back to who I was three or four years ago. As little as I think of myself, I'm so deeply happy to be where I am. To be this girl who feels sort of messy and at times awkward, but who is truly me.

I like being this Lulu, this girl I knew I was harboring and was nervous to let out. I don't know if I'll ever be successful in financial terms, or if I'll do all of the things I'd like very much to, but I know that I will be very happy no matter what I choose. I know that I'll grow very much more no matter where I go to do it. I'll always be too fond of chocolates and cameras and I'll love sunshine, trees, fields and art. I'll always write, always take photographs, always longboard and bicycle and play games. The big green and blue world will always be here for me and I'll always love it more and more. No matter what comes up next, I know many things for certain, but especially I just know that everything is going to be great.

I have no doubts that I'll be challenged even more thoroughly than I have been before. But then there's that delicious dream of mine, where the fire burns as I go through it but it leaves me strong and whole and unharmed. I think that I can rise to this occasion, this lovely life occasion. I never follow rules very goodly, and I tend to do all sorts of odd, unpredictable, quirky things. Most of the time I have no idea what I'm doing. But I have such a good time! Such a good time dancing, running, playing, exploring, relaxing, thinking, just being here.

It's such an incomprehensible gift... just to be here. To have been not only thought of, but then crafted and brought to life. I feel deeply honored. To be here, to be Lulu. I feel certain that no matter what happens next, I'm never in any real danger. The worst thing that a human feels can happen, is to be removed from the action. But I've never been nervous of death because I don't believe in it. I believe in changes and growing, of finding yourself in a place you never imagined. Of going home after a long day playing in the countryside.

It doesn't matter what I play at while I'm here. I could become a vast number of things, all of them exciting. I could stay at my beloved Co-Op and have a great time! I could be a photographer, a journalist, a farmer, a poet or children's book author. I could work in a great environment like a library or Co-Op or even just a lovely store!

All that matters is that I greet whatever comes my way with courage and an open heart. I used to be profoundly afraid of life, and I wanted to hide out from it and remain secure. But I like this new dangerous way, where in the blink of an eye the world just blooms and blooms right before my eyes and I'm a part of it. I have all of my amazing, affectionate, endlessly beloved friends and my unconventional but indispensable family. I have Heaven trailing around after me, wherever my feet head off to next. Nothing is ever lost, nothing. It all just adds, and adds, and adds, forever. Life is star nurseries and springtime and big, open ocean. In the end of it all, school, work, home isn't quite as important as the little things that happened along the way, seemingly in the shadow of the big.

It's greatly comforting to understand that there will always be daffodils, peanut butter, carousels and days at the beach. I'll always have everyones hand to hold, always have my endlessly beloved Ellie there just waiting at the gate for me at the end of a long and beautiful Day. Life maybe isn't about how you earn silly bits of paper. It's maybe just about all of these glorious, small things that I love so very much. It's just really about joining the story, taking breaths and reaching out. And there's a bazillion ways to do incredible things. Sometimes a degree helps, sometimes just smiling at someone who's having a rough day helps even more. Sometimes money helps you do cool things and sometimes it's coolest just to lay in the grass and watch the clouds and talk to someone about ships and sails and sealing wax, cabbages and kings.

Just being here is good enough for me. Everything else is details, and they're important, good ones. They need careful consideration and attention. But they also need a flexible, happy, gentle mind. Worrying about the future like I do just clouds everything so that I feel lost and helpless. I'd like to just go out and greet everything that comes my way. So I shall!

Ah, to live dangerously! To sing badly and loudly, to do handstands and eat too many sweets! To live here just this once, and to live it very well, until the next adventure welcomes us in. That's all I want. And now that I know, I'll just go for it! Look sharp my lovely world, here I come! :D

Resurrection

Yes, today is a roll away your stone day
Flex all your muscles, push away that seal
Come on out where the morning's waiting patient
We were made for lilies
Shimmering seas of candles
We were made to live
Now
And I know, know like you know
How those shadows grow long
You forget the meadows
Your fingers ache for hands that don't appear
Orbiting each other like we do
We forget to look long
To touch softly
Lean in closer and closer
Words like love and forever seem hollow now and then
When it doesn't appear that they come true after all
Fairytales become a mockingbird
And all those empty places grow deep and hopeless
A canyon that just keeps plummeting into the core
But today is a roll away your stone day
When it seems like everything that could go wrong, did
Guess again!
Surprise!
Life is back
Strolling through Damascus
Playing jokes on all of it's friends
That place that seemed to hold only an ending
Is cleared out
Death's robes folded up neatly and put away
And those who guarded it are stunned in the sunlight
He's back
Scarred in a way He wasn't before
Like we have known so well
All of us have been, falling into that bottomless veil
Clutching at air
Too scared to pray
Fall turns to flight
He's back
And all of us have been there
Hit the wall so hard it knocked the breath from us
But then...
Dusted it off
Climbed over
Looks like the grass is green on the other side after all
Still holding all that new rain
Heather and sparrows
You and me picnicking on the lawn
Today is a roll away your stone day
Tears can last for the night, as they say
But this is the morning now
Everything you thought was lost
Has always been, will always be
Yours
Someday when we go down to the water
Me and Him, skipping stones
Fingers entwined
No footprints for the ocean to steal away
I might ask Him why He did it, just to hear Him tell the story
I already know the answer
Love, as small of a word as it is
Is big enough
To go to Hell and back inside of
And come out laughing
A thousand times more powerful than you were before
More truly alive than you ever would have been,
Had not you descended so far and so fast
Love bears all things, believes all things
Sends whatever dark there is left
Evaporating like mist when the daybreak reaches it
And if you have love
If you are love
You can travel anywhere
Safe as a song
You can go and come back
And every time you come back
Lighter and lighter and lighter
Becomes the stone
You roll away

Come Away Little Lamb

I was born on a morning
Too early for the sunshine
All the candles trembled
For their little tearful light
God, how it almost extinguished!
What a violent, scorching flame of a girl
Turned to ash by her own blaze
I couldn't have arrived in the daylight
Burning, burning
For the touch, for the breath, for the torch to hold me
A man named Matthew
Used to call me Lamb
So meek as to lay myself on the altar
All of the temple on fire
And yet, I have lion enough to lie close to my newborn heart
Neither of us quarreling
Fangs withdrawn
Skittish soul sleepy with peace
I was afraid my dearest
When you spoke of a taper immolating from both ends
I was worried for the center
And what happens when it's reached
So I would rather flick the match, careless
Step in as all the trees burn
So as to make way for the phoenix
And the green shoots
New forest
I was born on a morning
Too early for sunshine
And I learned quickly to ignite the star
From deep within
Or be lost to the deep, blue night
To be both the fox and the rose
Or hide in the immortal shadows,
For which I have never cared
I was born in the morning
Never felt whole in the evening
Let the sun come up, and up and up
Let me be the dawn
Little daughter of the daybreak
Forever