Birthed from love

Trust your sadness

Don’t let it harden to defensiveness and anger

Let your heart be gently soft

As you count the enormous cost

Of all you wished for but could not gain

Of all that was longed for but lost

Trust the process enough to know

That somewhere even in the darkest shadows

Light is still shining somewhere

Even if covered over by frost and snow

For as the ice melts

Light will come again

As all that was illusion is dissolved

Through this process of transformation

Truly I tell you

That the sun will come again

After this all this grief

 For how could sadness be birthed

From anything else

But love?

A voice of love

Let us be

A voice of love

What good will it do

To add to the number of angry unhappy voices

Crying in the wilderness

Bemoaning the fate of a past we could never control

What will it profit us

To hold on too long

To the feelings of hatred or upset or anger

That may just be natural responses to pain and suffering

But sooner or later become if sustained

Only tools of rationalisation and defence

Surely if we dare to look deeper

There is something far more expansive going on

Than a contractive view could ever guess

Causing the knots of pain

Only to twist

Tighter inside our bodies

Seeking release from shame

Truly I believe that when we answer with love

When we contain with love

When we bear all injuries with love

Our souls participate within

The awakening of a healing

That arises from deep within pain

Revealing a purpose of forward evolution we should never distain

Opening for us

A doorway into freedom

Please believe in the power of love

Don’t believe me

When I say I don’t need you

When I say it is safer to live here

Within my perfectly circumscribed orbit

Behind barriers of fear

That I disguise with illusions

Of how I am just too sensitive to pain

And feel everything

Maybe at times

Its nothing more

Than a kind of dark narcissism

For is it really true

That malevolent forces out there

Are out to destroy me

Or is it all about the degree of love we have

To bring to any situation

Most surely we don’t have to be naïve

For there are those

Who may still chose to hurt us so

But if we can only find the will

And self belief

So necessary

To not taking it personally

We will find so much more relief

From all of those demons in our head

That tell us it is not safe to shed

Our protective overcoat

For the force of love we feel from within

Is surely strong enough to over come

Most of everything

If we only have the strength to believe

In a present that is brighter

Than all of our darkest yesterdays

When I first saw you

When I first saw you

I think I understood

You had the power to unravel me

And when I allowed my body to open to yours

Dizziness came with the fall

As you picked me up

And promised to keep me forever

Safe from harm

But instead our relationship

Took me towards the edge of a precipice

I could not negotiate

And my vertigo

Made you realise

I was not lion hearted enough

For one such as you

And so you let me fall

After such a long battle to hold on

And then the real unravelling began

As I tried to keep my self afloat

But slowly drowned instead

Captured by a black tide of history repeating

A whirlpool circling in upon itself

Chased toward the edge of extinction

Where I

Came undone

How could words explain the darkest of years

Instead all pain falls into emptiness

Unspoken

But through poetry

Birthed out of the deep black hole

With chaos at the centre

And yet hidden inside

Lived so many mysteries

Waiting to be penetrated

And so the labour began

To understand it all

Until eventually

Light began to dawn again

At the centre

Shedding

You shed these tears

With layers of years

As the pool of sorrow around you grows

There in that ocean where you swim

Flotsam and jetsam

And a million other things

Lap around you

As the water swells and you find yourself

Buffeted about

Tidal pull back to the past

Fills your heart with such unrequited longing

For the arms that never held you

Until the death nell

Refrains of songs

Bring intimations of the past

The big house he built

Looking for security

Chasing god know what dream

That ended in ruin

And as the explosions came

Everything detonated

Leaving only wreckage

And now you are that wreckage

But not only wreckage

As mosaic pieces begin cluster

You sort through all the precious things she left

With a heavy heart

As tears swell

And your head remembers the explosions

Of spring and summer

At times the grief feels too large to contain

But then there is the part of you that sees and knows

It is not the whole of you

She is in the room with you now

Holding all the younger selves

That struggled so hard to grow

And you know as the deep cries rock you

Without a doubt

That you are shedding

But also integrating

What everyone in ignorance

Said you needed to leave behind

Oh God why don’t they know

The past will never fully leave you

Only release its powerful hold

In time and with grieving

As it becomes the very thing

You bend willingly to accept

And surrender to

Because you finally forgive

Knowing the cost

Of holding on too tight

Will only lead in death

 

(Remember that this place into which you are dissolving

is a place of intense creativity. Of creation itself.)

Melissa LaFlamme

Foundation

You are teaching me

To understand

What it means to love wholeheartedly

Its some kind of miracle to me

But also strange

To experience a love that takes care of my fear

This is something I have never known

Is that why now

When ever we talk

It feels like I am coming home?

In your presence there is stability and grace

And I’ve never ever seen you show a nasty face

A stream of positivity

Just radiates from you

Shining light into darker wounded places

Deep inside my soul

Revealing then anew

And there are times tonight

I have just cried

As wounds I learned to hide

Awakened from inside

And as I reveal to you the source of all of this

Reticence

I feel every single wall come down

As my vulnerable side

Reveals itself hiding in the shadows

But there is such strength in this

Revelation

 Calmness and security

Revealing a powerful foundation

To build

Our growing love upon

Be there

Be there for me

Hold my hand

Let me know I have the strength to stand

Even if it means to stand alone

Give me strength

Help me believe in the power

I have to take root

Blossom and flower

Let me believe in the life force in me

And that I have the skills and knowledge inside

Things I no longer need to hide out of fear

Or the risk of disapproval

Remind me that

Although this world is often an unsafe place

One where it hurts to risk

There is a deeper price

For failing to expose my true face

Help me to find my right size and shape

And don’t let me listen to those killing voices inside

That want to cut me down to size

Or tell me I do not belong

Help me to be both vulnerable and strong

Stand beside me dear self

Hold my hand

As I risk my life to live

And take a stand

Making no other demand

Than the right to exist

As the very one I am

Disappear : the unknowable mystery

Sometimes who I am

Disappears beneath a veil of tears

And I don’t know if I am or

Where I am

Only that I am becoming

It seems for past years

My body is not complete

The discrete parts

Disjoint from time to time

And often my cells become sediment

Connections come and go

Returning me to the deepest silence

The darkest void

Unbearable emptiness

Is it place of creation or destruction?

Or?

Both?

Here inside my aloneness my soul cries

And I fear the Universe will conspire

To never let us connect

Never know each other’s bodies

And this reminds me of the loneliness

I have always felt

Surrounding me like a curse

Of feeling I never had a home

And most certainly did not belong on this earth

With humans

People come and go

And I contain them

And when they disappear

My cells rearrange to contain myself again

Digesting the feelings left in rearranged tissue

Its a mystery I cannot explain

And many may feel I am mad

Because it makes no sense

And yet

When I cry

And try to comprehend

I feel the self I thought was me

Dissolving

Being absorbed back

Into the unknowable mystery

All I need : A place to be free

You say I am all you need

And oh my heart is troubled

For I know that the depths of my soul

Cannot find completion

Only in another

And it makes me sad

To think I could hurt you

When I say to you

Don’t look to me to heal your wounds

What has become of me?

Is it just

That I have had to travel so very far

Alone

Over the harshest of roads?

And is a part of me closing a door

On the possibility of healing

Through a truly connected love?

Perhaps I will forever

Hold a part of myself back

Because I know what it is to lose

But I also know

That out of loss

And of that absence left

Comes a larger presence at times

For at times

All I need is this

Blank page

Or Computer screen with an open page

A place to pour out my soul

And enter my wild imagining

Found in reverie

And poetry

Discovered in aloneness

But that is only part of me

The part that fears I won’t be free

If you try to possess and capture me

And yet another part of me

Needs and loves you too

So if I say these words

Just stay with me

But please allow my soul

Always

A place to be free

The seed of love

You thought love was the wave

That came crashing around you

A deluge

In which you might find oblivion or drown

But, no Love what remained

After that wave finally washed you

Up upon the shore of broken dreams

Within whose wrecking and breaking

You discovered a force far deeper than desire

Yes Love is the seed that

Is then planted

Growing with a power

That can never be obliterated

Once it has taken root

And begun to sprout and bloom

Within your soul