Mr Opportunity

You who think themselves hunted by witches; who
need their empathy spoon-fed: you really cannot tell
if you have abused your power or pushed your luck?
You don’t understand where her boundaries are, anymore?
Why, poor lamb, they are where they have always been,
if you would only
stop getting your clues and taking your cues
from a world of patriarchal design.
Stop looking up for her. Stop looking down at her. She is
right here. Meet her eyes: she knows
you are both in a prison of Fathers’ makings
and there is a limit to how much she can keep saving you.

 

“Keep saying it’s a grey area”

Pack Light

Go to come back.
Again and again,
through the Gates.
Pack light:
the weight of Conscience
is limitless.

His story

On her back; on her knees
At the sink in bare feet
On a pedestal, silent, please
Dangerous angel
Too frigid; too bossy; too keen
Was his story; his glory
His magical chattel
From baby to wife
To invisible burden
Embattled; embargoed
Her scorn and her fury
Her life
As she rattles the bars
And beats hard on the ceilings
Deducing his god rod
Confuses his yardstick
The fairer sex feeling her Mars
As she’s peeling his story
Unsealing her future
In all types of footwear
And favourite bras.

Limits

Between a barrier and a boundary
the threshold of Imagination

Forehindsight

All of human history slaps us in the face. Screams

look at me! Witness: I did not end. I am born again and again to grow and shed infinite skins. Potential does not die but can be bound by the drawing of a line.

You, who crossed a thousand Rubicons of shame and hope, for love of my gifts: built walls and prayed for unicorns; slew dragons and mended fences.

The sum of all human consciousness is here, now. Who can contain its conscience? Where shall it be comprehended?

Witness. Else, why are you?

Every age knows fools and visionaries. Filter your vicarious indulgences but all is revealed, eventually. Each, to their unspeakable acts and heroic deeds, be true. By your own lines, rise or fall.

All women

To mark International Women’s Day: extracts from Thunder, Perfect Mind – via (The Nag Hammadi Library) The Gnostic Society

🕯

For I am the first and the last.
I am the honoured one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.

I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.  ⚡

*****

Equality does not patronise

This is my body
This is my mind
This is my soul

All me
All mine

🌹
2015 – there’s a hole in the whole
2014 – ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’

What are we living longer for?

What are we “living longer” for?
A few years more of being poor
To reach an age of destitution,
Helpless in dependency?

To be neglected; disrespected?
Sitting in the same old chair
In mean and squalid institutions,
Half aware, not really there?

Or, horror! With a lucid mind,
Enduring time and yet more time
To witness co-invented wars;
To weep at wasted brain and brawn?

Our social fabric worn and torn
To mourn lost generations born
Onto a scrapheap, harshly built
By systematic, alternating turns
Of greed and guilt.

[From February, 2013]

 

She said:

“I’m glad I am the age I am,” she said.
“I’m grateful that the road behind
Is longer than my road ahead,
For all I see is war and fear
And grasping greed by grubby hands:
The dark night of the Soul of Man
Enveloping all creeds and lands.

“There’s poison in the hearts of men,” she said.
“An undiluted self-belief and blinding faith
Casts bloody shadows, hollows Hope
And spreads an everlasting hate
Which fashions cold and steals Life’s hallowed Grace.

“There is a madness in the minds of men,
Whose messianic propagations bend
The Golden Bough and fray the sacred threads,
Which then, in haste, they darn with fœtid patches
Lest the Light be glimpsed –
The Truth lies in the gaps,” she said.

[From January, 2013]

‘Don’t get old‘ – Gaby Hinsliff, Guardian, December 2016

Lest

Careful what you wish
For it very well might come
True for ev’ryone

phfff to aah

The circus became the bread.
Numb to buzzing,
I cut strings and crossed a bridge
– razor, rainbow: I knew not –
I had passed beyond care.

U UK hun?

You used to be so contained;
so certain of that ‘Great’ bit;
so full of it…