Earth’s Redress

and these lines lay me down deep inside
in that place where all the untamed bits fret,
caged by the dis-ease of a civilized refinement
and some notions of felling faerie spirits for the greater good.
so i stand here in awe, aware of the coming home
as all that stands guard against the onslaught of chains
bows slightly to the season’s turning
singing golden whispers to carpet earth’s redress.
deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths…
nature won’t be bought or otherwise programmed to forget

 

photo by j. ruth kelly, 2017, all rights reserved

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Awakening

gentle turning within
disrupting, kindly disintegrating
all the walls surrounding precious seed
now spilling elixir, filling the soil of soul’s untamed bounty.
an unnamed fullness unfolds.
wholeness insists outside old stories…
and the fall, the loss grows richness where we land…

photo by j. ruth kelly, 2017, all rights reserved

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Airborne Over Santa Fe…

All awe-filled and full.
Sun’s beckoning lands me west
of all the madness
posing pretend love
and telling tall tales to fill
a yawning divide
no lie can hide now.
See, I see you more clearly
and all I can do
is fly far away
building sweeter ways to love
beyond the carnage.

photo by j. ruth kelly, 2017, all rights reserved

 

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The May Monet

In May Monet brews
deep hues’ agony and love
the vista reveals
A woman reeling
deeply resonating hope,
courage poised, still.

j. ruth kelly, 2017, all rights reserved

My daughter, Marion, is often called May, and in May we visited Carnegie Museum of Art. The month of May turned out to be a very challenging and difficult time for my daughter. Her courage, strength, and depth of awareness struck me as I turned to look back at her lingering over Monet’s magnificent and imparting work of beauty.

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A Harvest Calls

When the winter stole my song, all the lovely bits of me blew away
and the night chained the dirt of my soul to the earth,
a forest of dead leaves and berries cloaked my blood.
So I wailed into the mire, a sort of siren sob for ice and snow, but no.
The season remained anchored to an epoch, bored by all my ire
and, instead of relenting, carved notches in my throat,
binding my voice to memories of long ago, whispering secrets stored in lifetimes past.
And so I listened.
And the notches cut deep, freeing waters dank and tired.
They ran in rivulets down my neck and into the valley hardened by hope’s abortions,
flooded all the flotsam jamming up my flow and washed old corpses out to sea.
And I listened more
as the ice and snow melted down into my core, warmed by embers unseen.
Then a new song gripped the heart of every screenplay refusing tRuth,
wringing out the lies, peeling back the armor ancient,
fucking the mindlessness out of every habitual, knee-jerk bullshit
reactionary presentation.
Stripped, disintegrating but the truest hum emanating.
Out past the dirt and mire, through the cracks in my grave…
a harvest calls,
a song is freed,
and these feet remember the dance.

j. ruth kelly, 2017, all rights reserved

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At What Point…

At what point did my love for you end and my need for you to validate my fantasy about myself, about life, about love itself pick up, posing “love” surreal, impossible?

At what point did my desire for you end and my need to be craved, to be proven to again and again that I was desirable, that I could control you and could control just how much you reached me, truly reached me, begin?

At what point did my fantasies distort who you are in my eyes and at what point did those fantasies alienate you from me, me from you and even you from yourself?

At what point did my hopes blind me, then bind me to a hopeless mirage in the desert of a reality nonexistent while you stood there simply being a feast as I starved needlessly?

(How many of us ever get to really see each other, feel and know each other beyond the bullshit we are so convinced is real?)

At what point do any of us know beyond our projections dawning on the pretend horizon of our insecure need to be exceptional, to be anything but as human as the rest of us?

Do we reach the end, the bottom of the trunk so full of all those masks we believe we are and we hope won’t fall off, showing our unwashed beauty?

At what point will I walk permanently naked into the moment and not reach for the nearest defense mechanism to shield me from what it means to be free from the ancient pride hide?

Take me there, to that point.

I weary here of the shields and notions of perfection and the quiet desperation made by so much noisy needing to make a meaning that already thrives and will live beyond my dying…

j. ruth kelly, 2017, all rights reserved, pointillist spiral by j. ruth kelly

 

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All Angst Aside…

Take me, every ounce of this flesh and bone, pulse and blood of being, down that road,
that road long avoided, long ignored. Take me down that road, past all the detour signs and the “do not enter” and “wrong way” warnings. In the night, we journey. Past the sleeping towns and the slumbering souls barely breathing, we ride. All angst aside, all in, all gone on oppression, take me down that forgotten highway where only my body’s direction may lead as my soul receives and gives, leads and follows on a path of ancient knowing.

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved, 2016
Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved, 2016

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The Church of May

You leap beyond all
despair and hopeless falling.
Fiery woman, live;

no spire reaches
past your own sacred lightning,
flaring out fierce love.

Stomp and squeal delight
against a night of constant
yearning. Your love’s dance

blurs us past façades,
awakens all our hoping
towards sun’s warm call.

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved, 2016
Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved, 2016

“May” is one of my daughter’s nicknames. On this day, pictured here as blurred trees and a church held steadfast against our movement, Marion drove us around to see some of the more lovely parts of Pittsburgh. Our trip to see her began with her trademark spontaneity and abandon when we drove up to her home. She leapt up and out the front door into the 1am cold night air and squealed with joy and then down the stairs, doing little run/skip/dance moves out into the street to reach into my car for a huge hug. And that is the best of the “Church of May.” She reveals, at her most fiercely loving moments, what we’re all made of and what we’re all here for … no matter how dark the time. We are the sacred, spiritual, divine-as-love.

 

 

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With the Makers

I’m all done with notional condemnation,
nonsense posing “salvation”
suggesting pre-birth agendas and all the control
a robot might covet.

Take me to the truth, down to the bone of it.
Marry me to the wonder found in the midst of
all this chaos and randomness daring us all
to make meaning.

I see their meaning made in fear.
The meaning they make
spews the poison in their hearts,
the snare in their aid.

Take me far away from the righteous.
I want to live with the undone and undoing.
I want to dance with the makers and shake
every foundation lost to the mold of stagnation.

Deliver me to love, love in spite of it all,
love because of it all,
love morphing, rolling up sleeves
and shaping this mound of flesh into new and ancient songs.

j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved, 2015
j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved, 2015

*Pre-birth agendas and salvation are real forces and works ancient and new…but this poem isn’t focused on the mystical and mysterious, powerful and valid work hidden therein. It’s about freeing yourself from false faith.

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