Tag Archives: revolution

Salvation

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“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes” 

As the devourer chomps
more and more bites
from our collective day
And there are ever fewer places
its great maw has not marred
And as we see the things we hoped for swallowed —
their pieces spit back on the putrid heap —
And feel the seemingly inexorable churning
of sacrificial goods conveyed to feed the beast
What can deliver us?

What can deliver us?
Not only from the looming shadow —
swift encroaching hopelessness, despair —
But also from the soporific tendency
to sink in hooded apathy
or hide in empty revelry
To close our eyes as if we didn’t care. . .

Truth can deliver us
The truth of each one’s heart’s desire
must reaffirm its presence
The law of motivations
must ascend in every life
Till all that is perverted falls
and only what is true remains.

“Then will I also confess unto thee 
that thine own right hand can save thee.”
— And each yearning heart
that answers its own call
will help to realign our lives
and save us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 25, 2012



Remembering

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We walk almost in trance
Remembering
Doing things no one has taught us
Doing them because we must —
Some ancient edict
has brought us to this point
Insistent hunger drives us to the place
where we may find ourselves together
learning grace

Slowly, we pick up and wear the wisdom
Older than the schools
and the long, loud rush of words
and the frantic reasoning
intoned over and over
The words of those who would impose
a logic to their will
and make us think we need to do
the things that scatter, kill
us off, to cull the ones
who for a time can do the bidding 
of a voice that doesn’t care.

But we return
Some of us, at first
Then a few more
We come in ones and twos
But we are many
And listening within
Each of us knows 
this thing we need to do

So we unite
First join hands
Then learn to breathe together
Then learn to hold the space for one another,
To shine the light that magnifies each person’s gift
That brings us into peace and closes up the rift
Till we can weave our separate music into one voice
To reconstruct our primal song, and so rejoice.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2012


Picture: Jennifer McCurdy Vortex Vessel, Photo by Gary Mirando



Touch Hunger

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Now that I know about my own touch hunger
I see touch hunger everywhere I look
Faces longing to be stroked
Bodies leaning out toward one another
The boy whose agitated energy
moved him in an oscillating “8”
Just like my daughter moved
when she was small and needed to be held

We live in an emaciated state
Not knowing what we crave, how to relate
Our bodies stick-like, prickly, stiff
from starving for our basic daily touch

Caged off by fears, by norms, by talk of sin
We need to open gates, and so begin
to feed each other’s hunger
so we can
fill up our souls, and so be whole again.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 16, 2012



Plea for a new economy

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All the well-paved roads
just lead to wasteland —
The greatest mecca now the shopping mall
where everything is so meticulously placed
and if they could
they would commodify the soul
Refract it into little mirrored packages
so it can make the stuff they sell attractive
tell us if we want some soul
we have to buy it
and to buy it, first we have to sell it
Many are the nets of thought to have us so believe
So deceived, we’re bought and sold
and so enslaved

But let us move into the clarity of day
And see that in reality
there is no “they”
And if we see the roads are broad and yet
their promises are hollow
and just because they have bright signs
we’re not compelled to follow
We may envision some more perfect way

A modest road, that winds beside a river
where folks on bicycles and feet could wander
A common square where people daily gather
for music, song and dance, discussion, laughter
Where there’s no price or prison for the soul
And in our giving and receiving 
we are whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 14, 2012


Time In

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Let me give you a “time in” —
A time of contact,
of enough cuddle
to be an answer to your lost cries
A time in
Like time before time
when everyone knew
what to do about cries
that cry meant cuddle me
Bring me in
Let me know home
Oh yes
Now is the time
for time in
for everyone:
The hothead
The curmudgeon
The one who cringes inside his shell
darting in alarm at each approach
The one who sits alone
The one who sits with all her so-called friends
hiding isolation under loud words
The ones who make their dogged resolutions
with no idea what would earn the in ticket
The ones who hide their keening under sharp motion
The ones who try all day but can’t fix it
Oh World!
Let us give each other time in
Let us come home to connection
until we have the circuits to unite
in tender understanding and affection.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 22, 2012


Basic Needs – A Checklist

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For someone to find you magnificent
in the peculiar, unvaunted ways you are yourself;
For you to feel the same about another;
To freely give the world that whole magnificence
in ways that make it multiply;
For your magnificence to blend with that of others
creating one grand splendid harmony
a seamless shining fabric made of life;
A center still point and a way to get there;
A way to see grace, and the habit of noticing.

If we commit to meeting basic needs
What greatness we shall know!  What joy,
What peace!

©Wendy Mulhern
March 20, 2012


Monday, downtown

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Monday Downtown (background music: Isaac Shepard “Before Dawn”)


Oh, humanity!
Working at your tired charades
Moving through so many empty boxes
Desiccated corridors
Courses without meaning

Look how amazing you are!
Look how, even when the rules are cast
to close out any purpose, light or joy
You still find ways to shine:
Within this skewed account of life
your light slips through the chinks
and though at times refracted
blazes forth
Makes us maybe take a while to notice
all the places where it is suppressed
Just think: if we were free
what brilliance we would show

It is our destiny
We will prevail
We will shine clear
We’ll banish all the false demands
The failed array of hoops, constrictive bands
Deny the faulty purposes
that disappointed us
Swing free
on the strength of our unstoppable
creative rush!

©Wendy Mulhern
March 19, 2012


Manifesto II: Tipping

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The old story must
fall away like a husk
for it is too dry
to sustain the living—
those who now stride
into their own

Since there is no place for them 
in the old story—
No job, no niche, not even 
one small joy to suck on,
They will turn
and find their sustenance within
and with each other

And those who managed the old story
may try, once again, to recalibrate—
Give them just enough juice
so they will stay
But it’s too late
The load has tipped:
With a grand whoosh
all the piled up lies
will slide into oblivion
And we will put forth
our new green.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2012







Soul Retrieval

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No, no,
This is not the promise you were given
Mountains of detritus,
Self-enforced confinement
Stress and tracks of weary years
Across your face

No
This is not your course
The clock-enforced conformity
The envious and jealous stabs within
Reflexive judgement,
Passing down the curse
Of being conquered

However much the rules you’re taught
claim to control
You never could be severed
from your soul

Hold with me now
Together, let’s sing your song
It leads you back along the lines of longing
To where you’ve always sensed that you belong
We’ll all converge there jubilantly thronging
At home as if we never had been gone

Let our eyes now feed each other’s embers
Resurrect our light so we remember
What had seemed so lost from us, so far
Who we’ve ever been
And who we are.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2012


(background music: Max Richter, “Embers”)

Idols

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Winds of Spirit
Sweep my thought
It’s time to cast out idols
Those who ask for time
Those who ask for blood
Those who ask for tiresome daily ritual
Who say they have the power
to save my sorry life
or, if I fail to worship,
occasion my demise

But they know nothing, and their mouths can’t speak
The life they offer is anemic, weak
And Spirit shows me, right here, what I am
Exposing all their noxious threats as sham

I will not worship
the god of appearances
I will not worship
the god of social norms
I will not worship
the god of shopping bargains
I will not worship
the god of health concerns

Winds of Spirit, sweep my soul
for I am made to worship 
what is true and whole
That frames the space for all that’s free and wild
And holds us each as Life’s untrammeled child.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 6, 2012

(background music: Max Richter, “Haunted Ocean”)