While some are struggling
to be alive, others
are struggling to be real
It is the same struggle —
though it may seem poles apart,
it is the same need
And while some may envy others their ease,
and others may not know to envy
the vitality that rises from the quick
when the cut is close to the bone
In the end they will be saved
in the same flood of light.
It may even feel to them
like they saved each other.
This is the nature of the blessing.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 3, 2018
What if we discovered
we’d been, all this time,
strung up in nets,
our juices harnessed
to do things we would always sense
were sideways to our desires,
so that we felt the shadow
of regret, of disappointment
dogging our every act
If we should learn
this is not our purpose,
this is not our true companion –
we are not designed
to do things that always
cause somebody pain
If we could feel
our energies released
from those old nets,
slipping through like bars of light,
gaining strength and brightness
with their freedom
What joy, what power
we would wield! slicing away
everything unmerciful, unkind,
gathering the clan of all of us
into our rightful, foreordained design.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 7, 2017
As we start to escape
the violence of conformity,
we owe much to those
who first spoke out,
who wouldn’t call it courage
because it was desperation,
because it was the only option
besides soul-death,
because something deeper down
that instinct for survival
(or maybe that’s exactly what it was)
forced them to stand up,
howl out their truth
Who will witness this?
and who will turn
from the smooth and lethal cruelty
that calls itself normality?
Who will sprout up
in the wild, every-which-way
tumbling burgeoning
self proclamation of life?
©Wendy Mulhern
August 9, 2017
I’m tired of looking
round and round
in this prescribed place
of acceptability —
I’ve searched every corner
and some of what I want and need
is missing
And though I’ve been told
that my partition
is the one most everyone
wishes they were born in,
I’m not so sure
I’m thinking
I need to get out of here,
even if it means
giving up the stuff I’m told
others would most envy
I have a notion kindness
may be my ticket,
so I will prize it
and seek out every chance
to exercise it
I will build up the core
of my kindness
until it can do
all kinds of acrobatic things
or at least till it reaches
over the divide.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 22, 2017
Tempted to throw myself
into the sea again,
feeling the waters
behind my eyes
wanting to join
the seething ebb and flow —
I remind them that this is not
inevitable,
they would only be lost,
as would I,
by taking such a dive
There is a place for me
here at the helm of thought,
making the subtle distinctions
of perception,
ready with the course corrections
that will keep my ship from foundering
and deliver my proof
of the power of the higher Mind
for the greater good.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 3, 2017
There isn’t anything you need to do first.
You don’t have to pay a debt,
explain a misstep,
get somebody else to say they’re sorry
You don’t have to go down corridors
of what happened
or why you or someone else
made certain choices,
or what might have happened,
had you chosen different
And you don’t need to fix
a broken system, don’t need to
proclaim its flaws till someone maybe hears,
don’t need to suffer
to prove how wrong it is
The light of you doesn’t require
any of those fuels, nor can any of those things
obscure or snuff it.
You can walk free
in your divinity, your wholeness —
Look up, set your feet, and go.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 28, 2017
Anybody can be called back.
The unbreakable cord
that holds us to ourselves,
to who we really are,
to what we really want,
never lets go
And in this fullness of time,
it begins to make itself known.
The tug may first be felt
in quiet moments, between
the posturing, between the self justification,
between the self delusion
Once it starts asserting itself
there is actually no force
that can stand up to it.
Not willful blindness, not ugliness
of spirit, not power-drunk reflexes
of greedy grabbing
I affirm this cord in each of us.
I affirm it growing strong
and pulling all of us back
to our core love, from which vantage point
there is no more ability
to harm another.
I pray for all of us,
including the ones who need it most.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 23, 2017
If everyone learns how to pray,
just because there’s no other recourse,
just because the only way to rise up
is to sink down into the rooted core of truth
If everyone learns how to pray
just because all other power
has been stripped from us,
that may be the way that we prevail
Prayer will rise like tides, like floods
and change everything —
our sense of self, community,
and landscape,
prayer will render other powers
irrelevant
as it sweeps through us. You’ll see.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2017
Pardon me if I’m not fired up
by words of contempt,
however justified its dealers
may feel it is
Makes me want to walk barefoot
in water-sheened sand
and feel my footsteps melt,
and let the words that come to me
in my perplexed objection
be smoothed out as well
There’s no room for love in contempt
and there’s no room for contempt in love
and in the revolution
we’ll need traction,
not the gear grinding slippage
of mutual accusation
But there’s no traction either
for these words of mine —
makes me want to give them up,
and myself as well,
to the leadings of a higher Mind.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 19, 2017
Am I, even still, in deep dream?
Or am I slowly waking?
is it possible all this could be
just what it seems,
or are we long mistaken?
My fumbling hands try to determine
what is freedom here, and what is chains.
I find I’m bound by what I thought was comfort,
I find I’m freed by my internal reins
And what may seem a heaving shift of landscape
may be the rift of an illusive scene,
and what may seem a fearful theft of power
may lift us up to finer, lucid being —
to grasp and taste the source of true delight:
illumining the universe with light.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2017