Happy New Year!

Celtic Spirals :

When early man observed the beauty of nature's spirals its not surprising that it would become a potent symbol for creation and growth. It is the only provable decorative motif used in Christian Celtic art to have its roots in the preceding pagan period, the best examples are found on stone monuments such as Newgrange, in Ireland.

In the Neolithic world, passing a spiral barrier (like the entrance stone to Newgrange in Ireland) the initiate is led into an inner sanctuary that was the necessary passport in the journey of the sacred dance, through the labyrinth to the sacred realms beyond the centre. At the centre, there is complete balance: the point where Heaven and Earth are joined.

Masks

One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and all my masks were stolen, the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives. I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.” And when I reached the marketplace...I looked up...the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time my own naked face and my soul were inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more.”
The Madman, Kahlil Gibran.

As far back as the time of cavemen, it's likely that the mask has been part of our daily ritual... one face for stalking prey, one for dragging the little woman off to the cave, and another around the campfire with the boys, juggling for bragging rights.

If you're a woman, your closet is filled with masks... there's the professional mask, the devoted mommy mask, the lover mask, as well as masks for the smart-ass, the whip-cracker, the meek or powerful face, along with a myriad of others.

How does the mask differ from facets of personality, you might ask. Well, I asked... you might very well not give a shit, but something happened that made me want to take a closer look at the faces I wear.

As a middle child, I wore the mask of pleaser... don't shit disturb, get only A's, do the chores, and maybe, just maybe, someone might notice you were there. When, at 17, I realized that mask wasn't working, I replaced it with the mask of strength and independence... a charming facade that worked throughout my professional career and until my children were grown.

My personality is hidden behind each of the masks I choose to wear in public. I'm stubborn, close to being anti-social, do not suffer fools gladly, and have learned that I'm most comfortable with my own company, with few exceptions over the course of a lifetime. I have a mask to cover each of these flawed personality traits, and it's with rare exception that I forget to don it in a timely fashion. Does anyone know me... not likely. Do I care? Sometimes I care very much.

And then there's the mask of the Internet... the modern day horror story!

The F Word

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Fuck is an English word which, when used literally as a verb, means "to engage in sexual intercourse". It is generally considered to be an offensive profanity.

Scores of theories have been written on the etymology and the use of the F word as a verb (transitive and intransitive), but also as a noun, interjection, and, occasionally, as an expletive infix.

My relationship with Fuck started as an occasional flirtation, which over the course of a lifetime has grown into a full blown love affair. I love ladies who use fuck cleverly -- for punch and power and that old standby, wit -- and because sometimes no other word will do. If every second word is fuck, then chances are you're talking to an asshole. Overuse breeds contempt and the chance that everyone will know you're trailer trash.

If you click on a few of the links within this blog, you'll find some fucking beautiful ladies, each of whom has grasped the various and timely ways of using fuck. Don't be fooled by the occasional bastardization such as F'in, F**k, or just plain F (as in WTF). You're looking at the real deal.

And that's all I have to say about fuck.

I've Been Dying

(Shadow Talk)

I'm like a calico who licks her body clean
to heal festered wounds gleaned at play
in dangerous neighbourhoods. I've been dying
by degrees, measured on some scale
calibrated in a heaven not ready to receive me.
So many lives expended just playing the odds.

It's not odd that I, and this new-found god within me,
shamelessly probe the shadows for a guide
to our own divinity.
Alone in their beauty, jaded moons tear
the sky and we watch, confused at the fury
of those who sit in judgment.
Should I take flight from messiahs
who are not perfect? I think not. I worship instead
perfection revealed in brilliant back-light, and learn.
I've been dying by degrees and you don't scare me,
shadow player. A kernel cast on your own wind,
you chance to land in a field, fertile and waiting
for your blessing. Fly on, so I may languish
here awhile in my fool's nirvana.

I have a real god to deal with darkness.
We don't need you. She, and I, have a way
of landing on our tongue-washed feet.

© H. Long

Prodigal

This poem was written for me by Neil Aitken, a brilliant and very kind friend. Poetry brought us together purely by chance in Los Angeles, but Neil is also a Canadian and for the moment lives in the Vancouver area. It took Neil a year to ask me if he could send me this poem and it has recently been published in the Volume 11, No. 2 Edition of the Crab Orchard Review. Thank you Neil... I still can't read it without weeping.

Prodigal

Here is a grief grown white as the moon tonight,
so round with yearning
your mother has no more words.

She will not say she has come alone to the shore again
to draw something from the dark echo of waves --

some memory of you as a boy with impossibly small hands.
You with hair that will not part. You curled in the space
between bodies like a small bulb of light.

Not how you left, so awkward and pained,
your want as deep as the fear in your knees,
as the regret in the hollow bones beneath your skin

or that betraying hand, the one that trembled at your side
by the last needle wound. Your eyes now as still as pebbles
laid in the river bed with no memory of mountains or shores.

She cannot say hell, cannot whisper God,
or even the grave and its diligent worms. What is belief then?
What is faith? If she lets these go, what then?

We want what we cannot see, the other face of the moon,
the one missing. The one turned away at this precise moment.

We want to see, but it is dark in here, in the small narrow world.
It is dark always, then someone opens a door.
Then another. Then another.

There are more rooms than two in the world beyond.
Somewhere her son is sleeping.

What the Body Remembers

Two years after my son's death nothing much yet speaks to me, but sometimes there's a moment, or a person within a moment, who makes me take a breath deep enough to realize that I'm still alive. What the body remembers is not a lie, not a truth, but the subtleties of each wrapped in the confusion and the now of our moments here on earth.

I am a poet who doesn't write poetry. How can this be when for so long it was my life, my dream for my life? Perhaps, just perhaps, this will be the beginning of answering my own questions.

Dorianne Laux expresses some of what I felt, and still feel, with this poem.

Dust

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor --
not like food, sharp or sweet.
More like fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn't elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That's how it is sometimes --
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you're just too tired to open it.