Tuesday

Millie Dougan on the wisdom and spirit of the Moon-Blood




That space…

I love being a woman, and strange as it may seem to some of my sisters,

I actually enjoy the ebb and flow of our sacred moon cycle as I like to call it.

Are you with me or do I have to put it more bluntly?

Well okay then, ‘Periods’ I don’t like that word; it doesn’t do it justice,

It doesn’t sing out, life, nature, sacred space, earth, water, moon-blood.

Period just gives you that slot in time, it doesn’t embrace and encapsulate that feeling of

Loss, sorrow, pain, anger, joy, light, and being at one with nature its self.

To me that’s what being a woman is all about, being at one and peace with your cycle,

Embracing that feeling you get every month that makes you feel alive.

Going deep into your self and honouring ‘That Space’.


                                                              )O(


   THAT SPACE 

                                                                                       

I’m in that space again. You know the one?
When the Moon rises, big and full
And men run from the sharpened tongue
When the air is so thick you could taste it.


I would rather,
Swim the swirling seas
Find that beacon on the distant shore,
Climb the highest mountain
With just the shirt upon my back.


I would rather,
Turn belly right side out.
Sing the blues and wash the
Blood, so sacred, from my skin.


Be held by the man I love,
And cry into the night.

Stand naked:
Howl at the Moon and her power!

I would rather Run with the wolves,
And find my self again!

Saturday

Moments of Impending Transformation!

The introduction to my poetry collection 'The Book of Three Rings,' currently doing the rounds of the publishers.
As ever, comments would be most welcome.  Enjoy and success to your work.




MOMENTS OF IMPENDING TRANSFORMATION  




A thin whipcord snaps in his shocked nerves and wibble-wobbles his legs. He has become a touretted marionette.  A low moan is curdling like new cheese in his guts. His hands start to shake.  His eyes fill with tears that stream silently down his face.  His shoulders jump up and down.  A dense black stone begins to materialise deep in his guts.  He tries to deepen his breathing, tries to focus on something, anything, but cannot.  The room is spinning wildly.  He knows that if he gets up from the chair he will topple like a statue on a broken plinth.  How long does he sit there?  Moments, years pass.  Yet he wishes to remain in the Lesser Hell.  The whole point of purgatory must be this paralysed desire to stop the clocks.

Years later he goes to the bedroom where she is sleeping and puts on his shorts and trainers and a tee shirt. Everything that was familiar, that was home, is now strange and alien.  He is the stranger in a strange land.
He runs down the country lane, past the golf course with its naked grass.  He runs stiffly. He feels an immense heaviness in his heart.  Past the cemetery, up a steep little track and into the wood.  The grim, grey dawn slowly exterminates the death’s head night.  He runs under beech and oak; ash, and clumps of yew.  A huge droplet of water drips off a broadleaf and lands with a dull phut on his head.  Yet up he slowly wends.  Outcrops of limestone yield to him.  The weight in his belly is becoming more tangible now, as if he’s grown another limb; a dark, dense, supremely heavy limb.  He emerges out on a small limestone plateau and the village is spread out below him with its little dry stonewalls and pretty houses of the good folk.  The village is spread out below him but now is like the vilest lie; an insult and an affront.  He hates it and all that is in it.
Almost disbelieving his own Self he begins to ask God to help him.  He does not know if God exists and even if he did whether He would be listening to him right now.  He guesses that God, if He did exist, would be incredibly busy, with hardly any time even for His own family, if He had any.  God would be an absent father!  God probably didn’t exist but, you never know.
‘Please help me God’ he breathes.  ‘Please.  Please help me.’
He briefly considers flinging himself down upon some pointed limestone shard where he can lie impaled like one of the world’s great tragedies, but the height is minimal enough to only injure him slightly and that would be absurd.  Even now, he realises that death is not an option open to him, even if he possessed the selfishness or the courage to open such a door.  The existence of his sons will not allow such a strategy.  No, it is clear he must live, but how will he live with his heart shattered into a million shards?  He does not know.  But what he does know, even now, is that the betrayed eat at a different table.

The words of a novel come unbidden, into his mind -The past is a foreign country.  They do things differently there.  He knows he’s heading there.  He wonders when he’ll arrive.  For now, the grey-fingered dawn has done its business and the rest of the world is waking up.

Soon, he will find the first ring, and then, two more.

Thursday

'The Valley' Part Three by Tim Carrette

Here's the final part of Tim's wonderful poem.  Enjoy!


Love is a beast
of which we all want a piece
It cannot be stolen
It cannot be grasped

For it can slip away so very fast

A stranded ship without a mast
Upon whose waters we all set sail

Love boats are so very frail

Only the ocean stands the test
For it knows the rhythms beyond
worst and best

It knows that ebb and flow
still dance
both sides of this sacred romance

Love lost and found
is just a veil
upon which oceans we set sail

No wonder we live
No wonder we die
No wonder there is you
No wonder for I
No wonder
No wonder
no wonder.


    

The universe is far stronger
than idle wishes

She weaves
Serenity fabrics
soul to soul

She weaves
heart connections
that take us home

Why then do we persist with idle chatter?

Why then act as if
your tiny particle life view
even matters?



Why?



Because each tiny particle is but a stitch
that holds wholeness together
and through which love rides
forever

Forever cascading
through the immortal halls
of innocent wishes

  

If as they say
it is through pain we grow

Why then so little do we know?

Why are we not masters of bliss?

Who touch equanimity
when blessed with a young child’s kiss

Why?

Because then the ceaseless game of hide and seek
would be over
and the Divine masters
would roar with laughter
forever and ever
Namaste

Saturday

'The Valley' Part Two by Tim Carrette


The second part of Tim's epic poem below.  Enjoy!


Is it you who dances so freely in the moonlight?
Is it your hands that caress my naked truth?
Is it our hearts that split amidst simple reason?
Is it our child we hold above the emotional precipice of calamity?

And who will catch us in our fall?
Who will hold us tight to earthen breast?
Whilst we cry the tears of the madness clowns
The ones who laugh at love
and who destroy the safety balms
whilst the hell fires roar
and we gaze upon
the needlessly slaughtered lamb
of our petrified innocence.
This is the stream
that carries the water of life
and these are the winds that blow soft love
through fearful hearts

And this is the earth
upon which I lay

As we stoked the fires
of creation play

As yours is the womb
of our unborn child
When tomorrow reveals its chaotic rhymes

And so where is the path that takes us home?
Where is the valley
where pure truth stands alone?

And how will we know it when we arrive?
And which journey is to become my sacred bride?

Upon whose breath shall I pour my wine?

When the unknown lives
beyond all time

Friday

Beautiful Poem by Tim Carrette

Tim will be posting here from time to time and I really look forward to his work.  Tim is a dear and longstanding friend and an authentic and original thinker.  'The Valley' is a lovely poem and will be published in four parts over the next few days.  Enjoy.

About Tim:


Vj.Tim Carrette:

 is a  Psychotherapist, Poet, Musician
 and Writer.
Also trained in Shamanism and Tantra.
He is a currently writing and researching in
Non Duality and Psychotherapy.
He lives in Nottingham , England
with his three children.




THE VALLEY  Part 1       By Tim Carrette

So let the winds blow through me
may such subtle instruments of Divinity
play my tune

I know no such place as the still calm waters of my soul
For all that I am is a breath of God
Heralded by mixed illusion

Seen clearly by the hills,
the sheep,
and the rich majesty of natures perfection

Perfect only in its absolution of all things

Deaths dance carries mission highways
soul descendants of lost times

Creative impulses
stolen from memories
of a destiny yet untold

Hallowed be the name of the Gods
Be they grass or stone
seen or held

Tis the light I follow
tis the dreams that guide
tis this blessed journey
and its milestones of truth realisation


That is why Iam here
to carefully turn each page
To sing softly into each open heart
To touch all beings
with the immensity of Love
To love all beings thoroughly Divine.

           


Tuesday

AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL! A prose poem.

AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL!  By Tony Dougan




Hewn from granite, I was inlaid with copper and silver and gold. Lapis Lazuli my eyes, and burnished well, till shining in the morning sun, I glowed and hummed. A mystery wind blowing through a conch shell. A sound like gathering or redemption. A sound more like ‘blown’ than ‘moan.’ Something running through. Something bidding life. Like the bloods headlong rush or the river folding itself to a conclusion after much slow, flowing thought. I’ve seen the Eden do this with my own eyes! The blowing heightened once or twice, as when I held my sons, naked and smeared with their mother’s blood shivering in the immensity of their new life. For a moment it seemed eternity pulled up her skirts and said:



‘Man, in this second you are alive for once! Feel the power of NOW! See through/ over/ into. See the truth of the child. Feel the miracle in your fingernails. Feel it brush against your skin!’ And then you...You took me to the deepest well and I cast a bucket for a crock of gold, and you said:



‘Look! Look how deep the heart goes! It is limitless really!’



And in the moment of falling, of letting go, I was gathered up. And in the moment of trusting, I was loved so much. And in the moment of saying:



‘Yes! I’ll take this life. This one! Its birth, its struggle, its countless breaths. Its footsteps. Its becoming and befriending. Its shrinking from the light. Its tears and weight, of so much fear. Its heartbreak and its love.’



In that moment of NOW, a life is stretched from these small boundaried cairns. Stretched against the canopy of infinity. It is made to see it is not one thing but the many brought to one. A radiant point of NOW that sings:



‘THIS IS ALL! THIS IS IT! THIS IS EVERYTHING!



AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL!

Thursday

'On the Road' Part Two by Lou Mansfield

…the whole truth, apple and peach, is rarely placed into your hand and is never, most days, nights.. . within reach. fate ties a blindfold, delicate, close, with it's cold and distant fingertips, for a summer, a winter, tight.. . every now and again you catch a falling thought from somebody you wish had driven past and tossed that apple, core, out of the window before you.. . Catch your breath because life knocks it out of your lungs so much, for so long, you never know, all that you feel, do.. . is, gone. replaced by a different kind of peach. below the fireplace something different kindles and you lose your eyes in the shape of the flames that unfurl and fold and billow, smoke and sail out of sight, out of being, out of reach.. . some days you're the fast moving car, windows rolled down, arms over the edge, lining the road with gems, rose petals and sparks of apples, cores.. . Other days you're the suitcase on the edge of the bed, waiting to be taken, left behind, or undone.. . the whole truth, apple, peach or pear rarely lands on your pillowcase, like some kind of fallen angel out a sky that knows, holds on, keeps it all out of reach.. . out of the blue, sky, for you to know, before the day is over. before the day is absent, before the day is gone.. .


when you spend all of your time outside of being, away from every carousel, car. you lie across the white line in the middle of the road. the line that separates, that spark.. . about direction, about motion, about travel, about the world.. . you lie across the fragments, across the fall.. and you're staring out to sea, up at the sky line, the fiery heavens above you, the shore.. . all blood-red crimson sometimes, sometimes summer's tears fall.. . And you stay there, waiting, eyes closed heart undone. You taste the shadows of the clouds as they pass by, as they swell, they fall. You make sense out of every comet trail that scores, the sky, your eyelids, your thoughts. All of your dreams are pieces of the picture, the whole, the new.. everything you dream about and remember and write about, down, comes true..

you'll never know how much you were meant to be, you'll never know how much of you to be, that you are, is true.. For you keep your skies beneath pillowcases, you keep every break in the clouds above you, in your home back pockets.. you keep every dream that you're written down secret.. you never know how much you've missed, because

you'll never know the whole, the truth. of it all. ..

Your life is a fable, in the fireplace, of fate. a myth.

do you stand on tip toes?

or do you.. . tap the tension of adventure, desire every unknown, lust for not knowing ever. or taste

having every exit

mapped..

but the steely horizon betrays the blue with the silhouette of something strange, something dark. Something that binds and ties your heart into deep, lead, heavy knots. by knot. amnesia creeps into your lungs and you can't remember how to breathe, you lose all sense of time. a knife cuts deep beneath your collarbones, cheeks, it could be kitchen, bread or slaughter. and air like ice pierces you back into the room, like Elvis. dead.

All that you can remember about the first foot you set upon the road, is that your only desire in life. the only thing that you can ever think about, cold, hot. shallow, deep or adrift along a road of bones to nowhere.. . is that heavy, lead feeling of fear and dread. that knocks your heart out cold, sometimes. and leaves you feeling like Priscilla, in the wake, in the aftermath, all around the eyes. .

All that you've ever wanted is Elvis. And all that lies, at the end of the road, like a fallen down crucifix, arms open. eyes like parcels waiting to be untied, undone, open.. . There is no place in the world, this one or the next, like home. And all that you have left to live for, whereabouts unknown.. . is desk.

Saturday

HALLOWEEN POEM by Tony Dougan. Happy Samhain to all!



HALLOWEEN 
The village store has, just this minute, closed.

It’s drawbridge has gone up-portcullis down.

An aproned granny smirks behind the door

And labours the cruel bolt into its case.

My eyes weak pleading falls on stony ground.


I curse her and her brood under my breadless breath,

And curse ‘life in the country,' milkless on halloween.

A youth observes this frieze of unmet needs

In the dark hunching of Milnthorpe Square.


Just then, Death walks past, blood on his shining scythe.

‘You’re the one that I’ve been looking for

these past two years and more!’ I shout

and push him in the back of my old van,

pleased he’s at my shoulder once again.


Then a little witch walks past with a broom,

a-hubble and a-bubble, lovely little witch.

Suddenly I feel so sad for me.

No kids or pumpkins or those vampire masks.

Just me, and all my dry and dusty books.

Writing down the bones.

Sunday

QUESTION TIME AND NICK GRIFFIN




QUESTION TIME AND OLD NICK                By Tony Dougan


No doubt it was an event. The leader of Albion’s closest thing to a fascist party appeared on a mainstream TV show and was given a platform. I sat with notebook in hand to give a highly factual account of what might just be history in the making. Ten minutes in I threw the notebook to the ground and sat back to watch a pompous, clearly nervous, shuffling bigot who is obviously not the sharpest pencil in the packet, be publicly eviscerated. Is this what it used to be like when the good folk took their children and a picnic to the public disembowelling at the weekend gallows-fest?

Our media, ever watchful of our freedoms, agonised. The good folk and their wise leadership were split. The Nays declared that giving such a fascist a media platform was tantamount to helping them with a recruitment drive and would sow discord and ruin throughout the fair land. The Yays countered that democracy was at stake and that democratic integrity meant that you must sometimes listen to views you despise and detest. The management of B&Q decided that they must declare for the Yay camp and so it was that Nick appeared on ‘Question Time’ sandwiched between David Dimbleby and the divine Bonnie Greer like a limp slab of cheese betwixt two halves of a rustic handmade bun, or even more visually provocative-an ugly little school bully with his beautiful and popular parents outside the Headmaster’s office.

I am reluctant to call attention to the ‘looks’ of politicians or celebrities. I am an unrepentant Platonist and consider the good and the true more essential than, and even essential to, the beautiful. But Nick, I’m afraid, is an ugly man, in charge of a party of very ugly people. It is as if the internal condition of hate and intolerance scours the outside and moulds the very features into a grimace and an evasive scowl. When Nick laughed his face appeared creased into a contradiction. It did not look right.

There was little that was unexpected. Nick attempted to wrap himself in the flag and sought Churchill as a BNP bedfellow. He spoke of criminal scum and sending ‘them’ back. He justified his previously recorded racist and inflammatory remarks and described one of his Ku Klux Klan mates as non-violent. He denied he was a holocaust denier by saying he’d never been nicked for it. He described Islam as oppressive to women. He referred to Jack Straw’s dad having been in prison during WW2 for refusing the draft and compared his own dad who kebabbed the Hun on his bayonet with apparently heroic aplomb. It was all very predictable.

Dimblebly kicked off the public humiliation with gusto, lashing Nick with his own hate-quotes. It was Jovian, with Dimbers hurling thunderbolts from Olympian heights onto a cringing bug. Jack Straw weighed in with equally august mien barely able to contain his disgust and fury at this…this…minion of evil. (Just as an aside I’ve never really forgiven Straw for letting the old murderer Pinochet get away and he was also responsible for arranging the most beneficial pension scheme on the planet for our noble and self-sacrificing MPs. Mr Straw, you are not coming to dinner at my house!)

Chris Huhne of the Liberal Democrats is the living embodiment of that party’s ongoing existential dilemma. Fundamentally decent, clearly and logically reasoned, but sexless, terminally boring and instantly forgettable. I cannot remember what he said.

But what did strike me about this circus act Question Time episode was the quality of stillness, alert engagement and beauty of the two female members of the panel-Playwright Bonnie Greer and the Tory Sayeeda Warsi.

I am coming to my own extreme view that it just might be time to get rid of men entirely from the planet. I think they may be a bad lot with all their back-slapping, shirt-tugging, school playground high jinks. I shall of course remain behind to provide some gender balance.

Oh, the highlight of the evening? Definitely the joke by one of the audience (male) to poor benighted Nick.

“You’d be surprised how many people would have a whip-round to buy you a ticket…to go to the South Pole. That’s a colourless landscape, it would suit you fine.”

I’d happily bung a fiver in. Poor, poor, poor Nick.

Thursday

FIRST GUEST BLOG ON HEART OF BALANCE 'On the Road' by Lou Mansfield


"on the road.. .

There are no desks. or bookcases. or boxes of photographs, keepsakes, angel pins, postcards. mistakes. They’re all in an attic waiting somewhere safe. Being on the road, in the less than Kerouac sense of Bukowski’s middle name, is a hard place to beat. Because you tell yourself that you need a desk. a heavy desk.. . some kind of antique coffee-haloed, dark, foreboding, menacingly difficult to drag alongside with you, kind of desk. Piled high, like Dr Caligari’s desk, along with an endless stream of consciousness, caffeine.. . alchemy. are all of the books you’ve ever fallen in love with. all of the books you never dared or even dreamed to fall in love with. all of the books that seduced you. all of the books that made your world fall apart, undone. all of the books you’ve ever wished you’d written. all of the books that stole your ideas, thoughts, feelings, without you ever really knowing. all of the books that you’ve ever read. all piled high across a desk. a heavy desk. all or nothing in the desk sense of being, you are. all that you can think about. all that you think you know. all that your thoughts hinge, pin and hang from. is this. like a labyrinth, taps against the train window pane you’re staring out of. touching the fold down tray, with your absent hand, like this could ever be, some kind of desk that you dream about, want. to hold. in your hands. like a lover. and never let go.. .

All of your thoughts are shoe less, lined up, waiting to be invited into this, desk. this world of salacious ink stains, words. All of your thoughts are blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs. quiet. patient. waiting. for what? a desk. And without gravity we have no real ideas. about being. they go like the clappers, out of our minds, like kites, I imagine. I fear. would happen, instead. of a life, on the road. without gravity, without a hand to hold, without a bookcase, or an angel pin. without old collections of photographs. without a bed to fall out of. that you can call home. without meaning. without sense. without reason. without a decent hat stand. without a desk. How can a writer, write. so far away. so far removed. from everything. all or nothing, in the fictional sense of being all midnight around the eyes, without a light in the dark. How suffocating it can be, to be on the road. sometimes.." .