A Winter Rose

…walking in Vancouver Rain.

Stronger

Un-silencing the survivors.

Faith

It takes more than you bargained for
to find the right moment to ask.
It takes a lot of courage to win.
It takes a lot of faith to keep moving.

To find the right moment to ask,
when everything seems an illusion;
It takes a lot of faith to keep moving.
It takes a brave woman to believe.

When everything seems an illusion—
That the heart muscle knows how to lift.
It takes a brave woman to believe
that my feet know how to float.

If the heart muscle knows how to lift,
then his eyes are not lost in his questions.
If my feet know how to float,
will we walk the bent path to the sea?

It takes the strength of his kindness.
We need a lot of courage to win.
It needs the gentleness of my hands.
It takes more than we bargained for.

 © Sonya Littlejohn, 2012

A Child’s Story

Earth Beat

I made an original poem for a nice Djembe beat from Shaddow9Drummer, a producer and artist in the UK. Please enjoy. ♥

Video Poem and Photo Montage: On “Knowing”

This is Ian Keteku. He’s Dope.

This is Ian Keteku. He’s Dope.

The Big Distraction (aka. Stephen Harper)

Big Business is making sure that 100% of the assets filter directly to them, while everyone one else dies a slow death. Then the world becomes a plastic playground for them to frolic in until they run out of oxygen. Simple. No need to second guess or make complex. If you want to see something different, get to work in your communities, fighting apathy and ignorance and working together to make changes instead of waiting for all the people who DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU AT ALL (eg. politicians, military and corporations) to do it for you.

 

Plant a garden in your backyard so you can feed yourself (and, at least in America, alter the laws that have said it is illegal for you to do so, via revolution, petition, what-have-you.)

 

Find out how and why Monsanto has destroyed small farming across Canada and the USA, and why you can’t get a really tasty strawberry grown locally.

 

Learn why Stephen Harper thinks Kyoto Accord is a waste of time or why he doesn’t care to learn the difference between India and North America, or why he voted that clean drinking water is not a universal human right.

 

Wake up to how he has brainwashed so many Canadians into believing that he is helping our national security and prosperity by building up and modernizing our military and our prisons, rather than our schools and our hospitals and family businesses.

 

Learn why people think Osama Bin Laden’s death is such a monumental achievement and how it really will not make a difference at all.

 

Love people, despite their apparent flaws…you are not perfect either.  Neither am I.

 

Live.

 

Breathe.

 

Most importantly, CARE about something non-monetary.

 

Look out for those in your community in whatever way you can.

 

People have little faith in each other because we all see one another looking out for self and not for anyone else and it divides, and creates a perfect landscape for the bulldozer types to plough through and destroy us.

 

With that in mind…Enjoy:

© Sonya Littlejohn, May, 2011

On “Knowing”

We go in with a knowing…

Faith that telling our barest bones

can lead to a structure

that will keep us safe, warm and loved.

Letting us be understood,.

Not even knowing about innerstanding…

Letting us become worthy shelter

for worthwhile love.

We quiet the fear of offering our hand.

The factors are counted:

1. Before you, I was another person.  I am afraid to tell you that story, even though who I am now could not have existed without who I was, and you tell me you can love me; that you want my love.  I believe in you.
2. My experience can bend yours over backwards, and yours can twist mine into something I never saw in it before.  We can learn from each other, if we accept one another.  I am willing.
3. There are some things I have done that I wish I could have shared with you, but that opportunity has passed.  I grieve that, selfishly, because I want this to be new, though we both know there is nothing new under the sun.  We both know that we are just a logical conclusion, either a beginning or an ending or both, depending on what you believe about the cycles of time and their relevance.  To me, this is the first time I have ever known you, though I have met your spirit many times before. This is the golden moment of amazing grace, for now I see you clearly.

We reveal our weaknesses slowly,

Unravel our insecurities in a not enough, too soon

Too much, if ever

Not enough, never kind of way.

At the same time, we sit comfortably at each other’s tables

like old friends and lovers of past lives,

expecting things that are usually unexpected,

like we have the imprint of it

already in our souls.

We open ourselves

to phobias,

and maybe even their cures.

waiting on the other side of newly discovered doors…

Not knowing how best to prepare our lovers

for the trigger-bangs that might hit their foreheads,

dead centre before day breaks

if we let the spout flow too quickly

in the kitchen of our concept creations,

See, we are always afraid of the let go of no more,

The seconds and thirds we will crave

So anxious  for arrival that we will it to come faster,

Come hard,

Come screaming down the rails

a locomotive ablaze…

Rip the band-aid quickly.

For the price of a stronger sting, it ends faster.

Or rip it slowly.

Watch each hair pulled free,

each follicle rising angrily at betrayal.

Forgetting the new skin.

Focusing on the scar.

This is my fear of commitment talking,

And this is my desire to overcome,

responding.

We went in with a knowing.

We counted the factors,

Found ourselves still wanting one another,

Promised inner-standing,…

Gave faith.

Bringing life back to the centre, slowly…

Picking up pieces and disposing

of what we can,

so it doesn’t trip us on our way up

our spiral staircase.

© Sonya Littlejohn, 2011

When Insomniacs Dream

It was a dark and stormy night…

Stella dreamed she needed a Warrior Prince who traveled a dark path through a forest, fighting for truth justice and reciprocity,

Side stepping quick sands,

Washing the blood from his hands under each full Moon

and drinking full at the noon day’s Sun,

He would travel deserts and mountains looking for a land to call home,

Looking for Her,

To ask his beloved’s forgiveness for failing

to take all the demons away,

Promising that if he could just save one soul

It must be hers

and he would give his lifetime to such a cause.

Thinking he would know the way by the map in his mind,

Stella waited to bathe him in her heart’s content but

Early imposters kept appearing;

exes marking the spot…

Turning out to be the big bad wolf,

and Stella lamented openly…

Until no one heard her very clearly anymore…

She kept telling the story of failing to save the patient and having her own heart attack, with every broken love story between she and the Demon.

The crime scene dream of the bomb strapped to her child’s chest

That kept threatening to explode from killing the memory;

The night perils that had invaded her

when her innocence was stabbed and the life blood

was sucked into a black hole reverie.

It sucks her backwards when the trigger goes off…

It sucks her back like teeth into her most tender flesh.

She’s hated vampires ever since.

But in some darkness there is light,

just as in every light there is a fleck of darkness.

I guess that is why Stella loves the rain so much.

It always makes the flowers bloom

and the green so much greener,

even if the days are shorter for awhile.

She told me this, once, and I believe her that she knew it was true:

“My warrior had to be my mirror,

My true reflection that knows

that there is Love and there is Retribution

that there is Peace because there has been War.

that there is violence and tenderness in Life.”

And Stella told me then, that she saw this rhythm all over his cheekbones

In the depths of his eyes, when she caught them briefly one night in the dark,

lit by his smile…

She said they shone like rifle steel,

And his gaze would be the death of her.

She would die painting the sparkle into the backs of them;

To keep them polished as obsidian from a Pharoah’s tomb.

Knowing his seed would dance in her womb,

she forgave him before he ever found her

So they could begin fresh.

She said Love,

Poetry

and Life, whatever that was,

Were her trinity.

And in his, there was only music,

Poetry

And she.

A match made in a place

not meant for a name like Heaven.

Or Hell.

Or Earth.

“Our love was a language written on our heart’s tongues

Not made to be spoken,

But felt.”

She whispered in a daze,

“And we were drawn to each other just as

Moons to planets

Caught in the gravity of one another

Knowing we were coming to the North Star

And not believing the journey could really be beginning again,

For the first time.”

And as she said all this, lost in the whisper of music that is a muse’s call to be worshipped and to inspire poetry, she realized, there was one thing she had never done before.

She had never loved him.

Yet.

And it was time.

So she smiled,

Climbed onto his horse and they rode.

Sunset rises crimson on the horizon.

Shutter click.

The End.

 

© Sonya Littlejohn, 2011