Aura Soma

Continuing my colour phase... here are a couple of poems on red.
 It is associated with the base chakra and issues around survival, love and energy.

Red

And so from the womb of lush green
Brazen -blood stirring
Foot-firm stomping
Aries-dancing
Kali weaves to the sway
of serpent ascending
spirals,pivots, displays
of " I am " sounding.

It is life in the raw
Blood-stopping
Ram raging
Life affirming.

RED

Draws attention to itself
It shouts, "I am here!!"
Pigeon house, Light house
Red swings its hips and sways
To the sound of rumba

Colour Healing

Today I am wearing the Get up and Go bottle
Red over Blue
Bottle 29 in the Aura Soma range.
Not literally of course-- but these are the colours I chose to don, red top over navy blue trousers, and
Reading about the Aura Soma system it appears that I am "opening up to inner peace" today.
In my case this is very pertinent.

I did a course in Aura Soma a few years ago and, at the time, wrote a few poems while meditating on the colours and chakras... so here is one of them.
For further info on the system follow links.

http://www.aura-soma.net/

You can do a mini free aura soma reading for yourself here

http://www.puresoulalchemy.com/free_aura_soma_reading


Royal Blue

Blind seeing
through third eye
Shamen's vision
extending
like the stretched skin
of his drum
beyond
our remembering

Kundalini rising
like the serpent
Emerging
through crown
knowing

It is here
that you become
author
mystic
seer

Open the eye and see
beyond the stars
and into the night sky.

Cinder's sister

I don't know about you.
But I never got to play the Cinderellas or fairy princesses when it came to school pantos.
So here is the view from the much maligned side- the view from one of the ugly sisters.

Panto 

   Frankly I think me and the sister get a raw deal.

 I mean to say, if it had been me, I wouldn’t have made such a skivvy out of myself.

   She could have left home anyway. The Fairy Godmother would have bailed her out anytime. All she ever had to do was whip up a storm and the Good Fairy would have arrived pronto. 

But no. She had to string it out. Snivel and moan and lick the ashes. Get the crowd real sorry for her. Ready to lambaste us to any pole.

    Did you ever wonder where you’d be without us to act out the shadow side? And all before Jung even got a whiff of it. I mean to say, if she’s not going to act downright mean, then she’s going to attract it to her. Right?

   But there she is on her knees in the scullery owning all her goodness.

 Instead of learning fast, she acts stupid, eats as much ash as she can stomach, wallows in the stuff. 

Me and the sister had a terrible time getting her to the point of spiritual crisis. The girl’s capacity for insult and injury was awesome. Another day of it and I’d have wept with her in the ashes myself. But, thank God, she turned to a little creative visualisation and manifested herself a Godmother.

   I was quite enjoying that ball until she turned up doe-eyed, dimple flashing, lid-lowering and whipped PC out from under my nose.

  

   And then the dramatic exit!

  

   As if the universe isn’t bountiful!

   I mean do you really believe the fairy would have put a time limit on it? 

No, I reckon she got one of her self doubt bouts. Lost confidence, lost face and don’t forget the shoe! Very convenient that.

   As for that slipper fitting scene!

   Do you really think I wanted to squeeze my G size into that skimpy little excuse for a shoe that had done the rounds of the kingdom. And risk verruca, corns and God knows what?

    And then to watch her creep out of the cinders and slip her pygmy footsie into the golden slipper. And then, jack rabbit, out with the other one from beneath her pinnie!!! 

It’s all gush and pink flush forever and ever now. As if!

   She’ll make a doormat out of herself no matter what. There’ll be a few more shadows to play out. A few more spiritual crises to be had. She hasn’t learnt the lesson yet.

   

 But as for me, I’ve done with them. Make me the fairest of them all next time and let herself do a little shadow acting.

The Butcher's Hook

This novel is not for the faint- hearted.

I thought it was another account of another powerless, young woman living within the confines of a patriarchal society, in love with her social inferior and forced to betroth an elderly rich man

And it is

Up to a point

But more concerned with…. beyond that point

Jealousy, revenge, obsessive love….

Think Jacobean Tragedies or Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, who pales in comparison to our 19 year old anti heroine.

When I discovered that Anne Jaccob kept dead mice, dead spiders and finger nails… “a morbid tableau,” I should have known.

But in this first person narrative you are inside her head, making allowances, constantly adjusting, caught in a struggle with your own conscience.

She has you, the reader, caught on that butcher’s hook.

Some of her characters are caricatures like Titus Levener, the master butcher, “Great slabs of flesh swell beneath his shoulders…his neck circles hugely around to his back and balloons in front where it joins his many chins..”

And, with names like Fub and Onions, they belong in the pages of a Dicken’s novel.

But this novel is set a century earlier, Georgian London, the summer of 1763.

I have already given enough spoilers … 

suffice to say 

you won’t put it down till you finish it…

you may well skip to the last page to see if she gets a way with it…

you will rush back to the library with it, just to get rid of it…

but it will haunt you.

A very skilful, edgy, sophisticated piece of work.

The Butcher's Hook by Janet Ellis, published by Two Roads 2016

Things to do when trying not to listen to a phone conversation

The poem: Things to do around a Look-Out by Gary Snyder was suggested to me as a good read.
I haven't managed to access it yet but I was inspired by his title to write

Things to do when trying not to listen to a phone conversation

Keep doing what you're supposed
To be doing.

Even if the inflections of her voice
Change from chirp to flat.

Don't hold your breath
At her pause.

Keep breathing, even though
The pause stretches beyond hopeful.

Don't look at the clock;
Time may mean nothing

And you will have to wait
Regardless

To hear her news
Good, bad or ambivalent.

And keep praying
Or finger crossing

Or bead counting.
For that is probably

The only thing
You can do.

Adieu

With your oiled petals

still seductive

and your season's hues

still bold

I am reluctant

to lay you flat

or roll you up

or fold you away

And place you

in a dark closet

paper lined 

and cedar scented.

But darker skies

and cooler days

make urgent

the imperative

To let you go.

This is just to say

 William Carlos Williams, This is just to say, (see link)  which reads like a note found on the kitchen table, triggered a couple of pieces for me.

 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/56159

This is just to say

I have eaten

the raspberries

that you had

stowawayed

so carefully

behind

the iceberg

lettuce.

They were

delish

and berry,berry

raspish

RESPONSE

This is just to say

I have entered

your facebook

page

that you had

left

so carelessly

open

and have posted

some

berry,berry

cringish

posts.

Mrs Engels

That feeling of dread as you near the end of your library book…because you just want it to go on and on………

Enter Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea published by Scribe 2015

Now I have zilch interest in Marx and Engels, though some of my dwindling brain cells urge me to recant that statement.

But when I read the opening line of Mrs Engels I was jolted.

“No one understands men better than the women they don’t marry.”

The narrator is Lizzie Burns, of Irish descent and a textile factory worker in Manchester who becomes Engel’s lover.

And when she declares that “love is a bygone idea; centuries worn.”

I know she’s about to debunk all the romantic ideology that has been my daily fodder…

And, frankly, I just can’t wait to read it.

I am not disappointed.

If you asked me, "What is this novel is about???

I’m not sure I could tell you.

Not a lot happens. 

But I got a factionalised insight into the characters of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx that will lodge with me…dwindling brain cells or no.

Set in 1870, political and social changes rumble throughout Europe in the back-story,

But to the fore

And larger than the international canvas

Is the riveting character of Lizzie Burns.

She has been compared with Molly Bloom in Ulysses… (I can’t confess to having read past the first page of Joyce's masterpiece, put off as I am by a book’s bulk.)

But Lizzie is a maelstrom, swirling through Georgian London, leaving disarray and confusion in her wake.

Her advice to a woman in search of a partner might well be that of the famous Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, but put with a bit more verve.

“Odds are the handsome fellow you go spooney on will turn out to be a bad bargain”

And she warns against “fine wits, lookers, rare minds and fancy poets…..”

What matters to Lizzie is “A man with means, a man who knows the value of brass and is easy with it.”

Enter Frederick Engels.

After returning my library book I went out and bought a copy of it.

A must-keep!!

Illusionists

An exercise in my on-line poetry course is to write a poem based on a picture.
The pic features an old trick- conjurer's assistant suspended, apparently, in mid air.
Fine, invisible rope? Not so- hence the presence of a hoop.
The decor was mock-Eygptian so
I did a bit of research on this type of visual trickery.
I won't be trying it out any time soon.
See links below.


http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item106359.html

ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Hall

Meanwhile here is the poem.

The Egyptian Hall

They loved to watch women

Sawn in half.

Or suspended perilously

On a conjurer’s breath.

You cannot see the metal bar

Behind his legs.

Or the control buttons

At his feet.

Just a moustached man

Tail-coated and Bow-tied

Holding a clipped-
Winged woman

On a metal hoop;

Her breasts hieroglyph-

Bound, her hips

Silk –Tied.

The ideal woman

At his behest.
Silent, rigid.
Rising

Out of her coffin
In mummified

Repose.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

Enlightenment

At the time I gave in to that very special offer, 3 for the price of 2! We’ve all done it…

 3 copies of  Eat, Pray, Love. by Elizabeth Gilbert

 It was a BEST SELLER after all.

And I could think of a few recipient friends who might be rushing out to buy it….

Not all of them divorcees.

But 

I couldn’t get through it myself.

Bad timing? Wrong book?

So when I saw a DVD version of it recently in my local library I thought - maybe the pop up version would do the trick- enlightenment??

Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.

Could it go wrong?

Well yes, and no.

Apart from the irritating interruptions from my partner, “Is that not over yet?”

And it did go on….

Something about it didn’t quite stick with me.

 Julia running from one doomed relationship to another (been there -done that)

 Julia eating tons of spaghetti and not putting on weight- (haven’t been there)

 Julia trying unsuccessfully to meditate in an ashram  in India at 4.30 am.

(Tried that unsuccessfully on a kitchen chair, a bit later in the day, many times)

 Julia smiling from her liver! (Well how do you do that anyway?)

 Javier cast as struggling divorcee—gorgeous/gorgeous man - But...

 Hit Man in a Coen Brothers' movie sits better on him.

All in all- a bit of a flop??

But next day I am up and thinking

about meditating again!

And savouring

boiled eggs and toast

and wondering

how I might make my liver smile?

Less red wine?????

 So I guess Eat , Pray Love  just might have enlightened me …

a bit.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0879870/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat,_Pray,_Love

Paternal Gran

As part of my online course I am revisiting memories. I tried in an earlier poem to capture this memory but here it is again. The idea is to contain the memory in a central image- the spider.

PATERNAL GRAN

She was sat on a stool and remembers

clipped wings and stalemate

Outside in coop-sized yard siblings

Squeal Tig-Tag-I’m out, you’re in

Inside spider in widow weeds

And off-white pinny spinning

Throbbing web, invisible thread

Snapped

And Noose descent, shadow 

Spread, and waiting.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

Winding the Skein

My mother bought wool by the skein
great looped coils of it, too loose
to be worked with needles.
My outstretched hands, a skein looped
distance between them, anchored the hank
while she pulled, first from one hand
and then the other, ladling the wool
into balls, unravelling my yarn dressed hands
that tilted up and down, swaying to and fro,
forwards and backwards to her rhythm.
Firm but not taut
Loose but not free
If I missed a step
the skein would tangle
and I would have to let go.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016