Jason - Soul

On the writing

This week featured a kind of poem I had never written before, a sestina. This poetry of this work in using the same six words to end the lines in a set pattern. This lead to a poetry which has a heavy dialog or prose feel to it. The topic this week was the soul. So, I attempted to use this kind of repetitive poetry style to talk about my developing understanding the soul.

Family Divine

I once worked the soil of my imagination. I dragged mud into the house of the divine,
My small fingers pushing green seeds of fantasy. I devoted my being,
Into ethereal dreams of dragons and magic. A shallow deceptive veil,
Drawing a cartoon reality where pain is temporary and our bodies immortal.
The girl whose Daddy suddenly died in my elementary school, forced me to glimpse,
Something which shocked. Her tears caused me to hold my breath.

The playground felt claustrophobic. Watching her draw breath,
Was like flicking my fingers through a flame, tentatively touching the divine.
I could feel the electricity, the awareness of this other kind of being,
That me, inside of me, that vapor revealed by drawing the veil.
A new, dark, idea had been planted. The death of my immortal.
As the flesh fell away, it left something else, something fleeting to glimpse.

Floating dust in my Grandmother’s window, illuminated by the glimpse,
Of the vast sky. Invisible currents that danced with her grace, her breath.
She was a mystery and transparent, silently walking as something divine,
Perfected now, by the youth of my memories of her being.
Warmed donuts and ghost stories. Hiding in the apple tree or behind the curtain veil.
Sadness and fear, loss and despair had no place there. She lived immortal.

Those crystalline thoughts carry dark baggage. The painful, truth immortal,
On yellow cancer and final visits. I kept my distance, not wanting to glimpse,
The struggle for life, for humanity, to take the very next incomplete breath.
With hurt eyes and parched lips the illusion released the real divine.
It wasn’t her slightly frame or loving embrace that defined her. Her being,
Was released when those things were lost to us, when she pierced the veil.

The full church churned with craning necks hoping to see her white lace or veil,
And I, flanked by black and purple, thought of love and a binding of souls immortal.
Then suddenly, her hand was in mine, my vision rises to her glittering blue eyes. I glimpse,
A future of children and shared dreams. Of heads on chests listening to heartbeats and breath.
I cherished that moment she accepted new life. Her long surrender to the divine,
Which made this a forever love. A promise fulfilled. A fusion of our inner beings.

That love, that promise, holds me even today in this lonely state of being.
My heavy head fell to her chest. I wanted my tears to wake her, to cause a stir beneath the veil,
But she was still. So still. That spark that was the her, insider of her, the immortal,
Spirit had left. I lay severed. Bound by my heart and separated by my life. I had glimpsed,
A bit of heaven, in her laugh, in her arms, in her fantasies. But she was made of God’s breath,
So shed the limitations of her flesh and flew away, at his calling, to the divine.

The jagged memories break my being and mold my thoughts, giving a hopeful glimpse,
Through that celestial veil until, at last, I have no more breath.
Then my exhaled spirit, that freed immortal, will seek the family divine.