Poetry: 2009
(First posted in 2009 on Stephen’s previous website)
Avalon
You may go volitionally to Glastonbury,
but not of your own impetus.
If you have gone or should you go,
you go at the behest and with the agency
of the Goddess.
There is no other way. All who go are
called, witting or unawares.
Some tarry; some lost, distracted. Some stay
restoring self and others. Others touch and
go. Changed.
Some weep long over our recumbent Arthur,
whose sleep is not a death.
She will have her way with you. Her
prerogative. Her way is your way. If
you do not yet know this, you will.
The bowl, too, at Chalice Well. It too is
not of this world. It, too, will guide you
through Her initiation bringing your
heart to the fore.
Deaths will befall you. Bow to the Goddess
for such benevolent Grace. Enough with
what has gone before, Now is your
awakening. Now is your becoming.
Pick up your pendragon and march into
your sovereign autonomous heart of love
expressing your compassionate fire.
Burn brightly before these Wells. Warm
the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone.
Walk on your fears. Put your former
strengths on the ground. Bring your love
into figure – to the fore.
Live your own life in your own way.
Not at the expense of others
but in the confluence of love’s
Human Heart.
©2009 Stephen Victor
You may go volitionally to Glastonbury,
but not of your own impetus.
If you have gone or should you go,
you go at the behest and with the agency
of the Goddess.
There is no other way. All who go are
called, witting or unawares.
Some tarry; some lost, distracted. Some stay
restoring self and others. Others touch and
go. Changed.
Some weep long over our recumbent Arthur,
whose sleep is not a death.
She will have her way with you. Her
prerogative. Her way is your way. If
you do not yet know this, you will.
The bowl, too, at Chalice Well. It too is
not of this world. It, too, will guide you
through Her initiation bringing your
heart to the fore.
Deaths will befall you. Bow to the Goddess
for such benevolent Grace. Enough with
what has gone before, Now is your
awakening. Now is your becoming.
Pick up your pendragon and march into
your sovereign autonomous heart of love
expressing your compassionate fire.
Burn brightly before these Wells. Warm
the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone.
Walk on your fears. Put your former
strengths on the ground. Bring your love
into figure – to the fore.
Live your own life in your own way.
Not at the expense of others
but in the confluence of love’s
Human Heart.
©2009 Stephen Victor
Archipelago
We,
archipelagoes each.
Born of
numinous tides,
etherial tectonics.
More luminously supple than
physically substantive.
The sea, metonymy of our provenance
bathing our human shores,
intercessor of our transfiguration.
We ecstatically swoon in
would-be grand currents of subduction
blithely unaware…
And,
when seeking
elevation…
are we really?
Erosion and deposition,
our natural movements.
Which is which?
©2009 Stephen Victor
We,
archipelagoes each.
Born of
numinous tides,
etherial tectonics.
More luminously supple than
physically substantive.
The sea, metonymy of our provenance
bathing our human shores,
intercessor of our transfiguration.
We ecstatically swoon in
would-be grand currents of subduction
blithely unaware…
And,
when seeking
elevation…
are we really?
Erosion and deposition,
our natural movements.
Which is which?
©2009 Stephen Victor
While on a cross-country road trip, I listened to a CD version of Sue Monk Kidd’s sweet book The Secret Life of Bees. It was read by a woman with a wonderfully rich voice – and in one of America’s Southern accents. This voice made the book additionally delicious. This silliness of a poem came forward.
Black Madonna Honey
Nature’s Eucharist.
Bees are no altar boys,
smugglers of divine
booty they are:
Viscous golden light.
Might I too become a
lover of life’s corolla
and her sweetness.
©2009 Stephen Victor
Nature’s Eucharist.
Bees are no altar boys,
smugglers of divine
booty they are:
Viscous golden light.
Might I too become a
lover of life’s corolla
and her sweetness.
©2009 Stephen Victor
I am one of the silly ones who has made a vocation out of my own psychological, energetic and spiritual awakening. I do not mean a job or career – although – I work in “That industry.” Rather, I mean that I have made arduous labor of my own unfolding. The lines below capture my thinking – rather than my heart’s awareness. This poem reflects the conceptual awareness I seemed to require along the way of moving back into my heart – the one I had exiled myself from long before.
Crucible and Chalice
Forte and foible. A community of self,
innocently fashions its biography,
sculpting tomorrow’s now.
Mortar and pestle breaking away my
heart’s protective husks.
Hitherto unaware of my exile,
blind to the constraining banality
of my prosaic and metered life;
I understood conceptually, of course.
The juggernaut of my understanding is
wholly insufficient,
for knowing is the province NOT of an
understanding intellect,
but of the human heart
and her fields of Wisdom’s Grace.
I, a refugee, dream of repatriation,
to the contours of beauty
in my Life’s poetic humus.
©2009 Stephen Victor
Forte and foible. A community of self,
innocently fashions its biography,
sculpting tomorrow’s now.
Mortar and pestle breaking away my
heart’s protective husks.
Hitherto unaware of my exile,
blind to the constraining banality
of my prosaic and metered life;
I understood conceptually, of course.
The juggernaut of my understanding is
wholly insufficient,
for knowing is the province NOT of an
understanding intellect,
but of the human heart
and her fields of Wisdom’s Grace.
I, a refugee, dream of repatriation,
to the contours of beauty
in my Life’s poetic humus.
©2009 Stephen Victor
This poem reflects a modicum of awareness congealing as I stood on a public transport bus near Euston Station in Central London. I seem to love my every moment in this city.
Myopia, adios
How do I,
taking transport,
see
the innocence
of the drivershuttling me?
How do I,
ambulating one,
know
my own heart?
How do I,
ordering breakfast,
see the waitstaff’s dignity
as she brings sustenance?
How do I,
ordinary one,
see
my own grandeur?
How do I,
on streets crowded,
see the beauty
of passersby?
How do I,
beneficiary,
know
Gratitude?
How do I love?
©2009 Stephen Victor
How do I,
taking transport,
see
the innocence
of the drivershuttling me?
How do I,
ambulating one,
know
my own heart?
How do I,
ordering breakfast,
see the waitstaff’s dignity
as she brings sustenance?
How do I,
ordinary one,
see
my own grandeur?
How do I,
on streets crowded,
see the beauty
of passersby?
How do I,
beneficiary,
know
Gratitude?
How do I love?
©2009 Stephen Victor