And when the sky grows cloudy and gray
Send your angels here to guide us on our way

Bless us, Lord, grant us grace
Walk with us in your holy place
Let us smile with love and laugh with glee
Let us dance and play, wild and free

And when our minds grow cloudy and gray
Send your angels here to guide us on our way

Give us courage, strength and will
For the purpose for which we are here to fulfill
Let our lives be a song born of music and art
And let us sing it aloud and straight from the heart

And when the world grows cloudy and gray
Send your angels here to guide us on our way

© Joshua Mapp Weiss 2009

(Sande contributed this.)

Cuando estoy alineada conmigo y con todas las dimensiones de mi, el universo se expande y puedo entender que cada uno de nosotros tiene su propio viaje y sus propias dimensiones de si.

Me pertenezco y le pertenezco a todo.

Me voy creando cuando respeto mis distintas dimensiones; amo los errores y la perfección, al mismo tiempo.  Establezco límites que ondulan entre unos y otros.

Necesito probar que soy lo que amo y amo lo que soy, para entender que cada uno de nosotros está en la misma clase de prueba.

Tenemos el derecho de ser felices y completos a imagen de Dios, de Dios que esta en los cielos???  Alguna historia me contaron un día de niña, que habíamos sido creados a la imagen y semejanza de Dios, y yo lo creí tan profundamente que aún lo creo.  Si es que hay un Dios en los Cielos, habrá un Dios en cada uno de mis cielos, en cada uno de mis universos, de diversos colores e idiomas.

“Yo soy católica mama?” me preguntó mi hija.  La mire y reí, “No,” contesté, “los católicos son los que van a misa y rezan todos los días….yo lo sé porque así crecí.”  Ella está libre de historias y religiones, para ella son variadas, y yo la amo, es mi hija, es el alma de mi corazón.

Las dimensiones, los dioses, las personas, los universos, las razas, los países, todo desaparece cuando amo el viaje al estar y no buscar llegar.

(Fiorella Podestá contributed this.)

After all, what does my life mean?

This is what it feels like to write. The call so loud it echoes off the cliffs of my soul.

In splendors of turquoise. Agate. The inner silences, so rare. This writing is ahead of myself. It’s like Hansel and Gretel to myself backwards.

Leave clues.

Back into my shell I crawl like a scorpioncrab.
I cocoon and eat and listen. Try to listen to the outside.
There is another world than the one in my head.
There is a whole universe.

(But yet, being fun minded I cannot resist the urge for play. Word play. Shouldn’t I be out playing with my friends? Not sitting in the depths of philosophy. Or philology. And why we like which better?)

The making of a human artist, the rarest breed among us.

Discover creativity. Recover play.
Which is why there is jazz.
Exist like jazz does.
Total improvisation is freedom.
And freedom is bliss.
This is what it is to write.

(Lee Zebede contributed this.)

This is the symbol for “schwa.”  The dictionary (or was it Wikipedia?) had a lengthy definition of the word.  I came across it while researching phonological awareness for a college course I was taking to renew my teacher certification.  I teach pre-K and phonologial awareness is a big part of the curriculum.  Schwa in this case refers to the sound frequently added, especially by four and five-year-olds, onto the basic letter sound, or phoneme.  For instance, letter “b” without the schwa would be written /b/.  When it’s said “buhhh,” then the schwa is the “uhhh” that comes after the basic letter sound.  Capiche?

Mining familiar ground for something new

I’ve done it too

And so have you

It’s what we do

Find a riff

And give it a chew

We break ground

When we make sound

Bold and true

I choose the path of loves and sees

In my work, rooted like trees

Consciously moving with strength and ease

My body, my heart, my soul, oh please

Folding time with the edges of fleeting dreams

A few cars here and there, moving ghostly
Slippery fast in the slickness of incipient dawn dew

We’re all racing, until
Up ahead a bright red flash
An urgent calling moment
Two cars want over
In a nasty scary split second of merging blind side panic

A second later
as I pass that same spot
something…a rock?
kicks loud up and around the wheel well

At the same ninety-plus
hearing the sound
I too slow a moment
release the slight pressure of my foot,
tapping the break to my hot face throb
as these palpable chunks of fear rumble through me.

(Erik Thompson-Green contributed this poem.)

Who are they, these men who murder flowers?
I see them speeding down the road, hell bent.
Neither seeing, nor smelling the paradise surrounding them.

Who are they, these men?
They hurry to find a thrill for their souls, thinking it’s at the end of a speedometer,
Never knowing it exists already, contained within their beating hearts.

Who are they, these men who murder flowers?
And when can we enjoy the protection they can give us?
It’s the big disconnect that sends them rushing and crushing.
Perhaps we need to send out a search and rescue for their souls.

(Sara Melnicoff contributed this poem.)