Army of Ink Salute .
It is these inky things that stand me up when I slip up back. Show me forward into places I wouldn’t go all by myself. Write the wrongs through poems and songs. Create picture books of what I can’t tell. Hold me in a silent vigil when I bump and stop. Slow a world too big ad fast into moments precious and still.
It is these inky things that turn the deep end into a puddle I can jump over. Fear into something I can see. Anger into rock the boat defiance (like a wee rabbit thumping its foot). Shift loneliness into along wrapped in a nice warm blanket. Shrink pain to a hurt more my size. Make difference and smallness fell like a snug old fit. Every knock a trip to somewhere new.
And when night arrives … they snuggle beneath my pillow soft like a hidden treat. Riding the rise and fall of a slumbering breath. Catching sweet dreams and soft sounds that awaken a brand new day.
(Reposted from 2010. See also, ‘Peacemakers Plot’, ‘Once Upon A Dark Time‘. All Army of Ink here. In Clunk & Jam book, 2019. Original handwriting by Mags, with a chook feather from Ruth’s farm in Yallingup, Western Australia for handmade book, ‘Rock The Boat’, 2009.)
Occasionally she lost sight of hope.
(Clunk & Jam, 2019 book).
Art by George Frederic Watts (1886). Original in colour.
Martin Luther King Jr based his 1959 sermon, ‘Shattered Dreams’, on the theme of a 1886 painting called, ‘Hope’.
Excerpt:
‘We must determine how we live in a world where our highest hopes are not fulfilled. What does one do under such circumstances?
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Thanks again to Planet Books for the wall space at the rear of the bookshop for Robin and Amelia.
What’s with all the smiley faces – things are not really that great.
The one thing she disliked most was false optimism 🙂 And it was making its mark everywhere, particularly in emails and text messages 🙂 Sometimes people even shouted happiness :)!!! But was all this just a disguise? Were people really that happy :/ She sensed the world increasingly turning away from those who weren’t feeling all that happy right now 🙁 Opting for the pretense of living fairy tale lives:) That made her feel sad. 🙁 As did the effect of so many colons and wrong way brackets consuming a perfectly good language.
See this Rose who is free from the labor of smiling. This Rose about dealing with all matters of the emotional kind. This Rose is curious about the origin of sadness.
(Clunk & Jam book 2019)
Dump The Damsel .
She dismissed the damsel in distress and became the authority on herself. She also had any dull idea of becoming a star, well and truly covered. In conclusion: A sturdy resistance to being dumbed down, could well be her greatest achievement.
(Clunk & Jam book, 2019. Reposted from 2013)
Even a smacked bottom deserves a seat .
Footnote: We all start out worthy little humans. Deserving of love and care – and our own special seat. But sometimes things go wrong. Don’t go to plan. You make mistakes. Maybe you don’t turn out like you thought you would. Or how others thought you would. Sometimes other people treat you badly. And it’s catchy because you end up treating yourself badly too.
And then this little girl taps you gently on the shoulder and sits you back down in your goodness. And with this kind gesture, you are reminded of the worthy little human you started out as. And so you put the brakes on all the punishing , beating yourself up business. And reintroduce that little human to the love and care that is, and always has been, most definitely deserved.
(Clunk & Jam book 2019).
