Interview: White Lions, Poetry & South Africa

caught in the middle...

love is a circle...

Let Us Speak the Language of Love - poetry by Zayra Yves

Photo and poem by Zayra.

You can find the full length version of the poem here:

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/ZayraYves

It is on the CD Crowned Compassion.

Sleep in the Sea Tonight with Me - poetry by Zayra Yves

Photo was shot in Santa Cruz, California by Zayra 

Poem is on the audio collection with the same name at CD Baby:

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/ZayraYves

Compassion...

In this body of night...

liquid love ~ poem and photography by zayra yves

It's Almost Too Much Love to Believe

by Zayra Yves
(featured on Lanterns via CD Baby)

Late in the evening you arrive
And permeate my field of strength

You'd have to sleep among bones to feel
How deeply this communion affects me

My beloved friend, my essential being
I've seen you before in my dreams

It's almost too much love to believe.
You loved me when I was burned at the stake

A real Joan of Arc in the street
Not just another cold soul covered in sleet

You love like someone who knows my secret
You love me between a deep blue fire

And an ocean of purity
It's almost too much love to believe.

Soaked in wine like some blood of Christ
Held inside the rose of Magdalena Divine

I can feel the end of my flesh
The threshold of the separate self delete

Into the transfiguration of a blessed two
Who surrender in the heat

It's almost too much love to believe.
I am not afraid of the bitter root

Or burning clove where you sometimes sleep
I won't turn away from the hidden pain

Or the way you close your eyes when it's too deep
It's the discovery of you that excites me

Your style of illumination is brave
It's almost too much love to believe.

Everything dirty and clean finds its place
Like me, loving between damage and beauty

Mine is a heart that cries continuously
Searching for God's grace or at least a sign

I'm nothing special but somehow I am unique
When you smile, a glance of sun bestows my face

It's almost too much love to believe.
You love me in my defeat

And when I turn away from real intimacy
I am still in our lovers embrace

Like a saxophone that accents the jazz note
I am just sinner with some crazy idea

Formless, un-manifest, true sucker for a miracle
It's almost too much love to believe.

I said a prayer before you appeared on the scene
With the sounds of poetry and electricity

And now you are the artist and the muse
And now you are the lover and beloved

It's transpersonal. It's magnetic.
This light web of falling into you.

It's almost too much love to believe.

(*copyright 2011 by Zayra Yves)

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The CD Lanterns can be found at CD Baby:

Buy this CD at CD Baby

Now You Are In the House of Eternity by Zayra Yves

This poem is dedicated to my cousin Lex and appears on my new CD Lanterns.

www.zayrayves.com

Lanterns ~ poetry by Zayra Yves

I lit a candle for you

and said a prayer.

You lit a candle in me

and I became a prayer.

~

Lanterns is a new audio poetry collection by Zayra Yves with music by Kevin Barnard. It is currently in the manufacture stage of creativity and will be shipped from Discmakers on December 7, 2011. This collection is a soulful journey through the iconic love that Jesus and Mary Magdalene held for one another. Reserve a copy now at http://www.zayrayves.com/

(copyright 2011 by Zayra Yves all rights reserved)

Reflect on the Beauty of Love and Loss

Two of my favorite book passages speak to the depth of love even in passing and loss. The truth we often do not like to face is that all things pass away.  Everything is temporary in the material and physical world but our hearts and souls seem to live on eternal. It's the love we leave behind that makes us immortal. 

~

The first passage stands out not only in literature but it is exceptionally well portrayed in the epic film by the same title:

"The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje.


“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.  I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.” 

 ~

The other paragraph that set my world on fire when I read it is from "My Traitor's Heart" by Rian Malan:

"I think you will know what I mean if I tell you that love is worth nothing until it has been tested by it's own defeat. I felt I was being asked to try to love enough to not be afraid of the consequences. I realized that love, even if it ends in defeat gives you a kind of honor, but without love you have no honor at all. Love is to enable you to transcend defeat."

 ~

Often times our culture shows us love in the romantic or erotic forms but rarely in the spirit of friendship or transcendent love that appears in soul bonds between people.  We have many ways to love others, so we have many ways to lose them and suffer too. The beauty of it is when we realize that love in the most true expression of itself is an eternal feeling and it continues long after we have left the planet.  The way we love and how we love stays with us forever.

Love is who and what you are.

(link to image: http://www.crystalinks.com/petroglyphs.html)

~ a love story inside the structure of color ~

by zayra yves ~

you said that indigo is for soul love

blue is for the upper room

yellow is saved for those bent shoulders

who need to cry

but red, red is only for the same person

over time who carries the mouth of flowers

without the promise of sobriety

easily lost, somehow, in the ivory of creation

like a work of art or a secret bargain

formed with our eyes half closed

so no one dares to ask for the color of truth

but hopes for the soft green of the willows

- by zayra yves

www.zayrayves.com

Poem is published in Lulu book: 

"Leaving You Unpainted"

Angel Heart Resurrected

Angel Heart Resurrected
poem by Zayra Yves

Thousands of years ago, I was buried with lions.

I was sacrificed to serve a king in the after life.

They anointed my body with holy oils -

cedar, cinnamon and myrrh 

and wrapped me in the finest Egyptian linen.

My body was embalmed and entombed.

My musical instruments, memories,

and songs were immersed with me

as an eternal slave. 

Thousands of years ago I was buried

with lions and kings...

until the cry of humanity in distress

seeking to forgive itself,

seeking to love and understand,

seeking to know the mystery,

to know their sacred beginnings...

caused the scorpion sting in my soul to heal

and pulled me from the clay

of a reframed earth.

Thousands of years ago

I was buried with lions and kings, 

until I heard the plea

from your heart,

painted in blue and lover's gold,

ready to fly on the wings of compassion.

It was you who resurrected my song

from an ancient grave.

And, here I am today

to sing of how beautiful

you truly are. 

- copyright 2010

by Zayra Yves
www.zayrayves.com

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image: white lioness
© Brett Critchley | Dreamstime.com

Be Yourself

(dreamstime free image)

It is not necessary to be beautiful, famous, well-liked, educated, rich, perfect, or any type of status whoop-de-doop from the mass marketing mill, to be a loving, compassionate, gracious, giving, peaceful, true and whole human being. Don't be fooled into thinking you got to be "out there" giving into the demands in order to experience love. Love is happening right now. You are love. Embrace it.

(This was originally a Facebook note in 2010 that I decided to post in my blog.)

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Love is a Journey

Human beings are capable of tremendous love. They demonstrate this love all the time. It rarely makes it into the news. Try to remember that just because someone doesn't show you the style, brand or kind of love you want, doesn't mean it isn't in their heart or that they aren't capable of it. Love is a journey and it takes some of us a lifetime to figure out how to express it.

(This was originally a Facebook note in 2010 that I decide to post in my blog).

*


(dreamstime free image)

~ Angel in the Blue ~

Angel in the Blue
by Zayra Yves


Lost in the secret zodiac of the sea
a beauty swims.

In a swish of starry firmament
a sweet voice
emerges from deep within you
and moves through the waves of sorrow
to cup your soul
with a loving embrace...

as you sway to the sound of a heart beat
in the dance of discovering
your sacred song

is not forgotten,
just too long buried in the mystery.




© 2011 Zayra Yves, All rights reserved.


http://www.zayrayves.com/


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"All will not be as it was, but it will be true...." Derek Walcott

It is not August yet but I wanted to post this poem by Derek Walcott because in stanza four there is a line that stands out timelessly (besides rain in summer is an excellent metaphor for the dampness we feel when a bright moment has been spontaneously spoiled in our lives):  "Don't you know I love you but am hopeless at fixing the rain?"  I have been thinking lately about how and why we hold grudges against each other, as well as how sore we are at times about the unfixable things which happen between us or around us; how frustrated we are when things are not perfect or as we what them to be.


"Dark August" by Derek Walcott

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
of this black August. My sister, the sun,
broods in her yellow room and won't come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume
like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,
she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things,
my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls
like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out.
Don't you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge, my sister,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all will not be as it was, but it will be true
(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,
The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you

© Derek Walcott

-

It might be easier to be compassionate toward one another if we recognize that everyone has rain in lives.  Sometimes we cannot see what is leading to the ruin or the pain but it is there in every person's path. Perhaps we hold grudges because as Rumi pointed out "even if you hate me, at least your attention is still on me." We hold a wound because we don't want to let go of our emotional attachment to a person or memory.  Maybe we don't have to. Or it could be that the grudge is teaching us where we might try to be more forgiving and compassionate toward ourselves as well. Maybe the point of entry into our soul, which is bitter and hard, is the right one.  When we come to the gateway of understanding, it's like the last two stanzas of "Dark August":

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all will not be as it was, but it will be true

(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,

The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you

*


"All will not be as it was, but it will be true..." When I read that line, many things stir in me, and I find it leaves me speechless to think there is as much love in the ruin and rain, as there is in the temple and sun.  I discover I am overwhelmed by such love and knowing that it turns out I have been loved beyond that which I once imagined. Dare I say with a smile, that even when you hate me, you are still loving me as deeply, maybe more so, than you did when we were laughing?

It is possible.


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dreamstime image: hibiscus flower after the rain - by irabel8

Misunderstood: Love

This week I searched for the word "LOVE" in the on-line thesaurus and it came up as: "love - 10 of 111 thesaurus results" on the first page. There are a lot of different ways to use this misunderstood four letter word, while we use the other four letter word for everything else, and create confusion. 

It is easy to misunderstand the word love because we attach our expectations to others and our relationships with them.  We tend to approach relationships expecting, wanting and desiring.  Naturally we are upset when the object of our possession doesn't seem to reciprocate our fantasy. We want people to read our mind, communicate in ways we find acceptable, and behave as we have decided is appropriate to our liking.  The reality is often a shocking difference from our dream, then the blame game begins and the war to prove who is right or wrong.  And, well, Lord forbid that someone has a boundary, it must mean they don't love us.  In reality our fantasy is not an act of love per se, it's an attachment and an expectation that leads to trouble.

Even the Greeks understood that love required some definition, so they negoiated it into four slim categories:  Eros, Agape, Philia, and Storge or passionate love, unconditional love, friendship love, affectionate love.

There is more than one way to love, more than one way to communicate or express that love and several authors have commented on love.  Osho said, "Love is a verb."  Love is timeless. In her book, A Return to Love, Marianne Williams said, "We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.” I should write more to support this paragraph, and maybe I will later, or maybe I will leave it to the reader to discover their own quotes on love.

As for myself, I often try to cultivate love in its myraid of expressions throughout my life experience. I too have been deeply wounded and misunderstood.  I recall then that in The Course in Miracles it reads "Everything is a call for Love."  When I ponder that, I realize it is a love that is about acceptance and belonging.  We all want to belong and be accepted for who we are.  I am fortunate to say that I feel loved, as much as I have also loved deeply, but that doesn't mean I always feel I am understood or received by those I love.  It is perhaps part of our journey toward the ultimate love to discover that we have to begin within ourselves to accpet who we are and trust in the Divine plan of our lives to guide us toward being the expression of love in its highest form.  Keep in mind, it might not lead to marriage (wink).



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free dreamstime image: love heart by alejandro duran