Past Tense
~ Laura Winkelspecht

I still find myself talking
about you in present tense
like you’re still here
to add tales to our story,
but our verbs occupy
the past now,
a dying language
where I am the last
fluent speaker
longing for just one more
conversation.

My worries are pink gerbera daisies
~ Marga Fripp

My heart,
your worries are
pink gerbera daisies —
large blooms, bold
and long-lasting,
flawless in form,
seed-bearing bright eyes
in the center,
nightless silhouettes
holding on
to the darkness within.

I was going through some old files today, and found my notes from a workshop I presented on the Devil in Tarot. At the time, there was a string of highly public insider trading cases which caught several people in its web, starting with Michael Milken, Dennis Levine, Martin Siegel, and Ivan Boesky. Sadly, this excerpt from the workshop is just as applicable here in 2018, with the endless string of charges and indictments surrounding the current occupant of the US White House.

Paul Huson challenges us to think of the Devil not just as evil, but as avoidable evil. This requires us to take responsibility for our choices, and that’s not always a comfortable thing to do, particularly when dealing with things considering unacceptable by one’s culture. “The devil made me do it” or “I was deceived by someone else” or whatever other-blaming excuse we can come up with is more convenient than admitting the truth of our own bad choices. However, if we refuse to acknowledge our role in the situation, if we externalize and play the victim, it saves our reputation, and perhaps our ego, but creates greater discomfort in the long run because we are refusing the lesson of our soul—which means, yes, we’ll go through this again.

There are times when someone is a victim, and let’s not blame them for their situation. But how many times does someone claim to be a victim of another person’s machinations, when the reality is they just didn’t think they’d get caught?

The Devil from The Aquarian Tarot by David Palladini

Miscast II
~ Amy Lowell

My heart is like a cleft pomegranate
Bleeding crimson seeds
And dripping them on the ground.
My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full,
And its seeds are bursting from it.

But how is this other than a torment to me!
I, who am shut up, with broken crockery,
In a dark closet!

Love Song for Words
~ Nazik al-Mala’ika

Why do we fear words
when they have been rose-palmed hands,
fragrant, passing gently over our cheeks,
and glasses of heartening wine
sipped, one summer, by thirsty lips?

Why do we fear words
when among them are words like unseen bells,
whose echo announces in our troubled lives
the coming of a period of enchanted dawn,
drenched in love, and life?
So why do we fear words?

We took pleasure in silence.
We became still, fearing the secret might part our lips.
We thought that in words laid an unseen ghoul,
crouching, hidden by the letters from the ear of time.
We shackled the thirsty letters,
we forbade them to spread the night for us
as a cushion, dripping with music, dreams,
and warm cups.

Why do we fear words?
Among them are words of smooth sweetness
whose letters have drawn the warmth of hope from two lips,
and others that, rejoicing in pleasure
have waded through momentary joy with two drunk eyes.
Words, poetry, tenderly
turned to caress our cheeks, sounds
that, asleep in their echo, lies a rich color, a rustling,
a secret ardor, a hidden longing.

Why do we fear words?
If their thorns have once wounded us,
then they have also wrapped their arms around our necks
and shed their sweet scent upon our desires.
If their letters have pierced us
and their face turned callously from us
Then they have also left us with an oud in our hands
And tomorrow they will shower us with life.
So pour us two full glasses of words!

Tomorrow we will build ourselves a dream-nest of words,
high, with ivy trailing from its letters.
We will nourish its buds with poetry
and water its flowers with words.
We will build a balcony for the timid rose
with pillars made of words,
and a cool hall flooded with deep shade,
guarded by words.

Our life we have dedicated as a prayer
To whom will we pray . . . but to words?