Art is an act of Love

Silence: a love poem

Letters stilled,

Songs buried with the dead.

Violence brought about

By the fear of words, the brush, the pen…

All birthed by pain and blood.

Images of enlightened are pursued by those who want to silence….

The power of thought,

Boldly struck;

Court death, censorship, imprisonment, exile

Or quickly, negation.

Yet this is how we love

Some praise the deceased

Lorca, Neruda, Brutus, Agosin, Lorde, Tutola

Stilled words

That still liberate us all

Many, many more musicians, writers, painters;

And the very heart of humanity the poets

This is how we love, now

By braving all

For all of us.

The few tears others shed

While savoring every fierce word and image;

That are left behind or becoming

Smell numbly of the fear

Of not embracing the art, the truth

And leaving behind blindness.

To us, the artists

That shiver awake at night

Lie in terror not of death

But of not loving enough.

This is not courage at all

That imperils us,

But passion

For we must see into the darkness

And define it;

Or suffer not to love.

Some have tried to stop me too

In so many ways’

To convince sweetly or conquer with terror.

I have been shot at, men threatened to have my hands cut off.

Worse ignored like the Cassandra that I am.

I never stopped for

What I,

All of us, fear the most,

Is to stop telling

And be silent.

This is how I love

Must love

Thoughts of the beautiful, the neglected, forgotten, untold

But haunted by the terrible visions of violence;

Rendered well.

For this is how artists love…

Toni Truesdale copyright 1990

IMBOLC: Bridgit

“Woman by the Well”

by Toni Truesdale

Grottos, springs, wells and water,

Were all innate realms of  ancient female deities;

For all tribal European cultures.

Brigit of the ancient Irish evolved from the original Dana.

Christianized, she remains associated with fire and water.

Arthurian Lady of the Lake predates the mythic cycle

Wherein she reaches through time.

Mama Wata, who melds the European with the West African,

Protects woman and children;

She echoes the Medusa of Mediterranean Sea

Who was transformed by patriarchy into a fierce monster

But who came from the original Mother Earth religions

That listened to speech of snakes in sacred houses.

And in the sea, Silkie and Mesuline still hint

At the power of women and water

Giving birth to all...

Wells were used all over the world as channels to the spirit world.

And still today, many indigenous cultures

Hear the woman in the sea, by the well and in the water.

Truesdale copyright 1994

ToniTruesdale.com

man's inhumanity to man: commemorating the american halocausts

Historical grief slips secretly generation into generation

Unseen yet emotionally heard

In sterile familiar poverty;

Pain, sacrifice still poisons unresolved time,

Victims caught in moments of  past tragedy

Leaving a legacy of tears that haunt children presently.

Adults respond by drinking away  impersonal pain 

Leading  to destruction, self imposed this time, again

From  senses becoming incomplete

And, the  land murmurs in despair, as well as in

The very air 

Filters atmosphere, pathos steeped ...

Spirits all around

Some Native to this land, others brought to serve and slave

Still overlapping the sequence

beyond dying, out side the living

Imprints of sorrow nestled in the soil

Discerned by the unconscious living mind

The footprints of historic grief.... 

art: Trail of Tears by Truesdale copyright 1776

Water is Life

Water has a reflective quality

Does it mirror

The sun, moon, stars at night,

Or impersonal technology?

The subtlety of the dawn and evening skies,

Or trite, trivial media banalities?

The complex changing seasons,

Or the diminishing color sensitivities

In the coolness of an increasingly warm world

With less and less diversity?

Just what is realty;

A clean and fragrant mountain stream

Or a frightened and angry society?

copyright 2010

 Water is Life

Protect our Planet

Basket-House-Village-Universe

Reclaiming the Hearth
And Food as Sacred

Basket-House-Village-Universe

by Toni Truesdale

Baskets of women

Reflect nourishment

Physical as well as spiritual

Object to concept

Keeping sacred the spirit of everyday life;

Within the home

Utilitarian to universal

Dwelling to village

Community to cosmos

Each human passage

of the last 140 thousand years...

Birth to death

The finite to consummation

End to beginning...

copyright 2010

ToniTruesdale.com

Sugar

by Toni Truesdale

Celebrate overcoming the past

All People of Color

Is it freedom at last?

We begin each morning

Sweetening our cups of coffee and tea;

With sugar refined as

White as history;

Trying hard to distance itself

From the memory

Of genocide and slavery.

Now In the beautiful, warm vacation seas.

Shanty towns and the company store

Create the stillness of poverty;

The Eden now cleared of Native Peoples

And the terrorized Africans

Overworked and disposed before 30.

All to create fortunes for entitled families.

Money from death and misery, bleached

Pure by virtuous European banks;

In a society where income is so esteemed

It became the western hierarchy of ruling currency.

Celebrate overcoming the past,

Where all people are valued at last.

Celebrate the yet to come;

Where full freedom is finally won.

Dedicated to the very Reverand William Potter

Truesdale copyright 2011

Migrations:Origin Stories

Migrations: Origin Stories 

"Primordial peoples

Set Forth on the longest Journey;

To descend into each individual moment of

Still flowing humanity.

Those first peoples, sowed each continent

Common stories, myth, rites

To celebrate what we have always shared,

Great Mother Earth, the Guardian

Goddess of a thousand names."

copyright T. Truesdale 2016