Mademoiselle

“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.”  –  Stacia Tauscher

“Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.”  –  William Stafford

Mademoiselle Ambre

Ambre une poupée vivante

Squeals with delight

Throwing her mother’s phone

Across the café’s floor

Shouts of glee

Declarations of discovery

Of the world around her

The range of her voice

Sometimes startling herself

Temporarily

Trapped in a stroller

Escape is inevitable

Audre’s days of sitting

Dans la café

Visite avec des amies

Disappear with a curious

Toddler’s appetite

“Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma!”

*

Bisous,

Léa

Material Witness

“Art is not a part of life, it is not an addition to life, it is the essence of those pieces of us that make us fulfilled. That give us hope. That give us dreams and provide the world a view very different than what it would have been without us.”

–  Hasan Davis

“Art opens the closets, airs out the cellars and attics. It brings healing.”   –  Julia Cameron

“I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever.”   –  Susan Griffin

*

Material Witness

This is what I get

For attempting to reduce

The clutter in my life

This red plastic toolbox

Filled with long ignored

Pencils, charcoal, pastels

And other tricks of a trade

They were so foreign to

Me

Something I ached for

Yet knew nothing about

Flashbacks to childhood

A half-sisters art supplies

Tossed aside at the demands

Of her fiancée

Now these things

Were in plain site

Demanding attention

To be dealt with

To be used

To skate across paper

Or canvas

All the negative decrees of a

Lifetime want to be heard

Demand their say

Yet something deeper

Wants more

Dare I open the box?

Dare I see what will happen?

Learning to play

With art or anything else

Is more difficult as we age

But if it is given the smallest chance

It will prevail

The evidence is all around

Me

*

Bisous,

Léa

Re-post: Finding voice

This is a re-post of the first one to appear on this blog 11 December, 2011. My apologies to those who have already seen it.

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”   –  Vincent Van Gogh

“Never give up. And most importantly, be true to yourself. Write from your heart, in your own voice, and about what you believe in.”   –  Louise Brown

“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”  

–  Audre Lorde

 

Finding voice…

Be tells me to keep writing

Cait tells me to just write

My past tells me I can’t write

Fear writes for me

Anger writes the loudest, and is most prolific

Joy is silent, nearly invisible

Sadness drones on and on

Pain is sharp, isolated, and intense

Journals are scattered about my home

Tossed into the recesses of the car

They harbor numerous attempts of binge/purge

When moving I will devalue their loyalty

As I shove them through the shredder

The ghosts of childhood critique every effort

They silence me with threats to expose my failure

Deep inside the struggle

To break through the barriers

Quakes with revelatory thunder

Bisous,

Léa

Ces mains

“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.”   –  Audrey Hepburn

 

“The final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.”  

–  Anne Frank

“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”   –  Carl Jung

*

Ces mains

These hands

Often struck

With yardstick

Brosse de cheveux

Or any other

Weapon of war

*

Ces mains

Learned that they

Were best kept

Out of the way

Out of danger

*

Ces mains

Learned that

Other hands needed

Holding

Frail hands

Confused hands

*

These hands

Eagerly reaching out

To those in want

Or need

Finding hands to hold

Or guide

*

These hands

Never raised in

Anger

These hands

Gentle

Kind

*

Ces mains

Sont les

Miennes

*

Bisous,

Léa

Self portrait

“The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.”   – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

 

“At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance.”   –  Paul Tournier

*

Self portrait

Sometimes

At the mirror

I can smile

Seeing something new

Something I can

Appreciate

The hair has lost

It’s frizz – not yet grey

But it is the

Kindness that

Sparkles from

Mes yeux

And it is

Spreading

Like branches

Reaching out

Allowing me

At last to

Embrace

Myself

*

Bisous,

Léa

Circular-causality

“I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.”   –  Susan B. Anthony

” If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and minus.”  –  Emma Goldman

***

Circular-causality

When I left

You

I lay in a

Bed

One pillow

Undisturbed

Sleeping peacefully

At last

–

When I left

You

The weight of

The world

Toppled

Cascading

From weary shoulders

–

When I left you

My footsteps – yet

Unsure – guarded

Plodded forward

Into the unknown world

Of learning

You and

Others told me – I could

Not make it

–

When I left you

There were new friends

Trips to the theatre, museums

Classes, professors

While I was

Looking over my

Shoulder

Waiting for the

Failure

–

Yet we kept a roof

Over our heads

And each semester

I moved toward the promises

Of the next

My eyes opened wider

With each new step

Experiences extrapolated

The view

–

Bachelor’s degree

Then a Masters

Adding up

Priorities

You could never

Comprehend

Introspection

Those early

Terrifying,

Stumbling

Footfalls

–

Learning to dream

Setting boundaries

Having goals

Dreaming

Believing

Allowing the

Dream to

Come true

When

I left

You

***

Bisous,

Léa

La Langue Maternelle

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”    –  Martin Luther King

“I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.”

– Booker T. Washington

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong”.   –  Sydney J. Harris

***

La Langue Maternelle

Two sides to

Everything

Especially

Your face

You spoke to

Me and

Others

About this one

And that one

And without stopping

For breath

Turn to them

To speak of

Me

Yet cannot begin

To comprehend

Why the few

Who continue

To listen

To attend you

Are the same

Ones

Talking behind

Your

Back

Your

Razor sharp

Tongue

Viler than any

Serpent

Medusa

Could have learned much

From you

The tears for you

Were shed into the

Sand

I leave you with

Love (does it sound strange?)

From a safe distance

And

Pity

***

Bisous,

Léa

She knows me so well…

“Long hair is considered bohemian, which may be why I grew it, but I keep it long because I love the way it feels, part cloak, part fan, part mane, part security blanket.”

– Marge Piercy

***

She knows me so well…

YES

She knows my hair

Knows me so well

The muddy colored tresses

Cloaks my fears

Hiding my shame

Soaking up

Tears and shields me

From un-approving stares

These locks cool me

As the wind blows her higher

In the past

Yanked, pulled

Cut against her will

or imprisoned in clips, bands

Tossing my head – exposing my face

The only sense of freedom

My only sense of glory

Imagined myself safe

Enveloped in her embrace

Today

Raising the flag of defiance

I set her free

***

Bisous,

Léa

Inarticulate

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

–  Elie Wiesel

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence”

 –  Leonardo da Vinci

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself”

–  Harvey Fierstein

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

–  Martin Luther King Jr.

***

Inarticulate

Writer’s block

Is sometimes

Symptomatic

Of the things

So repressed

Like being

Tongue-tied

Stuck back

In the dungeon

Called childhood

The words

Won’t appear

Keyboard

Silenced

Somewhere

Between the past

And anywhere else

My fingers

Loose their way

Freeze in a hover

Over the keys

Separating truth

From the fiction

Exposing it to

Light

Like pollen

Lifted by the

Wind

To begin

Anew

***

Bisous,

Léa

Trad-ing Winds

“A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.”
– Catherine the Great

“As time goes by, I realize that I do trust the wind. And I often write my songs for myself.”
– David Friedman

“Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!”
– William Butler Yeats

Trad-ing Winds

Born where

The Santa Ana’s

Drove me

Indoors

Pushed me away

Made me ill

Literally taking

My breath away

Cutting familial

Ties

I now live

Where the

Mistral

Is a frequent

Visitor

Howling

Outside

My door

Slamming

My beloved

Wooden shutters

I laugh

As the leaves

Swirl

Today the

Forces of

Power

Have shifted

I walk with

And against

Her fury

She whispers

Kindly

In my ear

Bisous,

Léa