Administrator's blog | Leanna Banana

while i'm still here

"a little more
every day
falls apart
slips away
i don't mind
i'm okay
nothing ever stays the same
while we can
remember when
we always were
yes even then
stay with me
hold me near
while i'm still here"

via
.

I still feel you in me.

Every night, I grasp your bones to fall asleep. I hold them close to me too, like their coldness might warm me miraculously, a wish that feels something like manifesting death into life. Even though you’re dead and gone, I still need your skeleton to sing me lullabies. I still need your bones to hold me close. I still ache for your embrace even though I know it will hurt me unbearably because it won’t really be you who will be doing it. It will be your ghost. We are walking around on the streets on this earth like half-people, you and I. We yearn for shelter, we yearn for a home. We thought we saw the lights on in a window. This pain is a long staircase in a house with no doors. No pill, no sign of life. You’re living through me, you’re living for me. My body is haunted by yours. All thoughts of you leave me barren, all words of you leave a bitter taste in the back of my mouth. I spit them out. I stare at them abhorrently in the sink; all mutilated and sour and dripping with you, dripping with me. They are alive. I am terrified of my heart and the manner in which it stops and starts. It knows that it still belongs to you and no matter how I try to forget the truth, it always has. I need to purge this sickness out. I tread the earth with the wish that if I’m careless enough I will unravel beautifully if I catch myself on a corner, like a stray thread from my most-loved sweater. I find new ways to bleed. I cut myself on flowers. I read too much. I pray that a papercut may secrete enough blood to drain me dry. And even so, I would most certainly spill out your blood instead of mine.

via
.

*.

'Soul of the leaping flame;
Heart of the scarlet fire,
Spirit that hath for name
Only the name -- Desire!

Subtle art thou and strong;
Glowing in sunlit skies;
Sparkling in wine and song;
Shining in women's eyes;

Gleaming on shores of Sleep --
Moon of the wild dream-clan --
Burning within the deep
Passionate heart of Man.

Spirit we can but name,
Essence of Forms that seem,
Odour of violet flame,
Weaver of Thought and Dream.

Laught of the World's great Heart,
Who shall thy rune recote?
Child of the gods thou art,
Offspring of Day and Night.

Lord of the Rainbow ealm,
Many a shape hast thou --
Glory with laurelled helm;
Love with the myrtled brow;

Sanctity, robed in white;
Liberty, proud and calm,
Ringed wth auroral light,
Bearing the sword and palm.

Maidens with dreamful eyes
Eyes of a dreaming dove,
See thee in noble guise
Coming, and call thee -- Love!

Youth with his blood aflame,
Running in crystal red,
Sees, on the Mount of Fame,
Thee with thy hands outspread.

Leader of Hope Forlorn,
When he beholds thine eyes
Shining in splendid scorn,
Storming the rampart dies.

Many have, by good hap,
Seen thee in arms arrayed,
Wearing a Phyrian cap,
High on a barricade;

Aye, and by dome and arch
Leading, with eyes ablaze,
Onward the Patriots' March,
Singing the Marseillaise.

Lo, where with trembling lyre
Held in his long white hands
Thrilled by thy glance of fire,
Rapt the Musician stands;

Feeling them all around
Glow in the quiv'ring air --
Luminous Soul of Sound!
Music of all things fair!

Poet, and Sage, and Seer,
Smile when the world grows wan,
Knowing thine advent near,
Over the Hills of Dawn.

Anchorite, aple and worn,
Sees thee, and earth disowns --
Lifted on prayer, and borne
Up to the Shining Thrones.

Yea, as a seraph-star
Chanting in ecstasy,
Singing in fire afar,
So he beholdeth thee.

And, as in darksome mines,
far down a corridor,
Starlike a small lamp shines,
Raying along the floor --

So, ere his race be ran,
Parted his last faint breath,
Thou, for the dying man,
Lightest the ways of Death;

And, while his kindred mourn
Over his shell of clay,
Shinest beyond the bourne,
Dawn of his first new day.

Thus through the lives to be
We shall fare, each alone,
Evermore lured by thee
Unto an End unknown.'
.
blood, wine, & rose potpourri shadowbox, 2014

yesterday is here

‘if you want money in your pocket
and a top hat on your head
a hot meal on your table
and a blanket on your bed
well today is grey skies
tomorrow is tears
you’ll have to wait
til yesterday is here’
- Tom Waits
.

.

I'm still hopelessly in love with you.
.

rest in peace darling

‘Life is coming to an end
So says me, me wiccan friend,
Nature coming full circle.
I’m the green man
The green man.’
.

.

"Secret of the Rose" by Christian Schloe

' You for whom I wrote, O beautiful young woman!
You alone whom I loved, will you reread my verse?
Will you say, "This woman had the ardor which eludes me,
Why is she not alive? She would have loved me." '
.

*

" Everything leads us to believe that there exists a state of mind where life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, no longer seems contradictory. The dead are about us, shut out by our metaphysical denial of them. As we lie nightly in our hemispheres asleep by the billions, our dead approach us. Our ideas should be their nourishment. We are their grainfields. But we are barren and we starve them. Don’t kid yourself, we are watched by the dead, watched on this earth, which is our school of freedom. "

*

~*

bruises on the fruit, tender age in bloom
*~

the divine universe lives within us

‘The purpose of contact with the spirit realm is not psychic power, but expanded perceptions. It is the development of the ability to look beyond physical limitations and learn from the creative possibilities that exist within them, while at the same time transcending them. It is to help us rediscover the wonder, awe, and power of the divine universe and how it lives within us.’
.

flowers at last

*

.

There are faces in the clouds.
.

* . .

. . *

I Dream

When the remainder of the World is asleep, I Dream that I walk on water, out to the island in the lake. I feel the Ghosts around me and their breaths on my cheek, I feel their fingertips in my hair and on my body, I hear their whispers. I stand there under the Moon and the Stars and I watch and I wait. I feel the Moon looking down at me and shedding her Light, and as I feel her Love, I am overwhelmed with Joy. I look to the trees in the distance until I notice a luminescent Being walking towards me. You. Then Roses bloom all around me; Roses in my hair, Roses in my Eyes, Roses in my throat and Heart and abdomen, Roses in the palms of my hands. More Flowers sprout in my groin, on my knees, on my feet. The Roses are Within me and all around me! I am a Rose Garden in my Heaven. When you approach me, I can only feel You. I only want to feel You. You come to me and You hold me like you do and hold my face in your hands, staring into my Eyes, wiping away my tears with your thumbs like you do. And Every Time, I’m so relieved to see You because I never thought I would see You again. You say, Baby, we know better than that, we always know better than that. I say you’re right, we could never forget about one another, not Now. Yes Baby, you say, this Love is all there is, and all that is supposed to be. You put your lips to mine and everything around me grows vibrant and hazy. We begin to Kiss softly, and as I melt into you, for a moment I truly feel You, and for a moment I am encompassed in Love and Light. That moment, whether it be just a moment or an Eternity, is enough to sustain me until the next night I Dream, dancing on water, to our Paradise, out on the island in the lake.

via
*

'

Let Us Embrace Each Other, Odilon Redon, 1896
'
' Maybe fate will lead us down
a path where we will meet again.
And then we'll both be free
to love anew.
Then one sweet kiss from your
dear lips
Will banish all my fears.
My darling, I have loved you
Oh so many years. '
'

touch me with your naked hand, touch me with your glove

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone

Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of

Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on

Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long

We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above

Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born

Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn

Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn

Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in

Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove

Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the end of love
.

*

“Another day…

Hubby waits outside in the alley staring in the direction of the street. He sits with the posture of someone whose heart is currently in the process of falling down some stairs. But the stairs aren’t even inside him. The stairs his heart are falling down are somewhere far away from the confines of his body. Just miles and miles and miles away. And you can tell this hurts him, this process of his heart falling down some stairs which are far away from the confines of his body. But you can also tell it’s not really the physical action of his heart falling down the stairs that hurts Hubby so much but rather the overwhelming distance from his heart. Being so detached from such a huge part of himself. Not to mention the fact that he knows once his heart is done falling down the stairs, wherever they are, and however many of them there are, his heart still won’t be inside him. His heart will just lay there at the bottom of the stairs. Looking up at them. Finding them beautiful. Wanting to fall down them all over again.

And over again…

And over and over and over and over and over again…”

- Adam
*

.

there seemed to be
two worlds
the one before and
after you
.

*~

'Of course
I love you,
it's my fault
you never
knew.'

*

.

"Blind Faith" c. 2009-2010, oil & blood on canvas

'Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.
I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.'
- Leonard Cohen
.

.

I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for three seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. The world you see is just a movie in your mind. Bless and sit down. Forgive and forget. Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.

Jack Kerouac
.

*

Look to the sky, there's a full moon blooming in our hearts.
*

*

' I think about death when I’m awake and the world is sleeping. I think about heaven and angels and dying. I see flowers. I see flowers and colors and sometimes I see people. Sometimes I hear them. I’m never in reality. When everyone else is living reality I’m living a dream. My emotions are much deeper and longer lasting than other people. I feel things that most people ignore out of ignorance or pure inability to feel. I feel too much. I feel so much that it hurts me to feel. There is always more than little. Everything we do, everything we feel, every soul we touch echoes on for eternity. And that eternity can be seconds or forevermore. Time is different here. Time doesn’t exist here. I dissect and evaluate the world around me. The moon, the stars, the sun. When I am lost or think too deeply I just remind myself that those things are just a part of me. Those things are me in a different form. Those things are me eternal. The thoughts that I choose not to divulge are the thoughts that haunt me, the thoughts from lifetimes ago. I think too much about yesterday and I think too much about tomorrow too. I don’t know why I do that. Instead I should think about now. I think too much about doing the right thing because I spent so much of my lives doing the wrong things. I want to get it right this time. I don’t want to forget this time. I want to remember every tear, every heartache, every obstacle that I’ve overcome because I don’t want to ever go back to that place again. I think it’s sad how everybody has hurt someone else. And I think it’s sad because I think that sometimes people are so hurt inside themselves that they cannot help to hurt other people, even regardless of how carefully they’ve lived their lives to avoid doing so. It breaks my heart again and again. I think about sadness a lot. Even within my happiness there is always sadness because I know that it can be taken away. I don’t like living here. I can’t wait to go home where everything is forever. So I spend my days and nights in fields of flowers and stars. We are all ghosts. All ghosts are women. '

via
*

I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad.

)

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he's singing a little

in there, I haven't quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it's nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don't

weep, do

you?

- Charles Bukowski

paracosm

per-a-‘koz-m

noun

1. a detailed, prolonged imaginary world created by a child that includes human, animal, or alien creations

2. an other-worldly experience that develops during childhood and often continues over a period of months or years
.

Forget-Me-Not

'I tried to forget
But you grew roots around my ribcage
And sprouted flowers just below my collarbones
All day I pluck their petals
But I have not yet ascertained
Whether you love me
Or not.'
.

*~

I think about death when I dream.
*

far beyond words of love or lust

‘And when we were satiated, far beyond words of love or lust, we quietly stared, each into the eyes of the other, and watched as diamonds danced in the light. Diamonds twinkling in your eyes... diamonds dripping down your neck... diamonds, your diamonds... dripping from the core of me... all made like jewels by the light of the fire, forged in the fires of our fucking. This then is love, I thought to myself.’
.

.~

La Mère by Giuseppe Vannucci-Zauli, 1950
.

* * *

Do you have stars
in your mouth?
she asks
and I laugh,
she’s never tasted
winter like I have,
midnights that linger
for days. Yes,
I tell her. Come see.

Will there be breath?
For a while, I whisper
and blow on her hands,
but you will sing
and the aurora lights
will walk across the ice.

She lets me
put my hands on her.
Will I die? her hair
like snow.
Yes. I tell her.
Every time.

Jude Goodwin
.