Hidden in the Stars

Earth is my home

Earth is where I drew my first breath

Where I will draw the last

Earth is filled with family

Family with two legs, four legs, many legs and no legs

Somehow are all connected 

All descended from the same stars

Like abandoned children

Longing to know their parents

They are the reason we are here

But how do I know the Stars that gave me life

When some may not even exist anymore 

What stories do they hold that are out of reach 

What truths are hidden in the gaseous temperatures of their existence

They hide themselves from me when I’m awake

They come out and play when I’m asleep

Maybe someone has answers for all my questions

But no one can give me truth

Truth does not dwell on Earth

Truth is hidden in the Stars 

© Ruby Neumann 

Poet's Note: Written June 27, 2024

It was Rob Bell who introduced me to the idea that "I am stardust".  Neil Degrasse Tyson confirms Rob Bell's story.  So I like to believe it.  That's right... believe it!  I have no access to what so many feel like they do have access to... "Truth".  Am I so bold to state it here that I don't believe we have access to anything so foundational as the "truth".  We have our perceptions, opinions, beliefs, interpretations,  imaginings and understandings,  but who really has the truth?  I would like to imagine that there is truth... but it is hidden in the very stars that gave us life.  It's inaccessible... beyond everything we can reach.  That is amazing and worth celebrating.  No one has it all together... we are little creatures trying to do our best to understand... we can't even come close.   

Your Better God

You've made yourself a better God

Don't you see

Don't you see

You've made yourself a better God

At least it's plain to me

Your God is good, your God is kind

Your God won't condemn you for using your mind

Your God isn't threatened by words that I say

Your God, in you, doesn't walk away

You've made yourself a better God

Take a look 

Take a look

You've made yourself a better God

Than the one that's in the book

Your God doesn't kill people that your God doesn't like

Your God doesn't ravage nations out of spite

Your God didn't make all the evil around you 

Your God only holds to a love that is true 

You've made yourself a better God

That's okay

That's okay 

You've made yourself a better God

To get you through your night and day

I understand now why your God is so nice

Why your God doesn't have a heart made of ice

I wish the God you made was true 

Because that God was made in the image of you

© Ruby Neumann 

Poet's Note: Written February 21, 2024 at around 1:30 am.   I hate writing poetry that I feel like I can't share with the ones who inspire it.  I had a few Christians in mind when I wrote this.  Part of me wishes I had access to some of the vitriol that other agnostics/atheists experience from fundamentalism.  Then maybe I would be justified in feeling some disgust for Christianity as a whole.  My problem is that most of the Christians around me are still nice.  I think that is because of the "Better God".  I am still disgusted at Christianity as a whole system.  But the people... well... some of them... it's obvious that God has evolved along with them.  They weren't made in the image of the Biblical God, like many of them believe.  When "God" is made in the image of "you", he takes on the character traits of "you".  If you are a nice person, how can your "God" be anything but nice.  

To clear up so poetic prose... when I say that I wish "The Better God" was true... That is only if I had to choose between "The Better God" vs the "God of the Bible". I like the evolved one much better.  I still think "God" is unnecessary as a whole... but poetically, I understand that most people still need some kind of "God". I just wish they could understand that the "God" they say is shining through them... is actually them shining.  They have just made "God" in their own image.  

Driving is a Suicide Attempt

Almost every day I do something

That could take me out for good

Not thinking of the gravity

Or even if I could

It’s not that I want out yet

I just need to do this thing

I need to risk my life

It’s part of my routine

But now I think a little more

Of the possibility 

That death could take me today

That this time it could be me

Because yesterday it was you that died

Doing what I do now

Your memory floats around in my mind

And I have to keep moving somehow

Can I even hide in a place

Where Thanatos* can’t find me  

Can I even stop living 

Because it’s living that will kill me

So I leave this morning and I think of you

And hope I return home soon

That the asphalt won’t be my final bed

That the highway won’t lead to my tomb

© Ruby Neumann 

Poet’s Note

Written January 7, 2024.  Thinking today of the human road kill that has left a mark on my life.  I can’t even look at a splattered bug on my windshield and not think of them.  It pains me to think that every day we do things that can take us out, because we remember those who were taken out by doing the same thing.  I have skydived and bungee jumped… and it’s driving my truck that is the greater risk to my life.  

* Thanatos is the greek God who escorted people from the place where they died to the underworld, the realm of Hades.  

Message

What unseen baby do I submit to the slaughter

Oops!

… to the analysis of a poetry contest. 

My poems are my children.

Created from the emotional sweat of my life.

Their veins move the blood born of my tragedy and tears.

How then can I give any of them away to be poked and prodded

by someone who has not witnessed those tears? 

Why must I be tempted to participate?

For Money?

For Fame?

For Accolade?

And then to give my words away and my name doesn't go with them.

How lonely they will be.  

Robin Williams come back to life and remind the world that it is all…

"EXCREMENT!" 

That poetry is meant to be savoured, not sawed.

No, I will not surrender the sons and daughters of my emotions to be slaves anymore! 

***

 

Then what is this?

Is this not a new child?

Is this not an offspring born from my anger?

Maybe… but more than a poem, this a message.  

Let this be the child that willingly goes into battle 

to save her siblings from humiliation and death.  

© Ruby Neumann

Poet's Note:  

Written on October 24, 2023… in response to an invitation to submit a poem on line to a World Poetry Contest out of Ireland for the Moth Magazine.  The deadline for submission is New Years Eve.  

Dec 31, 2023:  I guess I'm not submitting this poem to the contest.  I might have had it been easier to process payment.  So I will publish it here and give it a home among it's "siblings".  

This year hasn't been much of a poetry writing year.  It's been a puzzling year, so I took a picture of puzzle pieces I arranged into the word "poetry", so that they would meet together here.  Poems are puzzles and puzzles are poems.  So maybe I am still "The Precious Poet"... even though I am also "The Precious Puzzler" 

Wind blow death away

Wind blow death away 

I will sit and listen to the voice of one lone rooster 

This morning his voice matters 

Because this day will be his last 

© Ruby Neumann

Poet's Note:  Written August 26, 2023. 

I wrote this poem on a Saturday morning.  I was overnighting at my friends place, and on the Saturday schedule was a butchering event.  We had set up on Friday evening, and she was having some friends over to help her butcher about fifteen chickens.  That Saturday morning before the sun was even up, I sad on the deck and the rooster was doing his morning calling.  He had no idea that it was his last day.  He just sang like he sang before.  Maybe it was grief  or just the awareness that life sacrifices so life can continue.  I just sat and listened to the rooster and let him sing his last song with a listening ear.  

White Wave

She stands firm on the ocean's edge

With her feet buried in the sand

She watches the waves pour in

Kissing the land

Enamoured by the mystery

The movement on the shore

Wonder is painted on her heart

As she longs for more

Her mother named her "White Wave"

Not knowing one day she would find

A love and passion for the waters

That would bless her soul and her mind

The warmth of the sun

Caresses her skin

As she breathes

She feels Spirit within

Her hope lies not in

What she feels or sees

She looks beyond to 

Something more real

She walks to the water

The waves wash her feet

Her journey here with us

Is now complete

         * * * 

"White Wave" 

Go and be free

We will miss you

We will grieve

But your love remains here with us

To grow and bloom

In our hearts, for you

There will always be room. 

© Ruby Neumann

Poet's Note: 

Written  July 21, 2023 

  

The name Jennifer comes from Welsh name "Gwenhwyfar" which means means "White Wave"  

It seems fitting for a woman who loves warm places, ocean beaches and the water found there.  

This is the poem I wrote for my sister.  She breathes no longer.  So many stories circulate as to what or where she is now.  But as the song says... I will find her footprints in the sand, I will find her voice in the white waves that lap on the shores of whatever lake or ocean I find myself at.  As I post this... it is August 4, Hawaii time... (technically the fifth, but whose keeping track).  August 4 is her son's birthday.  It's been six and a half years since our tears and my sad poems  started because of him.  This poem was written three days after her motorcycle accident.  The day my big sister died.  

Why's and Worms

There’s a book that hasn’t been written

There are children I didn’t have

There is life that hasn't been lived

And I’m responsible for that

There are places of magnificent beauty

That my eyes will never see

There are dreams yet unrealized 

And that is all on me

But the rain it comes and the rain it goes

And I breathe another day 

I ask myself why it matters

And is there a better way

Why are there so many children

And why do lovers make more

Why does the Earth keep spinning

As if there’s a reason to keep spinning for

Today as I create this poem 

I’m walking in the rain

Collecting worms for my compost

And to keep from going insane

Why does each worm matter to me 

When so often I feel that I don’t

There may be answers to my questions

But to look for them I won’t

So I’ll keep walking and keep looking

For each worm that comes my way

And hope that they help me compost my thoughts

And not just my organic waste

© Ruby Neumann

Poet's Note: 

Written June 15, 2023

One of my favourite activities in the spring and summer is "worming".  When we have a significant amount of rain, the earthworms leave the earth and find their way onto paths of the concrete jungle I live in.  I go with a pail, water and a fork and collect as many worms as I can find and give them a home in my compost.  I figure it is a win-win situation for both of us.  I get my compost worked down and they get fed for the rest of the summer instead of dying a horrid death on the street.  Some days, like today, the water soaked streets find me with my worming pail for therapeutic reasons.  

When I am done my walk, I look in the pail and see how the worms have twisted themselves together, much like my thoughts and questions do in my mind.  Big ones, little ones... all messed up together.  Maybe there is no separating them, maybe all I can do is dump them in the compost of life and let them do their work.  

Bubbles

My opinion doesn’t matter

It’s what I tell myself 

My way of seeing the world

Is best left on the shelf

It’s my job in life it seems

To let others have their say

My discoveries, my deductions 

Will only get in the way

There are bubbles all around me

That could pop if I even tried

But what would I do with the broken bubbles 

And the ones who lived inside 

© Ruby Neumann

Poet's Note:  Written March 24, 2023

I woke up feeling something and realized that there are often no fixes to those feelings. I wish I didn't feel responsible in maintaining the bubbles all around me, at great cost to my own understanding.  Nothing I find valuable in this world has gone unnoticed and even unpublished.  But those voices don't seem not threatening to the bubbles flying around me.  I feel that only I have the pin that can burst them, so my silence feels like a better choice than being authentic.  This is a painful place to live.  I wish the love I get from the bubble dwellers would be enough.  Sometimes it isn't.  I understand the value of most of those bubbles to the survival of the indwellers.  It is why I bite my tongue so much.  It's not enough for me to say, "This is how I see the world.". I don't trust it's enough for them.  I would rather hurt than cause them pain.  I just don't know if that is love.  

Today I bring you flowers

Today I bring you flowers

What might seem for Mother's Day

But more so, I bring you flowers 

To send my love your way

I've always brought you flowers

From my garden or Mother Earth

It seems that flowers best describe

The woman who gave me birth

A flower's beauty is unique

Each blossom from another

Together they make the garden

Made up of every mother

Born from the earth

Emerge to the sun

This is the treasured journey

Of a mother, most treasured one

A mother longs to have 

Each child walk behind

But she loves harder the one

Whose own path must find

So today, I want to thank you

For the hard love you chose to give

For it stretches across a great divide

And now in my heart can live

I may never be more like you

Than a simple home grown bloom

But in this flower, I see you

And in your heart where you've made room

You remember the autumn 

When I buried all you gave

But in spring something emerges

From that dark and painful grave

The love we share never died

It is the breath that brings the new 

Mother, today I bring you flowers

To say "I'm okay because of you" 

© Ruby Neumann

Poet's Note: 

Written May 10, 2023

May 10, 1987 was Mother's Day, and it was the day of my graduation from high school. That day, after I came off the stage, I brought a single rose to my mother.  I have been bringing my mother flowers since I was a small child.  I saw beauty in nature and I saw beauty in her… the two always went together.  

Maybe only my mother knows how much pain my path in life has caused her.  Her love stood against every storm I sent her way.  Today, I am not the dream she once had, but I am the daughter she will always have and will always love.  For that I am grateful, and as the last line in the poem goes… I am okay because of her. 

Poet's Note Continued... May 14, 2023:  These are the flowers I brought my Mom today.  I hand delivered them to her church with a copy of the poem.  Five tulips, a sprig from my emerging lilac bush, some blooms from my saskatoon patch and some pussy willows.  

On the Side

once I was 

on the inside

spending my time 

    with companions of 

arrogance

indifference

certainty

fear 

shame

and then I was 

on the outside

alone with 

more fear

more shame

feeling abandoned

inside

outside

These are not places 

    I want to dwell anymore

Where can I be 

    where fear and shame 

        are not my constant 

            companions

On the side

Just the side

Not in or out

Oh, to be on the side 

    of the people I love

Oh, to be on the side 

    of the people I have yet to love

To be on the side 

Observing

Listening

Learning

Embracing

Inviting

Sharing

Discovering

Laughing

Loving

© Ruby Neumann

Poet's Note:  Written April 15.  

I am trying to encapsulate a mix of where I am, where I want to be and where being thrives, makes sense, and is the most beneficial for my well being and the well being of those around me.  What does it look like to ditch the borders, the clubs, the restrictions and just be?  What would it feel like to embrace those around me without wondering how they will contaminate me?  How do I mark each step toward this "place of being"... in a world so opposed to it?