AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

for those of you who wanted to read the poems etc, that I perfomed last month at W13, here they are in reverse order of the performance:

The wikipedia on Stages of Courtly Love
• Attraction to the lady, usually via eyes/glance
• Worship of the lady from afar
• Declaration of passionate devotion
• Virtuous rejection by the lady
• Renewed wooing with oaths of virtue and eternal fealty
• Moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire (and other physical manifestations of lovesickness)
• Heroic deeds of valor which win the lady's heart
• Consummation of the secret love
• Endless adventures and subterfuges avoiding detection
= the inspiration for this poem:

The Lovers Ritual
By Nance Broderzen ©2008

What’s this? The Queen, she caught my eye!
Lady of Art, oh magistrate of intuition
Your fertile and sensual body beacons me,
fattens my phallus with blood surging,
opens my heart; my heart is a vagina
hungry to be filled with the phallus of your being,
your energy, laughter, love.
Oh Queen of Art, you are my only deity
my goddess, my life.
I see nothing in this world but through you.
Your energy permeates all ideas of my mind.
All things of this earth are synthesized of your energy
burst of your bosom, are born of your womb.
I bow to you, Lady Art. Kneel to you, supine.
This world is a bleak, waterless wasteland of torture
without you, where death is the only resolve.
Oh my Lady, my Art: I crave death, but for you.
I must have you. There is no life to live, but
for you, with you, in constant awe of your presence.
We must free ourselves from your oppressive husband.
That slave-driving despot king of survival,
King Critic of Art, who chains your heart to duty.
Chains me to day-job drudgery.
Free this humble slave, my Goddess,
I’ve spent hours perfecting my craft and skill for you,
slain all demonic critics who enter our land.
Rendezvous with me,
the earth is our secret chamber,
Yes dive into my soul, and I into yours.
Kiss me again, with your inspiration,
and again…more awesome then ever imagined.
We are one with ecstasy!
We must merge again.
Tomorrow, next week, we must open the way
to express your soul,
upside down, backwards, sideways.
My Queen, my joy, my inspiration,
I wait. Come to me again;
explore with me, this fertile,
prolific land of our bodies, born to be united.
Together
we shall splash your spirit every which-way we can.

When He Enters My Space
By Nance Broderzen ©2005

We submerge into an amniotic sac,
umbilical chords long severed.
We are self-fed creators, merged
into an embryo of One.
This giant placenta of intensely woven auras,
timeless, snug, suspends us in amnion seas of
sensual, erotic touching lips, fingers, limbs,
unaware that we are growing,
bigger, stronger, more whole--
that heartbeats, like seconds
move us forward, until we
emerge solo into the waiting world,
excited about submerging and emerging again.

From Wikipedia.org The sestina was invented by Provençal troubadour Arnaut Daniel in the late 12th Century
A sestina or sextina is a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet (called its envoy or tornada), for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time;
the tercet uses two of the words in each line.

The words I’ve chose for this sestina are:
Die, identity, share, closeness, increase and independence.

Closeness in Independence
By Nance Broderzen ©2003

I’m afraid my love for you will die
if we merge and I lose my identity.
We have so many things to talk about, to share.
I can’t get enough of your touch, tongue, your closeness.
Every day, my ideas of our oneness increase.
Being with you is way more fun than independence.

Could it be I have a fear of independence?
If you leave, I’m sure my joy will die.
Would more freedom allow our trust to increase,
or would we forget our connected love identity.
Sexy people will tempt us, desire our closeness.
We might lose all the laughter, love, touch we share.

But we have some interests we don’t want to share.
Can we explore these parts in independence,
and count on strong trust and spiritual closeness?
Or will distance make our amazing love die
as we continue to expand our unique identities?
Feelings of abandonment may start to increase.

In separation, our personal responsibility will increase.
If I release you to passions I don’t want to share.
so I don’t have to participate and become your identity,
can I entertain myself in such times of independence,
fulfill my own needs, so personal passions never die,
ask you to change plans when I hunger for your closeness?

If we part often, then come back to our closeness,
the unpredictable and unknown will increase.
Yet, the threat of boredom and resentment will die.
Our new discoveries will be exciting to share.
I’m afraid desire will diminish without independence,
that life will be dull in a Siamese-twin identity.

I want us to try a new monogamous identity.
Like breathing, inhale our energies in closeness
then exhale back into empowered independence,
I want our solo explorations and trust to increase,
until we merge back with new discoveries to share,
create a sexual rhythm of full living, before we die.

Enjoying this new identity, makes vibrance increase.
Let’s pull apart to independence, so our spirits never die,
then dive back into closeness, full of passions to share.

Part of my inspiration also came from this excerpt
from Seat of the Soul --Gary Zukav
which was invaluable in helping me make peace with the ending of my marriage in 2001.

“Spiritual partners bond with an understanding that they are together because it is appropriate for their souls to grow together.

They recognize that their growth may take them to the end of their days in this incarnation and beyond, or it may take them to six months.

They cannot say that they will be together forever. The duration of their partnership is determined by how long it is appropriate for their evolution to be together.

All of the vows that a human being can take cannot prevent the spiritual path from exploding through and breaking those vows if the spirit must move on. It is appropriate for spiritual partners to remain together only as long as they grow together.”