From an Upper Floor

Our Hearts Shout Our Validity . . . .

Mar 10, 2024. . . it seems I repeat and repeat. We are not a stupid people, yet why do we act so? I received an email from a daughter which was written on my forehead. (it seems so anyway because I remembered it immediately. words were thus. . . no matter how broad the hammer nor how hard we pound, we cannot put common sense in stupid people!!! ) To say humans disappoint me has me wondering what I saw as their potential to alibi them so long? To say I need a psychiatrist? I have had them for half my life. My beloved Dr. Heinz told me he had met a patient like me 4 or 5 times in his life but only in medical books. He corrected himself when he said Europe was the only place to accept me, because he said he was conscious of too many changes even in his Vienna.

He was conscious acutely of character and would not hesitate to shout BETRAYAL when told of contradictory behavior. Behavior changes are only as good as observable changes with no remorse and regret when the bar for change is deliberately lowered with an I’m only human excuse. It doesn’t hold water, sorry. Please don’t take my time. I have so little left.

Will our daughters who become mothers of sons need to shout that the behavior of a rotter wordly high official does not give an okay to their son to behave like him! Because I said so! And I am YOUR MOTHER!

July 8, 2021 . . I need to put this down before it goes into the forget pile. As most things do nowadays. But this I think is most important because we as a nation are becoming most distrustful as well as unforgiving about differences within even our families. It is a despairing situation, and I worry about the children growing up within families that don’t allow even for the genetic mayhem happening randomly with no ill intent.

My favorite philosopher, Ashleigh Brilliant, would no doubt label my perspective and me as God’s Mistake. And the psychiatrist whispers that I am lucky to be alive. But you see, I think this country is the most magnificent Rehab Unit in the world. We are all here because of courage to vacate situations which were the death of all of us. Whether the conditions were familial, or country, or monetary or healthwise; no matter. They were not life giving but life taking.

I read I had awakened from a teaching dream taking most of the night and written down all the memorable elements. And ended with these last words my brother Stanley saying ‘it is enough for here and now. Let’s just get this life, this world, right.’

And following that segment, I wrote. . . (there were faces that passed by me, from handsome and beautiful to strange and weird and then to beautiful again. It was a most fluid scene. Now the thought occurs that this is what life is about. That fluidity, the ability to see change and not be averse to it, not be repulsed by what life is in all of its worlds.)

I scribed the teachers April 17, 2018. . . It would seem that repulsion should be part and parcel of what you saw. Yet the introduction is given where you are and the majority of people have their favorite prejudices. They avoid what it is that is not like them. Whether color or patterns of behavior, etc. Yet we realize that for civil life to go on unobstructed there must be a mean behavior attended to. There must be a behavior which will not obstruct human justice or civil life, mannerly life. Else as you say, civilization goes down the tube. What must be allowed in civil life must also be accepted within the individual.

Because there are more problems adherent to the new norms one will encounter in other dimensions. Whether burn victims, handicapped or malformed individuals can be seen as spirits and soul on a pilgrimage, will commend the viewer to a better understanding when the other dimensions come into view. It seems a small way to begin, but begin we must at all levels.

So simple yet it seems like arguing by the high church as to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin! Pointless yet similar to the descriptions by Frank Herbert of the Dune Face Dancers. And the world dimensions of the Shikasta by Doris Lessing.

Yet looking at the haunting videos of the January 6 Insurrectionists of our Capitol Building, revealing the aged faces and bodies not having learned the respect nor knowledge for the nobility of the building housing the revered character of our Constitution, devastates.

I still write the truth that what we teach within the walls of our homes to the first years of our young, will determine the sacredness of the prophet’s peace on earth and what will be eaten at mankind’s tables. Whatever language we speak,

the heart will shout its validity.

March 11, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
Inherent Galaxy Laws Not To Be Broken. . .

(I was awash this morning with no peer to call because I have outlived the handfull of heart friends and felt isolated. No one to share my thoughts in mind that rose to show that within our lives have been peers saying sure things requiring no ancient researching. I had in my notes the following which I found quickly. I compare my head often to a computer hard drive in my propensity for stored information. Keeping notes in steno notebooks later put in journals was establishing ease in retrieving the notes. It seems I have notes that have hard copies in poetry, in journals, in stenos; meaning the backups have backups. I guess I made up for not remembering what I said to whom.)

Perhaps Doris Lessing and I would not be close friends because of conscience. But I can and do admire her brilliance with the written word and some of her ideas. Two things of value stand out. The first is of long standing and I spent hours locating this source only to find it at midnight in a steno book I happened to pick up before closing shop.

From her book Sirius. . . Laws are not made. They are inherent in the nature of the galaxy. .of the universe.. . . After a lifetime of independent study, another of my conclusions is that laws are inherent in the nature of all life. It is folded into a conclusion I had reached early on that man is basically good because man is basically god, (divine). If this were not so we long would have gone down the tube and stayed dead never to rise.

There is the thought that good can be derailed for a time, but to dismiss and be murdered forever cannot happen; because of the inherent good, basic good in life itself. As the saying goes, god don’t make no junk. Because of our narrow focus, our conclusions are not fully realized . When the larger picture is ours, different conclusions will also be ours.

Standing where we are, whether the terms are God or Life, Yahweh, or Father or Science it all yields truth as far as we can acknowledge, especially if our actions show that our lives bear witness to what we espouse. And when our actions enhance humanity, there is little argument.

The next quote I found last night in my researching Lessing. “Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.” ((3.5.24 hear that supreme court after yesterday’s ruling?. ))

This is a loaded statement because most people live lives nested in fear. And the fear takes form in job loss, prestige, threats, money, and whatever turns us immobile when our buttons are pushed.

It takes a courage unbelievable to have the knowledge of how to correct a problem and yet to work around the known frailties of humans involved to prevent an eternity of more anguish to shovel. One’s own integrated knowledge can be managed and democracy chooses heroines and heroes.

We see a congress of able bodies leveled and paying homage to a whiny loud voice. For shame.

March 5, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
A Way For Me. . . when body balks. .bread for the day. . .

March 3, 2024. . . I do what is foreign to me now. I am putting with only some editing whole journal entries with feedback from my teachers. For those inclined to scoff at what is given, I say just try to do it. I came into this life with a foot still in my last world. To my good fortune, a bevy of brothers welcomed me and watched; where it came for me to think I was like others they saved me from calamity. Nearing a hundred years gives me license to speak without resorting to make believe or outright lies. On her deathbed my mother said I go out too far. Because I cannot depend solely on my skills now bodywise, I take the route straight from the written word. There is no human law that could bear the weight of cosmic trust, so questioning is futile. They know me. For what is yours to glean and learn, I bless. It gives me another chance to wake up from my world where nothing hurt. That is a nice memory. Take what is meant for you. Amen and amen.

August 28, 2020
Friday 11:48 a.m.

It is I, Veronica. Bless me as I enter and exit. Let me be the benediction on this day. I give my blessing to who feels the need. Amen and amen.Welcome. Speak. (It occurred to me this morning when I awoke at 4:30 to read again the article in poets and writers. The ending stayed with me and I needed to sort it out. It was attributed to Stephen King originally that art should support life and not the other way around. And I needed to see that again. But Life now must support art.

And to put today now in bas relief, we need art to support life in total. And we need for it to do that. Yet in today’s schooling and educational systems, art is cut out as a means to save money. What we are doing is taking away the food the spirit feeds on.True enough, the body must be fed, but what happens to spirit when it starves ? What we have is what we are viewing. The sensitivities of the human are neglected or are allowed to grow unrefined to the spiritual, emotional and psychic needs which then atrophy and disappear. Or the base survival instincts run rampant and violence becomes the mode of the day.

We see it and are party to it. It has become the normal for the times. The so called mannerly ways are given short shrift and though they have taken centuries to manifest and groom within the human, in short appalling time they are lost if ever to become part of the soul stuff anymore.

And yet who would argue in these times we should not feed the children, whatever their requirements? Who would allow their progeny to physically starve to death? And   yet I ask, should we neglect the spirit in these crucial times and lose what we have gained in our best of humanity?

I could give a blistering argument for life should be supporting the arts, the sculpting, the potteries and the paintings depicting the human struggles from the beginning of manifestation. The beginning of when we took physical form to salvage our growing need for expression. And it was that that led to our need for a way to use the hands and growing mind needing to make what was a nebulous form in mind to something in the hand to see.

For we had eyes that pierced the fog of mind needing to hold that something which was idea first taking form. I search for words that would give some feeling to what were ideas in mind that we put imaging to.

I wrote in 1982 and that was a long time ago. 38 years ago. My god how could I have lived with that knowledge for so long? But no one listened and because our livelihood depended on the public I was told to watch what I said.

I wrote. . .we wandered the universe in the beginning
and walked and talked and set to dreaming
how would it be if we blew our collective breath and
set a planet whirling?

If we lifted the shades of darkness
and let our pain for expression
burn hot enough to warm even the bleakest spot?

It breaks my heart to read this. We have paid the price over and over for forgetting where we came from and what drives our spirit.   And last night when I read the article saying that the reason we are writers is because we hope to regain our passion to follow what we know is Machiavelli’s letter to Vettori.

‘the evening being come, I return home and go to my study; at the entrance I pull off my peasant clothes, covered with dust and dirt and put on my noble court dress and thus becoming reclothed. I pass into ancient courts of the men of old, where being lovingly received by them. I am fed that food which is mine alone, where I do not hesitate to speak with them and to ask for the reason of their actions and they in their benignity answer me and for four hours I feel no weariness. I forget every trouble, poverty does not dismay, death does not terrify me; I am possessed entirely by those great men.’

I have said to those of my kin, when everyone goes to bed I get a second wind and take to my books. And it is within the solitude of my self I have the conversations and learn of great things .

And I write here this day that I read art should support life and give meaning to it all. We should find that life itself holds the meaning and art supports that meaning. I find that it does, it does. But I have not found those whose thinking reflects the meaning I find. And have ridicule in my naivete they say and don’t know what life is all about.

Yet the mixed signals is what takes life from those burgeoning with sensitivity and find none to hold sacred these leanings to give hope amid the storms. Not given. . . I turn over. . .)

Not given to much credence are you for what you glean from even the simplest words. Not everyone saw this in the article you realize. Not everyone. He sees it in his daughter but your mate did not see in his sons what you did and you struggled for how many years?

Veronica, everything you encounter comes back to this doesn’t it? The sensitivity of the soul to those things giving meaning to life. For it has none by itself. The gross has to be woven out and the meaningful woven in. It takes time. Time.

(and now we have to work again to put art back into life because living with a spirit that is sick is untenable. It proves the point that without art, without an appreciation of history, of literature, of art in its basic drawing, that of looking at where the charcoal drawings show what mankind has endured by looking at the cave walls, the early pictures of venturing out of the heavens onto the planet set whirling, manifesting ideas, trying out philosophies to capture society’s intents and learning from the failures, to hearing the finest notes in variable melodies, my god, the meanings of the fine carpenter, what are we doing to ourselves again? I cannot bear it. Cannot.)

Do something with the hands today. Pack up the hats. Get them into the mail. And come home Veronica, come home. You don’t have the energy to write the article for the poet magazine. It would be an eye opener to somebody but maybe with your blog it would? God girl, leave it to someone else. Just leave it. Bless and take some time for who you are. It has been a hard row to hoe.   We need some off time. Too much sorrow going and too many tears. Your classroom requires a strong back and shoulders. And yours are not capable at the moment. Lady go rest. Do what you do and take it to the bar. Amen and amen. Go

1238 words    1 p.m.

March 3, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
A Sanctuary Moment. . . last bird sings . . .

A sanctuary moment. . .

In looking back the words I hear in closing the front door are, be careful what you say. That was from the time I have memory forming words, being told in essence to stop talking . Even now, this late in the day I am told to stop and listen. Yet the feeling persists that I will reveal something that is untenable, unable to be viewed.

If not allowed to speak, I will implode. I have no malice aforethought nor a desire to break someone’s rice bowl from which he eats. I may enhance his knowledge or broaden his outlook, but my conclusion is the outlook is too narrow still, and needs broadening.

The feeling I pick up is that I will either embarrass or demand effort the other cannot meet. Am I right? And I will be wrong or misguided or even stupid. As long as no work is demanded that they change their belief systems I can be called anything. And I excerpt the following from my journals.

Because most of my circle relate only from who they are when they see themselves in the mirror in the morning. No matter where their night has taken them, nor what they perceive in the rare moment when life becomes other than what they have known the moment before, they dismiss that, discount it and say bizarre and finally deny it ever happened, and never realize it was their sanctuary moment given to rescue them from drowning.

And this is what a sanctuary moment is, isn’t it? Now in brief I will tell you what leads me here and why I need time in conference. . .

When I was going to the doctor and waiting for Jennifer to pick me up, I picked up my two self published books, Kiss the Moon and The Last Bird Sings . . . I did not want my new doctor to think I was a flake. The moment I picked up Last Bird, I stopped in track. My heart faltered and the words came. . . I am the last bird, aren’t I? all my siblings . . .7 of them. . . were gone and I was the last bird, and I sing my song to say how it was with me. No one thought my thoughts and no one’s beliefs were spoken out loud. My brothers knew I was different and they worried.

I thought it all was my effort, almost 70 years days and nights. Now I wonder the poem scribed with the words the rose will bloom in December I promise, and I do not make promises lightly . I thought I volunteered for this assignment but now I wonder are we chosen for what we do with our particular talents?

Thank you for your time so generously given. . . veronica

As I was closing, I chanced a glimpse at the below   journal entry, I had scribed ending the following . . . .

Feb 17, 2018
Sat 6:32 p.m.

This is why you have not sat and discussed what you already know. You are of one mind and no need anymore. We discuss all the time, your venture to us and we welcome you.   In time you come home and in time we list all grievances and also victories. We know the isolation you feel and we know too that once you are with us all, there is no going back. You will be home for good and nothing ever will allow you to be torn from where you do the most good and where your heart will never be at risk again. It has been a hard contract to fulfill. But it was done with appropriate and non regrettable behavior and we missed you sorely. Amen and amen.

(I finally located the poem Rose in December, (written Nov. 7, 1982) from my hard copy and include it now)

The Rose in December. . .

The first frost of winter
has caught the bud unaware. . .

But lo, the edges are burned at the fringes. . . .
closed tight and full. . .
The rose will bloom again in December, I promise.

Look to the bush along the fence,
its roots buried, frozen.

The upright branch will sponsor
the blooming rose. You will pluck it and know. . .

     I do not make light promises. . . .

February 27, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
TIME TO LISTEN . . . .

He was 4 years old and it was his third birthday party in two days.   And I said did you have a good time with your cousin?   She was not his cousin but someone he met waiting here to get born.   Where was that I asked.    Here he said in Etherall.

When I penciled a copy of our talk, I spent time searching unsuccessfully for this place.   Years later I found that what was intended was heaven’s Ethers.

There is a quality or talent in some that goes beyond what is considered common.   It is something within that allows them to trust a one who is safe, who will not hurt.   Four legged creatures these persons include quickly and they are seldom wrong.   If we are observant, it is the same talent but adversely in others, that makes them turn tail and run.

We make this decision to come to this planet to make a difference, to make a better life for all.   But we forget how much work it is.   It is a matter of belief systems and we hope ours is well integrated and not prone to attach us to other’s dogma.

It becomes a time to listen.

It is not as easy as it seems. Try to think, to place in mind a picture of a Being other than human.   We have our science fiction writers who give us caricatures of what they suppose we would accept.   The images in fact may be actual.   Consider that.

I had awakened from a nap that had a familiar feel to it one very cold day in March when we lived in the North.   I had a messed up knee and needed to lay the body down for awhile.   I knew the place of the dream though I could not name it if pressed.   It was not in this particular world or enclosure where I am.    But when I awakened I kept feeling my hands as if they were foreign to me.

Like my hands are miraculous.   I have been feeling them within each palm and my fingers had a sensation to them that was amazing. My fingers laced with one another and I was surprised at what they do.   And are they not a wondrous piece of work? With smooth and supple fingers that I had never appreciated before.

How long had it taken me to come to this minute where my hands seem like an intricate blueprint of some great mind. It had taken me a lifetime to note this. As I sit here and give houseroom to Beings other than human because we talk of other worlds, envision what you are able of how life in other worlds different than ours might be fashioned. What would life be like in a place where none of our essentials exist and bodies are like nothing we view in the mirror.   Yet soulful with intelligence struggling for expression where words have not been born.    A species of life with no name yet.    Was that our beginning?

There is unfinished work everywhere. If asked, would we be willing with our tools, whatever we have mastered to take only in mind upon transiting this Earth, to be one for the vineyards?    Or would we rush for the exit that would take us right back to where the toys are plenty?   And what if we find ourselves in a not so lush Eden as the previous trip?   We must stretch our thinking for the rules are changing.    We must in times of quiet give thought to where the Indwelling God will take us.

It is time to listen.

I later scribed. . . Your thought is that it is about belief systems.   Not really so simple, because it becomes murky. You are reminded that the world awards systems that it identifies.   The belief system that is built on one’s self, it berates as non-productive and uninvolved.   For the business of the world to get on, for the noble experiment what is man to stay off the cutting room floor, it must award the high profile.   But for man to survive the rip within, to keep him out of the hospital wards and off the public rolls, the thinker, the one who subjects himself to inner scrutiny, private scrutiny, had best stay around.

February 9, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
From My Heart’s Pocket . . .

Word reaches that there are issues with some of my posts that are unreal; that perhaps I don’t know how the real world works! I write what I know, not hope or pretend. As Lawrence O’Donnell commented on President Biden’s Inaugural, experience is not taught.

We always knew it, I think, just never applied it to ourselves. Seldom are we lauded for our experience, mostly they say that we learned things and are old for sure. Something you cannot teach as the saying, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

When I say we go to an earned place when we die, I know it. It has taken a long time for me to be upfront with memories and many of them are painful and not happy.

If life were not everlasting, I would follow the daffodil or if hard pressed, even the mushroom because they come up year after year after year. It has taken many lifetimes to learn what I know. (I edit today (2/1/24) and say my peer Susan Howatch, when returning to England and studying at Oxford, came away with knowledge that the great philosophers thought that humans cannot accept what Reality Is. There must first be giant steps taken for evolution to prevail its course. But how to teach when people run from what sounds like work? When you can’t teach experience, you think entertainment will?)

One of the catalogues of this past holiday had a printed shirt that took my interest. I paraphrased the words to say I read, I research everyday and I learn. Therefore I know some things. (not a lot, but some things).

I understand that heaven’s remedial classes are now instituted to get a head start on Dr. Jonas Salk’s Conscious Evolution. This is evolution not to survive because we have spent lifetimes learning how, but to evolve to a higher form of human potential, with the spiritual aspects of more compassion, empathy and the heart elements like love and the more stingy, sharing, what we know as well as what we have.

(Coming to mind is what an elderly did which I loved and highly praised. Teach me, please teach me how to do that! Haughtily she pulled back and said, but then you would know as much as I do! The 20 year old that I was felt as if slapped!)

I came dragging a foot from a world where learning was held sacred and have lived a functioning life here for almost a hundred years. Not easy . . but doable. But thinking I should wear a hazmat suit for protection from cynicism which may yet do me in.

(But I since learned that when coming to physical life to make a difference we hope, we withhold forgiveness because we think that the past still can be rewritten. The potentials are still seen which keep us working the program and can’t give up. Lost causes are an oxymoron to us.)

THE POET’S MEMORIES

Torn from an event
and placed in an incubator to breathe,
are poets expected to live.
Leaving a world incomplete,
they wander in vegetation
totally unfamiliar
and yet expected to survive.

And give rise to credence
in a world with no root,
where trees are shades
of others more vivid,
whose flowers whisper their names
in a forgotten language,
whose people are ghosts of livelier images,
all crowding the nimbus.

Where horizons are vast
and what eyes behold are stark lines
dividing two dimensional realities
pretending a depth that fools not a one.
Where snow sheds its stars
on a crystal night and the night becomes
a holy night eliciting unexpected
extravagances bestowing grace.

All grasped in a moment’s vision
to linger through worlds creating ulcers
by gnawing the viscera
with dreams not completed.
The poet’s pen
translates worlds of mean existence
from memories held
long in the heart’s pocket.

Translates the colors of those other places
where winds caressed and sun bathed
a skin unlike his own.

In another place and time he walks
and because he does

his memories give rise to an Other’s dream.

artwork by Claudia Hallissey

February 2, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
My Keys in the Palm of My Hand . . . . .

In reviewing decades of my life with my kaleidoscopic perspective, is a stressful endeavor. I was cautioned to go slow.   ( At 92, how fast can I possibly go at this time?)

Most people are given to wait until they are on the side where support friends already are. Or here and I laughed at this; when one can at least! look at the walls filled with awards as proof that one was diligent at least in showing up.

Still, loving this planet as I do and marveling yet, I was told that obstacles this difficult deserved the best world to recover.   Some things were lighthearted but not many.

I share some written excerpts of my life. Some you can relate to and some have your eyebrows shoot up. . . .

Take to Heart This Earth Planet Classroom. . . . .

I have been in a few rooms when some beloveds have been preparing to transit this world. Some have been hospital rooms where it has been calmer when attention is focused on what was happening and not being diverted from the one leaving our world.

I am grateful to those who felt safe with me to share their experiences in leaving this world and trusted me to understand what they were saying. I have been there when information went against beliefs held by others present and the words were ‘it’s the medicine talking’ or some religious salves they felt necessary.

When our David said they were calling his name with his presence required for work on the Intergalactic Council for Peace. . . he was alert and not dreaming. It would have been cosmic shortsightedness not to avail his caliber of knowledge when the need was acute and the service on hand.

We have seen unqualified people in high places requiring expert and precise knowledge. We are living the results of such a calamitous journey now. And how we rejoice to see learned ones called upon again for what we hungered.

I took David’s statement as truth of the Council because I had heard the topic discussed years before his hospitalization. And never by him but by people well versed in stellar knowledge.

When my mentor, the Nazarene stood on the rock and said his famous much rendered I will build my church speech that the Romans took and ran with, he also said in plain words that here on Earth we are the reflection of heaven and heaven the reflection of Earth, the what is loosed segment seldom repeated.

Take those words seriously because they are meant to be serious. There is no better place than here right where we are.   We are the reflection. We are it, sailors, we are it.

The only reason to make a difference in this world, altruism aside, (the true altruistic persons are few, if any) is with the difference we make in ourselves. When we come to this conclusion and know the reason, we will remember that the purpose of this Earth is to be a classroom.

Things are not going to change because the purpose is for us to change ourselves. And we hold that card. When we do, we are graduates to the Universe where there are places needing work.

Places are many. . . planets and worlds with names and no names but workers are few.   It’s like Ethics class where conscience line dries for public scrutiny. Nobody shows up. Will you?

A Belief System . . . .

It is a belief system designed
to hold together an idea.
It floats, this idea,
in the Sea of Tranquility
where the I of me resides.

Someday
I will suspend my belief
that holds me to
this place hiding
my jewels.

It is a beautiful spot
I have made
to hide those jewels
and no one will
find them.

They will be forever
hidden in a place
no one chooses to look;
the hearts and minds
of those who love
this earth with passion.

Surprised they will be
to see in the palm of their hand

the keys of the kingdom. . . .

January 29, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
tell me what it means. . . LIFE ADJUNCTS . . .

Life’s adjuncts. . . veronica

Stumbling on previous writings, i find they leave emotions awakened again. If they do this to me, they also do it to others. I find my thoughts would have had me selling my soul to have found someone like me on a journey similar which would have prevented much damage . where it has led me , i will soon find since my terminus is upon me.

I will make my latest thoughts that impact older writings because the twig bent had a history when I took form in these times. Vibes of this century have colored me with a psyche somewhat different and i hope with more intelligence. And why these differences had to be accepted in my core for me to continue.

I am life’s adjunct named . . . veronica and this is who i am . . . . .

         Tell me what it means. . .

With the leaking draft of the early consensus of the Roe v Wade controversy, suddenly confronting me are meanings of words and phrases I have used and hopefully explained my meanings. I truly don’t know if my meanings relate to what you think about the subjects I’ve written.

I would like to know what you think. Not what you have read that someone else has thought. No doubt it was the basis of your studies as well as mine. And then you have spent time in a quiet place and given yourself to the process of thought. Over time it helps us form conclusions as well as give more substance to other questions.

Learning is a full time work. It is what I hurry to when supper is over and private time engulfs with hours of personal freedom. Like I, you have taken off work clothes and in comfort admit to the night that you are ready. For what is a personal choice.

For me it seems minutes when I look at the clock and wondering what happened to the evening. And as I type this, the phrase `life everlasting’ has meaning for me and I wonder if you have given thought to it. I wonder what has been added to your understanding and where it has taken you.

Most of the people in my growing up life were Christians and said the Lord’s prayer every day and some times many times a day. Included might be life everlasting as taught in Sunday School and said in conclusion to the prayer. What meaning does it hold?

It was in a bushel of phrases with the likes of I remember and then, why do I remember whatever has haunted me? When I did my best, why was my life not working? Why was I crying and why were they fighting and arguing? The bushel was filling up fast with questions and also I was telling the big people why I did not believe what they said when I knew what I knew.

And when I came to life everlasting it had meaning for me and it began with forever and ever amen and amen. And that did not mean lying about on a cloud like many believed and were happy about. At least it seemed to me that they were happy.

So now I ask you what does life everlasting mean to you. And how you came to that understanding. Does it mean forever and ever for you? Let me know because I am interested. I don’t look for essays just a comment or two.

We have been friends for a long time and I value our friendship.

Don’t Stare At The Moon

Any farmer knows
you don’t stare at the moon too long.
You get a little soft in the head, they say.

What they really mean
is that magic overtakes you
and carries you to the place of green fields,
of orchards heavy with fruit
and cucumbers cultivated straight
as a shot of rye whiskey.

What they really mean is that the magic
will make you see fields to be seeded
and calves to be born
and worlds to be peopled.

What they really mean
is that you will fall in love
with your earth
and in awe watch the wheat weave its gold mat
right over your eyes.

It is a softness of the heart man fears,
for the myth must enforce
the hard head to blunt

the pain of life everlasting. . . .



January 19, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
THE LAST BIRD SINGS. . . .

The Last Bird Sings. . . .

A fact in nature changes as the person who perceives it.

The maxim states ‘A fact is enhanced by what is perceived. Depends on who is looking and seeing and what they are seeing. One does not see what one is not looking for. The person who sees a something will see that something fully enhanced as either a main subject or like an adjective.’

I was getting on a bus and there were two youngish girls ahead of me. The wind was gusting furiously. Someone in front of us loudly complained oh my hair! My hair! My Hair!   It was a time when longish hair was beginning to be accepted on both genders. Who is that asked one. Sounds like a girl! It’s a guy, said the other. A guy!

Knowing that cultural change began in the late 4o’s for me, given time you can see what the girls were thinking by who was perceiving the incident. The important thing for me was what I was looking for with what I had learned. Which was why I don’t jump to conclusions and it takes a lifetime to speak my truth. And I speak for a concern for children who have no words yet for feeling different: for little boys who want dresses and girls who want boy toys and throw dolls across the room.

These feelings are not permanent most of the times and pass, but otherwise can and do present problems requiring knowledgeable care. Susan Howatch, the author of the magnificent novels of English philosophical and religious books says the old philosophers did not think human nature was equal to accepting or could accept extreme variants such as this.

But we know other worlds do exist and with an accelerated process of reincarnation, and I can almost hear the intake of breath, yet Christians among us pray to life everlasting and give no thought to how everlasting.

The dead sea scrolls are evidence to the Nazarene shouting at the disciples when they asked where they go   The answer in anger was why do you ask when you never asked from where did you come?

Yet he says as the twig is bent so shall it grow and most never give thought as to bent meaning also before being born.

I know I repeat and continue to repeat yet I being born with a foot still in boot in my last world and memory of it in mind and habit. I thought I was like everyone else and did not see others being different. Of eight siblings I am the last one standing and like the last bird I sing my almost 100 years.

I was busy with commitments taking my heart and time because they were my present in heart and time.

There are no options when the road narrows to who time and where money. My brother Stanley said in jest? to me, sis, thank you(s), don’t buy no gas!   Now I find they were more like me but doomed not to talk.

Now there are more being born to this favorite planet with gentle habits and speaking of being happier in other genders. No one informed them that the reason they know this is that they remember when they were happier because of memories.

Being born other was part of learning to accept differences and learning how to be happy in other skins. Yes! how to be happy in other skins is part of the broader focus.

It was in other skin that I learned what to be cherished meant and learned that the circular and scroll saws in my hands brought utter joy to my heart.

There are too many politicians who do not want to help the troubled youngsters in their need to search. They want life as it was whatever that was after no doubt they chased the Native Americans from their lands.

All those who support youngsters to understand by giving medical and hopefully the broader scope of changing genders will be free to do so.. It will prepare them for greater things in the universe of worlds.

Not just this world, but maybe where we cannot identify the inhabitants except by their knowledge of us.

We must convince the worlds surrounding that we are peace loving and eager to learn. It may not be true right now but can we make believe and work at it until it is?

For almost a hundred years I have tried. Will you for just now? In the cradle of your heart? Please do.

(I have been fortunate enough to have had psychiatrists walking with me since I was in my thirties. It was not easy living with a different kaliedescopic perspective of the world which resulted in a lot of sneakers worn with big holes as I walked off my panic not to crash or create mayhem. But puzzling always when viewing political corruption nationally or globally, from where comes their political courage to sleep? Judge not harshly says my eldest son, with my answer being almost a hundred years is not thoughtless. I have been present aware and not asleep at the wheel I say. Almost a hundred years is not rash judgement.   Amen.)

art by claudia hallissey

January 2, 2024

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
Parent On Premises . . .

When my youngest was born and I realized I was the parent on premises, literately and figuratively, there were certain things in my belief systems that I knew and took possession of.

I owned the knowledge and its consequences, not verbally expressed but were my walking companions.

I wanted this knowledge to be part of our sons, that love and life on this earth was sacred and must be guarded. The only way was for me to be their example. That it would take every day of my life was not in my thought.

It was the food of my day and nights, now I see. What we feed our minds is what we become. I did not want my example to need explanation to someone they respected.

Any surety in teaching has to be with no lag in mind, heart and behavior. Not easy to be sure. This trinity, mind, heart and action must be evident to be effectual to the who of who you are.

You do not lose your ability to think differences nor potential. Deviations only create doubt and nullify all the fancy words concocted to justify ‘only human’.

Because we come into the present world with a history, it means histories are different. Yet the focus, the broader vision must include the greater potentials of all of us.

We must be open to learning what might be uncomfortable even for the teacher.

Albert Einstein said that we must understand time else we never understand the why of us, the who we are.

(Feb 1, 2018—I scribed . . We deal with linear measurement. It has stabilized the environment and made teaching easier. Children now being born are versed to the enth degree in other worlds where they are familiar, but here have difficulty with this Earth’s time element. We throw in the hodge podge of linear measurement which is kindergarten for them having dealt forever with simultaneous time.

So we insert the thought that all this has a connection. It is of utmost importance that the simultaneous worlds of time and events are still happening is essential to growth.

We have here the ability which you display to live almost to a hundred with the idea which has sustained you through the years. You know that simultaneous is what you do as you cross boundaries in worlds that have no name. You take events and artifacts from one culture and take them with you and display them with the artifacts of the world you are in. )

We are not without history. We know what we know. We can conjure what we aspire to but we must be free to explore what rises within us to plague, to remind us of what we came to do, to learn and make the difference to benefit all life.

I negotiate for a bit of time for some really fun stuff . I hope to send some felt ideas to the great granddaughters to create and also to know who flicked the lights on and off to wake me when my younger said he did not.

As I formed the question , the responding immediate comment indelibly on my mind was . . . there are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than were ever dreamed of in your philosophy. . . . .

My immediate response. . .thank you Shakes . . thank you. Ahhh men and amen. Life is everlasting.

December 18, 2023

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.