CLOSE THE CIRCLE

 

 You won’t find yourself

Until you have found God.

You won’t find God

Until you have found yourself.

Close the circle.

 II

When you find life,

Realizing it within yourself,

When you have found the way,

Then you will know the Way is in you.

Close the circle.

 III

When you keep sifting for the truth,

You will see find it looking through you.

It hasn’t been recognized for eons.

But when the Wheel that has made

Countless rounds, weaving your story,

Makes its last round, it reveals your glory.

Close the circle.

 IV

When your thirst finds itself satisfied,

You will know that the water was inside.

You will have wandered through many deserts,

You will then see fountains there all the while.

Close the circle.

 V

When you have shoveled all the deserts’ sands,

You will find nourishment for many lands.

When you find exactly what you’re looking for,

“Behold, the Beast inside!”

Then you will be looking at YOU.

Close the circle.

VI

In your dreams, you see sublime, then frightening images

That disturb many of your waking hours.

In your dreams, you often run from bestial creatures.

Or you long for celestial waters to cover you.

Close the circle.

 VII

You peer into self-created corridors of darkness,

Straining the Soul's ear as the little bird sings.

Taxing the mind’s eye. Hush. The little one sings.

She sings such lovely, harmonious melodies

From somewhere far away yet very nearby.

Far away, yet near, somewhere, within the soul

 VIII

When you have finally found her,

You will then be at the end,

The beginning of your quest.

Your zest is the quest for life.

The little bird will then be able

To spread her wings and fly.

Close the circle.

 IX

When she is miraculously

Liberated from the cage

That your mind has trapped

Her freedom in,

Then you will understand

The origin of your dreams.

And you will understand

The many, many, many suns.

Close the circle.

 X

When you sometimes feel like

Death is near, no, here now.

Ready to overtake you,

To replace your life with it.

You wonder why you feel a

Strange exhilarating joy at

The possibility of death, a

Stepping-stone, life, death;

Death, life.

Close the circle.

XI

Such alien and familiar

Subliminal melodies she sings.

They thrill you like they are your

Songs, songs you have sung.

Having gotten lost in the

Maze of misinterpreting life,

You neglected to cultivate what

Has always been the lyrics of the soul.

Close the circle.

 XII

But when you struggle and pry

On the wrong doors,

She faints from loving sorrow,

She falls to the floor.

The flour of your soul. But she is

Always revived by a Power

That is her own. She is the reigning

Queen; she is the Queen of the Soul.

Close the circle.

 XIII

She scratches sometimes just to

Get your attention.

When you find yourself taking

The wrong roads.

She’s rising to break free. Set her free

From the cage of ignorance.

From sheer grief, she falls to the

Floor, disturbing the soul.

Close the circle.

 XIV

The bird sings her woeful melodies;

She is song. She must sing.

She will sing; she is Queen. She is

Faithful, dutiful, beautiful.

She must sing. You cannot live

Without song in the soul.

She occupies her place regally.

She is guardian of the soul.

Close the circle.

XV

When in the beginning you started

Your very long, yet short,

Journey to where you are going –

Where you have already been,

You have the answer then to

What you are looking for.

You left your answer on your journey

That will bring you to it again.

Close the circle.

 XVI

The point in the journey from

Which you began

Is the point in the journey

Where the Prodigal Son ends.

The end is the beginning, and

The beginning is the end.

The circle of life is LOVE.

You will meet yourself again.

Close the circle.

 XVII

Your destination is your

Beginning; find it again.

When you find it, you will be

At the beginning again.

When you find the beginning in

Making your rounds in the circle,

You will see the One in whose image

You are made, the images you have seen.

Close the circle.

 XVIII

You will know the riddles that you

Can interpret in your dreams.

You will know the abominable characters

That disturbed your dreams.

When you come to know who is in the

Middle of the circle,

You will know why, then, and you, too,

Will sing what the lady bird sings.

 XIX

When you have opened the portal

Resident in the Soul,

Then, you will know and understand

What makes you sometimes feel so old.

The answers enlarged themselves

But remained untold,

Because they were answers to a

Question, which question is Soul.

Close the circle.

~~Mary Frances Handy (Before-1982)

(Mary Handy Moore)

MISTY, NASTY, GHASTLY MYSTERY

Today, the world is misty.
The world outside is nasty.
The ghosts inside are ghastly.
How to uncover the mystery?

I wish I could see more clearly.
I wish I understood what I heard.
I wish it didn’t give such a scare.
I wish I could dare.

Sheets of ice unfold upon a sordid sea.
Heavily smudged as a soiled quilt.
Having eyes yet failing to see.
Caught up in cold, wet-hot clutches.

Going down into secret madness.
Sinking unwillingly into such
Has the makings of much sadness.
No light, no will; no, not much.

Going down, there is a ray of light!
Gone down, it is a foolish thing.
Down in the abyss, try to take flight!
But deep within are atrophied wings.

Time is wasted in useless regret.
The heart is weakened by needless stress.
The mind withered by agonizing fret.
The whole of it is an unholy mess.

~~Mary Frances Handy (pre-1982)

(Mary Handy Moore)

THEY ALL DIED ON EASTER SUNDAY, JESUS ROSE ON THE SABBATH DAY.

Following April 19, 2026, after 31-year-old Shamar Elkins of Shreveport, Louisiana, took the lives of his seven children and a cousin, all young children, and then either killed himself or was shot by authorities, I found this poem pinned to a clipboard waiting to be added to my notebook again. It was written decades ago. The past week brought us together again. Over the years, when I’d come across this poem in my notebook, I’d wonder sometimes what incident or circumstances inspired it. I put it down to the knowledge of mental illness in my own family, which has brought much heartache to us in ways nobody shares or talks about, which means in some cases that “it didn’t happen,” but it did.

 Also, after reading every entry I can on his Facebook pages, attempting to get more clarity about this darkness that overtook a whole family and is causing torment to a whole community of mourners, I am understanding more about it. Origins. I’ll self-talk in writing about this more at another time.

 The children’s names and ages. Say their names:

SHAMAR ELKINS’ CHILDREN WITH WIFE Shaneiqua Pugh Elkins

• Jayla Elkins, 3
• Shayla Elkins, 5
• Kayla Pugh, 6
• Layla Pugh, 7
• Markaydon Pugh, 10

SHAMAR ELKINS’ THREE CHILDREN WITH CHRISTINA SNOW

• Sariahh Snow, 11
• Khedarrion Snow, 6
• and Braylon Snow, 5

 Say his name if you honestly can. (But by grace there go I):

 Shamar Elkins. Thank him for his service. He was hopeful and prayed to God about it to the end. But, like beloved Whitney Houston, he was not strong enough in faith and lost his battle, but not the war.

No Luxuries Allowed

Bring all but luxuries, treasures, and money.

All those are his; he has no need for it.

Wealth buys things; bring yourself, contrite.

Self didn’t come by the power of money.

It was created by the power of God.

Bring all you have, the soul, before the altar.

In the inner light, you cannot falter.

In the presence of the all-knowing father

You need only bring the Son, the soul.

God receives his son with no reservations.

Where the son is instructed in righteousness.

And having received, freely gives of itself.

 ~~Mary Handy Moore

The Warning Came in the Morning

 

The message came

Early in the morning.

It came in the

Form of a warning.

 

One who is prone

To blow things off

Would have missed the

Urgency of the cough.

 

The message came

Early in the morning.

It came in the

Form of a warning.

 

 

EARLY MORNING PRAYER

“Do you pray always, Mary?”

Yes, Lord, always, working

Hard lest I faint. If I faint, what

Will the end of my children be?

What will the end be of the testimony

My Ancestors left behind for me

To live out, to prove true, to elongate

And to propagate among the airy minds

Of those I love, who love me, and those

Who don’t even know me, and let it sink

Down to the fleshy hearts. Offering love, one

To another. Praying for peace in every soul,

Like links in a chain, from one soul to the

Next, being that all souls are connected

To Your heart unless they fall away; forgive

Them, O, Father, I pray. You rejected us,

Father, so that you could ensoul, graph,

Include those without, within the Plan you

Had from the beginning. Had you left us in

Mire of our own creation, we would not be,

We would be no more a people in a godless

World, carrying knowledge of life and death

Within us and around us, hovering above our

Head, which some can’t see, no being aware,

Awake. Sometimes, it doesn’t feel very fair

That You require us to pray for those

Who don’t pray, who won’t pray for us,

Who pray against us, who forsook and

Forsake us in this system. You gave us

The power to be ourselves and in that, heal

One another if we will. We also abuse power

To our utter hurt. But those are who our

Ancestors prayed for. Today, we must pray

For our ancestors, for us, and them. When

We have defeated every enemy within,

Awareness of that will break every yoke,

All chains, and rectify past, present, and

Future drug-induced failures that cripple

Your people, as our ancestors fought

Against before us.

Yes, Lord, I’m praying, for then, now, and

forever. And when all of this is done, we will

know as we are also known. Thank You, and

Thank You again and amen.

~~ Mary Handy Moore

Without Light, Empty Shells Won’t Repent

HIM

He didn’t know them,

Therefore, he didn’t care

That he killed anonymous people.

He had no remorse, not being capable of it.

He loves the thrill of killing, being a killer.

He loves playing Russian Roulette,

Being the thrill-seeker that he is.

Thus, killing innocents does not upset him.

THEY

They have no character,

Not even a modicum of decency;

So how can they be moral?

Morality evolves in humans,

Else they fail to become that—

Beings unworthy of the name.

For what is a human shell

When the lumen, spurned, rejected,

Withholds the soul’s own light?

The human soul must have a spark

In the human body. Lumen, light.

As the heart, the mind, the emotive

Power evolves within the body,

These refine us when we’re led aright.

The seed, star, evolves every soul.

Yet a fire, light, un-nourished, flickers out.

And the lumen never becomes a flame or a sun.

~ Mary Handy Moore 

 Everything

Everything has a course to run.

Every road has a crossroads.

Every inbreath has an exhalation till

Every breath has a cessation.

Every evening has the following morning.

Every sunrise has a sunset.

Every created thing will sleep when

the Kingdom of Time comes to fold

all up in the Mother's Bosom.

To wait ... for another Eternity.

~ Mary Handy Moore