Prayer to My Muse

(As part of The Artists Way workshop I took, we were asked to write an Artist's Prayer. So here is mine.)

I pray to Source and with all your many masks of Gods, Goddesses
and muses.
And I implore you my muse.

I ask for your inspiration for words to express the inexpressible.
I pray for understanding for that which I do not understand
but feel in some illusive obscure corner of my consciousness
just beyond feeling.

Give me the acceptance
for what is
acceptance such that
if it is only
my rotting corpse I can offer
that I will stink proudly and profoundly
in its offering.

I pray to be always reminded
that darkness
gives birth,
often painfully to light;
for this is the dance, the play
of the Ying and the Yang

Give me the strength to experience what I feel
no matter how wrong it feels.

I pray for peace amongst the
storming angry crowds
in my mind
pounding and hacking at me
with their axes and curses
so that I may gently stand aside
to let you
flow through
and dance with me.

I pray that I may express in words, song and form
that which is the voice of Awen
and the inspiration you whisper in my soul
and that it will be understood
by those who see and hear it.

I ask you,
my muse
to embrace me
make love to me
as my soul intertwines
with you and I taste
once again your
epiphanous lips.

Let me go complacently
as I walk often blindly
amongst impossibilities
surrounded by the jeering
possible possibilities
shouting from my thoughts.

Let your magic shine through me
into a world where magic
has long since been declared
dead and banished from existence.

Though my mind and eyes
see only illusions
let me brush away
with my heart
the realities
that try to smother them.

Let my lips, my pen, my fingers
speak the unspeakable
though a myriad of voices
scream SILENCE,
You fool!

I pray that your words
songs and expressions
will touch and be as cherished
by the souls of others as they are
by me

I pray for seed, water and good soil
with which to plant and tend my dreams
I ask for the perseverance to nurture them
during the long dark times
before the first green sprouts
peak though the cold spring soil.
I ask for unyielding devotion to my dreams
and for my works as they unfold.
I pray also for unattachment
that I will joyously let their fruits drop
when they have ripened
and grown to maturity.

I ask for the acceptance of those times
when I am touched so deeply by you
that only silence
can be painted on the canvas;
times when our love making
is so private that
it could never be shared.

Help me to not feel abandoned
when my art is only
the tears of joy wept
when I hear your music played
or see your majestic beauty
unfolding before my eyes
and I am but the spectator.

I pray that you sit with me
in moment
and that I will remember always
you are there
arm around my shoulder
whispering softly in my ear.

I pray to remember to slowly exhale
and let go completely
opening my mind and heart
so your breath may fill my chest
and I may sing your song
in whatever voice you
have given to me.