SOULBURGERS

SoulBurgers book is the wellspring of all Christina’s work. This verse narrative tells of a 15-year journey in soul, identifying psychological landscapes from rock bottom to personal freedom. The book opens with a 3,500-word introduction, framing the journey ahead. Following Nietzsche’s dictum, “you need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star,” SoulBurgers articulates universal emotional landscapes in simple, sculpted prose.

The vision for this book found its opening lines after Christina saw a drunken woman in a restaurant, who reminded her of herself, 5 years earlier.

Living Dead

A red cloche hat

Red lipstick

Red nails

Eyes pooled in sadness

I sat living a lie.

For the next 15 years, while she trained, studied, and worked as a psychotherapist, the artist identified and articulated other emotional landscapes and mapped her verse to the finest journey in soul - The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

Her vision for SoulBurgers book was to produce a contemporary telling of the medieval poet’s masterpiece. Millions of books tell and lecture on this expedition of the soul but none since Dante joins the reader, breath by breath, footprint by footprint.

Experience, being the best evidence, Christina embarked on the same journey and re-imagined its pilgrimage for those who need a ‘Container of Soul’ today for their disorganised mind. Her contemporary map shows this odyssey from lost soul to knowing love - the mind of peace, fulfillment, and freedom in the excerpts of poems from SoulBurgers' 'The Sleep', 'The Wake' and 'The Dawn'.

Name, Title

The Sleep

NEEDLEPOINT

I bit my lip

And walked in there

I saw your faces

And you did stare

You searched my eyes for truth and dare

Defiant, I glared back

Blocking, blocking all out there

You looked again

Dismissing my will

I shifted uneasily

As time stood still

You spoke directly I ducked and dived

You needled away

I ran and ran and ran to hide

You pinned me with another gaze

I erupted in fantastic rage

Again you calmly sat right there

Never moving, moving an inch in the chair

I cursed your intrusion spun meaningless words

UNDERCOVER

I handed you my patchwork quilt

I watched you smile

I watched you tilt

You closed your eyes and cradled its weight

I heard you sigh

I heard you state:

“I like the density, I like the shape

But an alternative stitch

Will enhance its make”

“Its width and length could blanket a bed

Tuck it here

For a sofa instead”

“I like the fabric, I like the tones

But a different thread

Would strengthen its bones”

I held the spread of your needled advice

The texture was rough

But the wrapping was nice

The Wake

The Dawn

SIBERIAN SIGHTS

Where am I now, I do not know

I wander lost in winter snow

I hold your name, I see your face

I open my mouth but there’s no chase…

I’ve forgotten the language of stray-soul lives

I’ve bolted the Gulag of husbands and wives

I’ve voyaged past the post of masks

I greet the sculptures of hollow casts

I shadow the child I barely was

I gape in wonder at blinking stars

Muffed from the noise around

I breathe a sea in underground

I hear Yeti feet pound out there

I hear coughing children crying for air

I hear aching bodies frozen in voices

I hear frozen voices chilled in choices

Where has my shipwreck shored from storm?

Who is this snow-blind child I’ve borne?

On new-found land we brave our beginning

Scrunching footprints in fear and sinning

THE WEEK OF MAGICAL THINKING

If I could sit and write a letter

I’d write forever to you

Wishes and wishes would fill the page

Until I fished you through…

If I could lift a phone and talk

I’d call you day and night

Words and words would fill the hours

Until I sung you back…

If I could fly or drive or climb

Or sit and meditate

I’d hold my breath on a mountain top

To ease your thieving ache…

All books and else and time deny

The loss that has no name

Because my heart peels back its want

Your “gone” is raw today…

A burn so red it scars in blue

A longing so deep, it’s new

Your voice, your hand, your scented sound

My world still waits for you…

A MAP

Separated

Searching whole

Tripped in tease

Torched in darkness

Stood alone

Fallen to fear

Attached to hold

Delivered in ache

Soiled in doubt

I awake

Exposed

Crushed in loss

Surrendered to willing

Offered to heal

A new beginning

Guided to Self

Lead to Light

Transcended in breath

Bathed for love

I live

SUNRISE

And then there is not knowing

When maps are maps

Knowledge is knowledge

Wisdom fails to inform

And the alone of that

When the fapping in darkness stops

When answers offer no meaning

When terror burns to silence

And the still shot of that

When being is all there is

When breath is love’s experience

When expectations stop

And the godly hour of that

When giving is receiving

When running nowhere stops

When losing is beginning

And the grace of knowing that

Magic futes sing mid-air

Smiles kiss our cheeks

Rain is sun laughing out loud!

Lost, Gods dance in wonder!

And the glorious glory of that!