In Out-Of-The-Way Places Of The Heart by John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

 
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire. 

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

I Want To Be Alive With You [By Toko-Pa Turner]

I want to be guided by older-ups. I want babies to be born where old people die. I want to be sandwiched in the middle of a messy togetherness.

I want to be warned before I do something stupid. I want to be forgiven when I do it anyway. I want wisdom to be tapped out on my eardrums and not Googled. I want transitions to be recognized by fire.

I want gifts to be educed from children. And teenagers and adults and I want to mean something to my community. I want to get drunk on substance morning and night.

I want to hear your dreams. I want to raise a revolution for gentleness. I want to call out the bullshit on consensus reality. I want to get rich so I can billboard the highways with validations.

I don’t want to be another faker. I don’t want to show you my good side and hide my humanity. I don’t want to dole you out my Self in digestible status-chunks. I want to challenge you in long, drawn-out rituals and still find you interested.

I want to feed you seventeen course meals made with spices I crushed. I want to recite you circular poems, each beginning cutting a deeper grasp. I want to make you feel something, even if it’s awkward. I want to sing you songs which are ancient and new.

I want to carve stories in trees with tools my elders fashioned. I want to keep sharpening them. I want to find places we’ve never been. And then, I want to return there, but backwards.

I want to shuffle up words so we don’t sleep through them. I want to learn things and then be splashed into never forgetting. I want to make you feel seen. I want to hold your pounding heart in my gentlest of hands. I want to make your thing feel like my thing.

I don’t want to miss a moment. I want to dig at the bottom and find it false. I want to turn up unknown depths. I want to stand in this hurricane and sing the sweetest, most naked song you can bear.

I want to be alive with you.

Via Rebelle Society

“No person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors.” 
― Adrienne Rich

waiting freedom

at day's end

what was abandoned

in struggle 

was tucked in stacks of business cards

clutched tightly

I can't remember how

it wasn't lost

a tangled 

badge 

symbolizing: 

love / freedom

flight / light 

this bird: 

purchased with his cash

and worn  

in regalia 

to encourage the rising

broken

as dark minutes terrorized

wolf archetype

attributing details 

to play slow

in foggy denotation

a necklace

worn backwards 

to not show it's color 

like my hope / green

like my strength / yellow

like my pride / black

always dialing back the brilliance

  

motif is surely easily fixed

repair shouldn't be costly

but oh how it costs

So I keep it here

waiting to be ready

for conclusion

will this bird 

set to flight? 

or cast off?

either way 

freedom is waiting

21 Masks (one for each year)

I lived my life like this. 21 years. I guess more.

Story Telling

“Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. I have spoken to every person I have encountered these last difficult days...I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive and so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.” 
-David Eggers [What Is The What]

From Letters To A Young Poet by Adrienne Rich

Look: with all my fear I'm here with you, trying what it
means, to stand fast; what it means to move

Where the Wild Things Are (film)

Douglas: Will you keep out all the sadness?

Max: I have a sadness shield that keeps out all the sadness, and it's big enough for all of us.

I'm Not Afraid To Be Free

Heartbeat

heartbeat 

one, two

resting

it's important I count them 

and if I can time it  

then I feel yours too

listen to a

heartbeat 

three, four

whatever became of you? 

did it empty that moment

arrhythmic  

lapse with the second hand

revolution in one breathe 

loss skipping next

I take in each heartbeat

claim internal swell 

shame leeching 

at the point of dilation

writing itself into the rhythm

hitting at it 

hers was an acting out 

mine a never acting

soon every second is seizure

either way you play

heartbeat 

five, six 

all the way to 100

this time will be different 

checking pulse 

steady 

Is artery tunnel? 

as I take in each pump

deeper exploration 

and did you know you share a heartbeat 

with those you tunnel dwell with? 

sleep next to in soft heat 

we share one heartbeat 

we rise and we fall

I started writing about you that night

I started writing about you that night

and the next day you said you wouldn't make it

one word

then talebearing 'til 2

like skipping stones 

even if painted with bright lacquered lines 

they sink

I said I would hold it loosely

find value

so I wrapped esteem around tight

crocheting transparent lines

leaving space open 

residing in ambiguity with you 

it opened up

nearing worship 

huddled

like peeking in

being spoon fed 

one succinct moment at a time

careful,

I am probably too careful 

and if it hurts 

it is the kind of ache that also pulls

as your value and the corresponding risk increase 

it washes out in glowy middle

pinching as words turn to her

I would talk about it

if it paid it proper respect

and why is it so easy to talk to you? 

and you are careful too

to meet me

i am 

dating myself 

walking 5 miles 

just to meet me

You Painted The Galaxy

you painted the galaxy, child 

dialing gamma 

I think you have the ability to call it to you
then, you left paint in the sink 

I scrubbed it out and thought about 

universal law 

like the law of what a mother should never have to do

and the moment where I heard you

and you could tell 

like a child-led equation
solved:

adults are too logical

= don't explain away my feelings

you never spend time with me

= you aren't present with me

I'm sorry

for not listening 

until I finally did

Thank you for making it so clear

you made it painfully clear, my child

there is no heartbreak like a mother's 

You say you are an expert 

at eavesdropping 

and you assign color to thoughts

color = emotion 

so you know what thoughts to listen to 

and what thoughts to ignore

you practice on strangers 

but sometimes you misread mine

you read that I don't love you 

how can that ever feel true?

I have learned that feelings can deceive even the most intuitive listening

so I have to say it out loud
I have learned that words don't say it all
so I have to sit in it as I speak

I love you

Do you feel loved now? 

I will never leave you

the space the unknown creates

I am untidy

unpressed 

with travelers clothes

everyday a day trip

to the surface 

to be visible

chaos has joined me in underwater grotto

love follows quickly behind 

it thrives in subterrane 

(the space chaos creates)

as water ascends like spirit

matter floats out of place 

desks, chairs, floorboards

a reminder of the trouble I cause 

just from existing inside

bubbles take their stand

each with a tiny red flag

marked with a quick note 

in micron pen 

'fear'

'control' 

some of them have sketches

with detailed instructions

I try to force them into 

pie chart ink 

they read:

'contributes'

'value' 

transposing

just before they wash away

As this building falls 

the rubble hovering 

into apartment landings 

stairwells leading into unspoiled halls 

the stories attach to new bricks like barnacles 

We walk up to the door 

Together

Opening it to strangers 

Telling stories

I integrate 

I bloom 

In willful ambiguity

(the space He creates)

The mystery unfolds

If I am the church

you and I  

church and people 

if I am the church

relationship

ego

there's this question

this tie

does it bind?

love / hate 

one or outside?

marketed healer

but basal pangs 

censure cure

we are a mass 

of entangled threads 

and I am the tilted cog 

in it's heart 

slowing it down

to bicycle speed

lagging with clarity

if I am the church

where is the steeple?

my love for the church

deep, abiding 

we generate this

I fashioned the center

I begrudge

my own heart

in it's study

this oscillating story 

like biblical narrative  

set in vibrancy

sensitive by creation 

called to bloom in it's center

if I am the church 

Outsider

like outsider art 

the underbelly has always existed

finding each other in caves

gutters  

seedy bars 

and coffee shops

gently or angrily

pushing when they say to pull

as counterpoint

to the mechanism we think He needs 

He keeps Inverting 

As a rule, using the names

of those outside 

who we like to 

mercifully 

let exist 

inside

but, He has never been inside

He is in the outsider 

telling us it doesn't matter out there:

where we were born

who we were born to

what they did to us

what they did for us 

disordering our stories

tangling and re-casting 

This is what we felt in him 

You did feel it? 

He called it the kingdom of heaven

and it is in us

My people

You know they are your people

When they refuse to engage 

That blackened story crafted in youth

Actively carried on each morning 

Told to gather pats

You, my people, instead

Hold my head in your hands 

Collect my eyes 

Even feeble, fearful 

maintain 

You show me my brightness

Dingy reflection 

But still, light 

You will know them 

When they resist the urge to look away 

As your voice cracks

Shameful

They hold that gaze 

As long as it takes 

To rewrite the lines told 

With a bold ending worth believing in

Together

When I pull that thread as hard as I can 

Only to come undone 

My people do not wrap me up 

Sheets stay folded 

They wait

They sit with me 

All gawky 

And we laugh

Heaving laughter

We are ridiculous together

You are my people 

A tribe

Tiny gang 

And I return, kindred 

Believing each of you worth the effort 

To bare all with 

To story tell with 

To pioneer and burrow with

Here’s What Our Parents Never Taught Us, Shinji Moon

Posting this seemed important to me today, maybe because I am molting.  

The poetry of Shinji Moon is all kinds innocent while at the same time breathless... And I love that. 

Here’s What Our Parents Never Taught Us, Shinji Moon

Here's what our parents never taught us:

You will stay up on your rooftop until sunlight peels away the husk of the moon,
chain smoking cigarettes and reading Baudelaire, and
you will learn that you only ever want to fall in love with someone
who will stay up to watch the sun rise with you.

You will fall in love with train rides, and sooner or later you will
realize that nowhere seems like home anymore.

A woman will kiss you and you'll think her lips are two petals
rubbing against your mouth.

You will not tell anyone that you liked it.
It's okay.
It is beautiful to love humans in a world where love is a metaphor for lust.

You can leave if you want, with only your skin as a carry-on.

All you need is a twenty in your pocket and a bus ticket.
All you need is someone on the other end of the map, thinking about the supple
curves of your body, to guide you to a home that stretches out for miles
and miles on end.

You will lie to everyone you love.
They will love you anyways.

One day you’ll wake up and realize that you are too big for your own skin.

Molt.
Don't be afraid.

Your body is a house where the shutters blow in and out
against the windowpane.

You are a hurricane-prone area.
The glass will break through often.

But it's okay. I promise.

Remember,
a stranger once told you that the breeze
here is something worth writing poems about.

Courageously Move Towards Others

"It's this simple, we need each other. I wish I could open your eyes to the interdependent web of all existence. You're an integral part of it! We weren't meant to travel alone, and yet we do just that - we go to our separate corners and suffer in silence. We carry our burdens and wounds alone, we wrestle through our fears, hurts, insecurities and confusion on our own. I have a request that's going to require something big of you. Come out of hiding! Risk being vulnerable. Open up yourself to another human being, and show up and be this for others. Our lives are an hourglass and our days are slipping away like grains of sand. Knowing this is so, don't retreat to your corner any longer! Courageously move towards others - be there for others and let them be there for you. Be that strand in the web that makes it stronger."

- Hebrews 10:25, Religion-Free Bible

Ink In The Room

it stayed in the room 

like octopuses ink

it wouldn't let either of us 

dismiss it 

avoid it

even as it quickly disguised 

itself with autotomy

your words 

slipped

all blackish

foot in mouth 

you are always so careful with words

truth makes fools of us

both of us knew what it revealed

it made us uncomfortable 

stretching over the top

it lingered in the room 

a melanin cloud 

growing

others saw it 

not knowing  

it disoriented 

serving as shield

stinging their eyes

causing them to look away

I've done the same thing

wrapped up conversation 

to stop it from going further

made myself believe what I wanted 

distorted words to sqeeze inside my belief box 

cutting them off to fit properly 

I have made myself comfortable 

at other's expense

and now to see it 

so clearly 

in you

I look up to you