I see you
Living some hard truths
But living
Knowing that light creeps in
When injustice is done
Drawn to the will of the one
Who goes on loving
Because light attracts light
And love is uninjurable
I see you
Drowsy with pain and indignity
Bearing the weight…again
Leaving the door open
For the light to creep in
Because it is beyond your assailants’ reach
No matter how deep they are willing to slide
They don’t know what you can abide
And what you won’t
I see you
The truth in you alights the truth in me
Unites the will of love to be
The last one standing
It is a frustrating irony that my heart finds nothing worth writing about other than the painful, bloody fight for equality (still) raging in the US; and at the same time, my heart is too filled with anger, grief and tension to find words to write.
Here is one attempt. Just a few words that could not find completion written in the days following the release of the video of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder. I was born and raised in Georgia, and I think this is a sort of proclamation that we do not have to become what our social environment and our history might dictate.
Dear Dr. Angelou
Somehow
a global pandemic
and the war against “other”
have become bedfellows
And the place of my birth
is synonymous with murder…again…
And yet, I love
15 May 2020
For too long, it has been the challenge of people of colour to rise in spite of a system rigged against them. White people, please, we must learn to love humanity more than we love privilege.
Life brings challenges beyond our control, and these challenges can sometimes be great burdens. But when we use our voices and express our truth, we can turn those burdens into new light and fresh growth for ourselves and for the world. I wrote this poem for a friend 22 years ago. I thought I would give it some new light today.
The Shape of Water
All this weather
In a woman’s voice, it is matter of fact
Prophetic and profound
Because it is commonplace
That itchy little annoyance that turns up the dis-ease
That makes you or breaks you
All this weather
That never quite settles a person in one place or another
Just continual change
Until there is no particular sensation drawing the mark
Between rain and shine
No particular sensation
Bleeding into the flood waters – the runoff from the world
And blending so that one can no longer claim: “those tears are mine!”
…Even if one wants to
Defiance…submission…victory…weather
Do you know that the shape of water is round?
Like earth, like sun, like moon
Like life and death
Like submission and victory
There is no beginning or end – only weather
But do you know
That a woman’s voice will change the world slowly?
Light will creep in where she unburdens her heart
And leave the yellow-pink glow of sunset
Looming over the yield of years and years of weather:
Little green sensations.
River, where do you ramble?
In deep woods we meet
Inside a secret
That floats softly
From my tongue
Into your current
When I was a child
I plunged to your depths
And mingled with the watery spirits there
I rolled frantically like a pinwheel
Seeking purchase
Until invisible hands
Planted my feet in your muddied bed
I rose like a crooked cannon
Doubled over and ready to launch the remains of my burning breath
In violent exchange for a greedy gasp of the remains of my days
Which have led me here
Banking on your shoulder
Coming up short for time
Leaning in for invisible hands
And finding none
Here, I am the sacred one
I am become my own saviour
So pray you, River
Where shall we ramble?
Consciousness seeks to nurture a deeper truth of being while the world wrestles confusion, tedium and opposing extremes.
Insides Out
From a precipice of reversals
I envisage realities stained by a confusion of tedium
I know only this: I am extant
Belly exposed – gnawed open by hunger for the interior
For a collusion of continuum that sees insides out
I am stable in my rudimentary way, but I reach…
I reach for the magma of understanding
Singeing my extremities
Vapourizing foundations
Reducing me to sediment
My core extracted
Gravitational lore exacted
On light of becoming
I find the centre path
My eyes smouldering with exhaustion
I tell you I am here of my own accord
Then pluck my eyes out and retire
I am no more bound to the maelstrom
No more a rat in the labyrinth proving my worth
I have scattered my pennies
For their rat-tat-tat
On the glistening white floors
And danced to their rhythm
Until my soles bled
My red fortune spattered and spilt
I hand you the hilt
And plunge myself thus to eternity
If I pierce the fabric
We have staged a coup
And I am bound with you
Into the margins
When we open ourselves to the truth and power of nature and light, we are resolved to the same truth and power within ourselves.
Rendered
A sylvan dream requites our arrival
Permeating gold ablution washes over giants
Reaching us in strands
Vestiges of brilliance painting our skin
We are but miscreants and maladies
An opus dissonant and wistful
Resolved and replete by respiring light
We are sublimating, reintegrating
Syncopated selves dissipating fleet
Into amorphic jubilance rendered
When there is no view to the sea
I am reminded of the complexities and displacements
Shallows that engulf sentient beings
Leaving us stranded
With our monikers
For things we cannot name
Beveled edges bend the view
Until our eyes cannot attain clarity
Nor connect our own continuity to fluidity composed
But we embark on this odyssey
Unframed by expansion
And isn’t that the mandate of the universe?
Its sole prerogative
Amalgamations transcending
We are revoking and upending
What we’re meant to be
Mavericks waking cause to breach a higher sea
Now…while there is still time…
while there are still words
Now…when we meet in passing and are in the same space
for the first time…and for the last
Lift your head, fair one,
for there is no tomorrow that will hold this…either the sweetness or the sorrow
Tomorrow will steal in on a breeze that blows beyond our knowing,
and you will turn around and all will be forgotten.
And glowing within you will be only the love and honour and truth of your original light
And if I live, it will be only in the life that I give to you…And I will say,
“it was mine to give, and thus I gave it”
Riders of the Tempest: The Story of WE
by H. Hennenburg
Cover painting by Autumn Chiu @ArtChiu
There is no “I”. There is no “you.” There is only WE. “Reality is in the possibilities,” and Riders of the Tempest is a quest for the heart of what can be.
This collection of poems by H. Hennenburg tells the story of WE. Born from Supernova, we bear the imprint of the universe: the mandate to expand. Gripped by a deep yearning, we march into a tempest…a great storm…a war between our desire to expand as individuals and our desire to expand into the truth of our oneness. We believe we are mere “echoes to the sea and gathering storm,” but there is more to the universe than what we see. We are “more than the caged experience of sight.” Endowed with an infinite stream of choices, what happens in our story if we reach for more?
Download for free at: iBooks, Kobo & most Amazon stores
If you don’t use a tablet or e-reader and would like a copy, please contact me for the PDF version.
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