I did not expect the brittle cry
Rising out from the mana
Voice breaking
Rheumy eyes discomposed
Lodestar
Shining with defiance
You are beckoning me to serve
Your consonant hoof-falls
Spreading their alchemy
Irrupting the gnosis with idyll wiles
I did not take the path of forgetting
I rose from the water astride your back
Never tossed in the tides of time
I glistened with moonlight
And showed you the scars I would accrue
My deep sea flesh waiting
For the universe within to round on us
There is a way up the hillside
But the peak is treacherous
And the descent, often, involuntary
Mortals call the attempt death defying
Angels, recruitment
You will know you have arrived
When you are filled with purpose
And destiny is in the wind
This is where you should watch your step
The world will push
The heavens will pull
You will see only impossible choices
Then, the wind will rise
A cool rush of flagrant defiance
Unlocks a chain of misdemeanors
That fall from my tongue in a fevered cadence
My soliloquy goes uncharted
In this forest of layered beasts
Whose fragrant alliance has put me up to the mischief
I have fallen at the feet
Of one cleansing breath
That has choked the life from subjugation to rules that loathe exceptions
And I have taken flight on improbable wings
A river of stars finds me dreaming
Inviting space to sculpt stone into waves
Where river and red sea meet
Where so-called laws of physics
Are tossed into depths unknown
And shadows bear witness
To blood and tears fueling the mallet
The chisel strike sparking points of illumination
Into thin air
To be held aloft in a vacuum
Promising nothing
And doling out all
In a lucidity of timelessness
That gazes into the density of my abyss
And calls me beloved
“You are a worthless girl,” she says…and she says it again and again until the mirror cracks.
Then she studies the crack. Carefully. As it might well be a gift from beyond. Seeking a hidden message, she leans in and fingers the edges as her eyes scrutinize every jagged corner. She stands back and gazes from a distance. Arms folded. Knuckling fist to mouth…pondering.
“You are a worthless girl,” she whispers, re-examining the careless magic that summoned this unexpected visitor. “What does it mean?”, she wonders silently, eyes fixed on the glassy fissure. All day she is consumed by the question. It follows her through her tasks and obligations. It hovers over her. Slides beneath her. Envelops her.
And the crack in the mirror watches her. When she goes outside, it calls to her. And every time she returns, she studies it again.
She considers, tentatively, “you are not a worthless girl.” Then directly and squarely at the crack in the mirror, she declares, “you are not a worthless girl.”
The mirror does not mend.
But the girl…the girl is now fascinated by the possibility – by all possibility. What could come next?
“You are worth the sun and moon and all the stars in the universe,” she chances quickly.
“You are worth the planets and the ice and the oceans and every bit of life, seen and unseen,” she exclaims.
Nothing breaks, nothing mends. Everything is whole exactly as it is.
“You are worth time and immortality,” she dares. And at this, everything disappears.
She wracks her body this way and that, wanting to see every direction at once. Is it true, the nothingness? What does it mean? “What…is…it…worth?” she utters slowly as her face cracks the smile of consciousness.
We came out of a land
Rich with harmony and sacrifice
We built legends and legacies
And threw fire from our fists
Unto the firmament
We brought down gods upon our heads
We sought shelter in their arrogance
Devoured our fear like ripened fruit
And this is how we nourished our souls
Grew teeth in our throats to imprison them
Behind voices made lame by our dinner
Our hearts grew thinner
And our chests spanned wide
To shield and conceal our labouring breath
Convinced of our impending death
But our souls
Trapped in our breasts
Heaved through our skin
The immortal summons
To life
Trauma, indignity, betrayal and other unwelcome visitors show up in some lives more than others. If they show up enough, a person might reach a point where they feel – they believe – they cannot withstand anymore. One more blow, and they will crumple and cease to be. They might plead and put The Great All That Is on notice: “Look, I can’t take anymore. I’m just letting you know this, in case you can find it in your heart to not send any more my way.”
Then, another blow – maybe a series of small ones, or one low-grade, crushing long one. Then, the person might just shut down – cease to even try negotiating with the powers that be. “What’s the point?” Now this person KNOWS, they really cannot take anymore. Truly, this time, the person will break when another wave comes.
Then, another blow. A big one. One that makes all the other blows seem like mere child’s play. And do you know what happens to our little person? Our weary, bedraggled, pushed-beyond-the-breaking-point little human, who has always had thin skin, but who now surely possesses no skin at all anymore.
It takes a long time, but this person opens their heart and makes themselves vulnerable – again. They do it. And they do it because now they really know something. Now this person knows something that is true: Life wants to live. It keeps going whether or not we can keep up. Life wants to live. So may as well embrace it. We are stronger than we think we are.
Embrace This
I’ve watched you break
I have felt every bone,
One by one, splinter into fragments
Into dust and rubble
Utter annihilation, not once
But many times
I’ve seen you stand up to tidal waves
I’ve seen you refuse fortunes
I’ve seen you run headlong into the mouth of a beast
And then another…and then another
How you emerge to run again
I do not know
But I’ve seen you reappear like magic…fully formed
Over and over again
I’ve seen the map re-write itself
I’ve seen the flowers bloom
And ruts in old roads replaced by mountain meadows
Purely by the sheer power of your will
I’ve seen you cry
Alone, abandoned and betrayed
And I’ve seen you walk outside and go right on loving
There is no give up in you
Even when you desperately wish it so
So may as well embrace this
This longing
This heart hurt
This betrayal
Because it is happening
And your heart will rise to meet you
…Again
Images by Corinna Schenk (left) and FreePhotos (right)
To me, truth is joy, and joy is truth – one in the same. So in my view, joy does not always come in the form of happiness. It does not always contain happiness. Always, it comes with the clarity of what is true inside. And that clarity brings a feeling of freedom. Not always a celebratory freedom. Sometimes it is a freedom that is heavy with responsibility to go forth and transform something painful into something so beautiful, it is worthy of the loss that necessitated it and worthy of those who will benefit from the gift of it.
Molasses And Steel
You brought colour to my life
Black for molasses
Blue for steel
You stood for things that were not real
You stole in the morning
Then peeled away
Laying rubber, black as molasses, on scorched streets
You performed elegant and death-defying feats
You raised a glass to greet something
That would beat us into submission
You were cold, hard
Blue like steel
Peeling away the layers of skin
That healed you into my soul
Is not a goal I cherish
Or claim the wherewithal to do
But there is a piece of me in you
And whether black or blue
We both must breathe
We must leave a trace of ourselves in this world
We have to be the steel and molasses
That builds and feeds
And sweetens harsh deeds into submission
It is our composition
At least it is mine
So if I am to thrive on the brine
In the glass you gave me
Break your fast and save me
A cup of molasses
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