Freight Train

Sometimes Depression Hits her like A freight train It's her own fault She lies on the Tracks Waiting for The force Surrendering To the pain Risking Everything for A chance at Heaven.

I See So Much Wrong

I see so much wrongWith us Does this make me A bad person? Why do I think We are supposed to be Good? What is good? What are we but Crazy Beautiful Infallible Endearing Predictable Operating to uphold Nonsensical beliefs Dismissing signs as Happy happenstances Forgetting the Light-filled person We were born to be Calcified by layers Of lies While the cure Lives within The tender truth Contained in the Seat of the soul Would we rather be Uncomfortable or Unhappy? Are we living Or are we Dying?

Pretend

I don't pretendTo know Why my body Just broke out In chills

I don't pretend To hate myself Or love myself Or know myself And what I want

I don't pretend To be anything Less than perfect For I was born This way

I don't pretend The deluge of This human experience Does not break My heart daily

I don't pretend Mistakes don't happen Or light doesn't die Or envy doesn't Warp my thoughts

I don't pretend My thoughts Don't matter My addictions Don't count

I don't pretend I'm naturally Thin and I don't need Recognition for These years of work

I don't pretend My heart doesn't Hurt And I don't pretend To know why.

I want you to be more you

I want you to do what inspires youWhether it's "bad" like taking off your clothes Committing to wanderlust and only wanderlust Looking beautiful above feeling beautiful Numbing and filling and failing Or it's "good" like fighting for social justice Making babies and raising them closely Teaching yoga or meditation or The Truth Reading and writing and ruining and creating.

I want you to be who you are Wild hair pale skin smooth hair dark skin Sex lover sex avoider sex hater Careerist artist feminist philanthropist Competitive anxious selfish judgmental Gifted deep spiritual devoted Depressed happy introverted extroverted High low stubborn stuck Changeable mutable unpredictable

I want you to cast away shame I want you to love yourself I want you to have unshakable faith I want you to do what you want I want you to stop listening to them I want you to know your purpose I want you to enjoy yourself I want you to be more you As you are now, you are perfect.

Alone

AloneWeeping alone Sleeping alone Surrounded by alone

She did it to herself She made the space herself She carved it out with her fingernails Artificial red

Why? To weep? To smoke? To drink cheap wine & expensive cheese without anyone watching? When she's not alone She craves loneliness Her only constant companion

Blood on a page Words stamped in her brain She wants to matter to no one She wants no one to matter to her

She wears sunglasses and overcoats When she steps outside She prefers rain clouds To open skies

The potent sun that burns Her skin Too gauzy to protect her insides From the Evil

Some try to ignore it Until it strikes In the form of dishonest Devious

Heart-breakers As it always does So long as you are not Alone.

The Make-Up Artist (A Poem)

Her smile in a wordWas hopeful Baby fat Still clinging To apple cheeks Eyes bright and curled open Her face a daily masterpiece Only to be washed down the sink Come black skies. It wasn't beauty She sought But transformation A boundless identity Someone not herself. But she made a good living Because she wasn't alone In her need to erase the shadows And the lines Etched by fractured glass Filled with pools of red.

Ungrateful (A Poem)

I have two good legsI hardly notice them I love my husband I always want more from him I adore my kids Sometimes I don't like them They are the only reason I know for sure I matter Sometimes I get sick But I am strong And smart and beautiful And insecure I am wasted space A tangled mess of power Pushing without organization Working without focus Deficient of attention Pulling knots tighter Not looser I am angry And I am grateful Blessings Can be curses Hope can do nothing If we don't lean upon it We are trapped Between narrow perspectives Like a tiny ant Searching for sustenance In the middle of a football field Where all directions look the same And he runs Away from the food Away from the others Because he doesn't know. He doesn't know. I don't know either.

Why don't you go fall fly away Leave me on this island

While I drown beneath today

Information like storm clouds

Churning and burning cold

A ceiling between me and source

A cage thick as an eggshell

But strong as gold

Yearning for tomorrow and youth

At once

A paradox of impossibilities

They comes in flashes, the truth

We chip away at suffering

But all of this feels old--

Could we leave it behind

This yearning for our words to be sold?

Without condemning human kind

To a history that does not bear

The privilege of repeating

Nor believes

That a greater power does, in fact, care.

I rise

I am source / streaks of sunlight

Whatever makes our hearts beat / I am it

I exist not within boundaries / but around them

I am not the limits of the body / I am Holy Spirit

I quiver beneath the power that I am / but I do not crumble

I focus I fight I flounder / and I rise.

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Windows

I went outside and it smelled so good. I stood on a cinder block and danced to the music piped into my ears. I felt the morning sun heat up my face and my baby strapped warm against my core. Nine months inside of me, nine months next to me. I looked across rooftops, trees, water, past bridges past mountains, my gaze settling on the sky.

I danced and I knew happiness. I felt free.

Until I realized that anyone in my neighbor's laundry room could see me. They could be laughing at me. They could think I was crazy, or high, or both. A lot of people live in that house. They could be watching me the way I watch them folding laundry at night, not purposefully but because we are right in one another's line of vision. I sit at my computer, facing a window with a view. But at night the waters and mountains and trees fade to black, leaving only the illuminated window of their laundry room.

I stepped down from the cinderblock. The floating bridge in the distance disappeared behind houses.

I walked around the perimeter of my yard again. I want to memorize it now, in case I ever move. I know I will not live in this house forever. But I have grown attached to these walls where I've raised children and birthed a baby and loved a man and wrote words.

If the universe wants me to move, I will follow. If the earth wants me to feel my feet upon it, I will dance. If spirit wants me to play, I will dream.

Look for me out your window. I'm not afraid of being seen.

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Morning

Mornings open me

In the ethereal quiet of daybreak

I am free from excess thought and arbitrary restrictions.

Possibility looms in the form of light flooding from the east, clouds streaking the dome of sky.

A blank mind is a clean house, a new day is an unwritten page.

Coffee tastes better and I wish that mornings could last all day.

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Cobwebs

Opening feels like a cobweb of cracks around my soul.

As if I am a piece of glass and I have dropped myself onto concrete.

Not out of carelessness but because I am living and the risk inherent in living is breaking.

Light leaks through

Widening the gaps but also filling them in with the possibility of morning.

Who will I be today?

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Wilting majesty

Wilting majesty.

Reaches deep into earth.

History etched into her rings.

Reminds us how young our years and shallow our roots.

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Summer's sticky pace

What is already open?

Heart.

Hunger.

Love an ever thickening pulse that directs every move.

Ambition an intravenous substance that keeps me moving

Even at summer's sticky pace.

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Ground

The ground feels solid

When I'm spilled all over it

In bruised petals

Until I get it under my fingernails

And the land upon which we depend

Crumbles into piles of lost possibility

Beneath the surface a seed gestates

Cradled by the heat of the earth

A womb made of dirt.

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my full moon super powers

my full moon super powers--

Fly. See all of creation from up there. Skip through space to embody unknown dimensions. Walk to the other side of this planet. Understand the nature of beauty. Feel history as it pulses under my skin. Read a book by picking it up. Traverse the highway of time. Float. Levitate. Hover. Become everyone at once. Speak without words. Communicate across blank spaces. Shapeshift. Tumble through clouds. Read my heart aloud. Hold conviction as strong as the ocean. See God in the looking glass. Memorize the map engraved upon the deepest layer of spirit. Live the loftiest existence of my soul's imagination. Catch my baby's cries with unconditional kisses. Hold them forever. Grant grandiose wishes with the wink of my eye. Erase conflict with the nod of my head. Become the wind. Exhale abundance. Hear the echoes of animals. Unpeel the scars of living. Disappear. Reappear. Remember. Turn inside out. Show my insides to the kindred. Love all the children. Breathe in the babies. The crown of each head. Wrap my arms around the ocean. Unwrap the meaning of now. Sit in the stillness of sun. Bloom. Keep faith between my fingers, always close to my fingertips. Intuit without doubting. Play life like a movie. Slow motion. Rewind. Fast forward. Repeat. Open. Heart, mind, soul. Of infinite boundaries.

Photo credit: Alisha Sommer

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Great heights

Should I discard the compulsion to do?

Break out from the shell of expectation

Shed this comfort of protection, this belief I'm doing fine as long as I'm moving

Could it be about finding stillness instead?

Like the tree whose great heights come from standing still.

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Tied up tangled

My hair so often left behind

Long & dirty

Tied up tangled

Unhidden strands of silver.

Today

I let the curling iron burn waves into the broken ends

While music rolled through

My belly

And the baby watched and I danced.

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Collective Unburdening

Where we come from

The edges are supple

Not rigid

Blurring into the ether

And each other

Where nothing is separate

Not even our minds

Our ideas bleeding

Together

Spreading infections

And immunity

And tolerance

And maybe love.

Maybe love.

Collective unburdening

Divulges

A sparkling collection of

Modern thought

Where love of all colors

All iterations

Can be tolerated

Differences celebrated

Repression

Oppression

Confiscated by the past

Condemned by the future

Like crucifixion and the gallows

Gone

But never

Forgotten.

Essence of Destiny

A leaky faucet of truthtwist the knobs unplug the holes you can try but you can't stop the flow the flood of wisdom slick messes with no mercy. Watch where you step you are breakable like me don't close your eyes denial breeds dis-ease don't hide your heart isolation nurtures depression. Heed the coincidences for they do not exist feel your feelings not the emotional blackmail but the divine guidance the answers resting beneath bone and within blood arteries surging with the essence of your destiny.