Tag: language

Independence

During this season of independence, I’m celebrating my full, untethered mental independence. For too long, I have granted (or have had taken from me) space in my mind to the minds of other humans. My mind has been a nation occupied by pillagers – its culture ravaged and ruined by the words, behavior, intentions, and dismissals of its oppressors, both individual and systemic. No longer will I be too much, too little, too loud, too quiet, too thick, too thin, too emotional, not emotional enough, too strong, too weak, too feminine, too masculine, outside social order, outside traditional roles, or with too arrogant a “big” vocabulary. The border has been secured, and only the approved visitors of spirituality, family, friendships rich in positivity, art, nature, and the pure things life will be granted entrance. Let freedom ring.

6/21

Spirit and dust

and the ocean’s rust

Divinity meets earth

in its laboring for birth

When the chasm opens wide

A creature crawls and cries

Painted by the bow in the sky

The cooing wind names it Pride.

Unwelcome

If it makes it past my heart

I’ll kill it with my hands

There’s an echo in the mountains

When the body lands

Moons and Oceans

Not a person

But a planet full

Vast in its purple oceans

And many in its moons

Dragging me into your orbit

And drowning me in your

Violet waves

Stealer of Joy

In the morning

I reject the light

Ruin days and

Ravage nights

A brute forcing felicity

from its gilded throne

The joy that is lost

is the joy that was my own

Nightwalker

Treading softly

and leaping

from shadow to shadow,

existing only in places dark,

you find a sunken repose

in the folded corners of my heart:

a welcome stranger that I didn’t invite –

I only ever lose you in the moonlight.

Nightmares

My nightmares

are my own;

unfelt and unseen

yet the tremors

are heard in the morn,

dull echoes

hidden in sharp alarms,

falling to sleep

waking to rise

life to day

death to night,

ending its story

as we all do

in our fatal haste to new

Wrecked

Sometimes,

I remember that

the radio continues to play

as a car wrecks,

and I think that’s

how we often live –

ravaged by pain,

aware of our destruction,

and, yet,

humming along.

VD 1/4

You are a snow day,

a game-saving buzzer shot,

the first sip of coffee,

and the last page

of my favorite book,

when good defeats evil

and love wins.