Friday, January 21, 2011

A Therapy Poem

not surrender


so the doctor says
maybe surrender your womb
but she doesn't use those words
     remove           uterus
like it's an organ
like a part
of my physical body
and not the place
where I grew my daughter
and not the place
where all of humanity
grows
and not the place
that makes me
woman
and she is a woman
but uteruses are her business
her work
like woman's work
working on women
and she maybe doesn't know
what all I hold there
and what we all have in there
and that it's the warm red place
where some secrets hide
and where a goddess sleeps
and it's where I grew my daughter
and I don't want another child
but it's my woman self in there
and even if they don't take my eggs
and even if I get to keep my hormones
that place will be gone
and I look inside to wonder
how things will move
because I'm not pieces
I am a whole
I am a woman

but the body-part
that walking around part of me
she says it's just not fighting
and I think what do you mean
I'm strong
I'm fighting every day
surely if the rest of me will
my body will fight too
maybe no one told her
maybe she doesn't know
those cells don't belong
do you have a phone, doc
an in-there phone
so we could call her
and tell her to woman-up
because it's taken me too long
to get this far
and I know that if I have to
I will surrender that part
and be still whole
and be still woman
because I am

because I am a fighter
and I know no part makes me me
and I know I will move through every fear
and I know where my power lies
it's not in that warm red place
and it's not in a place that can be
removed
it's a part that will always be
that will come with me
even when I leave the body
with or without its womb
or any other parts
that can't seem to fight

because whole doesn't come
from a collaboration of parts
and strength is buried deeper
than the deepest inside me
it rides up through the earth
to fill all the unseen parts
and becomes the essence
of who I really am

Saturday, January 8, 2011

little bits

Things on my Fridge
You are a forest 
needing sun to grow stories
& the sea is your dream
rain beats a languid chant
to make fresh mist beneath a bare purple sky
explore your new voice
wild as a bouquet not from a garden
delicate as a petal still

your smile is a story library

man
end 
new 
&
old 
wars

whisper moon language

              never 
              cover your (heart)
from the world
              under shadow
              create beauty          (*never,cover,world,under,create came together)

wander the ancient library of the human head

explore this magic life

A poem I just wrote.

maybe i should eat
i need some more words
i think i'll have to start
eating dictionaries
because i can't seem to come up with
enough words
or the right ones to
mean what i'm saying like
how i love the word mobius
and i know what it is
and what it looks like but
sometimes i use it when
i mean something else and so
maybe i'll have to
eat up some geometry books too
to try to find a better shape
to metaphor with
and sometimes singing
even in words that have nothing to do with it
seems to get out or get across
what i'm feelin at the time
in the most direct, most satisfying way
so maybe i should eat some cds
or music books or my violin
and when it starts to all seem
too surreal like
life has gone
quite strange
maybe i should start eating
some of the old and true
fairy tales
warning us of how twisted
and mistakenly lovely
life can be

Something little I wrote last November.


Her nostrils flare like a horse when she's hot
and sometimes, when she looks at something
that makes her want to run, like to the barn,
you can tell everything else is out of focus.


Something I wrote a few days ago.
(unfinished)

working stiffs

So what has us working
as we toil for our supper
and nobody seems to be singing much
about anything
and sleep tends to defer to the needs
of a person to be a person
and sometimes around other people
and these natural needs take
an unnatural back seat to the
make-believe needs of
a culture of has-to-be
where balance is so sorely twisted
that if it were struck, even for a moment,
it would be askew
and it seems to me that most people don't see
that it's only this way because we say it's ok
we get up too early
go to sleep too late
eat food that's not that at all
being, often, grossly under-compensated
for our time and our energy
both of which are so consumed that
it becomes difficult to look around
it's hard to take it all in
to fathom the big picture
or bother to ask questions
 about- why do we do this thing
but instead just keep doing
because it's what we all believe in
and I may be a bit on the fringe when i'm thinking
we've all lost our minds