El Sumo Sacerdote
The dream becomes real
The Hierophant is the anchor of this week’s poetry collection. He represents the power of origination: someone who chooses to get in the game and make dreams tangible.
The last time we checked in with The Hierophant, it was late February 2024; I hadn’t discovered sonnets yet, but the poetry groove was deepening. You can read that post below:
Today—in my life—the Hierophant represents the completion and upcoming release of my new album, as well as the poetry book I’m editing for self-publication next year.
This card is a reminder that once the proper materials have been gathered, it becomes our own responsibility to create.
Contents:
Rowdy Body
The Wrong Kind of Cuddling
Shake the House
Quiet
Rowdy Body I ask my rowdy body to sit, and Trust the worth of potential energy. “Heed only good influences: strong-willed Attention focused on the things you need.” My rowdy body: follow-up questions. (She cannot simply take orders like that.) “What makes an influence good, you reckon? Someone with the same heart, or the same hat?” They are hard questions, those the body asks. Yet, they will be answered, or you will pay: In time, and cash, and sudden heart attacks, In remembering someone on a day. A rowdy body needs patient teachers, But it’s not an unsaveable creature.
The Wrong Kind of Cuddling When I haven’t made a choice in a while, And I’ve just been going along with things, The robe of dissociation, it curls Around me: the wrong kind of cuddling. “Go in your mind where you still have control. If you speak up, you’re going to get hurt. If you bend hard enough, you’ll meet your goal, And fit, where weaker others can’t insert.” Hang tight: don’t throw good money after bad. You don’t have to be in control to win. Further investment doesn’t fix the past. Accept what happened, don’t do it again. To sit still, and be a creature in space, Takes aspirational levels of grace.
Shake the House
Dissolve, sometimes, is the only option.
Is sex so good for you, it shakes the house?
If not, I’d really consider leaving:
Go find someone who knows what they’re about.
Resolve to live a life of lush pleasure.
(A garden widens, root to canopy.)
The space you need to grow is a treasure:
It’s good to feel your ribs move as you breathe.
Revolve around the fixed point of lover.
(Sometimes, you are the sun; sometimes, the moon.)
The marrow has chosen: there’s no other.
There is only together-now, and -soon.
(Remember when the housemates—so confused—
Thought it might be ghosts rattling the roof?)
Quiet
My nervous system is settling down:
I don’t jump so high when I hear car horns.
I don’t fear violence when I see frowns.
I midwife all my feelings as they’re born.
The space that comes between points A and B,
Where there is elbow room to make a choice,
Has grown inside my own living body.
(I do not have to scream to use my voice.)
My face wears the same mask as dictators,
But, inside, I’m a sheep in wolf’s clothing:
The line I walk is finer than razors,
But I wouldn’t change it for anything.
When I don’t know what to do, I just breathe:
In four. Hold four. Out four. Go meet your needs.Please consider a small donation to my fundraiser to support the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
I will be walking to raise funds for AFSP this October to celebrate both my birthday and my continued existence on this earth after multiple attempts on my own life. I am now healthy and strong enough to walk, so I walk.
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I love this:
"My nervous system is settling down:
I don’t jump so high when I hear car horns.
I don’t fear violence when I see frowns.
I midwife all my feelings as they’re born. "