Strength
Welcome, and a warm first hello to the newcomers! I’m so happy you’re here.
This week, six poems explore the Strength card. This tarot draw encourages us to have faith in our ability to meet the situation at hand.
Suggested background music: “Hourglass” by The Lizzy Co Show, a gearing-up montage anthem for the 808 crowd.
Sometimes strength means asking for help. If you find yourself in a tough place mentally like I do sometimes, consider reaching out to a resource like Crisis Text Line for support. You are certainly worth it.
Click below for more information:
Mature
1.
How am I so calm?
Had my Tig Notaro year,
Where I lost it all.
2.
I am choosing to
Meet a hard situation
With good coping skills.
3.
I look down, surprised
To find my body still whole
Before my own eyes.
4.
What is the strangest
Is how complete I still feel
Without a partner.
5.
How is it that I
Am not a pile of atoms,
Bonds dissolved clean through?
6.
My community
Is holding me while I weep,
Gently drying tears.
7.
Just let the days pass.
Fill them with the good you can,
Rest and food and love.
Too Cold
1.
New England: the place
Where you don’t feel your feelings
Because it’s too cold.
2.
I got filed down small,
Grown contorted in bottles,
Pressed against hard glass.
3.
I emigrated
From a land where I was held
Prisoner for years.
4.
I lost the last link
To the life that I once knew.
Chrysalis fell off.
5.
Altars-in-progress
Sometimes look like a real mess.
Imagine the rest.
Foul Gift
The water pushes me this way and that,
The color of the waves matches the sky.
The surface of the water remains flat,
So inexplicable, I can’t say why.
A room is forming deep in my mind-cage,
Its door is open, beckoning the pain.
It wants me to feed it my sorrow-rage,
Store it away, never see it again.
But parts are not the whole, their scope is small,
They only know the world of hurt they hold,
My true self, my wise mind, they see it all,
When integrated, I’m in from the cold.
I do not have to split to deal with this.
No longer do I need my foul gift.
Hips Shake
Mindset turned upside down,
Mentality shifting now.
No more fearful slinking,
Ears working so hard, listening.
Hypervigilant,
“What’s going to happen to me?”
Dog, that’s my call now.
No sweat on this brow these days,
When I move through life,
Like Frankie, I do it my way.
So what if the hips shake?
No one’s gonna touch.
Now that being seen
Doesn’t seem so dangerous,
I’m getting to be a little much.
Katamari Damacy,
Taking up space as I’m rolling down the sidewalk,
Confidence of a man with a huge cock,
Twinkle in my eye,
Don’t mistake that for nice.
Thinking of fucking with me?
Consider again,
Think twice.
Believer
There came a day I had to make a change,
Had to give it all away:
All the rules and chains,
Reponsibilities and obligations,
All the shoulds that got carved
Into the soft wood of my young frame.
I felt my fontanelle open up again,
And the Universe dipped her hand right in.
She swept fingers around,
Piles of ashes,
All the gunpowder,
Shined my mind up like a statue,
Oiled the whining hinges,
Painted all the peeling fences,
Rubbed rich liniment
Into the cracks in my defenses.
I opened wide to Love,
I felt it as the gift it is.
I felt like being lovable
Isn’t a grift.
Real love is renewing,
Never troubling,
Lovable in the spirit
Means the growth is always doubling.
And here’s another thing:
I did the work,
I did it myself.
I had supporters,
I had cheerleaders,
But every day I had to wake up
And be a believer.
I still have needs, to be sure,
But now I know who they’re for.
Consonants
When books are your parents,
You grow up wrong.
I’m not well-traveled;
To go places when you’re young,
You have to have resources.
Kids can’t summon adult forces,
They need people who love them to do some work.
What I had was books.
I had the eyes in my head,
I looked so closely at the trees,
Until I learned the name
Of each of my neighbor-leaves.
I read
Words,
Words,
Words,
Until they blurred.
They showed me the world.
The only thing telling me I was worth it.
Held them close to my heart.
In the dark,
I stayed up way too late,
Under blankets with flashlight,
Seeking escape.
In the absence of comforting hands,
Consonants do,
At least they did for me.
Hope you don’t know if it’s true.
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All my best,
I love you poems 🩶