POETRY IS NOT MEANT TO BE POLITE

Before you read any further, understand that the warning at the entry to this blog is there for a reason.   Most of what I have shared here has been written as politely as I am capable of and still discuss the subject matter in question.  The poetry has been the most explicit, and that is because;  

POETRY IS NOT MEANT TO BE POLITE

It is meant to make you feel and respond, to think yes, but more than anything, to experience.  If I was to censor that mode of expression I might as well never write another word as long as I live.

That being said, I am done being polite.  I am done speaking gently so as not to upset anyone, or make anyone uncomfortable.  I am done being anything but brutally honest on this blog.  

This is my place to speak about things that I need to speak about.  This is my place to look at all of the stuff that anyone else would have me hide.  This is my place to explore my journey.

You are welcome to read and to comment as you please, provided you respect the privacy of others, but I will no longer be discrete in my choice of language nor in the subjects that I choose to explore.

I have finally taken the step out of the theory and intellectual exploration and into exploring and experimenting and experiencing in the real world.  

I have experienced a profound awakening and I choose to share those experiences and to explore the meaning I am finding within them here. 

If you do not want to know…don’t read this blog any further.  

I will not be offended by your choice. Go in peace and grace and blessed be on your journey.

If you choose to continue to read these posts, I thank you for your support and your company.  I hope that you may find something here worthy of your time and contemplation. Blessed be.

Boundaries

I have been exploring and experimenting lately.  I have been meeting new people and discussing the nature of desire, and I realized that one of the skills that I need to develop further is the ability to hold strong boundaries.  To see clearly what I desire and to distinguish that from what others may desire.

It is not only a need to communicate those desires, or to negotiate what I am willing to try, but to hold clarity about myself, and to respect my boundaries. 

I have spent most of my life, until recently, complying with the wishes of others.  “People-pleasing” is a habit.  I caught myself asking whether or not I could meet another’s desire, and deciding that, I could indeed accommodate their wishes. 

I realized in that moment that, I was asking the wrong questions.  I need to be asking myself, “What do I want?” and   "Is this person’s desire compatible with my own?”

I can no longer afford to compromise what I want, or my need for autonomy and independence, to fit someone else’s dream.  This journey must be about my dreams. 

In a conversation with someone who was trying to pick me up, and who I had no desire to accommodate, I heard a gem of wisdom.  “It's not about surrendering to another person but, to your own body’s experience.  It’s about your own energy being released, and about your own power to choose.”

In an experiment with a cherished and trusted friend, I discovered that it is indeed about surrendering to my own body, allowing my own energy to flow freely, and it is about my power. 

Choosing to submit to another, in that moment, and only for that moment, is a choice to express my own power and, in doing so, to remember that power. 

The choice is mine and the power is mine. I must be diligent to choose consciously, not through habitual pattern.  And I must be diligent not to sacrifice my strength but, to choose my own desires.

time travel and the laws of physics...

Photo by Helen Jarvis-Reynolds

In the sunlight, 

the tail occasionally strikes, 

kissing my arm, my leg, my belly, 

the side of my neck once.  

We are just playing  but,

the bite of the tail, slight as it is, 

brings a flush to my skin, a rise in my heart-rate 

and a slight release of neuro-transmitters in my brain, 

I still understand the science, for now.

Later, we sit in the summer evening.  

I recall moments from long ago; 

the sound of rain on the roof of a car, 

the smell of South Carolina soil, 

the taste of strawberry wine,

another face, another name,

and the structure of time begins to shift.  

My memories from a lifetime ago are closer than they appear.  

the day to day, of life as it is now, fades to a distant past.

Later still, I sit on my bed in soft cotton, 

drinking wine and listening to music from that life long gone; 

you say my voice changed somewhere during the third song... 

The occasional touch of your claws playing lightly on my arm 

causes another release of the magick potion in my brain, 

I am less conscious of the science now.

I got up to get something, 

from the kitchen I think, more wine maybe? 

I am not sure now, 

you were standing behind me, 

your claws tracing symbols across my skin.

“You may turn around now…” 

your voice, a whisper from a half-remembered dream.

Moments skip forward; 

Minutes? Seconds? Days? Hours? Years?

The structure of time has lost cohesion.

bent over the bed, my hands behind my back,

"Do not move"...

the universe collapses into my skin... 

there is no spoon, no room, no clock on the wall, no walls…

only your claws on my back, your growl in my ears, 

your hand gripping my hair, 

pulling my head back, exposing my throat.

The magick in my brain has taken effect; your spell has cast me into power...

The laws of physics have been replaced by a warm russet fog 

that smells like sex and tastes of your skin; 

gravity no longer applies. 

Your forearm pressing against my neck makes it difficult to breathe, 

your grip on my hair tightens, 

both pull me back against you, 

“Don’t make a sound” 

and when you have finished fucking me again... 

“That, was for me."

Your voice penetrates the fog that fills my body and my brain, 

causing the temperature to increase by a magnitude...

Later, after you have restored the clock 

along with the walls and spoons and things, 

and I am once again a woman of my age 

and not a time-traveler, containing the entire universe within my skin, 

you ask me about the things I said when you asked me "why?"…

There are no bruises this time, but for a shadow on my belly from your teeth, 

and answers that I do not remember giving...

Stolen children

I remember a recurring night-terror that I had as a child of about seven.  I would dream that a mad-scientist melted my parents and my brothers into buckets (a sideways version of the witch in the Wizard of Oz) and took them from me.  Children of that age typically experience night-terrors regarding loss of family and abandonment.  

  

I woke at two this morning from a dream and was able to recall at least the last moment of it.  In that moment, I accused my family of origin of stealing my children.  I have this dream occasionally.

This may sound like an exaggeration but, in reality it is not.  My children were taken from me by my parents and given to others to raise.  I was not allowed to know anything about them or their families.  They were lost to me completely, possibly forever.

My parents are good and loving people.  They truly love me and were doing what they honestly believed with their whole hearts was best for me and my future, and for my children and their futures.  They were absolutely sure, and they were wrong.

I have never given birth to another child.  I did get to meet each of my children when they reached eighteen years, and I am building relationships with them but, I will never have the kind of relationship with them that I wish for, that the mothers who raised them have (and for the record, both of my children were raised by wonderful and loving families.)  I am grateful for the chance to know them.  I thank my Gods and my ancestors for returning them to my life.  But I am a footnote in their lives, a welcome visitor but, a visitor nonetheless.

I have come to terms with my anger over my parents’ choices.  I have forgiven them, and myself for my own compliance with their decisions.  For the most part, I have learned to let go of “what might/should/would/could have been” because, if I do not, I cannot live in the present or the future. But my grief over what I have lost still visits me, and the pain of that betrayal by those who loved me, whom I trusted most, is evidently still an obstacle for me in trusting and in being loved.

It is not possible for anyone to take from me more than that which has already been taken, and yet, trusting that is a greater obstacle than I might have imagined it would be by now.  I want to learn how to overcome that obstacle, if indeed I can.

Dreaming the Self...

Part of exploring and discovering who I am is remembering who I wanted to be when I was a child and considering who I want to be now.  I think that who we truly are manifests in our dreams of who we want to be. 

I have been dreaming a lot again lately.  The kind of deep dreaming that is difficult to surface from and yet, I have been unable to remember much, if anything, of these dreams.

It feels as though there is something important that I am supposed to know and that the images are presented to me over and over again only to disappear each morning before I can discover what they mean.

I will be working on other ways to find the answers, and maybe the dreams are not about who I want to be, or wanted to be years ago but, I have to start somewhere and so that is where I will begin.

I will let you know where it leads…

Perceptions

You cannot completely control another person’s perceptions.  Neither the way that they perceive the universe nor, the way that they perceive you.  It is an immensely frustrating fact.  You can try very hard to communicate, to be transparent, to express yourself truthfully and honestly but, you cannot control the way you are perceived.  And another’s perceptions are always, at least in part, colored by their own feelings and unconscious programming, as are our own.

I am perceived by many to be cold and distant.  Apparently I have many sharp edges and it matters not that this is neither my intention nor, how I truly feel about the world or other people.

All the advice someone can give me about how to be warm and approachable is beyond my ability to always follow successfully, no matter how much I might wish to. 

This fact is painful sometimes because it feels as though I am being judged as deficient in some way and, because I do not like to fail.

But what I can do is be sure to examine my own perceptions and judgments and, give someone else the benefit of the doubt.  I can remember that my own perceptions of others are not always completely accurate and that I am not capable of knowing everything about their heart and soul.  

It's the little things...

I wear a uniform everyday to work.  It isn’t horrible but, I hate it.  I hate that it has no color and that the part I have no choice in is a man’s sweater vest.  I grew up wearing dresses only for church and school.  The rest of the time I wore my big brother’s hand-me-downs which eventually were handed down to my little-brother.  I was not a tom-boy.  I hated wearing boy’s clothes, and the haircut my mother gave me when I was six (short like a boy’s).   

It’s not that I don’t get it.  She was a stay-at-home mom with three kids and valued all that was practical and thrifty. She put a great deal of love and time into the things she made for me but, sewing new clothes for me had to be reserved for school and church.  Nevertheless, I never felt right wearing my brother’s clothes, and I hate most of the photos of my childhood because I look like a little boy and I remember how wrong that felt.

I like wearing different clothes to express myself.  I still like to wear different clothes to see how it feels, to try-out facets of identity that I am exploring, to try-on different ways of being a woman.  It occurs to me what it must be like to be a trans-gendered child, to be stuck in a body and expected to dress and behave in a way that does not agree with your true self. 

It may seem to be a small and petty thing, to wear clothes.  They are simply a means to protect our bodies from the elements but, I have always experienced them as an expression of self, or an exploration of identity.  And that is no small thing. 

It really is the “little things” that make a difference…