Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...

Dear Pain,

Remember the years I shut you out?
I denied your existence in the name of Happiness.
Well, Anxiety and Depression moved right on in and derailed that plan.

I take you back Pain because Addiction just called and wants to surf on my couch.
Let's take the couch and Joy can have my bed.

Love,

Another Way to Be

Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...

Dear Pain,

An unconditional welcome is the best gift I can give you,
Which only stillness can buy.

Love,

Another Way to Me

Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...

Dear Pain,

Funny how when I shut the door on you,

Anxiety climbs into the windows of my sacred ground. 

She comes in shredding my stillness to pieces

Leaving my wreckage strewn about. 

My heart hardens.

The broken record of intrusive thoughts spins me into a dizzy spell.

You are persistent and again you knock.

And when I finally open the door, there you are standing right next to Joy. 

Come on in. 

Both of you.

Love,

A Softer Me

Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...

Dear Pain,

I will honor you with my stillness.
I will nurture you by filling my well of Self.

I no longer am scared of you.
I no longer abandon you.
I no longer feel ashamed of you.

I will say your name.
I will give you space.
I will give you voice.

I will breathe you in.
I will hold you.
I will give you purpose through cultivated creations.

You are mine as I am yours.
You are a great teacher.

Love,
Your Student

Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...

Dear Pain,
I see you. I know you are there.
Yet, I realize I struggle to meet you.

I am a thinker, a beautiful creator of ideas that flutter colorfully in my brain.
In thinking, I often do not come down to meet you and sit with you.

I think about holding and nursing you but then don't actually.
I realize that my thinking gets in the way of opening my heart to you and melting into you.

Feeling. Feeling. Feeling.
Welcome my dear Pain.
Come lay in my arms and in my warmth.
I am still.

Love,
A Softer Me

In gratitude for the teachings of Sheryl Paul in Conscious Transitions and her powerful  Trust Yourself Class

I Remember

You forgot because you never had to remember...

You remember only when Kaepernick kneels or when we Say Her Name and you deem our forms of protest inappropriate.

When hateful men walk upon cities and campuses bearing messages of hate and otherness 

you suddenly forget that freedom of speech does not protect hate speech.

You forget that we are a land of immigrants and souls stolen from their families. 

Land stolen and built on the backs of Black brilliance and Native wisdom.

You forget because you never had to remember that Freedom here is not like air,
free flowing for all; but more a rationed commodity given out by vigilant hands asleep to injustice. 

Voice

I sat down to write tonight with all the words tangled up inside. They hug each other holding on for dear life. Hiding behind my discomposed intestines peeking out in terror. My words bustle restlessly as I go through my day. I pour down my scorching thoughts of insecurity to settle the convulsing words back to a place where I won't feel them anxiously working to hide from my fingers. Lest these tentacles clumsily make their way to the keyboard or pen and come back looking for every last letter.

Words trapped and deep-seated in a red velvet cloak of perfection keep me from reaching for the letters to spell out my thoughts with curious questions. Bridges I might never construct and connections short-circuited by my disquietude of saying something wrong, presenting inaccurate data, affirming an unjust narrative, or letting my privilege hang out too far past my browness. I let the words popcorn around like nervous kernels of ideas, contemplations, and intuitions bracing for their metamorphosis.

Polyglot graphemes weep imploring me not to seek them out. A forthright set of agape letters settle into their constructed formation I a m a p e r s o n o f c o l o r i n t h i s c o u n t r y a n d w h i t e i n m y c o u n t r y, are braided with the tightly wound verdict that wails "ridingamotorcycleerraticallyisnotgroundsforexecution!" They wallop my gut with outrage as I sit here reluctantly typing and trying to find the letters to make words so I can unfold sentences that might one day chisel a passage to my voice. A day when each letter in his name T E R R E N C E S T E R L I N G will be gently resurrected from its embrace with the percussive beats of my bleeding heart.

Until that day, may this be a seedling implanted for the birthing of unraveling creations.

The Chase

I have heard it said that some poems come through you, 

Using your physical existence for 

A most artful spiritual experience of laboring, pushing, and birthing out 

An exquisite art form we call poem

My poems, they chase me. 

They chase me like a wise little brother almost as fast but not quite

Just slow enough for me to beat him to the couch 

And binge scroll through screened lives of others 

Who display the full-spectrum of a polished existence

My poem, he chases me down the hall to the pantry

And into a quarter bag of flavored pretzels that cannot get enough of me

Because I cannot see that I am enough, just as I am

He chases me to my next stop on the numbing express train

Down to the dreadmill on this bitter cold day
Perfect for retreating under the covers to cuddle with sharpened lead and crisp bark

To put to rest once and for all this wild quest
And like a tired swimmer caught in the undertow
Surrendering, floating, meandering and letting the poem come to life

My poem chases me fiercely

Until I stop and fall into his mysterious embrace carrying me to the shore

Where I will birth another whisper from my soul