Morning!
Oh palette day
oh beautiful blank
slate
wiped clean by
the darkness of
night
Oh beautiful fresh
beginning again
and
again
returned
again
and
again
oh beautiful
fresh
beginning
again
Palette day
with your colors
yet un
un painted
un marred
un smeared
un begun
inside the lines
outside of
the box
against
the grain
with the flow
I’ll go
where I’ll go
where
I’ll go
with this
beautiful fresh
beginning
again
Oh beautiful palette
Oh beautiful day
Oh let’s
PAINT!
Perspective
from where I stood
you tried to break
and break
and break me
but I was too
I was too…
rigid
protected
resistant
demanding
controlling
I was too
unbreakable
for my own good
and my own good
is what I didn’t know
from there
from where I stood
you tried
you tried
to love me
but your own good
wouldn’t let you
so you began
to break away
and that breaking away
that breaking away…
that slow and steady pain
of my own resistance
holding on so tightly
I breathed you in and refused to
let you go
a prisoner in my heart
I would have kept you locked away
but you were too
you were too
unchainable
unhaveable
unbendable
un…
mine
you were all of those
for your own good
and I broke myself open
fighting against
my own good
and yours
from where I stand now
what I didn’t know
about being broken
about being broken open
is filling me to overflowing
with my own good
And the water is still now.
My heart has been a turbulent thing. I think when I slept at night, it might have been calm. Ish. I never knew how it got so wavy, so currenty, so always moving and pulling and tugging and swirling. Sometimes it was that familiar to and fro, that wave on the beach tide of emotions coming and going. And sometimes it has been a flat out storm with crashing of waves and clapping of thunder and pressure and movement and chaos. And sometimes, just that gentle lapping along the banks or swirling around rocks or branches, but always, always the movement.
Until now. Now I can be right in the middle of that swirl, that tidal pull, that current, that tug, and suddenly, by some dawn of new insight, I can still the water. I can gentle my heart.
The water is peaceful and still now. There is no push from within. There is no pull from without. There is only my heart. Every feeling that was, is. But now, it is still. There is no reaching. There is no holding. There is only stillness. There is only peacefulness. There is only love. There is only patience. And on the horizon, all sides of the horizon, there is more stillness. I can stand in this still water that is as big as the ocean. I have found the elusive thing.
And I know something now. Something kind of funny. It was all the flailing. Flailing tends to create waves and splashing and even tidal crashing, depending on the tantrum. And like a hurricane, once in motion, my emotional flailing would suck up velocity and debris from my circumstances and situations and my thoughts and attitudes and the stories I believed about those circumstances and situations. I could drum up quite the squall. And still, mid-flail, I would be convinced that I was the victim, cast away at sea, forlorn and alone, with my poor battered turbulent heart. Even if I wasn’t flailing, I was always crashing around in my heart, frantically searching at times, or going through some motion trying to make myself happy by changing what I was feeling. I was trying to hold back the tide, or dam the stream, or go against the flow. I was always doing, doing, doing. I was doing everything except the one thing that could calm the water.
I think it has taken about a month. I think it started when I just let myself be stormy. I flailed around, trying to resist the fear and the sadness and the fear of the fear and the sadness. And throughout those stormy days, I would let myself, maybe for a moment, maybe for longer stretches of time… I would let myself feel the worst of it. I just let it. I allowed it. And it hurt really really bad. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I don’t know how long that storm had been building, but now I know how it got that bad.
I think those kind of emotionally stormy times happen when old feelings that were never allowed, that were the result of some attitude or painful story I believed, come crashing into my present moment and collide with some emotion I am flailing against and trying to resist because the story is similar to that old story I had believed for so long. All of these stories have a similar plot. I am not loved, I should not trust, I am unfulfilled. I came face to face with all the residual thunder and lightning and hail from believing those stories for so long while never allowing myself to feel how bad it hurts to believe them. I think it’s much easier to let go of those old stories that do not serve us after we feel the pain they have caused. They may in fact be locked up in the emotion and cannot be released until the feelings have been allowed.
I didn’t know that I was unlocking stillness. I didn’t even know it existed. But now that I know how it feels to have a still heart, I can feel right away when there’s an undertow or a wave coming in. And then, I just tune in to my feelings and let them happen and let them go. They never want to stay, they just want to be acknowledged or allowed or accepted.
I have noticed too, that if I wanted to just send a ripple out, as a message maybe, from my heart to another… it would be much easier for that other sweet heart to feel my message when it is coming across a still and peaceful water.
Heart on a Platter
she stares at the blank page
hoping that she won’t fall in
not again
not again
last time she came this way
it was better
there were words on the page but
now there are no words
no words at all
there’s nothing here to show where she’ll end up
so she
can’t fall in
can’t go down
can’t step out
into that
blank world
where have all the words gone?
it changed
it changed
it changed
he pulled the world out from
under me and it changed
there’s a plate on my heart
empty
staring out like a headlight
like one beam of light
out into the darkness
this white plate
there is nothing on it
there is nothing on it
but reflection
the moon stole my heart away
but I got it back
when the words fell off the page
and the world fell away
I took it back off that platter
and now
I see the words again
all the new words
and there is nowhere to fall
I only thought there was
Ghostgirl
I saw that ghost girl
standing rigid like a spike
stickin up out of the street
she was lookin at me
she was lookin at me
that ghost girl is
black as night and
there’s a ghost in her eyes
a big white ghost
coming for me
but I stopped looking
and drove on by
that ghost bulged right out
to get at me
but I stopped looking
don’t want no part
of that death before death
after death after death
ghostgirl
look down
put those eyes to safety
put those eyes to quiet
put those white eyes away from me
don’t keep following me
with those ghost filled eyes
those empty eyes
those big white eyes
who took your soul away
and filled your eyes up
with death
with that hungry
slithering
death before death?
you shoulda looked away
cause they got those eyes
they sucked your soul right out
and filled those eyes up with ghost
girl
My heart.
I took my feet off the pedals but I was cranking them so hard, they’re still whirring. I can’t build up the velocity for my body to catch up with my heart. It’s spinning out of my chest. It’s spinning upward and away and I’ll never catch it. I’ll never catch it.
Why can’t my heart just float out, almost out, but always within grasp like theirs do? They don’t understand why I spin so hard, why I always look exhausted and not happy and floaty. It got away again. And I just have to wait for it to come back. It’s sad, the waiting.
They judge me because I don’t have a heart. Sometimes it feels like it’s running away when it goes. At first it’s so happy and so beating and so bright. Painfully bright and then beating so hard and it can’t be contained and it just… it just… goes. I can’t hold on.
And here he comes, to stand there and smile. His heart is there too. He looks happy and peaceful and he’s there and his heart. His heart is there too.
He’s raining on me with his words again. Like the mountainside and the tiny little flowers that grow against the rock. Only the gentlest of rain should fall on them. And his words are rain like that.
My wheels have stopped their spinning. In the stillness, I can hear myself breathing and my heart. My heart. My heart is here too.