The First Doctors

Farmers were the first doctors

They care for ears of corn and eyes of potatoes

They cure onions and garlic and find out what is plaguing the tomatoes

Famers were the first obstetricians

They bring new life into the world

Laboring alongside cows, goats, chickens and sheep

Farmers were the first surgeons, carefully cutting up meat

In all seasons they are put to the test, tending to vegetable beds, from nursery to compost

Ridding all manner of afflictions

To the farmers and the nourishment they provide, let us give thanks before we eat

Spelunking

What if I stopped caring about pleasing you and everyone?

What if I felt safe even around people who are upset?

How much energy would I free up, and what would I do with it?

How much lighter would my body feel, would my breath flow easily?

Would I be able to sleep at night, without feeling hunted by your animosity?

Would my pounding heart simmer down, and my jaw unclench?

What would I think about, if I weren’t worrying all the time how to make you happy?

What if I told you that your feelings are your responsibility?

What if I liberated myself from unrealistic expectations?

What if I let go of expectations for others?

If you love me, it doesn’t feel like it to me.

I want positive, supportive, unconditional love from those who practice humility, humor, and curiosity.

I radiate those qualities when I’m not lost in a cave of depression.

When spelunking, bring a helmet and a light.

A helmet to protect you so that thoughts of suicide don’t become acts of suicide.

A light source as a spiritual anchor to remind you not to take yourself too seriously.

Heart Breathing

Breathing through my heart I expand across water and land

My golden light illuminates the darkest night, my moon rise ripples into infinity

I felt your pain and recognized it as my own

For the longest time I had a bitter grip on anger and anger had a bitter grip on me

Anger hardened my heart, kept it rigid, impenetrable. Anger was trying to protect me

Long ago I built a fortress around my heart and peered through the cracks with fearful eyes

No one could cross my mote- the bleeding hearts of potential suitors were strewn all around

I realize now that the problem wasn’t with them, it was with me; I was stuck in a rut of unhealthy patterns

I can unbuild what I built for survival long ago, I can rip up weeds and plant new seeds

I can create a space where I feel safe, where I am able to love those who scare me because they show that they are hurting, even blame me for their feelings

Why should I be afraid of fear, when we are so well acquainted?

Breathing through my heart, I am carried by the gentle breeze

This is enough- I don’t have to solve all the problems in one day

Heart breathing, problems melt away and are transformed into love

Little Women

A tale of 4 sisters

The first two bulimic and bruised

The eldest succumbed to drug addiction early on

The first three prone to promiscuity

The second smoked and drank

The third lost her voice when the second beat it out of her

She worked as a prostitute because it was easier than saying no

The fourth turned out alright after the third shielded her from the family tradition of abuse

At great expense

The third sister’s body is a bomb ready to explode with all the trauma it holds

Please tread lightly

I am a little woman but I hold enormous potential energy

I am a volcano of anger and I don’t know how to express myself without burning others

So I implode, swallow, drown, melt

Often letting my feelings remain unfelt

But I love to feel and I love to heal

I long to stomp barefoot, curls in the breeze

Take a break from humanity, put my mind at ease

We will seek peace in vain until we embody peace ourselves

Swallowing Fire

My unspoken sadness and madness

Burn like hot coal in my throat

My sore neck holds the tension of another night’s nightmares

Running from persecutors with unknown motives

Even in my waking life, I don’t know why some people get so mad at me

How tempting to cut them off like a gangrenous limb

I hesitate when my persecutors are my family

Stubborn old fashioned tradition of gritty endurance

Ancient dynamics, drama on loop

My sister, abusive and oppressive

My parents either didn’t notice or didn’t care

I used to want to be saved, wanted my parents to protect me, to show my sister that I mattered. That will never happen because it hasn’t happened yet

My rescuing is entirely my responsibility

We are grown as hell

I notice and care about the years of mistreatment and terror

I will protect myself

Though I’m not sure how

Though my throat is scalded with all the fire I’ve swallowed

Fire I’m getting ready spit when I tell you what you are

Flame

Your rage strikes my heart like a lightning bolt

Cracking it open and setting it afire

I am at a loss for what to do, so I warm my hands over the embers and wait

To transform, part of me must die

I cannot rush, only trust

How many times can one heart break?

As many times as it takes

To learn the sacred lessons

To consciously unite with the divine

Time and time again

Pain is pain, sensation is sensation

No matter the form or formal education

Lucid dreaming just before waking

I see a sea of broken hearts glowing in the dark

Each a floating lantern offered up

Burning with the same flame

Off My Chest

I need to get you off my chest

I’ve never felt relaxed in my life because you raised me in the war zone of your wrath

Bombs of panic explode in my mind all day every day

Choking me with your smoke and mirrors even though you are far away

My ears ring with your shouting

You were the biggest little tyrant

Not even two years my senior

Yet always more needy

Mandating, yet begging

I didn’t realize the power I had over you, and still do

You were the one dependent on me for affirmation, not the other way around

I didn’t have a choice then, but I do now-

To live a life without your storms brewing on my horizon

I’ve never slept well in my life because I thought you were going to murder me in my sleep throughout our childhood and adolescence

I used lie in bed wearing a cross around my neck with a note attached to it asking you to think before acting, waiting for dawn to break, dreading another day with you, feeling trapped and hopeless with no end in sight

I never felt protected, respected, seen or heard by our parents

In moments of desperation, I wish you had killed me

Instead you continue to torture me passive aggressively, and I am passive passive aggressive

Silenced, as if buried alive

I toss and turn, tormented between insomnia and nightmares

I’m trying to think before I act

I am upset that I’m even thinking about you now

I am upset about how you get upset ‘at’ me: you throw your rage at me and have me clean up the mess, time and time again, left to calm your ass down as if your reactions were justifiable or somehow my fault

It was never my fault

I am not responsible for how you feel

Leave me alone you evil bitch

I want to scream at you with the force of 35 years of repressed anger and tears

At the same time, I am trying to let go of the hot coal which burns my palm

I am trying to let the rippling waters of my pond be still

I am trying to not be irritated, for only then will you no longer be irritating

I am trying to take responsibility for my thoughts and feelings

I am tired of trying so damn hard

I am ready for ease

I am ready for peace

I am ready to breathe

Please, get off my chest

I don’t need to ask- I am responsible for how I feel

I’m not sure what to do next

I’ll probably meditate and self-medicate with raw emo poetry

Like the note pinned to my cross-necklace, you will probably never read this

But maybe those who matter will

Those who feel they are suffering alone

May find healing in this onion peel

And breathe just one breath more freely

For this I humbly pray

Namaste

Take it Back

I feel the knots you’ve tied within me

Stains on my energy

Pains in my body

I observe the damage

Tension, nausea, sensation of suffocation

Insomnia, dizziness, diarrheal defecation

You made me feel powerless for too damn long

You beat me up but my spirit is strong

This shit isn’t mine

This was never mine

This is yours

Take it back

Take it all the fuck back

The trauma and the drama

The hurt and the dirt

Keep your hands and your mind out of my skirt

Don’t tell me what to do

Your mind games were never fun for me

Were they fun for you?

You can win the prize, I offer it freely to you

I won’t play anymore

Your ego will have to deal with the fact that I’m letting my sanity heal

I’m learning to put myself first

Through radical acts of self care to restore my happiness and health

Your energy is yours

Take it back

Labor Pains

Give birth to your best self, America

Painful, messy, terrifying, raw

The most beautiful transformation you’ll ever see

America, you’ve been gestating too long to stop now

Humanity is bursting from your loins, America

Born of the brutal rape of racism

Blood spills on the ground

Fertilizing the soil from which you spring forth

You cannot go back to the way you were, America

You can only keep pushing forward

I am learning to listen to my heart, America

Though the change may not be obvious to you yet

Subtle shifts below the surface move mountains, America

I change my thoughts to change my life

Though the echoes of your trauma are deafening

Though the jaws of your mental imprisonment clamp down hard around me

I no longer strive to be your wounded warrior

I am your healed child, here to show you how to heal yourself

Even though you broke my heart so early and often that you left me without a sense of self

Yet my heart kept on beating

And loving

That is how you heal

Keep on loving

Love yourself, love your life, love your fellow beings and the whole Earth as yourself

Forgive yourself and others

Be kind to all, for we are children on a difficult journey that wouldn’t be so damn difficult if we were kind to each other

Pay it forward and see what happens

Love and kindness and forgiveness is the way

America is having labor pains today

I welcome your birth America, your infinite potential

You suffered so much hate that you became a hater but it is finally time to love, America

Sleep Talking

Long ago and far away

On a bus grinding through the night

The air thick with sweat and grime

All we had was time

Beer and ice cream on my lips

Bitterness and liquor on his

The man next to me said that I was afraid of talking in my sleep

He overstepped the boundary that I failed to establish between us

Sometimes when I wake up alone, I wonder if my lover heard me sleep-talking and left me to wallow in my past

I want to tell him the truth about my life, but I fear that he would stop loving me,

or worse- rehash it endless times and tell his religious family who would judge me as a hell-bound, lying, baby-killing whore

They’d be right, in a sense

I have exchanged sex for money and I’ve had 3 abortions, each one horrible in its own way, but not as bad as being stuck in an abusive, disempowering situation

Judge not, motherfuckers

I don’t want any man to judge the decisions I’ve made about my body

Least of all a man who is financially dependent on my career: a profession which swallowed my fetuses whole

My past is nobody’s business but my own

I don’t want to be given a hard time for the hard times I’ve already been through

I’m trying to heal and move on

I’m trying to meet myself with compassion for the trauma I’ve endured

I am strong and tough and vulnerable and delicate

My dark secrets are at once more innocent and scandalous than my jealous partners imagine

I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore so I stopped being pregnant

You weren’t supporting me by being broke and leaving me shamefully unmarried

I didn’t want to spend the weekend with you so I didn’t

I regret the weekend away because the other men treated me both better and worse than you, but I love you- painfully clear now that the hormonal storm of pregnancy has simmered down

Why do I set myself up for drama and disaster? I’m trying to heal but your rehashing of the past dredges up emotional detritus, dragging me back

My old stress addiction dies hard

I clamp my jaw

My teeth grind like a bus in the night

I pray that I didn’t sleep talk last night