The welcome #poetry

Your arms are wide
Your eyes are narrow
Your door is open
Your heart is closed
This is the welcome
You offer it to me proudly, loudly

I accept, I sign a contract
Unbreakable

I decline, forever cast aside
Ungrateful

What words sit behind your smiling, empty eyes?
The same words lingering on old, discarded sighs

You are the left over. The forgotten. The stalled.
The mother from a generation taught to fear your own power
Told to be a woman
Told to be quiet
Polite
Perfect
Domestic
They forgot to tell you the most important part
That you belong to them

Listen now to my song. It wakes the fear in you I know. The fear of missed and wasted opportunity. The fear of wrong choices, turns, paths left untended.
But I see. I see your longing. Your power. Your potential. And I believe. Even with your narrow, cold eyes. I believe in your power. Your real power. Not the power of the domestic. The polite. The quiet. The perfect. But, the power of a woman. A woman given choice. Opportunity, information. I hear your shackled roar. In the echo of your shouted words thrown in my face with nasty, poisonous force. I hear your longing. The depth of your fear that everything I stand for is on the side you know you belong.

I am the power of possibility
Of fierce and open love
Of honesty, tamed by compassion
Of compassion that has no boundary but fear
Of fear tamed by courage
Of courage given wings
Hear my song
Hear my roar
Hide behind your door
No longer
No more
We fight this out
Here and now

Your welcome has never been welcoming at all

So this is the plan #poetry

So this is the plan,
To channel all this
This hurt
This rage
This deep
Into words on a page
Words on a stage
For you here
Tonight
Beating
Breathing
With me
Ready

Pause
Stop
Ice
Sharp and pointy
On the edge of losing
All
Everything
Nothing
Something
How far forward
How far back?
Have you got my back?
Really?
You just saying that?
Spilling that?
Breathing that?

I’m thinking.
This
Feeling. Ripping, tearing, soaring and smothering
Breaking you
Breaking me
Somewhere in between

Left unsaid. Trickles on eyelids. Losses on fingernails.
Want to scratch your eyes out
If only
If not
You could see
The irony
And I’m laying
You’re not.
I’m crying
You’re not
You’re a wind up doll on a left over crusade
And I’m the casualty, the victim, the one who got in the way

This is family. New family. Made family. Forced family. I know I’m kicked. Not welcome. Left overs you didn’t want
But here I am
Ready to rise.
To dance
To love you
Like this
Over and over and over and over and over
Thank you

because_a little awesome fear is all it takes

Sometimes you’re just going about your work day.

In amongst it all you scan blogs, emails, social media for the latest grants/opportunities/news to share/engage with/devour.

Sometimes in the middle of all that you discover the gems. The large and small things that hit you in the best kind of way. The kind that sing to your inner longings and remind you why you do all this crazy stuff. The stuff that makes the people you know shake their head at you, because, because they don’t know the hunger in you.

The ache.

Sometimes you read words like these:

because of a sickness that says I can never be content where I am
always searching around for some new thing
because of a laziness that says never make something that lasts
only keep running for the next project
because of a fear that keeps me moving
that if I stop it will all fall apart under me

because half of life is breaking what i have
and the other half is trying to put it back together

because hummingbirds
because buenos aires airport on a winter night
because sound artists playing laptops and bamboo flutes in a gallery patio
because stoned and mumbling awkward spanish on a balcony

because to test ourselves against some kind of measure we don’t know what

I stumbled across this gorgeous poem while stalking the doings of the ever fabulous David Finnigan. Because was written during a residency in South America by Finnigan and Brother (David and Chris’ ‘band’ – so much cooler than a band, they’re exploring the messy edges of sound, word, song and music). You can read the full text of the poem here and download yourself a copy of the tracks developed during their residency.

David also happens to be a producer of the You Are Here Festival. Check it out and get involved in some of your own awesomeness.

My contribution to the interwebs/musicality recently? This. Enjoy.

Breath deep. Ache and hunger with me.

Because

Words

Fickle, slim, too hard to hold onto things.

Words.

Thrown across a room. Across a galaxy. Across the distance between my lips and your eyes and all the moments stretched between.

Words.

I have said words in anger, in sorrow, in grief, in deep shattering rage. Words that slip underneath all the other words and change the truth of everything that was and everything that will be.

Who made of me such a powerful tool?

Yet other words have also been spoken. I have said words of joy, of pride, of love, of fierce belonging. Words that have freed everything within me to sing and to soar.

Words.

 

Just words.

 

 

Homage to Uncertainty

I’ve been lazy with my blogging for the last year. Forgive me.

But check out this amazing project by the lovely Emma Beech and support her if you can. She is super close to reaching her target.

 

http://www.pozible.com/index.php/archive/index/12671/description/0/0