Basic Solutions

Telling me it's something that you have done too

Undermines the uniqueness of what I'm going through

Sometimes I just need you to hear

My suffering displaced from your referential fear

Thank you for your empathy

But not quite yet

I'm not gonna hear it 

Because our friendship is unsettling

The ground on which I'm walking

I know we're afraid of talking

I know I'm making things harder

But are you willing to barter

Your comfort zone

For healing my own

Heart

Break apart

This floating dock I built so you'd look and start

To work with me

Let's be

The basic solution of company

We've been practicing

The things they encourage in us are not what they see 

In us

But they successfully amp up our volume to be 

Subjects 

For what they hear through themselves.

We might exemplify it well (the notions they carry)

But underneath these talents are what we keep buried

What haven't we shown them?

What are we practicing

With less consistency because their praise is distracting?

Even though we don't know how to share

We musn't lose sensitivity for this art we've prepared

Under their very noses

And we must also learn

Not to become them when it is our turn.

Ricochet Damage

He didn't need to make very much more

Than a passive remark to bring weakness to the foreground

Was anyone dumbfounded?

When he dropped my name

Like a ball made the same

As the electronic mass that unorganized his shame?

Beyond his recognition. 

We're beyond recognition.

The only thing men in this world haven't dropped

Is the spherical maturity so hastily cocked

Ready to fire into open air

Whose ricochet will outlaw so many women there

More than a foot soldier

 It is upon the fact of birth that you and I are equals

No matter how hard we try to undermine each others' civility

We are both alive

Technique will

Differentiate

How we irrigate

The motes that confine us

Secluding the palaces we've imagined satisfy us.

We are alive.

But that is not the criteria to thrive.

A building without eyes will deprive you of sanctuary

But I won't.

And one day I'll be more than a foot soldier

I'll be

The one with the key

And you best believe

I'll give it to you.

Green-light

She spent money, will power, long drives and time

On herself, without knowing where to draw the line

It's her life, one life spent

With headaches, back bent

Jaw clenched

Tight on possibilities

Epiphanies

Strategies

and Eulogies

Don't mistake her ability to self-advocate for impatience

She'll furiously push you to lend credence

To her ambition

For position

For the power to green-light

It's going to be a hard fight

And you got yourself involved by having the power

But make no mistake, you're only the soil:

She's the flower

And when she is there 'cause you graciously let her

She'll advocate for others so they won't have to tether

Their hearts to the claustrophobia that is under this glass ceiling

Her nerve is all that has gotten her this far

She'd never say she lost sisters reaching for that star

But she did.

Fashioning pictures of young girls who couldn't be seen

Behind charismatic S.O.B.s

This Is Not My Home

 

Beautiful, a video to which I want to keep returning. Cataloged here for my own purposes.

The Liturgist

The liturgist sighed, looking out at the abandoned field. He sat, feet in the tan, dry dirt, more rocks than nutrients between his toes. Empty. Looking around, he saw his cousin, widdling into some olive wood to pass the time, desperate to provide some product of value so that his family wouldn’t starve. Food had been getting more and more expensive now, as there was so little of it.

The liturgist faced the field again, fighting back tears. He thought of his mother. He knew it wasn’t helpful, but it felt as though he couldn’t help it. She had been confined to bed for almost two weeks now; her body unable to handle famine. She has a graceful spirit, and thanks God for her “mandatory Sabbath.” This liturgist held within himself a fearful spirit, and did not want to lose his mother in this way. This isolation and fragility were too unnatural.

He shivered a little as a cool breeze interrupted his autumn musings. This harvest season was ending, and it had never even begun. They should all be tired from work, from moving soil and gathering grains; their bodies should be exhausted from grinding and cooking and wrapping up the season, not from the anguish of unexpected ceasing. “Our minds and spirits are not meant to be more tired than our bodies,” he thought, “This is not balance, and, no, mother, this is not Sabbath.”

“Our minds and spirits are not meant to be more tired than our bodies,”

This week, the family would be building their tents in the fields for Sukkot to celebrate the last week of a good harvest. He laughed bitterly. “Season of our joy” indeed. “How on earth was he going to inspire the community to raise a Hallelujah in the temple this week? And pray the Hallelujah Psalms, like Psalm 116? Thanksgiving for deliverance from illness?” He thought of his mother again.

Yom Kippur had been easy. Even quite meaningful. Their whole community was forced in the absence of security and comforts to really focus on God and right-relationship with their Creator; to reflect on all God provides for them, to atone for their sins, their broken relationships with both God and each other. The liturgist himself felt in the past few weeks how sacrifice was able to help him recenter around the Creator of the harvest, not just the harvest itself; to honor Creator as much as he so naturally appreciated creation. 

"The fasting was supposed to cease."

But now, Yom Kippur was over and done with. The fasting was supposed to cease. The time of atonement for the annual spiritual journey of his community was over, and it was his job to lead them into Sukkot, “the season of our joy.” And yet. . .

Can his community, like the psalmist, walk before the Lord in the land of the living? The psalmist did not utter such words of hope until after he was healed and saved. In his distress, he dwelled on his suffering “I am greatly afflicted!” the psalmist said. He was bitter, accusing others of being a liar. What were those others saying to him? Words of hope, perhaps, that he could not hear at the time?

If the holy psalmist could not proclaim hope during his suffering, what is this that God asks of me and my people now? Are we to say “Hallelujah!” and look up into God’s light as it shines into our tents? Are we to pitch our tents of joy in the middle of the barren waste-land that is our fields?

“Yes,” came the response. “Yes, please. Pitch your tents still, please. Make space in the roofs of your tents to let the light in. Walk in the land of the living. Say how your Creator is merciful, compassionate, bountiful, even if others call you a liar. Even as you call yourself a liar.”

The liturgist took a deep breath. He felt the oxygen awaken his mind. He took another breath, sent the oxygen to his shoulders, and woke them up. He took another breath. He sent the breath to his eyes, and found that he could see farther than the barren field, towards his neighbor’s family. He took another breath, and he directed God’s spirit towards his hands. He began to find it funny how he had been breathing this whole time and hadn’t even felt it.

"he could see farther than the barren field"

His fingers moved a little, the Holy Spirit that lives in the temple empowered the sanctuary that is his body. One more inhale, and the spirit moved his hands together in prayer. And he prayed the Hallelujah Psalms. And he prayed the Psalms in the temple. And all the people did what the psalmist could not. That, while even in the midst of their anguish, they shared hope and praise with one another. Sometimes they called each other liars. Sometimes they called themselves liars. But God’s spirit remained as constant as their breath.