Yeah…

yeah, I do love 
making you laugh
and laugh hard. 
because I know
at that very moment, 
you are the furthest 
away from the things
that hurt you. 
         
     - JmStorm

swoon. 
there's healing in darkness and light. 

Food for Thought…

"It is an absolute human certainty
that no one can know his own 
beauty or perceive a sense of his
own worth until it has been 
reflected back to him in the 
mirror or another loving, caring
human being." 

John Joseph Powell

The free soul…

"The free soul is rare, but 
you know it when you see it
- basically because you feel 
good, very good, when you 
are near or with them."

-Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

The night…

Excerpted from An Imperfect Geometry, by Elisa Diaz Castelo and translated by Robin Myers

The night too has long bones. It’s the moon, papered in scars. Its light still knocks hollow against the walls. I wrote you a letter once. I waited for you at the banks of the final hour and dipped my feet in the river. But the years are skittish cats that don’t return. And the outside goes on: the day rusts and darkens. My body is made of those gray and graceless city birds. They hop across the pavement without style. They don’t even know they can fly. But my blood is round and poisonous. And the heart fumbling along. What I mean to say is my pen ran out of ink and you weren’t there. The window broke and it rained inside the house all night. You weren’t there. The lights went out. There were no candles. I mean to say that countdown, that sleep and fitfulness, that I’m running out of time. My blood will soothe its doubt. I’ll forget the names of my bones. I mean to say that this will pass and you won’t be there.

Too Much

There is a sky inside you
and it is made of flames 
and it is made of rain. 
But you refuse to release it
because someone you loved 
once told you that you are too much
to handle when you unleash
all of your beauty, 
your passion, 
your vulnerability.
You are too much
when you are raw.

So instead, you hide it. 
You hold in the storms
you slowly let the fire die.
All because you think 
how no one can handle
your truth, your courage,
your pain. 

-Nikita Gill

As I learn to hold Myself, I learn to release my fullness and those that are meant to be in my life will remain. Being "complicated" and "too much" is a gift.  -JP.  

Departure

                   I
This wind sighing recalls certain things.
I warned you:
Beware of it:
Passion has wings;
And will return with the year’s return
Like a bird on migrant wings.
This wind sighing recalls
Certain half-remembered things.

                    II
You have left something of you behind.
But you went with eager step,
Fearful, lest what you have left behind
Should halt your eager step.
When the lean years bring you back,
You will be as one
Who has laughed the lean years with strange men;
You will be different then.

                    III
Beyond the gate of the sun
I shall not seek you:
Before the last days are done
You have sung your last song,
You have played your last tune,
You have danced your steps too soon.
It is not easy
When great moments are so few:
Beyond the gate of the sun
I shall not seek you.

-Chaman Lall

feast on it

your healing 
is on its way
to you

have you made 
room for
its arrival?

turn on the lights 
turn up the music

let it know 
that you are home

that you are ready for 
your new day

that you believe
your new day belongs
to you

you deserve your healing, feast on it.

-Cleo Wade 

Could not love this more. 
If today is not your "new day," know that it will arrive. 
You deserve it, my friend.   JP

Saint Francis and the Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   
began remembering all down her thick length,   
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

-Galway Kinnell

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.


Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.


The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

-William Wordsworth

…that is all

I was listening to a 
talk tonight and someone
said, "Who are you 
when you aren't believing 
something is wrong with you." 

And...damn...that is all

-Cleo Wade-

A Poem by Sarah Ruhl

Standing four feet apart,
you take one edge of the sheet,
I take the other.

We walk towards one another,
creating order.

Like solemn campers folding a flag
in the early morning light.
But this is no flag.
This is where we love and sleep.

There was a time we forgot to do this—
to fold with and toward one another,
to make the edges clean together.

My grandmother might have said:

There is always more laundry to do–
and that is a blessing because it means
you did more living
which means you get to do more cleaning.

We forgot for a while
that one large blanket
is too difficult for one chin to hold
and two hands to fold alone—

That there is more beauty
in the walking toward the fold,
and in the shared labor.

There's so much these particular words stir in me, at this particular time: how polarized our country feels, how we don't look one another in the eye, say hello and give a warm smile. We see differences as something to argue about instead of something to embrace. It's distressing. 

But then a friend reminds me in not so many words; it's my job to change my world. 
I find eyes -- I smile. I say hello.
My world changes. 

We need to fight. For community. For human-ness. For connection.  
Let's walk toward the fold, my friends. Together.

With love,  JP. 

My sweet darling

My sweet darling,
all these tears,
this hurt,
the pain in your heart,
do not fight it anymore,
it is a gift, you see, to feel this much
and even though it's hard
it means you're alive
with each of these tearful breaths gasped
your soul awakens,
more alive in the pain
than you were in the numb,
you are coming back to me now, my love,
lucid in this darkness-
so cry aloud,
yell,
and fall,
and I will be here waiting 
to catch you
when the waking up is done. 

-Atticus

Notes on the Term Survivor:

I need you to know
I loved her enough
to lie to everyone who knew me
about how bad it got.

I need you to know 
there is a bullet 
lodged between my ribs
in the shape of her holy mouth.

I need you to know 
the night the neighbors saw
what they did, when I took
back my voice

finally found the strength 
to call her a monster, 
I woke up the next morning
and I did not feel brave. 

I woke up feeling 
like the love of my life

        is a monster

which is the opposite of triumph. 

Which is the whole world
Dropped. Clattering
across the hardwood floor. 

We talk about survival 
like it's a thing that makes you
stronger. 

-Marianne David 
(adapted)

one hundred twenty

What you couldn't see coming.
What you didn't expect. 
What you weren't prepared for.
The blind side. 
The black smoke.
The descent.
It will gulp your tears,
drain your blood,
and wipe your slate clean.
Game over.
That's when you bite back,
tear your gaping heart open wider,
and start again. 

You start again.

-Tanya Markul

As many times as you need to. You start again.
 

You Can’t Have It All

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

-Barbara Ras

…but there is this.

The Gift

Be still, my soul, and steadfast. 
Earth and heaven both are still watching 
though time is draining from the clock 
and your walk, that was confident and quick, 
has become slow. 

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply 
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. 
That the gift has been given. 

-Mary Oliver

Let go…

let go
of the past.

empty hands
are easier
to hold. 

-cwpoet

The spirit is never holding
us back from an
attitude adjustment,
only the ego does that.

-Cleo Wade

A Rabbit Noticed My Condition

I was sad one day and went for a walk;
I sat in a field.

A rabbit noticed my condition and 
came near. 

It often does not take more than that to help at times- 

to just be close to creatures who
are so full of knowing,
so full of love
that they don't 
-chat,

they just gaze with
their
marvelous understanding. 

-St. John of the Cross

A Hundred Objects Close By

I know a cure for sadness:
Let your hands touch something that
makes your eyes
smile. 

I bet there are a hundred objects close by
that can do that. 

Look at
beauty's gift to us-
her power is so great she enlivens 
the earth, the sky, our
soul. 

-Mira