Feel the breeze through the trees. Even the leaves strive
to stay alive. The energy is flowing through you, my love.
Pause and feel its spinning. The way of this world , freedom
is for the taking with every breath, linger
in the outside, the black outside while still enclosed within,
for now.
Day 9 – Goofing off Revisions/ redrafting
Ten years. Ten long years of changes, I’ve been dreaming on paper.
I had to give myself permission.
To create again. Safely.
I was fearful. Fearful of the word. Images are safer. Images speak to the soul.
Paint. Takes me back to being a child and all I wanted was love and joy.
Tapping into this feeling of being with self, I show up to the page. Each day.
Each day, I have the opportunity to start again.
Each day I have the opportunity to meet the sunrise anew.
We obscure the outline of the belly of a mountain*
when we write about nature
we enter the realm of words being useless
we enter our narcissistic imaginations instead of being in with the mountain
I miss the mountains, the Highlands, Glencoe
At some point, I became marred by immobility, by staying close, staying safe
Now I return in my dreams, awake and grapple to describe their grace and poise
Abstracted longing. Never enough, never true enough to capture their form, their presence
I wait for my return. To sleep within the belly of mountains,
the mountains I’ve always felt are old Black women resting together, safe
*Day 10 prompt was: Find a single sentence someone else wrote that sticks out to you and use it as your first line. Let your poem unfold from there.
This adapted line was taken from ‘Against Nature Writing’ by Charles Foster.
I made a journal this week.
Recycled a print out of the Darkling manuscript.
I needed to get centred, grounded, focused.
So I stitched the printed sheets together into a book.
Then I applied paint to each page, blotted off any excess.
I had a journal of colourful pages.
I had a safe vessel to capture all my thoughts feelings and to-dos.
I had been feeling overwhelmed.
Like treading water and getting nowhere.
Creating this journal was fun.
It felt like goofing off my day-to-day responsibilities.
This journal helped me get my ducks in a row.
And tick(le) them off into the sunset!
Letting my brain catch up with the happening, I allow my heart to stop for an instant. Feeling unmoored to make sense, far too soon.
If only I had saw it coming. If only someone had thought to talk to me before this. Maybe things would be different, maybe the wound wouldn’t cut so deep.
Needing to rewind the clocks, to go back to that ignorant bliss, that season of love and acceptance, is a fool’s wish.
Under the avalanche of words, I move silent into the dark night, to piece myself back together following a different schema, charting an undiscovered course.
I know I was in the full of it all. Life overflowing.
With all its distractions and demands and me thinking I’m the central force.
I know I was missing from the family home, chasing the next big gig, the next recognition slip.
Maybe my family had eaten for the day and I’d missed it again.
Maybe I had to circle the streets trying to find a parking space for at least half an hour.
I know I carried loads of bags with stuff packed just in case, always worried about being unprepared and found wanting.
I know I lacked the self-belief and love of self. I know I needed more of everything.
So when night fell, and I found myself still working, reorganising books for god’s sake, I know I wasn’t prepared for the public shaming.
But my gut probably knew this day of failure would come to expose me for the imposter always felt and knew.
Pink is such a sick colour. Not like red or orange which own themselves. Pink comes across as whimsical, flighty and lacking. It’s uncooked meat. It’s a tinge of desire. Anger, hardly a ripple. Subdued. It’s lukewarm passion which little promise of satisfaction.
But then I see the blossom. In trees full. Bursting out in big blousy blooms. And pink has me by the throat, squeezing out every feeling of joy, pleasure and awe. Pink cherry blossom does it for me everytime that I forget my dislike for pink and I just swoon.
We’re always looking for answers.
I think that’s why I tell stories or lies.
The purple sky really sets off the creamy whites of those stars.
Silence plays itself. Silence.
I just wish you’d open your eyes when you hover over me.
I just wish you would see me.
Let us linger here in this room with the curtains closed with our other lives forgotten for a little while longer.
Let us not use words when our hands, lips and tongues can communicate our needs, our wants.
Let our breath be silken on our skin, let our bodies entwine still able to promise bloom and ripple.
Let us slow it all the way down, slowly, slow, so we can feel each stroke, each gliding smooth folding into each other.
Let us hear each others moans of joy, of wonder as our bodies wander together away from this room, this bed into our happy place where we can ride out the rest of our time here on earth.
Let us dream this lushness as we reach for each other, conjuring connection beyond the here and now, in the here and now.
Let us linger in the lingering light and just enjoy this afterglow, this pleasured pain like passing ships never to traverse these same desire lines ever again.
Living Wild Studios 