Humans are so loud sometimes
Our billboards, notifications, LED lights
HDTVs, brand names, addictions and consumerings
Our cars, trucks, guns and houses
Our street lights, our highways
Our airplanes and airports and cities
Our poverty, pain and avoidance
Our wealth, desires, longings and emptiness
Invisible in their glaring audacity
Silent in their cacophony
Like the summer fan we no longer hear
in the relentless heat
Like the air we breathe
When we’re able
Like the soundtrack of our lives
thrumming in our speakers, headphones and earbuds
Drowning out the world around us
Insulating us
Imprisoning us
All this we choose
It makes the quiet hard to hear
Hard to find the still spaces where all things emerge
The beneath it all
The ground that's always there
Patient
Alive
Ready to sit with us
Walk with us
Run and lay down with us
Laugh and grieve with us
Love and be with us
Reveal to us
Our place in this dance
This song
Or at least the next step or breath to take
Let us sometimes choose this
To listen to the beneath it all
and see where we end up
Instead
Month: August 2024
Grandpa, when I heard you wrote love poems
Grandpa
When I heard you wrote love poems
Something inside
Deep and secret
Rejoiced
You were funny
Loved to get into tickle fights
Wore a mischievous grin just like mine
or was it the other way around
You survived the violence of white men
Whose ignorance and fear tried to destroy you
Doctors thought you'd die
Then that you’d never walk again
You showed me the scars in your arm
Where screws held bones together
Looking at you
Walking around just fine
You seemed indestructible
I heard of your golden gloved fists
Skillfully a fighter
Prized and respected in the ring
Later I heard of these same fists
Brown and bloodied
Keeping your mother and siblings safe from your father’s violence
My dad told me our fighting
Was always about protecting
Family
Community
Beloveds
He told me another story
Of you arguing with Grandma
And walking out so as not to bring your fists to bear
Instead you walked
And found other men to fight
To hurt
So I learned a confusing path of manhood
This confluence of love and violence
Men fighting men
To protect women and children
Men fighting men
To not beat women and children
Grandpa
When I heard you wrote love poems
Something inside
Deep and secret
Rejoiced
Maybe there was more to our manhood
More to our hearts
Than hardening ourselves for the violence
The hurt
The isolation
The rejection
That’s also here
Compressing it all in
Balling it up
Tighter
Like a fist
Seeking release
Seeking something
Anything
To match the depth and volume of that pain
Instead
Maybe
Our manhood
Our hearts
Could reveal something deeper
Our courage
To feel
To be open
To find the words to rejoice at the wonder of this precious life
To voice our love and tenderness
Even as the conditions of violence try to tear our flesh
And break our bones
This blessing of manhood you also left for me
To continue the story
Of our lives
Our loves
Our courage
Our tenderness
Our wonder
Tired
Tired
Another day
No insight
No clarity
I want to know why
Sad
Another day
No insight
No clarity
I want to know why
Heavy hearted
Another day
No insight
No clarity
I want to know why
Pressure
Make it all better
Do something
Say something
Don't be dragged down
Be positive
Help others
And so on
And so on
All the things
All the tired and sad and heavy things
All the pressure
And somehow
Don't worry
You don't have to figure it all out
Like your simple and sacred breath
It’ll all come and go
Don't worry
You’ll be alright
There is a shakiness deep in my bones
There is a shakiness deep in my bones
As my feet touch the soil of my homeland
There is a press of ancestral bodies
Pulsing against the boundaries of my flesh and spirit
Crowding to feel into this life and time and place
And the River calls to me
Here I am
You know me
Don't be scared
You have been here before
Not in your dreams nor in places of dark fear
But in body and heart
Flesh and spirit
In your wholeness you were here
Let the reality of this place touch you and remind you
You are always home
Be here
Be bright
Let your spirit and being shine
In your fullness and love
Let words come and go
Let stories come and go
Freely and courageously
Naming fear and pain and violence
Naming care and connection
Of a love so deep
And a hurt so sharp
All in the same breath
All in the same touch
Let the yearning and longing flow freely my friend
Like the river
The one you come to again and again
The one who sings
Roar and be calm
Release and receive
Sing with us
With all the Rivers
These are our reminders of who you are
Healing & Liberation Counseling 