Both/And

Today, my chest opened –
and the world
fell into it.
 
(Not what you expect
on a Wednesday afternoon.)
 
So now I am a woman

in the world 

with the world 

in my chest,

and all that 

me-in-the-world

pales by comparison to

the-world-in-me. 
 
The world is in me now.

The world is in me now. 

 
Funny, cos I’ve tried 

to keep it out 

when – oh look –
it’s in me 

anyway.

Plenty

Imagine a world
in which everyone
had enough,
no-one had more
than enough,
and everyone knew
their own enoughness. 

Entirety

There is a wild and devastating love
that cares only for our wholeness.
 
 (It is loam and tears and
all the things I thought love wasn’t,
and it has laid me bare,
taken me apart, piece by tiny piece,
and it was this that I always wanted.)
 
It will make you think
you are losing your mind
and most probably your life, too,
but it has had enough of us
sheltering in the shadows.
 
This wild and devastating love
will no longer stand for
anything less than entirety.

Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart

 I'm delighted to announce that my poetry collection - Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart - has been published and is now available in paperback and ebook formats from the usual online outlets. 

I'm really grateful to everyone who has subscribed to my writings via this blog over the last twelve years. Your responses and support mean the world to me. Thank you. 

Liberation

 since way back when i felt inadequate, wherewithal-less

- not that i would have called it that back then -

so i set about finding people, things

that might adequatise me because

god forbid the shame of being less than

whatever the fuck late-stage capitalism

and the spiritual marketplace

tell us we should be.

 

on one particular day, not so long ago

i began to feel how much energy

had got tied up in trying to overcome this,

to this’s detriment, and how the overcoming

shamed this, so terribly,

this being the inadequacy, the lacking-ness.

 

this does feel wholly inadequate according to

whatever parameters might be applied, and for so long

i was in thrall to the idea that

something needed to be done about it

(i’m so glad i don’t believe that any more).

 

this (me? i don’t really know any more) feels utterly inadequate,

wholly lacking in all areas, totally without wherewithal -

not that that’s being claimed as a badge of honour,

or paraded in a look-at-me kind of way.

 

this inadequacy – i saw that day – never needed me

to take it on or pick up its cudgel or

attempt to correct it or overcome it or

better myself out of it or

love it or accept it or or or

take it to any number of healers or

self-described spiritual teachers or anyone else

who fell under the category of

people i thought were superior to me

to do with it whatever their schtick was (frankly,

all the schticks left it untouched, save

for feeling a little worse still,

having supped at their supposedly superior cup).

 

that day, it was a monumental relief to say:

this just is breathtakingly inadequate and

totally lacking in wherewithal (and

any other kinds of -withal there might be)

and right now,

i fucking love it,

not with some sappy welcome-it embrace-it love-it gloss

but with a sweating-in-the-mosh-pit,

too many beers and smudged mascara kind of love

that wants everyone (including me)

to keep their (possibly) well-meaning but

otherwise very misguided hands off it.

 

and that day this – my – inadequacy had never felt so good or

so real or so alive or so glorious, because that

was all it had ever wanted,

and it was such a liberation to repeat, on and on,

utterly inadequate and totally lacking in wherewithal,

and with each repetition

my body sighed and smiled and

i began to fit into myself like never before,

a yes throughout my being at the truth of this

and a wonder at how it is to be real.

 

Body

 And my body says:

there's a fucking cosmos in here

suns stars galaxies comets

you should know

I am so much more than 

a storehouse for your trauma or

a battleground for your conflicts or

the bearer of your scars or 

the carrier of your soul

so don't pull your reductive objectifying imperialist bullshit on me

I am not something to be colonised by

whatever good intentions you have this month

or your warped ideas 

about purity and perfection. 

Let's just say

I know all your sleights-of-hand

your baiting and switching

we both know who you are

and we both know that you should be

on your knees

sinking into me

worshipping at my feet

and howling at my very miraculousness. 

Aftermath

In panic

I ran

from one place to another

to another

to another,

from one person

to the next

and the next. 

I took to hiding

in the spaces between words - 

silence a temporary refuge. 

I took to disappearing

into the slivers of stillness

between moments,

those lulls in which

no-one was noticing -

(there are more of them than you think) - 

putting off the inevitability

of emergence. 

I was always going to have to come out,

eventually.