October 18, 2021

just atop a grain of rice
it makes my laptop all
wibbly-wobbly.
and something so small
that affects so much
has to be a metaphor (right?)
(ok, granted, my laptop is far closer to the size of the grain of rice
than say
myself
or
the universe
but still,
size-wise
it is quite
small.)

so

what great insight can i gain from this
“rice under the laptop”
experience?

perhaps to always look for the root cause of an issue
and to not judge too harshly
if the core issue seems
“too small”
to affect that much.

or maybe the lesson here is to simply
clean off the table
between meals and morning pages.

October 17, 2021

the wind rushes through the trees
rustling the branches much stronger than a breeze

that pushing of the wind, the apprehension i feel,
used to be so frightening to me, but now, there’s appeal

the wind brings changes, newness, the switch of the seasons
and while change is scary, it’s no longer frightening without reason

i choose to look towards the possibility of what change may bring
and hear whatever the winds choose to sing

for in this poem, this struggle of rhyming couplets,
i’ve found a calmness in my fear’s former culprit

and that, i think, is worth this hassle of a rhyme-scheme.

October 16, 2021

the trauma was not good;
no amount of “things happen for a reason” will change that,
it was unfair, unfathomable, wildly wrong.
but how i choose to deal with the trauma,
how i have survived thus far,
and how i choose to keep on going,
that is where the beauty lies.

and i can adjust my own coping mechanisms;
make them healthier, make them stronger,
for nothing is truly “good” or “bad”
“positive” or “negative”
but there are healthier and not so healthy,
things that help me access my emotions
and perform acting in a real, vulnerable, and honest way,
and that is how i choose to keep going
(start going? this is technically all new to me…)

and, similarly,
there is no “recovered” vs. “not recovered”
there is in recovery and the levels therein.
but one level does not disappear once you move on to the next
they are uneven steps existing in a labyrinth
that sometimes require backtracking to continue on.
and if i can look at my own mental health
in a way
that is
Non-Binary
(just like me!)
then maybe,
just maybe,
i can make friends with my trauma
(and how i felt it initially/since)
and understand a little bit more about me
in the aftermath…

October 15, 2021

wasn’t i complaining
yesterday
or the day before
(or the day before that)
that i wanted to get back to my
regularly scheduled schedule
and continue on in my routine of routines?

so why, now, comfortably sitting in
‘we’ve taken the dog out,
we’ve started the lofi beats spotify station,
we’re both at the table, doing our morning writings’
do i miss
so terribly
the hustle
the bustle
the never knowing what’s going to happen
from one moment to the next?

oh!

did i just need a cat in my lap?
this portion of my routine,
my every day,
my comfort and creativity,
that had been missing
pretty much
since we moved?

(even tho i do stop every few lines
to pet and love her
so she stays,
she still really does
help me
feel
the morning page
poetry
routine
i’d been missing
[and then immediately
got bored of].)

(she is the chaos
that i need
to appreciate
routine)

October 14, 2021

sometimes you have to eat
and read
before you can write and wake-up
and sometimes you have to just do the things you have to do
before writing that to-do list
and sometimes you need to look at where you’ve been
before going where you’re going
and sometimes you just have to cuddle your cat and dog
before being human.

October 13, 2021

sit down to write
sit down with millions of thoughts floating through your mind
sit down with the plan to get them all out and before you on the screen
ebbing from your fingertips onto the keyboard, seeing the magic as they appear…
and yet
(and yet)
sit down to write
and suddenly
the thoughts stop
and the fingers rest gently on the home keys
and the writing, it just does not come the way you thought it would.

so
start writing about not writing.
start writing about the expectations versus reality
start writing and end up with kind of a silly pattern before you on the screen:
a word or phrase
expansion on that word or phrase
another expansion that then makes each line longer than the last
(do that in threes, at least, and boy will it be visually appealing [for you at least])

but then
you have to ask yourself
is this the poem you want up on your poem-blog?

October 12, 2021

trying to figure out
what i need
each
and every
morning
to feel fully
me

because i had a great time
these last couple of weeks
having coffee with my Kip
up on the deck
chatting
or planning
or meditating
or bird-watching
or dog-playing
’twas fun and new and exciting
(and the meditation certainly helps most of the time)

but my brain and body
have gotten used to
Morning-Pages
Morning-Poems
Morning-Putting-Thoughts-To-Tomes
that, apparently, without them, i feel
just
a little bit
lost…

i mean, clearly, i catch up,
do an afternoon poem,
or after a few days, back-schedule the words i write at the time
but this
pre-8:00-writing
this Morning-Gathering-My-Thoughts,
this is where my true me shines

(or maybe just the me that is the most
Raw)

October 11, 2021

it’s national coming out day
but it’s also
Indigenous Peoples’ Day
(formerly [that colonizer] day)

and so, for today,
for my tiny platform,
i’m going to remind the few folks that may read this
(that may not know already)

that intersections of identity exist;
and i, a white queer,
will be quiet about me,
and hope you read the words of
queer people of color
(particularly those of indigenous and queer identities)
today
(and really every day)

(and maybe, on a different day, i’ll rant about how
queer people are so much more than their
coming out stories)

October 10, 2021

oh
no
i’m just here to
watch
observe
pacify my narrative stance
get only a glance
of the workings of humanity
then back to my hobbit-hole
to deconstruct the feelings
i observed:

there was anger
happiness
sadness
hope
the scope
of human emotion
is like a commotion
inside a cacophony
inside an explosion
and me, this entity of inquiry
cannot bear even one feel
bubbling to the top of their
chest/heart/lungs/brain
how do humans regain
control
of their larger selves
when their emotions run the show
so
constantly?

maybe
if i could name
my illogical passions
i could fashion some sort of
hocus focus
back into human-hood
but i cannot seem to seam the words together with the sensations
i simply follow the thought processes
and process
the thought
but the emotions
stay hidden
no light
just dark
so i keep looking
for the light
keep observing
the entities
who know how to emote
fully
freely
until that is me.

October 9, 2021

the stress
is starting to get to me
(even though i know
i’ll probably feel so much better
just writing the damn monologue,
or getting a damn shower,)
but i’m holding out
for…???
to feel actually grungy?
to feel actual inspiration?
i have other things on my to-do list
go through headshots
write to some agencies
actually cut these damn fingernails
but the immediate
is
to make this house
a home
(and turn the apartment home
into just an apartment again)
and everything hurts
and everything’s exhausting
and i’ve split more fingers than i can count
just from the dry air
and yet
i’m actually happy/excited/stoked
for the general month
for the general year
the general life we’re building here
it’s just the immediate
that brings me
multitudes
of
stress.