yin and yang

May 28, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

the same imagination
that skews to
worst-case scenarios
and all the dire ways
we could all be fucked
in this society of ours

is the same one that shows me
there’s more to life than just
consumption
and
competition,
that encourages me to find
better solutions to terrible problems,
that proves to me
there are better
more equitable
more humane
societies
than this…

every coin
has two sides
this sword
has both edges
black must stand out amongst white
and we all know yin
and yang
aren’t balanced
if they’re not
together

[but sometimes i wish
this imagination would just
let me rest]

December 30, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

the balance
of yin and yang
(Kip and Kip)
is to have the one
be
stressed out of their mind
working all day
(during vacation)
snappy,
trappy,
not happy,

and the other
enjoying
Repair Shop
and
audiobooks
and leisurely cross-stitching
all damn day…

~~~

went to bed
with an ache
that could have been the universe
reaching into me
to warn me
of something devastating approaching
or
it could have been
empathic absorption
of my spouse’s stress.

(when will i find out which?)

~~~

no,
please don’t eat the chocolate,
or the dog’s food,
or sleep on needles,
or rub yourself all around in cedar spray
or-
-what did i just say about the chocolate?!

[this cat]

October 17, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

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

/ HJ / Leave a comment

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…

April 25, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

writing poetry
finding the ‘right’ words
in the shortest amount of time
still watching the entire world pass me by
i take a word
and latch on another
and another and another
until i’m finished

but i never really finish
i’m never quite done
i still feel like this is a first draft
a rehearsal
a practice
and i’ll be able to go back and fix my mistakes
(eventually.)

what if that’s what our ‘heaven’ really is?
getting to fix all the things you think you did ‘wrong’?
and some of us are just more in tune with that
than others?

still don’t believe in a heaven
or hell
still don’t believe in an eternity
hereafter
there’s more out there than what we can see
but a supreme, conscious being,
that is the hardest to believe.

a balance with the universe, is what i believe
a yin and yang of light and dark
(though evil/good do cause me to pause
my thinking for just a second more)
opposites standing together
become whole, not opposing
and i can be whole within myself,
not two completely separate feelings/ideas/whatevers
struggling for supremacy,
i can be a person inside
who is whole
not opposing parts
never coming together
to create a powerful,
albeit rather strange
(and proud in my strangeness)
human person.

(it’s rather funny, to me,
that i really do not identify with much of the human race
but ‘human’ is my favorite designation
to stay outside the gendered binary)