There are words
that I have been carrying around close to my heart in an attempt to keep them
safe, but I am becoming aware of the arrogance of that false sense of stasis.
It is only for me, and it is at very best temporary. These are words like sustainable,
like community and like ally. I have often allowed my
willingness to write, speak, or even think very deeply about any of these
concepts to be driven by a fear of how terribly wrong things can go when the
energy in spaces existing between intention, action and result are fragmented
and unclear. I have been remembering what it feels like to be left alone in the
body memories and felt experiences that lurk just below the surface of
professionalism when it comes time to challenge the ways that we as human
beings continue to hurt one another with subtleties.
I remember and so
I carry the words of my own story just as close.
Sometimes too
close, and sometimes just close enough, but the truth is that I am really very
tired of expending so much energy on deciding which is what.
That is why I
write poetry.
We do not have
many words in this English language for the in-be-tween.
We have a lot for
‘this’ and for ‘that’
and for ‘either’ and ‘other’ and ‘or’
but when it comes
to trying to tell the story of an experience that exists in several places and
spaces of the spiral at the same time;
that is not only ‘both’
but also ‘and’
it is what we call
poetry that comes closest.
Poetry, like
painting, is a variation of language to which I owe my life many times over
because it has gifted me with a possibility though which I can maintain enough
of a connection to my sense of ‘now’ and ‘then’ and ‘becoming’ that even when I
can’t even feel why, I can still know
that there is enough of a point to it all to stay. Giving myself the permission
to do the math and science and language of my life through poetry has also given
me the time and space that I have needed to learn how to tell the story of
myself to myself…. it has taught me
about the importance of expending energy in the direction of things that are
sacred.
Things like change.
I imagine that
there is a place just behind my eyes where poetry occurs.
That there is no need
at all for forgiveness here,
because there has
been no such thing as harm.
There is no
mis-directed, re-enacting, side-ways-shooting energy that
was – is – will – be
shame or hate or blame and as such;
there is still all the time and space in the universe
for the story-telling that is the coming together of beginnings and endings and
opposites.
Adding,
subtracting and recombining fragments of words through poetry and/or the
absence of standard grammatical structure feels like a second chance… feels like transition. It is like the
system of language that I was born into did not match the way that my story
functions best in the same way that the physical bits of this body did not
match the way that my spirit functions best in relation to standard
constructions of “gender”. Poetry
is the closest that I have been able to come to remembering – honouring – with every last word that
much more than one thing can be “true” at the same time.
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