Joy, grief, fireflies, graffiti, & becoming co-creators
One of my all-time favorite poems is by storyteller, poet, playwright, screenwriter, author, performer, teacher, musician, and live-your-whole-being inspiration and muse, Lenelle Moise. This poem.
cuz i dream
a home
for you
in a safe & spacious country
where your very own
laughter
can sprout
from joy
homeboy
from joy
Isn't that beautiful? Beyond beautiful. If I gave out awards for how fast someone could bring tears from my heart to my eyes, then this poem– and this poet and her community and story and history– would win it. Not written for me, or by me, or about me– not centering me at all– they found me anyway. They found me within vulnerability, dreams, longing, community care, suffering, joy, generosity, and speaking from experience and the heart. They set up a quietly disquieting residency, a resonance, within the oceans, rivers, and rainwater that live within me/you/all of us. That's immigrants. That's the LGBTQ+ community. That's Black women. That's poetry. That's the arts. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you.
Ten years ago, to honor my brave Mom and family living with mid-stage Alzheimer's, I wrote a poem called I break my heart each morning. This poem.
I break my heart each morning
I break my heart each morning
so there is room for her
her memory and story
her history inside of me
disease that slowly separates
her away from her
beyond disease
a slow release
of precious self to daughters.
Mom
we break ourselves each morning
let our hearts be wounds
now find those hearts
a gentle gauze
wound around the world.
Interlude: a bunch of ridiculously fun things from family and poetry and humanity to fireflies and graffiti
Whew, two poems, back-to-back. That's a lot for hearts to take. So, here's a brief meandering essay before I share a third and final poem. A new poem found and written just this week.
Whether you believe me as just me, or me as a poet, or essayist, or herbalist, or author, or Dr. Lori Kane, or as an auntie, or as a huge SciFi fan and murder mystery geek, or me as a home canner and food preserver, or someone who daily supports friends facing genocide and who stands with neighbors against genocide and authoritarianism everywhere, know this. All of me believes this with every fiber of our being: people are magic and everything we do with wide open, whole hearts, together, is powerful spell casting– or prayer, or manifesting, or theory testing, or meditating, or dreaming of a better future, or art making, or co-creating a better present, if you prefer.
As our family approaches 24 years of living with Mom's Alzheimer's disease together– out here a full decade beyond when all of the most learned doctors imagined we'd lose her– I can still read poetry to Mom.
We can still read poetry, and sing songs, and tell stories to Mom. Her ears can still hear them.
The poem isn't the big miracle here. Her ears are. Poems, music, and stories help us feel and know that.
We also know now that she'll stay with us even when her body goes. Because my grandparents show up all the time to listen to poetry or when we make jam or when we sing or dance or look at old photos and to help us hold our grief about living in this world when our grief threatens to consume us. They're likely always present, but it's at these times when we're best at noticing their presence.
Thanks to regular woods-walking, home canning, seasons, listening, resting, raging, laughing, weeping, writing, and reading– including books and essays of all kinds, poetry, and personal stories on social media that hold humanity's worst self-inflicted horrors– I can now sense my grandparents when they are near. We can also sense when Daniel's brother and our other long-since-passed friends, dogs, and cats are nearby. Feel their spirits in the wind. Hear their words and sounds in our hearts just like we can hear what the trees feel as rain and wind come through. We often know when they think what we're doing is wonderful, hilarious, hard, or dangerous. I also hear voices of the suffering, dying, and dead in Gaza and the West Bank– both people and their beloved trees and land– every day now, too, thanks to friends there. My own beloved, including our beloved dead, are always with me. More present than the living some days.
The poem isn't the big miracle here. Her ears are. Poems, music, and stories help us feel and know that.
We are magic, friends. Earthlings are magic. Humanity is magic. Remember that. Poetry knows this, because poetry knows us. Visits us like stories, trees, wind, rain, spirits, and other ancestors do. Even when we forget our magic. Even when we abandon ourselves.
Poetry also bends time, or lives outside of time entirely, depending on your perspective. The poem I break my heart each morning, for example, was me as a fledgling toddler poet less than 3 years into me writing poetry, if you count from when I started writing poetry again in middle-age adulthood. And, that was also me as a confident poet almost 40 years into me being a poet if you count from when I actually started writing poetry, around age 6. Six-year-olds are artists by nature, and my most beloved medium was words on the page and, occasionally, spoken word. Back then we also dabbled in sand (castles), watercolors (rocks and paper), music (solo and group singing and playing the piano), dance and skipping (everywhere), drawing (in car-window fog and with colored pencils and markers on paper), and sculpture (primarily mud and water or macaroni, popsicle sticks, paper plates, and Modge Podge).
And. That poem was also collective wisdom firefly catching, because it was written more than 1,500 years into my Irish-lineage's long tradition of written poetry. Far older than that if you count spoken-word poetry, song, and poetry and songs created and written by women and non-binary folk but intentionally lost to time by frightened men, which– surprise to no one present here– I do. They count. We count.
Like music and dance, poetry has been with us since our ancient beginnings– no matter who our people are. Poetry came naturally to my people and to yours at some point: to people who loved the land as kin or mother or goddess or muse and who loved deeply enough to always be connected to earth magic. We trust earth, sky, water, wind, air, forest, field, river, lake, ocean, mountain, valley, and seasons– and all hands that honor them– like our most trusted friends and family. Because they are that. Family. Friends. Poetry and song come naturally to those who never stop listening. Never stop receiving and giving, communally. Never stop dancing and making music.
Another reason we love poetry is that we feel, intuitively, that poetry connects us and yet– magically– that humanity is not the boss of poetry. Not as a writer, editor, or poet am I in charge of poetry. If I try to shorten or quiet a poem, she gets longer and/or louder. If I try to make a poem airy and light, she's equally as likely to become intense, dense, heavy, or dark. I am not the boss of her. Overthink a poem that you're writing or, God forbid, try to make one more palatable to an imagined audience, and the poem will toss your sorry ass out of the chair you're in. Poems send messengers if they have to. Sometimes the dog comes and gets me– taps me, taps on the sliding door, looks at me, and says "Mom, you're overthinking it. You need Frisbee."
Ok, apparently, I'm not in charge of essays either when poetry and love are present. There will be four poems here today, not three. Here's another poem I adore that I read this week:
In a land where even
butterflies live longer than
children, which poem shall I
write for you?
-Ahmed Arif
Today I'll leave it to you and your heart to figure out which land Ahmed is writing about. Ok, back to the essay...
Readers and listeners find as much, and often more, in poems as/than poets do. These words are all labels that we humans pick up when we need to– to communicate with busy or distant people who we don't have time to get to know as whole beings at the moment. But our labels don't hold us, and they damn sure don't hold poetry. Reading, writing, and listening to poetry are all catching fireflies to expand beloved neighborhood graffiti together at twilight. We do this together to expand joy and to expand ourselves. When I have energy, inspiration, am lost in grief or wonder, feel deeply connected, and/or I have the privilege of time and the safe-ish boundaries of routine, I open up and I write. For joy, family, for joy. When I need energy, inspiration, boundaries, routine, connection, and/or help, I open up and read or listen, and I show up in person to help or ask for help in my community, and/or I write utter nonsense: all of which help me take my unnecessary worries less seriously and our collective and deeply necessary worries more seriously.
Reading, writing, and listening to poetry are all catching fireflies to expand beloved neighborhood graffiti together at twilight.
Another reason I love poetry is that poems are never finished. Some folks manage to gather enough of them that they can form them into books, collections, anthologies, zines, and even become cross-generational and cross-cultural communities with them. So beautiful. Humans are magic. And, like us, poems keep growing, keep expanding, as they come into contact with more of their worlds. Our worlds.
Self-publishing is fantastic for folks determined to listen to the world while putting as few constraints on emerging poetry as we constraint-loving humans want and try to do. And. Wow. Wait. Look, there's me again: still pretending I'm in charge of poetry! But I'm not. I care about self-publishing. Poetry doesn't. Poetry cares about showing up and becoming more present and alive together. That's it. Being a poet– writing and speaking poetry or attending poetry readings (yep, listeners in person are poets too in Lori Land)– is actively letting go of the control needed by our individual selves to instead see who and what else shows up when we let go of that control. In that way, poetry is a kind of map-less wayfinding: well-suited to people in uncharted territory, within transitions where everything feels uncertain and up in the air, empathic and sensitive people, people trying to hear the whole world or better understand part of it, and people in very scary places. We let go of ourselves and become larger selves to reconnect to someone or something we fear is lost forever or something we'd love the whole of creation to know and to celebrate.
Poetry doesn't exist to know and to teach. Poetry exists to open and connect hearts– doorways to other worlds and this one– and to help us find new friends or experience old friends with new eyes and hearts and perspectives and energy. If at any point you arrive with goosebumps, tears, dropped-open mouth, or wide eyes– surprised, delighted, weeping, and/or more fully seen– and you become softer, more open to connection, and a pinch braver, you aren't just reading poetry. We've just become poetry together. Nobody present is exactly sure how. Who is present matters far more than how we got here. That's the magic. Becoming poetry happens between words and worlds.
We've just become poetry together. Nobody present is exactly sure how. Who is present matters far more than how we got here. That's the magic.
To that end– holding the three poems I shared with you earlier and inspired by the now– a new poem arrived. This poem is an evolution of the one that Self-Breaking-Hearted Me found 10 years ago. This one is larger and longer than that one was. I have my ideas but I'm more curious to ask... Why do you think that is? Who do you think I– and we– are right now?
We the people. Humanity.
- Seeing
We're rising
this group. We're
opening our eyes each morning
seeing
the shelters-all nature of trees
the loves-all-beings nature of dogs then
seeing
our neighbors disappeared
seeing
beloveds taken, rights taken
seeing
humans treat humans and land like trash, bodies tossed in vans
disappeared or ripped apart
seeing
the spine-curved-walking bones
of intentionally starved children
intentionally disappeared parents or whole families
seeing
matted cats lapping human blood
off the streets of occupation
to survive
seeing
elders carrying loved ones'
body parts and blood
in plastic bags
to dusty, temporary resting places
within dark red plains
of billionaire-making-and-funded unrest
seeing
walls and blockades
concentration camps
under wide open skies
on beloved land
seeing
closed-tight hearts
closed-tight eyes
so much looking away and fear
abused becoming abusers
happily harming others with glee
and all the silent weaponry
of those whose empathy
was cut away
so slowly
completely
that they didn't notice themselves being splintered
shattered
beside a warm embracing sea
they can no longer see or feel.
We are them. We're the seers.
See how it just pours out of me?
See?
We see.
Humanity sees.
- Feeling
We're changing,
this group. We who are
lucky enough to hug
our loved ones
brush our teeth
turn on our phones
open social media to see and to feel each other
witness, document, plan,
organize, scream, calling forth all the old magics.
Before we even make breakfast
or go to work now
we feel
humanity.
We don't just see what you see– human-made horrors beyond imagination.
We feel what you feel.
On purpose
we feel.
Every day that we can, we do.
When we can't, we rest– that's the deal.
We feel what the world feels and usually
we manage to know that we're the lucky ones.
Lucky that we can still stand to feel and see people
gardening, harvesting, cooking, and eating.
A friend in G@za said yesterday that
she can't take social media at all anymore.
She can't hold witnessing that
for years now
everyone she knows locally
shares mostly loss, amputations, starvation, displacement,
price gouging, sorrow
and death– constant death–
while everyone else on earth
eats, walks among trees, gardens, and vacations.
Witnessing the abandonment of her people
wounds
hurts
too much.
As much as the snipers, drones, bombs, starvation, and gas.
So, she protects her gentle heart.
She wants to return to her maker
and to her family– all dead–
holding nothing but love.
I'm so glad she told us.
I'm so glad we know.
We who feel
are there, with you
we feel your abandonment, and in that deal
we also feel
humanity rise
becoming a hundred million shoulders
beneath that heavy casket
so you feel just one moment of comfort
within loss unimaginable
so you don't have to be brokenhearted
alone
as you struggle just to survive
without family, trees, birdsong, farms, or cities.
You're not alone, friend.
Every plant we touch
every tree and cloud we see every
book we read, nap we take
bite of food we grow and eat
we give thanks for– knowing
how lucky we are. We send judgment-free
gratitude
and love
to you now, too,
not just to God or our beloved goddesses.
You clearly need our love and gratitude way more than they do.
God has all of your devotion and half of your people now, too.
So you, sweet friends, get ours.
Shared outrage at
how irresponsible, complicit
cowardly and owned
our weapons-selling
children-slaughtering
horror-bringing billionaires
and governments
still are.
Dinosaurs
with tentacles
sinking us
in tar.
For we who feel
life's not I have to
not shame, secrecy,
judgement, or silence.
Just empathy: all-in connection.
Empathy is
felt awareness
of countless connections and
how much more we have
to give, how simple it is to receive
what we need,
and how lucky we are
to share and to be here.
I heard yesterday that 70%
of this latest round of genocide
has been happily funded by the
U.S. government. All elected republican'ts
and most elected do-nothing democrats
mortgaged to the hilt
serve only the greedy donor class.
The worst of the worst
of our bloody past.
We don't need studies or
peer-reviewed research or
permission
to know what is.
We can feel it.
So, feel it. Feel it all.
If you can feel it, name it–
feel it all the way in
all the way down
take all the time you need
then name that feeling, again and again
experience how staying with something
and someone changes everything
changes even
our names.
You're not hatred, you're fear!
You're not abandonment anymore
you have become curiosity
connection
belonging.
We who feel seem brave to others and
sometimes we are. What we actually are
most days
is always in, always caring,
cross-culturally
cross-generationally
soft, and getting softer, being strength herself.
We belong here
among friends, and fools
and the brokenhearted
always
until the percentage
that all our governments
and neighbors
fund and support
genocide and ecocide
is
motherfucking
zero.
- Being
As a species
we're being
cracked wide open
by the world now.
Some feel this as expansion.
Some feel this as any given Monday.
Some feel this as anxiety, depression, or rage.
Some refuse to see or feel this at all.
At times we fear we'll be abandoned.
At times we fear we can't take it.
We can. We can take being cracked wide open
together. Here's two secrets.
First, the soft together can't be cracked
we don't shatter– we ripple at most.
That's useful.
Second.
Here
is where
we always
choose
to be.
Choose to be here.
Right where you are.
Choose to be here, again and again.
See what happens.
No weaponry
or abuse
is
required
for being
in this world.
Self-defense is becoming
knowing
what everyone present needs
and offering that. Just that.
Receiving that.
Just
that.
There.
That's all my secrets.
Being is weird,
I can't lie.
We, the being, still like rest & comfort &
still grieve when beloved beings die
yet
disrupting the horrors of now
feels way more honest
& so much more like home.
We're entirely at home together
here among people
hiding, dying
weeping, screaming, starving, and lost
banging pots and pans, laughing,
protesting
bake-sale fundraising for others
even as tax dollars fund more bombs, prisons,
abandonment
& death
& billionaires vacation behind walls
built not to protect us
but to hide all the horrors they profit from–
from their constantly self-blinding eyes.
How exhausting that must be.
Glad to be
free.
We see what we see. Feel what we feel.
We say what community or earth herself
asks us to say.
We are who we be.
That's being.
4. We the people
With all due respect.
Fuck white supremacy.
Fuck authoritarianism and fascism.
Fuck genocidal corporations and governments and
greedy billionaires and their insidious surveillances and
billionaire-owned politicians
confidently playing God and lying and failing miserably.
Fuck also, worry.
Fuck paper constitutions and governments
capable of becoming ash and death overnight.
Fuck all that easily withers within
the bloated, tiny, orange, makeup-covered fist
of white-supremacist fantasy and
patriarchal pedophiliac
dick-tator delusions.
This empire is over, biscuit.
Let it go.
We'll learn with those
who've never been all that free here,
save everyone we can, reimagine,
compost the rest & start again.
Women always do, boo.
We the people are here. In the streets.
Online. In each other's homes
in love and all up in each other's business.
More than ever.
Armed with our hearts, our stories,
community, shared food, recipes
what beloved grandmothers passed on to us &
collective action & actual history.
We're done sweating the small stuff
for delusional men who can't even see women
or neighbors or people with brown skin or non-binary folks–
human beings–
as human beings.
Time to have the hard conversation &
take away the keys.
And,
we hear and feel and feed and protect
friends and neighbors and visitors, alike
getting to know their pronouns, names, foods,
stories, languages, and histories
with unshakable gratitude
and yes
with joy
homegirl– you absolute wonder–
with such deep joy.
We'll stay fully present
(me, weeping & hot flashing)
listen, work, play & rest together
& we may die trying in the effort
& that's fine by me (we?)
if it means
finally
finally
creating
a safe & spacious country
born from within
the fleshiness of women
not from the nightmares of
always-terrified
& denying it
men
Let's just be a safe & spacious country together.
What's your way?
Here, when asked
we say
"We the people"
and by that, we mean
humanity. Or earthlings.
The living.
No monsters abide here.
Just those who can't escape abuse
except together.
And the remaining screaming inner children
still trapped by abuse, alone
with no imaginable
way out beyond
just more
and more
abuse.
Then (here) we shut up. We listen.
We let land, forest, water,
animals, reptiles, insects,
stars, planets, sky,
whole neighborhoods
whole regions
whole communities
whole continents & oceans
& other beings
speak for themselves.
Entirely.
We, the people.
Humanity.
Earthlings.
- It's time for your spell. Or prayer...
Ok.
Gather your beings.
Hold your hands/paws/etc.
Wish your wishes. Out loud.
Pray your prayers. Out loud.
Dream your dreams. Out loud.
Test your theories. Out loud.
Cast the spells
you know you're here
to cast together.
If you do what you're here to do
you can let everything else go.
Some days.
May all walls hiding us from full view of each other, fall–
toppling human-centeredness,
supremacy, and division
for good.
May all prison walls crumble. All beings be free.
May we see and feel and be what matters most.
Let go of all the rest.
May humanity feel so much together
that we can all weep
openly
in public
without apology
and all laugh
together
sometimes
until
we pee.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Your turn.
That was enough
from me.
😄
