Reflection Before Motion

I want to offer myself

To give myself entirely in the only way I know how; a babbling brook of words, a flood of tears, gentle hands wiping them away

I want to show my timid heart and resilient soul side-by-side, and not be mocked for its softness, but I still fear the cruelty the world has shown me

I keep holding in these words. A new cadence, new rhythm as I explore the depths of myself and the gifts God has given me (which show me the depths of each of you)

I’m being asked now to trust in ways that send me scurrying back into myself, the lamb acting as ram wearing a lion’s mane as disguise…I want to hide because…because? I must not yet trust-

No, as I write I do trust. I feel myself facing my fears as I sit here and type out my truths in a way I never would have before. If these words reach you, if they please you, if they haunt or bother you…they are for you.

I have been brought here from home, I agreed to it. I have been…cold and alone. Raped, humiliated, left, forgotten. I have been held. I have grieved for the lonely and left behind, forgiven the cruel. I’ve hurt others and carried the shame of it.

In the bottom of a bottle was the reflection that I didn’t want to see, and snow white lines sometimes erased the vision for me. When I tried to scrub the nicotine from my hands (can’t stand the smell), I avoided the water splashed mirror as well.

One day I woke up, nose crusted with blood and old makeup smudged in a way I never pictured for myself. I was not who I thought I was meant to become…what a gift! To clearly see rock bottom, to be forced to feel the weight of it all. The crushing, clawing, empty pressure of…loss of love, trust, or direction. For the first time in months I sobbed.

I don’t know why this is all coming out now…if you’re still reading, thanks for sticking around. I will have to continue this later, I am lost in a strange new feeling of moving forward. It gets better, it gets better.

Farewell to Fear & Anger – Unedited/Unrevised

I keep expecting something big & poetic,
A wild vision of kinetic energy in motion
A potion, a barrage of emotion
Indeed I am alone in the ocean; not really treading, just barely floating
I came to this place to confront my fear, for some reason I thought it would manifest here
As a demon, as semen, as something unseen
As something once breathing, a liar, or teasing
But I’m sinking in the feeling it’s something less tangible, a little less manageable
And aching to be forgotten! Enticing me to drop it, inviting me to stop it instead of just stopping “It.”
I can’t quit!
The language here is dicey, but my god! The consequences pricey; paying rent to old captors when my spirit is so feisty? Come and fight! You can find me, I’ll be glowing; maybe crying, never slowing.
I am not sorry! I am not. I am not damaged or afraid, I am not weak or less or maimed. I remain, I remain. I am not beholden, or frigid, or frozen by your touch or entitlement.
I am above it! I cut it! Sword of Justice, light as a feather. Borrowed from Michael, you’ll never forget her…I decided to keep her. I’m a KEEPER! I’M A KEY, I AM A SEER, A FREER! I AM FREE, YES! (Angels and guides here) WE FREED HER! WE ALWAYS KNEW YOU WOULD BE HER! (Back to me)
Can you see her?
I am not bad for my existence, or a killer because my kisses are intoxicating
Yes, I may be a temptress
A soothing balm for all your messes, but I refuse to be your Atlas, not required to be your map-quest
And I am not too soft or shiny to call on my mother, Lilith! Crying out for strength and power when you’ve overstepped your boundaries
But…I have risen above lashing out in anger
You’ve trespassed my body and for a while I felt scars rising on my heart, threatening to mark my soul – it is un-mar-able.
I cut away the layers I’d made and found myself reborn, whole!
I will not be praying for you or preying on you or owned by you ~ I do not fear you or fear for you!
I am…emergent? I am emerging victorious, Venus on the foamy shore!
Screaming! Screaming Victory! The tar-heart of Beauregard dripping at my feet.
I am fearless and full, and I see the darkness in myself. I am soft and silly, plain spoken and young. I am ancient and complex, an ocean of ONE.
I am maiden, mother, Crone
I need not do it all on my own
My flow, indeed it is OUR flow! Connected to all the rich blood of my cycle, of old magick, of death, of allure, of black velvet richness.
And that is not – naught in the world is! – exclusive to the closed connotations crafted of fearful expectations and shallow understanding perpetuated by people who can only exist in boxes and segments and liminal spaces.
By knowing this I understand that I know nothing!
Oh! I do not fear the Morrigan, or Lilith, or Kali! I do not hide from myself facets of Hekate! I no longer shudder when I am compared to Her! Ha! To see such power, such fire…such infinite love, to be recognized as a spirit of such…as a goddess of creation and destruction…I find my purpose in their reflection!
I DO NOT RUN FROM LEI NYRA OR ODALÏ, or Circe, or any part/one of me. I do not deny the light of Saint Michael the Archangel in all of his glory or calm silliness. Nothing is conditional and I am infinite!
I do not deny Cernunnos, or Apollo, or Hypnos…but especially Cernunnos, the Hunter! The passionate, wild masculine.
Indeed I need balance that way, I can say it! I trust myself to know it in my presence.
I can be all pieces of myself cohesively…I am and I must be!
I needed to know that together these pieces made a whole, a jewel-toned mosaic, a holy blossom unfolded.
I am crowned! I am worthy and needed, I was meant to be here breathing. Knowing and needing, waiting, seething, leaping! Loving and grieving!
And worked through
I am the conduit, but I choose! I choose who I offer my hands and mouth to, who I push aside molecules for and have to cough back out again.
Undoubtedly I am priestess and keeper of the Celestial Storehouse,
I flip through the Akashic Records at the (any) time of my choosing. It will become (it is) soothing.
I’m no fool! But I’m always delving deeper
Leaping on faith, asking existence to be my teacher and my heart to be my leader.
Until the day I meet the Reaper, until the day I meet the Reaper!
Until the day I no longer breathe here, I will still be here
In the wind and the trees.

Continuous Motion

I am, as ever, in a period of transition…of release and forward motion, inhale, exhale.

There are so many things preparing to spring forth from me! I feel like a volcano and a magnetic field.

Right now, at work, I’m too tired to get much else out. There are days-on-end writing phases preparing themselves. There are (more) deep meditations to be experienced and shared. Vision boards to be created, lists to write, spells to craft, Spirits to honor.

I have no desire for company save for 7 or so people, and 4-5 of them in small doses only. I feel the pull of the raven haired man, I feel ready to meet him…but I am not eager or impatient, naive or jaded. Just prepared.

I imagine this is a strange update for anyone following. I was in a very deep, dark place for a while. I have come out of it, like the Star that so often is my significator.

Return

It has been many moons, my friends

Since I cared to touch brush, lens, key, or pen

And I am unsure of how to begin again!

But I am reborn, and I am returned, and I am alight with new found fire.

Debt Free

Tonight has been strange…peaceful and kind in its solitude, honest in the way I am shown to myself.

At the same time I’m lost. I’m swimming instead of wallowing in the sadness I harbor, wading in the depths of my life.

Kept company by thoughts of old friends, fresh memories, amends to be made with myself…I am as okay as I can be right now.

God is it dark! Is it sad! Here, with the Atlas weight of my friends’ depression…here, with the slow but efficient bone grinder of a caregiver’s work

Here, indeed, in this dark and cool room I find the peace of a starlit night away from the city. Here, amongst the steady snoring of the sick and forgetful I find peace.

I will not live in this place of suffering, in this bleak ocean of repetitive death through little means. I will move up, into the soft rays of light.

I will love the darkness like an old friend, but I will not pay it rent.

( Future) Goodbye, Old Friend

Will you let me love you?

Not faintly, nor softly or gently

But now, while you’re sad? While you’re dying?

Would you let me love the openness you are resigned to?

The concrete jungle you’ve come to inhabit – I will furnish it futilely, with throw rugs and pillows

The only honest decor bottles caps and cigarette ash

You can use my lighter! I’ll wear your old shorts, we’ll get higher tonight than ever before

We’ll light these old temple candles in new honest prayer

This is my preemptive goodbye to you

Not really goodbye

I will carry you with me, always and everywhere

To every coffee shop and cemetery, every playground and kitchen – everything you’ve ever given me I will bear

I will be adorned in your gifts and lessons,  wearing them like fresh breath

Whispering them to my notebook, crying them out the moon the way you would to the black and white keys

 

 

Contrast

I definitely wrote these after much wine…nothing like waking up still smelling of the bonfire & finding poetry. 

 

Impermanence reigns, and yet
I long for his calloused hands against my skin
Rewinding time until the knotted muscles are fresh
Awakening the beast within me

 

Every time a man touches me I feel you
And I fear I will never be myself again, without the shadow of your selfish hands against my skin

Soullight

I wanted to be someone I was not
To trade my passion for passiveness
To flow instead of destroy
I wanted to glow like the softest of angels,
Ethereal and opalescent beneath impossible constant moonlight
Benevolent beyond ability, kind instead of cunning
I wanted to be the doe, but instead I was a wolf in her skin devouring her wholly
With each season I inhabited a new costume, creating for myself the most glamorous of façades
I took my wisdom and fire, strength and desire and bundled them up in rose petals and sadness
I made darkness my sweetest ally and self destruction my secret lover, falling into its whispers of the poetry of broken souls
But I am not broken
I will not wither in the sunlight and I need no lover
The eager yearnings of a lonely and unanchored girl have dissipated,
My self imposed shackles evaporated in the heat of self acceptance
I no longer wish to be anyone’s greatest love, nor should I enjoy the station of caretaker for all
If I glow it is because my body cannot contain my soullight
I am not made of softness; I am the goddess of destructive growth and harsh healing, exposing your sadness to the bright rays of the sun
I am the fire that burns through falsehoods
I am the passion behind all of creation
I am the feral Crone, a woman in wolf’s skin with a staff of oak and bone
I am the warrior, the blood witch of old
Mistress of the forest temple, priestess of the Akashic web
I am the gatekeeper
I am unending

Owl’s View

I remember being a child at the library, pouring over books about Greek gods with a passion I didn’t understand. At the time, Athena was the only goddess on my mind. I looked up to her!
For many years later I bounced around from love/beauty goddess to witchcraft goddess to whatever goddess (it was right at the time, they pulled me and knew me…this isn’t meant to sound callous or disrespectful). The few times Athena kind of popped up, including a WILD amount of owls & owl related things, I ignored her. I wasn’t ready to dive back into my child-self or prepare to become my adult self. It’s kind of weird…if I have ever been a child of any goddess it is Her. A few months ago she popped up in a reading I got, like literally…and I half heartedly prayed to her, but I still wasn’t ready.

Today I am ready. I’m ready to be entirely honest with myself…I’m ready to evaluate my strengths and and better my weak points, to put in the work for success. I will not presume to know the gods or how they work, what they expect of my (other than my best). I’m ready to begin from point one and start trusting myself.

She is persistent. She is stern and kind, and demands I see myself as I am instead of as I think of myself. She will not permit me to wallow or make excuses, but she will back me fiercely as I push through this shell of myself.

I don’t know what it was about today…maybe seeing Wonder Woman kick ass on screen (my all time favorite super hero) reminded me of who I could be…on one of my lowest days the Goddess used a character that can easily be associated with her to remind me of myself. My little Tiger’s Eye owl has been watching me for some time…must be her.

Tomorrow I will light a red candle rolled in sandalwood and ground clove…I’m going to work on some of the assignments she’s given me. I will be kind to myself.