“From now until further notice, you’re no longer allowed to tell me how YOU feel.” A gentle and wonderful woman (and friend) told me he said to her.

The words were never said to me verbatim…but their substance was. I know how it feels to be seen as “less than” through the eyes of a man you think you love, you live with, you dream of a future with.

I told her what I had learned what feels like long ago but only hours sometimes “now, you must write how you feel.”

Today I realized that when I began writing again, after years of abuse and – that why I write and why so often it’s so personal is – I know what it feels like not be seen. But it’s more than me simply wanting to write how I feel now. I want the possibility for you, dear one to feel seen.

This is not to say I want you, dear reader to see me. What I want, what I strive to do is say “I see you.”

I hope at some point along the way I do that for you. That’s what my favorite writers do for me.

And until then I won’t stop trying.

In honor of all those who embrace why without answer, and then focus on they will instead.

ψ

Those who claim we are destroying the earth
Once claimed there were people destroying their God.

Those who claim all religions are the source of ills
Once claimed that all godless were the source of illness.

Beware the benevolent trends. They destroy the forrest before the medicines even get a chance to first grow.

Beware those who claim why the creations have become less bountiful – beware those who call you thief – that the gate was opened like a mugging – and the green stollen – denied now to you forever for the crime.

Beware of the word missused, reused or recycled. Beware of those who deny new language to invoke change. They drain the waters as they always have. Beware any who claim ownership of language.

Beware those who say beware.

Be aware of words used, the poetry of linguistics not the logic of the false critics and mystics.

Mind the gaps between age, ages and so called sages.

Not all explorers are courageous or wise. Experience is often wasted on the inexperienced.

Be bold enough to welcome the return of authority.

Beware the blamers for they are the victims of another age’s benevolence. Give them soulful pity. But no mercy.

Assume that not only the survivors survive. Beware the anointed victims.

Beware the music induced, not introduced and received in the slow dose of ordinary perception.

No one knows the mind, mindful or empathic – unless they know their own. Pay them no mind until you’ve learned your own.

No one can walk in anyone else’s shoes until they’ve walked in their own. Beware those who elevate empathy above kindness.

Beware those that says  “silence always is golden” or  “it speaks more than words can say” or “talk is best done slow;” for they never knew the unleavened word. They were the keepers of the grandest inquisitor’s tools too horrific to word – left to the world of the wordless.

Beware those that choose by committee.

Beware the children of Democracy.

Beware those left to create with only excuses made for creation and call that art.

Beware the time when musicians or games are heard and seen only in solitary boxes and not shared between people. Joy shouldn’t be contained or created with false friends. For that is a fest of famine obeying a vegetable law.

Beware those who value introversion more than solitude.

Beware the ones who long to be numb.

Beware those that say you must understand that you will not or never be understood.

Beware those who don’t have the conditions to suffer – for they will strip yours away and demand thanks for it.

Beware the ones who teach well, but were not taught well. For they don’t know the value in the safety they’ve shown you in self-reliance. They will never see their hands relocating the chains from themselves back onto you. Be aware. For they will betray the law of lessons.

Beware the promise of free love for it is the most costly of deceptions without
Even an offer made to partner Dyonisis with Apollo;
No manner of manners will save, no loving will ever serve, when everyone is free to choose slavery.

 

I’ve been working hard or hardly working on an idea and I’ve been mute too long.

So this is intended to get myself back into the groove (and discomfort) of the possibility of an audience, reader, listener thinker; I’m forcing myself to show you a glimpse of my process.

Getting a story told that really may be worth the telling is harder than I thought in ways I’d never considered…lucky me?

For that story – this is a piece / inspiration that has spurred the idea along since the beginning; the idea of a jacinth song. the idea of what a jacinth could be.

This is one of the early poems by e. e. cummings written during his years at Harvard somewhere between1911-16;  never in a collection perhaps only ever read (certainly only ever published) until his death.

He was so very young when he wrote this and perhaps that’s part of what I love about it.

This poem is framed on my wall and I’ve recorded it as part of that story (I hope) I will one day share with you and will be a wonderful story.

Sharing this poem now?

Well, it now feels like I’m sharing a secret – one that even he didn’t find the nerve to do.

Or perhaps that was the intention all along.

 

 

I hope so.