The Poetry Marathon

12 – My Experience Experiencing Your Experience is Not the Way

The way to get out of my own way is to start every statement with, “You..”

“You look terrified…!”

“You must be enraged…!”

“You have been through too much…!””You whatever you are in that moment…”

 

Not even,

“I acknowledge You…”

or

“I see or feel or hear what you are experiencing”

or

“I want to help…”

are appropriate.

 

Those “I” sentences twist my head back around to me, and it all so easily becomes about me again, my experience experiencing your experience. This is not the way to extend a hand, express an apology, open a changed ear and finally hear You.

This probably seems simple to others who are ahead of me in processing white privilege, white entitlements, but it took a lot of mental and emotional energy for me to make even this small switch, and I am working hard.

Here are the You sentences I understand so far from my heart…

You were kidnapped from your homeland, and made into slaves, beaten, tortured, murdered, dehumanized for centuries. You are still being  kidnapped, enslaved, beaten, tortured, murdered, dehumanized… You deserve massive systemic change, reparations. You will fight with everything in you to create that change. You will do it with our  without us.

You deserve for me to get this quicker than I am, You deserve for us to get this quicker than we are, for  us to have gotten it hundreds of years ago, and left you in your home with your families.

You will likely hear all of the prejudices and entitlements and privilege in these words that I am still working on hearing and seeing myself, and repairing. You are worthy of your best efforts, and deepest apologies. You will likely not be soothed by either, but we will offer them humbly, with no expectations.

 

Elizabeth Fellows

6/27/2020, 2pm

(Hour 10) 07.30-08.30am. PROMPT: song to poem

shadow hiders

perhaps they hid
behind the shadow of the moon
the shadow of jupiter
shadow of the sun
& though we run

north & south
it won’t be long
not too long i fear
before they find us
they’re always near

can we last another night

True Friendship Vibes (HR 11)

I’ve watched you walking around lost

With tears in your eyes

And your soul drained from having to constantly fight

Your spirit spoke to me without words

And I felt the need to give you a hug

I felt that you needed to recharge

And I have some energy to spare

I want to give you some of my love

I want to show you that someone truly does care

I love to see someone become uplifted

It’s the most beautiful thing

To see someone who’s been in the dark

To see the light in their eyes again

These are always the type of vibes you should have for your friends

Poem #12

Why do they hate me?

I am still trying to figure out why they hate me so much
I know my hair is bold and nappy and will never straighten out
Without chemicals and heat
But why do I need it to?
it is thick and full and I have the privilege to style it however I want

I know my lips are full but they help me to speak
Words of love in every poem I write
I know my fingers are long but strong
They help me to hold onto all the dreams when I snatch them
Out of the clouds and serve them up on the plate for all humanity to see

I know my body is not the model size
But it has born three brown babies who have excelled
In school and in life
and so I love all the places where they made me thick
Left me adequately full
Full enough to teach them compassion
Full enough to be softhearted when so much of the world
Is bitter and irate

I am trying to understand why they hate me so much
Why the thought of me standing up for myself
Or even taking a knee would threaten some mysterious thing about
Who they are
Who they perceive themselves to be
Who they don’t want me to be in this world
But it is not up to them to decide

I have been planted by the waters of life
I am meant to live
I am meant to grow despite the knife they stick in my back
Despite the knee they place on my neck
I am meant to thrive
I am meant to breathe

I know my mind is brilliant and that my heart is pure
I know that I can collect butterflies when I send out the message
Of love
I pray that their worms of hate will never swallow it up
that my words will not return to me void
that they have power every time they are read
again
I do not know why they hate me so much
Perhaps it is because I am so beautiful within

Birth of the Suns

Birth of the Suns

Cosmic light rises inside the darkness
That the mountains envelop
Stealing its golden hue
Entrapped in the folds of the sky
And slowly spreads

Hour 5

@varenyas

Love Letter

Why do I love you?
What is it that make you lovely?

How about your eyes?
They shift with wonderful feelings
crinkle at a joke
tell me with a glance I’m precious.

Or the teakettle?
When it calls, how you sprint to it,
bothered by the sound,
because you feel like it’s angry.

Is it your quiet?
We can sit all day in silence
and still be happy,
not needing all that small talk noise.

It’s not your body.
I would love you in any skin
But because it’s yours,
your body is perfect to me.

It could be your growth.
What once was just beyond your reach
you have conquered it
and I know you will never stop.

I can’t quite remember
what made me fall for you at first.
I’ve been loving you
for all my life that has mattered.

Do I know it’s love?
I will always feel safe with you,
always be brightened
into laughter at your urging
Yes. I know, my love.

First and last (text) lines from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer
“What about a teakettle?”
“We would have been safe.”

Prompt 12: last line

Last Line for Tayo

 

These stories

We have heard them before

The places remain

Only the names have changed

It seems quite steady

Always, already

Does something sound different

This time around?

Like the facsimile has faded

The ink ran dry

Things dropped off

The end of the page

Is there more?

Something I can write

That awakens

Opens the space

Clears the path

For Spider Woman

Her Ceremony

For the fatigued

 

Shadowed By the Moon – Prompt 10, 10th Hour

10th Hour

https://thepoetrymarathon.com/blog/seventhsolstise/shadowed-by-the-moon-prompt-10/ ‎

I am shadowed by the Moon,
when she beckons me to share her journey,
I follow her lead.
She has no eyes that she may see,
I try desperately to keep up,
but almost circumspectly,
She knows where I am.

Bouncing over Mountains and Skyscrapers,
as if she knows the height and breadth
of every milepost that greets her in the sky.
The Moon has no tongue and she never lies.

The Moon staggers not at the Glaciers,
or the cold they impart,
without legs nothing impedes her performance,
She knows her way around from finish to start.

Never stopping or looking back,
she never leaves me or gets off track.
The Moons shadows me.

 

Possible Course

entire protest in wax

a bone cross

distance established

from surgeons to statues

instrument spreads sternum

 

Dear Father

Dear Father,
things remain the same as they are
the air that I breathe is yours,
trees planted by you recognize me
or is it they recognize you inside me?

the old fish bears testimony;
I live in the illusion
that you are no more
but in fact you are there
always inside me.

Hour 4

@varenyas