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Poetry has nurtured me and been a vital form of release for as long as I can remember.
Forever I have had books and scraps of paper next to my bedside, damp from tears of confusion and loneliness over my parent's divorce and questions about my place in the world.
As a teen, my step-mother read private letters to my friends and poems hidden in the back of my closet. She demanded my Father force me to write a letter of apology to her, including all of the commandments my words had broken. I tearfully refused. My sister, Jodi, away at collage, heard about what happened.
For Christmas 1989 Jodi gave me my first cloth covered journal and inscribed on the inside:
your words are beautiful and matter
~
My hope is that these images and words will offer amity, spark compassion, and help shift the dialogue
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be the change- uplift the hope
i sit in my car
watching the rain
i cross out
laundry
return baskets
buy milk
missing from my list is
explode
breathe
hear your faults in their tiny voices
if you saw my eyes
could you capture
the depth of my urgency
the despondency in my soul
the truth beneath the inevitable lies
on the screen tonight
i will acknowledge
your joy, your pain, your dreams
i will assume to know
is it possible
for the exchange of loaded words
to be enough to share
this burden of bliss
i want
my light, my love, my words, and images
to synchronously signal
my gigantic yet gentle purpose
it is never too late
to shift the dialogue
i will crack open
and activate compassion
expose the shadows and
find a way in
for us all