This week I’ve written quite a few poems that I think are good, and I’ve been enjoying the challenge more again after a few rough weeks. I won’t say I’ve turned a corner, as I expect this is just the crest of one of many waves to come. It’s part of the process and part of what I set out to learn/discover.

Perhaps it also helps that the light has started to return and spring has begun to announce itself. It is only February and we could still get snow (two years ago at this time it was about -15c), but the birds are chirping and crocuses and snowdrops are blooming, and it makes my heart lighter. For whatever reason, this winter has felt quite heavy.  My energy levels have not been great over the past week, and I may still have a wee bit of a cold, but I have recorded some news videos to go along with this week’s highlighted poems – you’ll find the YT links under each poem.

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Poem #37: Radicalised

Strip away
convention
duty
conformity
insecurity
who do you think you are
you owe
you should
it’s not good for you to
you’re fat
you’re unhealthy
you’re ugly
you’re stupid
you’re too ambitious
you’re lazy
don’t be so touchy
it was just a joke
you should smile more
you should cook more
you should stay at home and take care of your family and also have a job and children and clean the house and diet and be thin and pretty and funny but not so funny that it overshadows the men
don’t drink too much
be chaste but sexy but don’t be a tease

and what are you left with

a life unbound unbridled unspoiled unrelenting unrepentant

nature
intuition
creativity
compassion
laughter
dancing down the street at 2 AM

Woman
in her purest form

—

On YouTube: https://youtu.be/uz6MriLfZt4

Poem #41: What Came Before

Moves in me
Is not something to be expelled
Cannot be harnessed
It is as wild, unpredictable and perilous as the ocean
Whenever I think
this life, these choices, this path
is mine alone
My spiritual, karmic, generational inheritance
swells in me
telling me
there is no such thing as

Tabula Rasa

I am a palimpsest

the hurt and wonder
of artists, peasants, revolutionaries
etched onto my bones
echoes of their prayers
their nightmares
their deepest most secret wants
resound in my every breath

I write with their blood
as well as my own

And this
is not a revelation
not a restraint
or the antithesis of free will

it is the living memory of everyone I have ever loved and everyone they have ever loved
all the way back
to Eve

—

On YouTube: https://youtu.be/-KBBg40cIQU