Here I Am, World

I have started reading poetry again. I used to read poetry regularly and somewhere along the way, most likely during law school a long time ago, I stopped. I used to write it sometimes even, although thank the gods there are no electronic copies of it left.

I've come back to it, recently, in a time of grief, loss, anger, and political upheaval, simply because I need something more than, or perhaps different from, the ephemeral, constant outrage culture of modern social media discourse. I have felt unmoored from social justice activism, as so much of it seems completely counterproductive and cruel. I've been rethinking and contemplating what I even want this space to be, going forward, hence the light posting as of late.

I am so constantly angry that I sometimes have forgotten what I was angry about mere weeks ago. And yet, if I'm not angry, I'm not paying attention, and I simultaneously refuse to be apathetic during this political moment.

Sometimes, living feels like we're in the worst of times, in which rape culture patriarchy has infested every nook on this earth - including the most "progressive" - with people making cowardly acquiescences to its power over and over and over again.

At the same time, I still somehow feel that we are living in sacred, borrowed time.

Sometimes, poetry helps me process things when I'm not able to completely process them from a left-brain, linear perspective - or when I'm exhausted from doing so.

Presently, I'm been slowly reading Andrea Gibson's recent collection, Lord of the Butterflies, savoring one poem a day, rather than rushing through it. (Note, Gibson also goes by Andrew, but I've used Andrea since that's the name under which they've published this book and continue to use professionally).  The following sampling, from "Ode to the Public Panic Attack," shows the political commentary and wit that comprises many of the works in this collection:

..[W]e treat panic, anxiety, terror
as the failings of uncourageous minds
who haven't sipped enough chamomile tea

or haven't tattooed Namaste
onto the right part of their windpipe
or haven't picked enough lavender

from their herb gardens
to rub into their
pussy chakra.

A white yogi tells me I can breathe
through the apocalypse in my bloodstream
and I do 6,000 downward dogs

and never stop feeling
the choke of the leash.
I'm done

with the shame. Done
with the cage of self hate. The lie
that this is weakness

when I am certain it is the mightiest proof
of my strength, how hard it is to live
knowing there's a promised jaw

outside my front door
and I still step toward that horror.
Still I say, Here I am, world!

More to come.