I look up from my book
The air ringing with sounds
Ceramics scraping wood
Steam hissing
Laughs entangling with sighs
A woman sits by the window
Hands wrapped around a cup
Tea tag wound around fingers
But I was drawn to the lipstick on her teacup
-gws
I lay beneath a starless sky
Wondering where they have gone
Have they become the freckles
Dancing across my nose
Strands of silver streaking my hair
Glitter in my joyful tears
Have they fallen to Earth
So I can shine
-gws
In these strange days
I can’t help but wonder stranger things
I’ve heard it said that life here on this earth is a graduate class for the soul
You see, we are not bodies with a soul
We are, instead, souls with bodies
We have chosen to walk and talk and hurt and love
We have made an agreement with Oneness
To take a fraction of what we are
And condense down into this biological machine called a body
We have chosen to leave Oneness to become one
Single
Alone amongst others who are also alone
I can’t help but wonder what we are meant to learn
What don’t we already know through our original experience of Oneness
Maybe it’s the simple act of experiencing the finite
A contrast to already being so familiar with the infinite
What an existence we must lead in Oneness
To allow us to be so curious that we willingly come to THIS place
Full of fear and uncertainty
Cruelty and chaos
But also kindness and compassion
And love
Love with all its grit and glamour
Its risk and reward
How brave are we to give up the infinite NOW of Oneness
For the finite uncertainty of Earth time
Where those around us that we learn to love and cherish are
Too, bound by the limits of a linear existence
Where love and loss are the rhythms of life’s tides upon this world
Such contrast and contradiction
I suppose there’s beauty in it
Oh, to be able to know now what I will know after
To be able to answer with certainty what it was all for
The good and the bad
To know how good of a human I was
Where I helped
Where I hurt
Where I healed
Will I miss this experience when it’s over
Will I choose to return again
Will you
I think about all of the various mythologies of life and death
I think about how more than one thing can be true at once
How time and experience is such a strange soup
So as the world becomes more and more outlandish
As long held collective truths seem on the verge of collapse
The undeniable feeling that something new is being birthed
Through this terror on the back of a desperate hope
I can’t help but ponder stranger things
And my place within it all
-gws
Sometimes
A woman is an island
Steadfast amid the violence
Of salt water and storm cloud
Eyes ever focused
Where the sky caresses the sea
Kissed all over by the ebb and flow of waves
Dancing with moontides
Volcanic at times
Worn and weathered and wiser
As beautiful at sunrise as sunset
As much a force as nature herself
-gws
Nevermind
You see
You were never mine
Not the way I needed you to be
You were an illusion
A twenty-four and seven hologram
Insubstantial and incapable
Pinocchio with a nose job
A foundation full of rot
On which we placed our house
And when the floor fell out
You did not reach for me
Did not treat my scrapes
Nor bandage my wounds
You told me to walk it off
Toughen up
It wasn't that big a deal
Not everything was about me
YOU were the one who was injured here
Look at what I did to YOUR floor
Look at what I did to YOUR life
And I believed I was the weak spot
The salt in the wound of us
Nevermind
You see
You were never mine
You simply made me believe
In an us without a we
Told me that was how it was supposed to be
My every need an inconvenience
My efforts doomed to fall short
A fat lazy black bitch
Who just wouldn't listen
Who just wouldn't drown my sense of self in your ego
And join you in your fortress of delusions
Nevermind
You see
You were never mine
And now I belong to me
After taking too long to see
I needed to be worth more to me
Than I was ever worth to you
-gws
Put away the books
Lying scattered across the floor
The table
The bed
Spilling across surfaces like toppled ink
A labyrinth of poetry and prose
Keeping me trapped in verbose clutter
-gws
I love watching the women with fire in their veins
The girls with Punky Brewster profiles
They enter with energy so big the room feels small
Laughs that ring out above the rest - distinctive and full bellied
They refuse to be shamed by the PTA moms
Not allowing their messy edges to take away from their contributions
They embody the revolutionary girl that Nikita Gill wrote rules for
Standing up for themselves and others
Accepting no excuses for bad behavior
They are often truth tellers slicing through mass delusions
Magic makers manifesting dreams into reality
Only ever competing with themselves
Chin high and eyes sharp
They are goddess and girl
Witch and woman
Scorching or blessing the ground they walk
In equal measure
Giving no fucks and taking no shit
As they say "yes, and" or "hell, no"
Fierce and joyous and unapologetically free
-gws
Thunder rattles behind her ribs
Lightening arcs from her tongue
She is storm clouds
Bringing steady rain to parched earth
Raging winds to clear the way
She is elemental
Wild and raw and rare
Her smile crepuscular
Her love blisteringly radiant
I live to study her meteorology
-gws
Springtime in the Bay Area makes me think that the emerald city could be nestled in the foothills
-gws
These poems are a journey
That began in the light of hope and love
Then slowly meandered through increasing darkness
They dare to expose the skeletons and demons
Barely hidden behind my front door for too long
The narration begins in the middle
After darkness had well fallen
And documents my struggle to breathe
My desperate journey to find myself again
And for those who live with horrors who wear human faces
If I found my way free
I know you can too
Let these poems serve as proof
That though it is not easy
Freedom can be won
You can take your life back
Write the story exactly as YOU wish it to be
Sometimes the dragon burns down the world
As long as you’re standing
No matter how wounded
You can slay that dragon
You ARE the hero of your story
YOU get to say when the story is over
YOU get to decide how the new book starts
YOU get to do whatever the hell YOU want
Take my story and forge it into your sword of courage
SLAY
-gws
Words Wishes and Wisdom 