Strength VIII/XI

Strength card from The Tarot of the Spirit by Pamela and Joyce Eakins

Honesty & Hope (a.k.a. No Pain, No Gain)” by Shiela L. Kalkbrenner

“Mortal Fear reclines on the edge of infinite opportunity.
Hope explores fragile rewards.
Grace allows the consequences.
Obstacles fall away.
Honesty embraces the pains of change.
Life begins again.“

~Shiela L. Kelkbrenner

Building Strength: Turning Towards and Working With Our Pain.

Strength (VIII) is the numerologic “Card of the year” for 2024. To learn more, here’s a great video: https://youtu.be/HZmwTt8K_h8?si=HFlK0aDaatJ00N4C

Desire

Photo by Maria Helena Mazuroski on Pexels.com

Sometimes I wake in the night

Terrified

Terrified that I’m throwing it all away

Terrified that because She is so quiet

Because I can barely hear Her

Because the waves and roars

Of unending possibility drown Her Majesty

Choiceless

Frozen

I am terrified

I am throwing it all away

Desire

I’ve gone back and forth about it my whole existence

Is it that there is too much inside of me

Or that there is too little

Is it that there lives a gargantuan backlog

Of unlived yearnings

That when touched, create maelstrom of woe

So threatening, so unapproachable

The consequences of choice

Too complicated

The result of this weight

A blankness, floating

That the only choice is to go back to the same?

Is it that

Deep in this Center

There is a wide, open vista

Free of any wanting

Free of any needing

Free of any seeking

Merged with Infinity

One that absolutely trusts

Where, when, how and why

She’s come to be

That this is all there is

The question of desire

Dropped into this Center

Doesn’t make any sense

It only makes laughter, hysterical

What does make sense

Is this need to create routines

And measurements

And patterns

To keep Her alive

Otherwise

Left to the following of “animal instinct”

She with no need

She with no hunger

She with no desire

Would disappear into the wind

What is true is not yet known

But still

Sometimes I wake in the night

Terrified

Terrified that I’m throwing it all away

Terrified that because She is so quiet

Because I can barely hear Her

Because I am not thrust by myself

To create and savor and lavish

In an obvious, enviable Dream

Choiceless, frozen

Or…empty vastness

I am terrified

I am throwing it all away

Undertow

I had it all planned out

The list, both wrinkled and gleaming

But when I heard your voice on the line

Like a follower, I let you lead the dance

We talked about politics, and religion

And about your dear Aunt Martha

But never, never

Did we get

To the list

I didn’t even remember to look at it

Even though it was smoothed out beneath my hands

Even though it was caked in sweat and frustration

No, when I heard your voice

Was gone

Our voices, matching

I am not silent, I joust back with my intellectual positions

I know how to do this

I know how to keep the waters steady

But inside,

My heart is dying

After nearly 3 hours of vocal interminglings

I finally speak of space and future meetings

And set

The receiver

Down

It is only now

That I feel that paper, glowing against my skin

And what it was hoping to remind me

I feel its resignation, its scratchy fibrous sigh

And yet

I feel its yearning to persist

That paper, it glares as if it will not give up

That paper, it will stand steady

In case someday, I feel my hands

And its beckoning

In your midst

Will I ever find my way

Out of this learned amnesia

To speak to the depth of the words we have exchanged in letters

To speak to the cryptic poetry you send

To speak to my confusion

Whether you are lover

Or friend

That question that has followed me for ages

To speak to what both of us are really looking for

To risk and dare the truth of that

To speak of tendencies to sink into undertows

Rather than use authentic voice

My fears, and yours?

Instead, once again

Like in that seaside screaming childhood

I fall into your spell

I get quiet

I do the dance

And pray that you’ll stay

I just hope that someday

In your presence

I remember to feel my hands

That I remember to look down for reminders

At that list, glowing

I just hope that someday

I’ll know what to say

You. Listen.

I’ve begun to record my wonderings with musical backgrounds. Take a listen to my recent poem, “You.”

I am feeling to record more of what’s already been written…perhaps chapters from my memoir…let me know what you think, or stay tuned if you so desire :}

~raVen

Complex

Hidden beneath the thickness

Of mass, papery thin casings

I found you

Hidden in the gaping despair

Incongruent with trivialities

I found you

In the litany of ghostings

In the rage of suffocated voice

In the tears and vomit upon entwining

I found you

In the great lengths of distance

In decades of sadistic bodily torture

My own dear, terrified, feminine upon your cross

I found you

The clues, honestly

Have been there all along

Trailing me like some desperate sickly hound

Hoping, begging

To be noticed, transformed

How I walked the edge of death

Just to see if you’d appear

How I languished in purpose

Vacillating between grandiosity and nihilism

You

Were always there

Absent

How I wish it hadn’t taken me

This many decades to finally see

That I’m attracting you

Over and over

To feel and attempt to resolve

What may never be truly found

Underneath it all,

Whether mirrored in my own neurosis

Or in the eyes of the man at my door

I’ve found you

And me

And how it’s this work I’ll be doing forever

Hidden beneath the thickness

Of mass, papery thin casings

I found you

Daddy

Medial Practice

Rising

Daily

To this dark, dark

Shadow

It haunts

It pants

It fills all of me

This heavy, unexplainable

Androgenous and weighted

Meaninglessness

Through thick, murky waters

I attempt to appreciate

All the seeming realities

I am gifted with

Yet

Cannot fully entertain

Who am I

To be ungrateful

Of a life so many would die to have

Of a life so many have died to have

This threatens to add

Just seventy more layers

To the tissue load, the tissue load

I call out for guidance

To “Spirit,” of which I cannot even fully believe

Answers arising

That confuse

Something’s just not right

Or worse

Answer

All

Floating

Just floating

No tether in a

Deep, dark Void

In the place where desire should rise

In the place where passion should rise

In the place where a fire should rise

Is this my prison, or theirs

Is this my darkness, or those

Of unimaginable

Numbers tied to tendril?

Only questions, more questions

Circling, whirling, storming

My only practice, breath

A daily, focused, determined

Presence

Emptying…

Is it sacred

Or just a numbing?

These of course

Are only words

But it resonates, exists, penetrates

Burrowing in so many unexplainable

Ways

Inside me, around me

I want to describe it, fully

But cannot

Like the Ain Soph Aur, the Emanations

Wordless, amoebic, gargantuan

Dementor like–perhaps?

Siphoning all hope, all possibility, all interest

Sucking, desiccating, into empty hollow

How can I give this form?

This suffering,

Bombed,

Ignored,

Starved,

Hidden

Repressed and

Feared

This part

Of myself

This part

Of us…all?

Rising, daily

To this dark, dark

Shadow

It haunts

It pants

It fills all of me

How can I give this form?

How

Can I give this suffering

This emptiness

This formless, grieving

Totality

How can I give this

Prodigious ancestral terror

That befalls us

How can I give this

Form?

Release?

Freedom?

Healing?

Aware

I am aware

Breathe

All I can do is breathe

A Legacy of Silence

I remember the day clearly

Sunlight gleaming off lapping blue crests

The squeaking of tattered wooden pier

The aggressive cries of gulls circling above

We’d stopped for a breath

Leaning against a wobbly rail

And like it was the latest ache or pain

She told me

About her rape

The night of the house

The temperature of the air

The terror

And the knife

Against her smooth twenty-something neckskin

The shock

From one she thought she knew

On military break, and soon to depart

How he left her there, weeping

The timeline’s a bit hazy

But I’d say she was about sixty-five

I’ve never told anyone until now

Those words, they hit me like lightning

Looking into her eyes

After years of my own intensive therapy

I wondered how she’d carried this

For so long

This wasn’t her first reveal

There’d been one other

It was delivered as we sat on a starched striped blanket

Our shifting, squeaking, in the quiet room

In my voluntary psych ward home

I tried to kill myself with pills

She said

Nothing, but this

Except for the unspecific screams

She’d hurl regularly into my childhood cell

And her wails of wretched body pains

These

Were the only clues

To the mystery I was always trying to unfold

Even sifting through her belongings

After her death

I thought I’d find out more

I searched her sacred daily planner

I thought for sure

The daily cigarette and gin-laced writings

Would open new vistas

I sat, hungry and heart beating

Turning those pages

Hoping, desperate to know her

They won’t keep her from me!

Angry.

That, I swear

Was all.

She’d left only a handful of single words

Over the decades of daily financial scribbles

And unless she somehow knew she was going to die

And uncharacteristically danced wild,

Her impassioned deep confessionals

Burning in the sunset sands of some secret beach

I’d have to just accept

I’d just have to let go

And realize

I’d never really know her

And that perhaps

She’d never known her Self

It’s taken me decades to come to terms

With my mother, here inside me

And lately, as I wrestle

With this great unexplained torture unfolding within

With the memories and violations

And strange symptoms revealing

Slowly…like she did

That I realize the pattern

The pull to conceal, run, hide

Anything to prevent a generations-old shame

Its threats to destroy me

I recognize the ripples, mirroring

And how it’s me, seeing

And how it’s me, writing

And how it’s me, screaming

And how it’s me, starving

And how it’s me, crying

And how it’s me, sharing

And how I think…

In this strange visceral way…

I do know her…

And how it’s me

Putting words to these shadows

Extending my hand, to you

And how it’s me, and her

Who can only break

This legacy

Of silence

The Wandering Cell

I’ve always been a wandering cell

Cruising around this Great Body, trying to find my kind

At first, I hung out heavily with the immune gang

They were so badass!

Tried so hard to be a killer, wasn’t mean enough

Spent a lot of time with the memory crew, kept forgetting

A bit of life with the neutralizers, I did that pretty good

But not good enough

They knew I was pretending

So then, I began roaming

Trying on organs like roles on Broadway

Auditioning to be a heart…nah, too cheesy

Attempting to be a liver…geesh! too laborious

Having no business…being an ovary

And a stomach? Forgeddaboutit

I just kept wandering, wondering

Why nobody wanted me

Just busy, going on about their duty

Everyone so certain

And me, just a big ol’ question mark

Wandering, wondering

Why I never could quite fit in

Why I could never seem to find my place

Years and years I wandered

And finally became okay with it

Saying hello as I rushed on past

Even if I wasn’t acknowledged

I smiled

Somehow, I began to understand

That if heart cells tried to be liver cells

Shit…there would be a trainwreck

Somehow, I began to understand

That we all had our own lanes

But me? What was my purpose?

Was I really meant to just wander alone, forever?

I began to fantasize

That I was a special type of cell

And that there were maybe others like me

Us wanderers, wandering

It’s just what we do

It’s our purpose

And I began to do that

With certainty, I spent a long time

Wandering

Lately

I’ve found myself hanging out again

With those heart cells

Those guys I totally laughed at

In my attempts to be a killer

And strangely, although they’re still distant

I feel like I’ll hang out here awhile

Swimming in all that Presence I’m finding

They’re really not all that bad

And maybe, even though I can’t really proclaim a destiny

Beyond this incessant wandering

Maybe

I’m part heart too

Acknowledgements~Redux

Photo by Dziana Hasanbekava on Pexels.com

To the first peoples of Switzerland, who were colonized

To the first peoples of Germany, who were colonized

To the first peoples of Scandinavia, who were colonized

To the first peoples of Lithuania, who were colonized

To the first peoples of the Netherlands, who were colonized

To the first peoples of the British Isles, who were colonized

To the first peoples of the Americas, who were colonized

To the first peoples of the Great Utah Basin, who were colonized

To the first peoples of the West Coast of the Americas, where I now stand, who were colonized

To the first plants, animals and living beings who were colonized

To the meat, vegetable, herb, tree, and crops who were colonized

To the plots of land, under concrete, that will never see the sun, who were colonized*

To the trauma, disconnection and forgetting that lives on in my bones, blood and gut, colonized

To the sicknesses that are trying to help me see

May I find a way to understand

May I find a way to respect

May I find a way to honor

May I find a way to clear

May I find a way to re-member

These hands

These white hands, open

These blue eyes, open

This raw, beating heart, open

Aching

May I find a way

To re-member

To all who have been a part of me

To all who have suffered

And to all I am a part of

May we find a way

To re-member

To re-member our privilege

This privilege

This Body

This Earth

May we find a Way

In acknowledgment of the first human and non-human peoples

From upon the bones on which we stand

Breathing within the breath that has never died

May we find a Way

May we find

A Way

*This sentence was inspired by a talk given by Kanyon Sayers-Roods, of Coastanoan Ohlone-Mutsun and Chumash peoples.

~Original form of this poem first published in Food Memories by Reagan “raVen” Lakins: https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9781689839075

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Memories-Reagan-J-Lakins/dp/1689839074

Vanilla Smoke

It’s the first thing I remember about you

That sweet, sultry smell

That weighty, mysterious fragrance

That way of being

It permeated

Everything

I remember how you held that pipe

Its amber chamber cradled in your palm

The far-off look you had

As if lost somewhere in Mystery

That vanilla smoke

I remember the contrast

Hers, acrid and jarring

Yellowed fingers and hoarded butts

Hers, it always pushed me away

But yours, it drew me nearer

That vaporous tendril

Trailing my memory up the old staircase

And into your study

The papers and books, laden

A rush of you, each time I opened a new portal

In that antiqued wooden nook

There I lost myself in temporary fantasy

Wishing for a new family

Escaping for a moment, into yours

That vanilla smoke

Some Sundays, I watched it through the window, scone in hand

While you absorbed a French bakery sunshine

Taking in the street, silent smiles, reaching

I wanted this, so bad

Still further it travels, winding

To those trips in the leather-seated Jaguar

My little hands opening the backseat polished table

Culture and class, theater and symphony

Pretending

I am yours

I remember how you’d excuse yourself

Leaving me to hang in torturous void

As we, silent, sat staring out at the sea

Violence, suicide, manipulation and desperation already worn out

You were a bridge for both of us

I could see the stars in her eyes just as much as I felt them in mine

That smoke, now I’m remembering

It picked me up at a lonely bus station

Both when I was a small child, hoping

And when I was a rabid, grieving teen

Eyes sunken, dying

You were there, again

Vanilla smoke

Although it trailed off, disappearing

In the twilight of your years

It stays with me, and how the rough tweed, infused

Rested against my cheek

It stays with me

Now that you’re gone

And I’m uncovering your Chet Baker

And Memphis Blues

And subtle writings of hawks and cards that tell futures

Your vanilla smoke

I’m remembering

How it saved me, all those years

While I gasped for meaning

While I prayed for release

While I found any way I could

To hold it all at bay

Your vanilla smoke

I’m remembering

It helped me breathe

A sense of The Father

In an aching smoke

That almost killed me

This poem is dedicated to my Uncle, Richard Stookey, who passed away this weekend. He was surrounded by love.