-Antoine de Sainte-Exupery (The Little Prince)
Working on a poem that I started here yesterday and because it came out here I wanted to leave here. Now I am wondering if that is a good idea. It is just a poem. I have copy right protection. I can prove that it is mine. I don't want any money for it either do I want anyone else to make any money off it (not that they could lol). Just leave it be...please.
After a wonderful get together with friends I found myself triggered as I was innocently reminded of how much my life has changed, how different I now was compared to them and the person I use to be. I felt like all my usual defense mechanisms and personas were dropping away messily...and I wondered if my friends could almost see them dropping away and if that made them feel uncomfortable. It was a lovely, lovely visit yet a weird mental experience took place in my head. My friends are both absolutely lovely...my vulnerability had nothing to do with them.
It actually has been surfacing all week...that heavy sadness I felt when I got up each morning...and I was just very much aware of it during the visit. Then I picked up these beautiful little Terra-cotta soldiers that were tourist/gift representatives of the ones found in the Chinese tomb. Something happened as I held one in my hand...I became aware of how all our defenses and protection are really not real...but used by ego to scare others away. Being open and raw is not a bad thing.
So the poem came out...but it took more time than usual (hours!!)...I was a bit obsessed with it until I finally finished. Now I feel like wow! I feel relief and release. Is that what was coming up since Monday??? I didn't want to analyze it with conceptual thought so it came out creatively...still with words mind you...but words that came from the place behind the mind and not the mind itself. :)
I guess it is about Seeing rightly.
I will put it here now and do whatever I can to protect it but I will just let it be. If I become aware there is any illicit behaviour, I will deal with it harshly only for the preservation of the written word :) :
Terra-cotta Soldiers in a Perfect Little Room
I feel the jagged little pieces of life piercing through my chest,
pulling away the broken flesh and feeding on the rest.
Bleeding , draining memories, sticky, sweet and wet
drip through tiny holes of me, staining social etiquette.
I stand here awkwardly, not quite knowing what to say,
My mind resisting noisily as spirit pushes walls away.
Do they notice I am unprotected now, open, exposed and raw
As I smile my nervous smile, feeling the tightness in my jaw?
Do they see beyond this decaying carcass with its matted clumps of past
Still sticking to the surface of an image that was never meant to last?
Do they wonder who I am now with all the flimsy veils torn away
Or would it be simpler if I hid behind my burqa for yet another day?
All that remains of my defenses are spilling slowly to the floor
Creating large embarrassing puddles that leads me reaching for the door.
But I do not want to leave a mess behind for anyone else to clean
So like the well trained dogs, I sit and hope the puddles can’t be seen.
Do they hear the apologetic trembling in my scattered broken speech
That once expressed such confidence as I stood in front to teach?
Are my long pauses leaving them wondering what we will dare speak of next
As we distractedly reach for cell phones and the protective wall of text?
Even the tiny terra-cotta soldiers, I know, can not protect my crumbling tomb
And I feel a chill despite the light pouring into this perfect little room.
I now know I have trembled more from fear than I ever did from cold
and suddenly I feel like the soldiers ....so very, very old,
I am not who I used to be, the person they knew is gone
yet my body sits upright and smiles and tries to carry on
the fantasy that I ever was this stranger they once said they loved and knew
with the same desires, goals and wishes, I so drastically out grew
There is so much of me that longs to be here, to just sit within their grace
To speak of perfect homes, perfect kids, the challenges they face,
to talk of their work, their pets and crafts, with life so innocently expressed
but it leaves me, for some reason, feeling stripped down to my naked brokenness.
Thankfully there is no talk of shattered hearts, of loss, or bodies that are ill
There is little focus on decaying forefronts and the externals that haunt me still.
They graciously drop their eyes and look away from my broken ,bloody parts
And do they do so, I wonder, with apathy or with kindness in their hearts?
I know it’s hard to look upon what remains of an ugly broken shell
beaten down, and tarnished, depicting how traumatically someone fell
from ego's pedestal of laurel wreaths and perfect decored normalcy
to the hard cold depth of something else , a world so few want to see.
I want to reassure them it is just the outer that can break
And though it looks so messy, it is just the externals life can take
Clinging and fighting and holding on to remnants will never give us peace
There is something so healing, and so freeing, in the sweetness of release.
Besides ...this ‘little me” they thought they knew is just eschar on the skin
and once debrided fully, the healing light will finally come in.
I want to speak of what I learn as each layer is stripped away
And let them know that though it stings, it is going to be okay.
But as I sit on perfect chairs, beside tiny soldiers, seeking true identity,
I question if they can see beyond the layer of raw and fragile vulnerability.
Who I really am is well preserved and waiting within this wall-less terracotta tomb
Where precious Love shines through to all of us who gather in this room.
I am not sure though that what I have to say is something they would really care to hear.
So I bite my lip and nod my head and I listen, focusing on simply being here.
Then I awkwardly take a picture of us to remember how we used to be
And sadly walk away from the room, the soldiers and the lovely company.
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