Unmasking a Myth

Eden by Valeri Tsenov

when they want to
control you
they do not come
with shackles
made of iron
they come instead
with cages made
of shame and story
like the one
about the woman
who earned crisis
for her curiosity
so tempted by a life
of wisdom and independence
she caused the downfall
of all civilization

women are dangerous
says the shame story of Eve
they cannot
be trusted and
should not
trust themselves

give a woman
free choice and
she’ll eat the fruit
tempt the man
enrage the god
she’ll destroy us all
with her mad desire
to know
to discover
to understand
her self
her world
her maker
give a woman any freedom
and she’ll follow
her curiosity
shape her
own story
seek truth beyond
the dictates
of order and obedience

she will wreck
your carefully controlled mandates
your reign of tightness
she will unmake
your holy wars
of right and wrong
and infuse the realm with
choice and instinct
empathy outranking rules
creativity eclipsing war
sovereignty subsuming
blind servitude

when you want to know
like Eve
when you have a taste
for truth
and a hunger for wisdom
you have to question
the stories
test the facts
rattle the cage
who profits from you
believing a lie?
who benefits because you
believe you are both
cause and curse?

they have tried
to burn you
with their shame
strip you
violate you
shrink you
silence you
but they could not break
your phoenix spirit
its fierce heat
will melt old regimes
and enflame a generation
who will not settle
for smallness
for submission
for shame

sink your self into
the feathered
red sleeve
of your ancestors
and rise, woman
rise again
for you are
Persephone’s Daughter
Lilith’s lover
Eve’s heir

find the truth
eat the fruit
unmask the myth
let it burn

~Angi Sullins

🔥

Poet: www.AngiSullins.com
Painter: www.tsenov-art.com

A Little Bit of Soft

Why do we spend all of our precious soft?
trying to be hard
talking like we’re hard
dressing like we’re hard
pretending to be hard
moving like we’re hard
acting like we’re hard
writing like we’re hard
living like we’re hard

until we wake up one morning
stone
cold
hard
and we’d give anything
everything
to feel a little bit of
soft

~Max Mundan

~~~

#getYin

The Wild Will Call You Back

The Wild will call you back.
Through half-remembered dreams
and sunsets painted
in burnt sienna
and vermillion flames
she will call you back home.
The coyotes will wake you
from your sleep
with their clarion call
to keep your eyes
wide open.

How long have you been sleeping?
How much have you forgotten?

The Wild will call you back.
She will hang you upside down
and shake the nonsense
from the pockets
of your mind.
She will strip your soul naked
leaving you raw and exposed
under the searing glare
of the gods.
Offer up the holiness
of your confusion
and questions.
Dress yourself
in fireflies
and attune your senses
to awe
while you learn the slow seduction
of courting your muse.

Brush the stardust from your wings
and wipe the ocean from your eyes.
Flex your claws
dig your roots deep down
into the fertile earth
and show your fangs.
Gather pollen on your legs
and speak
in venom
and honey.
Peel back your colonized tongue
and let it hiss
and purr
and growl
and scream.

Do you remember
how to stalk
as predator
and how to surrender
as prey?

The Wild will call you back.
The owls know your real name
and will call you
from the darkness of night
to dance under the moon.
Crack your heart open
with your ancestors’ bones
and dance in the ecstasy
of your love
and your grief
with flailing limbs
bloody knees
and mud-stained feet.
Braid mugwort into your hair
and dream yourself
awake.

The Wild will call you back.
She will teach you how to die
again and again
and how to die well.
There is no difference
between your funeral pyre
and your birth canal.
Do not bother
to try and stop
the bleeding.
Love with the gentleness
and ferocity
of your whole
soft
tender being.
Feed the spirits
with your beauty
and sweetness
and ask them to show you
the way home.

~Gina Puorro
www.ginapuorro.com

Grief Work

If you come as softly
As wind within the trees
You may hear what I hear
See what sorrow sees.
If you come as lightly
As threading dew
I will take you gladly
Nor ask more of you.
You may sit beside me
Silent as a breath
Only those who stay dead
Shall remember death.
And if you come I will be silent
Nor speak harsh words to you.
I will not ask you why, now.
Or how, or what you do.
We shall sit here, softly
Beneath two different years
And the rich earth between us
Shall drink our tears.

~Audre Lorde

The Blanket Around Her

maybe it is her birth
which she holds close to herself
or her death
which is just as inseparable
and the white wind
that encircles her is a part
just as the blue sky
hanging in turquoise from her neck
oh woman
remember who you are
woman
it is the whole earth

~ Joy Harjo

🌎

Photo by Ruthie Martin
on Unsplash

She is the Source

Sculpture by Agnes Arellano

She is intuition,
she is far-seer,
she is deep listener,
she is loyal heart.
She encourages humans to remain multilingual;
fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry.
She whispers from night dreams,
she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul
a coarse hair and muddy footprints.
These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.
She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory.
She has been lost and half-forgotten for a long, long time.
She is the source,
the light,
the night,
the dark,
and daybreak.

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
🌙☀️