Maybe this
will be the year I do it all finally let the cult of productivity, the myth that I control anything slough off like dead skin. Maybe this will be the year my ears tune out shrill frequencies of fear and control, urgent wailing of algorithms and bend instead to my heart’s own rhythm. Maybe this will be the year I become uncivilized, live in the wilderness of my limbs, viscera blood The year I traverse the wild chasms of shared sentience.
Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash
The Prompt
By this point in my life, I have been compelled to confront (many times over) my own humanness, my finitude, my limitations. I am neither perfect nor perfectable, but I was raised on a myth of perfectability—the notion that everything short of perfection is “sin” and that the ultimate (and ultimately achievable) goal is to become perfect and, once that box is checked, to become elevated to godhood myself (or rather, to become one of the wives of a god). Mormon theology is hardly mainstream, but constant striving for perfection is. The roots of this extend beyond religion. Capitalism loves our sense of not-enoughness. It loves to tell us how to fix ourselves, and the answer will always be some combination of work harder and buy more stuff.
I know all this. I’ve seen through it many times over. And I’ve seen how quickly, both in the culture and within my own mind, the ideal of productivity swoops in to take the place of its debunked cousin, perfection. But even knowing this and seeing this, I catch myself swept back into its stream—imagining that doing laundry is somehow more noble than sitting down to watch a movie or imagining that some higher power is softly shaking their head over the fact that I still haven’t finished this or that project. (My internalized deity doesn’t throw fire or brimstone, but man oh man, his disappointed look will make you wither.)
Maybe your feelings about the cult of productivity are similar to mine. Maybe not. But surely there is some belief or value or myth that you’ve inherited from the culture that you don’t totally buy into anymore. If you’d like a prompt to play with today, then I invite you to take some time to notice where your own deepest beliefs and values depart from the beliefs and values of the culture you were raised in or the culture that surrounds you now.
Can you trace the history of how your beliefs and values shifted? What shook those ingrained stories loose? Trauma? Education? Humor? A mentor? The slow magic of time?
Among the old stories/myths/values that you no longer fully believe, is there one that still reaches up and trips you? Is there one that you see through but then must see through again and again and again because its pull is powerful or pervasive? How do you catch yourself in this moment of falling? What brings you back to your own deeper sense of truth?
As you ponder all this, memories, images, stories, or metaphors may rise to the surface. Welcome them. Let them move your pen across the paper. See what emerges. Notice what sits below the words, not quite ready to surface on the page but is still alive as part of your process. (Or maybe your process is part of it?) I like to think that the poem isn’t just the words you write down and possibly choose to share. The poem is the writing itself. The poem is what you can’t write. The poem is the sitting in experience, letting it speak to you in its own strange tongue.
I look forward to hearing from you friends—whether in the form of comments or poems of your own! I am so grateful that I get to live into this year together with you.
P.S. In case anyone missed this update from a previous post: 100 Poems began as my own personal project to write and share 100 Poems in 2024. And I did it! We did it. This community has been such a source of inspiration, joy, fun, and support, and I am grateful to each of you. Now that we’re beginning a new year, my plans for this Substack have changed a little, and I’ll posting once a week rather than twice. So you’ll get 52 poems and prompts from me this year, plus maybe a midweek extra here or there.
P.P.S. If you value what’s happening here and have a little cash to spare, then please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support this work. At this point, nothing is paywalled, which means there is no reason on earth why you have to upgrade . . . which means that every time someone does, I feel like I’ve been wrapped in an incredible and unexpected hug from someone dear. Thank you to you dears. You know who you are. ❤️
Traversing the wild caverns of shared sentience is by far the most noble goal I've yet heard for 2025. Thank you, Lisa. I had a few moments this morning to dust of my poetry pen and chose to write about the cult of gender.
***
We all come in wonder-filled,
wholly wild,
fiercely free
of the barbed wire of linear ideas.
Not yet seared by the branding of the binary,
primed to organically express
our divine feminine and masculine
from an essential core,
no less and no more
than nature would have us.
But no sooner have we arrived
than we’re assigned a fixed point
on a straight line.
A sticking point where most learn to survive,
but never fully thrive,
because
survival is conditioned on forgetting one’s wholeness,
accepting the oppression of fragmentation,
the indignities of objectification and gender limitation.
This unrelenting demand for full compliance --
without hesitation --
as reinforced by our collective participation
in the top-down obfuscation
enables this most unnatural form
of violence against creation.
Even the most privileged amidst this contrivance
are every bit as imprisoned as the least.
Bonded by chains of coercion, in uneasy reliance.
Strained to bursting with the suppression of truth,
longing for feral release.
Lisa, I sat down with one thought and the journey of writing led to another. This poem I likely will come back to again and again, trying to get it just right?
Voices
^
As we crested into rare Alpine zone,
Southwestern Virginia Appalachian mountains,
we looked behind, beyond and between.
You said “I want to climb higher and higher,
Never stop, peak after peak.”
And you did, climbing so high,
until you were gone from sight.
I felt content lying in the meadows,
serenaded by Mountain Laurel and Rhododendron blooms,
the urge to go slowly crashing into urgency and busy.
^
We walked many trails together,
Until our paths diverged,
and our journeys led to conflicting
destinations of mind, heart and spirit.
The climber and the tortoise,
companions once now faded from view.
^
In the slowness of the journey,
I hear it every day:
“Move faster, do more, be better…
It’s your fault; why can’t you be like…
If only you weren’t so scattered and spacey.”
A scroll of self-recrimination and loathing.
^
The voices outside the walls could be loud,
but never as fierce or as constant
as the inner monologue on repeat,
always managing to find its way out
of the attic of my emotional storage,
years of compassion and love often
just harbors in a storm.