Where the Air is ClearFor all their power, I know my fears are paper thin— wordy distractions from the work of love, wheedling deterrents from the work of play. I’ve tried to crumple them up into balls, tried to send them out with the trash. Always, they make it back. Dirty and determined, they spread across my desk, like things I must fix before the play of living begins. But today, I will play with
Your final stanza made me gasp out loud! I love this so much. And I'm so relieved that I can finally stop telling myself you're braver than me! 😜 Also, since I know you're trying to write poems that feel more spare . . . there isn't a single wasted word here. Spare and powerful.
Oooooh, love this! Yes...self is always (and only) the sole meaningful gauge when it comes to courage and most everything else. I love how you cut right to the quick on this one.
Oh dear, "cut to the chase" was what I meant...please don't let my poor choice of words detract from your self-confidence in attending to Bjorn's dew claws!
I had to laugh at that Keith!!! And Rebekah if you want a real challenge come and trim my chihuahua's nails. There is not a soul brave enough to take that on in my house.
Rebekah this is wonderful. Fear really does come down to the individual. "People say I’m brave
because of what I do...But that’s just because those are their scary things." YES. I am also with you on scaring myself just a little. Trying something new opens the door to the other side of fear, excitement and enthusiasm.
Rebekah, this is powerful and full of wisdom. What a perceptive insight--our notion of bravery is dependent on whether an act is truly something we are afraid. As you illustrate, fears are os unique to us--sometimes not knowing where they come from. I love how you turn and face some of those fears, which also acts as a call to the reader to do the same.
I feel some fear posting this 😅 but seems like the right thing considering the prompt. Thanks for this encouragement to sit with it tonight. I also love your imagery of the kite!
Lindsey, I love the metaphor of fear as a stone - something hard intended to protect us that instead tends to pin us down or even crush us. And “but a beating heart / can be its own kind of bastion.” Just beautiful.
This captures so well the paradox of fear being protective and destructive at the same time, and I love how you land on the implied power of love as being ultimate. Thanks for sharing, and hurrah for saying no to your fear and posting this!!
I love this Lindsey, very touching. I am reading this just after posting my poem here, so I am looking through the lens of that. What I see is perspective. Is the stone hard, cold and frozen? Or is it the bastion of the beating heart as warm open hands holding the monsters gently?
I'm so glad you shared this, Lindsey! It's a powerful poem and concept both -- the idea of trying to protect yourself with that cold stone, but also getting crushed/frozen by it, and exploring whether a warm, beating heart is a better bastion (at least how I'm receiving it). There's a lot to sit with here.
I love the notion of the monsters catching you anyway...and that you received them and are dealing with them as best you can. What a lovely poem - thank you for sharing.
Thank you for posting this nice splendid poem, Lindsey. As others have said, the stone is a powerful metaphor, especially how you place it where the heart should be. And you note the shadows and light natures of a strone. I love the arc of your poem, and how your opening to a beating heart, yours and others, are places where the fears can be held with embracing love. Thank you for sharing!
In honor of today being Trans Day of Visibility, a day which, in part, is meant to stand up to fear, I wanted to share a poem I wrote last summer after FL Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the "bathrooms bill." This law, which is based in fear, in turn struck fear (and rage) into my heart, and so I wrote this poem to channel some of the intense feelings. My fervent hope is that some day, fear-based laws that marginalize and demean will not be passed, and also that a day meant to elevate folks who are made invisible as a result of marginalization won't be maligned as this day has been this year..
Dear Governor DeSantis,
I pray that God grant us
the serenity to accept you and your hate,
even as you demoralize, demean and denigrate
every queer citizen of your sunshine state.
I pray that one day,
the god of your misunderstanding
in mercy might grace you with a soft landing,
notwithstanding
the way in which you are cruelly demanding
God’s rainbow fade into a binary
of girls in pink and boys in blue
nor
the way in which you’re arbitrarily commanding
US to forsake what is true,
what will always be true,
even if we hide in plain view,
having stuffed ourselves into straight
jackets tailored by you.
I pray the God of truth and love
grant us the courage to rise above,
to somehow transform fear and grief
into indefatigable collective belief
that your reign of terror and malignant bombast
cannot, must not, will not last
and that together,
we will make it past
the injustice of your scourge,
your reckless, feckless, inhumane purge
[one day at a time and not a moment too soon].
I pray the God of wisdom help you to know,
and I mean really know,
that there but for the grace of said God go
you, go yours into hell’s fires below,
where the limited menu of either/or
leaves you and yours choiceless, humbled, abject and poor.
What a treat to get to read this incredible, rhythmic, scream-it-from-the-mountains poem of yours again! To my ear, it begs to be spoken aloud . . . and loudly! I hope very much for the day when you as a trans person will have nothing to fear from the world, but thank you for showing up so courageously even in this ****ed up moment.
(Also, totally okay to just say fuck on here - at least in this context.)
Thank you for sharing this Keith. Wow--it rings so powerful and true, and sad that the steps we make going forward can get swept away by those fears and those who use them to extinguish the rights, identity and personhood of others. Ron DeSantis is just one example, sadly, who exploit others fear and his own bigotry and insecurity to use Trans folk as tools in his cycnical desire and ambition to rise up the political ranks. We lifted up Trans Day of Visibility in our Easter Service this morning, considering it a perfect day to celebrate the intersection of that day and a time when we should celebrate an expansive, embracing love that has room for all. We'll keep witnessing one step and person at a time as numbers grow and the volume of the demands for justice and equity ring louder. Thank you for your beautiful poetry and presence in this world.
Thanks for this feedback, Larry. Thanks even more for lifting up Trans Day of Viz in your service. I think that may be what bothered me most yesterday about the drama being stirred; it's not as though the day was meant to cancel Easter...the binaried thinking of "one or the other" and of TDV blaspheming Easter was just so painful.
I hear you Keith. Sadly, the voices of bigotry, fear and hatred never seem to rest or miss an opportunity to exploit and distort. Their loudness seems to result in them becoming smaller, more pathetic and more insidious, and corrosive to them from the inside out. One day, those voices, as prevalent as they may seem now, will be gone.
Thanks, Larry - I will hang onto this. My wish really is that the corrosion can somehow be transformed into something positive, but I will definitely settle for "gone!"
Keith this is brilliant. I love how you wove the serenity prayer and the "one day at at time" through this poem. It flowed so well, packing a mighty punch. Loved this line, "the way in which you are cruelly demanding God’s rainbow fade into a binary of girls in pink and boys in blue." POW! Actually there are many punches here. Yes to, "You bigoted, sanctimonious, miserable ****"
Amen to all of that! So many folks keep trying g to turn the rainbow that appeared to Noah after the flood into a weapon. I actually heard a conservative theologian keep referring to it as a “bow”. That is, as in how and arrows. He said God put a weapon in the sky as a warning. Really, bad theology and scholarship does so much damage.
That’s for sure! Sometimes we see what we want to see. There are some Bible translations that say “bow” instead of rainbow, but it is pretty clear the passage is referring to a rainbow.
Wow, I'm surprised, yet not, to hear about this distortion of scripture. Sigh. Thank you for bringing a loving heart, mind and face to religion, Larry.
Thanks so much, Julie! I really felt like this poem wrote itself, it just came flowing out in a righteous rampage one afternoon, with hardly any effort at all. I must have been channeling <3
I read this almost in a rap like rhythm ala lyrics from Hamilton. And I applaud you for your words, your heart, and your courage to simply exist among the bigotry that this world bestows upon you. Bravo my friend.
I second Karri's comment -- I was totally hearing Lin-Manuel Miranda in the feeling and pulse of your poem! I've never seen Hamilton, but I saw him rap about Puerto Rico's debt crisis on John Oliver a few years ago, and that's what your poem called to mind.
Whew boy, this is a powerful poem, Keith. I love the Serenity Prayer theme and pacing, and the top-volume feeling throughout. "Straight jacket" is some good shit. And YES to the ending!
Lisa, so true; "For all their power, I know my fears are paper thin." Agree. agree and agree! And in the middle of fear, it is a whole other experience, isn't it?!? Where it seems my poem went today...
"Crooked roads circling back on themselves" - such a great image and such a relatable experience! It's sorta amazing how tangled I can get even when I know the way out.
What a visceral journey into fear (the not-so-wondrous kind) this is! I like the release at the end, and felt myself breathing slowly as you stretched out the word s l o w l y for us. Nice, Julie!
Very nice, Julie. Your exquisite lyricism and flowing poetry are so enticing and comforting in a world gone mad. This poem circles and weaves and goes in and out, and invites me to do the same. I loved so many lines, but these especially resonated true:
This was so relatable, Julie...and compelling (I felt this in my bones). I love the truth bomb/truth balm at the last..."fear only assumes command when I believe and identify with it/Going outside and feeling nature's grace, perspective becomes everything." I love the way nature is the great equalizer. So grateful for that.
I thought about this a lot the last couple of days and realized I have issues differentiating between and amongst the emotions of fear, dread, and worry and they are all tangled up like some ball of confusion in my mind. After a lot of writing and thinking and rewriting, I decided I would have to explore that issue later and came up with this:
Everything I dread and everything I fear
Is that which I cannot control or predict.
What if the cancer returns?
What if the money runs out?
What if the ties cease to bind?
What if the fog does not lift?
What if the symptoms lead to illness?
What if the illness leads to grief?
My fears are my worries and my worries are my mindset.
I anticipate the worst case scenario with all the confidence
Karri, this is beautiful, and it seems to me that it shines light on the relationships between fear, worry, dread, and uncertainty. I love how after taking the reader into this journey of fearful questioning (fearful and totally understandable), you land in the end on a question with the same structure but a very different emotional tone -“what if I am wrong?” It makes me think that uncertainty can feed our fear, but viewed from a different angle, it can also feed curiosity, wonder, gratitude, or hope.
I love all these "what if" questions. So relatable. And then the final lines, "I anticipate the worst case scenario with all the confidence of a foregone conclusion. But then again what if I am wrong?" Now there is the question! It is like being in a death spiral then being shown the door out of it.
Your rhetorical questions hit so many of the oft-heard fear "notes": existential fears (health, financial insecurity, relational fears, fear of grief. I love this line: "I anticipate the worst case scenario with all the confidence of a foregone conclusion," which, followed by self-doubt, really captures the "ball of confusion" you described. So relatable, too!
This is so very honest and insightful, Karri. I hear your wrestling with the degrees of difference between fear, dread and worry. I struggled with the differences between anxiety and fear in what I finally wrote. I expect these are all facets of the same beast. LIke Keith, I really loved this line, "I anticipate the worst case scenario with all the confidence of a foregone conclusion." and your open ending: But then again, what if I am wrong?" Indeed, what if? Thank you for grapping with this one and sharing these fine lines.
I love this, Karri. It's so bare and self-reflective, and oh boy, do I feel the worst-case-scenario-as-foregone-conclusion (or "worst case confidence," as Chuck put it).
Like you, this prompt had me thinking deeply for a couple days, and it's so interesting to see where fear intersects other emotions and behaviors -- like worry, dread, avoidance, etc. If you end up writing another poem exploring those intersections some more, I hope you'll share it with us!
"I think i fear disappointment. / Or maybe success. / both come with the same baggage." So good and so relatable! And I love how it follows on the image of you as the adolescent BMOC.
"a 50 yard dash without a finish line" - man, I feel the exertion exhaustion dripping off that line. Your poem really captures the inescapable pressure within, as internalized from without. Such a radical act to see, then truly embrace ones self.
What a difference the size & nature of the stage makes! I've felt this in my life, too. Like my friends, I really like the idea of disappointment and success coming with the same baggage.
I like this Chuck. "More like a 50 yard dash without a finish line." That is brilliiant. Thank you for this journey through your heart, soul, mind and spirit.
LIsa, your poem is remarkable and full of power and provactive insights. Thank you for facing the fear directly, and helping me to do the same. That said, here goes:
Fear
Now that you have a name,
you don’t seem quite so intimidating.
The breathless treks and heart races
Drumbeat rhythm hammering for an escape,
Dizzy dancing perched on knife edge.
Naming you tears the curtain away.
Helps me peer into the nooks and crannies,
where you often hide from view,
desperate to understand your origins
and yes, to learn to love you, breath by mindful breath.
I love how you return to the power of naming your fear at the beginning of each stanza, Larry. The repetition is beautiful and thought-provoking. And oh, my the tender closing lines - “Come out, come out, my shadow / there is light beyond these tears.” Beautiful.
I too am finding naming my fear helpful...it's amazing how therapeutic this space seems to be! And I can see you coaxing that shadow out into the light <3
Larry this is such a tender ode to fear. Loving the fear, "Come out, come out, my shadow, there is light beyond these tears." I too have found deep grace in meeting the fears within me. Truly seeing they are not who or what I am, but just a part of human/animal nature. And they are here none the less. So then invite them to the table, they need not hide in the dark.
So many great image, expressed poetically, in your poem, Lisa. Crumpling up paper-thin fears into balls, "the play of living," watching fear lift from you like a kite in the wind. So lovely.
It’s funny that on Easter eve, I should stumble on that poem due to your prompt. I wrote it about me and my hypochondriac tendencies and how God helped me to move beyond that fear but in reflecting, I think there is a theme of Old Testament God/holy, perfect, clean, separate from man and New Testament Jesus-still perfect and a manifested God who could get close to man and his “disease”. His love and sacrifice allowing for us to be in Holy God’s presence if we so choose. The timing of this prompt, the most holy day and celebrated day for Christians. Thank you for what you do and who you are! You are loved and fear has no hold on you!
I feel this in my obsessive compulsive bones Billy! I struggle with worrying about germ/disease and it is worsening again after getting better for several years (after cancer treatment I was like, hey I had cancer, surely I don't need to worry about a toilet seat, but I digress!) Thank you for sharing your work and words.
I will pray for you Karri. It’s definitely a control thing for me. Death is the ultimate lack of control. Disease puts you closer to death but I know I have a savior who frees me from death. I don’t need to control just to live.
I really appreciated the journey of self-inquiry you took us on in this poem. Being afraid of the disease, recognizing yourself as the disease, landing on love.
Gauge of Brave
.
People say I’m brave
because of what I do
alone, as a woman:
live
camp
cut wood
climb mountains
etc.
But that’s just because
those are
their scary things.
.
A better gauge of brave
is, do I do
my scary things?
.
My mental map contains no
sheer-sided, one-lane roads.
Rattlesnakes close trails
for me, forever. I back up
no trailers, lay no tile,
climb no trees. Pass me
the mic or the ball,
and I will
keep passing.
.
I think I’ll
scare myself
today, just a little.
I might walk into a
room of people in which
I am the only stranger.
I might get into my son’s car.
I might trim my dog’s nails,
one at a time. I will start
with the dew claw
longest neglected.
Your final stanza made me gasp out loud! I love this so much. And I'm so relieved that I can finally stop telling myself you're braver than me! 😜 Also, since I know you're trying to write poems that feel more spare . . . there isn't a single wasted word here. Spare and powerful.
Oooooh, love this! Yes...self is always (and only) the sole meaningful gauge when it comes to courage and most everything else. I love how you cut right to the quick on this one.
Eek! Not to the quick! I was about to trim Bjorn's dew claws, but I might need to do some deep breathing first... ;)
Oh dear, "cut to the chase" was what I meant...please don't let my poor choice of words detract from your self-confidence in attending to Bjorn's dew claws!
I had to laugh at that Keith!!! And Rebekah if you want a real challenge come and trim my chihuahua's nails. There is not a soul brave enough to take that on in my house.
Oh, that sounds TERRIFYING! I'll start with 75-lb. Bjorn first, and maybe work my way down the weight classes from there... ;)
HAHAHA....wise choice!
Rebekah this is wonderful. Fear really does come down to the individual. "People say I’m brave
because of what I do...But that’s just because those are their scary things." YES. I am also with you on scaring myself just a little. Trying something new opens the door to the other side of fear, excitement and enthusiasm.
What a marvelous concept....that we can't judge others bravery by our fears. That I am going to have to tuck away in my brain and think on later!
Rebekah, this is powerful and full of wisdom. What a perceptive insight--our notion of bravery is dependent on whether an act is truly something we are afraid. As you illustrate, fears are os unique to us--sometimes not knowing where they come from. I love how you turn and face some of those fears, which also acts as a call to the reader to do the same.
I feel some fear posting this 😅 but seems like the right thing considering the prompt. Thanks for this encouragement to sit with it tonight. I also love your imagery of the kite!
A tight chest
A dense, cold stone
In the center
Where a warm beating heart should be.
A stone holds fast like a
Bastion
Fortress
Keeping out monsters.
But stones can also crush
Held down by their weight,
I stay frozen.
And the monsters catch me anyway.
But a beating heart,
Can be its own kind of bastion
Holding my monsters gently
In warm, open hands.
Lindsey, I love the metaphor of fear as a stone - something hard intended to protect us that instead tends to pin us down or even crush us. And “but a beating heart / can be its own kind of bastion.” Just beautiful.
This captures so well the paradox of fear being protective and destructive at the same time, and I love how you land on the implied power of love as being ultimate. Thanks for sharing, and hurrah for saying no to your fear and posting this!!
Thank you so much 🙏🏽
I love this Lindsey, very touching. I am reading this just after posting my poem here, so I am looking through the lens of that. What I see is perspective. Is the stone hard, cold and frozen? Or is it the bastion of the beating heart as warm open hands holding the monsters gently?
I'm so glad you shared this, Lindsey! It's a powerful poem and concept both -- the idea of trying to protect yourself with that cold stone, but also getting crushed/frozen by it, and exploring whether a warm, beating heart is a better bastion (at least how I'm receiving it). There's a lot to sit with here.
Yes, that’s it. And thank you Rebekah 💗
I love the notion of the monsters catching you anyway...and that you received them and are dealing with them as best you can. What a lovely poem - thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Karri. 💗💗
Thank you for posting this nice splendid poem, Lindsey. As others have said, the stone is a powerful metaphor, especially how you place it where the heart should be. And you note the shadows and light natures of a strone. I love the arc of your poem, and how your opening to a beating heart, yours and others, are places where the fears can be held with embracing love. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for these words 🙏🏽
In honor of today being Trans Day of Visibility, a day which, in part, is meant to stand up to fear, I wanted to share a poem I wrote last summer after FL Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the "bathrooms bill." This law, which is based in fear, in turn struck fear (and rage) into my heart, and so I wrote this poem to channel some of the intense feelings. My fervent hope is that some day, fear-based laws that marginalize and demean will not be passed, and also that a day meant to elevate folks who are made invisible as a result of marginalization won't be maligned as this day has been this year..
Dear Governor DeSantis,
I pray that God grant us
the serenity to accept you and your hate,
even as you demoralize, demean and denigrate
every queer citizen of your sunshine state.
I pray that one day,
the god of your misunderstanding
in mercy might grace you with a soft landing,
notwithstanding
the way in which you are cruelly demanding
God’s rainbow fade into a binary
of girls in pink and boys in blue
nor
the way in which you’re arbitrarily commanding
US to forsake what is true,
what will always be true,
even if we hide in plain view,
having stuffed ourselves into straight
jackets tailored by you.
I pray the God of truth and love
grant us the courage to rise above,
to somehow transform fear and grief
into indefatigable collective belief
that your reign of terror and malignant bombast
cannot, must not, will not last
and that together,
we will make it past
the injustice of your scourge,
your reckless, feckless, inhumane purge
[one day at a time and not a moment too soon].
I pray the God of wisdom help you to know,
and I mean really know,
that there but for the grace of said God go
you, go yours into hell’s fires below,
where the limited menu of either/or
leaves you and yours choiceless, humbled, abject and poor.
That you might come to further know
that to erase oneself,
to leave not even a trace of self,
Is to disgrace, to debase and abort oneself.
Yes, you heard me right. To abort oneself.
Until that day comes, governor
I wish you luck.
You
bigoted,
sanctimonious,
miserable
****
What a treat to get to read this incredible, rhythmic, scream-it-from-the-mountains poem of yours again! To my ear, it begs to be spoken aloud . . . and loudly! I hope very much for the day when you as a trans person will have nothing to fear from the world, but thank you for showing up so courageously even in this ****ed up moment.
(Also, totally okay to just say fuck on here - at least in this context.)
Thanks, friend. For the feedback and the permission to eff when called for :))
Thank you for sharing this Keith. Wow--it rings so powerful and true, and sad that the steps we make going forward can get swept away by those fears and those who use them to extinguish the rights, identity and personhood of others. Ron DeSantis is just one example, sadly, who exploit others fear and his own bigotry and insecurity to use Trans folk as tools in his cycnical desire and ambition to rise up the political ranks. We lifted up Trans Day of Visibility in our Easter Service this morning, considering it a perfect day to celebrate the intersection of that day and a time when we should celebrate an expansive, embracing love that has room for all. We'll keep witnessing one step and person at a time as numbers grow and the volume of the demands for justice and equity ring louder. Thank you for your beautiful poetry and presence in this world.
Thanks for this feedback, Larry. Thanks even more for lifting up Trans Day of Viz in your service. I think that may be what bothered me most yesterday about the drama being stirred; it's not as though the day was meant to cancel Easter...the binaried thinking of "one or the other" and of TDV blaspheming Easter was just so painful.
I hear you Keith. Sadly, the voices of bigotry, fear and hatred never seem to rest or miss an opportunity to exploit and distort. Their loudness seems to result in them becoming smaller, more pathetic and more insidious, and corrosive to them from the inside out. One day, those voices, as prevalent as they may seem now, will be gone.
Agree!
Thanks, Larry - I will hang onto this. My wish really is that the corrosion can somehow be transformed into something positive, but I will definitely settle for "gone!"
Keith, perhaps a better word is transformed! That's what Easter is all about!
......Reckless feckless ......
This is excellent.
Cant resist offering some suggestions for last word = "****"
Twit
Turd
Dork
Butt
Putz
Bozo
Thanks, Chuck. So many apropos 4-letter words, how does one choose? This is a good list :))
Keith this is brilliant. I love how you wove the serenity prayer and the "one day at at time" through this poem. It flowed so well, packing a mighty punch. Loved this line, "the way in which you are cruelly demanding God’s rainbow fade into a binary of girls in pink and boys in blue." POW! Actually there are many punches here. Yes to, "You bigoted, sanctimonious, miserable ****"
Amen to all of that! So many folks keep trying g to turn the rainbow that appeared to Noah after the flood into a weapon. I actually heard a conservative theologian keep referring to it as a “bow”. That is, as in how and arrows. He said God put a weapon in the sky as a warning. Really, bad theology and scholarship does so much damage.
Oh my! It takes a certain kind of mind to see a rainbow and view it as a weapon!
That’s for sure! Sometimes we see what we want to see. There are some Bible translations that say “bow” instead of rainbow, but it is pretty clear the passage is referring to a rainbow.
Wow, I'm surprised, yet not, to hear about this distortion of scripture. Sigh. Thank you for bringing a loving heart, mind and face to religion, Larry.
Thanks so much, Julie! I really felt like this poem wrote itself, it just came flowing out in a righteous rampage one afternoon, with hardly any effort at all. I must have been channeling <3
I bet you were! I know those moments, they are powerful.
I read this almost in a rap like rhythm ala lyrics from Hamilton. And I applaud you for your words, your heart, and your courage to simply exist among the bigotry that this world bestows upon you. Bravo my friend.
Thanks so much, Karri. The Hamiltonian rap idea makes me smile. :))
I second Karri's comment -- I was totally hearing Lin-Manuel Miranda in the feeling and pulse of your poem! I've never seen Hamilton, but I saw him rap about Puerto Rico's debt crisis on John Oliver a few years ago, and that's what your poem called to mind.
I'll have to google some L-MM for inspiration...thanks!
Whew boy, this is a powerful poem, Keith. I love the Serenity Prayer theme and pacing, and the top-volume feeling throughout. "Straight jacket" is some good shit. And YES to the ending!
Thanks, Rebekah - really appreciate this feedback! <3
Yes, this begs to be read aloud! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks, Lindsey! Perhaps it will be one day, if the opportunity presents and I can get up the guts.
Lisa, so true; "For all their power, I know my fears are paper thin." Agree. agree and agree! And in the middle of fear, it is a whole other experience, isn't it?!? Where it seems my poem went today...
.
Fear has its own itinerary,
an excursion into uncertainty.
Is it a joyride of wondrous discovery…
or a frightening suspension of confusion?
.
The latter the noose only tightens,
strangling hope into submission.
I scream yet there is no sound.
I cry but there are no tears.
Like a wet wool sweater in a hot dryer,
I’m shrinking away…
.
Doubt seems to be the trajectory.
Crooked roads circling back upon themselves.
Round and round the same thoughts run.
An ongoing holding pattern,
with no place to land.
I’ve gone astray, off course,
without any chance of being found.
.
Thankfully, nothing stays the same.
All things do come to pass.
Breathing s l o w l y . . .
I recall fear only assumes command,
when I believe and identify with it.
Going outside and feeling nature’s grace,
perspective becomes everything.
"Crooked roads circling back on themselves" - such a great image and such a relatable experience! It's sorta amazing how tangled I can get even when I know the way out.
What a visceral journey into fear (the not-so-wondrous kind) this is! I like the release at the end, and felt myself breathing slowly as you stretched out the word s l o w l y for us. Nice, Julie!
I loved this. So much. I want to bookmark it to re-read daily. Thank you so much for your words.
Very nice, Julie. Your exquisite lyricism and flowing poetry are so enticing and comforting in a world gone mad. This poem circles and weaves and goes in and out, and invites me to do the same. I loved so many lines, but these especially resonated true:
"Crooked roads circling back upon themselves.
Round and round the same thoughts run.
An ongoing holding pattern,
with no place to land."
This was so relatable, Julie...and compelling (I felt this in my bones). I love the truth bomb/truth balm at the last..."fear only assumes command when I believe and identify with it/Going outside and feeling nature's grace, perspective becomes everything." I love the way nature is the great equalizer. So grateful for that.
Me too, nature is a great equalizer. I was in Muir woods yesterday. There are no words....
Right you are Julie! What a splendid place!
I thought about this a lot the last couple of days and realized I have issues differentiating between and amongst the emotions of fear, dread, and worry and they are all tangled up like some ball of confusion in my mind. After a lot of writing and thinking and rewriting, I decided I would have to explore that issue later and came up with this:
Everything I dread and everything I fear
Is that which I cannot control or predict.
What if the cancer returns?
What if the money runs out?
What if the ties cease to bind?
What if the fog does not lift?
What if the symptoms lead to illness?
What if the illness leads to grief?
My fears are my worries and my worries are my mindset.
I anticipate the worst case scenario with all the confidence
Of a foregone conclusion.
But then again
What if I am wrong?
Karri, this is beautiful, and it seems to me that it shines light on the relationships between fear, worry, dread, and uncertainty. I love how after taking the reader into this journey of fearful questioning (fearful and totally understandable), you land in the end on a question with the same structure but a very different emotional tone -“what if I am wrong?” It makes me think that uncertainty can feed our fear, but viewed from a different angle, it can also feed curiosity, wonder, gratitude, or hope.
I love all these "what if" questions. So relatable. And then the final lines, "I anticipate the worst case scenario with all the confidence of a foregone conclusion. But then again what if I am wrong?" Now there is the question! It is like being in a death spiral then being shown the door out of it.
Your rhetorical questions hit so many of the oft-heard fear "notes": existential fears (health, financial insecurity, relational fears, fear of grief. I love this line: "I anticipate the worst case scenario with all the confidence of a foregone conclusion," which, followed by self-doubt, really captures the "ball of confusion" you described. So relatable, too!
This is so very honest and insightful, Karri. I hear your wrestling with the degrees of difference between fear, dread and worry. I struggled with the differences between anxiety and fear in what I finally wrote. I expect these are all facets of the same beast. LIke Keith, I really loved this line, "I anticipate the worst case scenario with all the confidence of a foregone conclusion." and your open ending: But then again, what if I am wrong?" Indeed, what if? Thank you for grapping with this one and sharing these fine lines.
Yeah, worst case confidence.
spot on.
Then there is at least one butthead that always seems to advise that you should "just try to smile more". I hate that guy.
I love this, Karri. It's so bare and self-reflective, and oh boy, do I feel the worst-case-scenario-as-foregone-conclusion (or "worst case confidence," as Chuck put it).
Like you, this prompt had me thinking deeply for a couple days, and it's so interesting to see where fear intersects other emotions and behaviors -- like worry, dread, avoidance, etc. If you end up writing another poem exploring those intersections some more, I hope you'll share it with us!
maybe 9th grade, maybe earlier,
BMOC came easy.
with a football,
a trombone,
maybe a big bag of reefer.
a piece o' cake
when the "c" is lower case & lilliputian,
& fits in the palm of your hand.
Just play the part.
Act kool.
Upgrade the stage to a capital "C"
Not so much like cake.
More like a 50 yard dash
without a finish line.
I think i fear dissapointment.
Or maybe success.
both come with the same baggage.
And water over my head. I fear that too.
"I think i fear disappointment. / Or maybe success. / both come with the same baggage." So good and so relatable! And I love how it follows on the image of you as the adolescent BMOC.
Thank you. Too many words
I guess I fear that too.
"More like a 50 yard dash without a finish line." Yep, that is exactly what it feel like!
"a 50 yard dash without a finish line" - man, I feel the exertion exhaustion dripping off that line. Your poem really captures the inescapable pressure within, as internalized from without. Such a radical act to see, then truly embrace ones self.
Chuck I feel like we get to know you more and more through your work! And the line "lower case & liliputian" - music!
What a difference the size & nature of the stage makes! I've felt this in my life, too. Like my friends, I really like the idea of disappointment and success coming with the same baggage.
YES THANK YOU that stage size was a difficult transition.
I wound up on a submarine.
Turned out ok.
Aha -- water over your head, got it!
I like this Chuck. "More like a 50 yard dash without a finish line." That is brilliiant. Thank you for this journey through your heart, soul, mind and spirit.
LIsa, your poem is remarkable and full of power and provactive insights. Thank you for facing the fear directly, and helping me to do the same. That said, here goes:
Fear
Now that you have a name,
you don’t seem quite so intimidating.
The breathless treks and heart races
Drumbeat rhythm hammering for an escape,
Dizzy dancing perched on knife edge.
Naming you tears the curtain away.
Helps me peer into the nooks and crannies,
where you often hide from view,
desperate to understand your origins
and yes, to learn to love you, breath by mindful breath.
Discovering you have a name,
brought me to others ready to stake their truth,
to repair the damage done,
to find the bridges once burned,
to heal at all the broken places.
In the quiet of dark night,
I can whisper to you, softly, bravely,
wondering what made you so afraid
all those years ago.
Come out, come out, my shadow,
there is light beyond these tears.
I love how you return to the power of naming your fear at the beginning of each stanza, Larry. The repetition is beautiful and thought-provoking. And oh, my the tender closing lines - “Come out, come out, my shadow / there is light beyond these tears.” Beautiful.
Gosh, Lisa, I had not even realized that! It is so wonderful and enlightening to see something created through the eyes of other! Thank ypu!
I too am finding naming my fear helpful...it's amazing how therapeutic this space seems to be! And I can see you coaxing that shadow out into the light <3
Larry this is such a tender ode to fear. Loving the fear, "Come out, come out, my shadow, there is light beyond these tears." I too have found deep grace in meeting the fears within me. Truly seeing they are not who or what I am, but just a part of human/animal nature. And they are here none the less. So then invite them to the table, they need not hide in the dark.
Beautifully said, Julie!
So many great image, expressed poetically, in your poem, Lisa. Crumpling up paper-thin fears into balls, "the play of living," watching fear lift from you like a kite in the wind. So lovely.
Thank you, Keith! 🧡
You’re an outstanding poet/writer.
Have one entitled Fear, so I guess that would fit the prompt fairly well?!
https://open.substack.com/pub/billy2r6q7/p/fear?r=1nyjrs&utm_medium=ios
Thank you, Billy! Your poem is beautiful. The repetition of the first line at the end is really effective - a device I don’t think I’ve ever tried!
It’s funny that on Easter eve, I should stumble on that poem due to your prompt. I wrote it about me and my hypochondriac tendencies and how God helped me to move beyond that fear but in reflecting, I think there is a theme of Old Testament God/holy, perfect, clean, separate from man and New Testament Jesus-still perfect and a manifested God who could get close to man and his “disease”. His love and sacrifice allowing for us to be in Holy God’s presence if we so choose. The timing of this prompt, the most holy day and celebrated day for Christians. Thank you for what you do and who you are! You are loved and fear has no hold on you!
I feel this in my obsessive compulsive bones Billy! I struggle with worrying about germ/disease and it is worsening again after getting better for several years (after cancer treatment I was like, hey I had cancer, surely I don't need to worry about a toilet seat, but I digress!) Thank you for sharing your work and words.
I will pray for you Karri. It’s definitely a control thing for me. Death is the ultimate lack of control. Disease puts you closer to death but I know I have a savior who frees me from death. I don’t need to control just to live.
I really appreciated the journey of self-inquiry you took us on in this poem. Being afraid of the disease, recognizing yourself as the disease, landing on love.
What a sweet poem, Billy, and a wonderful coming to awareness. Blessings to you!
Thank you Larry!
"bound to me still,
but only by a string,
held in my willing hand"
I am thinking your fears won't like you being the driver very much.. They aren't used to that.
Thanks
My thumb did a premature post, i want to add a "screw them" on the end.
Haha an excellent addendum!
Beautiful. Just beautiful!
Something worthy of reading every day
This one took a while. I'm tempted to call it, "Sorry I'm Late, My Fear Didn't Want to Come" 😅
I tried to write a poem
about my fear,
but I couldn't find it.
It was hiding,
tucked away,
curled around
my ribcage,
clinging desperately,
unready to be
revealed or released.
It made it a little hard to breathe.