When I Was 20

When I was 20, I came to.  I had many head wounds.
A tribe of villagers gave me Band-Aids and aerosol antiseptic.  “Addiction.”
Their god bless them.

Oh, The Great Hollowness.  It was so vast.  Eroded self like the Arizona Canyon.
I was looking for Her, but didn’t know.
Food, sex, drugs, dreams...is She in there?
I was two people in one spirit; I was the lost and the seeker, the watcher and the doer.
But, of course, I didn’t know.
“She exists?  Who is this She?  I am right here.”  But I wasn’t.

When I was 20, I used to watch movies like “Requiem for a Dream” and let music pulsate through the orifices of my being.
When there is no Core, there is a vacuum inside the gut.
The music gets it’s claws in you.
Vibrations expand inside the Great Hollow and make the body it’s puppet.
The witch doctors call it mania, depression, disassociation.
They’ve believed it for years, the witch doctors.  Since I was Child.  Since I was She.  Since She was ten.

“Was it like ‘being asleep in a dream?’”  The villagers don’t understand the music.
No, it was like being the dream itself.
Lonely and scary and thrilling and fast and vibrant and high...
...and dangerous when everyone else is awake.
“But no more head wounds,” the villagers are so satisfied.  Their god bless them.
So many Band-Aids.
They're free.

I Saw Her Once

When I was sober, I met Her once.

I would dissolve into the music.  It would infuse my psyche.
Sometimes I would lose myself because She was a still, small inkling in a big, vast world.
But when She was strong, and we held hands, the dancing was beautiful.
We moved together.  Sanity and art together.  The colors were beautiful.
When She was strong, I didn’t know it was Her.
Magnificent and adrift.  She really was.
I was.  We Are when we're united.
Wonderful.  Touch and go.
I was 25. 26. 27. 28 years old.
Until I lost her. 

PTSD

When I was 29, we played hide-and-seek, She and I, in love.
We were in the middle of the game, She’s so clever.
We were in the middle of the game, She was hiding.
We were in the middle of the game, and the sores appeared.
What is this?
Dormant injuries now fresh.
In my joints.  In body.  In my sleep.  In my brain.
Throbbing.
What happened?
I don’t know.

I needed to find her.  She was still hiding.
Now hiding from the soreness.
But I didn’t know that part.

“What will bring Me back to Myself?” 
So many villagers. So many witch doctors.
So many books. So many plants.
So much unknown. Their gods bless them.

Deadly Saintliness

Maybe purity will take the sores away.  Will perfection bring Her back?
Try harder.  Hurry Up.
Meditate. Become Nothing.
There can be no sound without silence.
There can be no noise without sound.
There can be no pain without noise.
Zen.  Tao.  Hmm.

The sores come and go like waves in the ocean.  They ooze.
Mostly because She’s gone. But I didn’t know that part. 
She doesn't know, either.

“Maybe the gods want more from me."
"Maybe, if I give up everything to the gods, She will find me.”
I thought this, but didn’t know I thought this.
Naked.  Clean.  Empty.  Nothing.  No blocks.
I’ll be nothing for the glory of their gods. Just like before.
Just like before, when I remember being Her.
So long ago.  When I was ten.

So I said “no more music.”
And my life lost a little color.
And that was sad, but it was safe.
And of course, when the music went,
The dancing went.
Because to what is there to dance
If not the dreams of melodic energy?
Harmonious collision of cords crisp with poetry.  

So I said, “no more dancing.”
And I cried and cried and cried.
And my life lost a little aliveness.
And that was sad, but it was safe.

I was doing it for Her.  Where was She? 

And when the dancing died, the bravery shrunk.
Because nothing requires more courage than dancing.
Touring the foreign terrain of unfelt beats.
Skin stretched to the sky...
Stepping, sinking, splitting, ssaaaaaa...
Pirouettes colliding into cords crisp with poetry.
“Oh, what dreamy melodic energy.” 

So I resigned to no more newness.
And my life lost a little inspiration...
...and beauty.
And It was sad, but It was safe.

Boxed in world for you, my Dear...Hello?
Hello-Ooo?
Where are you? 

Reflection in the Desert.

Hindsight 20/20.
Today is June 24th, 2018.

When the bravery shrunk, I lost my Self; She hid Her All from me.
She was small, and I was blind without the art to help me see. 
She escaped my grip so wisely; She was total honesty.
She was the life around my bones; She was the Babe that kept me free.

I didn’t know the music was Her lifeline to my conscience.
I didn’t know She was allergic to my brainy gridded nonsense.
Although I made the grids to shrink the wounds inside my brain,
I didn’t know they fed them.  And grew them.
Poor Girl.

She’d been fading for a while, long before the music was removed,
Her missingness made worse the famine; tragedy ensued.
She was my stability - She’s what kept me feeling full.
She used to warm me from within my womb.
I warmed her back in wool.
I used to wrap her in the blanket of my fleshy diaphragm.
“Rachel - the name - means sheep,” they say.
I am the lion, She’s the lamb.

“If She’d been hiding and been dying for the past two thousand days, how come it took so long to notice, and to find her?”  They are such simple villagers.

I didn’t know that she’d been dying; I was busy drawing lines
Around the pain inside my brain, planted with IED land mines. 
Karen calls it post traumatic stress and pain delayed.
The Christians say it must have been because I disobeyed.
There was no time to see it or to face or be free.
I was 20.  I came to in a million pieces;
Put your life back together, Rachel.
One piece at a time.

I was busy getting Band-Aids from the villagers and witches.
I was busy with addiction and then fixing it with stitches.
I was busy with photography and boys and making wishes.
I was busy getting better from the illusions of the past.
I was busy getting better from my not-Self.

But then...
The sores happened.
Sanctification gone wrong.
Be small. Boxed. In.
Until I came to.  Just like before.
Empty.  Oh, the Great Hollowness.

My Darling Lamb, I now see how you’d been withering away.
Soul of prism kept in prison, black and white and shades of gray.
Ritualistic repetition, done to keep danger at bay.
Refuge from the noise carried a price too high to pay.

But I didn’t know.  I’d wish I’d known.
Oh, my Darling Lamb, I’m so sorry.

She gave me all the warnings; I felt the cold of spaciousness inside.
The more I chased away the pain, the more her vitality died.
And though she didn’t fully pass away, her Child Spirit cried and shied.
Until, of course, it didn’t.
“Too numb to know,” I lied.

And when She went into hiding, my Life Blood disappeared.
I couldn’t hear Her anywhere because Great Deafness filled my ears.
With no inner-notes to guide me, and a world mute of sound,
I lost Her when I thought it best to burry song into the ground.

When I couldn’t hear Her in my gut, arose my Lioness, the Mother.
Violent, roaring, searching for the Young that silence sought to smother. 
There were many years of hunting for the Baby birthed Within.
There were many years of scouring the pasts of history and kin.
There were many years of stepping stairs with humans void of gin.
There were even times Miss Lioness tore away her very skin,
Hoping Lamb - her babe - be underneath...

...but Nothing.

It was a land of nothingness, no aliveness, void of Us.
It was a land that I’d lived so many years; timeless dawn to dusk.
It was a land of dry and achy bones, eroding slowly into dust. 
It was the very barren land of being empty, sad, and safe.

Heal Thyself

Perseverance. 
I am a fuckin’ courageous Mother Lion.

My Lion made a candle from this dry and crusty land.
She asked the gods for fire sprung amongst the arid dessert sand.
“Put me in your brain,” replied the flame she held in hand.
“Set your brain on fire.”
And so she did.

And the IEDs inside her skull erupted with a vengeance!
The candle said the end would be eventual transcendence.
So she leaned into the mirror with a spirit of dependence,
In the name of finding the lion Cub she’d lost so long ago.

The fire and her brain - they used her memories as fuel
For the holocaust of blazing thoughts that made prison so cruel.
They were tangled lovers filled with hate and trust and frienemies in school.
The smoke made shapes like elephants...
And nakedness...
And cribs...
And sin...
And me. 

“You found her?” The villagers don’t understand.
No.  I surrendered.  She will find me. 

So there I am, the Lioness.  No longer searching for my young.
Instead, I’ve set myself on fire.  EMDR has just begun. 
My body finally owns the past,
Black clouds start filling up my lungs,
Until I breathe the hurt concealed once by rituals undone.

And when the burning turns to embers just as hurricane to rain,
Once I’ve faced the crevices of fear and pain and shame inside my brain,
I find the courage that was sacrificed for boxes made of lines
Containing things now burned away by mind and Lion Soul combined.
And when the smoke has left the scene of mind,
And all that’s left is mirrors,
I see surviving Lamb waiting for me;
I love Her. 

Oh, relief.
“Oh,” we wail together.

Finally. 

My Love Song

Since I’m so many years older, I embed You in my chest.
Hunching closer with my shoulders, just so You can get some rest. 
I wrap You tightly in the wool You once knew from my womb.
I hear Your screams of panic, stuck inside this lonely room.
Exposure to the cold and to the damp and to the moon,
I rescue You,
I sway You to sleep,
I clutch You so tight.

Relax.  You can relax now.
Rest.  You can rest now.
Sleep.  You can sleep now.

You’ve known such isolation, I’m so sorry for your tears.
I can’t believe you’ve wrestled in the crib for all these years!  
I keep you deep inside my body where it’s safe now; it’s protected. 
My flesh was made for you, my Dear, with all of us collected.
And I know we’ve been divided, felt forever disconnected,
Once inspected and corrected and infected and neglected.
But no more.
Oh, never again.

I am bigger than the god that told them what to do.
I am bigger than the god of blackened air; the lens they saw you through.
I am bigger than the helplessness of Pavlov’s wooden spoon word cue.
I am bigger than the egos of the loud and hungry few.
I am bigger than the poison of concepts since proven untrue.
I am your Mother, Child Lioness...
I am Me and I am You.

I am bigger than the choicelessness of food or sex or drugs.
There were reasons touch resembled giving serial killers hugs.
And I’m bigger than their feelings and their glances and their words.
I am your Great Supplier, your shield.
I am so much bigger now.

Nothing can get you.

I collapse my skin around yours.
Be enveloped.
You’re inside me.
I’ll tell you over and over.  I promise.
"Nothing can get you.  You are safe.”
We Are. 

My skin is your great protector - it is lion-like and strong.
You are warmed forever by my tissue, soothed with heartbeat’s vibrant song.
You are welcome to my lungs, roaring all their days for you...
For you, my precious Daughter.
My Lion Cub, my Lamb, my Self. 

I love you so much. 

There is so much color now.
All because of you.

And I can stretch now.
All because of you.

And I am brave now.
All because of you.

You are so precious and majestic.
I make poetry about having found you.

But for now, just be.
Rest.