Barefoot

Barefoot

Barefoot

In my mom’s friend’s backyard

Tall weeds

Unfinished construction

Dirty rusted nail in wood

Now in my foot

Remembering

Tetanus shot

Blood

Cockroach infested kitchen

Unclean

Poverty

We bond with each other

Over bloody feet

Circumstances into which we’re born

Methods we used to cope

Until that turned to addictions

Without the benefit of recovery

Taking new lives down the same paths

Of unclean

Impoverished realities

Recreating circumstances

As if there were nothing else available

When we know the truth

There are other times

When we have walked

Clean grass under feet

Smell of crisp wet summer

Happy

Fearless

Without shame

Barefoot.

 @jennieolsonsix 2012

What Seeds You Water

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity and celebration; weddings, graduation parties, fun and not-so-fun endings.  But one of the slower moments came from watching Wayne Dyer on Super Soul Sunday, in case you don’t know, Oprah’s alternative to Sunday morning sermons and televangelists.   A snapshot would be this:  you can’t afford to think anything but what you want in your life, you have to replace your thoughts.   This isn’t wishful thinking.  This is replacing your thought patterns.  For yogi’s it’s mantra work.  And it’s something that I’m actively practicing and working on in my life.  But sometimes you have to dig down and figure out the root of where the bad thought or seed is coming from.   And that work is messy but necessary. 

Today, I had conversation with a friend about how horrible everything was for them and how they had no choice in what they were doing and why.  After I hung up and started to drive home the thought came up “it depends on what seeds you water.”  Even when things are not so rosy, it’s one thing to feel bad and feel discouraged, it’s another to let that turn into the frame of the picture of your life and that this bad thing will be all that I experience.   If I actively affirm all of the bad things that go on in my life, I’m going to feel like crap.  But turning that into an active affirmation of positivity is slow process sometimes.    And I have to believe in what I’m saying.  So digging down into the roots of the weeds of my garden and looking at them, replacing them with some new seeds and watering, these things take time.  And patience. 

Use Everything by Rick Belden

I’ve been running from parts of myself for years

even as I believed I was embracing them

I’m still running

but I’m getting tired

I can’t run as fast and as far as I used to

and even when I do

I can’t seem to find the places where I used to go.

I guess it must be time for something else.

sometimes the only way to rise is to sink

sometimes the only way to move is to be still.

can I sit naked and wait

can I stand my ground in the rain while the lightning

strikes all around me

can I change my way of thinking

without thinking

can I remember to be kind to myself.

bad luck is the language of the unconscious

the body is the gateway to the knowledge of the soul

every experience has healing potential

every person I meet is my mirror.

life’s true work

is the work of the soul

the challenge is to love myself

to be with myself

in my body

always

in every moment

no matter what’s going on.

it’s all soul work

use everything.

#POETRY Last Day 30/30

So this was just as challenging as it was last year.  So I leave you with the last two.  Enjoy.

If I Can

If I can steal away
for a few precious moments
hold fast and take breath
into this full-throttle paced life
step back from the storm
watch it pass
there might be some space left
to create something new
out of the rubble
into something greater than I ever dreamed.



The Wooden Door

Two hearts stand guard atop
Weather worn wood
Outlived the lifetimes that carved it
Patient.
Hinges rusted paint faded
Once someone's dream house
returning to the woods now
Moss topped roof growing sprouts of birch trees
Weight weary
Abandoned or forgotten
The lives that once lived there
Gone.
Still the door
Stands watch.
Splintering
Waiting for someone new to enter
That never does. 
Wrecking balls and junkyards
unless the woods reclaims it
as one of it's own. 

#POETRY 21

Twenty-One

I just got started:

Community college class-load

Part-time employed

Starving student vegetable rice dinners

Cheap tennis-shoes

Growing out dyed hair

Retro-fied hippy wardrobe

Minimum payment on maxed out credit cards

Running slippery rain hills

Boyfriend at the 4-year university

Push start Volkswagon Super-beetle.

I went on to waste my time in various ways,

70's disco themed parties,

Hippy to office appropriate to yoga culture

Moving states,

Changing boyfriends and bedroom furniture

and jobs and careers,

Having choices.

You no longer have choices:

Ended in dirty lands

Filthy wounds

Too soon is a fucking understatement and a crime to say.

As I saw your name and age

Amongst the list

Of 33, 31, and places like Idaho

Hunting, Simi Valley

Families never getting their prayers answered

Hopes smashed

Dreams of college education

Gone.

What happens to that money that should have gone

To community college class-loads

Vegetable rice dinners

And cheap tennis-shoes to run in

Slippery rain hills?

Your names now on a list

That is far too long

And too often forgotten

When we can’t be pulled away long enough

From being entertained

To recognize the sacrifice

The loss of dreams

The elimination of choice

So we can still think we have one. 

#POETRY "To the Maidens"

To the Maidens;
You less than skinny,
stockings runned, pock-marked, less than perfect beauties
You who can not compete with airbrushed lies
But live full out in your speckled skin wonder
Worsened by the unknown chemicals in food
Supposed to feed but poisoning us.
Those earned feathery eyes
Sparkling behind oceans of tears,
Shed in moments of pain or joy
They do not compare
To the soft weather of your hands
Worked to keep mouths full
Of sunshine and hope
Tired, oh yes,
 but in those moments of wondering,
 Whether to ball into rage or comfort, you make choices
To laugh,
To breath,
in spite of polluted air and better beauty products
made only to consume what has already been consumed
hips made to sway
lips made to smile
cracked open you are and you run anyway
on feet bounding through blistered dreams
cause this, girls, is what it is to dance
and this, is what it means to live
in a world that doesn’t believe you’re worth saving
Hair, wild, burning through forests of
Doctors making surgical options
To make a better you,
And politicians making god-like decisions
That they were never hired to do,
And believers so lost in their own pollution
They forgot the holy words left by their savior’s blood.
But these are stitched into your fingernails
Hollowed into your marrow
Gray mattered gospel it can’t be broken
They try to erase you and yet the angels sing praises in your name,
The vibration of their voices shake them all awake
Crumbling institutions that can not save,
Because we knew that already.
Holding onto pieces doesn’t put them back together
It just makes us stronger.
These tree-trunk legs were made to work
And dance and hold ourselves up when no one else did.
This, you fire-dancer, keeper of the down-trodden, lover of the beast, speaker of the truth, shoulder-crier, breathless rebounder, giver of all you have got and then some more,
you are what makes this world bearable. 

#POETRY catchup 22, 23, 24

Suntanning

Let us just call it
what it really truly is
hot red angry skin. 

Lollipops

Childhood sweet delights
Sticky mess when stuck in hair
good until the stick.

Treehouse

My husband wants one
A chance to live in the wild
But I am the wild. 

#POETRY or lack thereof

Can't live without you

Tasty delicious
once black now creamy goodness
my morning coffee.


An Love Letter to Chocolate

So many ways you have come to me:
hot chocolate with marshmallows
milky goodness or dark mystery
bitter bars used for cooking
melted goodness for dipping
sometimes dipped and then hardened over bananas or pretzels

heated by flamed marshmallows between layers of graham crackers
poured over ice cream
sometimes in your appearance you are hot fudge
liquid sipping kinds

round confections
surrounding liquid caramel
infused with things like
nuts, vanilla, coconut, raspberry, mint, cocoa nibs, chilis, lavender sea-salt goodness,
oh chocolate, you had me at hello.