poetry

Happy Ending

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I don’t want to eat

I don’t want to Need

I don’t want to want

To want to need to Feed

I hate that fairy tales told me

That Life should only be

This ever-after love-fest

Filled with just One Thing

They sure as hell left out a lot

There at The (gift-wrapped) End

Forgot to say Life’s challenges —

The evil witches, the Malices

The Queen of Hearts and Alices

Are merged far past The End

So the darkness and the struggles

Don’t just cease when evil dies

Death is just a pit-stop

Another Thing will rise

And They didn’t ever tell us

That the Princess is a zealot

And Charming oh-so-jealous

‘Cuz that would ruin that Happy End

I hate that fairy tales told me

That darkness is Out There

That Perfection is a pretty princess —

Because Real Life requires Wear!

Dirty, bloody, messy, muddy

Darkness lives Inside

But The Hero also lives within

Just open that Third Eye

Do the work, eradicate

The inner, self-effacing Hate

Face the Monster, don’t run away

Watch darkness be transformed

You don’t need no Fairy Godmother

To make yourself Reborn

As for me,

I may not want to eat

I may not want to Need

I may not want to wrestle

With What Will Truly Feed

But as I do I can feel

My heart, betrayed, is mending

I’d rather have an authentic life –

No, I don’t need a Happy Ending.

Wisdom Lives

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

In the distance

A warrior cries

A girl breathes out

A Sage has died

Something Deep’s been brought to life

Unconscious things direct the wise

‘Til Truth reveals Age-Old lies

The Wise then question their label of “wise”

The girl mourns and sighs,

How can I ever trust The Whys?

When their Answers are hidden in such plain sight

And wearing such a believable Disguise…

But

In the distance

A warrior cries

She hears the voice

She knows Inside

Something dead is now alive

A treasure Unearthed from a far-away place

A taste of dark, generational waste

That lived in her while Life she faced

Unknowing that this poisonous Slice

Wound up her soul like ivy vines

From her very First Cry

To her first breath in

Unintentional Parental Sin

But

In the distance

A warrior cries

The girl breathes out

A Sage has died

Something Deep’s been brought to life

The girl breathes in —

Alive again

A Sage reborn

Wisdom lives.

 

 

Taming the Beast

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

The Beast comes back time and again

I’ve got nothing left to say

I’ve bid Her, oh-so-bitterly,

An “I-swear-I-said

Good Day.”

And I should know by now

By now

By now

I have travelled far enough Down

This road of heathen roads

To simply Know, to simply Know

To simply know

By now…

Shutting Her down with a Go Away

Don’t do nothin’ to ease Her pain

But something in me keeps Hoping

Keeps expecting things to change

Like, perhaps the Tiger in the cage

Just…won’t show up today

And I am lucky

I guess

That there’ve been days

When I locked The Beast inside

Unlucky

I guess

The cage that’s locked

Resides within my mind

The paradox:

I seek control while wishing things would change

I have come to understand:

Life just don’t work that way

So I have learned to tolerate insufferable suffering

By doing The Thing that’s The Hardest Thing:

Not letting go of me

And the difference is the Hanging On…

It Changes Everything

‘Cause the suffering has meaning, I have built my strength

The Beast returns, gets out Her cage,

Wild with Her insatiable Rage

But it is I who holds the whip

And She is Mine to tame

So when she roars and bares her gleaming, razor-fangs

I do not run from Her, afraid

I meet her gaze, think ‘bring it on,’

A grin begins to play

I give a tiny nod, instead —

A challenge to The Beast I’ve tamed

Offer Her, respectfully:

An welcoming

“Good Day.”

 

Ying/Yang

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Sometimes

God calls

In Her silent ways

Tugging at the soul like Intuition

Which only becomes nagging…

When we Refuse to Listen

She shows up gently at first –

A little itch at the neck

Or a whisper in the back of the head

Or a sense that something is Not Quite Right

Sometimes

God begs

From Her Presence on High

Or maybe from Deep Below

Where the gut speaks

In gurgles and bubbles and indigestion

Please, She says plainly now,

I am trying to get your Attention

But we have gotten so used to pushing Her aside

Placing Her in a box of the Archaic kind —

Urging in voices that are not ours but our Parents

Or our Parent’s parents:

“You must fit in This.”

(Bullshit.)

We’ve been believing this and Restricting Her

Or hiding Her,

Sweeping Her under the rug

Until

Sometimes

God screams

She badgers us and weighs heavy on our souls

Now we have enraged Her

She tried so hard in Her gentle kind of way

But we would have none of that, No.

We westerners so used to listening and valuing only One Side:

The goal-oriented, straight-line, get-shit-done-yesterday-damn-it!

Patriarchal approach

(When the round-a-bout, Matriarchal way is proven to lead to better learning)

Did you know this?

Doubtful, because She has been dismissed – missed —

By way of men’s unintentional ignorance

How could any God not be Whole?

Look to Nature and see your Soul!

I swear — You will find it includes Both.

The Feminine half of the Godhead, though

Has suffered

And suffered

For so long

That we humans begin to rot right along with Her

Suppressing the feelings that might help to lift Her up

To be renewed from Life’s overflowing cup

But We do not hear Her until she screams

And then we call her a Bitch or a Nag

Or some other Unpleasant Female Name

Or we ignore Her, still!

Sometimes,

God calls

Why wait for Her to start screaming?

Why not just close your eyes, center in

And Listen?

Fragile

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 12 Comments

Fragile girl

You hold the world

In the brightness of your eyes

The blue in them reaches me

I have cried the way you’ve cried

Fragile girl

I see you, so!

I see your light inside

So many gifts within your soul

I’d be ruined if you died

Fragile girl

My heart pleads

Keep fighting this blackest night

The journey will get easier

If you don’t give up the fight

Fragile girl, I won’t lie and say

I know what the future holds

But I beg you to stay with it all

Let your life unfold

Living’s so much harder than I ever thought it’d be

No one told us life would include so much suffering

Oh fragile girl

You’re not just fragile, girl

Inside – the strength of stone!

I see this clearly because one can only understand

What one also

Knows

No More Easy

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

There is no more Easy

I have gone way, way…

Way too far in

I have Seen Things most won’t ever See

I have taken flight on hellish wings

Clasped hands with dead visionaries

While friends from this 2013

Somehow don’t seem as real to me

Life will never again be “Fun”

In the way the Unencumbered use the term

Fun like carefree

Fun like light

No, The Work comes with it a weighted plight

The kind that can’t just breeze by anymore

The kind that’s tethered to Something More

A bigger fate, behind the scenes

We carry the cross

For Others’ dreams

And know, as we tread the weathered road

There is no more

Easy.

The Sick Girl

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments

She walks in with her too-loose sweats

Flat ass

Casual tee

Eyes darting about

Until they reach their destination:

The cookie display

The snack-tray

She fingers a bag of BBQ chips

Pursing her lips

Hating and loving the salty sweet things

She gets to the front

She’s ordering

Yep

I can always spot The Sick Girl

I see her mind darting internally

As fast as those eyes

A million thoughts about

What to buy, what to buy!?

But one bag would never be quite the thing

To stop the Pastry Sirens from their incessant singing

And One Cookie is like blasphemy

I mean, really?

Really!?

Really. You must be joking.

As if there were such a thing as One anything

When it comes to her Insatiable Feeding

She can’t fill the hole in her Soul

With any material

Or flour-and-sugar-filled thing

But she’d get an A-plus for trying

And trying

She orders safely ‘til she can go crazy

“Non-fat latte, please.”

Yep. I can always spot The Sick Girl.

She’s at the supermarket now

Free to unleash the Craving Beast

With her unwashed hair in her face

Or Hat or hoodie

Attempting to be incognito as her bony fingers throw in

5 more boxes of Lucky Charms

Or Haagen Daz

Or chocolate-caramel bars

Her manicured nails distracting from

Her knuckle scars

On fingers that help her get every last bit

Out

They help her shout in that silent kind of shout

Because she doesn’t know what the hell to do

But try and numb the pain all out

I would try and meet her gaze and say

Everything will be okay

But the truth is I don’t know

And she thinks she’s hidden, anyway

There, on bright florescent light display

In aisle 3

She’s standing, then, in front of me

The clerk tries to make conversation

As she scans across things no one should eat

The Sick Girl can’t mutter back a single word

‘Cuz talking about the weather is just absurd

When her life is forever hanging in the balance

And you might Judge her but I do not

For we should never mistake Pain for Malice

I walk out, I say a prayer

One day she will be the one in line behind

The Sick Girl.

(Or better yet, there won’t be a Sick Girl to be in line behind.)

UNREALIZED

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

I am starting to Begin

To realize

All I have Unrealized

The things I have known

That have been shoved way down deep inside

Though prying fingers have tried to open up

The Vault in me

It stayed cemented shut

If I couldn’t get to it

You sure as hell weren’t going to

But somehow

The cement has begun to soften

Sticky now, like it wants to be

Pried open

Torn apart

Ripped open

Blown apart

Exposing fully

The human vulnerability that is

me

Heart-Throbbing in the open space

Of human community

Feeling the Everyone-Air touch my Raw Wounded soul

And very slowly

Ever-so-slowly

Begin to Know

When I am hurt again

(for that can’t be prevented)

My Greatest Strength will protect me:

My vulnerability

My ability to Feel All These Things

To move through them in my community

And know

Really Know

That though the individual journey is On My Own

I am never, ever

Alone.

And as I continue to uncover my soul

I begin to unweave

The Unrealized Me.

 

Lilith Rising

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

She is livid mad

Crazy bad

Kick your ass kind of badass Wo-

man

But ain’t no man a fan

Of this kind of Black-Red

Sick-nisssss (I mean that in the Present Tense –

Sick as awesome not sick as bad)

Just ask the First Man —

Adam

How he couldn’t stand

The Original Kick-ass lass:

The one we know as

Lilith.

How he moaned and bitched like a little bitch:

“Ooo, waaa….God made a mistake —

‘Cause this woman won’t Subjugate”

Subservi-ate made Her irate

‘Less Than’ was nothing she would tolerate

So God banished Her to the Other Land

But She was the Wrong One to ban!

Shoulda took that Adam-Man off his

Ladder, man —

Made him mate with matter, man

But he shoved Lilith in the Shadow-Land

And by His command…

Another woman up God’s sleave!

Mix, carve, blow…

Why look!

It’s Eve.

Oh, so willing,

Oh, so sweet

So ready to just

Lie Beneath

And take what Adam did bequeath

She’d lay there silent,

Just receiving

The entire time just believing

She must be doing the Right Thing —

By never, ever

Speaking

Adam praised God’s “Good Girl” work

Secretly feeling like the biggest jerk

For all the while he was fucking Eve –

It was Lilith he was seeking.

Epilogue:

[And all the men wonder today

Why a woman won’t just speak up and say

All the things that she is feeling

But deep inside an Ancient Fear

That we’ll be Sent Away for speaking

There’s that Usher song, you know… the one that says:

“Want a lady in the street but a freak in the bed…”

But the Freak is the one who won’t Lie Beneath…

The one We All left for dead.

She wonders now, as she breaks out

And leaves her Shadow Land

Who is strong enough to Share my bed…

Is there Such a Man?]

Bright Red Dress (a.k.a. Anima)

AriaPhoenix Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

 

She wears the Bright Red Dress, dances on marble table-tops

 

Has that perfect laugh — Head tilted back

 

You know the kind.

 

Yes, she’s That Kind

 

The kind they like to put in slow-motion

 

On the movie-screens

 

The kind who gives the teens

 

Wet dreams

 

And makes men stiffen in their theater seats

 

As they squirm over to one side

 

So the wife won’t see

 

The hard evidence of their fantasies.

 

Yes, she’s That Kind –

 

Her smile blinds,

 

Those wide big eyes

 

Blink innocently

 

While what they think is underneath – unbridled sensuality

 

Simmers through transparently

 

Because it ain’t necessarily

 

Her own sensuality

 

But I won’t bore you with

 

Such Things.

 

They all imagine she’s Untouchable

 

While fiending oh-so-desperately —

 

To touch her ever-endlessly…

 

Projecting every wanted woman they have ever seen

 

Unconsciously on that Bright Red Dress

 

She happens to be wearing.

 

Betting to themselves deep down, “I know her and she knows me.

 

And if I could only win her over, she’d see we’re meant to be.”

 

Oh, how they think Know her!

 

And there is some magic quality.

 

I’m not sayin’ she don’t have it —

 

It just ain’t the Realest thing.

 

‘Cause they all think she’s the Virgin Mary

 

And Madonna —

 

Goddesses Sophia and Innana —

 

Some twisted kind of Freudian mama

 

That they secretly beg to Keep.

 

Sweet souls just projecting onto her

 

Their hopeful, true-love dreams.

 

Nothin’ wrong with this except

 

When the woman removes the dress

 

She hopes the men who said

 

She was the greatest thing since whole-grain bread

 

Will be able to, instead,

 

Love the regular, plain ol’ “me.”

 

You know — the very real wife beside them

 

In the theater seat.