Day Fifteen #PoemADayFeb – Assumption
So, It’s V-Day and All That…
Here’s the deal, guys:
I was born smack-bang on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer, which leaves me existing in a kind of constant state of ambivalence, swinging between the emotional heart of a Cancer and the intellectual mind of a Gemini.
Which means even though I have this big, sloppy romantic heart of a poet inside of me, I also flatly refuse to buy into the ridiculous, over-commercialised notion that is V-Day, and all the shizza that goes with it.
Because even though I may have had to learn about love the hard way, here’s what I do know:
Love cannot be bought with flowers and chocolate and wine; even less so on the one day of the year consumerism tells us it can. The only exception to this rule is gin. Love can be bought with gin.
When Jesus said to love thy neighbour as thyself, the dude was seriously onto something. Because if we cannot love ourselves first and foremost with every measure of love we deserve, we will never be able to love another the way they deserve. Loving others can only come from the overflow of love we give to ourselves first; to expect another to fill our well only ever leads to disappointment.
If we cannot love ourselves with this measure of love we deserve, we’ll spend our whole lives settling for those who do not love us that way either. How much we value our worth is how high we set the bar for the love we accept. Keep it high. Those who deserve to be in our lives won’t be afraid to climb. Or at the very least, buy a ladder.
Unconditional love transforms people. Like, the most incredible magic trick you’ll ever see. Love someone like that today and watch them change before your eyes.
Love does not look like abuse. The moment it does, leave and never look back. You do not destroy the people you love. Period.
Love is a decision. You will not always want to love the person you wake beside every morning. You either choose love, or you don’t. One of those choices is easy. The other is worth it.
For those actually celebrating Valentine’s Day today, I promise not to judge you. At least, not too much. It’s not that I take issue with celebrating love, or showing a loved one what they mean through grand gestures of overpriced flowers and chocolate. Love is glorious. It should be celebrated. Every day. And this is the point. I don’t want to reduce love to a once-a-year gesture, but remember to celebrate each day this force of nature that resonates through every part of our lives and makes it worth living.
K x
Day Thirteen #PoemADayFeb – Change
I tell him I will write a poem where the letters of his name
are woven through every line; that I will not place him
in the spaces between, where I hide meaning inside
of metaphor.
I do not tell him of the way this terrifies me; to write
of such pure things, as friendship, as him,
when my native tongue is fluent in the language
of sorrow,
and his name does not belong in such dark places.
Someone once said all you need is twenty seconds of
insane courage for something great to happen
and it made me think of coins in the air;
the way we hold a lifetime of hope inside our lungs
as fate is decided, except it’s probably not a lifetime,
or even twenty seconds, but is courage just the same.
Snowboarding while listening to My Chemical Romance,
he tweets, and I have listened to them on repeat
for an entire year and I want to grab hold of this moment
of kinship
but there are wounds on my fingers still trying to heal and
bloodstains never looked good on new beginnings
and I still have not told him
how he was my twenty seconds that day;
how we spend our lives afraid
to throw our coins in the air; so unsure which way
they will fall, until we soon become tired of pockets full
of loose change weighing us down.
© Kathy Parker 2019
Day Thirteen #PoemADayFeb – Change
Day Twelve #PoemADayFeb – Summer
And this is how it happens;
months of half-descended skies
dampen our gaze and like greedy children
we clamber to see the first yellow vein
touch the surface of fleshy cloud; we drench
our shadowed bodies with light, careless
to heed the warnings of our youth –
eager gaze prolonged, cells of retina
bleached by sun’s bitter kiss.
Black spots, blind spots.
In a dream,
sky above scorches flesh
while ground below holds frozen
and the air hangs thick with a metaphor
I cannot see, blinded by beams of him
coming through the doorway of my winter.
Black spots, blind spots.
He does not notice how taut my arms
become from holding up the sky for him.
I do not notice how razor-edged the ice
against my flesh until I bleed.
Black spots, blind spots.
Blistered eyelids force my gaze away
from that which I once hungered
and I see what I did not before:
love is only born of the soft soil
beneath our feet.
The scales fall from my eyes.
I am the rain.
And he is so last summer.
© Kathy Parker 2019
Day Twelve #PoemADayFeb – Summer
Upcoming Event News!
Ridiculously excited to announce I’ll be performing at The Showcase Series by Paroxysm Press as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Come and see me and five other amazing performers take the stage with a cracking night of spoken word, to be held at Broadcast Bar, Saturday 23rd February.
“Over 3 huge nights, we present 18 of the best underground authors, artists and spoken word performers. Their work comes to the stage tight, slick and hard hitting with a stubborn desire to entertain. New work, Paroxysm favourites, and a few surprises, it is the best value entertainment in the Fringe. If poetry has a punk scene, you’ll find it here”
More details and tickets to this show, as well as the two other shows in this series, at www.adelaidefringe.com.au
See you theeeeere!
Day Eleven #PoemADayFeb – First
I lost my voice when I was seven;
buried in an unmarked grave
where all untold stories go to die.
I learned it’s quite a skill to hold
a lifetime of words beneath your tongue
and not choke on the debris of letters
that fester in the back of your throat;
to swallow truth like a hungry dog with
bared teeth;
willing another to not come close enough
to taste such foul feast upon their lips.
It turns out there is no minute of silence
for silence;
no funeral for people to dress in black
and eat jelly cakes
and cluck tongues over the tragic loss
of life taken too soon.
Innocence taken too soon.
There is only the sound of applause; let a
woman learn silently with all submissiveness.
I am thirty-four when I find my voice again,
yet it is not the first time I speak
which brings me to my knees,
but the first time I am heard.
© Kathy Parker 2019
Day Eleven #PoemADayFeb – First
Day Eight #PoemADayFeb – Dropping The Ball Again
So that’s actually not the prompt. But I’ve totally dropped the ball with #poemadayfeb the last couple of days, but always knew it was bound to happen here and there throughout the month!
It’s been a busy (see cluttered desk) and tiring (see dark circles under eyes) week, and I’m reminding myself to go gently, gently. In the past I’ve been the worst at being harder on myself than anyone else could ever be; hating on myself for not doing enough, not being enough, falling short, stretching too thin to be all things to all people.
These days, thankfully, I choose to love and honour myself instead. That includes setting boundaries with my time and energy, practicing self-care, and accepting my very human limitations. It means working damn hard to achieve my goals, but remembering this isn’t about performance, or perfectionism, but just showing up and giving it my best, whatever my best looks like today.
In the words of Brenè Brown – “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough”
For those doing #poemadayfeb with us, write what you can, as you can, and learn to love the process as much as the outcome. I look forward to jumping back in as soon as I can!
Happy weekend x
Day Five #PoemADayFeb – Journey
I was looking for one
not afraid to journey
upon these war-torn
paths of my freedom
but he was never
a man of sure foot
and what I needed
most was a traveller
with heels as blistered
as mine.
Day Five #PoemADayFeb – Journey
Day Four #PoemADayFeb – Inside
I turned my heart inside out;
delicate, handle with care.
(as if you ever read labels)
(as if you ever read me)
Day Four #PoemADayFeb – Inside
Day Three #PoemADayFeb – Beginning
And this is what we’re left with,
but then, we never were complete –
only ever broken halves of a whole;
pages half open, clothes half open,
half-finished wine, half-begun touch.
A goodbye disguised as a tomorrow
we knew was not ours to believe in.
I write stories about leaving lovers,
you, about being left. The ocean still
longs for the shoreline even though
she knows if one thing does not end,
another cannot begin.
© Kathy Parker 2019
Day Three #PoemADayFeb – Beginning