weathered change

October 1, 2017Leave a comment

Brisbane Art

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow – Melody Beattie

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. – Albert Schweitzer

As we’ve continued to discuss the link between the personal and the political, our lives have also continued. We focused our writing attention on gratitude but also discussed the changes in all our lives and how writing and poetry helps us both mark and weather these changes, giving space for our identities to hold these changes and become them at the same time. It’s complicated. Most of the time, we say we’re freaking out. We can all handle more than we think. In pieces below communicate this both through their content and the overall strength of the writing.

ALIVE AGAIN
I who have died am alive again today

My life is two parts.
I am two people
with two faces,
two hearts,
two souls,
two meanings,
past and present,
before and after.
Then and now…however you like to call it,
good and evil.
It really and truly was, and still is, a spiritual battle.

The past, the before , the then, the evil; still
creeps up and takes the leading role.
The claws of this entity dig deep and direct
my into darkness. It’s defeating and I cry out,
making it known. This is the part of me
I am not fond of these days. At one time
I didn’t mind so much, but I know now there’s
a whole different realm to be a part of. I don’t
have to exist in the darkness.
The present, the after, the now, the good…
this is where I thrive and I am most alive.
You have to understand it was in the darkness
that I have died. That part is gone, for the most part.
With that vacancy, I have filled with light, the most illuminating,
beautiful light. It does not dim. I does not go out.
This will guide my path from here on.
This will show me the way to something greater.
Let my spirit shine.
Let me live.

***
LIFE AND LOVE

This is the birthday of life and love

finally being free from this cage
starting fresh with my kids and family.

This is the birthday of life and love

leaving everything in the past
pushing for a brighter future
letting go of the old and looking towards the new.

This is the birthday of life

the feeling of change and triumph

and love.

Time to be the woman I was meant to be.

***
EYE OF MY EYE

Dark, burning, lighted the flame within me.
A canker, a searing, raw, weeping sore
curled tight and stubborn, shadowed changeling.
Dark, burning, opening my eyes to the flame.
An acid, burning, corroding, etching passion
all-consuming and desirous, villainy, and revenge.
Dark, burning, candle to my mirror’s dark.
Confiscating, glittering, starry-eyed dream of the end,
perpetual, inescapable companion, twin, twined, mate.
Dark, burning, flaming eyes wide.
Truth, crucifixion carried daily, shows at 6 and 11,
rivers run, red and clotted, fish-choking, floating, stench.
Dark, burning, burn it all and watch with glee,
dance to destruction, partners change,
blood, wine, and sacrifice, journey never ending.
Dark, burning, blister and char my skin.
Penalty, penalty, every step an agony, endless litany
of sin burned into mind and heart and skin.
Dark, burning, ashes and sparks fly free.
A mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,
soundlessly screamed by a voice already long gone.
Dark, burning, dervishes spread inferno and children.
Whispered venom, poison pen, a Google search,
no starting over, no second chance.
Dark, burning, eyelids seared away.
Secret places, a room of my own, solitude
ripped away with peace by hands marked, “Justice.”
Dark, burning, bring me to the stake.
Make a martyr of one in my own mind
though you and yours will call it well-earned.
Dark, burning, the ropes will bite.
Hold me up, display me, my cart through town.
throw refuse, scream. Sharpen the Guillotine.
Dark, burning, light the flame that burns me.
This. This is your motivation. Not that you
should burn me, but that I should burn myself.
Dark, burning, ashes, ashes, cinders, and soot.
Nothing left, no spirit, no fire, no merry,
pyromaniacal light in eyes gone dead.
Dark, burning, wind scours runnels in sodden ash.
Echoes, footsteps, and voices giving voice to long
dead echoes, the light will burn my eyes.

MRo

who I’ve become

October 25, 20162 Comments

10-6-mandalas_0010-copy This past Thursday evening was our semi-annual reading inside the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility where all incarcerated women in Vermont are housed. We had over 40 guests, at least half of them from the outside community. These included leaders in criminal justice reform, publicists, providers in re-entry programming, mentors to our writers, volunteers, DOC personnel, writing inside VT advisory board members and assistants, and friends.

The evening was nothing short of magical, in the words of one first-time reading attendee. Feedback included so many supportive and surprised responses, like these:

Feelings of hope and words of self-love and acceptance are rising up for me; images of these women as only criminals are falling away. They are humans.

What a waste to lock away these minds, these hearts, these words! What is falling away from me is who I thought was in the room as opposed to who was really there.

I never even began to imagine a lot of the realness that was within these women. Maybe they aren’t so bad after all.

These women have been through such a journey. Perhaps the ideas that separate us are not so great after all.

I’m struck by how much beauty and wisdom there is in the readings tonight.

A particularly poignant moment occurred when one of our long-time writers spoke from her heart at the end of the evening. She thanked everyone for caring enough to come, to listen, to give the writers confidence that their stories, indeed their lives, matter. She composed a poem of gratitude on the spot which we anticipate will appear in local press within the week. Be sure to watch for the link! Continue reading →

giving thanks

November 30, 2015November 30, 2015Leave a comment

smartpei.typepad.com

Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings. – William Arthur Ward

It has been almost a week since Thanksgiving and I feel like I already need reminders about grace and gratitude. In reviewing our work from last week, I have the same feeling looking at our work as I did around the table at Thanksgiving. We focused our attention on art last week, creating our own political posters to advocate for those things that are most important to us.

The writers, now artists, focused on things like LGBT equality and anti-war sentiments. Mostly though, they created expressions of love and peace. In one, a writer wrote “give peace a chance.” In another, “be adventurous, be kind.” And lastly, one simply wrote, “peace and love” in a bubble floating over the word “family.” As the holiday season continues, these are the messages they want to transmit out into the prison and our community.

We stood in a circle a discussed each poster and what it offered. Essentially, we stood around thanking each other, honoring, working through what each of us trying to say with gentle curiosity and affirmation. With our eyes, words, actions, we showed we were listening. We enacted what saw and advocated for on those posters.

Continue reading →

image of birds

November 11, 2014Leave a comment

credit – m c escher via wikiart

Last week, we gathered around a table in the education room inside CRCF, a group melding women new to us and old-timers. As always, some hesitation hovered around the room alongside confidence and assurance among the more seasoned. And the occasional reluctance to share something particularly deep and disturbing lay silent among us.

We opened the circle with “Sixty Years Later, I Notice, Inside a Flock of Blackbirds” by David Allan Evans. This poem provides a new metaphor for the way light shows through flying birds, and prompted the creation of an entire flock of new metaphors – for flight, for light. The underlying theme of gratitude infused all the writing with grace and compassion, so that a poem created from the shared lines created its own powerful metaphor for resilience, gratitude and hope.

AN IMAGE OF BIRDS*

Birds know how to be a group
grateful to be alive
rhythmic, intuitive
spacing while undulating
mindful of daily actions,
things that fly through the mind.

Everything indispensable my mother taught me
a tremendous gift I will never forget —
they taught me to be strong
inside myself
grateful for the small things,
friends to turn to, who care.

After raising the blinds,
I feel their presence.
A gathering lifts,
hovers; see the universe change
all threads in the same quilt,
the air stirred by holding birds.

Not just one time – impossible.

I am grateful for change,
for the things I have,
for the passage of hope
silent before liftoff.

swb created from lines shared at 11/5/14 mentor/mentee writing group inside CRCF

challenge . . . AND gift

April 8, 20142 Comments

Last Saturday, a group of about 60, largely justice and social service professionals and advocates, gathered at Middlebury College to receive the gift of women’s voices. First, the sweet harmonious ones of WomenSing. And second, the courageous and heartfelt personal ones from ‘inside.’ The challenge was was that three of the five previously-incarcerated women who had hoped to attend, did not.

While these odds are not typical of our show rate inside (where our main competitor for group attendance is sleep), it was initially disheartening. But that sentiment didn’t last more than the two minutes it took to decide to move forward without them. The voices of the two women meeting at this reading for the first time rose and fell with their own cadences of regret, sadness, determination and love.

The audience was riveted. After approximately 30 minutes of reading, we opened the floor to questions. What followed was a genuine dialogue of curiosity and gratitude. To give a flavor of the event, which we neither taped nor photographed, I share here a few comments left by listeners in response to the question, ‘what is stirring in you after hearing these stories?’:

What a gift it has been to hear the stories of women in prison. We take so many things for granted. The obstacles they face need the healing that writing brings.

The courage of these women to grow, to forgive, to create a new way of being. How much value everyone brings to this world even when we lose our way for a while.

Women in prison are women who have been hurt deeply without – just one person – to help them heal and recover. Women outside of prison had that one person who saw and heard them. Continue reading →