read a poem Archives - Page 2 of 8 - ⚡️Kristen Kalp

Posts in "read a poem" Category — Page 2

You don’t have to earn your keep.

Welcome to Microdose #2 in our 2022 podcast series!  You can start with Pandemic, Year Three, or dive in below for the most-relevant-to-this-moment wisdom I’ve got:

We begin with a poem.

When people ask how I am, I don’t want my first response to be “Tired.”

And so I am undoing
unlearning
rerouting
my life’s ley lines
around wonder and silence
stillness and depth

I am deleting apps,
banishing the phone to the furthest corners
of the house.

I am tossing big plastic rings
at the dog, who chases them
and chews them
and likes to see if he can dangle from them
by his teeth for just a second
before his grip fails.

I am learning not-tired the same way:
dangling, just barely
by my teeth

But I am learning, nonetheless.

There’s a portion of asshole brain that I call Resting Bitch Voice. It’s like Resting Bitch Face, only this doesn’t just make you look like you’re pissed when you’re in the latest edition of People magazine.

Resting Bitch Voice keeps you tired, overworked, stressed, steeped in martyrdom, and unable to articulate exactly why you feel like a bag of old turds. (This is covered in far greater detail in That’s What She Said episode #251, which you can find at https://kristenkalp.com/resting-bitch-voice/)

First, Resting Bitch Voice makes you EARN rest.

Resting Bitch Voice will also pipe up about how you’re doing rest WRONG.

It says things like…

Why can’t you do all these tasks on this very long list and THEN rest?

Why can’t you rest MORE PRODUCTIVELY?

Why aren’t you working ahead when you know you have [ENORMOUS LIST OF THINGS] to do next week?

Why is the pandemic STILL making you tired?

Why can’t you just HANDLE YOUR SHIT without having to sleep, chill, ask for help, or unplug?

Ultimately, Resting Bitch Voice continuously conveys that it is NOT OKAY to be human.

It NEVER stops questioning your Very Human Limitations.

I’m not telling you about Resting Bitch Voice because this is easy work.

Rather, I’m talking about the mechanics of rest because it’s hard for me. My natural tendency is to WAKE UP AND DO SHIT UNTIL I DROP.

I had to learn that Resting Bitch Voice a.) exists and b.) can singlehandedly ruin my health when I listen to it.

How many hours of sleep and/or downtime would you get if you allowed yourself to be fully human?

What would regular rest and downtime look like if you let yourself be fully human?

What would you put down, leave behind, stop doing, or start prioritizing from an allowed-to-be-fully-human space?

If all you do in 2022 is learn to rest with less guilt and more joy, YOU’RE FUCKING WINNING.

If you’d like to be supported as you learn to rest, slow down, do less, and generally un-capitalism yourself as much as possible, I invite you to join me at The Imaginarium!

During these live, in-person workshops for the fully vaccinated in Philadelphia, we’ll take a look at every aspect of your life during pandemic. Then, we’ll vote many of the things that keep you burned out and stretched thin off the table so that you have more space for occupying and enjoying your life. Bonus: you’ll have three months after the workshop to form new habits and to explore the world of whatever comes after hustling yourself into the ground. You’ll do this work in the company of myself and up to 6 other rad humans.

To talk with me about attending, hit up bit.ly/talkwithkk and book a call! If you’d like to do this work privately – just me and you in Philly on the dates of your choosing – book a call and ask about Solo.

P.S. Related to learning to rest and find the sweetness even here, in the midst of pandemic: it doesn’t count if you don’t enjoy it.

The Other Side

We get up every day
and do the work.
There is drama, pain,
resistance, play,
noise. Sometimes
the deafening silence.

We get up every day and do the work.
No one anywhere says a word because
they do not see and cannot know
what’s required to enter the chambers of the heart,
day after day, week after week, year after year.

They cannot know what it’s like to crawl along your belly
through the tears-snot-pain-awful for what seems like miles
in order to find that reliable feast set in a room of rock:
peace, persistence,
pleasure.

We tell them but they do not believe:
the other side of the tunnel opens
in all directions to pure
blinding
light.

P.S. My book of poetry is pay-what-you-can priced.

Any Given Tuesday

Two poems to share with you in this podcast episode!

Any Given Tuesday

I cannot tell
them what it’s like
in here, in my brain,
late September, facing down
another pandemic winter,
climate change placing our house
in a new tornado alley, the immediate world
divided:
red, blue,
pro, anti,
on and on,
while I try pointing my dials to
Function.

Ignore your tightly wound belly
and the tears streaming down your cheeks
because it’s not one thing
it’s all of it:
All of It.
All. Of. It:

We were not meant to hold this much pain
without being able to hold each other tightly,
physically, breathing in the same room.

Healing without holding hands is so much harder.

We continue to accrue layers of not-here,
stacking distraction
upon mess
upon dysfunction,
cynicism,
rot.

And still my brain demands it,
beneath the piles of wet cardboard
and the urine-soaked carpets of mind:

Just Function, Kalp.

Just remember how to write.
Just pretend it isn’t happening.

Just keep swimming.

Just

keep

swimming

Secrets

You taught me
so much more
than straight A’s ever could

just by popping the truck
intro neutral at the top
of the longest hill around
and refusing to brake
all
the
way
down
,

my little body
screaming and squealing
in delightful terror
as we picked up speed,
squiggling past more
and more houses,
all of me screeching along with the tires
in the deep trust of childhood
that can only be reached
before the world
does any real breaking:

we’re gonna die
but not right now

we’re alive
we’re alive
we’re alive

(…and, um, hearing about this would probably upset your mother.)

You showed me the places we can go
only with one another
and for no good reason,
just because it’s fun
to be
here.

Maybe this was your best-kept
secret to living:
all trust,
no breaks.

P.S. My book of poems is pay-what-you-can priced right here!

Followup

Last week she told me she wouldn’t come
to my latest offering even if it were free.

I absorbed the blow, laughing —
light as a leaf
falling from the tree outside —
but the seeds of her doubt are trying to take root.
(I have been silenced by far less.)

Perhaps the larger part of Maturity In the Internet Age
is choosing to look it all in the eye and proclaim:

You cannot take my work from me.
You cannot make me believe I am trivial.

You cannot silence me today.
Or tomorrow.
Or on any of the days to come.

This is the promise,
and the reward,
all in one:
you cannot
take
my work
from me
ever
again.

Amen.

This is an episode of That’s What She Said, my podcast! Listen in 👇🏼

P.S. If you need (not-poetry-based) help with following up in sales…stay on it.

The Mental Health Pep Talk

mental health pep talk

Little did I know when I started a business eleven (!!!) years ago that I would be talking about mental health with people all the time. The ins and outs, the ups and downs, the hardest parts of being human — it’s all on the table, and that was BEFORE we came down with a pandemic. Lemme read you a poem and love on you in this episode of That’s What She Said, okay? (There are hundreds more episodes here.  Or catch up on all things dealing with depression while running a business.)

To Past Me, Who Has Endured 20 Years of Depression

I love you.

Thank you for every tear you cried;
for every time you left the house
when you’d rather stay in;
for every time you shared the truth
instead of pretending to be okay.

Thank you for being brave enough
to ask for help, to tell on yourself,
to rest and pause when needed.

Thank you for simply enduring
when your brain was sure
you should no longer be alive.

Thank you for resisting the easy way out.

Thank you for being resilient enough to grow into;
grow despite;
grow past;
grow deeper.

Thank you for reaching into your darkest parts,
hands flailing around in sheer nothingness,
and finding gem after gem to examine,
cherish,
love.

Thank you for continuing to feel
in a world that wants you
to go
numb.

Just: thank you.

P.S. Dig poems?  My book of poetry is pay-what-you-can priced.