Posts in "read a poem" Category — Page 2

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.

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.

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.

And so I took a walk,
greeting as many beings
as I could see:

rain, puddle, rose.

I drank deeply from the lilacs
and wondered at the tiny complex
reproductive organs of flowers
whose names I do not know:

nova, miracle, Wild.

I watched ants traversing canyons
of tree bark
In search of
I Do Not Know What:

sustenance, wandering, sweet.

(I didn’t have anything to offer
the water-soaked crow resting over there
and tried to not feel bad about my failing.)

(Human, human, human.)

At the last corner,
a pink bed of cherry blossom petals
strewn all over the sidewalk
to celebrate this homecoming:

You are here, you are here, you are here.

Air, sky, breath.

Alive.

Remember.
Alive.

P.S. We need this Note to Self now more than ever.

Let’s unlearn productivity, starting right now: