you would love me,
you say,
if you weren’t
already taken.
by a future of
mediocrity
just stable enough
to ride out “safely”
until you die.
isn’t it against
your gambling code,
balking at
high stakes
and settling for life in the
safe lane?
you might be surprised
at how quickly
dead things
come back to life
when you
feed them
just a
bit
more
water.
remember those days?
(so many millions of miles away now… )
of slow dancing to patsy cline
in small-town dive bars
of singing
juana
across the moonlit lake
at midnight,
rain pouring down,
baptizing us
in the sacredness
of our
shared soul-cloth
of drinking cheap liquor
caressing
that was all we knew.
…
how beautiful it was,
my love,
painting melancholy
with you.
i feel you.
i’ve been on a journey. one of the most important of my life. and a journey that is entirely invisible to everyone else in my life.
a year and a half ago, one of the closest partners i’d had in my life left me, suddenly. of course there is more to the story, but as i experienced it emotionally, one day we were partners, he had my back; and the next, he was gone, emotionally and physically completely unavailable to me, where he had been one of my primary people for over nine months.
it was one of the most severing experiences of my life, and sent me into a deep depression. i have been ping-ponging in and out of depression since then, having better weeks, better days… and worse weeks, days, months… losing him exploded my life, my concept of myself, my concept of trust in myself and my intuition, and many other things. i have been through many break-ups, and even a divorce… and none of them touched the pain i felt from this loss.
and yet, as it turns out, i needed those things to explode. to find healing, i needed to blow up some illusions i had still been grasping. i needed to see in even deeper ways the way i gave myself away in relationship, the way i set things up to explode. lately, i can find it in my heart to start to feel (rather than just think) gratitude for this experience. i am grateful i found out sooner than later that he didn’t have the emotional capacity to meet my needs in the long-term, that he wasn’t willing to work on the issues we had, to his less-balanced reactions. i know rationally it would have been much more painful, the more i had invested…
and yet other parts of me still grieve no longer being able to feel his touch, his energy… to hear his voice. i have been humbled by this break-up. never have i been so destroyed by a loss of a partner; it has made me empathize in new and deeper ways. the difficulty i have had viscerally in letting go of him has given me new appreciation for folks who have a difficult time letting go.
your love
demands
my existence.
perhaps some days..
you forget
the weariness
the constant vigilance
of remembering
to exist.
you and me baby
we speak so many thoughts
we have none left for poetry
is it true that good art
requires a lonely,
aching soul?
and after a life of melancholy
and understated drama..
can i give up that beautiful art,
that bittersweet sadness,
…even for you?
is this an ancient line of poetry,
delicate beauty
unwinding in a complex rhythm,
intertwining our souls?
or the residue of
old dysfunction,
rationalized by invisible needs
buried deep in the recesses of
our psyches?
and after all,
perhaps they’re just
the same thing.
pushing and pulling at us.
at each other.
we spin against one another,
helpless.
the same.
perhaps poetry was invented
for people like you and i
somehow my metaphors
tread lightly,
slip by your defenses
and snuggle up softly around
your heart..
my spoken words,
an arrow through
your beautiful,
trembling soul.
masturbation (that nasty, shockingly perverse word… not to mention the act of!!!) is one of my favorite activities. it defined the beginnings of my sexual consciousness, taught me what gave me pleasure before anyone else had a chance to mis-teach me, shame me, or pass over me, and has continued through my life to give me comfort, pleasure, and moments of deep realization. i wish i could teach every child (and especially little girl!!) about self-pleasure. i think this knowledge should be a basic human right. i believe it is that deep and integral to who we are and how we relate to ourselves and to others in the world.
wendy strgar spells out this connection on a theoretical level beautifully in this article on the art of masturbation.
Perhaps the best reasons to let go of all the judgment and history surrounding this normal sexual behavior is because having access to your own pleasure and orgasm teaches a profound inner lesson, which is that the ability to orgasm is your own. No one else gives it to you or has power over you having it.
in other exciting news, a study has now shown that masturbation may (keyword: may) “help” your immune system. the cover image for the article being a box of kleenex, with a number of used kleenex wadded up around it (unclear if used kleenex are cum-filled or snot-filled…), it may or may not be implying this applies more to men than women. hard to say. maybe other women have different self-pleasuring practices than i. surely they do. perhaps some that involve wadded-up tissues. at any rate, i do imagine the relaxation one derives from masturbating/cumming would lower stress significantly, and stress is a well-known strain on our immune systems.
it’s cold season; by this logic we’d best all get a-pleasuring!!!
i came across this article today on elephant journal, and was intrigued by a story so similar to my own… the conflict between my body’s knowingness and what my socialized brain is telling me i “should” be doing/thinking/feeling… i went through a very similar journey when i was a teenager, just beginning to explore my own pleasure in a real way. the internet was just beginning to be a worthwhile source of information, and i would sneak online after everyone else was asleep to search for what in retrospect i would call: healthily sex-positive, educational materials on masturbation. (not much available at the time, but i learned the potential of shower heads.) i also searched and searched for any quality Catholic sources, that had a more liberal, open-minded approach to masturbation. i knew with such certainty in my body that what i was doing couldn’t possibly be morally “wrong”, but i so wanted to be a “good girl” and have the approval of God, my parents, etc.
to this day, it infuriates me that a male-run institution had the gall to set up laws that would inhibit my own relationship with my sexuality, in ways that would affect me deeply, for years to come. as this author states, she (and i) had to go through sexual assault (multiple times), trusting others more than ourselves, etc… before finally bringing awareness and healing to this rift in ourselves. is the power of female sexuality really that terrifying? and if so, what kind of gender divide in our culture is responsible for creating such a difference in our experiences of healthy sexuality?