Refusal/Affirmation

I refuse to bow beneath the trauma which I bear,
Where letting myself feel it,
I would only further tear the wound,
Like a child who picks a scab to stop the pain,
And finds all we are underneath is bleeding.

I refuse to bend beneath a weight I’ve made,
Whose very heaviness comes only from condemning myself to bear it -
This boulder which I shift between two hills 
when life is a wide garden.

​

I refuse to wince in shame,
Which thinks it is the recognition of the judgement of the masses,
But is just my judgement of myself before them.
Every all-seeing eye we feel penetrate ourselves
is just our own
And we have only to invert its gaze
To look out upon the world we had forgotten to see.

​

I refuse to suffer needlessly,
Gnash my teeth at harsh emotions,
Which come to me as surely as the passage of the day.
For I know I am not so much the night which darkens,
nor the light which then illuminates,
but the infinitesimal continuum moving in between

***

​

No longer will I wonder mournful down wintry streets
Bemoaning changing weather,
Mistaking it for movements in my soul,
Seeing no winter is forever,
And neither is my soul forever,
But is just the name I give my grasping out 
for something beautiful which cannot die.
Letting go, 
I will see the hand trying to grasp itself.
When all along I held and was held by

the life inside and out my body

I now say 'yes' to all of it,

Knowing I will fail in my affirmation,
And say 'yes' to this as well.
To all error and confusion,
Shame and broken promises,
Doubt and paranoia,
Stupidity and lust,
In long and short to everything
Which after all was human