Substance and Shadow

Today I release my latest creation - Substance and Shadow - 26 of my finest philosophical moments, each captured in a poem. Love, gardening, necrophilia and the meaning of life are all covered, one way or another.

My love of and sheer amazement with this world, and all its inner workings, fuel all my writing, poetry included. Good poetry rocks my core when it captures a specific feeling or idea whilst also maintaining the integrity of its vastness. I am blessed with the desire to take what seems big and make it small and take what seems small and make it big. Thus, I am a poet. Each poem reflects a moment in time where I have felt compelled to take what was seen in my mind’s eye and turn that image into words in a way that honours the depth of the picture.

Pollen and Powdery Sunshine

I was flush with life and that is how

I imagined things should be.

I had wanted to take myself out

of the spiralling city,

pop from the top of her cyclone

and land on my behind in a silent field

but for a light breeze.

Perhaps I will flop to the ground like the limbs of a scarecrow and

laugh hysterically at the relief and amazement from having escaped

certain ruin at the hands of exponential force.

Once the laughter dies down and I

can take a breath I

might stretch long, slowly

allowing the muscles of my body to

release their grip on my bones.

Fibre fingers will uncurl from my throat

and delicious honey

will coat my sense of being with pollen and powdery sunshine.

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Transition

I have been joyous, but today I recognise the swamp as my knees push V shapes through the woven greenery and its nutrient rich slime. Just stop. Don’t do anything yet. Don’t push.

But I am stressed; like I am pushing, a whole lot of life through the spout of a funnel. Remember Krista, you’ve got time to go through the transition. There is no rush. Deal with what you feel.

I sit far to the outside of all things; I am so much the observer that I have stopped being. I look on today, and don’t know how to approach.

Central aspects to my existence have fallen away and I am in disconnection. My world appears shrunken. Limbs and skin buckle and crumble and bones heave against the weight of new beginnings.

From what was to what will be with a full vessel of cans and maybes and should-bees to guide my hand shakes with fear and potentiality screeches and screams within the tin. You would do well to get comfortable with the mess. This could take a while.

Transition made inside nightmares. The body breaks down, the soul wide, the mind having nowhere left to hide, and eyes of shattered glass feels surely like seven years bad luck.

Momentarily blind I can no longer see in the same way what was behind, but I return time and time again to find comfort in the familiarity that is really no longer there, and I choose to ignore the shards and cracks that come and go with the sweeping of my lashes. How can you stand in the past expecting a present?

Now I must choose whether to persevere in this dangerous safety or whether to be willing to go a new kind of blind - the one made from new light; the one made from unfamiliar sunrises; the one made from the forging of precious things; the one made by and old star dying and a new one being born.

Krista
Rune Ink 

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

I will never forget the day I met an openly gay man for the first time. We became friends in five minutes flat. It was instant, the way he turned my head. He stomped and shimmied up the back steps of my house, landed at the kitchen table and with a penetrating laugh and a long, soaking look in my direction, made himself right at home. We spent a lot of time sitting around that table telling our stories and getting a feel for each other’s contours and shadows. He delivered the often outrageous and camp stereotypes and tantrums together with wonderful masculinity, competence and humour. He could bake a cake and drive a forklift. I was impressed.

I didn’t realise or understand the long-term occupation and dominance of my heterosexual consciousness until I noticed its fading, and eventual passing, within this profound relationship. Watching him embody and express his own sexual identity slapped my mind about, blurred my vision. My preconceptions stood stunned and slack-jawed as they received this almighty shaking. Not because I had previously been homophobic—I have never cared for prejudice or discrimination—but because every minute spent with him showed me, taught me, that I too could take charge of and own my sexual identity. It had never before occurred to me that I had that right.

Until I was given the chance to absorb the depth and spaciousness of my new friend’s sexual identity, mine was based upon a body that believed it was an object, a heart that was drowning in shame and a mind that was programmed to operate under the stereotype of feminine weakness. His refusal to adhere to social dogma and childhood programming meant that he did not attribute much at all to my sex or gender. Of course there were slight variations with my fallopian tubes and the like, but as far as he was concerned my weaknesses were personal flaws in character (of which, I assure you, there are few), and my strengths were attributes of my skill and talent (of which there are, of course, a great many!). His self-definition as a gay man and his openness to see me through the filter of person instead of woman showed me that there were possibilities for myself far beyond what I had ever imagined. I was much broader than I had realised myself to be.

An extract from "The Outsider's Inn - Saving Lives with Conscious Living" - Chapter 3 - Sexual Identity.

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