Shitty Poetry Month: Week 2
Some kind of spirallic geometry.
♥ Shitty Poetry Month ♥
*Ｓｈｉｔｔｙ= 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖙 ☆ 𝕳𝖊𝖗𝖊 ☆ 𝕴𝖋 ☆ 𝕿𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖋𝖎𝖊𝖉 ☆ & ☆ 𝕿𝖗𝖚𝖘𝖙 ☆ 𝖄𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖋
Shame is a debilitating condition that most women and AFAB people (and many others) live with everyday. I’m sure you know that shame can not be compartmentalised either. It seeps into one’s work, relationships, and whole way of being in the world. And it seeps into one's creative expression. For those of us who even allow ourselves to be creative.
When our learned thoughts and behaviour tell us we’re innately defective, we will struggle to express ourselves. We subconsciously tell ourselves that if we reveal something of “me” and my humanity, through expression, we’ll reveal ourselves to be garbage people; unworthy, untalented, unintelligent, unlovable. This is the terror dome. Many make a home here.
When we shit on ourselves mentally, we activate our own nervous system. And we prime ourselves for danger (the danger of our own verbal self-abuse) by simply shutting down. Meaning we procrastinate on, or all out avoid, any creative play or therapeutic art exploration.
If you’ve been engaged in Shitty Poetry Month over the last week, you’ve probably had a glimpse of the alternative: staying with your discomfort in a non-judgemental, self-compassionate way. Like you would with an infant learning to draw. There is no good or bad when watching them play. And what the overculture labels “bad” simply doesn’t apply. This is the beginning of practicing openness, curiosity, and experimental play; letting go of all labels.
That’s when we can create a safe-enough space for ourselves (sweet infants that we are!) to put something—anything—down on paper. That’s when words can emerge and with them, possibilities.
That’s when we can begin to watch our thoughts (“I suck at this”) and not buy into them, but just notice them and smile encouragingly anyway. When an infant grows frustrated with her crayons, we don’t believe that something is wrong and thus end the drawing session. We just encourage them to keep going, knowing full well that whatever they do is the purest, most creative, most divine thing ever made. An artefact of their humanity. And that is enough.
THANK YOU THANK YOU so much to everyone who has joined in for Shitty Poetry Month—itself a random, last-minute, and scrappy experiment. I applaud you. <3 Let’s keep going.
☆ SHITTY POETRY MONTH ~ WEEK 2 ☆
Day 8: An abundance…
Day 9: What God is…
Day 10: With curiosity…
Day 11: Being seen…
Day 12: Resistance
Day 13: I commit to…
Day 14: When Mother Nature…
As you go through each day, I invite you to pay attention to your own learned patterns and thought processes. And bring some warm awareness and kind neutrality to them. They are part of an intelligent system created to keep you safe. Maybe you’ve outgrown them, or maybe you haven’t and they still feel important in your current life and our current world. The fun part of a daily creative process like this is, you get to re-teach them about what safe-enough-for-now can look like, tiny step by tiny step. Word by word.
Tarot card of the week ~ The Chariot
Onward, valiant creative explorer! For some, onward means deeper. For others, onward looks like going further. Ideally, this card allows you to recognise that the ways that “deeper” and “further” are inextricably connected and you can’t do one while bypassing the other.
Getting in alignment with your values—your desired qualities enacted through behaviour—and becoming clear on the why of them, is what keeps you on the path of your North Star. It’s what gives you the grit to keep going. The determination and belief of a warrior.
This too is a practice. A practice of making values-based decisions that align with your path and where you know you’re heading. When you run off course, you pause and reassess. When you go slow down to a snail’s pace, same thing. But in being in touch with your bigger sense of meaning, you never doubt the journey itself. Yes, your faith will be tested. Yes, you yourself will become impatient and wonder why you can’t just buy/drink/fuck/wish your ideal life to existence right NOW. That’s the trap though, isn’t it?
The Chariot isn’t moving towards their ideal life—the one the world sells us. They are moving towards their true nature. Something both deeper and further than what our imaginations might allow. Not a straight line, but some kind of spirallic geometry that only Goddess understands.
Xo Jerico
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An abundance…
I see but don’t
yet understand.
There is medicine here
used for thousands of years.
There is food for hours and
shelter for days.
There is string, rope, fishing
lines.
Fibre to tie, tether, catch,
feed and bind.
An abundance offered free
in one thin, old tree.
That I see
and don’t yet understand.
I commit to…
I commit to aliveness.
I commit to depth.
I commit with sharing more
when I “think” there’s
nothing left.
I commit to breathing.
To learning to shapes.
I commit to opening up
to expand the limits
of “safe”.
I commit to love and death and everything
between.
I commit to learning,
to building from a dream.