Dream

When did I forget how to dream?
I used to fill the void with
Rich tapestries
Unfurling landscapes beneath
Tempered and trusted wings.

I used to wake exhilarated
From the adventurous heart
That would paint
Love songs of splendor and
Panoramas of unnamed hue.

I was the hero,
The hopeful,
The eager and brave.
I was the dreamer who dreamed
Only of better days.

So, when was it
That my heart stopped singing,
That I forgot the feel
Of the dreamer’s brush?
I wake only aching, hollow,
Robotic, and stale.

I sleep only disappearing,
For some hours before
Morning’s pale blush.
And the lack of dream
A whispered fading memory
From a time that felt more alive.

Where did my heart
Disappear to?
Can I grow its ember
From spark to glow once more?
Can I remember
To unleash my wings
When I find the light
Burning in my core?

It’s so quiet here,
So lonely,
So empty are the dreamer’s walls.
Can I find my way back
To tapestry and painted thought,
To a world that wonders
At its own making?

I endeavor to find the world
Within again.
I will find a way to
Set my heart loose again,
To feel the wind upon my face,
The liquid moonlight,
The lulled and lapping pools,
The winding tower whipped
In Cloud,
As my wings lift me upon
The languid skies
I remember.
I come alive.

Heart, sing your songs.
Fly upon wings sheathed in hope.
Teach me how to remember
In my waking hours
The lilting jostle of melody
Painted into flower,
Born in a dreamer’s dreams.

-Angel Marie Russell

Act

The news gave me a gaddam meltdown this morning. Everything just sucks so much and being autistic in America is terrifying to me in ways I struggle to explain. Covid has me afraid for my life. Trump has me afraid for my liberty. I said to my friend this morning who suggested that I think of rainbows instead. And I said, “we are in a dystopian novel there are no rainbows…maybe I am the rainbow.”

We need the light in our hearts to shine so bright it blinds the hatred and vitriol out there. We need to have compassion for eachother and not lose sight of our humanity and why it is worth fighting for. We need to be strong and resilient. We need to self care. We need to see the us in them and realize we are divided by programming. We are all in this together but this too feels so far down a path of madness I struggle to know how we find our way back.

Love seems to be the only answer I can find. I know love is stronger than fear. I know love can be strong and defend the innocent. Rhetoric and the standard political fight is not enough against what our country now faces. I’m just so scared and have never been this afraid in an election and sadly a discloser of vulnerability would have half of our country call me weak when in truth being authentic is hard and brave.

Please don’t let the world have you forget love, empathy, kindness, sincerity, compassion, acts of service, solidarity, and unity. Let us protect the innocent, the weak, the disabled, the impoverished. Let us come together like never before and remind people what America really is about. Bring us your impoverished masses. Rally against evil and those that would perpetrate pain. Let us remember our hearts and build a World of compassion. We need to act. We need to vote. We need to remember love above all things.

“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”

• Rumi

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

– George Orwell

“The only way humankind can withstand the threat of nuclear wars and environmental disasters is to maintain a ‘vibrant democracy’ where ‘informed citizens are fully engaged in deliberation, policy formation, and direct action.’

• Noam Chomsky

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

• Elie Wiesel

Dim

I buried my shine
Lest it be devoured.
I locked it in a box.
I threw away the key.

I gutted my own heart
Lest it feed wolves.
I feasted on my own flesh
Before they that would,
Did.

I painted my soul black
To hide amongst the darkness
That threatened my shine
While not realizing,
I had swallowed the sun
And I was burning inside.

Smoke filled my lungs.
Embers rose in my eyes.
My bones ached from fire
Flaming in each cell.

I made myself a bomb
To keep myself safe.
I made myself volcanic
Spewing ash and molten flesh.

I made myself a vortex
To contain the impossible.
I cracked, I crumbled,
I blew.

A million raging birds burst
In panic stricken flight
Upon wings of flame
Blinding every recess of the night.

My soul broke open.
My heart erupted solar flare.
My eyes like lasers
Burnt through the ash filled air.

And I bared my broken chest open
Blinded too, by my own light.
I was a force playing small.
I was a Phoenix forgotten.

A star cannot help but burn.
A storm cannot contain its fury.
A volcano cannot remain capped.
Nor can a soul be forever trapped.

Even by your own will
That which was made to,
Will find a way to shine.
It is that very fire
That keeps you alive.

-Angel Marie Russell

Everyday a Battle

May 3 2017

Everyday
Every
Day
Here
Can be a battle
For some and for me
A war no one else
Knows is waged.

And when stuttering for words,
Trapped in a mouth
Repeatedly shut by rage,
Anger ignites again in the other
And again, more of the same.
“Answer me!”
“What are you stupid?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“You just have off energy.”
“You obviously need to
Integrate your shadow.”
“You create your own reality.”

My pause annoys others
My hesitance to speak
My mutism
Taken as malice,
Stupidity, insanity
Or that I’m weak,
Damaged, doing it wrong,
Not trying
Hard
Enough,
Certainly not tough
Enough.
Certainly not
Enough.

Too many of my days
I lay weeping
Begging for the words to speak
To tell them all how, truly
I find no solace
In sleep.

How,
I find no peace in a rainbow
For my bones are soaked, nay
Drowned many times
In a deluge that never seemed to end.
So, to me, a rainbow speaks
Of another coming storm,
That will rage, and wash quickly away.
Just like bruises.
Just like decay.
There is no hope in tomorrow
When trapped by yesterday.

“Let it go.”
Sure, it’s easy.
I can see
How you’d think that could be.
But there is this thing in our brains
That when bludgeoned
With repeated vicious attacks,
When spat at,
When assaulted,
When picked up by hair,
When screamed at,
Well, it cracks.

And it never forms
Back the way it came.
Just like the memories
That steadfastly refuse
To go away,
Penetrated bone deep
Where the deepest scars lay
Ready, waiting, and available
To permanently replay.

So, they say, there’s hope
In tomorrow
And admonish me
For not seeing it that way
Because the pain
The pain
The
Pain.
Surely I’m willing it to
But it just won’t let me away.

And I bury my face in hands.
I hide my tears for their sake.
I wish for it,
I lament in prayer,
Supplicant,
“Goddess please
Take it away!
Relent!”

Yet still it is present
It is hounding.
It persists.
The knocking of the door
That opens to tragedy.
To memory,
To scars,
That nobody can see but me.

And the crack is on the inside
And the split it goes so deep
No one sees what I carry truly.
No one sees
Amidst the pain
The truth of me.
The shadow walker
The love stalker
The one never ever
Really giving in.

Only sometimes defeated,
Shell shocked,
Triggered,
Sick, down for the count
With one minute left on the clock.
With one more breath before
I fall

I finally, exhausted, relent to sleep
Where the memories
Chase, entangle,
Enrapture and suffocate
And wake me.

Nay, there is no solace in sleep.
Not this night.
Not for me.
And yet despite that
I’m a fighter.
And a fighter never truly quits.

And if love has taught me
Anything
It is this,
Love loves survivors
Fighters, even the weak,
Love knows the struggle
For which so many of us,
I speak.

And love knows none of it means
We are broken and empty things.
There’s beauty in our breakage
There’s a way to peace
Even with every broken piece
There’s a way to mend it
With patience, love, and care.
And if you know this struggle
My sister, brother
Auntie or uncle,
You’re not alone.
And I see the bravery
In every breath you take.
And the courage
Every time you wake.
And I see you warrior;
Survivor.
I see above all,
Your strength.

-Angel Marie Russell

I Was Angry

I was angry in a world
That had no place
For such things.

No place was safe
For a girl on fire.

I was angry in a world
That had no place
For such things.

No soft breath could arrest
The feelings that transpired

Rage in my fists
Fury on my lips
My heart burned holes
Through my chest
And there’s nothing left

I burned up in a world
That had no place
For a girl like me

But a flame can rise
From the smallest ember
And so will I
Love remembered

Melancholy

When I lost sight of hope
I turned to the void.
It knows the way of grief,
Of lament, and of dark truths.

What it lacks is talent or
A delicate muse;
No whispery cloud
Over mountain
Or rainbow overpass.

Its course is hollow
a crevasse, desolate, and cold;
Its embrace with no hold,
Its gaze with no stare.

It devours and feeds
On pity and mire.
It empties what feeling
May have before transpired.

In that it’s gift,
Absent of heart matters,
Absent of wonder,
Abysmal dark matter.

It feeds on what is left
After the storm.
It glistens ready like the blade
Of a Valkyrie winged bearer.

To lift you aloft past needs
Or desire,
To plummet you down into
Into the mouth agape.

Ready it fed.
Emptied from loss,
I had no strength.
So, I bade it consume.

“Take this pain.
Do what you will,
This weight is too heavy,
I nolonger want to feel.”

In limbo I laid
A lost ghost within
My own frame.
I lost love.
I lost hope.
I lost spark.
I forgot fire.

So, how is it now
I stand pillared
In soft light?
How is it now
That I remembered
To fight?

In that long lasting grasp,
Hope somehow reached me.
It too weakened, stretched thin
From the seeking.

A tether, a tendril,
Not a jolt but a whisper,
“Rise from this folly,
Remember your power.”

Hope gently held me,
Begged me to remember,
There is sun after moon.
There is calm after storm.
There is strength after weakness.
There is rose to the thorn.

It lulled me and told me,
With my fists over my ears,
“Come this way. Listen,
Come over here,
My daughter, griefstricken,
There is healing in tears.”

And the flood filled me,
The dam overflowed.
All that I hid away
Was abruptly exposed.

I met sorrow.
I met anger.
I met fury and force.
I remembered the power
In the tender care
Of my own wounded heart.

And like an injured bird
I nursed her back,
Baby stepped through the pain,
Until my steps became quicker,
Until my feet stood firmer
Rooted in purpose.

I remembered myself.
I held grief and we wept.
I held love and she filled me.
I held onto hope
With all I had left.

Steadfast she reminded me
In the try again.
Without ceasing,
She emboldened me
Feel, Heal, and anew begin.

So, I turned from the void.
I limped back towards the light,
Though harrowed, emptied,
and worse for wear,
Alive, alight, and awakened
I am here.

-Angel Marie Russell

Grow

I have found that in gardening, one must have a gentle spirit and patience to let things grow as they will. If one rushes, pushes, demands, or over nurtures, the plants will react. They will show you in browning, sickness, and death. If it is one’s intention to help them to flourish one must adhere to this knowledge and over time, if it isn’t present in the begining, a wondrous thing happens within one’s own heart.If the person is receptive to the teaching, gardening allows our hearts to find the patience within ourselves. If we tend to the plants in the way they gently call for, it is truly we that bloom. It is they that guide us how to grow. It is they that teach us the wisdom of patience and humbleness.Of course not all absorb this wisdom. In the hurried industry of landscaping time is money. And human demands often over encompass the needs of the plants. For me, it was in those still mornings in the garden beds, fog still resting on dewy meadow, that I gleaned this secret spark. It was over years of tending, bending, and reaching, that my spirit softened. It is in gardening that I found the timid courage to heal my own heart from years of abuse, neglect, and PTSD. It was in nurturing these delicate spirits that I found the roadmap to nurture my own.Gardening requires a lot of recalibration. It desires that we find the right mix of nutrient, soil, water, and sun. If we do not the plant will falter and it will surely let us know of its displeasure. And then we must search for the missing key to its health. We must think on what is off, what is it here that we have overlooked? And very often it is that very same lesson that we ourselves need.Plants my friends, are indeed medicine. And we don’t even need to ingest, harvest, or take from them to learn it. We must only sit with them for a time. They are teachers, companions, and friends that bring us both beauty, grandeur, and the softness of petal and morning dew. If only we had the space to notice. If only we had the patience to sit with them and learn. As they falter we do. As they grow we do. Both in the micro and the macro, our small potted windowsill companion to the great forests we are clear cutting. There is wisdom. If only we could all learn to grow.❤🙏Angel

Shining

You make me want to be vulnerable
To believe in wings made of hope
That will carry me aloft
At no risk

Though I know to dare could be
A threat for my safety never had any nets
And my spirit grew accustomed to fire
And to ash

But I too learned the mystery
Of the rise after the death
And that no end comes without a start
And perhaps

I might brave the break for the lift
Because I’ve seen enough of life after death
And to see the other side of all that
A worthy risk

This world knows of love too after all
There is no light without darkness enshrouded
May this light shine without burning and mend
All that is hurting

-Angel Marie Russell

Those With Ears, Let Them Hear

What I have learned of Spirit and what I think we intrinsically miss is that we do not need to idolize anyone, not teachers, not priests, not popes, nor any human being for we are all equal. Our place in space time is the only separation from “us” and “them.” To idolize another human is to miss the point that Spirit consistently makes. When we come into contact with someone who is awake to Spirit, we have used the terms, enlightened, “woke,” gifted, touched, Shaman, Rabbi, healer, etc, as names to define these categorically different folks. And what they all have in common is a deep willingness to meet Spirit, humbled to receive, and to be filled up by what we merely need to seek within ourselves. These people are, after all, human. This is my belief and one that Christianity has completely misunderstood. Jesus, in my understanding was merely an enlightened human, just as Buddha before him. And whether in one life time or many, these types of folks had the audacious willingness to go underworld deep and stand in the face of the black hole depths of suffering. They did not turn from suffering, but rather towards it in kindness and they found love there.

When you find love in the darkness you can meet it in another. You do not reject the other. You do not condemn, judge, withdraw, reject, repel, or attack the other because you see the yourself in the other. You have stood through the test of facing fear to meet all of who you are. You have looked at the self and found the light hidden amongst all that ails. And when a person has found that ember, that holy internal grail, the grain of sand that shines more than all the rest, the flame awakens. The awakening occurs. Our senses, mind, and bodies align in harmony. We see that all is one, and one is all, and we are the embodiment ourselves of love because it is within us all.

I know nothing of this world except that I have touched the spirits edges. I have held in hand, the intangible. I have met myself in the darkness and stood ready flame in hand, sword in heart, wings unfurled, ready and waiting. It was as if the wind came alive. The world was seen through clearer eyes than ever before and the intangible and the present coalesced for what felt like eons, but in reality could have been mere seconds. As time has gone on I have started to lose sense of that reality, but it awoke in me the knowledge that fear is not a liar, but a messenger full of information about healing and love. It is truly astounding when we meet fear with love. Love disarms those ready and waiting for cruelty. And in our world cruelty has become the prerequisite response. To not approach with rancor buried in civility with equal subcutis hostility and to instead extend an olive branch of love disarms fear. And in that moment the true nature of love is revealed and for but a moment we see that love is real and far greater than we ever could have imagined. I think because we lack authority over our senses, emotions, knowledge of self and the lack thereof, we return to the lack of belief and we judge what we perceive to be a mistruth in the other. We misinterpret compassion for control. We disbelieve that this singular truth of compassion is alive and living in the present moment between two hearts. Noble fear stands ready to attack the intruder disguised as love and we retreat or attack that which shines instead of adding our flame to the tower of light. And when we do believe that a person truly does contain this level of compassion, we idolize them. We put them on a pedestal believing they hold truths and secrets that we do not contain. They may have knowledge that we have not been taught yet, true. They may have journeyed down paths we have yet to embark upon. They may be in a different place than we in the present moment, but it is this exact multifaceted reality that we live in and it does not mean that we cannot also awaken to the compassion stored and alive within us.

Power does not like to be disarmed. Societal structures that exist in a prism of powerful control over people siphon energy from those under their power. They above all have the most to lose if hearts are disarmed and more people see the need to rise in love to meet the other. When we know love from this place, we see that power is a lie and no single human, animal, plant, or insect is above or more important than the other. When we see the world from this perspective we awaken to compassion as a weapon against power. And we see power retaliate with control. Through that control they teach us about love through the lens of manipulation. The nature of this paradigm is abusive, but it does seem to be the nature of the world as it has been for millennia. The Buddha said, “The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized the nature of the world.” People who see the world as it is with an understanding of love realize that in order to help others truly heal, they must meet them where they are and not participate in perpetuating the abusive paradigm. To participate in abuse means to force, coerce, manipulate, or control the narrative of the other; to judge the other. When we act in this way we mistakenly see this as help. We think we are helping the other without seeing that our intent lies in coercing the other to see as we see in order to “save” them. Coercion is not love. Jesus said of those in power, claiming false knowledge of spirit and love, “…you are like a dog sleeping in a manger. The dog does not eat, nor does it let the cattle eat. You have stolen the keys to the temple and locked and barred the door. You have not entered yourselves, nor have you permitted others who wish to enter to do so. Instead you have become as dishonest merchants, selling that which does not belong to you and over which you have no power. Only from the truth I tell you that dishonest buyers and merchants will not attain the place of the Spirit.”

True healers, teachers, and wisdom keepers point us in the direction to ourselves. Their information should not mean that we see them as holy. Their information is coming from the same source. It is Source, Universe, God, Goddess, The Gods, that of many names, the nameless, that teaches through us and could be called Love. We seek compassion. We seek relief from suffering. We seek and do not find and a chasm opens within us. The chasm rifts a disconnection from body, heart, and spirit. The chasm blinds us to truth, and we see with eyes that do not see, and we hear with ears that do not hear. Jesus said, “those with ears, let them hear.” Those are the hearts that stand ready broken on the precipice of despair, on the edge of chasm and lift, they that have grown battle hardened but ready for love. It is they that are disarmed by compassion and they that add flame to tower of light. It is they that awaken and teach, lead, and heal. Their healing does not come from themselves. Our idol worship of them keeps us from ourselves and our truth and the wisdom that we too contain. I believe that Jesus told us that he was the way in the same way Buddha laid the path. They have found compassion to be the reason for all and love to be the answer to eternal life, because in that place fear is absent and love can take hold. Love is the answer to the heart that seeks and the answer is inside you.

When we seek from a place of desperation, fear, control, or pain, we open the chasm wider, but we also may not learn if we do not seek in this way. To seek in this way teaches us about not seeking in this way. To learn is to grow, and to grow is to lift above the chasm. Buddha said, “Be a lamp unto yourself. Work out your liberation with diligence.” To find love within the underworld is to find liberation. To find love through suffering is to find liberation of suffering. To find love past fear is to awaken to heaven and life eternal. There is no suffering past fear. Buddha said, “Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.” To not have suffered enough means that one does not understand the plight of the other. Their privilege is a blindness. They continue their abuse and control because they do not see that it is not possible for the other to rise so easily when held back by base needs not being met. Their privilege blinds them to the pain of those unlike them. They are suffering blindness and we can have compassion for their lack of sight. When we meet their ignorance with compassion it disarms them. When people are disarmed they can see with eyes that see. Love heals them and the world by awakening compassion. And drop by drop that compassion leads them to peace within themselves. We seek outside of ourselves to our own folly.

Once this place is found, that light within, one set upon a path to self discovery and will find that there is always more to discover about the nature of love. Those new to the journey will take the ecstasy of awakening to this love to mean they must seek to teach. They must help others still blinded by suffering. They do not sit with themselves for long enough to see that to teach too early. They are still desperate, yet this time to heal other hearts as their hearts have been healed. The desire can then again become a desperate attempt to seek to coerce, control, or manipulate the other into believing that their way is the only way. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” – The Buddha. I believe that Jesus spoke to teach us that his path was the path to enlightenment, not that if we don’t follow the rules we go to hell, but rather that to not seek an end to suffering allows it to continue, within us and without us. I believe that those in power sought to control and retain power and manipulated his teachings. I believe that he came to show us the path leading to ourselves. We mistakenly turned him into the only son of God, when he himself said we are all children of God. We are all equal in spirit. There is no doctrine that is the only doctrine save for compassion is the key. Compassion includes boundaries and is not asking the other to sacrifice who they are to meet spirit because spirit is already there inside of us waiting to be rooted out and discovered.

Teachers, healers, wayshowers, they only point in a direction that we must be willing to walk on our own. We must take the steps, one by one to the mystery of ourselves and we must meet ourselves there in love. Once we discover how to love all that we are, we are no longer afraid of all the other carries. We are no longer afraid of love. We also see that the world is a dangerous place for those awake to spirit, but there is great strength in love. There is honor in fighting for love. There is the possibility that speaking up about the nature of love puts one in danger to the effects of the threat to the loss of power. And love disarms power, so those in power actively seek to destroy it’s voice. Look how far reaching, powerful, and lasting is the voice of those who spoke the truth of love. See how their lives were cut short, silenced, discredited, and murdered were they that spoke truth. And see the bravery it takes to stand in the face of all that power and pain, but do not idolize these people as wholly different than the self. We are all capable, maybe not in this lifetime, but the path is there laid out within us. Teachers are wayshowers, not Gods.

We must merely seek to understand love to end suffering.

Seek to reach past fear.

Strive to love all the places that ache within us.

See that our worth does not come from another.

Open our hearts, eyes, and ears.

Listen to understand.

Hold space without seeking to change.

Breathe, ground, and release.

Honor another person’s no. Honor your own.

Honor anger to lead you to act towards love.

Recognize when to say, “I’m sorry.”

Take steps to mend what needs mending.

Know when to move on.

Go easy on yourself.

Release.

Find safety in the present.

Allow fear to teach you, not guide you.

Breathe.

Seek to understand nature.

Learn your limits. Respect them in self and others.

Move.

Sit in silence.

Ask for help.

Accept help.

Love thyself. Forgive thyself.

Allow your pace.

Love.

-Angel Marie Russell

Forefooted

~Forefooted~

Do not put faith in the
Narratives of the past
Being the fortune tellers,
To your fate.

Do not believe the whispers
Of what ails you
And pulls you further away
From yourself.

Do not resign to the
Pitfalls and valleys
Of the past,
Marking the road
That is yet to be plowed.

You are not destined to follow
What lay in the rear view.
You are not fated upon what
Has been strewn before.

These are merely markings
On the path traversed.
They are temporary;
Way showers without maps.

They are stones on a hill
Valleys behind the ridge
Forks in roads and
Oghams carved in tree.

You dear heart are lead by
Well worn shoes
And feet that step
With ferocity,
And hopeful planted lands
From leaps.

Your past does not define you
Not the darkest of hours,
Nor the loneliest of sorrows.

Our landscape merely shows us
Points along the way,
Towards lessons,
Of birth, and decay,
Of burn and ash,
Of spark and flame,
Of wind and blaze, and you
Are all of these things.

Free to dream
Upon the grace of tomorrow,
The soothing balm
Upon the meadow’s breeze,
And the dawn on the horizon
Bringing hope of better things.
To live, to learn, to grow,
And to be.

-Angel Marie Russell
#poem #poet

Photo by Angel Marie Russell