A One Woman Riot

1 Corinthians 14:34

34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.

For more than the first half of my life, that passage of scripture cast a shadow over me, seeping into my physiology, accompanied by the style of parenting that sets it into the neural pathways, often choking, inhibiting, paralyzing. I’m past 50. I’m still ousting the darkness of its influence though I have long renounced its claim. The women of this epoch are making it easier and easier to oust. But the work is still mine.

When the song “Quiet” morphed into the anthem of the Women’s March, I was drowning in a silent scream of grief and life events way beyond my capacity to actually weather. I was holding my breath. So, I missed the originator of it, MILCK, though I heard groups of women standing, holding hands and singing “I can’t keep quiet.” It pricked my ears.

My sister shoved the video in my face, finally. And so, I can’t sing this song without sobs. So, I sing it a lot. And then some more. I have yet to get through the song without stopping to let things roll out of me. I’ll get there. MILCK found the words I haven’t. Imagine that. I have so many words and I never could keep quiet for long. It’s my biggest, baddest sin, that and boat-rocking, cage-rattling insistence on truthseek. And while it’s not like I have a big secret to tell, it is definitely that I and many other women are still unlearning the silence. Minute by goddamn minute.

Folks, girls are still raised under the strain of the lie of misogyny. Right now, and in the name of Jesus. I imagine he’s pretty pissed about it. It’s cloaked in all kinds of alleged holy. And it’s even dressed up in versions of pretend liberation, the kind that works as long as you speak up only within the prescribed, allowed lines. Dare not announce you will no longer tolerate certain things. Dare not boldly be. Dare not call people on their shit when you’ve had enough. Dare not be anything but a new version of quiet. Fuck that shit. All of it.

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Under Leaves…

Under leaves those lies and shows you thought I’d grow up to blow
on my knees perpetually for your testimony of delusions,
the paradise you claimed and named as real,
all those lies and shows, all their fangs and claws,
chains and saws dissolve around me.

Under leaves I am.

Under leaves these cells sing, sound and bellow something never meant to be silent or still.

Under leaves every fiber of me hums, shouts, and pounds a drum no one can claim.

Under leaves and on their scatterings my feet bare and drinking, gulping up the gobs, sigh.

Under leaves the chunks and corpses sink into dirt, all the lies gone.

Under leaves the bones rumble to life, a resurrection unrelenting.

Leave me here, I’ll dance, I’ll laugh at the scars and all the servitude scenarios.

Fly these arrows to the missionary madness, leave me to the sane and true.

Under leaves you could never be.

Under leaves I am.

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved, 2018

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On Why the Door Remains Closed…

“The humanism bypass. I did it for years. I saw glimpses of someone’s potential, their beautiful soul, their loving heart, and told myself that this was who they truly were, ignoring all the rest. But the rest was what destroyed. The rest is where they lived most of the time. The rest was no illusion- it was them, too. This self-destructive pattern was birthed in two places: (1) my deep desire to see the best in my difficult parents. Not for them, but for me. I needed to believe that there was something kind and caring living inside of them; (2) a misplaced projection from my own self-concept work. I held the belief in my own potential, as a way of overcoming the shame I carried. But I made the mistake of assuming that everyone else was just as eager to find their light. Of course we all have glowing potential. At the core, we are all magnificent beings with profound capacities. But how many of us fully actualize it? At this stage of human development, not so many. The trick is to hold the space for two things at once- a deep belief in everyone’s possibilities, and a deep regard for your own well-being. It’s okay to pray for everyone’s liberation without joining them in prison. Pray from outside the prison walls, while taking exquisite care of yourself. It’s okay- you can’t do the work for them anyway. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries… don’t leave home without them.” Jeff Brown

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved, 2018

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Jonah-Like

“Jonah-like we all have to be spit out of the belly of family and cultural assumptions, a new person, freed and unqualified. But this is one of the purposes we have seen for dark nights of the soul: to prune, to cleanse, and sort out the essential from the illusory. We have to do something with our anger other than suppress it or vent it. There are a thousand possibilities, but each of them has to honor the emotion while giving it form and meaning. Ultimately, you transform your anger through a channeling of your life force, and this liberated vitality gives you your presence as a unique personality.” Thomas Moore [Dark Nights of The Soul]

It’s time to get back to the book I started, finish it and set it free. Onward.

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The Night Sky Singing

we thought the falling stars had all gone
and their shimmer merely a memory,
a shock of brilliant fiery intrusions
when only black seemed the norm
with bits of sparkling shine calling
a strange hope we could not grasp.

but, we were wrong, weren’t we?
for seasons tell a story still
in wings and waiting
that somewhere in the darkest nights
their shine holds fast, collecting,
massing sparks in the silence.

their flames, ‘though gone, unquenched,
await shock of birth way up high
in the night sky singing.
all the stars fallen hold in pause
for a moment to arise our own
erupting…
the artistry of love enduring.

photo by j. ruth kelly, 2018, all rights reserved

 

 

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The Way of Soul

what does water know but the go and rush of fluid being
wending ’round every season and within the tumult and pull
of moonful wooings’ wonder?
nothing tears or rips
asunder her skirt, her gown, for
she is nudity dressed in grace
she is everywhere flow
she is anywhere still, full, knowing
she is sound and silence all.
what will her wet reveal but the way of soul
the tides of love refusing carnage,
choosing resilience in the fallout
and wrecking prisons in a flood
of her endless feasting, blasting
down walls, ripping off the chains,
currents fiercely grasping, carrying
us to freedom?

photo by j. ruth kelly, 2018, all rights reserved

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After

when the blooms fade and the song’s pause stops my heart
and my mind poses questions like, “why and what is the point anymore?”
and I hear “I feel so sorry for you…” echoing and kicking around
in the dark corners labelled “them” and “those”
their daggers finding flesh
when the smiles and sweetest laughter grow bitter haunting the halls
of doors and doors between passages and choices
when the known disappear and the wrinkles whisper mortal fear,
I crumble here and there
while the rivers release the second feast
and the utterances of grief and bankruptcy are dogged
by love
always love
but not necessarily gladness
or even gratitude
just this relentless eternal presence filling
(that same presence from when, way back when and then
a 4 year old singing fullness from within)
filling up all the holes, pockmarks smoothed, lines shining
and nothing undone that has already done the damage
no carnage reversed, no bodies resurrected,
no Lazarus release, no proof,
no Messiah, no keeper and no savior
but love keeps on, keeps the soul singing seeds
in the silence after
…
Play the audio that follows for my own reading of “After” to get a feel
for how it’s meant to flow…

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, 2018, All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

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Blooming Song

all the dying reach
into the unknowable,
a blooming song born

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, 2018, All Rights Reserved

 

 

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All Of This

all the answers washed away
swirling in the undertow,
the work of tides beyond me
circling, engulfing my feet
fully covering every inch
and stitch (undone)
pulled for wily moon’s musing.
and all that remains, the earth
tides, and sighs,
new wrinkles and aches
the ancient quake rumbles
but shakes this form less wildly.

do I have my sea legs, finally?

or am I becoming the woman
white haired
at the shop on the seashore
open-air fabric market
ocean behind me, encroaching
as the bolt of fabric
mocks my bloomers?

or am I the husband hiding?
seemingly afraid?

or the woman standing
reeling there with feet wet,
the shock of life melt
disintegrating in the shoreline
of all that has been
and is still becoming the mystery?

does it matter?
we are, I am
all of this…

 

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, 2018, All Rights Reserved

 

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From The Fall

From here the view: a feast of greens and blues when my eyes lift up
awakened fresh agony dreams, rantings felt deep
down
down the deep a depth of knowing annihilates notions of anything true then
when my heart hoped in feasts, planting fields of my own vast stores
and
and the sky holds a heaven only known by the ground, the grit, mud muck mellowing us
for the plowing real obliteration, a song sowing creation for the just
but
but we first find out who loves beauty, who holds truth when backs hit walls
when you’re facing a courtroom full of lies, you find your real kin
in
in the aftermath, a wreckage sift reveals the ones who were there all along
singing your song in the night and wiping tears from the fall, unafraid.

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, 2018, All Rights Reserved

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