Do It Now

When you would grab me down there
and grasp and stare, boring into windows here
I would scream until I wouldn’t scream
for fear of implicating not just me, but you

And the implications of one who fought hard
to reclaim her windows, the deep pools you
raped for spoils you could never claim
despite your name, despite your preeminence
screams for justice here, screams my names:

Ruth, which rhymes with truth, and Jez,
perhaps the sweetest treasure,
the name I grew in my depths,
the ones your eyes sought to plunder.

But I never let you reach the me you
could never be, never produce
for all your raping of the tRuth,
and plowing sweet songs for sooth,

but not saying the violence your nature
exacted on my silence, my song wrenched
from my throat by your spinnery,
a bamboozlery, wickedry cinching,

clenching the nothing of your reach.
I seethe here, a love fiercely seeking,
finding voice you took. the song my soul
never forsook sings here, sings here, sings here

And yours I will never be for fear,
or for the claim so dear you could never be.
Open up your own eyes, set yourself free.
I see our history and love,
only love dares to free you, too, whole, see?

Dear ones, stop wrecking thru windows,
the little ones, innocent and defenseless
against ravages only you can satisfy
when you bow the knee to love…do it now.

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

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Earth Begging

In the woods somewhere
sweet swaying songs bear witness
to wounds deep, the worst sort
of gutting, how large the teeth,
and how far I’d seeped and seeped
and seeped completely down in seed
and in a gone-ing, a yawning crypt
held and holding eruptions,
creations’ secret reddest colors
for deeply hewn stutters fluttering
across a canvas as yet unknown
‘til my heart knew
and out I flew into one,
and one and one, (yet still One)
and yet still not knowing the known
and the hiding
from a creature lunging,
a bite’s longest reach
still bleeding,
but an ancient design called,
a bridge eternal healing,
deepest love promising,
then subsiding
‘til the singing resurrection,
a transformation from tomb
to tower to long desperate hours
within hours and hours blending
miracles wending, sending
every inch of me calling,
falling up and all over every spec,
dot, bindu, wreck not wrecking
as the beckoning out
of richest colors wrought whole
and healing a song
to raise the dead,
to know the unknowing
into love flowing
rivers, a heaven on earth begging…

photo/expression by j. ruth kelly, 2017, 2025, all rights reserved

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Wander Here

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

Wonder, dear, wander here
where will and mystery meld
a history awaiting your discovery.

Beckon transformation’s song,
fiery orange paired
with faerie floral,
and your soul will know,
grow the you held by
your tenderest self,
the one back in time still
holding sway with music,
twirling grace and heart open
to a Creator your path
eventually stripped away.

Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack
and take your hand there in mid-air
as hope retakes your truth,
the deepest knowing of love
bestowing life to all and healing
to those who weep the call.

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Dance

A rhythm hums and jives
beneath the fear,
the rage, the tears, desires,
grief, multiple stress fires,
under all the dross a drumbeat
defies loss, gains,
and suggestions of inadequacy.

But first: feel, wail, stomp,
tell the story yet another time,
grind your teeth, your hips,
your angst and every fucking fit.

Don’t stop there, let your face display
the rage, the sorrow,
the joy, the lip-curling bliss
and the sweetest ecstasies.

Let it all roll through,
tips of toes to top of head
and everything, everywhere
in-between… roll up, roll down
a spine afire, not finished
with living, not done giving, filling,
jumping, gyrating this being human.

Don’t let disaster freeze your body
for fear of losing sight
of the decimated, losing the fight
for a kinder humanity ’cause grief and rage
clamor loudest.

Run to the pleasure,
the places sweet and tender,
and howl ‘til animal you births
a truer you, resilient, feet moving,
hips swaying, shimmying flow,
plotting overthrows of fear, greed,
and oppression by a love refusing defeat

‘Cause your feet, yes, yours,
mine, theirs, crave the sweetest trance
dance delighting, satisfying, magnifying,
electrifying every fiber of our being one,
every last one of us…

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future?” Herman Hesse

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These Feasts

Wondering when we’ll wring and wrest ourselves together a tautening melody,
what new song will grow between us, through us, as us,
until the next and the next ‘til we’re writhing, not in agony,
no, not that, no more of that.

Just the ecstasy, the face to faceness, flesh to flesh with
zero wonderings, all our doubtings obliterated in waves
crashing through the miles once between us, waves
encircling, encompassing, entwining a we free, open, complete.

Until then, these feasts will have to do.

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The Silver Cup

Listening to America’s “Lonely People”, I remember hearing this song when we would sneak radio time in my sisters’ room. “The world”, forbidden and made sweeter by the alleged taboo of wicked rock music, felt so far away.

I imagine looking back over my life and finding many forbiddens bidding me come out and play.  Stray and sneak away outside the gate. Songs and goings on whispered outside my world, bidding me run fast from the realm of religious zombies and their kool aid.

How appropriate the line: Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup. Even fundies can be saved, y’all.

I eventually ran. I’m so glad I ran.

Today, sitting with the melody and the impression, it strikes me how life/humanity/freedom pulled at me even then, a sort of promise of days to come. Certainly, the times have included some loneliness. But the final impression filtering into my awareness as I see myself, ear up against the little radio, grinning while “Lonely People” greets me on this side of things and leaves me, not lonely, but deep in my sense of inclusion. I feel myself as a voice among millions, crying out for peace.

I ache daily. Hostages, cobalt mines, “terrorists” and refugee camps in danger as I brew one steaming cup in my world of immense wealth however financially limited. I hate, I loathe the unfairness. The inequity. There is no good reason for what has been happening in Palestine for decades. Not one, not a single good reason.

And truly, Zionism triggers my fundie warning system. My newsfeed is full of Zionism’s fallout, bodies torn. So, I run to music, to birds, to working with my hands. There’s no way to engage that belief system, to pry it open and let the light in, set minds free. And yet, I wish. I know well the truth that no one can know until, well, until they know. And as a fundie, no amount of shame or ranting would’ve brought me out of that darkness. Only love, love and life breaking me open.

So, enough with fundies, and please know that I know that not all Zionists feel the same way about things unfolding in Palestine. People are complicated, but what’s happening to Palestine is quite straightforward: genocide. The purpose of the trigger, the purpose I make of it, is one of reaching out to life as I am now. Today. I’m not “chosen” anymore. The sea of humanity may well engulf me, wipe me from all memory eventually. And that is a beautiful thing, to be in the flow of being human amongst humans, flowing towards the next expression of love.

And as I flow, some things remain. I still pray. I pray to the love that was, is and is yet to be. I pray to the love within me, the love within every soul. Let our longings grow, our clamoring souls shout us all towards deeper truths and a love that refuses oppression of any and every person on our planet. May our *chosen* values embrace everyone, and our holiest lands spread far and around and through, to our precious one and only earth.

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All the Light

We cannot see. Anthony Doerr’s six potent words float up to the surface when pondering expression here. What do you say on a blog/website with an activity level of almost nil these days? Where to begin and who will even read/listen?

2023 consisted of a number of challenges, not the least of which was the work on my Etsy shop. Besides that, being present for landmark, wonderful moments with my children while mourning the loss of one of our tribe, mentioned earlier in 2023, blurs behind me. Everything feels out of focus.

So much muddied over, trampled in the dust of racism, ethnic annihilation and corruption. Is there light to be seen? Whatever meaning some may have taken from the book/movie, All the Light We Cannot See, I can point to human resilience as an echo in the back of my mind. It lingers. And yet all the light we can see feels eclipsed by genocide and by the attack on 10/7/23 that triggered a landslide of public outcry. All over the world. First the protest and anguish of the initial carnage, and then the inevitable spotlight on Gaza, on Palestinians. How could we not see what we’ve known unfolds for Gazans decade after decade? And then the explosion of gaslighting. It turns out some folks willfully refuse the complexity possible in people’s perceptions of events. I can condemn the slaughter of 10/7 while simultaneously protesting the ongoing slaughter of innocent civilians while holding my breath for the release of hostages on both sides. Most especially, yes, I’m going there, those hostages held by Israel long before 10/7. There is no innocence in Israel’s history as far as I can see. None in the history here in the United States. Perhaps none anywhere.

I had quit yelling about Palestine somewhere between the end of Obama’s presidency and the onslaught of tsunamic shifts in my personal world. It wasn’t a lack of concern, but all my passion focused on struggles for one of my children’s well-being, and at times it felt, their very life. A pandemic tosses around in the mix of memories, isolation, fears. The 2nd Pfizer jab laid me flat for 18 months and here I emerge into a world I barely recognize.

The madness roiling across the global landscape dares me to cherish what I can see, what I experience as sanity and coherence. Meaning. My daughter is expecting her first child…new life gestating, kicking around in the womb of a beautiful person. I can’t type those words without tears, our wonderful good fortune both beautiful and a direct contrast to so much loss, and all while highlighting how precious it all is. The whole world should fare as well as my children and my children’s children. Everyone deserves peace, autonomy, wellness, shelter, freedom from the greed and unchecked power of the corrupt. But not everyone finds such. I can hold these truths simultaneously. But they feel especially heavy today.

Meaning morphs itself, gestating vision, birthing mission. What am I about now? Love is still the only point, isn’t it? It is, but why can’t love feed the hungry, end wars. Perhaps the question is, why do we allow greed and corruption to blockade the works of love, humanitarian relief? Why are all the wrong people holding all the power and what in love’s name can we do about it?

Maybe all we can do consists of the stuff we can’t yet see. I look at my youngest’s earrings adorning both ears. They’re gorgeous understated simplicity. Gold. I wore them in my 20s, before the life and light of one Evan. Suicidal ideation held a lot of sway back then for me. So many wounds to heal and denial to shed and Jesus dogged my every footfall, stalking my sanity. I had no clue what my future held and how much meaning it would infuse into my life and how much darkness it would dispel even as far back into my history as my 20s. My nonbinary youngest who graced our world the same week of 9/11 stands a beautiful 6 feet 3 inches above all I see. I look at those earrings these days and, call me crazy, but it feels like redemption to know they went from a fundie’s failing moments to the ears of a person whose childhood looked nothing like mine. Not that they didn’t struggle (!). But…their life, their siblings’ lives, the life gestating…light. They were there back when I wanted to die. They weren’t physically there, but they. were. there. The light I had yet to see.

I’m finding my mission to be one of reclaiming faith. Faith, not in a religion’s deity, but in how love can shape a life and how persistence and commitment carry that meaning, love meaning, forward into new eras. It’s not that I lost my faith as much as my life changed so dramatically, I’ve been disoriented, shocked, groping about in, yes, darkness, trying to find what remains. Love remains though it doesn’t always look or feel like it. Everything about being/doing/gestating love was immediate and real when my kids all lived under my roof, relying on me as mama. And while I worked hard to not let that be my only outlet and focus, it held so much of me. When the nest empties, everything feels foreign. Who is this person now? Toss in some apocalyptic goings on, challenging times and it’s easy to feel lost. So many struggles are boiling over all over the world. Masks ripped off some powerful faces, revealing gross darkness. A nation’s decline, a country’s struggles, our standing in the world literally affects us, each one. And ours isn’t the only nation wobbling, is it? I would not have predicted one of the most despairing situations I would contend with in my 50s would be the state of our nation and what we’re supporting with our tax dollars. But here I am and here we are stumbling around, grasping at what feels like endless darkness.

Democracy is literally hanging in the balance here in the U.S. and Biden’s total silence on the value of Gazan life nuked my respect for his accomplishments. I may have to vote for him regardless. I would rather stand in front of him and scream at him, literally scream. How could you abandon all that matters when you’re the president following on the heels of Trump and all his hellions? How could you be such a grotesque caricature of integrity at this point in the game? How could you be so obvious in your racism? How can you live with these war crimes? WHERE IS YOUR LIGHT?

Just to persist requires a faith not easily held these days. Gazans prove the fact that to exist, just to exist, is a rebellion of love itself in the face of so much devastation, corruption and betrayal. Just as a people whose lives hung by a thread, crammed into railcars heading for the deepest darkness, were breathing all our value with each breath, a revolt against the coming loss, much hangs in the balance now. We owe it to them to stop the madness growing more dark each day in the Middle East. The only way most of us can do that is to keep screaming, keep protesting, keep calling it what it is.

We owe it to the lives to come and to the light they’ll be.

J. Ruth Kelly, 2024, All Rights Reserved (Digital Media)

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Cuppa Life…

When snow falls even just a wee bit, softness following
on the howling slams of wind and thunder slapping awake
a peaceful slumber, you sit quietly in the half light
sighing hours later, gulping in the stillness
as it falls outside the window of your reverie.

The words above reflect on the night before last when winds and thunder snarled my sleeping in a surreal rush of clamoring. The noise was akin to dreams and transformations, the kind that sweep you up out of nowhere in a whirlwind of change and awareness. Surreal. Magical. Frightening and exhilarating at the same time. The storm windows on my bedroom windows clanged loudly, evoking visions of trees uprooted, hurling themselves at the night.

So, awakening to snowfall, the gentle quiet of it all was a wonderful contrast and I felt deserved reflection.

Not that it’s about the new year, but I’ve resolved to more posting here in order to participate more in my power to create, however small. One of the challenges of disability, and particularly of the MECFS variety, is that of escaping the sense of feeling imprisoned, held captive by the power of the illness itself and this is especially true as it has real power to do that very thing, to imprison. And so, we veterans of such imprisonment get to learn the sort of freedom that defies chains and bars. It’s not a lesson I’d wish on most folks. But it is what life has dished out to some of us and my past attempts to pretend it might all go away have faded into an awareness that the only way out is through and that sort of pretending becomes a self rejection. I refuse such.

So, here’s to deeper acceptance and finding ways to own and participate in one’s power, bit by bit.

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In A Warming Sun…

I look out the window as it whispers quiet melodies of all the goings on going on without me. And yet I wonder whether goings on go on without me or if maybe we’re all connected. And if we’re all connected, are not the goings on of others also my own? If only I could know the quickened pulse of one dancing fit and free and not the rapid race of a heart working overtime for a body whose health declines more than sometimes, sometimes often without provocation.

In my own way, I do feel connected despite the isolation MECFS insists. I hear the city sounds outside my door, and sense a world full of doing. My heart tells me we are one, and in this moment I feel full. And while I feel full, I also feel the many things beyond my reach. Were I to grasp them, therein would a fullness peak, eventually waning. But I would remain.

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

What I come to in my non-goings on of a life is that we all must land in the same place. We all face the inner world, an immovable yet flowing eternity. And that same world goes with us whether we are fit or frail and that same world remains when the noise and clamor fades.

I long for more doing and going and yet the fullness of the moment rewards me just the same. I am grateful to be here witnessing the play and tussle suggesting endless horizons. I look out the window knowing their promise.

They only guarantee experience.

Horizons don’t make us more free or more present. They simply pose a chance for more ways to grow and love in a world aching for peace.

But I look out the window and accept my rootedness for now. And I remember when I last chatted with my maple friends forever rooted in my front yard. They whispered a contented grace. They daily taste the world as whole and one, gathering life’s echoes as feast in a warming sun.

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The Worst Thing…

“The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.
The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.
The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath”
Chelan Harkin
From her poetry book ‘Susceptible to Light’

photo by S. Isaac Kellogg, 2020, all rights reserved

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