I spent most of today reading Acts of Speech aloud to do proofreading. At some point over the summer (not on the day I was aiming for in my annual goals, AKA eleven-ish days from now, because I don’t know what I’m doing), the poetry book will be self-published, and I’ll finally have a copy of these poems that isn’t loose paper stuck between books below my shrines. Right now, I’m figuring out how to do formatting and learning what bleed size means.
While in the process of writing, I went back to the box of journals I had while I was a teen and ended up clearing out/discarding most of them, save a few pages. Since some of the poems in Part III of Acts of Speech deal with growing up, I had wondered if I wanted to put any of the poetry from my teens into it. I decided against doing that. It didn’t fit with the tone of the collection, so it risked being filler.
That said, here is some (lightly edited) Not That Bad poetry I wrote when I was a girl (fifteen or sixteen) and growing up in generic Neopaganism. I started writing poetry when I was nine or ten during a school unit and instantly loved it, so I wrote reams of it during the latter half of my childhood.
I.
The wind whips; people open
fall back freely, yielding.
The trees bend in resistance,
defiantly holding out until
the wind comes and splinter
open their trunks, killing them.
I am a tree — a great one.
Bend or break, bend or break?
I see others blinded by the gale —
they cower, they move with it.
II.
See the new morning sun
who rises above golden trees.
His rays strike the window
filtering through warped glass,
curving, spinning through trees
while wind rustles their leaves
and tickles through the grasses.
His light reaches for playmates —
a dead leaf, a small pool, berries.
They dance in the breeze together.
He dances and dances until
darkness — until the moon
ascends and the sky is hers.
III.
Goddess, Mother,
Ruler of the Heavens,
showering benevolence,
Lady of the Wind,
Goddess of the Waters,
Lovely, Lovely Gaia
beneath our chapped feet,
bestower of gifts,
driver of passion,
Lady, we thank you
for this grace, these gifts.
IV.
Muse, mother of the pen,
guide my fingers,
steady my hand.
Give me the power of words;
let me use them as I will.
Muse, Lady, I pray to you,
always of the streams
and sacred trees,
never to be forsaken,
calling out to your followers
that you are the Muse,
the mother of the arts,
and we are yours.
V.
Make them stare open-mouthed
at a revolution of the soul,
a boiling point of unity, disunity,
a place of love and compassion.
We can all save the future
if we reach out, hand in hand.
Think about it — it’s not hard —
if we set fear aside and get real.
Get real — feel the Lady, Lord,
the primal force of our abodes.
Feel our lives, our deaths,
the smallness of our breath,
and each cruel impermanence.
We are hunters and hunted,
the saved and the suffering.
We have nothing to lose here
when we join for a better tomorrow,
hate discarded, strong together.
✒️❤️🖋
KALLISTI 