I am my own people.

My heart is the fire by which I warm my soul.

By the sustenance of my mind my spirit is fed.

I dance in the wilderness into which I have been cast.

On the rocky moors of self-sovereignty I run,

wild and free.

Hmm?? What was that?
What did you just say to me??
You’re not down with the way that I talk??
You think my big words are all just for show?
Oh, my makeup, that makes me a ****??
These tattoos, they’re just over the top?
My eyes are too blue?
My hair is too big?
My body’s too thin?
My clothes aren’t your thing??

Well, listen up.
I don’t give a ****.

I’m not here for your pleasure.
I’m not your one-woman show.
I don’t need your approval,
So get up off of my flow.
I exist for myself, I don’t care if you hate it!
You can scorn it or mock it or judge and berate it!
Go ahead, live your life, do what you need to do,
But I’m not changing a **** ******* thing just for you.
I’m in love with my life and I love who I am,
So if that doesn’t fit in your neat little plan
Then just show yourself out and get out of my way.
I’ve got mountains to climb.
I’ve got something to say.
Better get your thesaurus, I’m not dumbing it down.
My words are my scepters, and my boldness my crown.
That’s right, yeah you heard it, you’re addressing a queen.
What’s that phrase, “Children shouldn’t be heard, only seen?”
Listen up, tiny child, time for grownups to play.
You can’t hang with this crowd, shut your mouth.
WALK AWAY.

The warm winds of my future are filling my wings.

I am starting to fly,

beginning to sing

with abandonment,

for what does it matter who hears?

I'm not trilling for them.

I delight my own ears.

Glistening swallows,

tentatively darting, through

silvery mists and mysterious yearnings.

Past golden clouds of vapory dreams,

through faceted colors and rainbows of leaves.

With teardrops of tune on the winds of a prayer,

with sunbeam and moonglow alive in the air,

they flit and they frolic and then they are gone,

ardent wisps of the burning remembrance of song

floating down like the white holy ashes of grace

till they settle like dew on the weeping earth’s face.

The whole world goes to sleep

and the songbirds, they fly

on a velvety sonnet

into beckoning night.

Jennifer Faris

Across the landscapes of my soul
this aching weight of loneliness still
stretches and swamps
and rolls over the rills.
It rains down on the hills
like a thick grey fog,
weeping and moaning across the bogs and the moors
of my spirit.
Like a blanket of steel, it wraps, and it holds my heart and my soul.
The world beckons and beams with all its profound
weights of frolic and fun, and yet, wrapped in my shroud
I burrow down,
deeper still,
as if maybe, somehow,
in this cold and grey thickness,
a life can be found.
Oh, why, within these dark iron folds,
do I find a dense comfort, a salve for my soul?
Mysterious voices call out from the clouds-
Even they cannot coax me to enter the crowds.
I examine this swathe where I suffer and breathe
and find buried down deep, where no one can see,
a whispering Purpose,
a mystical mime whose long and cold fingers
with mine intertwine.
Her lips come to my ear, and her ghostly airs sigh
like a breath on the winds of a prayer in the sky.
“You were not ever meant to leave these black folds,
No, instead you must stand with them over your soul
like a velvety cloak,
an inseparable mantle.
You are one of the ones, the reaping has spoken.
You will walk in this world as a visiting token
of a realm that can only be seen by the others
who also are called,
the ones who have suffered.
They now bear, alongside you, this
argentine fate,
this burden of glory,
this holiest weight.
Those who are with you, those wrapped in grey robes
will solemnly nod as soul senses each soul.
These are your people, your god one of sorrow.
Well-acquainted with grief,
you will sojourn together.
Now, stand, sobered sister.
Wear your robes like a queen.
You are one of the chosen.
Go with strength.
You are seen.”