Leaving WordPress – (but you are coming with me)

Please follow me at www.thefeatheredsleep.com I am still showing up in WP Reader and can read your work too. After numerous appeals to WordPress I did not get my ability to follow other WP authors reinstated. It was horribly unfair and ties my hands on WP, as part of my job is discovering and publishing talent. I’m disappointed, but I want to move on positively. In order to do this, I have decided to leave WordPress rather than condoning them.

One of my best friends built me a site. I have WordPress Reader and all those whom I follow (before I was banned from following any more) and all those who follow me (and you can continue to) will be exported with me so I can continue to read you. www.thefeatheredsleep.com

If you are not following me, you still can. When you go to my new page it gives you a way to follow me by email (Subscribe to Blog via Email on the right-hand-side of the page). If you subscribe, I will show up in your WP-Reader. www.thefeatheredsleep.com

My best friends online (although I’ve met many in real life by now) were found on WordPress. The caliber of people on WP is outstanding. I literally have met people I adore. If not for Mark, Philip, Tremaine and Susi, I might never have survived the worst of my illness and those people and others, are life-long friends.

Recently, we had a big loss in the WP community when Sue Vincent died, she was widely respected and I respected her deeply as a colleague. Her bright spirit infused everyone. Her life has touched myself and others deeply in many ways. It was actually the non creative writing that touched me the most. The her in herself. The woman she was. The process of her life.

A few years ago, we lost Paul, and many of us still remember him and think of his face. I have a photo of him that comes up in my memories often, and I never deleted his last message to me. He was one of my first friends on WP aside Eric, Rita, Tony, Pelgris, and Monique and we all knew him and cared about him. His death was tragic and senseless. Monique and I talk of him every time we talk. He walks with us.

When Natalie Scarberry passed, it was gut-wrenching. She had fought so many battles in life, and was such a rare human being because despite being in her 70’s she still had TIME for people, she still could talk about ‘a bad day‘ or empathize with others, and often life beats that out of you, but it didn’t with her. Despite having difficulties with her own mom, she was a surrogate mom to many of us. I keep her photo in my room and I think of her a lot. She will always be with me. Not in the pithy sense, but the truest sense.

Even when sick, Natalie was encouraging and loving. She wrote this on one of my posts;

“You know how a pin ball machine hits all those things that make noise; when you write like this one that is so honest and raw it feels like a pin ball is hitting everything that has ever hurt me or touched me deeply and I have to wonder how that can be. And I feel sure others who read your words are impacted in the same way. You have an incredible way of understanding all the sham of life and the betrayals, we as flawed and broken humans, are subject to. Reading this was heartbreaking and at the same time spelling binding in its profound insights of existence in a fallen and flawed world.“

We should never forget the value of true support and selflessness.

With each person lost, I have felt such emotions that have taught me more value and a greater understanding of the most enduring things in life. I have literally grown in my heart and soul because of knowing these people and being briefly connected to them. I shall never, ever forget them.

I am so proud of every single one of you who has been in an Indie Blu(e) anthology and as our company gets larger and more successful, we hope to have more breadth to share the works of such talented writers and artists – whom we have mostly met via WP. What a sad story then that WP would ban me from following new talent, because of an algorithm? That said, I am determined to continue to support those talents in whatever way I can and balance my day job alongside my Indie Blu(e) work, because it has literally been one of the most meaningful things I have done in years.

Thank you all. I hope you come with me when I go. Because I have learned, in going, you never really leave.

RIP Natalie, Paul, Sue & all our WP friends who have passed, but stay firmly in our hearts. We see you. We love you.

Please consider following me if you don’t already, at www.thefeatheredsleep.com

Also thanks to: Tara, Christine, Derrick & Jaqui Knight,, Jane, Erik, Mark & Chris Renney, Merril, Cordelia, Holly, Monique, Dorlinda, Bob, Aakriti, Sarah Doughty, Devika, Little Charmer, TGFJ, Philip, Helene, Mr Militant Negro, SonofaBeach, Basil, Raili, Crow, Megha, Laurie, Sunshine Jensen, AND SunJesper, Kindra, LIB, Nicolas, SuddenDenouement, Nicole Lyons, Dev, HastyWords, Black Duck, Cyranny Skye/, HMS, Henna, Braeden, Carol, JaneB, RobT, Anya,
Contoveros, Charlie, Nathalie, Sabrina, Em, Richard, Jaya, SNTC, Bjorn, Sue, John, Audrey, Rpoetry, Wallace, NFW, Chris, Peter, Teti, Mani, Amitav, My Jewish Sister, Lunar, slpmartin, OP, SHL, Lamar, SFD, ELR, Tanya, Forrest, Sol, Sheldon, JAGL, Keith, KMF, NFW, MSP, TCFC, GhostWriter, Janet Wright, Vidur, Joseph, Jacqui, Ashley, TRP, Andrew, TBP, Ken, Dawn, YOU, Betty Albright, Ivor, Ogden, TBFO, Penny, EOB2, Smita, Willow, Petru, Earthwalking, David, HLR, Perditus, EFTDN, Poet Pas, Jude, H&R, Carol, Eric, Jonathan, Krissy, EDCW, Ali, robertgoldstein, Merbear, Jasper, Annette, Meg, SliceTheLife, CODS, GC, Vic CigarMan, Bethany, Maureen, Emma, Ameena, BCB, Maria, S&B, Morgan, Kim, Eugenia, Day, ChrisR, Usha, Melissa, mylifeandme, anitabacha.com, Samyra, saynotoclowns, Spiritkeeper, Jade, TTT, PFTP, TH, EOL, SageFemme, Amir, and everyone else.

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Finding Hope in Despair — my article in Borderless

“There is no activism without despair, no despair without hope. Despair can be as powerful an engine for change as hope.”

Finding Hope in Despair — Borderless

Beneath its rebuke we claim our sex

I am disappointed when
My thighs resemble dough

From lassitude or the dreaming void

I know not

While others jog I find ways to hide, and years bring encroachment
I am disappointed when stretchmarks form and breasts once firm and fine, fall
As if the hour, prescriptive written, perforation, was

all along a trembling, inken fate

Only in your arms
away from dull gaze of waxen youth

yet to taste harsh glare of life
Still blunt in their unlidded perfection

Was I ever so?

Only in you, I find solace to unburden these stored shames
Bidden me by my role as woman
The unkind hand, who beckons us close to fire
That we may touch a moment of glory

Then slow descent to nowhere visible

In my head of aches, I hear the cacophony of iteration

Women over a certain age
Sexless, sagging beasts of burden

We laugh over my fears
Our respective flaws, rubbing each other
Tenderizing that, which believed itself perished
And was alive
Beneath its rebuke

And when you bring me out of my shell
To kneel to the sun god, without need for apology
I see not those things

Or the artificial glide of time

But feel
Feel your fingers

Deep in my belly

Sense your mouth
Folding bliss in her eternal recline
Taste the syrup of us, in the temple
Then
I am disappointed no more
A fire bird loose in my body
Such pleasures, no child can find
We lift together, in our mutual ecstasy
Emboldened by the dream to be free of chains

Two of us
Released from the grip of words
Threshing at the gate, with the symphony of a female’s sex
Greater than anything that can be crushed
Our fever, mighty in her conquer
We cry as one, our voice raw with awakening
For to be pleasure, is to know
The Gods

No you do not own this moment
Bashful world

For we have transcended the hand of man
We
Who are
Woman
Claim
Our

Sex

Steel eyes

Why

don’t older people

express their despair

as much as young?

Do we numb ourselves so much?

Shame? A mask we don

to pretend we’re well

when everyone knows

ageing doesn’t bring respite

from demons.

It is the singular reason

aside chubby cheeks

I wish to be

16 again

for all the friends

who unknowing of pains

to come

had the tenderness

of a hundred, 40-year-olds

who have seen

and are

gone

into their

steel eyes.

It interests me to recall how much time a young person will give someone who is upset. There’s visible difference between what a young person will say and do, versus an older one, that I think has nothing to do with becoming more mature. Older people have little tolerance for depression. You would think, based on this, older people suffer it less, though we know this isn’t true. Is it to do with hope? Societal shaming of seeming weak if over 25 you still give it your time? I always wonder what those over 40 do by way of finding support and people ‘hearing’ them, when the entire world seems to shut you down by a certain age, including yourself.

New girl

A broken bottle

a discarded hairbrush

totems within totems

effigies of past and present

a light knock on the door

she’s wearing a French halter dress

her ankles are slim like my mother’s

she’s not my mother

her skin is brown like my mother’s

she’s not my mother

her black hair is curled like my mother’s

she’s not my mother

her perfume speaks of wanting passion

it belies the faux expression on her face

attempting trickery

she bends to me and pretends to be enchanted

by childhood photos

they are not her photos to touch

with her careful, manicured pink nails

a color my mother always hated

she had more style in her little finger

the one with dupuytren’s contracture

more a question mark than deformity

it didn’t stop her playing the piano

carving her place in my father’s heart

and this imposter? Flicking her way into our life

like a cheap fan you buy, because you are sweating

I want to tell her, using grown up words

I may be six, but I know what she’s up to

with her shifting glances toward my handsome father

with her endearing crossing of espadrilled feet

if she touches my mother’s hairbrush

I will burn

this happy house down

Salvation

Detail lies

prism-like

at the bottom of the cheap glass

‘heche en Chine‘

blurred by straining eyes

brokenly watching colors

as they wink in and out

made indistinct

by tears, long rinsed

clear of salt

Weather vane

Before they laid bricks on her and called her a place

not a thing of flesh and light

before she lost her ability to mimic cat

and jump unheard

out of open windows

before her arms lost their ache to

live unbridled unburdened in

the clear surround

of joy

she was a light footed creature

listening to no scold

obedient to no rule

her father called her willful

her mother, spirited

her grandmother covered her face with faux shame

though she hid a smile

cousins were told to mind themselves

around her urging sprint

lest she rub off

some of her mercury

some of her wild saffron

the thing compelling her shine

when all seemed still and lifeless

a hurtling progress to wholeness

they forecast her early demise

said nothing, nobody could subsist

as fevered as her run

Zola Bud without shoes

temerity pulling her strings

as if puppetmasters were sea sprites

fashioning their dreams on tierra

with undomesticated weather vane

bound tight to wildest storm

trethevy quoit

Stand here

moss washing over rock

hands in time

I think of all who have passed through

their atoms blessing sky

if you were here with me

your Irish bones and Welsh soul

how many years will I wish

you were with me

this girl of shifting blood

drawn to the pasture lands of Cornwall

more than any purposing Chaîne des Puys can evoke

the Sioule wrapping herself between empty valleys

or the sorrow of les Pyrénées, a gentle horror

languishing in Cathar country

their ghosts stumbling between worlds

I never belonged in those spaces

memory an acerbic ¿Cómo se dice

*as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods

just as I do not now, own a home

in the barren tumbleweed of Texas

unattached, they call it ‘winged pigweed’

even as we sneeze it away to carry on

lonely pilgrimage amongst spoiled tarmac

perhaps it wasn’t even trethevy quoit

but you, and your pure love

filling me with a peace

I have not possessed since

(*line taken from King Lear, Shakespeare).

Weigh Scale

Do you hear it?

Relief sounds like

a girl’s slip

a bird’s wing

your eye lashes fluttering

against your blushing cheek

Do you hear it?

Suffering sounds like

cloth pulled by stick across dirt floor

chalk pressed violent into board

fingers opening blouses raggedly

your chest bone protrudes

more than the year before

Do you hear it?

Thoughts in light

She has written herself off

or so she says

watching youth inherit the mantle

she stares at her own flaccid chest

in unforgiving morning sun

and tries to convince herself to gently let go

light pouring in through the bay window

creating a halo effect in surround

she is bathed in unexpected warmth

her pores absorbing hungrily

that urging intensity, a happy blindness

as if the world paused in its toil

to tap her on the shoulder and whisper

it’s not near over yet girl

go out, gather your arms full

live

live

live!