honoring self – The BeZine

“ONE’S-SELF I sing—a simple, separate Person.” Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

For Zabaida on her 98th birthday.

Maybe next time around …

NO-BALONEY SANDWICHES

Jamie Dedes

This is dedicated to all those fine beings . . .

Those who are blatantly themselves

You know the ones I mean –

Some, when seedlings, had folks

who jabbed a finger yelling: You! You! You!

accusing them of being quintessentially themselves

. . . as though that was wrong.

They are the YOUs who come from multi-colored places

and varied dreams

with hearts woven of wonderlush.

They are womanish or manish.

They are childlike and adultish.

They run from the gray streets to the green forest.

They take to long-lost roads and never-found pathways

with their song in a backpack and

a brown-bag lunch of no-baloney sandwiches.

When they elder they arrive back at the beginning

knowing who are they are

. . . and why.

Photo credit ~ Jon Sullivan’s “Woman on the Beach”

I know that I haven’t powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates. Tillie Ollsen (1912-2007), American writer and feminist

I READ A POEM

Jamie Dedes

I read a poem today and decided

I must deed it to some lost, lonely

fatherless child to embrace her

along her stone path, invoke sanity

I want to tell her: don’t sell your

dreams for cash or buy the social OS

Instead, let the poem play you like a

musician her viola, rewriting lonely

into sapphire solitude, silken sanctity

Let it wash you like the spray of whales

Let it drench your body in the music

of your soul, singing pure prana into

the marrow and margins of your life

Let the poet-shaman name your muse

and find you posing poetry as art and

discover the amethyst bliss of words

woven from strands of your own DNA.

Yes. I read a poem today and decided

I must deed it to a lost fatherless child

Photo credit – Jaime Junior, Public Domain Photographs.net

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration: