Pain & Creativity

Anticipating a constructed myth of apocalyptic content to emerge from this event, this event somehow external and internal simultaneously,
i hear the words of Maria "invite it in; have a relationship with it."
i hear the words of Barbra Brown Taylor "if you're willing to stay awake, this too will become an altar"
i remember that Audre Lorde wrote "Cancer Journals" when she got sick and though I've never read them, I trust her because of everything else she's written, and I trust that someone of her brilliance knew exactly what she was doing when taking up the creative task in response to the potential silencing of misery and physical pain.
i remember listening to David Sturdevant talking about nationalism, as a veteran of the Vietnam era, talking about the pain of citizenship in these times, talking about how his music saved him then and it saves him now, before playing "America the Beautiful" on his harmonica and breaking my politically pouty heart out of its dangerously protective shell.

i recall their words, their teachings, their works of suffering transformed, and I come here, to this place, this space, to write...

because today

i could only walk around my block twice
and envisioned myself looking like an old woman
trapped inside this 28 year old body
that struggles to put one foot in front of the other
when i used to kickbox and dance in nightclubs
for hours on end. i used to envision myself
a fierce warrior, an ecstatic worshipper in those places
and today an apocalyptic narrative began forming
where I envisioned myself walking slowly and painfully for the rest of my life,
stuck in this pain-killer enduced ghost-likeness forever, unable to get past
the numbing sensation that reaches into my hips and
only breaks when shooting pains erupt in my ankles, unable to get past
the numbing sensation that pervades unexpected things like
emotions, sex drive and appetite.

so i come to confess my fear
to call upon the giants of art and recovery
and inspired by their witness of power, i come
to label my injury and its 6 month subsequent reign as a producer of both:
pain and poetry,
loss and creativity
death and fertility.
i come to reclaim the parts of this event which remain
possible and productive,
allowing pain the attention its due and healing the right she deserves.