{"id":3541,"date":"2013-02-15T08:10:22","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T13:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3541"},"modified":"2013-02-15T08:10:22","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T13:10:22","slug":"journey-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3541","title":{"rendered":"“Journey” Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prisoners of War<\/strong>
\nThe experts are now saying that those of us who grew up in alcoholic and abusive families have lived with a level of stress that is equivalent to that of prisoner of war. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

We are prisoners of war: trapped in a situation where we are helpless, where the people with the power of life and death over us give us treats one day and explode into violence the next.\u00a0 They exploit our helplessness and make us pay for favors and humiliate us if we rebel.
\nBut these people are not our enemies, they are our family.
\nWe never know what will happen next, or when someone who seemed to be on our side will suddenly abandon us.
\nLike the vietnam vets with post trauma stress syndrome,\u00a0 we too enter a room with all our senses alert to possible dangers, checking for escape routes.\u00a0 We too do not trust the seeming innocence, the gifts that sometimes turn out to contain grenades, the destruction that comes without warning.
\nWe want to help, but our efforts to change things are ineffective, unrewarded, and unsupported by the larger community.
\nWe no longer know what our feelings are.\u00a0 All we know is stress, anxiety, restlessness.\u00a0 We want to throw bombs too, to end the tension, even if it means our death.
\nWe want to escape, to be free, but can no longer imagine any pathways by which we could get there:\u00a0 the world everywhere is full of dangers, even when we go home it is no longer home, for our sense of safety has been robbed, our sense of belonging has been broken, our power to create has been lost in the dirt and blood.<\/p>\n

The Women Learn to Dance<\/strong>
\n(for the women of Journey into Courage, April 6, 1991)<\/p>\n

An inner pain so deep it can\u2019t be put into words.
\nTake my heart and cut it open and you will find
\nthe blackened seeds of a thousand gardens
\nthe broken bodies of small animals
\nthe tattered remnants of banners that once went proudly into battle.<\/p>\n

What has her life been?
\nThe struggle to get free from what weighs her down
\nand the realization that she will never
\ndig her way out of this grave.<\/p>\n

Dirt and blood and bones must be
\nThe matter she shapes into poetry
\nif it be called poetry and not the stumbling walk of a cripple.<\/p>\n

We come together in the dance:
\nThe Warrior, the Artist, and the Cripple.
\nAs Warrior I swing my shining sword
\nand clear a space for the Artist.
\nAs Artist I raise my arms like wings
\nturning in the wind I soar
\nvulnerable to storms and downdrafts.
\nWings broken I turn to find the Cripple
\nlooking at me with tears in her eyes.
\nAs Cripple I help the Artist up and we
\nstumble along together, calling to the
\nWarrior who strides on ahead.
\nAs Warrior I turn back
\nresentment fading when I see their faces.<\/p>\n

Welcome sisters into the tough spun web
\nThis is our dance.<\/p>\n

Blood & Stone<\/strong>
\n\u201cBlood welled up among the roots, on its way to the world of men, and in the dark it looked as hard as stone.\u00a0 Nothing else was red.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Rilke,\u00a0 Orpheus. Euridice. Hermes<\/em><\/p>\n

I want to write a poem, and I don\u2019t know how to do it.
\nThere is an ache in my heart and I don\u2019t know how to explore it,
\ngive it form, let it unfold like a flower.\u00a0 Or blood seeping from a volcano.
\nThere is violence here and so much pain.
\nRilke describes the underworld, blood at the roots of stones.
\nBlood and stones.<\/p>\n

What is this pain that is so deep inside.
\nI\u2019ve bruised myself against your stony silence.
\nI am open and vulnerable in my need for love, in my childish
\nattempts to make it better, take your pain away, do something, anything that might win from you a smile.
\nI offer you my heart\u2019s blood and you remain a stone.
\nBlind, you crush my eager efforts to show you who I am.
\nSlowly, gradually, I learn to close and harden.
\nIt was someone else you wanted.<\/p>\n

Mommy and Daddy, if I cut myself and wrote you in blood
\nwould you listen?<\/p>\n

Blood at the root.
\nBlood seeking a path among the stones.
\nThis is my life, bleeding away in hard dark places, among the cold faces.
\nWanting to flower and not knowing how.<\/p>\n

November 1991<\/p>\n

The first poem was written before the first performance of Journey into Courage, the other two were written afterward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prisoners of War The experts are now saying that those of us who grew up in alcoholic and abusive families have lived with a level of stress that is equivalent to that of prisoner of war. \u00a0 We are prisoners … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}