Featured Poet - Rain Kaleo
SONORA
I was but a teen blessed with the gift of losing myself. Don’t know when, where, or even how I swayed the arms of presence but I’d be gone. Just one of those habits, drifting away or off to a different planet. Knowing now, I was simply numb. Numb. What does that mean to a broken one? Nothing. No ups or emotional baggage, buried long ago and tossed away the shovel. Believing my lies to no longer be troublesome.
Some poems don’t want to come out all at once. They take years to form waiting for a host or a culprit to hold. And as I was held by its experience thus was the way that it was told. Kintsugi isn’t art without the gold. My cracks, leaking onto paper like fossilized oil. They drew what seemed to be nothing more than haphazard pictures. Nothing more. They meant nothing more than things to observe over my nightstand. Abstract pieces and yet they weren't. One in particular always stood out. Sonora. Young, pregnant; angel, judging by the wings. Long black hair, parted, revealing a dagger held by her heart. A tear. A single one thrown at a floor now shattered. Why had she done it? Nothing more. She meant nothing more than a pretty inkblot. Years go by….
It’s been a decade and I’ve moved on, away from Sonora, garbaged long ago. Life is magical as such a pure statement, and these days, I can feel nothing more than Magis in the lungs that I breathe. And so I shared. I shared the past of all my drawings. I was asked and this as per usual meant nothing more, but yet, it wasn't. No longer numb, the truth was now my trouble.
Some stories take you by surprise even when you know them. Hearing it shared turned back the clock with an added perspective. It didn't feel good. Didn't look good either: Sonora, left behind, crushed by my old baggage. Or so I thought until she later came to visit:
“Mom,
I never knew the pain the world caused you as a child. The kind that can only be given by God as a gift to her creatures. It wasn’t born until you drew a dagger through my heart. Fallen from above, I’ve searched for you. Only to tell you that you're not alone, so I bore this pain for you. And now, I came to release it with you.
Sonora "
KINTSUGI
Good things take time … or so they say,
As if I'd know of good with a slap of the face.
Cold comes to swaddle these very things,
Gone, buried inside or left behind.
My prayers, tossed away by the sting of trauma.
But, good things take time … or so they say,
As gold-filled scars cradle untethered wounds,
While I, a beggar for more of me to nestle
Home
Which stone was left unturned?
I've often wondered.
TABULA RASA, REBIRTH!
God? Is that you?
My days are numbered. Preyed upon by circling vultures
On a decaying lane of memories
Gone.
Cast away tissues take refuge on my wooden floor.
They've built a labyrinth of unresolved issues,
And I, its Minotaur.
Greed swallows unspoken prayers to capture the likes of you.
I've put you in a box, and now, in there,
I search for you….
BOOK OF ANUBIS
(Psych Ward, 2021, B.C. Admitted Voluntarily)
[...] and I’m off to a better start!
The other patients call me Audrey as in Hepburn. With my short hair, minus a decrepit lure, we seemingly look alike. You’d be surprised just how fast you make friends; compare stories through hollow stares carried by the masses. Bill’s your best example: Old Man lost his wife, 50 years married, no children, siblings…. Doesn’t take a genius! Perfect candidate for electroconvulsive therapy. Yeah! That's still a common practice. His past honourably held by fellow inmates […] irrelevant, societally erased, under new management. His forehead bears a permanent neon’d “VACANCY”. I suppose ignorance is bliss when psychiatry’s so facile.
Got the nurses’ hot tips on sleeping pills currently sampled. Judging by the bags under their eyes, it’s all coming together now. We’re all lab rats, us and them alike! They just haven’t cracked yet. Fine, I’ll be the crazy one for being ripped apart!
Remember, you begged for this! Walking through an empty ER, muzzled, desperate, embracing the floor, fetal’d for help. Begged through the veil of agony. "Please! I don't want to hurt myself again!" There! There! On the bright side, you’ve got a Flat Earther Born-Again Christian as a new friend. Apparently, we don't deserve to be loved by God, thusfore, we must worship Him. Nothing personal, just good religion! Also, your book Living Buddha, Living Christ coincidentally missing?
I’m like a fat kid in a candy store. Open a tab, Doc! So far, five prescription drugs and counting….
Look at him! It’s like talking to nothing. Absolutely nothing! A saviour's portrait worthy of museums. What made you this way, Doc? I've got nothing to lose, but you, you take the cake!
“Tell me, what kind of life is this? I can still feel it, you know, the pain you scaled as psychological torture? It hasn't left me, so I’m still an insomniac, by the way, still having blackouts, still wanting to … but now I feel nothing! Absolutely nothing, properly numb, my potential is endless. Bravo! All better now. Bravo! Tell me Doc, which one of us’s the sociopath?"
I laugh, "Sure, let’s add an antipsychotic!" Remember, you begged for this and this is how they helped you. So far, six prescription drugs and counting….
I’m gifted with words of wisdom on my way out. It all sounds so poetic: “Joan of Arc was strong because she knew when to put her sword down.”
This! This is what death looks like and what Gods are made of!
Behold, Anubis!
INFERNO
The poisonous wise drag little vines down disgusting, debilitating, annihilating knifed crowds. The rape that takes place in claustrophobic leeched society screeches the reaches of genuine capabilities. The whispering, penetrating, tantalizing germs of dehumanizing sperm crawling inside the cattle burns. The silenced cries of individual flies must die for parasitic, political lies to strive. The cultural, religious, abusive cuisines force feed the genes with obscene scenes for the killing feasts. The brotheled debacles of cadaverous misinterpreted puzzles are absolute nonsensical, egotistical babbles. Misery loves to breed an infectious disease spree for corruption to breathe free.
So pray, little ones.
…
Pray to the gods that we must serve!
A NOTE FROM GOD
“To begin with,
Suicide’s not an easy one to dictate
As you vessel my words.
The vibration exists!
It has to, period.
Perhaps as an etheric absolute
Even though I wished for us that it wasn’t
How I dearly wish that it wasn’t
If none other than to hold perfect space
In stillness
So that you or yet another wouldn’t need to believe in brokenness
Erased in permanence
An exit by choice
Even though it hardly never feels like one
I’ve failed you
With nothing better for you
To gift but free will
Through your perceived existence.
You wanted to go home
I gave you the human experience
With time as our witness,
How we could never be separate!"
ABOUT THE PIECES
These pieces are part of a larger collection of imprints, which together form Cerebro Soul: a poetry book with a strong spiritual surrealist theme. They are all real accounts from my past. Sonora is a depiction of trauma, Book of Anubis, my personal stay in a psychiatric hospital. Kintsugi, Tabula Rasa, Rebirth, and Inferno, emotional releases, and A Note from God, a gift from above. My work reflects the journey within which brushes on mental health and trauma, among other things.
PERSONAL JOURNEY
My past isn't an easy one to dish out, so to speak. Not in the sense that it pains me, as I believe its suffering to have transmuted, but rather, from a protective mindset of not wanting to imprint a "dark seed" onto others. Or so, that's the story I once told myself. What have I learned and overcome since then? Tremendous pain and suffering. No matter which story I'd spun myself in, at its core, my cocoon was made of hell. My past was a story of shame, left with no words to properly paint the experience of a suicide attempt; it happened as a reflection of this pain and suffering. I hated myself for being alive, it’s that simple, but despair isn't spun from just one web, and in hindsight, it wasn't.
This is the power and impact of spiritual trauma and the connection that courses through our veins. I felt it all as mine, as ours, living out of my body, and for good reasons. I couldn't discern myself from others anymore. I was caught in a self-perpetuating loop of not wanting to feel, therefore living out of my body, which ironically meant a stronger connection to collective pain and suffering. So I ask myself again, "What have I learned since then?" I learned that we storify our lives to give them meaning. In a way, the Divine is itself a great storyteller. Time is the greatest illusion of movement, and through my looking glass it holds the key to stillness. I say this only to express the paradox of presence as the experience of omnipresence. Now this concept holds fluidity in itself, and as a parallel, presence spins story as poetry. What does that mean? It's commonly said that storification entails solidification. However, how often do we give ourselves permission to drop the story in order to feel our poetic presence instead? It's my belief that we're so removed from authentic connections with ourselves and others that we use stories as a form of bondage. I also learned that in their most natural state, feelings are fluid and hold movement. My impression is that the so-called void, quantum field of reality, unknown, God, or whatever you want to call it, is in fact a field of energy in motion, and just like water or air as a medium, we swim and express ourselves through that field. Everyday these energy winds pass through us whether we attach ourselves via storyfication or let them pass over us. We are not these feelings, but are gifted with their experience nonetheless as we honour their need to be expressed, transmuted. I learned that freedom comes through meditation, its meaning, to become familiar. How familiar are you with your inner world, feelings, thoughts, and actions? What is your current form of self-expression? Erykah Badu, the singer, wrote such a great song, Bag Lady, as she notes:
Bag lady you gon' hurt your back
Draggin' all 'em bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you
All you must hold on to
Is you, is you, is you
Through this analogy, letting go of our stories is similar to dropping the bags that we're dragging in our body. Becoming consciously aware, familiar, and letting go is the path to freedom. So I dropped my bags, motion took place, and healing came to visit. Now, who am I without the story of shame chained to my body?
ABOUT RAIN
Rain is my soul’s name. It translates as abundance from Arabic, and Kaleo, from Hawaiian origins, means the voice or the sound. Born on Turtle Island, I am of Palestinian Lebanese descent and I see these two names as sacred symbols representing the Divine embodied throughout my spiritual journey. That no matter how harsh the world becomes to walk on, in stillness, I am willing to swim an entire ocean in order to find my voice’s abundance.
