Hunger – Poem by Sonam Hajela

I bleed internally
There’s a scratch
I can’t seem to itch
Where is it
In my heart
On my tongue
On my body
Rolling over my arms, legs,
Feet aching for a body
Fingers restless for a touch
My thighs quiver for a need
I can’t express
The wind whispers something to my mind
Feverish
I want to taste the salt on your skin
My tongue licking my lips
thirsty
My fingernails leave marks
Their trails a mark of my todays
And yesterdays
Telling me I still live
I hunger for more
I want to be pleasured by the skies
The sun caressing the insides
that have spent a lifetime
in the desert.

Client Poem: My Brown Fingers

My brown fingers
I have tried to wash you away
Down the drain
Down down down
They reach, lost, confused
Looking for their master
Winding, groping, searching in the dark
In the rain, in sunlight
in the heated air, swirling
where have you gone, they ask
they follow the path from my wide eyes
down my blunt nose
over my lips
down my body
a stranger to itself
my knees, still like when I was 10
my feet so much like my mother’s
the body grew, the mind changed
the skin stretched
and I breathed
but my brown fingers have written the pain
when my body was foreign
when my mind was strange
they always knew where I was hidden,
trying to find purchase under the layers of knowledge that
only removed me further from myself
Come back, they said
Even the mirror knows so little
A reflection is not a story.

Client Poem: In Search of Me

I was taught to not pay attention
Let the stars shine and the crickets chirp
The night’s dead to you, child.
The whole world is dead to you in fact.
The light, the air, the green trees, the earth
Mock your existence
Do not go into the night to hear its call
Listen to my hand marring your cheek
Disappear
But poetry arrived
in search of me
I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river….
It swam to me, claimed me, its mark not stinging
but caressing my cheek
Pay attention
And I, infinitesimal being,
felt myself pulled into the abyss,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

I rage at your ignorance
At your blind eyes
And even blinder heart
The earth is dead to you
I am dead to you
A thing, a statistic, a number, a piece
What you couldn’t see is that you are part
of this earth
You made it corrupt
Listen
The earth’s vines are calling your name
Reap your rewards, father.
Reap your rewards.

Your Right to Feel Your Pain: Quote and response – Jim Morrison

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

-Jim Morrison



Comment on Morrison from Client: He was always so profound. Too bad he numbed himself out with drugs and alcohol. Strange that he knew all of this yet still chose to hide from his own reality. Sometimes I feel like when you are a feeling person things aren't necessarily easier, which could make someone want to numb out more. But its all the more painful cause you know what you are doing. Anyway, just my random morning thought.

Comment from Marta: He couldn’t receive love or feel love in his own life. He knew life, but couldn’t feel it in a way that allowed him to be in life and love, fill his pain and void. It is a constant practice to stay in the body and locate feelings, needs and desires. I am happy that more and more you are choosing nurturance over self-destruction and criticism. However, having self knowledge and using the tools in an intimate relationship and in life is always new territory and creates different challenges. But it does start with knowing yourself. It is a discipline to be a feeling person, a different consciousness that most don’t have. It is an awareness and aliveness that makes you sensitive and passionate, but it takes learning what feelings are in the body and how to master them with grace and action — it’s life, you don’t have to get drunk, drug out, medicate, or live out addictions in order to live life. You have to learn to feel, express and receive life. And part of that is the pain of life that creates passion and compassion. Most do not want to go there. Pain is frowned upon as a weakness, or something to fix or get over. Many artists live their feelings through their art, not through their life. They use their art as an escape from life, but able to put into words and visions the exact experience and reality that most cannot see, hear or touch. The artist is a prophet, but like many artists and prophets they hold the pain, joy and aliveness of the world and can’t handle the enormity of their purpose and chose to go numb, because the physical experience of feelings is sharp and deep. That is why it is important to keep moving the emotional energy through expression, movement and reception to fill up the voids and emptiness.

Wild Child – Poem by Client

I am the wild child
kicking your insides awake
pounding to your beating heart
singing to your hungry soul

The one in the picture with the unruly hair
and mischievous smile
that hides pain like candy
in secret places only she can find
the one that searches for your love
in every face

Hunger pains
vibrate through my hollow stomach
Desperate to fill
your haunting presence
with anything
but your rejection

No longer silent
Alive
with pain
Heat
Love
and fire

Dancing
in the grass
under the star filled sky
calling for your attention
I am the wild child
No longer to be ignored

Wild child. Where does she live in your body? Can she be in an intimate relationship?

I think she lives in my chest when she feels stirred up and wild and sometimes she drops down to my vagina, but when I ground her she drops down to my stomach. Underneath the wildness she feels anger and sadness; grief in my chest/heart and anger in my stomach. I have been centering her for the past 24 hours. She is now calm and feels taken care of. I feel good about the past 24 hours and how much I took care of myself around the wildness. I really knew what she needed: nurturing and creativity and to get out of my head. I believe she can be in an intimate relationship. She just needs me to keep bringing her in and grounding her, and also paying attention to what her needs are and not to judge her. I think I get nuts in my head when I am avoiding being in my body and that’s when the child takes over. I have to continue to be vigilant about calming her with love and understanding.

Whom is this for — that’s a good question. When I was writing I was thinking of my Mom, so maybe I feel pain and sadness and anger for her. But then the child wants to come out and be self destructive, but I don’t want to be anymore so we are having a pretty good battle these days. The adult seems to be winning. I haven’t quite perfected it, but I’m a work in progress.

Client Journal: Poem – Hungry Eyes

I am the girl with the hungry eyes
Crawling on hands and knees
Raw and bloody from the glass
You leave behind in your wake
I call it bread
Convincing myself it nourishes me

I am the girl with the hungry eyes
Looking for your smile to shine on me
Coating me warm and perfect
And waiting for you
To tell me I’m beautiful
To tell me you love me
To tell me you’re proud of me

I am the girl with the hungry eyes
Laid shivering in your shadow
With my fingers unfolding slowly
Turning seconds into minutes
Minutes into hours
Hours into days
And days into years waiting

For the scream that lies in waiting
To sound out your name

Poem: A Condemned Woman – by Sonam Hajela

I am condemned

By my mother’s hand
and her anger
that flows like wine
murky and deep
By my fear of the
Unknown
By my father’s desperate
Desire for the world
To be
By my inability to
Focus
To thine ownself be true
And all else a lie
By my legacy of hate
And judgment
That has drowned me

I am a condemned
Woman
Hear my blood speak
it mocks me
It knows my
Grief and
Hunger
Yet it condemns
Me to gaze up on that which
Is not and cannot
Be mine.

Poem: The Beast Unchained by Sonam Hajela

I broke my ties
From you
They lay on the floor
You ask why
And I cannot answer
Because my heart is a wild beast
And is roaring against the
Bars of blood that close in

So take my words
You made my body a cage
But I will break every bone and bleed out every
pint of blood
so I can walk with this
Beast
And roar against the tides of all my
Yesterdays

You ask why
And I cannot answer
For I have loved your pain for too long
My own is now too loud to ignore

So take my words
And know I dug in the dirt you never wanted me to
touch
streaks of it now mar my face
but oh wouldn’t you know
I was elbow deep in your cloak of shit
And I found a key.

I am looking for peace
It is not still
It is an ocean that rips against those bars
Mixing with the scarlet
There are things
You cannot know

I want ugliness, a mark against this
Fragile filigree of lies
There is nothing pretty
About clawing my way out of your
Paralyzing eyes

And you are not forgiven
I forgive myself
You broke all the pieces and would have
Thrown the rest away
Locked away in shackles

So take my words
I will leave a trace
Of myself
Without your haunting legacy of
Reins and blood and bone
Cages.

Client Poem: Haunting

Searching for the still voice that once lived in my belly
Thoughts race by and by again
As they pass I toss them into a jar but the loud cries stir echos from afar
HAUNTING!
I can’t breathe…my breath a lost spinning tornado
Round and Round in my head
Tears come to the surface but I strangle them dead
My bleeding heart slowing down
Where is my voice? She remains unfound
A dying expression that chokes my scream
Sadness pinching my arms
Awaken to myself…to feel my hunger for love like a vulture
My desire…my fire…my need to bleed…to feed off of my tears…
For you to love ME
All of my weakness and fears
Wounded eyes and black & blue ears
Scarred from all of those years
Not good enough
You are stupid…slow
No one will love you if they know

In search of a perfect balance between the sun and the moonlight
No longer can I deny this wounded child from her birthright
Her bloody tears build up puddles of fears
I must face her…embrace her

Castles in the air…heartache and despair..
Take all of her or none
But without her you are aren’t even here
Invisible and untouchable
Because she is the child and the mother…the hope and the fear
She is the you that completes the you
My heart…my promise…my fate
All of my sadness, happiness, love
Oh love how I love to love
She is all that and you are her

The birth of the feminine
Her bleeding heart is yours and you are awake
You cry…and cry and cry with crystal clear loving eyes

Poem: Mirage – By Sonam Hajela

Mirage

 

Your love came to me
In a time of thirst
Deep need
And a raging desire

My own pools
Have been drained
And I tire of scraping the walls
With my nails
For droplets that have long gone dry
And leave trails of sadness

So I ran to you
I ran and
I ran
My skirts tripping my bare feet

My face blazing from the sun
My arms on fire
And my heart half dead
Only to find you

Disappeared…

Your face was like an oasis
Fingers in my mouth
And your scent in my breath
Your body warm against my skin
But you were never there

I drop to my knees
And cry to the sky
Rail against the dunes of time
My tears draining me of
What is left…

With you
I disappear
I disappear here.

Marta Luzim’s Writing The Wave: The Family In My Veins

They were my world. Their big voices, large laughs, glamorous wardrobes, and exciting trips to Las Vegas and Spain. They wanted to live BIG…big and hard…and their pain got in the way. I hunger for them…and all of their grandiosity.

They had wings
They had fangs
They had arms that suffocated my life
They whispered, jump off that cliff
They screamed, you can’t love anyone but me
They were the honey that seeped into my pores and turned into bee stings
They made me fight for life, although they thought they were giving me an easy life
But they knew war, poverty, dead meat on their backs.
They went through it all…pogroms, heart attacks, mental breakdowns, suicide and cancer.
They lived and died and now I am left with their handprints all over my cells.
How can I ever just give them a tatter…or a scrap…they made me…they made me.

And now I am still me in them.