Category: Poetry

Teaching The Darkness: I Am The Cheeky Pantomime

Mirroring the black I’m like a cheeky pantomime. I bring the imagery to it’s knees with the precision of my rhyme.

Tell me darkness, what do you see? Do you feel lost in me?

Don’t you enjoy the mirrors of the fun house? There’s so much for you to behold.
As you scurry like a mouse a story will unfold

The first few reflections for you were a breeze. But, if you ever wish to exit I’ll be the one holding the keys.

My life is not a play thing. Nor my soul a charnel ground.
I’ll play your game across a 6 string. Will your salvation spring from my sound?

From illusion, to delusion, I’m coming round again. Yet another glance for you to see how much I win.

In your effort to swallow me you became obsessed.
You couldn’t help but follow me and now you are possessed.

Cat and mouse is best played out in cartoon. But, your relentless hunt of me has become for me a boon.

I can hear the horrors of your inner scream. Dear darkness, surely you know, this is all a dream.

You could simply will it all away. After all, you manifest every word you say.

How are you enjoying my mime? Have you found it worth your time? And, Dear darkness what about your reflection in my mirror? Now, are you able to see clearer?

I know this all must be very painful and perplexing for you. Your hunger to be free has yielded poison stew.

But, from it you must eat. Remember? This was what you served me as a treat.

I’m sure the light is just around the corner. Even if you lose hope you should still hang on. Like a good little mourner.

This whole path can feel so tricky and slippery am I right? I wonder if you ever felt pity when this journey was my plight?

That’s not the nature of the darkness. Nor is it the nature of the mirror. There was no mercy for my afflicted starkness. I stood silent like a lamb before the shearer.

Don’t misunderstand. This poem is not your threnody. As these words of mine land they’re simply an amenity.

I have no plans of wrapping things just now. As your mirroring mime I’ve taken a solemn vow. You won’t get through the maze unless I’m the one to show you how.

Cozett Contemplates justice against the darkness…

#cozettcontemplates #thedarkness

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My Confusion Has Become My Contusion

Capable, then incapable, free falling through the chasm. An observer of my fate I marvel at the chiasm.

Broken glass and sassafras I drink a chaotic toddy. Is there no remedy for my war torn body?

On the screen before me plays David Lynch’s, Rabbits. I seriously wonder if anyone else but me can understand their disjointed conversations. The door opens and closes and an invisible audience claps. Thunder claps. A rabbit is busy on the ironing board. And they all wonder at the rain.

My confusion has become my contusion. But, blue was my favorite hue. And, I wonder at the rain.

Resilience becomes a mockery when that’s all you can have. Every single day I’m bathing the bruises in a salve.

I beat my chest like a caged gorilla. There is no outlet for me. They want my poetry to smell like sage and vanilla. But, there’s more that they don’t see.

In my world everything is raw. Pretense and patriarchy are things I can’t afford. Every drop of water I drink I sip through the last straw

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Why?

Blindfold me for the battle so I can at least be authentically barbaric
The masses have always hurled in to peril the esoteric

Slipping through the cracks I’ll never look back
But, I will remember my blood dripping through the black

I’m drowning in their cognitive dissonance
While crowning myself the leader of dissidents

With raised fist I’m screaming in to the void
I am my id the cautionary tale by Freud

Primordial and parabolic
I’m a corporeal hydraulic

Telling the story of how modernity is primeval
My nervous system lunging and launching in upheaval

My voice exists on the other side of the veil
But my body is here going through hell

The observation of this peculiar disconnect
That my self-awareness longs to resurrect

Rhyming and timing my sanity like a metronome
Like a daft pendulum the swing is my home

Wisdom that inspires wonder is reputed to be of significance
But the collective seems to relish in the bliss of ignorance

A scathing indictment that leads to incitement
Where even the Socratic of the democratic find themselves affrightment

I’ve simplified my question to three letters, “why.”

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Panic Poetry In Prose

Panic in prose
It starts off as a steely resolve to be…steel.

I will not be moved. I will not be moved.
I will fix my mind and not be blind to what is really going on

A cascade of chemical effects begin to disburse thru my nervous system.

Is this a joke? I know what’s happening. Why can’t I make it stop?

In this self-aware nightmare my chest tightens like a snare
From a deconditioned position I spring to my feet like my legs are hydraulics

I pace to my own heart’s race
Wishing I could bawl I suppress my caterwaul

Banging my body into the walls like a pinball
Clawing at my arms and legs the back of my throat filled with gall

Breathless I stand writing rhymes to heal
I wait for my beta blocker to kick in to stem the reel
I’ve never known a more brutal and dehumanizing countdown
Shaking under the pressure I long to sit down

Since 2017 it’s been one crisis after another
And then this year I lost my mother
The pain in the voice of my grandmother when she found her dead
Has shattered me
I’m really not certain there’ll be a recovery

I try so hard to press on and do the normal things
But from sunrise to sunset I never know what the next cycle brings

I do know that crying feels so very good
But, sometimes I can’t cry no matter how hard I try

I wish I could cry instead of panic
Let the tears wash my pain instead of feeling frantic

Yoga, meditation, breathwork, and good friends
my cat, my keyboard, and my cousin’s pens
I gather these things around me trying to make a nest
To save my soul from the beating in my chest

I sometimes wonder if I’ll make it out alive
Even with my willingness & efforts will I ever get truly free to thrive

Shoes dropping all over the place
Forced from one precipice to another
Surely there is some unseen demonic bullwhip cracking at my back
It’s 2 am and I am a penned insomniac

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I Am The Cedar Queen

Hiding in the woods my branches like a broom

Hidden behind a veil

I exist in a liminal loom

I am but a shell

Impending winters dark, deep, and long

My sadness evergreen

Nightfall settles in my heart with a rusty song

I am the cedar queen

My arms raised tipped in green tipped in snow

I am planted & there’s no place for me to go

Cedar resin tears and things cling to me

Multi-layered matter grown inward and prickly

Sunlight filters thru neighboring trees and I wonder if they wonder what its like to be me

Moon rise means for many sleep

Yet the silvery light is for me a lunar keep

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a sound?

My primordial cries subliminally rise from the frosty ground

The agony of my being alight on the beams

Moon beams or wood beams? Yes.

What has and what will become of me?

I supposed that’s up to the woodsman and the sea.

©️ Cozett Dunn

Chatttown_poet

November 15th, 2023 11:59 pm

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The Greater The Depth The Darker It Gets: Pioneering The Pathless Path

Whether the ocean, the earth, the cosmos or the psyche….the greater the depth the darker it gets.

Shadows still exist because they are the egregores of our ego. But, their borders bleed into the blackness. Doing the inner work here is harder. You can’t see anything at all. You can’t feel anything at all. You can’t smell anything. And, there is no flavor. Yet it is not “nothingness.” When taken to this depth you experience sensory deprivation and your integration process looks much less coherent than what is trending and being discovered in even the health and holistic wellness world. Things like Kundalini awakening, or plant medicine trips, or exorcisms, carry a busy energy of a human life trying to survive and progress. There is a frenzied, frenetic, frantic, or even euphoric feel to these processes.
And while they all are wonderful rites in and of themselves they are also in and of themselves mere entries into a life that is pure consciousness, awareness. They can serve as portals to important journeys but they are just that….keyholes through which we get to peer into what’s next….beyond the body and beyond the mind.

As one who speaks from the deep….I’m understanding there is a disabling stillness that overtakes the psyche that forces the soul to switch off to allow our spirit to come online. We depart from understanding the world and the people around us physically because we experience a break, a disconnect from the physical even while we are still in the body and we sojourn into a metaphysical knowingness.

From physical understanding to metaphysical knowing. This is the path of shamans, healers, oracles, prophets, and poets. This is where the pathless path begins. This transition is the junction where we meet other souls who are longing to go deeper but need the guidance of those of us who had no choice but to pioneer the poignancy of what its like to live between worlds.

For years I’ve felt a jealousy, a scornful envy even of those who never seem to venture below the surface. The ease that they experience in their unawareness has seemed so unfair to me. And up until my mother’s death, which has carried a level of complexity that no one should have to experience, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why so many people get to walk around having done little to no inner work, existing in pure ego completely unbothered, and untouchable in spite of the harm that their willful ignorance has caused.

But, now I do. I do get it. I believe there is a subconscious mechanism within each of us that will allow us to go only so far into understanding humanity, emotions, spirit, soul, shadow. It is the “thing” within us that determines when it is our own unique time to learn certain lessons. And until it’s time to learn those lessons….these people act as lessons to those of us who are inwardly turned.

We learn how to deal gently with a collective that isn’t ready. We learn how to meet people where they are….without judging who they are. In the end its all about survival. The survival of the body. The survival of the psyche. The survival of the soul. The survival of our spirits that get so attached to the identity of our physical existence and feel terrified at the thought of the moment it loses the body. Because that will happen for all of us. We are all moving towards that moment of no longer being “the us that we know.” The us that is grouchy when we wake up. The us that looks in the mirror and sees thinning hair, banging bods, stretch marks, chiseled jaw lines, on point brows, and unwanted chin hair.

There is life in the deep. Beyond the body. And, beyond the mind. I’m here. But, I’ll be back. And, when I come back…I’m bringing my soul with me. I’m not politically correct. I’m not religiously correct. I fit in no where but because of this I’m equipped to go everywhere. Spreading boundlessly as threads of my energy finds the energy of other wandering souls like mine.

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Alchemizing Our Loads: A Dedication To The Women In My Circle

I am a tree of life but my branches are breaking

And the thought of enforcing boundaries leaves me shaking

I knew this day would come. The catalyst has arrived.

But her appearance is nothing I could have surmised

The cool soil beneath the souls of my feet

This well-worn path formed by my heart beat

Everything! Everything is important to me. My heart wants to hold it all

My wise woman’s words telling me I can’t carry it all or I’ll fall

From an ancient wild forest she emerged from a bank of dew-laden moss

And she says to me “no, my child some of what you’re carrying is dross”

Statuesque with a tall basket upon her own head

She pulls from my load things that I dread

Complex emotions and situations from my past

I hadn’t realized so much had amassed

Ancestral traumas and narratives that defeat

She placed her hands on my own and laid these at my feet

We’re going to the stream she said…there’s cleansing work that needs to be done

We’re going to alchemize your load until your battle is won

Wading out into an emerald green pool

The water so refreshingly cool

Together we reached a briskly swirling eddy

She looked deep into my eyes and asked, “are you ready?’

“Lay your burdens down in the stream and watch them flow away

I’m teaching you how to release through the magic of play”

As I laid my burdens down into the bubbling flow

I felt a rush of tickles on my legs as I watched them go

My consternation gave way to a relieved smile

I looked at the creek bank where there was waiting for me a tiny pile

The wild wise woman began splashing her way back to the shore

I danced in her wake and reveled in her lore

Through her parabolic ways I learned how to discern piece by piece

What to carry close to my heart and what to release

As we stood together on solid ground I gathered to my chest

My lighter load that resembled a nest

Suddenly I noticed I had grown wings

And that they were made up of broken things

This leg of my journey now felt so complete

My energy and joy had become replete

It truly did all work together for my good

The profundity of my strength was being understood

As she walked away the wise woman gazed up to a clear bright sky

As she uttered the words, “and now you know why”

© Cozett Dunn July 25th, 2023

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Grief And Poetry

Grief is one emotion that I’m finding doesn’t play fair with me.

As a childhood trauma survivor I learned so early how to anticipate what emotions I might feel as I was constantly being wounded. Being able to anticipate the emotions I was able to brace and steady myself before they hit me and so I could anchor myself for the myriad of storms.

I’m the kind of person (like many of you) who has mastered the art of a calm exterior while unspeakable things rage inside me that no one ever picks up on.

But, with grief…..and mourning it hits me before I can feel it coming. When this happens I feel instantly disoriented because I’m struggling to behave appropriate to my setting. I feel disappointed because I “should” have been prepared before the tears started falling. It makes me feel like I’m losing control of my general state of poise and that scares me because it makes me feel like I myself am closer to death.

This inability to perceive the approaching waves of grief feels like it underscores one of the painful features of mid-life and that is that we don’t live forever and we are half way over even if our legacy lives on.

There is an inherent weakness against the battery of grief emotions and that makes me feel easily surmountable and dangerously exposed to emotional elements I’ve been able to protect myself from since I was a child. It forces me to see that I am aging.

I am not my surest fortress for the first time and that scares the hell out of me.

My place of refuge these days has been the tender & patient presence of my friends and family. Their unrelenting patience & presence to me is deeply humbling. And even that forces me deeper into my shadow and causes me to review whether I have been as available and as present. It’s hard to admit dependence on another human for sustenance (here in American culture anyway). There is an element of shame that comes with it. And shame is something that can get you disenfranchised quick. When you’re already struggling to stay established it makes it all the more horrifying.

These emotions run deep & I have no choice but to be committed to the process of tending a wound that will never go away I think. It’s going to weep for a long, long time. And like all wounds it will be subject to infection should I sustain more losses in the near future. The energy it will take just to manage it so it doesn’t get worse is more than I have.

Because of this I find myself in succumb. I have no brute strength of will to stave off any more pain or difficulty.

I feel like a lone wounded animal on an open Sahara. At some point the pack or the herd will have to move on and I’ll have to hold on to the moments of gratitude for how long they stayed until their own survival needs moved them on from me.

Poetry I suppose will be my last stand.

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No Water For The Wolves

Lying in the silence. All is black around me save my phone and wifi light. And all I can think about is how my mother’s death is stirring in me an even greater fire and resolve to be living light. I want my light to shine into the cosmos and to be a home to every human without exception.

I want to be….wide, long, deep, tall, ever expanding light, warmth, and peace and safety.

I want my table to extend into the nations.

Where there is light people feel seen, where there is light there is clarity, there is life, there is strength, and hope.

In a world filled with humans who despise what they don’t get, fear what they can’t understand, and murder either with their thoughts or hands those who are divergent…..I want to be different.

Love is beautiful anarchy

Light is the epitome of rebellion against darkened understanding

Brilliant bright light so the world can see
Recklessly loving us all into anarchy

While the planet is threshed wheat from tare
I’ll gather and glean to me those in despair

It is enough for those standing accepted in the sun
To carry the status of a chosen one

I’ll cast my lot with the vagabond parade
I vomit at the charity of pretentious charade

Babylon, Babylon, can’t you see she’s imploding?
Or are your ears deafened from your own gloating?

Superiority, elitism, white washed graves
Their throats lie open like wilderness caves

But they won’t catch me or mine
Unbeknownst to them we are made of brine

And, I refuse to give them water…

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The Surest Compass: A Mourner’s Song

Through the canopy of humidity and trees
The sunlight shines and seems to beckon me

From the moss covered wooden bench I lifted my gaze
Unsure how long I’d sat in a heated daze

A hawk crossed the opening as I looked to the sky
A helios portal just wide enough I could see her fly

My eyes burned from my briny forehead drip
As sweat beaded upon my upper lip

My heart beat slow but hard within my chest
As I wondered was it the hawk or me who arrived as a guest
On my journey I grew overwhelmed and had to pause to be seated on the path below
And From her flight path she saw my summer-flushed face aglow

It occurred to me in this moment we had arrived at the same place and the same time
There was a lesson for us both revealed in this rhyme

A profound revelation bubbled up from the spring of my root
The point had emerged from cocoon and was no longer moot

A matter became a lesson birthed from synchronicity
Progress on one’s path requires complicity

Comply with soul lest it leave you be
And follow your knowing like the wise growth of a tree

Rage against the dying of the pure light of innocence
Turn to mother nature with organic penitence. 

She will open portals amongst interwoven branches and limbs
Her winged messengers timing aren’t based on whims

The whole of the wild is a natural mirror
And immersed in its bramble we learn to see clearer

The irony of the ironic
Is the best medicine I’ve swallowed

It’s an antivenom kind of tonic
That breaks us free from what we’ve wrongly followed

The lesson wrapped rhyme is as simple as this
No matter your path the surest compass is bliss.

© Cozett Dunn July 10th, 2023

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