Being Less of a Somebody Makes for a Happier Soulbody

I didn't think it was possible, but alas... As I fell into a blissful nap this afternoon, after working the early morning shift at the bakery down the street from my house, I thought to myself, I have the perfect life. 

Mind you, I have a cracked tail bone, under $200, and no real goal of getting somewhere big. No love-of-my-life has strutted into the scene. No dreams have fallen into my lap.

But mind you, I also have a roof over my head, friends of every age, the time and space to dance and make art and light candles and read books and bake bread if I so well please. And perhaps, after all, those are the biggest dreams of all.

I have space. I have quiet. I have art and music and true friendship. I have freedom and my own small rebellion from all the projections of what I was supposed to become. I have a thousand acquired legos and I'm building my new home. (Which, by the way, has candles lit 17 hours a day, and walls that sweat with prayers and grace.)

And I live in a city where being like this--relaxed and healing-focused--makes me just like everybody else. And that, my friends, feels good. Freak flags are fine and dandy (wonderful! fly 'em high!), but living in the Freak City is proving itself to be the sweetest relief a girl like me could ask for.

That's all. Just wanted to pop in and report on life from my end. I've casually taken myself out of the internet-end of my business. Because hustling online for clients is not my art, nor my liberation. That's all I really feel like saying on that for now. I'm sure you can imagine. 

Also, since moving to Portland it seems I've been getting mail twice weekly. If you want to be pen pals, I'd so love to hear from you. How's your heart? What's your secret wish? The life you know in your bones would be your most authentic day-to-day? 

Write me here or on old fashioned pen and paper. I'd love to hear from you.

Rachael Maddox

8535 SE 16th Ave

Portland, OR 97202

Also, I'm doing an intimate poem-a-day project throughout 2014. I'm keeping it private to the public-at-large (oh, the millions of you that want to read my secret poems! ;)... but I'd be happy to send you the private link if you want to read along. Just email me at rachmddx at gmail dot com with WRITE YOUR POEMS in the subject line, and I'll send you the link. You are so welcome to sneak a peek, write to me about it, write your own poems, send them to me as a loving listener and support. All the good things!

Wishing you the happiest of 2014s... a year of truth and emergence, liberation and grace. xoxo

eve eve eve, with no need to apologize

i don't have normal words.

i have acrostic poems and sketches and ribbons of choruses dancing the gray-sky winds.

i have 1,000 homes and healing hips.

i have my mind and the chance for existentialism or grins.

i have the gift of what's come from giving up on where i'm from. trying less to impress. trying true to breathe through the anxiety of not needing to be somebody.

i have coffee, black and bitter.

i have books, better and better.

i have chest-swollen-thanks under my sweater.

i have moon-bright-trust tucked under cover.

i have a chastity belt around my bruised bottom and a sense of safety even though i'm broken.

i have thank you's overdue and your welcome's i haven't felt through.

i have more spirals than i can count.

i have sacred memories i won't write about.

i have mirrors and mirrors and mirrors of love.

i have the wild above and the thick tangled below.

the center throws of now all dancing around my body like flames of infinity i don't need to control.

find me in awe, down on my knees, praying please please please:

shout yes across the ether, and yes into my weathered heart.

yes to the ache in me that pleads to break free from humanity.

find me whispering: this, this, this is it.

stay. it's all okay.

tenderness. cracks. new growth. laughs.

a strange freedom from longing.

a weird sense of belonging

to myself.

small child, still wild, ever-allowed to make messy mistakes and infinite retakes.

all for the sake of feeling at home in myself.

i hold the wealth.

there's nowhere to go.

stay. there's a way to be strong and simple here.

there's a way to clear the need to be anything but free.

fall.
fall.
fall.

love calls me to my natural height.

tall.
small.
tall.
small.
tall.

through the love lens

i am neither
one nor all
but the strange
falling motion of
acknowledgment
and now.

promises

weave a story
with your strong hands
in my wild hair

tell me something
untrue
and unbuttoning--
drenched with wanting,
elongated

i've mostly sworn myself off promising,
but i promise
i'll stay open to
considering your sweet nothings

not that you're a liar,
just that words
are as impossible
as love
and i speak more in the language of
labor and hands:
grabbing hold
clenching skin
punching in
time after time after time--

muscles so controlled
they learn
how to stitch
and stay--
or at least
make falling away
look graceful



***



i'm hungry, now
with no energy to spare deliberating

i will feed myself
until i become round and full of promise
big enough
to keep

if you wanted to know my spirit

if you wanted to know my spirit
i'd give you a jar and say:

mix all my paints with water
turn me mud-brown, mutt-like
let no one know where i'm from by sight

call me a gorgeous indistinguishable everything
call me singing hallelujah off tune
call me just like you: special matter, transmuting 
unable to untangle 

all these pigments
and roots

hallelu
hallelu
hallelu