Stand up to the line and sing...

"Poets know this moment
when it's too soon to scream yet
but too late to hold your tongue."

Ewa Lipska

I wrote once that the world needed a new heart, and I asked of myself - what can I do to help create that? Recently, I have gone through periods of despondency as I have witnessed the poets and fools of my world increasingly allowing their spirits to become caged in the dullest of lead cells. When this happens, we begin to sing the wrong language. Yes, I want comfort, the security of belonging, the warmth of a fireside and the safety of acceptance, but I would rather live with the rain in my face than sleep in a velvet-lined cage, for when we allow ourselves to become too dictated by our desire for accolade, approval, recognition, security, reward - we run the risk of missing the moment when it is 'too late to hold your tongue'.

But it is natural, yes, to seek legitimacy, to seek labels that make us feel 'worthy'. I had big low lately when I didn't get a job I had applied for. Why? Because I had wrapped up somewhere in the mix that this was a signal of my legitimacy as a poet. And why seek this coded legitimacy? Because it gives us a label against the 'mad', against the feeling of it being somehow a decadence to live this way. STOP!!!

The poet and Fool tells us the stories of what is is to live, to be human. In ancient days, the poet-shaman went out and told the stories, created magic to explain the existance of their world. The troubadours told of our capacity to love, of the struggle of the free-heart against a growing political and moral oppressive force. In the 20th Century, women and men began to tell their stories in poems, to speak their existence and break the silence. They stood up and shared the individual breath, and in that action, showed that in each single life, all humanity is held. The war poets broke the myth of the heroic bloodshed. Prisoners have sung the poetry of the oppressed. The silenced children have grown up and spoken of the tortures of hidden abuse. Poetry is not about earning the legitimacy of a label (am I a real poet now? a little voice asks), but is about the willingness to break silence. It is a passion for the telling of the human, and the shared, experience. It is about the act of connection, much as this act is. And it is there for everyone. We can all break down the silences.

And this is why I continue the Fool's Path, why I continue to want to sing my songs and why I am blessed to meet and share the journey with so many beautiful travellers! It is why, in the end, I suppose I cringe at the thought of being absorbed into the mainstream, of releasing my autonomy of expression, of creation. I choose freedom and all it entails, the good and bad.

Perhaps in time, the value of the poet and the Fool will come to be appreciated in monetary terms, though it would be an interesting society that rewarded subversion! But if it happened, maybe I might be able to pay my bills once in a while, which would be nice (I have noticed that big business does not accept poems as payment!) but meanwhile, well - rice is nice and the rain feels good.