shameless

Sometimes I feel invincible,
and for all that human frailty may try to keep me back
I am gonna just spit in its face,
'cause the fount of feeling that wells up in my breast,
the hurricane, thunderstorm, cavalcade, concerto
of overwhelming emotion that bursts forth from my soul,
Constantly,
is powerful as nine hundred million nuclear reactors on the face of the sun
and I simply must use this power for good.

I am omnipotent,
Able to accomplish astonishing feats like
Coaxing the unwilling to learn to love,
Overcoming internalized oppression so I feel really good about myself as a person,
Communicating remarkably well, all of the time,
and consistently being a considerate human being
while striving, aggressively, toward my dreams.

I am unabashed and unwilling to take no for an answer.
I can and will do it all,
Experience every raw moment this raucous life presents –
I will guzzle everyday miracles like a baleen whale sucking saltwater in the sea,
I will let life shove my face full of sweetness like she is my merciless newlywed,
I will nurture and tend like the thousand-breasted Artemis, and
I will ride life bareback like she was my bucking rodeo pony.
I will use the thorns of the Joshua tree soaked in cuttlefish ink to etch life’s pedigree permanently under my skin,
I will study like a scholar in an ivory tower and obtain the highest degrees –
Just you try to stop me!
And I will wail the cries of every widow war ever made, brokenhearted under the stars then
Like a Jedi on Dagobah I’ll levitate my spaceship above the murky abyss that tries to keep me from soaring light speed through the universe and
Turn even the most heinous of events into lessons I will be grateful to have learned.

I refuse to accept any assessment that I am
Too big, too loud, too wild, too proud and
when those words come toward me like bullets
I will pluck them delicately from the air
Pulverize them,
then blow the dust back in the faces of non-believers till they see…
There is no one as powerful as me,
No one as powerful as any one of us who insist
We live life by our hearts
We submerge ourselves fully in the complexities of existence and
Never ever apologize for what we are or
Who we want to be -
We who are shameless in our insistence that
We are fucking remarkable beyond belief.

(This piece inspired in part by a shameless scorpio beloved, a silver super sonic rock star, and a Death Cab for Cutie song I got turned onto by said silver rock star. The artwork above, also titled "Shameless," is by an amazing artist I just discovered named Stephanie Metz. She is a felted wool sculpture - wow. Please click to see more of her work once you have read my post, of course. Thanks Stephanie.)