if we could disconnect the sun the clouds could separate our tongues, light no longer shed on things we have done (if we could only disconnect the sun) ~ A. L. Stippich
April Showers
The month of March has really beat me to a pulp, hence the lack of posts. Sometimes the emotional ups and downs in mental health are just too much and the idea of practicing vulnerability feels more like horror and suffocation and makes me want to hide forever.
With that being said, I am going to attempt to start April fresh with a hearty month of poetry (and plants. And yarn…).
Enjoy.
southern bells (mama)
Mama, There is trouble in the dark folds of the clouds There's a steady wind that's stirrin' A foul chill from the southern towns There is death on the horizon, Hatred hangin' from the trees People trying to be heard but Being brought down on their Hands and knees Mama, There's a war that's spilling dark blood into the ground, We tried to warn them with our words But monsters swallowed up the sound Mama, mama, there is trouble, And we've hidden underground. The plague is ripe, the dead have grown And they are coming for us now Mama, There is trouble, breeding ugly all around. We were soldiers in the war, Now we're six feet underground Mama, know I'll always love you, I hope you see me when you sleep. I keep your picture in my mind, I keep your memory buried deep ~ A. L. Stippich
death is a cloud
I watched you die in your sleep your last sighs peaceful and deep my heart went hollow and weak (I felt the soul of you leave) my nerves were tangled and sorrow completely engulfed me I watched you die in your sleep A. L. Stippich
for the love of the game
It took me twenty some years to find out that my mother had a major love for baseball. Twenty years of no games on the television and seemingly no interest and this woman sits and sketches me a diagram of a field, rules and all. I remember the first time sitting and listening to her talk about baseball. REALLY talk; I think my jaw fell open. Who is this? A completely unknown form of poetry in itself, America’s “favorite pastime” that was unbeknownst to me.
As I share parts of my book, I am inclined to stress that, though much of my childhood was a shattered mess, there is a reason I am still here. There are positive and beautiful memories I can look on that help remind me that every moment has its purpose.
Today’s segment, while short, still makes me teary eyed when I think on the memories it invoked.
~
“I have always known I was a writer. I have my mother to thank for that.
My first inspiration. A poet herself, her love of poetry was recognizable by her book collection as well as the books she surrounded us with. Her favorite poet was Emily Dickinson, but it was always her other collections that held my eye more. The obscure writers, Black and White, from the sixties and seventies whose pain and transparency bled crimson from each page; a rhythmic manifesto for a generation’s angst. Writers with such rich descriptions and overwhelmingly strong capabilities of waking up parts of my heart that I did not even know were there. Admittedly, I was too young to understand most of what I was reading when I first started pulling these books from the shelf, but I would learn. I was a motivated spirit when it came to words, I loved the way with which poetry painted the human condition, and I wanted to learn to do the same.
No parent read a book like her; a master of voices, my mum always read aloud like a conductor, with precision and ease. Each character had their own specified voice, some of them I still recall to this day. High voices, deep voice, squeaky and silly voices, transitioning from each one with a small grin. By the time the books were finished, her voice was always slightly shot yet, we always wanted more.
I remember loving words so much as a kid that I would memorize large sections of children’s books that she read to us. I even went so far as to then “read” the books to my baby brother, which impressed her greatly, until she saw I was reading Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham upside down.
As soon as writing sentences made some semblance of sense, I found a way to weave thoughts, stories, and poems together. I got as much use as humanly possible out of my mother’s clunky, late-eighties, electric typewriter when I was seven years old and I never grew tired of it. I can still hear the tapping sound the keys made and the “snap-snap-snap” of the machine pounding the key letters one by one as it printed onto the paper back and forth across the bar. Writing and books were the first things in life I remember losing time to. Endless hours of words on a summer evening and seconds later it is three in the morning and my light would be the last on in the house. Eventually, I realized I was better at writing than I was at speaking.“
~ For No One, by A. L. Stippich
take me to church
“Religion is a breeding ground
Where the devil’s work is deeply found…“
~ Sleeping at Last
*Triggering Content Warning*
What does it mean to say “I grew up in the church.” Some of us make the statement without even thinking about the weight of it, myself included. Just a standard fact of observation, a piece of historical data written into your code. We do not talk about how it affected us, positively or negatively, how it shaped us to be outside of the church walls, and how we interact with other human beings on a day to day basis because of it. The environments with which we are raised define everything about the final product of which we become, and being raised in a church setting is not free of its destructive demons.
It is a different story each time. Some people have had amazing experiences within a church setting growing up while others drift away from their church, often from experiences that are starkly contrast.
My experience was the latter.
In our world, gossip was currency. One prayer for a juicy detail that would make its rounds through the slacked jaws of the church pews until it came back to you, diseased and distorted. Emotional manipulation, blackmail, and racism were just a few more of the first things I learned about what it meant to be a part of my church.
My experience has far too many layers to gather within a single post or even a chapter. So lets just start from the beginning.
~
“By the time I was a preteen, I was a bible hugging, awkward, and overly curvy brown girl with hair no one knew what to do with, nor wanted to deal with. To top everything off with the sweetest of cherries, I grew up having no inkling on how to socialize outside of warped, cult-like church beliefs and ideas. I felt like the divine recipe for a walking disaster. I was always saying the wrong things, giving the wrong looks, talking too much, talking too little, and everything in between. With body parts most preteens had not even started growing yet, I had no self-esteem and was surrounded by dozens of skinny, straight haired, white girls who could wear their hair down and adorn scant bikinis while a simple two piece was considered ‘inappropriate for a body like’ mine.
I can recall as early as ten years of age having my body stared at, discussed, and over-sexualized by adults in the church community in open and public conversations in front of me, sometimes even pulling in their own children to demonstrate my iniquities of having a shape.
“look at my daughter”, I vividly recall one mother boasting loudly in a hall bustling with my rowdy peers. She roughly yanked at the bottom of her offspring’s man-sized, knee length, tie-dye monstrosity to indicate minimum length requirements. “Modest, Christian girls wear shirts like this, not like yours,” she huffed in disgust as her gaze scanned me from head to toe.
I was wearing a t-shirt and a club vest.
How I looked was always being picked apart by adults who just provided their children with ruthless ammunition to make their own assessments of my body. I became a constant target practice for the girls within my religious clubs, made up of non-profit evangelical groups, that my parents had enrolled me in at the age of five. Bullied incessantly for my hair, the way I talked, and more than anything, the way I dressed; my thrift store clothing purchases were never the talk of the town.
I still remember my first pair of Nike shoes, white with baby blue lining that almost glowed. I was beyond excited to finally have something that would help me fit in. It was not even a week later when I would be shoved into a dark corner away from adult eyes, pinned against the white washed, brick wall, having my Nike adorned toes stomped on over and over while being accused of buying fakes. It was around that moment that it began to feel like nothing I could change about myself would make things different.
Even pedophilic men within the church, some fathers themselves, were no strangers to myself and my female peers body types. It was not uncommon to hear a man in his forties approach a father to inform him that “his [twelve year old] daughter’s tight fitting look was causing himself and other men in the church to stumble.”
Translation in the real world – a forty year old man and his buddies, who could not keep it in their pants even during Sunday church services, were struggling to not find a twelve year old as a sexually viable candidate and it was the child’s fault. It was always the child’s fault.
~
These same men who cheered on their sons as their one night rendezvous were tallied up between high school and college like a competing scoreboard that defined masculinity the higher the numbers grew. The same men who, when women approached them for safety from spousal abuse, no matter how beaten, bloody, and bruised, would give the same repetitive, monotone advisement –
“That’s something you’ll just have to work out with your husband…”
In the church, even from childhood, I learned two very important things about how the sexes should behave and obey. Men were given every single excuse in the book on a golden platter while women were instructed to keep their men “happy” in the bedroom and in the kitchen or else they deserved every ounce of disrespect, infidelity, physical and emotional torture they were dealt.
A fresh take of hell on earth, surrounded by adults catering to sick thoughts, family structures, and the poor moral judgements of other adults. A cult under the guise of a steeple.”
~ For No One, by A. L. Stippich
Our stories are important, no matter what the elements are that make them up. To ever believe that your history is what should define your road moving forward, however, is not moving forward at all.
Many will ask me today where I am with Christ and if I am a Christian still, and while the Ron Swanson part of my narcissism would prefer to say I’m a “practicing none of your damn business,” my answer is usually just ‘yes’ and then it is time to move the conversation along.
My faith is my own now, and for the first time in my life, it is protected and healing from the decades of war caused by others tearing it down. It is not for anyone to dissect and analyze under an equally flawed microscope. My faith belongs to me, and my spiritual journey is no longer defined by a building filled with other broken human beings.
It is between me and my god.
maternity
a childless mother of none a heathen, (To fail) her purpose redirected at the tender age of twenty two (a walking casket, the crowd throws flowers, and mourns, spitting sentiments of well wishes and good health. Rejoice!) open up the hollow points of her decaying Womb, (the space has been labeled an empty tomb) Wasted and stripped, for her purpose is not but to exist, and Nothing more ~A. L. Stippich
intention(al)
(bang!) the echo stretches for miles even the trees stop and turn and all is still one slip of a finger on the silver hammer cuts a clear path through the front wall and out the back (enter through the side door, exit through the window) and everything you know (every idea) every picture (everything you carried, loosed) (every first love) spills back into the earth (your mother receives you in gallons; in pints) if all is not lost, then, for now, it is only you ~ A. L. Stippich
deep
I am in the winter, and I am in the snow. I am the child of a vengeful cloud Through the black trees, my sharp winds weave and grow (echo, I echo) I am a quiet death, I will take them while they sleep I am the rattle of their window pane, And the numb beneath their feet I will wake you at the moment, in the deepest of your slumber When the moon wanes to the center and lightning meets with thunder When a rush sets through the freezing streams I’ll bleed you out, and strangle your dreams I’ll spend the last of the air that I breathe to bring you down here, into the deep with me (into the deep, you will be here, with me) ~ A. L. Stippich
dear brother
dear brother, don’t forget to turn out the lights (dear brother, don’t forget to let go) the leaves will still choose to change their colors and the earth beneath you will still turn all the same what is gone is over, the dead cannot speak any more than they can hear; your cries remain foreign to closed ears (brother, to stay inside the still is a slow way to die) tragedy is every crack in your road; every fistful of sand in your eyes we can make up our minds to wash them clean or let each grain bore holes ‘til we go blind so let, slow the veil that covers your soul slip back down from your face to the floor; mourn yesterday when it is (and only when it is) and close that door and, brother, don’t forget to turn out the lights ~ A. L. Stippich
Life at the Burrow 