I just don't get it.
It -being defined as the objects of pandoras box.
It being defined as-
the pain
the loss
the hurt
The things that I should have gotten over-
but still hold me under.
My soul
feels like its drowning.
I am trying to breaststroke in quicksand and
I don't know how to swim.
Ironically,
I don't want to be saved.
I want to survive using my own means.
I need to learn how to trust my own capabilities.
I need to learn how to believe in me.
I am tired of looking into the mirror.
Who is she?
Where is she?
No response.
When my reflection smiles,
she is mocking me.
I am still not whole.
I still have work to do.
Author Archives: Mariana Allsop
I take it back…..
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
I would uninvent the permanence of time.
The saying “in time it will get better” would be no more.
Time would not fly by like the cold winter air kissing my cheek-
reminding me with its caressing sting that my scars still hurt.
I would make time stand still so I could walk around all of my memories , daydreams, laughs and beautiful conversations that I encounter like a visit at a museum.
Taking in the smells, sounds, and kind words that I yearn to hear-
The voices and laughs that I miss daily.
Time does not heal the pain that has anchored its roots and flourishes like weeds.
Time is a reminder that everything we encounter, everything we love, everything we embrace is just borrowed for the time being.
Stop letting it fly by so easily.
Dearly Forgotten
I didn’t write this for the majority.
I didn’t write this for the generation of entitled personas mimicking the human form.
You know the ones that ridicule you for being different because what the majority says goes- and they created this dystopia where anything that is different is not welcome in this bar, store, school, park, bus, train, sidewalk, church, earth.
I wrote this for the vast generation of have nots.
Those who picked the shorter stick by proxy-
Via decisions that were not of their own-
Decisions chosen by those who chose not to try harder-
Decisions chosen by those who chose to not clear a safe path for us.
I say this with pride- We are the have nots.
We are the ones that were trained to endure walking barefoot- down roads littered with shards of fractured dreams – and promises-
With jagged edges that are inoculated with the past transgressions of others and we suffered from the subsequent wounds that festered deep into our soul-
We were eager to wash away our sins by running to get baptized in muddy water and drinking spoiled grape juice with stale crackers- because the silver lining is not always sparkling, fresh and new.
And we struggled to keep our mind free of gangrene, which is rampant because we have to trudge through the unsanitary conditioning strategies of society- you see-
Decay of the mind starts with the censorship of our thoughts, emotions and truths.
So I urge you to continue to make as much noise as you can-
Our voices in -unison can break many glass ceilings throughout eternity.
This is for the have nots-remember- Losing is never an option
My One Ton Life
Every day I disrobe the tangible elements of life and stand on the broken, unbalanced scale of society and stare in the mirror and weigh myself.
Some days I scrutinize each tear as they fall, imagining that they are shooting stars that could grant my wish of taking away the weight of some of these burdens.
Even when my tears filled forty gallon pails, I still weighed a ton.
Everyday I disrobe the tangible elements of life and stand on this broken, unbalanced scale of society and stare in the mirror and weigh myself.
This weight is too heavy for the farce called Reality TV.
No network is brave enough to share the real faces of you and me.
Fate hands us the most beautifully wrapped trials and tribulations as heavy and deadly as the atomic bomb, and lovingly lays them across our chest, forcing the air right out of our lungs but we still have to stand up straight and function as if this weight does not exist.
We still have to stand up straight and walk as if our body doesn’t ache from the pressure of depression compressing our soul.
I find myself unconsciously, robotically sucking in the extra weight so I can fit into the different molds of the personas the outside world befriends and society accepts.
The mother mold, the wife mold, the friend mold, the model employee mold- there is rarely anytime for me to wear my- just me mold.
I suck in the extra weight so I can fit into these molds that have no windows, so at times my creativity becomes stagnant and my soul begins to drown in the puddles of sweat formed by anxiety.
I suck in the extra weight, hoping it doesn’t show as I greet you with a warm hello, or hug or smile.
I discovered that there is no surgery that can cure this weight problem.
So I get my therapy from poetry.
Each poem encapsulates the burdens from my soul into verses that recycle them into something meaningful.
This poem is for you.
This is for the 280 million people in the world that suffer in silence on a daily basis.
This is for you.
I am you.
Everyday we disrobe the tangible elements of life.
Everyday we stand on the broken, unbalanced scale of society.
Everyday we stare in the mirror and weigh ourselves.
This poem is for you.
I see you.
I feel you.
I write these words with hope that they penetrate the manufactured molds of society and let you know that you can do this.
Manifesto
I was birthed in an altered dimension constructed by the hands of deferred dreamers’- souls bludgeoned by burdens until they turned into concrete slabs and bricks, which were used to construct cities of catacombs with exits that only put you right back at the beginning of a path of footprints that lead to self destruction.
Can you imagine being buried alive for over 30 years?
I was forced to draw the frames of a million windows on miles of stone walls using blood from the wounds of my wounds that had been standing one on top of another fighting to get some fresh air.
The toxic environment caused parts of my soul to slough off and evaporate into the stale atmosphere , which mocked me with precipitation that consisted of my innocence dispersed into rain drops which would form twelve feet deep lakes that would taunt me with the reflections of what was lost, taken by force, and I had no choice but to swim across and continue on my path to the surface.
It took me years to slither above the layer of sediment made from decaying past forms of me that I shed in order to lighten the load-
while I struggled to ascend mountains of spines, the remnants of skeletons in the closet, navigating across fractures caused by the weight of the world on weak shoulders demineralized by societies leaching tendencies which erode souls and strip the nutrients needed to produce creativity which in turn depletes the energy necessary for survival.
Now I sit here free.
Dictating this manifesto, unafraid to call out the wolves in human skin.
The life force behind the revolution is us!
We emerge from the swaps, we emerge from the sewers, we emerge from the slums of nightmares holding hands-tattooing your mind with diamonds from the abyss every chance we can get because this is the movement of the rebels.
This is the movement of the rebels.
This is the poet’s manifesto.
Sangre
Yesterday I drove through a thick, blinding fog.
I hoped it would lead me into a portal that would take me to the places that I visit in my dreams.
The places where unfamiliar faces greet me with familiar smiles and hugs.
Here they remind me that eternity is a real place.
This fog caused me to levitate in memories, and before I knew it –
There I stood.
Lost in my mental Labyrinth, which shape shifts with my emotions-
filled with dark alleyways lined with street lamps with flickering bulbs that hold the pieces of the souls that still continue to guide me with the light of their memory and love.
I soon found myself in a house of mirrors.
As I walked down the forgotten corridors- I started to break every mirror because I didn’t want to see the reflections of me-
Images of my past – the puppet that I used to be.
The wooden girl without a cricket for a conscious- who just wanted to be free.
I painfully stepped on every fractured piece of me – as I remembered that I was
a shattered girl living in a shadow world, trying to hunt for the sun- barefoot on hot city concrete, standing in line waiting to get baptized in the river of illegally open fire hydrants- which was the only time I felt relief.
I always watched where the water went as it trickled down the grates into the belly of the beast.
Wondering if it all ends up in the same place that the blood went when it spilled onto the city streets?
I was the forgotten Tarzan, a child raised by sewer rats, swinging through life’s jungle holding on for dear life to the lines from discarded children’s bibles and National Geographic magazines that I saved from trash piles and used them to build paper houses for me to hide in, while I treated my wounds alone.
Lifes lessons built a warrior like no other.
I am a walking, talking enigma.
My soul is grotesquely disfigured with scars and missing parts, but the one thing that was never touched was my heart.
My blood type is the rarest of them all, not A , not B, Not AB, not O-
It is light, it is heat, it is energy, it is unapologetically me.
When I get hit by the fists of life, this rare emulsion flows freely from my busted lip and bleeding nose onto paper – and dries into fragments that form love notes from my soul reminding you and I that anything can be conquered with love.
First I Tried to Walk in the Footsteps of My Father (part.2)
There I stood alone.
The younger version of me was still there too.
She sat down, crossed legged in the middle of my fathers timeline and looked up at me and asked-
“When will he come back?”
Five words, as heavy as bricks, thrown at me
by my own innocence.
They knocked me off course and of course-
I knew the answer, but did I want to disappoint myself again?
Then I remembered.
The superpower that all children have is hope.
In the middle of distress-
In the middle of nowhere or nothing-
In the middle of this burning forest-
A child can sit and still see the possibility of something re-emerging, alive, from fire and ashes.
She asked me again, this time pulling my left hand harder, “When will he come back?”
I stood her up gently and said, “When people lose their path ,sometimes it’s better that they start off at a new point, a place that was different from where they went off track to begin with. I can’t tell you exactly when, but I know where you can find him again.”
I pointed in the opposite direction of the road towards the future.
Her eyes – were so bright.
So, Bright.
Illuminated with love, hope, dreams- so innocent-
And for a moment, just a moment – I remembered seeing through them.
I remembered how differently the world looked.
My senses were heightened.
I could hear the beauty in life’s chaos.
Despair was a symphony of violins playing in B minor, weeping in unison carrying away tears, pain and prayers to the clouds.
The cracks in the sidewalks were strings on a blues guitar and the footsteps of the crowd played a mix of polyrhythmic jazz octaves , sometimes in A minor-
and I was enamored by it all.
I remembered me.
I hugged my youth , I hugged her and watched as she melted into me.
I had locked her out and there she was- just patiently waiting to return to me.
I was so lost in my thoughts that it took me a while to notice someone was watching from afar.
I walked towards the figure only to be stopped by large pieces of glass in the road.
I had to carefully step in between the pieces of dangerous debris, I had to climb through bushes with sharp thorns.
I thought to myself this road was not meant to be traveled and someone tried their best to hide it.
Then I lost my breath after being kicked in the stomach by instinct.
This was the path of my mother.
I was now walking in the footsteps of my mother.
I tried to get to her.
I was bleeding.
I was in pain .
I had to get to her.
She yelled out, “Please , don’t try to come closer! ”.
Three large rows of barbed wire fencing kept me from fully reaching her.
I watched this younger version of my mother as she sat down on the dirt road, hugging her knees to her chest with one arm and burying something with her bare hand.
Her dress was torn, her feet were covered in mud-
Her face looked like it was permanently tattooed with streaks of tears.
The more she wiped her face, the more streaks would appear and her tears were invisible.
I dropped to my knees and said – “Don’t you want to be free?”
She looked at me and said, “I was left here on purpose. I had to hide in order to survive. I am almost finished burying my feelings, because I don’t want to hurt anymore. This is the only way that I can make it through that path that you just came from.”
I got so mad.
I stood up and yelled-, “ What about love? How are you going to love, how are you going to care- if you keep it all buried here?”
She replied, “Love hurts! Love hurt me. My father hurt me. This world hurts. Nothing is safe.”
I yelled back,” Then you will just hurt others. You will hurt the ones that don’t deserve it. You will destroy your own flesh and blood.”
She stood up and grabbed the barbed wire fence with both of hands and then she showed her palms to me.
There was no blood.
Not one drop.
She said, “ Everything was taken from me, down to the blood that ran in my veins.”
She stared at me in silence and then said,” You look like me , you remind me of someone I saw in the mirror many,many years ago. You look like someone I should know, and if this is so- Please make sure that the curse of this path stops with you. You came from that direction so you know what part of me is left.”
With tears in my eyes I watched her fade into the burning forest.
In a rage I screamed out all the pain I endured for years and years.
It echoed through the burning forest and blew out all of the flames.
Engulfed in all the smoke, I just stood there and cried, because for the first time I understood that my path was my own and It was a path that I was meant to travel alone.
As I approached the start of my path, a woman stood before me.
She was an elder spirit that I only saw from time to time in my dreams.
Her form changes but the warmth in her eyes and smile are always the same.
She put her hand on my shoulder and pointed to the sky and said – child, this is where you came from.
First, I heard the devil betting god and all the other angels that I would not succeed and then
I watched these beautiful beings conversate while they crafted me with the stars.
They said we won’t give her regular eyes of man- we will give her the eyes of a guardian angel.
This way she will always see the beauty in the rough and the love in the swap of hate and hope hidden under despair.
We will gift her the power of an imagination that never dulls even as she ages. She will be special, she will be strong and she will carry the messages that need to be heard and felt by the souls of all those in need.
And I saw this light pass on to me in the womb and I watched my body form and my heart beating and my first cry when I was born.
I continued to walk down my timeline and the memory of the beatings I endured didn’t hurt as much, and the verbal abuse daming my existence didn’t cut as deep.
Because now I understood my purpose was never to suffer , my purpose was to shed light and conquer the darkness.
And I only know this because first I had to walk in the footprints of my father.
The Message in the Bottle
I am the remnant of an empty bottle-
Forgotten biofilm that mutated under the pressure of a toxic environment and I flourished- even with little to no light.
I emerged from the bottle, reborn, rebranded as a genie.
I am the genie of the common man, woman and child.
A master contortionist, skilled at finding comfort in any space.
Here I stay, hidden in things that will never catch the eyes of aristocracy.
I prefer to be the diamond in the rough, the fallen angel who is able to fly with one broken wing while holding the hand of men and women while we trip on the same concrete stairs of life.
If only we could all witness the beauty and power in transcending the eyes and using our souls for viewing the world.
I am the remnant of the empty bottle.
While inside I draw the images of my dreams on the walls in star dust and bring light to my small space, I become lost in my personal galaxy, and the sounds of shooting stars, eventually lull me to sleep.
I am the genie of the common man, woman and child.
People seem surprised when I tell them that we all are able to grant wishes.
I have given the gift of long walks.
I have given the gift of silent, strong, warm embraces.
I have given the gift of holding the hand of strangers while they are in the midst of taking their last few breaths.
I have given the gift of spending my last few dollars on a happy meal for a hungry child, standing on a busy NYC street corner, wearing a mask of shame as he watched his mother begging for money for her next drug fix.
Me having nothing did not impede my need to give him something, even if it was just ten minutes to imagine feeling like a child with a mother who just wanted to make him smile.
I am the remnant of the empty bottle.
I leave one bottle and flow into the next, like the fresh ocean breeze.
I am the message in thousands of bottles lost at sea, hoping to reach those intended to receive solace in the form of a simple poem.
I am the genie of the common man, woman and child – and I do not wish to be free.
All that I ask is for you to continue to leave your empty bottles out for me.
Lost Letter To Heaven
It’s days like this when I miss you the most.
When the sun is out and the air is still cold.
When the trees are half barren, yet the buds are beginning to grow.
When the ice starts to melt and the water starts to flow.
You are no longer in pain, but my heart still feels the blows.
So I close my eyes and I reminisce about the beautiful years you spent watching me grow.
You were my hero and you taught me how to fly.
I remember seeing so many colors in the sky- my mind is forever stained with vibrant hues of orange, pink and blood red.
I remember you taking me to the top floor of a building – just to let me look out of a large window – so that I could observe the sky after a thunder storm and watch a rainbow form.
I remember imagining that the rainbow lead to a world filled with teddy bears with magical powers.
I remember my belief in other realms waiting for me to explore.
These early memories are my comfort.
Comfort is me falling asleep on the shoulder of my hero as
my father carries me in his arms after our trip to the circus.
His cologne and the smell of his fresh leather coat-
I take a breath in now, like I can still smell his fresh leather coat.
I miss him.
I miss those aromas of life.
My heart aches as I remember the feelings it gave me.
I remember the feeling of pure love.
I remember being engulfed by the aura of happiness.
I remember the love in your eyes.
I’m honored to be your daughter and I hope I made you proud.
I promised you in your last few days that I wouldn’t let you down.
You became my guardian angel and I know you’re still here.
Physically gone, but your spirit is still near.
Anything beautiful I see, I whisper thank you for sharing.
Thank you for reminding me that this world is still caring.
I know you have your hand on my shoulder during the nights when I cry.
I can hear your voice saying, “Listen sister, wipe those eyes.”
You prepared me the best way that you could,
and I held your hand like any daughter should.
I whispered in your ear, dad just let go, I will be okay, you will see.
You held on for days because I know you were worried about me.
I was a rebel in the streets, trying to find my way.
No real home, adrift floating, trying to find my place.
It still hurts so bad.
It doesn’t get better with time.
That hole is left burning deep on the inside.
I had to share this with you, because I know we might all share the same kind of pain.
You have to keep going, your life matters the same.
We are here for a purpose and we have to find our way.
Our loved ones are all shining lights from above, which helps guide us down the dark paths of life which we all trudge.
Dad, your love is what keeps my heart warm, at times when it’s cold.
Your values I instill in my kids, you will see.
If I had a genie and he granted one wish for me-
The only thing I would wish is to hear your voice say how proud you are of me.
Or to smell your cologne along with one last, long strong hug.
To the man I adore the most in the world, I’m sending kisses and hugs to heaven above.
Love daddy’s little girl.
A Poets Pantry
I remember when I took my first bite of heartbreak.
I didn’t see ill intentions hiding underneath the perfect layer of milk chocolate-because I was only dipping the tips of my fingers in the icing.
I was enticed to take a bite, and that was when I first experienced the taste of malice.
The bitterness hugged on to each of my taste buds, like the barnacle colonies on the hull of my self esteem’s sinking ship.
I couldn’t eat for days.
I remember laying in a fetal position, retching in my sleep.
Everything reminded me of him- and I was sick to my stomach over and over again.
I thought I knew what the scent and taste of love was, but my senses were so immature.
Eventually, this taught me to observe more.
I have a habit of reading people like nutrition labels- because I need to know what your value is to me.
I need to know the repercussions of adding you to my diet on a daily basis.
Do you increase my risk of heart disease by clogging my arteries with false friendship, fake forevers and parasitic tendencies that hardens not only my heart but the vessels that lead in and out of it?
I want to know what percentage is organic-natural, real, wholesome, fresh, light.
Are you a superfood- packed with dense nutrients?
You see, I am a glutton.
If you invite me to a buffet, I will pile up my plate with fulfilling, perfectly seasoned conversations that have been marinating in this frigid world.
I prefer to leave my food for thought out in the cold – on the back porches of society where other poets also thrive.
It’s a place where we can have a better view of the stars as we allow our brain cells to marinate into a savory fusion of enigma, dredged in understanding about the beauty in our differences.
Differences that amalgamate into an exquisite delicacy that we deliver in the forms of verses.
Bon Appetite!
