so, hold your capacity for melancholy
and name it strength
hold your righteous anger
and name it the pathway to peace.
honor your translucent skin,
your bone truth bruises
worship your geography of bones and scars
that roadmap of veins
the path to the center
the pulse of spirit
the gateway of want

Light torch to
bonds built from lies
let the flames build
ignite truth
and let it burn
merge ashes into melody
knit moments into worlds
howl visions into open skies
fold yourself into the endless rain
and call the wild things home.

sing rough croon
spill blood fever
coax magic spiral
nuture the fierce in your belly
let it expand
release the song in your pulse
let the explosion push outward
and rock your standing ground
let the quaking earth birth you anew

rise up, now

accept your catalogue of regret
gather close your imperfect history
this life can be violent crucible
grace doesn’t always look pretty
grief is a complicated ghost
and we are all
in some way haunted.

but this?
this is an invitation
enter your life now
build a home inside your hollow
cast a spell into the ether
evoke your own divinity
turn the music up loud
let it build
feel  the reverb
settle deep in your bones
until your spirit
pulsates

until the heat of it
permeates
your entire existence

and listen, you starlight seeker
listen jackhammer goddess
you’ve been holding on too tight
to things no longer yours.
loosen your grip, lover,
ease open your palms.
come out with your hands up.
this is not arrest.
this is the beginning.

and you
must not
be tamed.

The post poem for the world appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

There is a point when tears don’t work
to wash things away anymore.
Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers.
I miss You so much some days
that I beg for the airplane to crash
with just enough time in the freefall
for scribbling “I Love You” across my chest.
That way – when they find my burning breast plate –
they will tell You how the very last thing I did with my life
was call out Your name.

The post Giant Saint Everything | Sunday Slam {Buddy Wakefield} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“For any woman who’s ever been told she’s too much:
You, who broke out of the mold before they even cracked it
off you. You, who came out inventing your own how-to-scale-a-wall
with only vowels. You, who fireflash in the eye of so many
midnights, so many men who want to taste your hem, who dream
of being desired by an Uncommon Woman, if only because
their dressers are empty of anything but brand name cologne
and predictable portrait. Let them call you different. Let them bait
the minnows of you heart. Show them your heart is a school
of fish, a solar system of all moons. When asked, say,
“My heart is always causing the mating season.” When they call you
full of yourself”, say, “Yes.” Breathe in their scorn and breathe out
Atlantis.”

The post Uncommon Woman | Tara Hardy {Sunday Slam} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“Love isn’t always magic.
But if I offered my life to the magician, if I told her to cut me in half so tonight
I could come to you whole and
ask for you back would you listen?
For this dark alley love song,
for the winter we heated our home from the steam off our own bodies.
I wrote too many poems in a language
I did not yet know how to speak,
but I know now it doesn’t matter how well
I say grace if I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eat,
So this is my wheat field.
You can have every acre, love.”

The post Maybe I Need You | Andrea Gibson {Slam Sunday} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared… but reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you. You see, I’m not really a love poet. But if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window, you see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me because if you were here, right now, I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to.”

The post Love Poem Medley | Rudy Francisco {Slam Sunday} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“But I know she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby,
because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix.
Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can’t fix.
But that’s what the rain boots are for.
Because rain will wash away everything, if you let it. ” 
{My rocking new friend Jill blew me away with a hard cover printed copy of this book for Christmas.  I will treasure it always}

The post Plan B | Sarah Kay {Sunday Slam} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

During the hungriest periods of my life, it has been poetry that fed me.   First as a reader, consuming poem after poem like a starving woman. Rumi, Hafiz, Erica Jong, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde.  They were friends and teachers and guides.  I learned about love and sex and feminism and mysticism and how the language of poetry transcends language and centuries and gender.

Then I got over that small voice inside that kept saying “you can’t write poetry” and I started writing poetry.  The words that flowed healed parts of my heart, allowed me to claim my truth, and answered questions I didn’t know I was asking.

It  wasn’t until I discovered Slam Poetry/Spoken Word that I found my home.  I thought I knew all there was to know of poetry until the night my dear one played me Daughter by Alix Olson.  The hairs on my arms stood up and I felt my throat get tight and my eyes were wide and I thought, “What the HELL is this?”  and then, “I must have more”.

Performance poetry is like sex and hot showers and spooning in the dark. It’s the fierce love of a mother and the broken heart that refuses to heal.  It’s the kindest thing I’ve ever done and the meanest thought that’s ever crossed my mind.  It’s my darkness and my light and my very humanity expanding before my eyes and ears.    It’s Andrea Gibson and Buddy Wakefield and Sarah Kay and Rudy Francisco and Big Poppa E.   It’s feminism and the queer community and social commentary and politics and a spotlight on racism.   It’s hard core fucking and the most innocent love and it’s the agony of being left behind.  And it all plays out in the voices and faces of real people – not just names on a page but real, breathing people who give themselves so fully that you can’t help but be moved.

I’m going to start sharing some of my favorites with you on Sunday each week, because this is far too good to keep to myself.

{Phoenix Peeps: We have our own amazing spoken word night  Homebase Poetry Open Mic – 1st and 3rd Sunday of each month at the Wyndham downtown.   I’ll see you there.}

“This is for the hard men, the hard men who want to love but know that it won’t come.
For the ones who are forgotten, the ones the amendments do not stand up for.
For the ones who are told to speak only when you are spoken to and then are never spoken to. 
Speak every time you stand so you do not forget yourself.
Do not let a moment go by that doesn’t remind you that your heart beats 900 times a day and that there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean.
Do not settle for letting these waves settle and the dust to collect in your veins”

The post Shake The Dust | Anis Mojgani {Sunday Slam} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.