Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
Pay attention to the silence
The pause right before words are spoken
The future exists in that holy space
Pay attention to the pause
The second of stillness before you draw your next breath
Your life exists in the gratitude of that moment
Pay attention to the spaces
The brief breaks between action and non-action
Your soul hangs in the balance of that time
Do not be like the crowd
Running from one moment to the next
Without silence
Without pause
Without space
And missing the whole point of existence
Honor the silence
Praise the pause
Celebrate the space
They are your life
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
Did you ever need to just be held
Gently, like a baby bird or fragile leaf
That when touched harshly
Crumbles to dust in the hand
You who are bound together so tightly
With the thinnest of twine
Who cannot move one way or another
Without breaking in to a million pieces
If someone would just hold you
Honestly and in stillness
You might find the strength to stay bound
Or at least the desire to
What it must be like to float
In and through the soft hands of one who loves you
To find a soft place to land and scream
When the twine finally breaks
The problem is that you look sturdy
You look like the weight of the world
Could rest easily upon your shoulders
You do not look like some fragile thing
Unless someone cares to look in your eyes
They would never know
Only your eyes know the secret
And you never look anyone in the eyes
But there may come a day
When you look up
And hope that someone will see
And hope that they will hold you
And let you breathe for a while
And hold the weight for a while
And let you scream for a while
Until you can laugh again for a while
Gentle seer and holder of lost souls
This is my wish
To be held
To be weightless
To breathe
To be
Hold me
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
I have a safe life
We all want safe
Get a little job
Pay a little bill
With just a little paycheck
That will never be enough to buy
Freedom
We play at freedom
Convinced that we have no chains
Only to find in the quiet moments
That life is chains
And that is the secret
We can never speak
If we utter the truth
It would break us
So we live little lives
And teach our children to be little
When the whole point was to be big
The whole point was
There was no point
The answer to life is
To be life
To be so big that there is no room for anything else
Not many people can do that
People are content to be small
Content with just enough
Being just enough
Doing just enough
So that they do not have to see or be seen
The most dangerous man
Realizes this
And sets fire to his life
Walks away while the ashes
Of what was his life
Are still smoldering
We should all smolder
Once in our lives
I haven't had a good smolder
In years
Maybe ever
Somedays I am brave enough
To pick up the matches
Strike them
And wonder what
Would happen if I just
Let them fall
Other days
I cannot find a fire
Or desire
And even a flamethrower
Could not set my world ablaze
Perhaps one day
I will stop being weak
And burn the whole thing down
Quietly walk away
And be big in a small world
But today I sit
At my little job
To collect a little paycheck
To pay a little bill
And dream of freedom
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
I cannot fight the dead
Or those that want to die
I cannot will you to life
Or happiness
And I have no desire to be
The keeper of your fate
That I lay squarely at your feet
Choose to go or choose to stay
Life is a dance to be lived
But only by those who hear the music
Dance lover dance
And when the music fades
Take your exit as you please
For I cannot fight the dead
Or those that want to die
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
The air is heavy today
And sits on my chest
A crushing reminder of unmitigated loses
I will labor to breath in and out
While the weight of miseries pushes down
In unwelcomed pulses of desperate cries
Millions of voices raised in revolt
Millions in hunger and strife
And only me to hear
I want to feel less
But if I do not see and hear
Then who would know
Who would know the desperate struggle
Of holding on to hope
While trudging toward nothing but hopelessness
Who would feel the burn of hunger
And the frantic pain of sickness
That are drowned out by weak promises of help that never arrives
There is no bread
There is no hope
The sick get sicker
The dying get dead
The poor stare at me in my nightmares
And I stare back, helpless
They will still be poor and so will I
Dying together under the weight of secrets
The untold stories of the people
No one wants to see
Clawing, ripping, fighting our way through the days
Only to fall and weep and burn
At night when no one sees
The silent scream in the shower
So no one can hear
The inhuman sound raging from your soul
Begging for help
For scraps of left overs
The mention of our names from your lips
The uncomfortable truth
Buried under your comfortable lies
And shining institutions of greed
I see you
And you see me
And I know that you know
You can pretend for a while more
You can cast shadows and distractions
And still I see you
You can put on a show
And give your alms
And still you see me
A silent reminder of your selfishness
A glaring rebuke of your holiness
A fire burning that will not be put out
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
I was done
Packed my bags
Ran from the grasp
Of Liars and Cons
Considered myself lucky
To know the truth
And walk away
Mostly intact
No damage
No harm
No foul
It’s funny the lies we tell
To mitigate pain
Only now as I unravel
Myself from the knots that were tied
Does the insidious truth
Raise its sneaky head
Were my choices even mine?
Was every thought under your control?
To make me like you
To do what you say
To believe as you believe
And to have been placed
At your mercy
By those who were supposed to protect
Is a bitter pill to swallow
They did not know
But I ask myself how did they not know
When it was so plain to me
Once I looked
They were trained not to look
And I guess they were better at not looking than me
I guess I failed at not looking
I like to think walking away was easy
I do not give it a second thought
On most days…
Other days I realize
That walking away was the easy part
Living away
Separate from the thing
Is a much harder task
Unwrapping everything I am
Outside of what I was told to be
Dissecting my actions and thoughts
To eviscerate any trace of things that are not me
Weeping when the letting go seems endless
Rejoicing when it is freeing
Running when it is overwhelming
Cowering in fear when letting go means losing
Losing family
Losing promises
Losing community
Yet here I find myself decidedly unlost
I am found
In the deep places you never wanted me to know existed
This joy is what you are afraid of
If anyone felt this
They would never settle for your imitation
So today I will let go
Of fear
Of shame
Of guilt
Of the things you told me I would feel
If I strayed from your path
I stand
With my feet on solid ground
Built by my true heart and hands
A foundation on which I can safely build
The life I will design
Some days I may look over my shoulder
But not with regret for lost things
With hope for a time that you will find yourself
A horrid memory of the past
A reminder of the worst parts of humanity
That gradually faded in to the recesses of time
Where you cannot hurt anyone ever again.
I will smile
I will play with my children
The ones who will not be bound to you
The ones who will be good without you
The ones who will rise uncaged
I will thank the tears
And Doubts
And Fears
That led me away
That opened the cage
And set me free.
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
I have been treading the water of the universe
For 15,845 days
Head slightly above the water
Arms and legs in a frantic dance for survival
You can tell yourself that at some point you will stop
There must be a stopping point, right?
The time to float seems like a luxury you have earned
But for today, day 15,845 you will keep treading
If you feel the water begin to creep up
If the universe seems bound to rise against you
You may want to flail about like a fish on the sand
But believe me, it will be useless
Better to sink into the water
Let the blackholes devour you
And come to find that what you always needed
Was the sinking
Sink in to the deep
Fall in to the vastness of the void
Stare with terror at the tide of destruction
Embrace your fate
And then
Emerge to find that what you thought was an ending
Is really a beginning
That the strange new shore upon which you find yourself
Is a paradise for the aching limbs that struggled for so long
You can float here
In the undulating waves
Of the new world
In a universe you found in your destruction
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
I have painted you in the brightest yellows
Green and golden light that shines
A million prisms reflect the light of you in my life
A beam this way
A ray that
And a million more
Reflected to my soul
All my thoughts of you in a forgiving dance
Yes I have painted you in my mind
But a million more times you have painted yourself
Short angry stokes of black and red
The deepest of browns and the solemn of purple
All against the backdrop
Of bruises and wounds
That will not heal
Shown yourself to me time and time again
And time and time again I have turned my face
Unwilling to see
Who cannot accept the darkness?
Who cannot accept the truth?
Lovers of light always see the light
And when the shadows come as they always do
It is a shock
Yes I have painted you a million time
But never in truth
So today in the light of truth
I will relinquish control of the brush
And allow you to paint your truth
Truth of me
Truth of light
Truth of dark
Truth of love
I will turn my face to your canvas
And allow you to speak
I wonder
What you will say
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
Here is how we start
Breathe in and then out
Eyes open, then closed, then open again
Place your feet on the floor
And rise to greet the day
This day will not come again
And thank whatever gods there are
For that small mercy
This day I put you under grass
And say a final goodbye
Here is how it starts
She was brave and lovely until the end
What courage and grace
Words and words and more words
Then we will sing a song
Here is how it ends
Take a handful of dirt
And throw it on her coffin
A fort to keep out the worms
To preserve flesh and bone for a while longer
Here is how we cry
Numb and in the bottom of a bottle
Shoving leftovers in our mouths to fill the hole in our bellies
Digging through the remains of a life
Dividing them up like consolation prizes
A small consolation
Here is how we sleep
In sweat drenched sheets
With nightmare memories
That never seem to end
And only serve to remind of what was lost
What was lost will never be again
The arrangement of swirling matter and stardust that was her
Cannot find its way back to the same form
Cannot create the same smell, or touch or taste
And a copy is never as good as the original anyway
Here is how we live
In waking moments of little deaths
The book she never finished reading
The toothbrush left on the sink
The pillow that still holds the scent
And then one day, unexpectedly life will resume
The swirling dance of action will carry on
The music will play
And we will move in time with all the dancers
Here is how we start again
Breathe in and then out
Eyes open, then closed, then open again
Place your feet on the floor
And rise to greet the day
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Erin Cowart Poem
Being a good person will take you far
Like one wheeled bicycles and dead battery cars
If you do your best things will turn out fine
Like gas on fires and bread with no yeast
Those jeans still fit
Like my hand in yours and yoga pants on a fat girl
Falling in love is fabulous
Like smelly garbage trucks and moldy fruit
Falling out of love is easy
Like rocket science and scaling cliffs
If you love someone they will love you back
Like cats love dogs and gay men love straight women
Like you love me….
Copyright © Erin Cowart | Year Posted 2020
|