Rowena

open.substack.com/pub/rowenaro...

Text on green background reads: RESPONSIBLE Not merely making right choices or owning consequences of wrong ones; Not only seeing life cannot be fair but can be a series of unique challenges designed for the growth of our soul; But also holding yourself when you hurt with tender love nursing your own wounds, and asking for the help that you need without shame.

#poem
#poetry

Text: MASK A calm, frozen crust of decades overlaying white noise. "Melt it!" they cheer, and you do, too until the dial tunes into wavelengths screeching old panic of inner children and they run away because they are not your parent and you are not your parent but you are responsible, now. Fight fear with gratitude for you are capable, now - you have remembered the wonders of a healing world, and can use it to love yourself. So, get the fuck outside weep your dripping mask into patient soil and let your face exist.

#poetry #poem #masking

Text: UNKNOWING Slip - sliding through my own fingers - belly curdles in disbelief - belief arrests within kicking legs - thighs grip the ego; can the head ever release - let there be light?

#poetry #poem

#poetry #flow

I ran a free workshop yesterday on connecting to your creative flow, featuring some of my one-to-one mentoring work with a willing ans very generous participant.

Link to the replay, for anyone who's curious:

youtu.be/0jg7jrIDKxU

#creativeflow #creativity

Background image: purple crocuses. Text: A NEW SPRING First, the robin. Cheerful chest billowed by the breeze - legs, boldly apart, silhouetted against a dropping sun. Melodic virtuoso upon cylindrical fence post. Below, a mouse scrabbles - upcycling tired old grass for fancy new family lodgings. If he builds it, they will spring up like crocuses thrusting purple surprise through the crackling carpet of last autumn's ashes. And the truth is I only grabbed my pen in stiffly programmed response to the near-lifelong urge to hide my self from strolling strangers: open pages, face closed. But, as I scribbled surroundings, softening, the daffodils nodded their green-yellowing buds in my direction with such divinely attentive wisdom that I felt seen, anyway.

#poetry
#poem
#spring

New post up on the substack.

rowenaroberts.substack.com/p/out-of-hib...

Text: Drip with unwept sorrow Dance with untrembled fear Breathe with unfelt presence Sing with unshrieked rage Stretch with unmoved tension Scribble with unheld flow Walk with unseen beauty Let life not be undone Background: purple colour

#poetry

Text: hold belief lightly self will break and be reborn ground in soul and soil. Background image: Tree on hill against a sunsetting sky

#HaikuOfTheDay
#poetry

Text on blue background reads: I just want to feel the reality of my life right now - kidneys crave warm, gentle pressure spaces pop and stretch between languid toes hair waves softly in grateful release let mind wander where it will without touching the sides of a should, while awareness seeps, luscious-deep into the bones of my sigh.

#poetry

#haikuoftheday
#poetry

How kind! Thank you.

Text: An orgasmic life needn't shatter the earth only blind habits and defences. Rollercoastered screams and sobs story-engineered for drama, lack the pulsing, juddering, uncharted swirls of subtle atomic motion. I tend the quivering rhythm of a dance unscripted, directed by the body; bodies draw in the stroke like water in soil feeding connected soul.

#poetry

moving from fullness not depletion or hunger so abundance spreads

#HaikuOfTheDay
#poetry

Lessons from winter. Give yourself the nourishment that you need.

Skittering. A poem.

Text: My urge to rescue you is irresponsible. I cannot heal another while I still poison myself. Image: Pen draws a heart onto paper.

#HaikuOfTheDay
#poetry

Text: porcupine bristles frantic circles sinking sand anxiety-mind Image: Smashed glass

Where I used to live.

#HaikuOfTheDay
#poetry

Text: "Inhuman!" I cry for I must deny your dark reflection in me Image: Black and white close-up of a leaf floating in a dark puddle

#poetry
#HaikuOfTheDay

Text: running from darkness meets others only in shame a race into hell full spectrum human owning froth and filth alike opens space for grace Image: close-up image of an eye in shadow, with a strip of light down its centre.

#HaikuOfTheDay
#poetry

🤢

We got a thank you from someone on a canal boat. No idea why you would live on the water and then desecrate it.

Not heard of it. I'll check it out, thank you.

The kids and I went on a canalside litter pick last week. One hour, multiple bags of crap - including stuff that was clearly deliberately dumped by a local business. Horrible to see the detachment.

Words: we act out of pain forgive your imperfections see everyone's light Image: flickering flame

#poetry
#HaikuOfTheDay

#poetry
#haikuoftheday

#poetry

#poetry
#haikuoftheday

#haikuoftheday
#poetry

John Simmons is a gift to writers.