Game Genie

This spirit has always craved mystery
Of trying for the seemingly impossible;
And yet it fears failure
At the end of a long game;
It fears erasure,
Fears unsaved progress,
Lost

But that was then,
This is now
Game Genie,
Changed it all,
Shifted the odds,
Way back when,
But it was never really the game
or the game system
That was at stake;
It was the mind,
The controller of the hands
holding the game control,

It was the mind shuffling between
Levels of life,
Competition in game,
At school,
At home,
From which friends were those
Fellow players
Sifted out and held close,
For keeps.

Along the way
The cartridges get dusty,
The disks scratch,
The software glitches,
We become tired,
We get distracted
We stop playing, because
Life…

Our fingers need only work the buttons once more,
To remember the sequences,
To do it just
Right
To beat that Boss,
To escape that trap,
To remember it was never
About winning it all
On the first try,
Unless you had “backup”,
I, you, we all
Were never meant to game alone,

But we got older
And we saved our games
And some tucked them away,
Forgetting
Each other

We got older
Our relationships got complicated
And became new games,
Complete with bosses
And real became fake, and fake real

Never mind the console,
Or the title
truthfully,
We are all trying to beat it,
This epic game.
We get minor victories,
And the harsh truth being
We will all eventually get
Game Over

In radically accepting
My eventual,
final KO,
eventually,
I strive to make my own sequences;
Reset to replay my favorite games;
Reconnect with my backup;
And break the rules
That bound me to a fear of failure

If I am going to one day end
I can not
live the game
Afraid to even play.

Puzzle Pieces

At times, the possible evades us,
Not because it’s not there,
But because we’re too scared
To pick through the pieces of what we can see,
The mess,
The muck,
The unclear,
The overwhelm,
And that’s where anxiety brings us,
To see everything and
Nothing at the same time,
Look,
But closer,
Deeper,
One piece at a time,
Even a 1000 piece puzzle
Requires this discipline

Vulnerability: I Love

Image: Me before my 9th grade social (2001)

Vulnerability is my vulnerability,
I pick and choose
the pieces of me to share
I shuffle my deck,
Lay my cards out
Then scuttle back,
Back in,
Under cover
To safety,
Concerned others might see.

Or, I did;

Until
Sometime this past November,
When a New Birthday gift
Enhanced my shell,
Made it stronger
And made it removable,
I need not bare all,
But I can bare.
And I can be so damn proud,
And openly admire
this body,
this mind,
this heart,
this soul,
With all the bumped,
Bruised
Smoothed,
Filled,
Filed,
Etched,
Modeled,
Molded aspects
Of this vessel;
Of this person I am.

This person
She is Beautiful;
Authentic,
Wild,
Ever growing,
Ever learning,
Ever being;
For she is living.

And I love her;
She is Me.

Experiencing Joy

Make the list,
And check the boxes,
Off,
One by one.
But never forget to leave one more,
Always check it
But never off,
This task– the simple,
Beautiful,
Necessary,
Preventative,
Supplement,
Medicine,
And cure
That is
Experiencing Joy.

[Image: Some of my Joys– Me being myself (a kid at heart), and dressing up to bring joy to self and others. ]