Metal Hippie

Today,
a girl wearing a long, loose, flowered skirt
and combat boots
walked by me in the library.

Her look
is exactly the persona I want to adopt:
metal hippie.

You need to know
that I want peace and love in the world
*AND*
will fuck shit up
to make that happen.

————————————————————

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.


Dangerous

The more I learn to love myself,
the more dangerous I feel.
But dangerous in a good way.
Dangerous to systems of oppression,
dangerous to bullshit.
A wrecking ball that’s coming for the things
that need to be destroyed

“I believe that the more we love ourselves, the more potent we are”-India Arie

Part of the Family

I finally see the mean inner voices for what they are:
part of the family.
I’m never going to eradicate them.
Fear,
self-doubt,
self-criticism,
and depression
will always be in the car
in the road trip of my life–
a month from now,
a year from now,
ten years from now.
And that’s okay.
They can be here–
as long as they know their place.
They sit in the back.
They sit shotgun.
They are not the driver.
I repeat:
They are not the driver.

*Credit where credit is due: this poem is a paraphrase of a part of Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert.*