Twinkle This

Welcome, welcome
to this party!
Welcome here
to this Mad Tea!
Bring with you
a drink, a poem
or ditty
or three!

"'Twinkle this...'
it's what he said,
pointing my gaze
as he molested.
His ignorant fingers
crept towards
my face."

"My mother banned me
from a place
I could not search
myself in grace...
So I came here
for psychic tea,
convinced my name
did not own me."

"In discomfort
I strain to rest
with each encounter
jealousy, pest...
Hanging on to
grandma's flowers
in the last, my childhood hours -
when Easter chocolates
made us wretch."

"My heart IS pain
a constant ache,
my fate - to manage
without a break.
It rules me,
dictating who I am...
In this place, what I call
nightmare wonderland."

"I DO enjoy
your butterflies
and changing chairs,
shining surprise...
My life becoming quiet, fair,
without approval
LOVE is here.
I bop between the worlds and so,
it's like survival where
I must go.
From moment to moment -
from here to there -
like all mad riddlers
I shed my care."

There are many people out there living with disabilities. People can be born with them, or acquire them in time; or they may have hereditary conditions that become something more. There are also many people who love to attribute all kinds of magickal characteristics to someone with a disability. In this way, the disabled are led to feel they are special, or can eventually refer to themselves as "shamans", having traveled through their "wounds".

What we don't see is how it is our condition sets us up for all kinds of scapegoating from the public. As we must work hard to integrate our dark-sides, we are often faced with the projections of others who cannot! It is not our responsibility to understand them, and it is not their responsibility to break us down in that way. This is where looking for approval can destroy the spirit of love. If we are people-pleasers, it is easy to lose the true essence of the gifts we have been given... For we exploit ourselves and others in the process, by establishing neediness and desperation as the ways to relate.

As we move into a time in America where we are bringing hundreds of injured soldiers home from war, society will have to be more realistic and compassionate in how we go about interacting with the disabled. Yes, it's true, we could have been great actors, great performers, musicians, painters, and writers, etcetera. There is only one problem: it is difficult to manage your life when you have a disability. Disability will often reduce one into becoming a liar, a thief, a con artist and a beggar. We live in a world of survival of the fittest, where weakness of any sort is looked down on. It's in this way disability begins to take over our lives and makes things unmanageable. It's in this way we are challenged to conduct ourselves with integrity.