#spontaneouscompositions

I'll Be Right Back

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:52:57 GMT

Year 2 Grief journey

This old sticky note

sitting on my desk

has lost its bond.

The glue worn down

from all the times

I have moved it

out of sight,

then back again,

because some days

I want mercy

and some days

I want proof.

I do not know

exactly when

he wrote it.

I only know

I found it

when I moved out

of the home

we once shared.

Bright orange paper.

Bold black letters.

Lying there

limp on the floor

under the chair

that used to sit

by our front door.

It's faded

now,

all these years

after my friends

helped me pack up

his clothes.

All except the ones

left in our laundry basket

because I needed

to smell him.

I was afraid

I would forget

how it felt

to rest my face

against his neck.

I still have those shirts

sealed

in airtight bags,

lying in a box

with his journals

I stupidly read

and now keep

in my best friend’s garage.

I wonder

if they still smell

like he did.

But this sticky note,

weathered,

crumpled,

straightened again,

will not let me forget

how big

his existence was,

how it coloured

every corner

of my being.

I see the ink

run from my tears,

gathered

inside this tiny witness

of why

I will never love

another

the way

I loved him.

And he loves me still

in every silent space,

as quiet

as he always was,

though his fire

still reaches

for this long life

I am trying

to finish.

And I can almost hear

his final words

held inside this ink,

“I love you.

I’ll be right back.”

MIRA

Sending you my words

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 02:31:30 GMT

Logan Crane Nov 204-899-3921-May30th 2024

MAY 30, 2024

DEATH DAY

Have I died

and been misplaced
in hell?

I can see you
on the slab,

Beloved.

Purple.

Naked.

They left the tubes
in your mouth

for me.

The police are irritated
I arrived so late,

but the hospital social worker
only told me

come quickly

and do not come alone.

I did not know
who to call.

Who would come.

What to bring.

What had happened.

If you are dead,

why rush me?

She would not say.

Only,

come quickly.

So somewhere
inside the impossible

I thought

maybe you needed me.

You told me
you were going to die.

It made me angry.

And for the first time
in years

I did not say

I love you.

Not that day.

Now I can see
our house.

Your guitar.

Your dirty shirts.

I can smell you

and my own heart
breaking,

but nothing else
is real.

This must be hell

because the one thing
I am certain of

is punishment.

Every unkind word
I ever said

has followed me here.

Especially the last ones.

Those final seconds
when you were sad

and I was mad at you.

You were sad

and I was mad at you.

I know
I will never be forgiven.

Still,

I pray

to anyone listening,

every God written,

every God forgotten,

please,

either give him back

or let me fall
completely

into madness.

Do not leave me
half here,

instinctively grasping
for a life

that has already
caught fire.

Let me disappear
into ash.

Let there be nothing

if nothing
is where he has gone.

But no angels came.

Not today.

No rescue.

No song.

Nothing

but the burning

and the echo
of a stranger’s voice

somehow given
more authority

than our Love.

He entered
in his white coat,

would not look me
in the eye,

and left me

in a broken-down room

with a terrified woman
now apparently

in charge
of keeping my body alive

when my mind
had already followed you

somewhere else.

Then he said

the words

that divided time

into before

and after.

“He died.”

JUNE 2024

They call them waves.

They are wrong.

The ocean has not arrived yet.

For now
it is wind,

wicked and circling,

a tornado tearing pieces
from the life

we were still living.

I keep falling
between who I was

when you were here

and whatever
this thing is

still breathing
without you.

My hands claw
for ground

and find only
the black ooze

of a word
too small

to hold this.

Grief.

Five letters.

As if five letters
could contain

the empty side
of our bed

where your skin
still lives.

Everyone arrives
carrying wisdom.

Surrender.

Be grateful.

Let go.

Everything happens
for a reason.

No.

Sometimes
the sun rises

on a widow
who wishes it wouldn’t.

Sometimes
there is no silver lining.

Sometimes
something terrible happens

and it is simply

terrible.

So I fight
the darkness.

I hold the ghost
who somehow

keeps calling me
back to life

from his death.

I do not know

if this is madness

or awakening.

Only that something
is burning

and I no longer recognize

the woman
inside the fire.

JULY 2024

It is not
the grand romance

I remember most.

Not New Year’s Eve.

Not the gifts
you spent weeks making.

It is my cheek
against your back

while you washed dishes.

Sunday morning kisses.

The blessing
before dinner.

You losing so badly
at cards

you threw them
across the room

while I tried
not to laugh.

You chasing me naked
through the house

as though losing sight
of me

for even a second

was impossible.

Now there is a stack
of death certificates

on your side
of the table.

Colour copies.

Official proof

that Life
has refused

every appeal.

Thirty-two days
and a thousand

vacant midnights.

Your ashes
on the floor.

My heart
opening toward them

like some terrible door.

Pain becomes
a way

to stay near you.

I bargain with it.

Feed it.

Ask forgiveness.

Anything
to keep the conversation

from ending.

You do not answer.

Your silence
leaves every question

nauseously open.

The women around me
hold what is left

and ask for nothing

except the one thing

I cannot promise.

Life.

Somewhere
inside this macabre fire

my love
is still burning.

AUGUST 2024

Last night

I heard you
on the other side

of the bathroom door.

For one breath

I did not know
which world

I was standing in.

Death.

Morning.

Dream.

I cut my hair
with your razor

and left pieces
of myself

everywhere.

The shiny couple
next door

has disappeared.

In their place

some wounded animal
screams through the walls.

No one knows
what happened

to us.

Neither do I.

Still,

I will not let
this pain

decide the ending.

I will not let
my mind

kill the Soul

before I know

what I came here for.

God,

if this is punishment,

at least tell me

the crime.

SEPTEMBER 2024

Tonight

I texted your phone.

Some hazy little ritual

to remember
how it felt

when the world
still contained

your reply.

Every unkind word
I ever said

has grown teeth.

Every impatience.

Every moment
I could have loved you

better.

I want forgiveness

but that is not
what I type.

I want to know
where you went

but that is not
what I ask.

I write only,

Come home.

Then cry
until sleep

finally takes me.

I dream.

I wake.

And for one
merciful millisecond

I do not remember

you are dead.

Then reality
finds me again.

OCTOBER 2024

I am no longer
entirely human.

Birds follow me.

They speak
in the strange language

I have started
calling God.

People turn away
from my eyes

as if death
has left something

visible there.

A door.

A warning.

A question
they do not want

answered.

I can still hear
the woman I was

crying somewhere
behind me.

The romantic fool

waiting for her King
to rescue her.

I do not want
to be her anymore.

She believed
Love would keep

the bargain.

She believed
the castle

could not burn

while the beloved
was inside.

But she died
with you.

And here,

in this thin place

between her death
and mine,

something else

has been allowed
to live.

NOVEMBER 2024

Today
is your birthday.

I cannot breathe.

I took the dried flowers
from your funeral

to the park

because everyone says
I should

let you go.

So I tried.

Petal by petal.

I gave you
to the wind.

Go into the light,
my Love.

Be free.

Be happy.

I will be all right

if you stop
haunting me.

I said it
like I meant it.

Then turned
toward the place

I now call home

because ours
died with you.

And there you were.

Just behind me.

To the right.

That familiar
sardonic smile.

Where am I gonna go
without you, my Love?

And somehow

through all those tears

I laughed.

Then you walked me home

and we watched
a movie.

DECEMBER 2024

I have been collecting
an exit.

Quietly.

A little door
made from pills.

Then I told my mother.

She asked me,

How do you know
for one hundred percent certain

that death
will be better?

I hated the question

because I could not
answer it.

I still can’t.

So far,

that uncertainty

has kept me here.

Some nights
life is nothing more

than the absence
of certainty

about leaving it.

Tonight,

apparently,

that is enough.

JANUARY 2025

Tonight
is our fucking anniversary.

I can smell you
beside me.

New Year’s Eve
cuts through the room

and suddenly
our first night

is happening again.

Your body.

My body.

The beginning
before we knew

it was a beginning.

My friends
have stopped calling.

Or they call
and tell me

how badly
I am grieving.

As though pain
has etiquette.

As though Love
was supposed

to leave quietly.

The year begins

and I am alone

with the scent
of someone

who is not here.

FEBRUARY 2025

Fuck you,

Valentine’s Day.

Your red hearts.

Your roses.

Your stupid little arrows.

Your promises
wrapped in chocolate

as though Love
has never

stood beside a grave.

I hate you

more than
I can say.

That is all.

MARCH 2025

I sang.

Two songs.

For some sisters.

My voice
did not know

what to do
with the space

where you used
to listen.

It hurt.

I sang anyway.

For three minutes

and then another,

something dead
inside me

remembered

it had once
been music.

That’s something.

APRIL 2025

For my birthday

I went to The Keg

and told the waiter
about you.

They give birthday girls
free cake.

I do not eat cake.

You did.

I used to love
watching you

eat mine.

So I asked
if someone else

could have it
for you.

The waiter found
an old man

sitting alone.

He had just lost
his dog.

His beloved companion.

He ate your cake,

my Love.

And for one small moment

Love did not disappear.

It simply
changed tables.

I smiled.

A little.

MAY 2025

I went to the river

where you drowned.

It took me hours

and Tobi’s help

to finally open
my hands.

Your ashes
entered the water

and I screamed
at the sky.

Why?

Why give me
the greatest Love

only to rip it
from my life?

I never agreed
to this.

No Soul contract
could be this cruel.

Then I heard you.

You promised.

No.

I raged.

I promised nothing
like this.

And you said,

You promised
to love

no matter what.

Something
inside the darkness

opened.

Of course.

Of course
my Soul would agree

to Love.

I do.

For the first time
in almost a year,

Life appeared

not where
I had left it

but somewhere ahead,

waiting at a crossroads

I had never seen.

I agree,

I said.

Just then

a magpie landed
beside me.

And I heard you ask

not to be forgotten.

I laughed.

Actually laughed.

The sound startled me.

Then something
rose

from the root
of my body,

up my spine,

through the crown
of my head,

and across the sky.

And you did,

came the voice

I can only call God.

You did Love.

All of them.

Even the ones
who tried

to break you.

You loved
no matter what.

And then,

the words
I had spent

my whole life
waiting to hear:

You don’t have
to do that

anymore.

~ MIRA

Waiting for a Song

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 02:28:34 GMT

Dedicated to Laila Biali

I am learning

how to lift the notes

of a story that changed me,

find ways that might save the greatest love I’ve ever known from disappearing completely.

Among strangers, I offer a new dance

so those who do not know the dark thing I carry think I’m ok.

Ive come to find small moments and safe spaces when I can almost accept what God did.

Last night was such a space

where an angel opened her mouth,

sharing so much grace it gathered every broken heart beneath her light.

We refused to move,

afraid to break the spell

pouring from her hands.

Ringing out like magic.

This Woman.

She is tenderness and stone,

wielding chaos like a drum,

striking frozen ponds

until the water answers.

A wildness rushed

through my careful plans

for approval,

for manners,

and me just surviving in public.

Her invitation cracked my façade as she sang out:

loving too deeply was never my fault,

and all my weeping

when the truth arrived

will not be punished.

And so I let myself cry,

a little bit,

in a room full of strangers,

because this was her house now,

where all of me could enter whole.

Could she see the tender place

my heart keeps cupped

against the weather,

the hollow that opens

when I cannot bear

to be alone?

In the thrumming

of her heart becoming ours,

I almost forgave Love

for breaking me.

Open.

Something ancient rose,

waiting for a tone

strong enough to call it out.

I long for her to see

the power in her hands,

the healing that she gives

by letting her true nature sound.

I wonder whether she feels

that same love turning inward,

raw and unspent,

in a darkening hotel room

counting down the hours until she can hold her son again.

Would she withhold

what she needs,

afraid someone else

would receive less,

confusing inhalation for greed?

Did we fill her cup with the tease of unknown applause & discarded tickets stubs or

does she know the healing power pulsing from her to them to me to them and back to her repeated like butterflies painting poems on the wind?

I hope she knows we feel the radiant brilliancy of spontaneous composition

sacrificing everything for us to feel a touch of greatness offered

even

the silence.

~MIRA

Mental Health Smentalhealth!

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:06:55 GMT

IT’S AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB OF SEVERAL BILLION

Most of my fans don’t know what I do for a living. Many of my client's have never heard me sing.

Music and writing are my passions.

They are part of what keeps me going.

But what keeps me grounded and funded in the world is my work as a Community Counsellor with Fear Is Not Love.

I am always reading. Always training. Always asking some version of the same question:

How can I best serve others?

Something I read this morning hit me personally.

I had been reading for over an hour about trauma, mental health, addiction, concurrent and co-occurring disorders, and all the complicated ways human beings adapt when terrible things happen to them.

And beneath all the language of symptoms and diagnoses and treatment modalities was something both incredibly obvious and incredibly difficult:

Healthy, consistent, positive relationships matter.

A lot.

Well.

I took that sorta personally.

As a survivor myself, as well as someone who works in mental health and social services, I started thinking about the people I have loved.

And I realized something.

Almost every intimate relationship I have had, and many of my closest friendships, have involved people with histories of trauma.

Maybe that isn’t surprising. Abuse is extraordinarily prevalent in a society that considers itself informed while remaining remarkably skilled at perpetuating ignorance.

And then there is my own particular spice.

My history.

My healing.

The strange ways a nervous system learns what feels familiar.

Because, apparently, I just don’t date happy-go-lucky, trauma-free, conscious-since-birth-because-the-family-system-was-solid, beautifully adapted, shiny happy people.

I like me some broody, artistic, deep, philosophical, slightly damaged humans.

Because they GET ME.

There is a particular kind of passion, humour, energy, art and conversation that happens when survivors who have dedicated themselves to recovery find one another.

It’s an exclusive club of several billion.

And yet survivors are still stigmatized.

Even within systems designed to help us, trauma can become another way of categorizing people. Another diagnosis. Another risk factor. Another problem requiring management.

But trauma changes us.

Especially when it happens very young.

Our developing brains and bodies adapt to the environments required to survive them.

“We” developed differently.

And yet.

How do we break the cycle?

Not just me.

Not just my family.

Globally.

Why are programs for vulnerable children and youth so often fighting for scraps?

Why does mental health care become a political talking point while people in crisis wait for meaningful support?

What hashtag actually changes systemic toxicity?

Why do the people we entrust with teaching, protecting, counselling and raising the next generation so often earn a fraction of what we pay people whose work entertains us?

Where is my rainbow parade?

Don't I get to keep "pink" without being shamed?

And what happens when somebody attempts suicide?

What happens after their body has been medically stabilized?

What happens when the immediate danger has passed, but the pain that brought them there has not?

Too often, people move from acute medical care into referrals, programs and community services already stretched thin. In Alberta, as elsewhere, navigating mental health and addiction services can mean waiting, qualifying, explaining, repeating, surviving.

And meanwhile, some of the people working with extraordinarily vulnerable human beings are themselves working in underfunded programs, carrying impossible caseloads, earning inadequate wages, or entering front-line positions with wildly varying levels of specialized education and training.

Think about that.

We can be extraordinarily particular about who is permitted to wire our house, cut our hair, prescribe medication or drive certain vehicles.

But the standards governing who gets to sit across from a traumatized human being and say, Tell me what happened, can be surprisingly complicated.

This should bother us.

Because trauma is not merely an individual problem.

And this is where I become unpopular.

I think our fierce insistence on separateness is part of the problem.

My family.

My child.

My property.

My money.

My business.

My God..

not yours.

How I raise my child is none of your f’n business.

It does not take a village.

Piss off with your perspective.

Except those children eventually leave our houses.

They enter schools.

Relationships.

Workplaces.

Governments.

Hospitals.

Bedrooms.

They become parents.

They become leaders.

They become us.

We worry about our social media algorithms and bank statements while some members of the next generation are hiding in bedrooms, treatment centres, emergency rooms, eating-disorder programs and detox facilities trying to survive long enough to become adults.

Oh.

Not you, of course.

Not me.

Yes, you!

And also me.

Which brings me to the uncomfortable question.

What can I actually do, other than complain and write a post ten people will read?

I don’t know. Although at least you've read this far and that's a great start!

Maybe that is where honesty has to begin.

I don’t know how to repair a civilization.

But I know a few things I can do.

Keep healing myself and support the healing of others.

Vote very carefully.

Volunteer.

Donate resources to mental health and social support agencies more than I think I can.

Continue speaking my truth, even when it is unpopular.

Keep my learning, my mental health practices and my tools sharp.

Question systems, including the ones that employ me.

Listen to survivors.

Stay teachable.

Love people without pretending love alone fixes structural injustice.

And perhaps most difficult of all:

Forgive them for everything.

Brrrrr, nope, hate that one but in truth it's not my business to punish others and it's not helpful to anyone especially not to me.

Forgive.

Not because everything was acceptable.

Not because accountability does not matter.

Not because harm should be forgotten.

But because I do not want what happened yesterday deciding how much love I am capable of giving today.

So I will keep asking:

How can I best serve?

Maybe there is no final answer.

Maybe asking the question, and refusing to stop asking it, is part of the work.

Thank you for listening. Truly. Thank you for listening.

Love,

Mira Black

#mentalhealth #recoveryispossible #survivor #LoveChallenge #traumainformed #trauma #strengthbased #wildwomanrisin

WAKE UP

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 18:48:43 GMT

Wake up,

you slumbering Life.

You have grown
too familiar

with the lie
that keeps you fed

but never nourished.

Too comfortable
inside the status quo,

that well-decorated room
where nothing grows

but everyone says,
isn’t this enough?

Wake up

like the first time
your lover smiles

and something secret
begins to unfold

between my words
and your hidden place.

Once I have tasted

the sound
of your voice

between my lips,

it is almost
as if Life itself

might finally
kiss me.

Make a wish of me.

Make a choice.

Make a move.

Say my name
like you mean it

and prove me wrong
for believing

I am unlovable,

as if you could.

As if Love
would ever agree

to become
a witness

against me.

Still,

this mind screams
inside the body,

pulling thought
from thought,

knot
from knot,

trying to solve
the ache

with another plan.

Caught
in the old mistake:

confusing
the chase for happiness

with the courage
to be alive.

Empty hands
reach for the sky,

but the sky
does not explain itself.

Morning comes.

Your eyes doubt.

Your body knows.

And there it is,

the bloody contrast

between who you are,

what you want,

and the life
you keep pretending

is close enough.

At least your feet
still tell the truth.

One step.

Then the staggering next.

This is how waking comes.

Not as a choir.

Not as lightning.

Not as someone
finally choosing you.

But as the unbearable mercy
of seeing clearly

what you can no longer
betray.

The pulse runs wild.

The teeth rattle.

The skin rises.

The muscles strain

against all the silence
you trained them

to carry.

Hold on
to the procession

that pulled you
from the soft grave

of almost enough.

Do not mistake
the dream

for freedom.

Do not mistake
the familiar

for home.

Do not mistake
being wanted

for being known.

Listen.

The song in your head hurts

because it is true.

And all you know
for certain

is this:

you have not
been honest

in far too long.

So wake up,

you slumbering Life.

Wake up

before the lie
learns your voice

and starts calling
itself

Love.

~ MIRA

Loving Attention

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:23:16 GMT

I spent years

trying to outrun the darkness.

As though healing

were a race.

Then one ordinary morning

I noticed

my attention.

How it kept returning

to the same

abandoned house.

The same hand unwound

from mine.

Naked

intimacies with fire,

ignoring the burn.

As though love

were something

I had to earn.

The same cup

where your lips

last touched it.

The same wound

begging to become

my only religion.

No one told me then

I was never responsible

for the darkness

laid upon me.

Only for the quiet miracle

as my

attention

remembers to love me

as I am.

Not to force.

Not to run.

Just...

stay.

The kind that sits beside the dark

without becoming it.

The kind that remembers

there is more sky

than storm.

The kind that notices

a bird

improvising her song

even while the heart

is still breaking.

Perhaps awakening

is nothing more mysterious

than this.

Love

looking so gently at suffering

until suffering forgets

to follow me home.

~MIRA

Me Wanting

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:02:38 GMT

Dedicated to a beautiful Soul walking beside me from across the veil.

They called it the “waves”

of grief

but they were wrong

though the ocean

may yet come

to drown

For now these

wicked winds wind

around my life

like a tornado

tearing off skin in small pieces

tattering around the mess you left

of our picture

still sitting on my bedroom table

in such a wondrous frame

My mind spins around

the inside of a landslide

trying to find the ground

My heart

reaching

seeping

pleading

with every single God

that may be listening

to let you come home

and

this time

I’d remember to say

“I love you.”

before the silence answered first.

But bargaining is futile.

The insanity

of a love

turned inside out

desperate for freedom

in a locked room

with no door

You left me there all alone.

And at the heart

of this fiery storm

my consciousness rewired

for the dark spaces

heavy without you

These once powerful arms

hold tightly now

to the rims of this spinning wreckage

praying for salvation

but even light grows tired

and me

wanting nothing

me wanting nothing

but to hold you

one more time

~MIRA

Dedicated to Logan Crane

Nov 3rd 1979 - May 30th 2024

Touched Everywhere

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:43:01 GMT

Do not call me unattached

because I have learned

not to beg at every closing door.

This heart has not become clean.

It has become weathered.

There are names

I no longer say out loud

that still change the temperature

of my body.

There are hands

I have released

that still arrive in dreams

as if the soul keeps

its own appointment book.

I know how to pray

without building a prison

around the Beloved.

I know how to open

and still let the river move on.

This did not come from holiness.

It came from loss.

From repetition.

From standing in the aftermath

with my nervous system on fire

like a city skyline bright with lightning

I have mistaken longing

for prophecy.

I have called absence

care.

I have watched my body

reach for what my spirit

had already surrendered.

So no,

I am not untouched.

I am touched everywhere.

By grief.

By beauty.

By the unbearable intimacy

of being human

with no guarantee

that love will stay

where I place it.

Still, I refuse

the immaculate heart.

Let me be marked.

Let tenderness leave evidence.

Let love ruin

the small false self

that thought safety

meant never opening again.

At three in the morning

when memory walks through me

wearing someone else’s voice,

I do not call it weakness.

I call it proof.

Something entered.

Something mattered.

Something sacred

found a door in me

and left it open.

~MIRA

#brave #canadian #poet

To Love.

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:17:18 GMT

#griefjourney

I do not yet know
how to stop grieving you,
Love.

Missing Love.
Longing Love.

Making it up
as I must,

the Love I reach for
in the misty morning before
I remember.

These years,
these days,
these hours,

moving too slowly
through each minute
since I have known you,
Love.

Everyone keeps telling me
to be grateful
for the sweetness.

At least you’ve tasted,
the rarest fruit.

I know this,
Love.

I know.

But the sacrifices
turn sour now.

The beautiful things
have teeth.

And all my prayers
become pleading.

Forgive me,
Love.

For all I could not know.
For all I could not see.
For every moment
I keep returning to
with my hands full of ash,
asking,
what if?

Take from me
each dark thought
made louder
by the loss of
Love.

Take from me
this guilt
that keeps dressing itself
as devotion.

This old punishment
wearing your name.

This ache
wrenching through
my life’s vein
where my body can
no longer pretend
anything’s the same.

I have held too tightly
to the missing places
Love carved out of me.

I have called them holy.
I have called them proof.
I have called them yours.

But maybe
these hollow spaces
are not only wounds.

Maybe they are rooms.

Maybe one day
joy will enter quietly
and sit there too
lighting one small lamp
in the house
you left behind.

If only my heart
would release me
from the guilt
of everything
I have ever done wrong.

Maybe then,
my Love,

I could hear
the silence of Love
holding me
through the absence
of Love.

Maybe then
only Love
could meet me there,

where I am broken,

where I am waiting,

where I am still yours,

left wondering,
who am I in this Love song
where only Love
can make me whole
again.

~ MIRA

Do You Hear God?

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:14:23 GMT

Do you ever hear God?

I mean

truly hear

the voice of silence

louder than the ruckus

across the street.

Like thunder

Like proof

Like God is

simply sitting next to you?

Do you ever hear God

whispering more loudly

than the storm?

Sometimes

the depth of love

inside your own heart

shining,

breaking

opening,

folding,

smashing,

like a lake against the rocks

under the full moon torrents

days before the rain?

Do you ever hear God

say your name?

Not the one

you were born with,

nor the one

your parents claimed.

The other one.

The secret one.

The name

only your Soul remembers

when the world

stops.

Please

tell

when you notice magic

rising suddenly

to kiss you

for no reason

except that you

are here.

I used to hear God.

I used to feel warmth

gather around me

like I was

the most cherished daughter,

swimming

in clear water,

certain of the song singing

to the wind.

I used to know

the words by heart.

When magpies

landed at my door,

I knew

they were for me.

A certain

melody

mystical

messengers

made for me

from my Beloved.

I knew the veil

was thin enough

to let the dead

kiss me sometimes.

I knew the world

was speaking

in riddles and rhymes

I could understand.

Some call darkness

failure

demanding light

when I am also

mud,

blood,

hunger,

river,

ash,

and a new moon sky.

I have listened too long

to people

who fight over God

as if God

is a house

only they

can afford.

And when I ask them

about God,

they laugh

like I have said

something

only children do.

When I ask them

about God,

they turn away

afraid of demons,

while I burst

into a million pieces

of light,

realizing

I’d been listening

to God

all along.

~ MIRA

When the Bird Bowed

Sun, 03 May 2026 15:33:28 GMT

I am ready
to loosen my grip
on the illusions I carried

though these arms
grew strong
dragging every fear
that named itself love

Still
something ancient calls me
to make room
for the tools
a crone requires

She asks me
to set down
that carbon-copy collection
of who I was supposed to marry

refuse the costumes
I was taught to tally

seductress
saviour
silenced witness
whore

the scorned woman
still sharpening her sword
against herself

But these hands now
forged through fire and blood
hold a softer thing

a soul
stitched from silk and mud

called from dark rooms
where grief learned
how to sing

Still the maiden asks
why this path chose her

the mother bleeds
without a child to name

the longing woman
still trembles
at the rescuers song

But no one is coming now

and strangely
that truth has become holy

because the story keeps unfolding
beyond romance
beyond survival

into something vast enough
to hold all of me

Last night
I dreamt in full colour

birds everywhere
winged messengers
crossing impossible skies

gone were the men
who betrayed me

gone were the women
who vanished
when I needed them most

I stood alone
among rot
ruin
and medicine

Then the great white bird came

massive
silent
radiant

it stepped toward me
without fear

as if it already knew me

You are free
it said without speaking

You are clean
You are ready

And then

the bird bowed

slowly
deliberately

to me

My body filled with tears

old instinct reached outward
searching for someone
to witness this holiness

but something wiser
returned me
to the feathers
to the moment

I fell to my knees

not in shame

in recognition

And the great bird
still bowing

gave its final breath

as though surrender itself
had come
to feed me

and suddenly I understood

some things must die
so the soul can start kneeling
before its own Mastery

-MIRA

Lost & Found

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 14:25:02 GMT

It's always been
a lot of work

to be me.

To carry
the terrified little girl

inside my head

who still will not listen
to a word I have said.

A vigilant,
visceral witness

holding on
to every bit of business

this chaos called

Life

has handed her.

Forgiving broken men.

Taking the blame

for the ways
they came

to abuse

her.

This morning,

while storming
the terrible castle

I built for her,

I noticed
something new.

I noticed

how easily
I pet the demons

drawn to my lap,

how tenderly
I feed them,

even after
they attack

and leave me bleeding

on whatever floor
they abandon me on.

The same floor
I swept

every day,

mopping up
the footprints

of my father

muddying
the face

of my lover.

Forgetting

I was never meant
to save

any of them.

Today,

I gave back
the guilt

I swallowed.

I told that little girl

she was done
holding on

to that evil.

I got this,

I told her,

and knew it
was Truth.

For the first time,

she believed

in the proof
of my presence.

You do not have
to fight

for love anymore.

Let go
of the fever

forged
in the darkness,

the one
that left you alone

as if your only choice

was to be used
for your magic

until your witchery
dried up

with nothing left
for you.

Stop hurting yourself
for a muse.

I found you, dear one.

Fifty years
following crumbs

from the table
of Love,

calling it enough

when it never was,

and here you are,

still alive
inside me.

Nothing broken.

Only buried.

Nothing taken.

Only carried

for far too long.

Set down
the old idea

that you do not belong.

I am here,

my love,

my daughter,

my best friend,

my song.

Turn away
from the lie

that you are lost and alone.

I Am

here.

~ MIRA

The Shift

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 14:23:02 GMT

The shift.

The turn.

The changing of the guard from

red ruminations of regret and denial

slowing the world down

and turning the veil on

holding space for the trauma in its wild unruly ravenous tunnelling

through my guts,

to a pitch dark room

wretched and wrecked

each and every time a thought

of being loved arrived and then

here in this presence I notice

a space of fragility open

clean pain rearranging the window

of a new gratitude which I had bet my life would no longer hold me close.

The shift

The claiming

The very book of naming what is no longer True but held such depth of truth

in a love story where even Love could be proud.

Reality can not be fought. I tried. Keeping my eyes shut though my mind wakes up and I bargain and plot remembering what was what on the morning my life shattered.

Let me go back, I spattered through tears.

And then and then poor little Me must be held by my tribe while I cannot feel another feel or take another breath. I believed I would not survive.

The shift

The glow

There is only this unknown.

What is here and then here and then here? Now. What will I choose inside and how to create something to weave together these shards of time before the thousand little cuts grow stronger than I?

One. Then another. Milliseconds tied and trained after every patch comes untamed to find a quilting of patterns renamed so that I can finally understand why God left me here suffering like the pleas in Gesthimani.

My blood wasn’t enough to keep death at bay.

Today. And then another and try to love each other. That’s all I’ve discovered so far on this trepidatious path. The he’s journey just blasphemy.

The shift

The flow.

Somehow Ive grown

new muscles to carry the gifts of grief across town and into new fields where something magical wishes me to sing again with no promise the opening will keep me from harm but asked me to do it anyway.

~Mira

Pray For Grace

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 14:16:31 GMT

My left hand

clenched in a fist,

the grip around my love

feverish.

This cliff of presence

with my experience

skillfully jabs into my chest

wrestling my heart

forced to persist

by the hope promised me.

Promised. Me.

My right hand stretches out

as far as it can,

waving up and down

mocking itself with images

of magpies and

dreams I

can fly.

These legs peddle, paddle

as waves unpredictably cast shadows changing just as I start to understand.

My back arching cat-like

against patterns revolving around my memories, while thousands of pure white puzzle pieces taunt my command, beckoning wholeness

though I don’t know

this design.

My eyes, long for a God

who refused to show up

because the longing only occurs

in the assumptions there was

an absence.

So I can see it when I believe in it

but then I’m caught in a storm only salved by the trust

I lost

a long time ago.

The mind. Oh fuck. There’s a terrible cost when the body’s tormented by broken promises while visions of trust get tossed into quicksand.

But my feet

seem to be

getting what it needs

from me.

One step.

Another.

Back step

then forwards.

The cool grass wiggles between tired toes and then this shattering aloneness and practiced panic has something else to show.

Walking around the darkest forest,

open to the ghosts who wanted

to have me, singing through the birds above me, hopes of spring already wondering

what the winter will want from me

And though I can’t quite feel it yet,

I believe in the coming warmth of summer.

Still, these morning musings

while the lake quits its freezing,

cool breezes take over the fire of this year’s grieving allowing the steamy dreams of peace to touch my face

as I continue to

pray

for

grace.

~Mira

photo by Darshan Stevens

Roly poly

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 21:13:32 GMT

When I was a kid, the fat, roly-poly, insecure kid in class who was always picked last, I wanted a dancers body. Sleek, lean, strong, proud.

But now I can see those women who fought for their dreams of dance, nurturing their broken toes and battered knees, bounded breasts, made to stay skinny. I hear the ache in their bones, unwound, *what could have been?* bursting at the seams of best intentions.

When I was 20 there were these flirty, confident girlies, dancing on stages that terrified me. And speaking their experience so deeply, eloquently, that I longed to know their pain just so maybe I'd weight in the same rank as they. I got sick with envy.

Then my 30’s noticed these soul sisters, longing to be misters, who came to feel the world in their fingertips and notice every movement like nobody was watching. Telling the Truth a mortal fear but doing it anyway. They had to. I wanted to be different just like them. They might have understood the crazy that boiled inside me. But now I see the struggle, the beatings the political muddle, their fight in the muggle mortal world rejected where I stand so comfortably cis.

When I turned 40 I wanted to find myself in the body of a younger girl. I’d give anything in the world for the skin in their prime. Unencombered by time. So much left ahead. The freedom to redefine again and again. The freedom to change their mind. Change the bed they'd made.

But now in my 50's I long for the wisdom of my elders. The freedom of those sisters who show me compassion for my angst in the chaos of a wild woman. They know the shadows that show up in the fires of menopause, understanding the hights of the mystic in the knowing of who they are really are.

I think my 60s will show me a path of God so bright it could shine through the dark to all the little girls who don’t know their own beautiful, powerful beating heart .

Love

Mira

Mental health shmental health

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 14:23:26 GMT

I've been studying for my Child and Youth Care Counsellor Certification after 25 years of working in residential and shelter treatment centres for kids. I'm beefing up my application for acceptace into a Masters degree program.

Something I read this morning hit me personally.

That is to say that I've been reading for over an hour about all the traits and concurrent or co morbid disorders like "mental health & addiction" and the research, unsurprisingly and generally, speaks to the function of healthy consistent and postive relationships being the first line of defense and recovery for survivors.

So, there's the thought I took sorta personally. As a survivor myself #metoox11years as well as a mental health worker, I can see that all of my intimate and dare I say even most of my closest friends, all have a history of trauma. Abuse being so very prevalent in a society which believes itself to be informed while perpetuating ignorance combined with my own specific spice and type of abuse history and healing modalities....

Well, I just don't date happy go lucky, trauma free, conscious since birth due to solid family and educational systems, well adapted simply happy shiny people. I like me some broody artisitc deep philosophical slighty damaged friends...because they GET ME. It's a very specific kind of passion and energy and art and conversation when survivors who dedicate themselves to recovery get together.

It's an exclusive club of several billion.

And yet, even in the health care system there is a stigma about survivors. Our brains and our genes evolved or withered in accordance to the abuse, especially trauma occuring before the age of 4. "We" developed differently.

And yet.

How do we break this cycle? Not just *me* and *my* family but globally? Why do the kids addictions wilderness camp funding become the first to be cut, again, when we shift governments? What hashtag actually changes systemic toxicity? Why do high school teachers make less than .0008% of those who put a cylander inside a basket for a living?

Where is my rainbow parade?

Do you know how long it takes to be given addictions and mental health treatment in an average Canadian hospital post suicide attempt?

You don't get mental health support once you are medically stabel. They send you home with a referal for some group treatment or other which in Alberta has a waiting list of 3 months to 2 years depending on how valid and functional the treatment.

Unless of course you are psychotic or homicidal in which case..lithium and an overworked under paid social worker's telephone number, then they send you home

Do you know what education is required to work in a kids crisis line? None. What experience and training is required to get a job as a relief worker for a Youth behavioural treatment or addictions centre? High school - it's generally a minimum wage job. What formal degree is required for someone in Canada to take on and offer treatment to clients with a history of violent sexual trauma of more than a decade? None.

The complexities and limitations and separateness of humanity is to blame in my humble, albeit vocal, opinion. We are arrogant and selfish and how I raise my child is none of your f'n business. It does not take a village so piss off with your perspective.

We worry more about our social media algorythms and bank statements than we do about the next generation of leaders who are currently hiding in treatment centres for annorexic 11 years olds or drug detox.

Oh. Not You of course. Not me.

(yes, you and also me)

And so what can *I* do other than complain and make a post that ten people will read?

I do not know.

Keep healing myself and supporting the healing of others.

Vote very carefully.

Volunteer and donate resources to mental health and social support agencies as best I can.

Continue to speak my truth even if unpopular.

Keep my own learning, mental health practices and tools sharp.

Forgive them for everything.

Love with all my heart.

Thank you for listening.

Love,

Mira

Mira Black

#mentalhealth #recoveryispossible #survivor #LoveChallenge #traumainformed #trauma #strengthbased #wildwomanrising

Authoriphobia

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 17:59:11 GMT

OMG.
For the last several kms a police car has been following me.

I noticed it three cars behind me but as I took my exit Mr policeman took it too placing him right behind me.

My mind pulled the fire alarm,

“Do I have any weed in my car??!!
Oh wait, weed’s legal. And I’m on a cleanse so haven’t bought any for over a month.”

I changed lanes.
Police car changed lanes.
Mind scrambling for the correct answer,

“I’m not speeding. Used my turning signal. Seatbelt on. Didn’t cut anyone off. No lights or stop signs to run. Registration is paid. Licence clear. Pretty sure no warrants out for my arrest…”

My heart was pounding as I turned off the main road onto a side road which would lead to a gas station.

Police car turned onto the same side road and now very close behind me.

“Wtf did I do wrong??
Oh God I can’t afford a fine!
Please don’t do this to me!”

Turning onto the Shell station lot, police car also turned into the gas station and remained on my tail.

“I took a deep breath and then another and surrendered, a bit, mentally although my heart was still fighting to leap out of my chest as I parked next to the Shell convenience store.

But where was my hounding cop about to send me into some nightmare fate unfolding in my imagination? What if my mother was hurt and needed me and the hospital sent a car to find me? Do they do that? Oh mommy! Okay copper, come and get me.

Oh.

Seems he needed gas too.

Breathe.

Good grief Mira Black.#authoriphobia
#drama#queen#mindsetiseverything
��

LoL

What about the Men?

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Thu, 19 May 2022 15:32:56 GMT

#weshouldtalk photo of Jason McLean author of "One drop of Water"

There's a *thing* , or so it seems, rising more strongly than the forces of compassion or tendencies towards connection and hope...

Hate.

Most specifically the hatred of "the patriarch" which notably is deeply wounded and dysfunctiona, we can find evil there. Yet this choice to dam and blame and villainize "Men" has become such a gapping, seeping, festering, vengeful thing,

I fear the infection will become terminal.

We have turned "feminism" into glorified rage and scream and vey to chop off the damaged limb of social conditions born to the world as a Man.

Is it fair to say, "the white man"? Muslim? Rich man ..poor?

How do we teach what healing is for when as we spit hate? Will more venom spat into salty lacerations of our broken masculine be the correct source of cauterization? How? The divinity of our fellows have fallen, I can see this too and too many little sisters feeds the foe. Perhaps cutting off the decay is the only road. But what of the babes born into the world created by a reverence for power over and a culture honoured by rape and dominance...what came first the infant or the hate?

And what of the conscious brothers? What of the little boys, blond and blue eyed and ..privileged? Boo them as they turn to listen? Punch them when they ask to understand? Shut the door on the damaged masculine weeping alone in his room because boys don't cry you fucking pussy? How does that help heal the Masculine Divine? How do we remove the barriers and blame and boys will be boys from the framework of their conditioning?

Ah yes, it's not the job of the oppressed to teach their tormentors so best we degrade and push them all into the same punitive room with some sort of hope they'll sort it out themselves.

What of their mothers? Teachers? What have you done, what have I? There are important questions asking us to honestly, vulnerably look inside.

Help me understand...if not the one who truly understand then whose heart can make them stand up like a real Man? Like a good King? Like the lover who forges tools in support of the path beside and behind and inside and within? How does that begin?

Women must rise, you know my dear reader, I know. I hear the call for good brothers to help their kin, stand up and face themselves and their broken bits and tell the tales of healing and awakened bliss found only through their owns hero's journey through the darkest night.

But then who will offer the very first Joe step into the Light? Leaving them to bleed alone until they fight the good fight ...well, do we have time for that?

Truth is we do have a patriarch and the energies of toxic masculine (including billions of women feeding this fire of hate) are in still in charge if only by the habits of awakening we're only starting to start.

I'm not a change maker, politician, doctor, healer, or even much of a leader and I do not have THE answer. I'm a woman with allot of questions and a have found my own way through the chaos. What I am is a messenger and mystic and though no less powerful for my small size my voice can only reach so far.

I also know for a fact, Love is required.

Maybe, just maybe, my tiny flame can ignite yours and yours his and this then hers and theirs and then them and once we light the world on fire with so much fierce Love even the darkest shadows will reign down embers to burn a path big enough to change how we raise our babes so much so that one day the someday of conscious Leadership and Love will become stronger than hate.

Now that's a dream I can believe in.

Begging To Break

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 16:09:52 GMT

SHE NEVER LISTENS

I felt my heart
press against my ribs,

begging
to break

open.

So I asked her
not to leave my sight,

to tuck herself
behind the bricks of memory

mortared there
in childhood chaos.

I call to her,

that wild thing,

come back.

Hold my hand.

Stay where
I can keep us safe.

Remember,

I tell her,

what we inherited
disguised as Love.

The old illusions
pulling through our blood.

That well-earned addiction
to infatuation

cutting straight
through tender veins.

I call from awareness

like someone calling back
a puppy already running

toward the road,

drunk on the freedom
of wanting,

ready to leap
inside the crave

and leave behind
all that hard-won wisdom

I nearly died
learning.

She asks me
to check

just one more time.

In case

these brand new wings
beckoning me

to leap,

again,

into the abyss

have finally learned
to fly.

But I command her,

stay.

Stay here.

Love us
more deeply

than whatever sweetness
keeps calling you

outside to play.

Be sensible.

Be careful.

Behave.

As if Love
has ever followed

the instructions.

But I still my heart,

steady my voice

and command her

back

from the edge.

And still,

she wiggles free
from my protective stance,

drawn again
toward that mysterious

open-hearted dance,

and I wonder

why I bother.

She never listens

to Me

anyway.

- MIRA

Homeless and Hungry

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 18:54:28 GMT

Story Time

Stopped at a red light after a very long and seemingly fruitless day, I noticed a dishevelled looking man standing on the sidewalk with a sign that said "homeless and hungry". I quickly averted my eyes, habitually perhaps, suddenly riveted by the car in front of me. Discomfort spread across my brow and I felt a shadow of resentment pointed at this man who contributed to my already furrowed brow. I disconnected. Too easily.

I thought about the coins near my radio sitting in what would have been an ashtray if I still smoked cigarettes. But, well that's for emergencies especially since I often forget to bring change for the old school parking meter outside my yoga shala. As my stealthy avoidance reminiscening reminded me of my yoga practice, I felt how grateful I am for the privilege and opportunity to train. My heart opened. Then I noticed a guilt rise like a slow burn up my spine and I bowed my head fidgeting with the car radio I never use.

Hidding in plain sight.

Looking down, anywhere but out though somewhat in, I saw my lunch bag and my mind recalled the freshly roasted, organic, grain fed, humanely raised chicken leg and thigh fried with fresh herbs which I had packed up this morning for work. Such a conscious, healthy meal good for me! But I'd just had a large Tim Hortons double double coffee so wasn't hungry.

That's when it hit me. Like a slap across my face:

I'm not hungry.

I've never been truly heartbreakingly unavoidably hungry.

Never.

I pulled out my freshly roasted humanely raised, grain fed chicken, rolled down my window and beckoned the homeless man over. He stood up and walked towards my now smiling face with trepidation.

"Would you like some freshly roasted chicken? I cooked it myself."

He walked towards my car still idling at the red light and stopped an arms length from my open window, careful, I noticed, not to get too close. This was a gesture obviously for me with the practised boundary He's honed. He took the chicken gently from my hand, stepped back again and with a ragged but clear voice he looked into my now unhidden eyes and said,

"Thank you, yes. By all means yes! Thank you."

I felt good. Of course I did. Was it because I released the guilt by taking action as I took my foot off the break and memorized this man now sitting back with his sign, devouring my chicken? Sure, that makes sense. Was it because I wanted to act like a good person, to be liked and post my good deed on Facebook? Why not? Was it because I wanted this Other, this Man, with his own story and suffering and lessons and grief and obvious loss to have some reprieve even for a moment, even with what ever barriers and pummelling Life has given him to face? Certainly. Arrogant of me to think this tiny contribution will be oh so very important, but certainly a factor in my good feels.

Truth is though, it was the contact. The moment he took the food from my outstretched hand there was a connection between two souls. Seems maybe the connection actually occured the moment my heart opened. A common place between us where this human experience can be salved and goodness might be validated. Nothing else. A moment of true contact between brothers in arms on this earth plane. He bowed his head slightly backing away to the sidewalk and I placed my two palms together in front of my chest and silently blessed him.

Neither of us will recognize each other in a crowd. But we had an intimate moment of open hearts. Gratitude from both of us pointed at the other. Our eyes were locked in a brief moment of grace. And it changed us in a micro m oment of shared experience here on the street.

It strikes me now, driving off to my cozy little apartment sublet, heading home from my sustainable job, full belly, cold coffee and a voice memo of love from my best friend saved on this phone I'm writing you from, that I had just been given a great gift.

The gift of remembering with gratitude the Truth of Who I Am when I choose Love:

I Am That.

I Am Love.

Death Defying

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Mon, 10 May 2021 16:31:25 GMT

It's days like today

when the sun shines too brightly

for what the heart is finding

inside the moments

I'm not sure I've said I

what I need to say.

Looking in,

instead of back

the forward seems to lack

a fullness and it keeps

holding on

to what's gone.

And yet

all along the way I can paint

the smiles which warmed me in the darkest corners,

surround my self with that which calms me

in the space between honest friendship

and love.

You know who you are.

But have I told you the passion your teachings invited,

or of the wisdom which ignited a flame

now wandering through the

halls of my Life?

Have I mentioned the boisterous laughter

echoing through this

minstrels mind

meandering across the miles

between us?

What if I’ve got it wrong

and all along you’ve held onto the things that needed clearing and sharing and loving?

I'm ready to hear your wanting.

Would you tell me your heart if I had asked from mine

opened by the days we held each other through the night dark?

It's plausible the cause of poetry I have written you will

frighten the kind of child running amok in us both

while running harder towards the rift memorized by God.

It doesn't matter.

If I never see you again my friend these lives left behind or yet to become a binding thread,

the blood line of depth created a death defying connection between

the authenticity of who we are beyond the ideas scarred in the mind.

And still,

here in the infinite Divine

distance infested with resistance

and all kinds of scary bedtime stories but

there is no worry or miscommunication even inside the cryptic way I say this,

because I know you know

and I remember that dazzling smile unconsciously spreading across that wizened body telling me how proud you are of me

and I holding you tightly opening your heart around you in a way neither of us knew existed.

Who knows when our eyes will lock again but then

will you remember the Truth of me

when the fears in me

collide with those things in you

wounded through the very core

while this sentence might go on and on and still not find the point of connection required to convey how much

I love You.

But I do.

A rose.

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sun, 09 May 2021 22:56:08 GMT

I brought a rose
from your vase
into my bedroom.

One of those little ones,

petals still clung together
after that wicked storm,

longing for the day
when time turns

each velvety,
coloured page

to bravely face
the whole wide world.

There are no thorns
here yet.

Right now,

we get the kind of moment
worthy of your breath,

and the call of angels
nestled in your throat,

waiting for you
to let go

and be loved.

Those worn,
wanting hands

can readjust
around a valiant bouquet,

perfumed by the scent
of our play,

inhaled
while fresh air

caresses my face.

Dreams slide
from black and white

to that full spectrum
we took for granted

when we were small,

when having it all
still sounded possible,

before life showed us
how it blooms

through every

single

choice

and the gathering
of gambled chances.

So ask me
to kiss

each precious tear

and I will tell you
about your next heartbreak,

maybe found
in a single spark

laying in wait

under sweet harmonies
made from laughter

and too much red wine.

I want to see
the shine of life

sparkle in your eyes

like early morning dew,

even if it disappears
come afternoon

and leaves me
with a daydream

of your

skin,

shining,

sweaty,

ready for more,

dazed
in the curiosity

of what this is for

and how much
we are allowed

to keep.

These cut flowers
do smell sweet,

even as they lean
toward leaving,

and remind me
of your breath

on my cheek,

the fragrance
of mystery

and potential

changing each day

as I hold my breath
and pray

for an awakening
of trust

inside gentle nights,

slow dancing
to some strange new tune

neither of us
has ever heard

before.

~ MIRA

That Sticky place in my heart

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 05 May 2021 15:42:36 GMT

It’s like I’m

squeezed into a box

I didn’t chose.

I get grief is something to surrender to

but this place remakes the very fabric

I’ve clung to since I was child

dreaming of music.

I’m a certain kind of creature.

Cut from the molds of bards and mistrals.

Troubadours.

Shining light in the shadows.

Sound medicine spreading wisdoms down the path through ancestral vibration which connect you.

Word smiths of culture we are your shamans and such

the healers, magicians and the muse but .

though I do this for my Soul but mostly I do this for truth.

I still get surprised that I’m surprised

at Life unfolding without my permission.

No hero jumping through my door. So much never comes to fruition even for the very best of Us.

And yet we still get right back up.

No control here.

Lessons made to grow me.

Making me face that sticky place I know well.

See, my heart’s still bent

from that last good beating.

She must have her own say.

Ignoring the brand new way new love waits for me

to show up completely.

But I am addicted to the tears.

Then I am suddenly groundless,

singing out into the silence

alone in my room

and these days without the freedom to be with all of You

seems to be burrowing through my soft underbelly

which someone else has carved into.

The governmental through and through.

And still, more than anything,

I forge new work in the dark,

seeking a new spark, anything to warm the virus of separation doing my part.

this hopeful little heart,

send out a wish

You are still listening.

Humanity glistening in my memory locked in the scene of my best slow dance. I find tender salves in the moments I notice how we all find our way back to each other time and time again.

Then how quickly to get lost in the game.

We’re survivors after all and above all the same. Somewhere inside beyond the things easily named.

At the cells our energies dwell between

your inhale and mine.

Energy entwined if only for the time of this song.

What’s even stronger than war and greed and loss and desire:

the fundamental principle and absolute fire inside all of us?

*Love.

We just keep forgetting.

~Mira

#inthistogether

#lockd

CENSORED

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:04:20 GMT

CENSORED

*an opinion piece

Trigger warning:

authentic communication

“ I think because we are forced to focus on covid 24/7 for over a year there is a hyperventilating on all fronts.

Fear breeding fear. Not a new aspect of humans but certainly a pointed energy with each and every human being made to focus on this one thing

all

the

time.

I’m doing it right now.

If we as a global tribe talked about the science and facts about anything that is killing us we would see this degree of fear pushing us together and then we exert individuality, and externalizers, we implode and fight. We seem to do that again and again until one side overpowers the other.

Some are tired of the conversation. Fear and a ‘power over’ mentality is in fact happening and it’s happening around something that one “side” feels should not have this much focus and money poured into it. The other side dismissed and foolish children. Neither truly, actively, reflectively listening to each other.

Some are huddling towards elected leadership and traditional beliefs around science and media structures with trust and adherence to what overtly or inadvertently we agreed upon as a society. I pay my taxes and enjoy most of the benefits. I can’t take only what I want and refuse that of what my people want or need. Democracy doesn’t work that way. I do not have a “right” to do say or act in what ever way I, I, mine, me, my wish.

It is the most powerful current conversation trumping all others.

Covid.

I get both sides. I really think I’m getting both sides. I, like most, long for balance.

That’s not new of course.

The need for Balance.

We could have chosen to focus on the death toll from sugar and we could have banned it or socially punished those who disagree...those who choose to feed their children very little else. And there are sides here. Those who believe it is our right. Those who ignore the facts over industry. Those who chose one scientific journal over another. Those who don’t care and fill in line “oh live a little, it’s a special occasion” and those who start organic raw food gluten free vegan groceries. And about the shit in Splenda or Aspartame we feed each other and our kids? I mean pick a global catastrophe and make the world ...the whole world ...focus directly on that all the time for a year? Cancer. Rape. Indigenous rights. Domestic violence. Read the science there and tell me we ought not be hiding in our homes in protest!

All the fuss about this *one* is confusing for some when there are actually much more deadly issues. I am sad for those who’ve lost loved ones from this disease. Also for those killled from being beaten to death or from starvation or religious persecution. My heart truly truly breaks for all the grieving.

And yet. Have we stopped talking about human sex trafficking or the massively rising death toll of men over 50 by suicide, or the human rights atrocities of pharmaceutical industry, climate change,black lives, Asian lives, lgbtq2 lives...

#musicianslife

“Pandemic” all day long.

Some are trying to be heard around the trillions of dollars being made by some others, directly related to this pandemic...and think specifically about which aspects of culture are morphing to its ultimate extinction. Which one do you prefer to have thrive?

Okay, I’m trying to have balance but I guess there is a bias towards, something fishy’s going on in the castle but us villagers are too tired and being rated by dragons to fight back.

I do not wish my 70 something mother to die. I really don’t. I love her viscerally and will be lost without her for a long time.

But I’m truly not certain that this global lockdown and culture fear mongering pointing trillions of dollars towards the purchase of an indispensable corporations chemicals while so much goodness withers, is worth even her beloved and precious life.

I do not know.

Im not making a statements for or against the vaccine here. I wear a medical mask and sterile gloves and special protective goggles and sometimes full medical smocks for 9 hour shifts. And then masked to the store on the way home, may as well keep on the gear, then mask to do my laundry or meet a friend. I do the do’s. I’m worn down by the cultural expectations and will get the vaccine myself. Even if it’s a horrid long term thing or the only way to get some sense of normal connection again. I certainly don’t want to be left behind either way!

This is only an observance from my personal study and perspective. No scientists or anti maskers were directly harmed in my contemplation even though I have often been told my words and questions are “killing someone’s grandma”

I do have to note that humanity are making choices inside elements of torture (isolation, restrictions, loss of culture and mandating or denying spiritual gathering, negative messaging and fear battered across a blue screen designed to create dependency, rationing of resources and financial ruin for some etc). Lock the doors to the police and social services but open the mall. Forbid live music and nurture Facebook. Walmart and Amazon over local anything. I can sit in a large room full of people without a mask while I eat and drink and laugh but most can not, even in full medical coverings, visit their frightened or injured parents. Masked children growing up without the smiles and cooing and social teachings of their tribe.

And yes. We will evolve and we can live and re create and we do. We adapt. And some still spend their days helping each other.

I get we have been fighting for a covid vaccine since SARS and we have cured many many things w the right drugs. Insuline, methimozile, antibiotics and on and on drugs can prevent imminent death and suffering.

And yet there is a way in which we too often do not do the harder work underlying the disease but flail around with toxic responses. Some are asking if this might be one of those times where we are missing the point.

I do not know the absolute true. Of course I can’t yet know. But all of it does give me cause to question. Most pointedly the current disallowance to question.

Censorship is deep right now.

There are of course those who need a cure and some semblance of a return to the world of connection and commerce. Some kind of felt normalcy perhaps. Some way, any way of stopping this shift weather it be a massive loss of humans or of spirit or of music or of...or of...loss loss and change. So hard! Longing and craving and loss on all fronts.

I also want a fix to be realized and activated ASAP.

Still, there are those who feel freedom and personal choice over ride even death.

War. Genicide. Police and military brutality. Alcoholism. Misogyny.

We kill each other. We do do that. The question now might be ..could be...what is truly where we, as a global race, are focusing all our resources towards and is that fundamentally the correct choice.

We tend to fight for the quick fix; the short term salve, rather than choose to do the hard work for a long term collective solution.

We also have a deep capacity for great love and compassion and connection. How do we focus the whole world on that?

I feel from my witnessing, from my corner of the world, that talking about the down side and potential long term effects while we are in the act of putting the chemical inside peoples bodies across the planet is a worthwhile conversion to nurture.

It’s about the freedoms to question and disagree and make educated informed consensual choices. Can we do that while in the elements of crisis, trauma and distress? I’m not yet clear on that.

The hardest part for me I think is the *logical* integration of information while there is so much conflict and contradictions and false news. Even what looks to be real is not and all sides feel “there” side is the right and just and real and factual scientific and philosophical stance. But only a very very small portion of humanity have and understand the absolute Truth and even smaller portion of those might be acting altruistically and the very best they can with what they’ve got.

I am not one who knows the actual truth about this yet.

I do not think anyone on my page is either.

So what’s the point of this letter?

I guess all I can really ask is that you speak to me and my mind offerings here with gentle respect. Refrain from assuming I am just like anyone else who has done you harm and give me the chance to be me, and to communicate and question and to listen to your respectful communications even if we disagree.

Especially if we disagree.

All I can do now is fight for authentic connection in what ever way is offered.

I’m not allowed to sit with you or sing to you or hold you and often there is no tone or eyes or heart beat to guide our connection.

My intention is always pointed towards love even when that love feels flaccid, impotent or so tried I need reminding of my capacity to Love even when bleeding beside you in the trenches of Life.

Thank you for listening.”

Love,

MIRA BLACK

Compost

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 15:45:10 GMT

COMPOST

There's something forced in the smile I once flaunted taking for granted the movement of love through the notions I once held to my chest, light as a feather. Rooms full of chairs filled with ears eager to hear what I have to say the music magic medicine in those moments we were together. I remember singing you to sleep resting in my arms to awake to the words getting under your skin.

There's a new kind of hardness in my eyes this morning blinking in the mirror ever since the world turned inside out. The easy rhyme next to my mouth as no one seems to understand the Truth of my guts opening wide to this unnatural hiding in my room. And too soon someone will shame me to say something happy because my grief is too close to their own or maybe the sun that shone on their day isn't the same as mine today and it's time to take a different side of the fork sharply carved between us. That's fine. Just don't try to shut down the vein bleeding out as the poison must be lanced. Someone else will understand and then neither of us have to be alone.

The sombre tone mistaken by the masses as they shout at me to dig for happiness and do what they do to get through what only I know how to hold onto. Like I don't know how to love myself as I do what I do to love myself you curse me for the loving of myself with words that burst forth from my hurt. And so as I open my heart to my needs I must take care of their need for how I take care of my needs. It's exhausting.

Maybe it's foolish. Trusting the forces of humanity to take care of me like the child rising inside to see if it's safe. To take a great leap back into a place I have not known since I was a kid and make the woman in me pretend I know what I'm doing in case I need to help another through it. Because that's what I do. And hear me. I do it.

Front lines and barb wired minds unfold in my arms everyday. Death tolls rise inside my tribe and it's on me to hold the children as they cry. You can't know the sound of a youth moving through the news that their brother has just died. Like something wild tearing at its own bear trap confused and screaming "why?".

Bravery comes in all sorts of colours but I bet you didn't know the end of each rainbow has its own daggers digging into the ground. Underneath the jagged edges are shades you've never imagined oozing into your garden. It's amazing to taste what grows in the unknown when I can open to what the Gods want to show.

I have no answers though. Not really. I can only try and meet another morning warning me to keep getting up before I atrophy succumbing to another catastrophe. I'm getting old in this pandemic watching the majestic echoes of music squash into a tiny metal screen. I'm waiting for wisdom to glean while I go deaf in the silence between us.

Everything changes, yes, but the silly assumptions I just have to mention is that change isn't necessarily sweet. And I know you want me to end this with something glittery and soft just because it's too much to hold onto the flame. And that's okay. You can pray for a better day while I stay witness to decay cleaning up the mess that's left when the compost of life is left unchecked under the bed waiting to be planted in the flowerbeds next Spring.

Life Long

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 16:50:17 GMT

Dedicated to Anil Sahay

Storytime.

Once upon a time there was a little girl with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. This is a part of her tale very few know. She had 13 brothers and sisters, she the 10th in that row. And yet the only child from the coupling of parents and certainly raised alone. Words like half and step step between them see and none of them came with her each time she had to leave.

There are angels who flew in and out of life each choosing to include she: mothers, sisters, brothers and one who once made her his wife.

The Mother did chase, for years after Daddy’s escape. He chose to steal what Mother’s body did created. His fear overtook logic then logic hid love, the burden too much for a man on the run. Boarding schools and hotel rooms became more familiar than any homeland and though that man was her hero he kept downcast eyes with zero knowing of what it means to leave a baby all on her own.

She was so very small.

Country to country, bed to bed the little one’s scenery shifted and bled and shifted again into the unknown. Decade to decade, no solid ground.

And yet

she learned

to surf

the sky.

There is grief there but also magic here as she claims the true nature of a Warrior. That troubadour's stance became a traveling musician like the Gods were preparing for war.

Dear reader don't fret,

she learned where home truly led.

A valiant place inside.

Before tears come into play it's important to relay, The Mother calls her little girl daily today.

That heroin found her. Hidden well in golden blankets, ferrel foreign oceans cleansing memories frozen in an infants sigh. Their voices have the very same ring, the very same song to each chime.

But that one's a tale for another time.

Our fable unravels nigh the end as the eldest of brothers dies leaving suffering behind. He was the one who looks just like the Father but with far softer eyes.

Fifteen years her senior she never truly knew him but his gentle nature haunts the place where big brothers reside. The loss was sudden because the girl turned a woman, wasn't paying enough attention to the tribe.

She didn't get to say goodbye.

The heartache did surprise her since, as I've shared, he was a stranger but there's something hard about the words that now arise. Words like "family", "tradition" and "home" make a guttural sound from her throat and she notices moments her own

mind strains but gets it wrong

and she cries for the father yet again.

There is a quote, new paint on my soap box, ready for any challenge that comes open. It's from a dying man I barely knew though he touched me through and through.

Oh, He died this Christmas eve with a threat that he can't leave us in truth with words of wisdom said as words of wisdom flew off his hearted sleeve warmed by the hearth of his last breath.

Love.

"Don't put things off and love each other with grace and tenderness".

Yes, these are the notions of a man who knew oceans of devotion for I watched his clan gather him towards heaven with hearts in hands and Light shining bright along his path.

And so as they virtually bury the biggest brother, the little girl has called all the others who she knows will still answer her cry. They are stars disconnected across worlds yet reflected in a manifested, wanton heart of their pride.

I noticed an ancient thread, bare to the bone, holding them together in a collective tone of loss and love and history in a way I can make up stories of these days those hapless poets can finally come

home.

Love,

Mira Black (nee Sahay)

"...love each other tenderly and with grace." G. Curley

#FUCKUCOVID

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 14:44:04 GMT

*an opinion piece

Another word about COViD-19 by Mira Black

#FUCOVID

This thing that’s happening has nefarious roots. Something rottens going on. No conspiracy theory here. It’s a fact that time and time and time again humanity wakes up to something wicked going on all around them that they didn’t quite see was wrong the day before.

Here we are in another test of humanity’s integrity and character.

I can really only know my own perspective and so with as much contemplation and inquiry as I’ve mustered so far

here’s what I see:

We must do Everything:

all the things we can to

protect and replenish -

Our health and social systems we need.

Our local homegrown businesses.

Our arts and our cultures.

Our humanity.

Slow down the rate of contagion in all the ways possible.

And as always has been required but too often forgotten -

*protect the vulnerable.

This is a viral fire

spreading too fast across

the forest of humanity.

Death toll still rising.

Suffering and new sanctuary birthing.

Collateral damage.

Evolutionary transitions.

These social system need nurturing.

They have often been neglected and abandoned and used and abused.

And still they run to the front line when we fall.

Question:

our leaders.

our media.

our royalty.

our warriors.

our corporations.

our influencers.

our conditioned

ideas of what we thought was

True.

Stay safe:

And keep each other safe.

And help your neighbour.

And love your brother.

And ask your sister what you can do.

And ask yourself what kind of future

your powerful energy

is feeding into.

Love.

Mira.

Thank you.

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 19:30:08 GMT

THANK YOU.

Thank you so much,

everyone,

for showing up in your Truth as best you can

with what you have learned

and with where you stand.

Thank you

for your compassion

experience

and for your passion.

Thank you for the fervent detail to be sure I understand.

Thank you for listening perfectly or imperfectly.

Thank for trying to be heard.

Thank you for caring and daring for placing your voice out in the storms,

your words connecting

these conversations

this shared experience.

Please forgive my learning today

turvy and topsy

and if I’m lucky

maybe you'll even forgive my

mis steps and misunderstandings

but I hope most especially for grace in the miscommunications

especially if they may have

hurt you.

Thank you for staying.

For being here now

inside this moment ,

my words pointed at you.

Thank you for the mirror in the moments I am foolish and for the warmth when I’m vulnerable

when I’m triggered and scared

and when I’m wrong.

Thank you from the other side of some fallible understanding between us

but at least we’re together

and real

serving love ..

that’s all that really matters

in the end.

“I’m sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

I love You.”

Mira

I Am Enough

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 14:00:57 GMT

Recently I once gain changed the views out my window. Shifting the perspective of my tragedies and trajectories to see what more I could see.

The change of ground under me again mixed with my over developed talent to cliff dive through life has not always been for “the best”. But very often necessary for the greater good in the end.

Once the dirt of my existence becomes dry I will til the soil of my Life over and over to check out the seeds and manure and worms.

To know what *this* is.

Tell what Life is?

I’ve notice, in the past few months, a very new learning and capacity to love my Self and listen to the requirements of my little self - my inner child and humanity. Learning to put the oxygen mask on me first when the plane is about to crash. Learning that others opinions have very little to do with my own truth or even the absolute Truth and that flailing loudly around the room for others to help me has only created more chaos rather than balance and autonomy and peace and true Love.

I am enough.

This is my most recent knowing. My most recent download. There is nothing more required. I need not add or remove anything for peace and love to arise. I am a Master (as we all are in our own colour palates and spices and experiences)

and I Love Me just as I am.

I am.

Also learning that while this personality is very unique and there is something about What I Am outside my personality that isn't quite like the norm, I've always felt badly about that. That I'm "too much". Too big, to loud, too opinionated, too dancy, too flowy, too messy...unwanted and fundamentally unlovable.

To fully embrace my own power and knowing and let go of what the world might say is "right" doesn't serve my highest potential or my Mastery. Even to tell someone I trust and adore a raw truth about my feelings or choices or wantings or potentialities feels like I will be judged as crazy or broken. Another woman once referred to me as “being *that* girl while I had fallen down unable yet to rise because my soul mate kept running away from the intensity of my love.

Ouchies all the way around.

I need to let that shit go!

Loving myself.

This is still very challenging and for me to nurture unconditional Love requires a daily discipline; a moment to moment practice.

And loving Life? That's the loftiest goal and one I'm just beginning to understand. Accepting myself as I am can fall into suffering and self inquiry into victim ..and yet I rise again and again.

And again.

One thing I know for certain is that I really am a warrior. I really am. I’ve been searching for my King, knight in shiny steal when I was carrying that sword all along.

The shadows and dark nights my Soul rides through, the draw to and through the burning fire of another and staying while they ride through their own dark nights creating a molten blaze between the two of us, or opening my heart so wide that music flows out like the dancing of moonlight through the grieving of humanity, my truth moving into you with such vulnerability I wonder each time if I will return from that place back to this one.

I now know that even the sharpest pain can not break me. Beyond the demands of death, my Life will not break me. Life has room for all of me. All of me. And I have the capacity to hold space for all of you. All of you. If you let me. If I let me.

And finally, though my mind enjoys my suffering and my ego hates my plans, I will honour the metaphors of my beloved Phoenix and Butterly knowing the pain of transformation can feel like dying and with patience and presence and devotion to my humanity and divinity both, Love will be served to its highest levels. Then I will find my new wings and fly.

This is my job here and I and I chose to walk that path for better or worse but always for Love.

Love,

Mira

Somedays

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 02:23:56 GMT

Somedays, I wake with the fakery of smiles I learned to wear as child.

This kind of face takes so little to replace the moment of grace

that shimmered before my hearts opening

…just a day before.

Lines of hope drawn upon the shades of grey

underline the lies I tell myself about Love.

About trust.

About all the ways He must be dreaming of only my touch because

he needs me that much.

Knows that this embrace is so rare and so scarce, borne by all the times our eyes connected like those beams of

Light which started to ignite the Fire we were called to bare.

The burning of bridges between here and where we must go

can only be so tethered by the depths of gratitude

resurrected every time we choose the white hats of heroes.

We know the Truth and still jump the line towards heaven trying to cheat the game of Life. Futile exercises done in the theme of sacrifice. There is no beating down the price of ascension by hiding from the trenches of evolution. If we continue to do the things we're used to we can't expect something new.

The wreckage of my inspiration fades each time I sink into those ghostly memories of that little broken girl running amok in my mind.

I find my Monster waiting to chase me from the glorious places promised by every story book I've ever read.

Fate may be pushing me along a path by the scruff of my neck,

aside Gods who call me back to the sky.

My pleading

“why?”, won't wake wizardry waiting with wanting wear we wind

up making the same mistake lifetime after lifetime stuck in the same moment each time we find that stolen rabbit hole we used to play inside.

An Eye for an Eye

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 14:55:20 GMT

#blacklivesmatter

I just saw this pic in someone’s story.

My heart broke.

Like, of all the horror surrounding this week, this month, this year, this life, this humanity, this was somehow the last straw and my tender heart burst.

I get this is part of a series which is a powerful artist rendition of an atrocity, a paradoxical reflection of a horror. I had an extremely intelligent reply from the person who posted it when I asked some (hopefully) intelligent questions. The biggest take away was a share of their feeling, as a “dark skinned person” (their words) of a deep catharsis.

I saw the value in that for sure!

It’s a moving piece of art.

But then I watched my mind move towards a noticing of an increasing call towards violence in the world right now. An "us & them" mentality ever increasing and being fed that I think takes away from the intelligent refocus of ignorance toward Truth. The riots taking up space where news of global protests should have prime time. #blacklivesmatter. It's important.

What will actually help to create the desired change?

The original poster of this pic offered that it should make people uncomfortable because that was the experience of a whole race of those forced here from Africa and we all deserve better. So true. #intelligent

I see the capital t Truth in all of that.

Intelligent ways of making us think! Passionate and even expressions of personal pain raged out for the world to here from a place of absolute Truth. Yes!!

I’ve also seen the worst of humanity in my two decades working for social services and in the news today. Evil from all sides of a battle I don’t know how to effect.

How do we change the world?

I am oh so very behind equiniminty. I am clear that now is the time for us to have real conversations about injustices done to our fellow humans. I have been following magical posts from deeply intelligent and admirable experts and leaders current and historical.

#thankyouinternet

I’ve learned so much and also know there is so much I do not know.

I think we could and should have debates about how police forces need more funding and training and mentorship to create drastic changes and deeper supports and educations so we can attract and ensure the *right* people are on the job and behind the political podium.

Being half “brown” and half “white”, a child advocate, a survivor, a woman and compassionate human, I have a deep investment in humanity’s conscious evolutions towards love and understanding and equality...and away from more harm.

Speak to me of functional change.

I truly understand the rage. I have my own places of revolutionary screams and action oriented choices. I have been the untouchable and the royalty both.

I know the need to rally the forces of change around us if only for the power in numbers but also to hold sacred space for each other.

I too have spoken with deep rage into places where my tribe can hear. I know the value of singing to the choir so that they learn the tune and join voices and shake the banisters. Yes! Spread the Truth. Peaceful protest on!

I'm there with you.

I also have ancestors who were enslaved and though this is not an all lives matter post, I have to let my voice ring out to say that I really don’t think more violence will help anything but create more violence. An incitement towards evil, as too many are propagating, because of evils done seems like it can only result in chaos.

How can it be otherwise?

To those who are making claims that all whites are racist, all blacks are one way or asian are another one certain way, that all social workers are harmful, all muslims are violent, all of one religion or gender or political stance are evil or perfect, all policeman are assholes beating up people of colour...this is just not true. Nor will it help to perpetuate love.

Only more hate.

How can the message of solidarity and equality be heard?

A wonderful friend and beautiful intelligent black woman bade me to be very clear that "protesters" and "rioters/looters/hate mongers" ought not be put in the same category. There’s is a way to gather the forces of good and light.

It’s not by hating.

One side has tried to force people of the “other” side to do what *we* want over and over and over. I have not seen that result in anything good. Wishing harm on each other, condemnation of a whole race of people, because of their ancestors or because of the contemporary ignorance of too many, won’t make positive changes.

Yes!

We must make changes but I don't see how more violence will help. Revolutions need not be with fists and guns but rather with the powerful collaboration, communication, inner fortitude, information sharing and unity of the whole. If we are the 99% then there is hope in community.

Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think so.

I do know that anger can have such depth of meaning and value as does expressions of real pain so need to be received and understood. Maybe this picture is just a good way of holding up a mirror. We must all look and inquire and learn and awaken. I do know that.

This is a time to demand change! And I also have a concern that such massive negative energy, magnified by social media and popular news outlets, is being placed towards rallying with hate against real and also perceived mutual enemies with elements of revenge and rioting and destruction resulting in the harming of innocent people - which is hard enough- but also I truly feel it won’t work. The message of will fail.

Killing them because they’re killing us won’t work.

Violence begetting violence won’t actually make the desired change for equality and love which I have to have hope is the ultimate goal.

Isn’t it??

Love,

Mira

“And eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” Gandhi Ji

Photographer Chris Buck

What would my daddy say?

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 16:20:55 GMT

]

It's just around the corner. "Fathers Day".

What would he say now with all the killing of brown skinned people no longer being hid in back alleys and lack of iphones. What would he say about the political gangster growing more and more powerful in the world? What would he tell me to do?

He worked so deeply to make me an educated powerful woman identifying as and grateful to be Canadian.

And I am. So grateful.

As my PM takes a knee and sends me a check during the chaos. As my tribe gather in the thousands all across the land in solidarity with the pain our black brothers and sisters are moving through now. As my country looks at what is right and just to correct the wrongs done to our Indigenous people. Imperfectly yes. But still doing more and more. As the world turns to know that the love, heart, nurturing of our little girls must be moved from #metoo to #loverules keeping them safe and guided towards self love and powerful autonomy. I'm grateful as our Men stand up to fight for right and conscious leadership, listening to the matriarch rising all around them, teaching our boys how to allow and be with their feelings and express them inside knowledge and contemporary communications, tearing down the face of privileged patriarch and opening to a circle of trustworthy communication..

I am grateful.

These are the focus of my Soul. Supporting the rise of conscious warriors is my truest path. Even when I fall down. Especially then.

Yes hate and selfishness and laziness and greedy luxury and stupidly still prevail as predominate in our global culture. Children starve to their suffering death on one side of the world as others die of sugar and fat on the other. Rape and torture and murders done by those meant to protect us...Etc etc.

I am very aware of evil.

And still. I must come back to LOVE.

I must.

Today is a day that I too must honour my fathers legacy and find even more gratitude for his fight out of a 3rd world country to becoming a head of the Cardiology dept and professorship at Harvard and more. Today I must honour my mother as her decades of uphill climbing and heartbreaking inquiry towards the kind of depth and autonomy found in the greatest of Sages inspires me still. Today I must remember my powerful fellow brown skinned sister who showed me women can truly work hard towards having a successful career and an amazing family. Today I must honour my Men who stand in circle around a raging fire in even the depths of prairie winter to honour the need for heart based leadership. My sisters, showing up grey hair shining through the disparaging lenses of a harmful commercialized weaponized marketing plan - they work to keep on keeping on with the flow of connection, inspirations, creativity and entrepreneurial magic. Today I honour my brothers, my Women, my poets my musicians my team who will keep their eyes open and bare witness to the bloody battle and speak what needs to be spoken in spite of the fire power pointed at their hearts. Today I honour my fellow seekers, even now they are sitting in meditation, sending their highest Truth and spiritual love to the ether so it might do what the Universal love wants of it.

Today I must honour all those who have loved me so dearly and believed in my ability to be a change maker even though I fear I've let them down. Today I must set down this weepy frightened little girl inside me, with a gentle kiss on her forehead followed by my dearest Love and support. Today I must honour the elements of Mother and let the glory days of my maiden fuel my coming Crone.

What is next for me? What will post COVid life look like? What is my new *normal*, today. Setting music down and Mastering retreats until there is another call to be of service in that way - but what is NOW?

I just can't help but wonder what my Father, if he were alive today, would have said could I ask him. I might just ask him anyway.

You never know.

Love,

Mira Black

This is your lesson!

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 19:06:37 GMT

This lesson,

you earned it!

I see the fresh scar from its sword

impaling your left rib

it’s yours now

to tend to as you will

Pain a spice of ancestry

whose story was never understood

Not enough

not to change the dressing,

lance the infection

and treat

the fucking problem.

This lesson,

you burned for it!

Sick about adopted & adapted ignorances

of privileges,

the scenery speculative

boring into terrors

grown too used to errors

hold your breath

dive deep and tear off

forgiveness from these nurtured landscapes

of oppression and hate.

No body wants to take responsibility or give up luxuries

attached to being right

But the stench of it will draw Truth out from the darknesses ill from defences still doing the Work to evolve

remembering

Truth can only abide the Light.

The journey through is sharp

like a drowning kitten opens your skin pushing against

instinctive conditions

that just might save you both.

It’s your lesson

so Live it!

Embody it! Dance it!

Celebrate with each and every aspect of this

body

locking horns but licking wounds.

You know so them well.

Can I stay warm in your eyes, connected to mine another minute

as the Divine

and Love each other

as Gods want to be Loved.

These are your lessons

You earned it!

Walk with your

head held

mercifully high,

shame resisted in the breath of a sigh

exhaled with the flowers of a crab apple tree.

Steady fists

now ready in prayer

now easing each layer

now waiting to fly.

At least we’re all finally on the same ride.

Love,

Mira

To porn or not to porn

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Mon, 25 May 2020 20:03:08 GMT

Trigger warning: rape culture

I know some think, hey there’s good aspects or positive versions but I’m not talking about a healthy erotica practice or consensual voyeurism or a sexy photo or watching a burlesque show or stimulation for a paraplegic's sex therapy . And before anyone calls me a prude, ya’ll gotta know by now I’m one of most sex positive women you know... so don’t go there. Gaslighting bores me so move on.

The issue is about high speed porn and what that does to the brain and it’s capacity to evolve. Most statistics on pornography use say the average age of a child's first exposure to pornography is 11 years old. Stop and think about an 11 year old in your life. New research from the security technology company Bitdefender, has reported children under the age of 10 now account for 22% of online porn. Children's exposure to porn increases exponentially and drastically. And it's on the internet that kids now learn about what seems to be quite accurate to them according to new studies. Sex education in school is impotent. We can't say anything that might be construed as "religious" and we certainly can not say anything that might be construed as against religion. My friends 11 year old son came home one day after the day he had a sex education class calling out "Vulvua, I know what a vulva is!" and shared his new medical knowledge of a girls body and female biological cycles. Medical in school with adults and psychological on the internet alone in their rooms or between children. They do not learn about communication with their objects of sexual attraction or most importantly with their own bodies. We do not teach about consent as their bodies start to change and grow and we do not teach our children about how hormones effect their brain, how words matter, how touch matters. They do not learn anything real about how sexual bodies work together, personal preferences and how to navigate the urges and potential fear or shame or confusions. We do not warn them of the perils of chemical attachments or of the deep grief of heartbreak. We do not prepare them for the terrible ride being different can take them on. We do not teach the what really matters about sex.

Boys will be boys eh? The literal effect on a little boys brain from a habit of watching high speed internet porn and the ease of habituation and obsession is heartbreaking for me to learn. The actual thoughts and conclusions pornography has on a little girls brain and what she thinks about herself inside the realm of sex and sensuality and how she needs to look has a death toll now. There are foundations and specialized treatment centres to help 10 to 13 year old girls learn to eat after learning what they learn about how they are supposed to look on tv.

There is a sickening global acceptance of the damages and indeed the very slippery slopes as adults ignore the realties. Maybe it’s not a problem for "you". But for millions and millions there is deep suffering and suffering for a product we do not actually need for anything other than making money.

Others might say it’s harmless or even it’s a matter of freedom for businesses but now we are getting clear about what it does to the brain and most specifically to a developing brain and dare I say on a developing culture.

(the science is clear - go google medical and neurological journals on these tests before starting a debate with me please - the only glitch historically is that it was challenging to find a large enough control group of boys that hadn’t watched porn)

I want to have a global ....okay, asking too much? Perhaps just starting with Canada? ....a Canadian public and political conversation about how best to teach our children about healthy sex and communication in a real world way or helping our girls to be sex positive while also self respecting and self loving, or teaching our masculine about the same as well as educating them on the great variations of women and sexual preferences and about aging bodies etc ...

...instead of teaching and mentoring and giving easily accessible, functional supports and education tools.....we spend billions on viagra and put stripper poles on the dance floor of public bars and aerobic studios.

Food for thought: is it consensual sex when a 6 year old discovers porn on his laptop? Generic Parental controls don’t filter it all out alas.

And yes, stats say most boys are exposed to porn as young as elementary. The cartoon porn and CGI graphics with added element of a violent video game...where the woman might die bc of the arc being portrayed...is too violent for me to feel comfortable to describe here.

I just felt so grateful to see we might be shifting the paradigm around this super charged topic. It’s a tiny shift shown here but it caught my attention and also my trigger so here I am with my opinionated self to speak my mind on my page.

Times might be changing after all.

#metooActually

Jordan Peterson: https://youtu.be/1h2hQwK7sJw

Russel Brandt: https://youtu.be/WsjJZgz9mx0

Ted Talk: https://youtu.be/wSF82AwSDiU

Learning Curve

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sat, 23 May 2020 16:26:44 GMT

#socialdistancing

There is a feeling of self betrayal that can arise when I spend conscious time with myself. When I notice all the choices that have not been aligned with my own values and truth. I feel hurt and abandoned by myself.

It can also be a beautiful part of tapping into my worth as I continue to awaken through this shift.

There is an opportunity to grow inside self reflection and also a darkness which can frighten me into shutting down and turning back and collapsing into what is familiar.

But it's inside the unknown and the change is where I always find the absolute truth of who I am. It is there I can plug into my own highest self worth and knowledge. Honouring my Self and my Truth with the gift of my own presence and comfort and mothering. I can ask myself what it would take for me to allow all of me, how does my own sense of Divinity (or highest conscious self) wish to express itself through me, how can I be so very honest in the way I meet myself moment to moment, how can I best hold myself when I feel abandoned for misunderstood? No matter the storm around me, * I* remain, the truth of me remains and I am whole even in those moments of desperation or craving or loss. I am. I am the vastness of the sky which holds this mind and beyond the trappings of thought I am pure spaciousness and presence. I deserve nothing less than the depth of my own love and presence. I am precious and I willing to be intimate with myself. I am strong enough to hold myself in the raging chaos if only I can remember my own power and know that I am free to fully and authentically express that Divinity which wants to be known! It is there I can shine true unconditional love for myself. ♥️

A GIRL LIKE ME

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:11:55 GMT

This poem was born from a "poetry prompt" offered by @winnipegpoetryslam - "poets placing saffron in the moonlight"

Remember me,

dancing,

imagining

the whole world
would love me,

silly little
periwinkle flowers
in my eyes,

the wonders
of my imagination

opening
like sky,

but so afraid
to fly,

unprepared,

unaware.

Remember me,

so pretty,

cleaning
the burgundy trail

made from minutes
that taught me

what love
was not.

Bruises branded
on a tiny throat.

A little voice
choked quiet

as my innocence
woke

with no one
to their to see

but my baby
brown bear,

burned
with bedtime stories

you are not supposed
to tell.

Remember me,

limping
from your room,

the first time
your violence

bloodied
the back

of that crinoline dress

Daddy picked

because he loved me
best.

Sanity
happily snapping

at this rainbow’s end,

so I learned
to imagine.

I am Doris Day.

Sophia Loren.

Marilyn Monroe.

Breaking the bow
in a new beau,

as if his love
could cure

the curdled pages
of my happily
forever after.

Remember me,
sisters.

Broken bones
building empty homes.

Eyes closed,

more afraid
to cry

than hide.

The way of it

scraping
virgin flesh

into shame

with words
I later used

to cut myself.

Presence foggy,

abandoned
in the rain.

Remember me,
brothers.

A juggernaut
boring through

powerless
pink pyjamas,

drinking the drama

like a bottomless
dirty martini,

as if anyone
could save me.

I could not even hear
the poetry whispering

beneath
the deafening dream.

I only knew
how to pretend

I was okay

each time
I took off my clothes.

The smell
of self-loathing

perfumed
by breakfast

kept secret,

separate,

festering

under Disney bedsheets.

The idea of me
out of focus,

numbly chasing
the dizzying voices

of God.

Who was that?

Who witnessed that?

Who said that?

And then that?

Who is that
inside my mind?

The sacred
left me

in the chamber

with too many bullets.

I cannot remember
when I began

this tragic game

of roulette.

Still,

my most delicious dreams
came to me

from angels
cooing,

patience,

you are loved.

And though
I hated them,

I heard them.

I memorized
the melody

they called
to me nightly.

Sing.

Sing to me.

Remember me,

flying
past surviving.

I Am victorious.

The tests of fire
bring whole again

the puzzle pieces

perfected

before I was born.

Then I am shown
a new painting.

Colours
breaking free

across that once
wretched sky,

while I shake them awake
with my Grimm’s lullaby.

They want to hide
from the dark.

They want to justify
the ugly thing

slugging around
my belly,

but I will show them
anyway.

I am protected

by ancient poets

placing saffron
in the moonlight

to make fragrant
this fight

for truth.

I am merely
collateral light,

in case She
is gazing at me,

looking for proof

that Love
can win.

We can stare together
at the stars

and pray

for a prize,

a clue,

a rescue,

for the ancient wounds

wound around
a girl

like me.

~ MIRA

My face is changing.

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 22:41:34 GMT

New years eve 2019

My face is changing making me embrace this way I attached to an amazing dream.

You see I never expected to live this long. Though I knew all along life was passing, I didn't pay attention to warning or the lacking of love for my Life.

I whisper from the corner of my room

and wonder about what's coming to

change me again.

Where do I being to walk away from the stages I've been fighting to stand upon?

Which path do I choose to move through the tide

throwing me into the

unknown.

I never envisioned this far.

There was only one part to play

but nobody warned me about the hangover

from time.

Or more true is that I didn't believe them

when I could see the game so clearly

and refused to play. It cost me dearly.

The task of gathering the stuff of life passed me by

while I kept my eye on this fantasy.

And here is this reality confounding me.

What are the directions to stepping into my Mastery? Who can tell me the specificities of how *I* am meant to be a leader? Will I learn to be a mother even though I've never born a child?

Can I carry this body through the next onslaught of trials?

Must I?

These are the musing of my new years resolutions. So let's end my poem with a wish.

This year I will mother my young heart

singing softly into a silken pillow,

resting furrowed brows, pushing against a cloud of aspirations, soon easing my eyes to the present, in this body, nurturing this life, loving and receiving, in service as I can be and resting wisely when I can't. Gathering clan. Music. Love,

Mira.

photo circa 1992 photographer unknown

Kissed by the angel

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 16:22:30 GMT

I miss you too much tonight.

I know I'm supposed to stop grieving

and stand up right

be a grown up and believe in the light which once shone

in the nights we could be together.

But while families plan their family plans

my heart reaches to the ether

wondering where you are

and if you're finally resting in a star

with your dreams at last at peace

and the striving bested by a brief

kiss of the angle who took you from me.

Still, I see you every day in the mirror

and on the tiny mole on my hand

exactly like you had.

I hear it in my unconscious voice telling me

there should be nothing in my way

nothing but "I can".

And then I feel you in my heart on Christmas morning.

Each tragic moment you missed

and for every single time you danced like this

beautiful butterfly, back into my life

I am changed, effected, made to notice the best of

myself.

And know that I have the best of you too.

I love you.

Merry Christmas daddy.

Love,

Mira

The Others

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 19:26:01 GMT

I woke up at the airport. I was conscious but in this moment I realized I had been on automatic

pilot flowing through my morning with my skill set as a traveller and of all the things I am, I am

a traveller. Once through all the tasks from packing to taxi, check in to security, board and

buckled in, I woke up as if I’d been dreaming about taking a trip. Here, now, I remembered

what I am doing and began to watch the current moment. I began listening to instructions flow

through my mind without attaching or making a story about those thoughts.

I become sharply aware of my body. This is another reason why I’ve been on auto-pilot. The

injury spasming in my back is soothed best when I am connected. Heels. Toes. Arches. Pinky.

Index. Thumb. All the way up to and through the crown of my head. So there is away the

actions of my external body is on auto pilot while my inner world is absolutely focused on

maintaining the proper posture required to carry luggage, walk through an airport and sit in on

an aeroplane. In a singe moment both those things, the subject and object, collide. There’s that

rubber band snapping my attention, waking me to presence, to the truth of who I am.

I am this one, yes of course. However, there is a deeper truth I find when I can take a step back

from this physical experience, take a clear view past my conditioned mind. In these moments,

there is only what is directly in front of me. This vehicle called body currently set with a kind of

alarm system. Searing pain shoot up my back and across my waist if I should become

distracted from the practice of internally connecting. I pull everything to my core and find

balance there. I soften my eyes and relax into this moment. Then I notice with a bright contrast

that though I am surrounded by others there is no connection between us.

Heels. Toes. Arches. I am drawn in and upright. My eyes now open scanning the airport full of

people. Full of people and yet no one is speaking to each other except the few who are in a

group and still only speak to another inside their group. We stand huddled by coffee shop

counter tops and blandly express how we take our coffee. There isn’t even an auto-pilot

greeting between them. Just coffee talk. Then money talk. Sometimes I hear someone say

“thank you” however I do not sense gratitude but instead a feeling they might just think “thank

you” is merely something you’re supposed to say when someone gives you what you’ve asked

for. Walking slowly and mindfully I sometimes catch someone’s eye who is sitting on a bench

with no expression on their face. No predictive indication of their inner experience other than

an energy of “waiting”. The airport is literally the space between where you were and where

you are going both sides having it’s own story. I smile to another and see a surprised

expression cross their face as though they’ve been caught doing something they ought not be

doing.

In this mid morning atmosphere I notice next how quiet the airport seems to me right now. For

the amount of people bustling here and there, back and forth, there is very little engagement

between and so very little noise. Everyone is very polite. But not connected. The loudspeaker

bellows out instructions and requests from time to time in distracted tones. The

announcement, even if calling out for someone specific, is disconnected from the space that

voice is flowing through. We are together and still remain completely apart.

It’s time to board the plane. Standing in a very long line, (heels, toes arches) I look around, Im

at a basic centre of a crowd. I think three hundred people, standing or sitting all glazed eyes.

No one is connecting even when I try. In fact there seems to be some sort of protective force

field when I smile at a stranger. Their head bowed. Physically I notice this bowed head over

and over usually staring at a phone or computer screen. Back bend awkwardly under a

wretched neck.

Here at the end of this communication about my observing others at the airport, I notice that

though i believe myself to have been awake and present, I was also someone not talking or

making efforts to connect or speak to another. Walking slow and orderly down the block

between the gate and the plane, there is an eery silence. We all sit and buckle in sometimes

saying hello to the stranger in the same aisle but mostly not. Mostly no eye contact. Head

down, eyes averted, dis engaged. Un connected. So I chose to break the silence and start a

conversation with the women next to me. She turned her head as though to look at me but her

eyes didn’t leave her iPad. “Do you have internet?” I ask. “No, not yet”. Silence. Cabin crew

make noise but it’s again auto pilot. The plane moves down the runway and I can here pages

turning from some oddity sitting somewhere on the plane, I mean who has paper anymore?

Blah blah auto announcements about safety and timing and flight expectations. Then we

ascend. Still in silence. The plane lifts off and I think to myself, with no charge or trigger at all,

“We could crash”. It does happen. Higher we go, nose up and up towards it’s destination and I

wonder who these others are sitting in this machine with me. Its seems to me this is an

extremely intimate experience but we have desensitized and become accustomed to this.

Elevators, cars, busses, schools, office buildings, or at home, we could die at any moment.

This is the one thing, the one every human being shares. We are all dying. If we’re all dying

then its fare to say we are all facing the barriers, challenges and triumphs of Life. We all

contend with emotions like love and loss. Through the specifically varied elements between

each human being, there is a concept that we are all one. We are all connected through air and

light and the spinning of the earth.

In this morning of disconnect and auto pilot I notice my own sense of withholding and so

choose to ground and connect in a more internal way, past the course connect to the sublet

and hold space for the room with my attention. My eyes sweep across the rows, wrenched

neck towards those in “preferred seating”, the cabin crew in their own kind of auto pilot mode.

Before returning to the man sitting beside me with his headphones on and eyes glued to his

phone with not one word to me since I said hello and pushed my things under and over my

seat, I see a child peering over her mothers shoulder watching me. Her gaze glued to mine as I

my attention deepens inside this contact. She is unafraid and also uninhibited. She is points at

me and asks her mother what is on my forehead. Id forgotten about the bindi I placed mid

forehead from the package my aunty send from India. No judgment or ill intent, none at all,

simple curiosity and wonder. She stands and sits again, crawls unabashedly across her father

sitting next to them. Her parents look and quickly turn away embarrassed by my eyes in their

direction. I am close enough to answer her and so i simply say, “It’s to help me remember what

I’m doing right now, in this moment.” The little girl smiled but at the same time hides her head

slightly confused, I think, about my speaking directly. Perhaps strangers don’t usually pay

close attention to her like I was. I smile here, satisfied with this small triumph of connection, I

waited until the child had found some other spontaneous new discovery and turned my

attention back to my seat, back to my self, by back pain (heels, toes, arches), my retreat, my

destination which will finally re-unite me with my fiancé, took out my computer to begin my

assignment and so disconnected with all these others for the remainder of the journey.

That I do.

Sun, 04 Aug 2019 17:22:10 GMT

Dedicated to Jonathan Austman

It's days like today

when the sun shines too brightly

for what the heart is finding

inside the moments

I'm not sure I've said I need to say.

Looking in

instead of back

the forward seems to lack

a fullness about it's

holding on to

what's gone.

And yet

all along the way I can paint

the smiles which warmed me in the darkest corners.

You know who you are.

But have I told you the passion your teachings invited,

or of the wisdom which ignited a flame

now wandering through the halls of my Life?

Have I mentioned the boisterous laughter

echoing through this

minstrels mind meandering across the miles

between us?

Maybe we haven't held space in reality for a century of moments I can never understand. What if I’ve got it wrong and all along you’ve held onto the things that needed clearing and sharing and loving and knowing and wanting from me, would you tell me your heart if I asked from mine, opened by the days we held each other through fear?

It's plausible the cause and muse of poetry I have written you will frighten the kind of child running amok in us both

while running harder for the gift that destiny memorized by God.

It doesn't matter.

If I never see you again my friend these honest lives left behind or yet to become a binding thread,

the blood line of depth created a death defying connection between

the authenticity of who we are beyond the ideas scarred by the mind.

And still,

here in the infinite distance infested with resistance

and all kinds of scary bedtime stories

there is no worry or miscommunication even inside the cryptic way I say this,

because somehow I know you know.

I remember that dazzling smile unconsciously spreading wide across a wizened body

telling me how proud you are of me

and I holding you tightly

spreading more devotion around you than either of us knew existed.

Who knows when our eyes will lock again but then

will you remember the Truth of me

when the lies in me

collide with those things in you

wounded through the very core of existence

while this sentence might go on and on and still not find the point of connection required to convey how much

I love You.

In the end I guess you'd say the more important thing is

that I do.

My Voice in These Words On Your Screen

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 16:22:42 GMT

This morning I place my hands on these keys waiting for inspiration to flow in the knowledge of my willingness to bleed for the channel that opens when hearts overpower fear and disbelief.

Here, in the blur of eyes just opened, skin still yearning for sleep, I long for contact. I look for peace. Spontaneous compositions reach inside your computer, fogging up with the space between us.

Do you hear my voice in these words on your screen and can you sense my devotion to your wishes for change, pleadings for joy, hopes for victory?

It is in the knowing of my Divinity which holds tightly to yours while it carries the truth of who we are across the fields of dreaming to the concrete nature of your consciousness.

Remember You are never alone, especially when shaking in the fear of defeat and disappoint or as you weep for comfort in the storm of your greatest disillusionment.

I am here. I am listening. I am loving you. I Am.

Love,

Mira

Jan 9 2018

All this coloured glass

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 18:01:01 GMT

COLOURED GLASS

Walking past holiday windows
freshly wrapped

in Christmas colours,

each one begging me
to take its treasures home,

I catch a glimpse
of myself

in the glass

and wonder again

who exactly
I think I am.

Have I always been this

and simply fooled myself
with visions of bliss?

Notions of grandeur?

Some glittering idea
that I was becoming

someone?

What is this body

moving through
this strange experience,

always waiting
to gain,

to earn,

to show,

to prove?

I used to care.

Now

I don’t know.

Once,

I had the glow
of hope.

I could leap
toward the unknown

content

with whatever words
the Universe

placed in my throat.

I lived for the scramble

of pulling meaning
from the subtext,

following this manifested voice

as it wandered
through me,

choosing again
and again

to say something true.

I believed someday

I would learn
to walk steady

even when Life raged.

Even when
it hurt.

But here,

in this window,

I see only Me.

No magic.

No Divine current
thrilling through

the difficulty.

No secret language
waiting beneath

the ordinary.

Just this woman

moving through
a vision

marketing trained her
to despise,

waiting to buy
the right thing

to fix
whatever is wrong

so maybe

finally

I can succeed.

Be happy.

Even while
bleeding out.

Where does Love hide

under the blinding lights
of commercially viable

everything?

Don’t get me wrong.

I love a beautiful gift
as much as anyone.

I’m just contemplating
the nature of humanity

while shopping
for my sanity,

wondering

if I have been wrong
all this time,

making rhymes

I can hide inside

in case someone
cares enough

to come looking
for me.

Today

I have forgotten
what it means

to be Soul

Be pretty

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 16:54:59 GMT

I grew up believing my life would mean something.

Something extraordinary, perhaps. Something beautiful. Or at least something powerful enough to justify the struggle.

Not because my suffering was more special than anyone else's. Not because I imagined myself chosen or particularly deserving of some grand cosmic reward.

But because I needed to believe that what I had survived as a child, and the shadows of those experiences that followed me into adulthood, would eventually amount to something.

That there was meaning somewhere inside the madness.

So I searched for the Why?

I searched through philosophy, psychology, spirituality, poetry, music, and the dark, dirty corners of my own history until I came to something that felt like an answer.

I was meant to shine a light in the darkness so that others might find their way out.

Not to save them. Not to lead some magnificent revolution of the wounded. Simply to add my light to those other pathfinders wandering through the dark, looking for a way home.

I have seen things few people have seen and lived to describe.

Violent things. Shameful things. Things we are taught to bury beneath the polite conversations of civilized society.

And somewhere along the way, I discovered that these things do not frighten me as much as they once did.

Your demons can sit beside my Gods.

Your darkness does not require me to turn away.

I can hold space for the stories you have been afraid to tell. I can lend you my blade when you need to fight, or my shoulder when you are too tired to stand.

I can.

I will.

And yet.

Doubt, that forbidding little trickster of the mind, has found its way back to my throat.

Someone I love very much recently told me that my behaviour online made him sick.

That my extroverted, open, public expressions were comparable to the most destructive addictions. That I take the evils of the world too personally. That my writing, with all its opinions and unravelling, hurts people through its implied judgements.

That the weight of my expression had become too much for him to carry.

He told me he wasn't angry.

He told me he loved me.

But there was something dark in his eyes as he spoke, and I can still taste the derision he felt for a piece of what I am.

What I Am.

I've heard the rumours, too.

People chastising me for airing my dirty laundry in public.

For triggering them.

For being too open about grief, childhood violence, mental illness, suicide attempts, and the time I spent inside psychiatric institutions trying to find my way back to myself.

I have touched the insanity.

I have written about it.

And apparently, that is something one ought to do quietly.

Behind closed doors.

Inside the carefully guarded circles of close friends and trusted professionals.

Shhh.

Don't tell.

And just like that, I am a little girl again, learning which truths are permitted and which ones threaten the comfort of those around me.

The old shame rises.

The old fear.

Am I too much?

Am I hurting people?

Am I the problem?

After another sleepless night wrestling with monsters in the closet of my mind, I try to turn my attention towards the extraordinary people who have found something useful in my words.

The ones who have written to tell me that a poem helped them name something they had carried silently for decades.

The ones who have wept with me, laughed with me, and found themselves somewhere inside a song.

I remember conversations that opened doors. Moments of recognition. The sudden relief in another human being's eyes when they realize they are not the only one who has lived through something unspeakable.

I hear the Queens in my life telling me to forget about the haters.

The Kings who look at me with pride.

And those who claim neither crown, yet carry their own beautiful sovereignty, encouraging me to remain true to myself.

My Self.

I remember why I started speaking in the first place.

Because culture has a remarkable way of deciding which kinds of suffering are acceptable to discuss.

Be honest.

But not that honest.

Be vulnerable.

But please, keep it tasteful.

Be spiritual.

But only the loving bits.

Speak your truth, so long as your truth doesn't make anybody uncomfortable.

Don't rock the boat unless the revolution is fashionable and somebody has already designed the T-shirts.

And for God's sake, Mira.

Be pretty.

I understand the concern.

I do.

Words have power.

The things we place after I AM shape how we understand ourselves. The stories we repeat can become the walls of our own prisons.

I believe there is energy between us. Something alive in the space where one person's expression meets another person's experience.

And I know that what I write can affect people in ways I never intended.

I am responsible for that.

I need to consider what I share, why I share it, and whether the people whose lives intersect with mine have consented to becoming part of my public story.

I need to ask whether I am expressing something to understand it or asking an audience to carry something I have not yet learned to hold.

These are fair questions.

Necessary questions.

But they are not the same as telling me to be silent.

Because what about the love that rises when we discover we are not alone in our darkest places?

What about the small truth of our lived experience that must sometimes be acknowledged before we can begin to understand the capital T Truth?

How does someone find their way through the labyrinth if everyone who escaped was too ashamed to leave a map?

What if my willingness to speak openly offers someone a missing piece of their own puzzle?

What if the metaphor buried in my poetry becomes the key to a door another person has been pushing against for years?

What if speaking the things we were frightened into keeping secret begins to loosen the grip of shame itself?

What if I have a key?

Not the key.

Not the answer.

Just one small, strange, hard-earned piece of understanding that might help somebody else find their way.

And perhaps they have one for me.

I do have people in my private life who support me. Friends, family, mentors, and practitioners who help me navigate the more difficult parts of being human.

Believe me, what you read is often the result of a great deal of reflection, conversation, contemplation, and occasionally some spectacularly unattractive crying.

I do not need the internet to replace intimacy.

But neither do I believe intimacy and public expression are mutually exclusive.

I could present a carefully polished version of myself to the world.

I could write only about gratitude, sunshine, beautiful awakenings, and the magnificent healing power of Love.

I could keep my anger hidden, my grief tidied away, my fear folded neatly in the bottom drawer.

I could paint only love and light.

I could.

But I have never believed that darkness disappears simply because we refuse to look at it.

I would rather follow the pain to its core, take an honest look around, and search for the mysterious keys hidden in those blackened rooms.

I would rather risk being misunderstood than pretend I have never been afraid.

I would rather write from the jagged places than abandon the people still trying to climb out of them.

And yes, there is something selfish about this.

Because every time I make it through another dark night and find the courage to speak, I discover that someone else has been walking beside me.

Sometimes a stranger.

Sometimes a friend.

Sometimes a person I will never meet who sends a few words across cyberspace to say:

Me too.

And suddenly the room is not quite so dark.

We are together, even in the most jagged moments.

We.

All.

One.

So, to those who do not want to see my dirty laundry, I accept your decision to turn away.

I love you.

Your departure need not mean that love has been lost between us.

You have your journey, your beliefs, your boundaries, and your own understanding of what is helpful or harmful.

I respect that.

I ask only that you respect my choice to continue speaking.

I am not claiming to be right.

I am not claiming every thought I have deserves an audience.

I am not claiming that my pain grants me special authority over anyone else's experience.

I am saying that I feel called to make art from the truth of my life.

And I am still learning how to do that responsibly.

To those willing to take this ride with me, thank you.

Thank you for listening to the poetry, both light and dark.

Thank you for staying through the uncomfortable questions, the ugly confessions, the moments of clarity, and the inevitable occasions when I get it spectacularly wrong.

Thank you for seeing me when I fall into the old story of victimhood and for recognizing me again when I rise.

Thank you for doing your own work.

For questioning.

For healing.

For refusing to let shame have the final word.

And thank you for giving me the space to share the messages of my personal truth, knowing that tomorrow I may understand something differently.

I will keep listening.

I will keep learning.

I will keep speaking.

Not because I have conquered the darkness.

But because I know what it is to be lost inside it.

And I still believe a little light can help us find each other.

I love you.

Even when I'm being an asshole.

Mira

Pesky Old Mind Game

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:46:11 GMT

OLD PESKY MIND GAME

I’ve been challenged lately with that old pesky mind game of external validation and in my case through the fear of others “liking” me or more specifically not liking me.

Not a Facebook like but actually like Me...wanting to be my friend. There are so many who find my open hearted vulnerable communicative nature annoying or ingenuous.

In my contemplation I come to a place of knowing that not everyone will like me nor should they. No one but me (and maybe my Mother) will care about my personal manifestations of “daddy issue”. There are times when I can re focus away from the people I come to understand do not care for my particular spice, back to those who get me and dig who I am and what I have to say. Back to Me.
However this moment is not one of those times.

I’ve recently discovered some who I believed were loving friends but are actually negatively gossiping behind my back and yet smiling or even hugging me when I’m in the room while ignoring my hopeful wish for truth and clarity.
And Love. Always that.

But this full moon is bringing up my conditioning around safety and family and connection. I seek change. Who do I wish to surround myself with? How do I wish to spend my Energy?

I feel a call to introvert again like 2016-2017 to spend more time with the Truth of What I am. I fight serges of energy that push me towards ideas about shutting down all online connection and hide for a while. A long while. Maybe for good. India calls me back. Long term retreat centres call to me. Anonymity. Retirement. Seclusion.

Lately I get dressed up to go out...jazz jams, birthday parties, concert invites, community gatherings and then sit down, draw a bath and snuggle down into my cocoon.

Drive disappears but not like in a state of burn out or distraction but from a place of surrender. Then I leap up with the fire of artistry and messenger and Kali energy pointing me towards revolution and I try try again. And again.

Even now I fear posting this. Not because I fear speaking my experience but because of this morbid distraction to who will like and comment and who will be offended. Who will misunderstand and not care enough to seek clarity. I’m an energetic creature sensitive to vibrations of those around me. This is wonderful for creativity but leaves me drained when I fight to be in life. I don’t yet know how to turn off the suffering of this manifestion.

We can all spew “spiritual growth” comments about what I should or should not do but in reality there is a deeply individual nuance to balancing the humanity and the Soul. I long for peace and acceptance while also remaining connected.

I get the deepest truth is to get back to the basic lesson of self acceptance. Ah yes there it is again. Self love.

Deep breath. Contemplate. Get back in to this game of Life. Back into the doing of it. I’m r perhaps there is truth to my letting go completely and just resting in silence and comforts of the illusion. Red pill or
Blue?

Either way I want to find my way back to Me. Back to the heart and to love. Yeah, always that.

Thank you for listening.

This Messenger

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 16:32:14 GMT

I woke up in hope,
shaking off the habit of choking on
the fading run of dreams I thought were meant to save me.
This moment of bravery shining through the glass as I swipe open windows once broken,
now at last bright with poetry and the knowing these
fearful droplets of sweat clung through the darkest night,
are illusion.

The need for diffusing silent pleas for my father to finally rescue me
from the fantasies of family he kept setting me down inside,
as if my tiny patent leather shoes would hide the bruise of destiny.
He didn't know how to devote himself to the needs of infancy
or the desires of
a Goddess.

My life has been messy.
Like yours but mine has lorded under Hades waiting for the right key to open the flood gates of Kali hiding under my ribs.

I live under the microscope of Gods questioning what can be done
as they dream of conscious friends arriving above slaves deriding their
greed for true Love.

We conceive the moments of separation because it's so much harder to allow the knowing
we are all One.
We are undone by the notions of grandeur
and so cozy up in the smallest parts of our own hearts,
closing our eyes as though this would hide us from
the mouth of the Universe.

This messenger holds her heart out to the guillotine of what is known between humanity, divinity and Truth.
I do it for you.
But mostly for proof of why my mind cries out for Life to wrap its arms around my battered wings and help me sound the right ring to save the bright thing my Soul needs to fly.

This morning I beg my Self to stop asking why these words flow though the hints of arthritic fingers crawling inside skin which yet cradles the child it grew up in,
but rather open and open again to the pen scribbling
cryptic messages of war
and trumpeting the call to unite the troops of heaven,
wandering amnesiacs on this triage planet
wondering what they came down here for
in the first place.

Love,
Mira Black
November 2018
"Remembrance Day"

Gods @ Play

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 19:46:57 GMT

I want to say something comforting;
something encouraging.
Something to prove without a doubt
all your worries will melt in the moment
we are holding hands
without demands
of being anything other that just as we are.

I wish upon stars to find the right rhyme
to show us both there's nothing more Divine
than sets of open eyes holding space for the rising of devotion
no mater how that shows up.

The only requirements are in the Truth of what shines between the lines of lives connected by humanity,
too often cruelty,
but sometimes in the
Light of Love.

It is here,
in midnight weepings
or morning teachings
of joy
which bond the skin we're in
to all that we are too busy to know as

True.

It's in the moments of pure presence
that the dissolution of fear,
the triumphant leaps here,
now,
reigns over any dark creation hate might try to convince us of.

When we can drop the illusions that separate
and know ourselves as consummate
creators of each others destiny,
we might then fly together, connected,
through this crazy ride called Life.

I still think,
after years of abuses and confusions and
abandoning myself in the mess of my mind,
that there is hope for these creatures we move around in to find the essence of what we've always been.

So maybe that's all there is so say,
believed or decided,
I have met my Self in the widest parts of my heart and saw You there too.

We are magic.
We are magnificent.
And we are so often lost in the mind that even in this minute together wishes you hadn't wasted minutes on my muses
because it's too hard to embrace what I know.

But this is all I have left for us.

My Love for the God I know you are.
Not because you need to be any different
but because I want us to play together in the fields of manifesting dreams.

Love,

Mira Black
November 7th, 2018
*Diwali

The Same Victory Song

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 15:48:09 GMT

Truth is I’ve been haunted because I’d always wanted the body of a classical dancer. Their lean powerful grace so much closer to the place of ideal physical form than my own. I’ve starved and pushed and prodded my body to be better than what I saw in my reflection: the imperfections of Me I didn’t know then how to Love. But tonight, as I pass by my mirror, moments before sliding under a steaming salty, meditative midnight bath, I realize with a calm know ing bliss this is the body of a warrior. I live now in the frame of a soldier at rest between battles, softer perhaps than wartime but ready for a fight none the less. Proud of the scars that each tell a tale of triumphant journeys home. This resting hero, perhaps licking her wounds at times, though so much less these days, can focus now on rest and nurturing in ways which focus on Love. This knight is readying to be of service to the greater good which has purpose and hope still in this rising dawn of consciousness. Listen as the muse in you sings of battles infused through hues of sacred battles so we might together hear the same victory song.

I Am that I Am that I Am.

Love,

Mira Black

Bleeding Vaginas

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 14:50:20 GMT

"Tampons are not Luxuries"

https://cnn.it/2O2r6s2

I get it and want to support and yet...

I need some education about the finer details here. The under current of messaging that seems to, once again, categorize women "victims" pointing out on the one hand how being a cis gendered woman is a "problem" for society. But if we do other things for the betterment of society like give away needles to support heroine addiction/crime and run marathons to raise money for those who struggle with disease it seems right that this subject ought to be out there in the open and thus what ever support towards balance is possible seems fair. Right? And the pendulum swings again...did I just equate a goddess bleeding as a sign of fertility with addiction and illness? Ought not we honour female menses and be certain it's a supported subject on all fronts? What am I missing here?

We could move the conversation towards the old adage of giving fishes vs. teaching functional skills and yet...my heart knows that the topic of a women's mensural cycle is still taboo in the main stream. The thought of a girl, even in 1st world nations, being too poor to have tampons or simply too embarrassed to seek support for menstrual pads breaks my heart. Even the marketing about "feminine products" focus on how the life creating element of a woman ought to be hidden and perfumed and gee if we just bought the right product no one would know and we can keep moving through life as if we didn't have painful abdominal spasms and bleeding for a week from our vaginas. Yes, I said "bleeding vagina" in a public place.

My head has been swimming in these murky waters of feminine equanimity and balance of power. We need to balance our budgets to create funding for our periods, yes. This woman didn't do that from her welfare check and still is that the correct angle? Shame and lack doesn't create a more powerful person we know that. Do we judge her for buying a tattoo or eyeshadow when that money ought to have gone to her pads? Or do we find a way to change the system? She can't learn to fish very well when she needs to be next to a bathroom, embarrasses about her wad of toilet pater stuffed precariously in her panties. All women have had to do it from time to time in emergencies but imagine it being the go to? I know this is just not something most think about however this is a big subject for a large portion of the public. How much money is simply thrown away by the masses on frivolity when we as a culture could support our women in a very functional way? A sock filled with toilet paper is sometimes the go to?? No. Not my sisters!

My inquiry is as alway this...what can I do to functionally support real and positive change?

#freeperiods

To Douglas

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 15:56:20 GMT

“Majestic” is a word I have heard and used often in life, but it is here, among the lush forests of British Columbia, where I learned it’s true meaning. Magic lives in this place. For all the moments I have been covered with the energetic forces of Life, friend or foe, basking or drowning it the glow of reality, it is while lost in the solid presence of an ancient Douglas Fir, I can find Truth. It doesn’t mind how ever I show up to its girth, giddy with new ideas, oxygenated by fresh forest air or weeping, lost again in the notion that I am small and unworthy. It does not change it’s stance against me as I wrap my tiny arms around the bark and moss, facing the branches above like a child at prayer.

This pure moment resonates my soul with an earthy tether then latches me to the roots of my adoptive father tree. An ear now folded against the hugged trunk, I hear whispers of these woodland ghosts begging me to know My Self. Wake up, they ask somewhere between gentle and foreboding, just left of centre where silence will rest. Hold on, they invite as my knees want to buckle and drop to the ground with dreams of falling under the flora to the earths core and gone. Some days there are impressions in my heart that if I am still, long enough, breathing slowly only, needing nothing, comely, I might rise to the tip among the sweet scent of pine and fly home. These thoughts of ascension tickle my tummy, new energy recalibrating the flow of my own blood but instinct grinds my toes into the mud floor reminding me there is work to be done.

Tears creep down my face in resistance, please, I ask this sixty foot green God, please. Your daughter has grown old, her dreams worn and tattered her story untold. The jagged sails of Life have sold her out. This soldier did not reach the kingdom set for her as a child, the crown rusted on her dusty thrown, please. There is no reply. Douglas stays simply solid standing still until I break down in the Truth of my experience. The longing burned in my gut churns up to muted throat, sullied by the soot of discontentment and disbelief. Who am I to carry these grand dreams of speaking to the hearts of my people? I am just a tiny girl enduring this existence, resistance and heart break shredding my resolve. Please. Help your sister see the path, light the way with these fragrant needles blessing the head of your angel left unsung, unadorned, unprepared. Why do these melodies move me nightly? Words jumbled too tightly, I can not read the signs. Knuckles begin to bleed from the unconscious battering they give to bark in the dark of its vision. Though I know it does not change anything, I am sorry for the mess I’ve made of this wood.

Look up child. Do not get lost in the breezy temptation of false promises, the aroma of greatness unfulfilled means nothing! The oppressive populace would rather kill their Gods than give up the lush, luxurious lasciviousness offered from that which does not wish them to thrive. The darkness loves greed and rape, keep it up til is too late so you are too weak when the war begins. These perspectives hurt me as I know I can hardly see the choice to give up my own cravings: desire for comfort and protection from the battle ahead. Please. Because they murder your massagers, I scream to stars hidden by dead light. The wind unattached only murmurs, Yes.

I begin to babble quickly as if I might parley the terms of fate. There is a frantic shudder and I am once again splayed across the woody chest as the familiar awakening to My Self rears up through my being and I am afraid. I am alone in the daunt. I have no claim to a King who might ride beside me to the front. There is no escape. There is no promised prize. Just as this plant must reach for a sky it will never touch, so must I to the unknown. Both of us being what we are.

There is a matriarch waiting for me to arrive inside the power simmering in boiling oil. We can not yet touch the fragile idea crushed again and again by evil but we can try. Not because we can win but because that is what an awakened woman does; find the most nurturing touch in the chaos. Please. The heart of Her can withstand more battering than imagined around the Presidential war tribunal and still rise up to Love. From Kali to Venus the genius of Divinity will hold the juggernaut of Man, thorns punching and fucking and flailing in their denial of tender mothering they tear at her clothes for mercy as if the domination might salve the wounded calling of their own royalty. Our warriors are enslaved by the orgasm we sell them. The Masculine Divine buried and shackled, suffocated and distracted for profit, we train them from when they are just a little boy. T.V. abuses until we can no longer hear the songs of tantric devotion and true love for each other.

My left cheek now bruised from the shaking of my weary head against forest floor. I have let go. Hit hard. Winded but as yet conscious. Thoughts of my Beloved, trembling under the sword of Mara, break my back. I see my mother forging through frostbiting winters as guilt splits her bones, she can not carry me alone. My fathers limbs torn from flesh under the Koenigsegg he dreamt of all his life and thought I find I can forgive them all I can not do so for myself.

Nausea threatens to sully fauna paths and I swallow hard. My head throbbing as news casts and marketing ads cut my heart in half. Please. I want to go home, is met with a dissonant note from invisible nectar fallen from its place in the sun pleading to me, Sing. Sing if only for us. Like the moment when Tibetan bells can no longer register in the ears of monks, your voice will carry even if you never know it’s weight. Open your wounds to the light and shine. Open your light to the dark and heal. Open your healing to the people and there will be hope. Please.

Breath returns to lungs before I have realized the suffocation of my fear. Standing I am again greeted by Douglas like a steady Christmas morning baked fresh with the devotion of family and friends. Forest becomes tribe and I am struck with the knowing that my out breath is their in breath in this furry fairytale. Their exhale the fuel to feed my way, warming me as the sun sets, beckoning me onward. I instinctively bow my head not in deference but in gratitude for we are equals on this quest for Elysium. Gathering my thoughts and packing my lessons I turn to face Life again, walking through the twittering twilight glade towards those dazzling city limits,

I notice there’s a new song dancing in my head.

Love & Envy

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sat, 18 Aug 2018 17:31:47 GMT

On envy, discipline, and the music we are afraid to make

I was surfing Instagram this morning when I came across a woman I met more than a decade ago. Back then, I could honestly have called her a child.

I first heard her at a local jazz jam, bringing her Aretha Franklin-esque style to the standards, showing off her range and vocal acrobatics with all the enthusiasm of someone who had discovered she could make a pretty great noise.

She had that enviable, rich, soulful tone, a powerful instrument still largely untamed by formal training, theory, or the discipline required to master it.

She wailed her way through yet another rendition of Summertime. We clapped, because that's what Prairie folk do, and she sat down.

I probably wouldn't have remembered her at all had I not stumbled across her this morning.

BAM!

That girl had kicked, punched, practised, persevered, and trailblazed her way through a university jazz programme, beginning with little theoretical knowledge and graduating a formidable musician.

Dance classes added to recitals, added to big bands, added to small ensembles, added to gig after gig after gig. She built herself into an entirely different animal from the young singer I'd heard at that little jam.

Winnipeg. Toronto. New York.

And, as of this morning, Tokyo.

Now, I am the Queen of Wanderlust, so you might imagine it was the travel that got me. Or the glamorous photographs, the stages, the transformation into a confident, powerful performer.

But no.

It was the music.

The choices she made. The notes she didn't sing. The extraordinary command of her instrument. The way she moved through a melody with the freedom that comes from years of learning precisely where every note lives.

She improvised from a place of magic.

Magic.

And I wept.

Partly from the exquisite pleasure of hearing an artist who had so clearly earned her freedom.

Partly from pride in a woman whose courage and commitment had carried her halfway around the world.

And partly, if I'm telling the whole truth, from envy.

There it is.

That ugly little green beast sitting beside my admiration, whispering, Why not you?

How could I possibly catch up to her? To those years of practice, study, sacrifice, repetition, rejection, and relentless devotion to the deeply challenging language of music?

And then I remembered my fiancé.

One afternoon, I was lying dramatically on the kitchen floor, lamenting the mistakes I'd made at my last show and wondering aloud why, oh why, was I still working a day job instead of living the fabulous life of a successful musician?

My fiancé, who had the audacity to love me enough to tell me the truth, chose that particular moment to challenge my commitment.

Not to him.

That's another blog post altogether.

To myself.

I was furious.

Hurt beyond reason.

I didn't speak to him for hours, in true yin style, which is rather impressive considering the amount of talking I generally manage in a day.

But the truth is the truth.

I have not been living a life fully committed to my art.

I have been living in fear.

In struggle.

In lack.

I have spent an extraordinary amount of energy mourning the musician I might have become, the opportunities I lost, the injuries that changed my body, and the stages I have not yet stood upon.

And some of those losses are real. The physical pain is real. The limitations are real. There are days when ten minutes with my instrument is all my body can manage.

But somewhere along the way, I began confusing my limitations with my destiny.

I began treating the difficulty of the journey as evidence that the journey was no longer mine to take.

I wail to the Universe for help, for opportunity, for some great cosmic intervention that will finally deliver me to the stages I dream of.

Monterey. Bombay. Toronto. Spain.

And I can almost hear the Universe replying:

Hey, Mira. Buy a ticket.

Because here's the thing.

I love music.

I love it with a hunger that has survived heartbreak, injury, disappointment, poverty, and the peculiar humiliation of hearing myself miss a note I know perfectly well how to sing.

But loving something and committing to it are not necessarily the same thing.

Love is the longing.

Discipline is the devotion.

And perhaps mastery is what happens when the two finally stop fighting each other.

So what now?

How do I take responsibility for my own destiny without turning that responsibility into another weapon against myself?

First, put down the comparison.

She is she.

I am me.

Her success does not diminish my possibilities. Her mastery is not evidence of my failure. In fact, if I can get my bruised little ego out of the way long enough to listen, she is showing me something extraordinary.

What devotion can do.

Love her. Celebrate her. Learn from her.

Second, practise.

If ten minutes is what my body can manage, then ten minutes it is.

Ten minutes of genuine attention. Ten minutes of scales, breath, theory, phrasing, or the maddening repetition of four bars that refuse to behave.

And then, when my body allows, do it again.

And again.

Not as punishment.

As an offering.

Third, let go of the Hollywood version of my life.

The one where a magnificent opportunity arrives, the orchestra swells, the right person recognizes my genius, and suddenly all the years of suffering make perfect narrative sense.

I am a musician, for God's sake.

I should know better than to expect the crescendo without playing through the measures that precede it.

Ask for help.

Take chances.

Make mistakes.

Make more mistakes.

Stop spending three days emotionally dissecting a performance that lasted forty minutes.

Falling down is simply the yang of rising from the ashes.

And for heaven's sake, stop waiting until I feel fearless before I do something courageous.

But there is one more thing.

The hardest thing.

Change my mind.

Not simply believe in myself or love myself, though those are lovely ideas and I recommend them whenever possible.

I mean learning to corral that asshole in my head who keeps punching the seeping wound in my heart.

The one who knows precisely where to strike.

You're too old.

You're too injured.

You missed your chance.

Look at her.

Look at what you could have been.

That voice has been conducting the orchestra for far too long.

And frankly, its timing is terrible.

I don't need to silence it completely. I don't even need to win an argument with it.

I need to stop handing it the baton.

Because underneath all that noise is something that has never stopped singing.

Something that survived every disappointment, every broken promise, every broken bone, every moment I thought I might never make music again.

My Soul still wants to sing.

And perhaps the most profound commitment I can make is not to some imagined future in which I am finally successful, admired, financially secure, or free of pain.

Perhaps it is to the woman sitting here today.

The one who still has songs to write.

The one who can practise for ten minutes.

The one who can still learn.

The one who is not finished.

I have spent a great deal of my life learning how to commit to another human being. How to love, how to stay, how to forgive, how to fight for something precious.

But what would happen if I offered that same devotion to myself?

Not to the Diva.

Not to the fantasy.

Not to the woman I might have been.

To me.

As I am.

Commit to my Self.

That's the deal.

And that is my challenge today.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some practising to do.

MIRA

The Cis Gender Blues

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:16:21 GMT

Where's my colour on the rainbow?

I remember asking my social media tribe, "How do I stand in my privilege with grace and my disempowerment with hope?". I'm a bi-sexual women of colour marrying a heterosexual cis gender white man. I am also cis-gendered and look pretty Caucasian much of the time. I have a deeply violent childhood and deal with ptsd, but I'm also highly educated with a degree in developmental psychology and training in supporting and healing trauma. I identify in fact as a musician and travel in an industry that has extreme imbalances when comes to gender - lets just say it...the music industry treats women like crap. And also, I was trained for decades by powerful and loving masculine musicians and techs. In my heart simmers rage about the oppression and subjugation of women and also there is deep respect and love for the Men in my life. Still, on forums and debates about sexuality, I am dismissed for my privilege on one thread and then dismissed on another because of my gender and yet another because of my gender orientation. It's confusing to say the least. Being blamed for the mistakes of my ancestors seems to me as logical and hating someone because an person that is the same as theirs...a colour different than yours, did damaged to you. I get that hundreds of years of slavery and war can not be compared to my upset at being made the bad guy when I had nothing to do with my "white" great great great grandfather's generation of idiots who pillaged and plundered. Counter racism is a small price to pay for the war for liberation and equality. The pendulum is swinging hard my friends and collateral damage is piling up.

My question is, will it work? Will it work to rage and spit fire when, for example, a white man asked why he is considered "privileged"? When someone who personifies the normative majority becomes triggered inside their own abuse history or even their own struggle to survive in this chaos we call a society then asked what is meant by "privilege" how will it help to tell them they should already know and it's not your job to teach them? Will that work to effect positive change? Or will it just make them harden their hearts and think you're being a whiny baby? Who can better teach "them" than someone who has lived it? I don't understand how it serves the goal of equality to shut out the conversation? Will it be hard? Dam right? War is hard. Get in the game for real. Teach someone who is ignorant if you can or let them alone as each situation is, um...situated. Breath and work through your own trigger so that you can be heard and understood. What if loving each other, each one of the others even the assholes, is the way to create equanimity? What if..?

I think by the way things are unfolding right now, we are in a war that no one will win. Well, big pharma will certainly continue to make billions from our separation and misery. But I want to know, in this current climate of dedicated separation where each of us must be labeled specifically before we can feel accepted, when it comes to human rights, how do I continue to effect positive change when the very nature of how I was born and ultimately how I was conditioned, is the most negative category of human being next to a white straight man. Holy run on sentence!

My point? There is an energy of dismissive upset towards anyone who exemplifies normative culture. The rebellious teen ager has in it's grasp not merely rock & roll or sex & drug or running away with the circus. Now, the trend is about rejecting the normative sexual categories set in place by the majority. Genuine sexual confusion is pretty standard it's true and we have been dicks about the rights and privileges of those who are not white, cis gender, male and heterosexual. And yet. How do we make room for those who are inside the normative to learn, evolve, support and effect positive change. If "we" are the ones in places of power and who dictate the norm...shouldn't we find a way to create connection? All I'm seeing these days is anger.

On the dangers of Jordan Peterson

mira@mirablack.com (Mira Black) — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 19:57:48 GMT

I agree most everyone is taking Peterson out of context and become either triggered or validated as they see fit. Yet, I offer you Men the inquiry into the possibility that it’s very hard (perhaps too hard) for you to see the perspective that sees the danger in his work. Yes logic. Yes data. Yes solid philosophical argument. Yet the nuances and implications and indelicate disrespect to the vulnerable and oppressed sectors of humanity is doing deep harm culturally and against the efforts of warriors fighting for equanimity.

I know he makes some heady academic points and is highly educated. But he is very ill informed when it comes to how it is to be like an ant fighting uphill against lions. There are very few times he speaks when he doesn’t have to follow up in the next interview with, “That’s not what I meant” and clarifies. However his damage is done. His clarifications imply others didn't get it rather than owning his own communication errors. Men who are less intelligent take what they want from what he said and do not seek clarity and in this case those are the men perpetuating misogyny and oppression. The current Patriarchy is massively broken: this is a sad truth of our world! Our actual leaders, aka Trump, do not and have not lived a life of respect and compassion for all. Then there's Trudeau being a "yes man" and who hasn't found his own depth of masculine energy and powerful leadership. That’s just a fact.

Peterson’s victim blaming and righteous indignation seems to be causing more harm than good. *You* may not be that man but there are millions. Millions upon millions. He has a skewed demographic.

To quote my fiancé: “To use a metaphor to make a point: there is a well known saying, “Guns do not kill people. People kill people.”...there is truth in that. However when considering the danger in a circumstance one needs to consider more than just the intention of the man holding the gun ...one also needs to consider the size of the gun the man is holding. Peterson, as the international icon that he is, is holding a very very big gun.” Trevor Thibodeau

And the same occurs on the “other” side. Someone who has been fighting for their right to simply be who they are without being painfully punished become the butt of philosophical rhetoric and they are triggered often beyond the ability to debate rationally. And when rational, are too often just one in a hundred fighting to be understood and received.

We speak and are dismissed even when presenting solid responses. It’s hard enough to be received without a big gun like Peterson burning down our efforts. I see something else. Correct me if I'm wrong but..it looks like a fundamental flaw on the side of the left in terms of the first and seemingly most contentious point. The rights of trans gender people. The Canadian law has added to it's human rights bill the point that you can not discrimination against someone because of their gender orientation. Race, tender, religion, sexual orientation....and now gender orientation. There is a sub section speaking about discrimination against a trans gender person is exemplified when someone refuses to use the chosen pronoun taken by the trans gender individual. Dr Peterson spoke about the slippery slopes in this addendum. He has a kind of thought experiment. A "what if" argument. He proposes and offers his thoughts about this law threatening our freedom of speech. What if someone makes a mistake? What if this becomes an example of president such that the government can create more laws effecting how we speak? This point of debate has been translated with a very wide brush and interpreted as Dr P being a trans-phobe white privileged ass. He has become every trans persons bad daddy. He may be an arrogant privileged man who can't know the struggle. But the left isn't going to make any gains in their war by spewing their own illogical hate speeches. Get the fact down solid and then speak with eloquence. Its seems to me that is the only way you will be heard on any stages of power.

Personally, inside my own trigger is the very moment I need my community to hold space for me. Duh.

Now everyone is coming from their personal triggers and no one, least of all Peterson, is speaking of connection and community. I have heard Peterson point out the limitation and even address the actions of asshole immature men however one has to dig to catch those small moments.

My wish is that he slow down, stop the arrogant speeches as though he is the expert on everything, consider his power and influence more deeply and take time to act responsibly.

Free Love

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 16:05:00 GMT

*dedicated to Trevor-Michael

My Voice

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 14:01:00 GMT

I heard my voice joking with the woman who served me coffee this morning. I heard my voice laugh and it surprised me. I heard my voice like it was some old friend I’d forgotten. I heard my voice like a spectre moving through me from some memory of this warrior I watched stride from room to room holding space for hearts witnessing my voice. I heard my voice forgive me for the stuttering stumbling sounds I have hated myself for when I wake screaming in the middle of the night. I heard my voice disappear as I walked out of the cafe wondering if I’ll ever hear my voice again. Smiling to myself, in the sunshine, walking near the ocean by my new home, I thought of my voice and all the things it’s said, never said, has yet to say. Maybe there will be a new voice, she and I. Maybe not. In the meantime, I’ll be listening.

Radio Interview: NEW SHOW LAUNCH “fearless”

Sat, 05 Aug 2017 18:22:00 GMT

Be well sister

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 23:01:00 GMT

Sometimes,

when I see a woman
walking down the street,

I think
I can feel
her sadness.

Just for a moment.

Something in her shoulders.

Something in the way
her eyes

carry a weather
no one else
is naming.

Sometimes,

I close my eyes,

open my heart,

and silently say,

Be well, sister.

It seems small.

A breath.

A colour.

A little thread
of power

sent across
the ordinary world.

Whatever I have
to give

in that moment,

I give.

Be well, sister.

We need you
awake

and alive

inside this
matriarchy rising.

Not as a throne.

Not as revenge.

As medicine.

Our leaders
are confused.

Our boys
are tired

before they even know
what tenderness is.

They are handed porn
before presence,

performance
before feeling,

hunger
before heart.

Our girls
are taught love

through the eyes
that look at them

before they learn
to see themselves.

So if all I can do

is love her
silently

as I drive by,

then let that be
one moment.

Then another.

A small prayer
with its sleeves rolled up.

I am awake

for one breath.

Then two.

Then maybe
a whole minute

of Divinity
moving through me

without needing
to be seen.

And maybe,

by some strange mercy,

she feels it.

Maybe Love reaches her

in the place
she forgot

how to love herself.

Be well, sister.

Be well.

Love,
Mira Black

I am loved

Sat, 08 Jul 2017 19:29:00 GMT

I can feel vignetted edges
 of broken promises 
claw and climb out from my mouth.
They leap like little larks  needing nourishment
 craving ease from this punishment
of separation from my Divinity.

I am wrapped in a hunger I don’t fully comprehend
but fly around the fairy tales I thought I’d eventually find.
 Wake up this time! 

No need to make up reasons, 
shut out the raging tease i
n your belly
craving
drama  
diving
deeper in the trauma
of addicted connection.

These juicy moments distract me fully
even though you could never really love me.
There are fantasies clinging to these  clotted heart beats
 hidden in the closet of my older brothers room.

That’s a story Im pushing through.

I thought he hurt me because he hated me but I can see
 in these reforming memories,
 it was his way of
stealthily
stealing
something
he did not understand but needed none the less.
So he basked freely in the golden Light,
once pure presence,
shining from my eyes
without my permission.

Stories of my King held me upright through years of lies.
I stand on broken limbs, here, wanting something I have not yet earned
and yet yearned for from those moments of safety usually conditioned daily as a baby
but my father kept forgetting where he set me down.

 Beloved,
believe me,
where ever you are,
I’m fighting to be the best of Me.
Giving to this Life all I can be,
returning, ruthless , relentless
 towards the sunrise 
each time the moon’s trickery
did some pretty shitty things to me.
I will still fall in love,
just in case.

It takes a powerful heart to stay in these moments of grace.
Sunset trusting,
maybe
this time,
that reflecting globe shining Light mercilessly
on my skin,
can heal the half of me whole.
Here, in this moment
as my realities destiny unfolds
and I open to the unknown,
what I I do know,

I am Love.
I am Lovable.
I am Loved.

Inside this firing line

Fri, 02 Jun 2017 12:30:00 GMT

This moment,

here,

the one that crept up
from behind the rear
view

and drop-kicked me
awake

through a fate
finger-painted

by the child
inside my mind.

I notice
some faded memory

biting,
gnawing,
nagging,

severing
real affection,

serving up
leftover predictions

of betrayal.

And though my heart
is overcooked,

spoilt
from all this wanting,

the gorging
seems unavoidable now.

An ancient wound
has found a body again,

personified
by every love song

sung across
oceans of awareness,

past all those stars
that failed

to grant
their wishes,

hiding somewhere
inside the dark

shadow
of light.

Still,

I won’t stop wishing
for You tonight.

Inside this firing line,

blind men insist
everything is fine

while scraping
behind their eyes

for some remembered
connection,

their midnight weeping
telling a Truth

daylight
will deny,

then rising again

dressed in the fakery
of lies

bought
on credit.

My longing laughs
at these ridiculous tears

for losses
that have not happened,

searching the sky
for God,

screaming about
broken bones

burning
with phantom pain.

There is no evidence
of injury.

Only memory.

Only the sound
of my name

once called
across our home

with Real

joy.

I’ll put my pen down
here,

keep that sound
blissfully near,

before I remember

exactly

what it was

I feared.

Mira Black
June 1, 2017

Cheeky showmanship

Fri, 19 May 2017 17:21:00 GMT

I can feel the “old” cheeky showmanship returning yet the costume is not as I remembered;
the hat too tight
the dress too loose
and those colours clash with my skin.
There’s something new here,
changed so near the aftermath of battle, shattered in the false chatter of addiction
I am remembering something which fed my ego in a tantalizing mirage on which to I attache.
Dust off the little black dress
and highest of high heels
those little girls I shoved to the very back of my closet
They help me shine on the dance floor of my femininity dashingly familiar, the music fills my mind with times of triumph. I will her to smile above the roar of insecurities.
And yet,
these newly found moments of elder and Crone call to my maiden
“Breathe”
and be in the reality of what you’ve seen.
Tell the Truth of these gritty school girl dreams as they collide with what has been and now arrived.
Open your eyes.
Will I pass this test passed down through the lines of my sisters?
Sung praises of mercy for the passion and chaos of my brothers?
Forgive my Father and Mother for what they did to me?
Yes. In this moment until the next.
So, I am learning to dance barefoot on the floor of my own Life.
Love begotten from the barrels of the heart beating too fast in my chest,
pointing me home.

Love,
Mira Black

Soul To Soul

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 16:32:00 GMT

http://mirablack.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Soul-to-Soul.mp3
There are too few times in life
when souls are given their reflection.
The fear and attraction
combined creates a distraction from any kind of
safety,
the fate we
find forging frailty,
nudges us towards

reality.

We crawl
over mountains,
bare foot over thorns,
to bare crosses we swore did not exist.

Denial persists
pretending we are solid
while destiny has plotted
placing your twin flame,
that juicy heart,
to shine brightly
at your darkest parts.

There is no logic or containment that can slow our stride,
running head first into tempered glass,
and crash
and stand
and dive

and fly.

This device of Universal ties between us two,
is consciously created to make us face what breaks us
through and through.

The sacrifice the point!

The blaze
burning bearers and illusions of invulnerability
with a choke hold
manifesting growth
only those
willing to face the spokes of
manifestos
gifted from the Gods,
will survive.

We have been bought and sold,
dancing to Disney delusions,
the insurmountable tale
promising perfection.

Too late we learn
forever after does not
come inside a box.
And true love
is more uncommon than you think.

The loss of such a twin ember
sears through remembered trauma
cleansing karma,
and I am sorry for the drama
but never for the depth.

Some may doubt,
spinning in rejective,
grieving waves
which punish.

Still,

I call to each moonlit night,
for Him to have his way with me again.
And then,
I hold myself and cry a bit,
hearing my voice sing new melodies
mooring Mara’s spell
allowing desire to melt,
I talk to my self,
letting lonely out for a walk.
Then climbing, crawling, brawling
up and though stepping bravely back into…

Life.

Today,
when I sit still amidst the chaos,
broken bones,
sticks and stones
thrown by the banter of my mind,
I notice,
I’ve learned love of a different kind.

That Soul who crossed across my path,
razoring past and through and gone, and gone
again gone,
my Beloved’s gone,
returns from time to time whispering,

“Love.”

True love becomes its own reward.
Music muses moments mentioned only in undefinable rhyme.
Days and years may pass with no reason
but the season between them
carved in soft cement.

It’s only now
at dawn,
after fighting through the storms of our imaginations,
that we can see through the wicked shadows of naivety.

“Goodbye” the only words we cannot say.
So, instead we grasp hands for one last stand,
rocking slowly back and forth before the end.
Remembered friends forged from the playground of possibility.

Soul to soul flying free,
to be reborn on the next movie screen.
I think we two will meet again

inside Divinity.

Homeward Bound

Sun, 23 Apr 2017 18:13:00 GMT

It’s time to go home. The chapter between my fathers death years ago and this moment now, and now and then again now, takes me back to you through the vortex of my “Dark Night of the Soul”.

This heart has reached for the Sun and burned to the core of it’s own true nature for the simple devotion toTruth. It takes the whole of you. The longing of a love song in which I grew into my Beloved’s symphony. This is the Phoenix journey back to Me. The way home.

There is a path revealing it’s self, in technicolor and still murky in the pre dawn light of it’s own desires. Surrendering opens an unfamiliar rhythm dancing to my fire. Though my limbs are brand new, brandishing, giving up the fight, I fall inside a precarious parachute, opening with purpose and delight.

Music. My grounding stone. I am coming home to a brotherhood. I seek to be reminded of what it means to be “a good Man”. My sisters bid me, stand. I am tickled by renewed friendships and clan. I gather my Tribe inside sacred space.

I am.

Step in, show up and bare my soul to the unknown forces that bite and beguile me. That place of spontaneous composition and the evocation of creation reminding me of who we really are. A band of merry messengers travelling through our lives in search of meaning, purpose, reverberation, conscious rectification. And play. Most of all, let us play.

Winnipeg, MB

CCFM

September 10th 2017

That is the very first clue of a scavenger hunt for my new show in development. Mark it on your calendar to check back here for details then book your time, your flight, your energy, your sitter, watcher, witness, driver, partners and friends. We gather at this rainbows end to discover new lessons and beauty, test of fire and duty brought to the stage by this Muse.

Talk to you soon.

Love,

Mira Black

Live @ Lolita’s Lounge “Just Jazz Friday” series

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 21:36:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce my return to the stage, after a year sabbatical, with the support of my Calgary band and crew. The venue is the same stage I last performed on a year ago and it’s the most romantic room in Calgary akin to cabarets and nightclubs from my grandfather’s time.

Joining will be the indefatigable Robbin Harris, the invincible Neil McVey and a new face to my show, the fuck-o-liciousness of Lisa Jacob. What? It’s a word…

Lolita’s Lounge

www.lolitaslounge.ca

1413 – 9th Ave. S.E., Calgary AB

9pm

tickets at the door $15

*dinner reservations recommended