Don't Let Them Make You Feel Ashamed

Don't let them make you feel ashamed
of your peculiar joy.
Don't let them make you feel ashamed
of the shatter-lines
like a tree of wounds
on your broken mirror.
They look into it and see
the fractals of their own confusion.
Don't let them make you feel ashamed
of your name, that jewel of honor
your father wore in his blood,
your mother carried between her breasts,
a diamond amulet containing
the faces of all your ancestors
in an intimate syllable, a crystal whisper
of incomparable suchness.
Don't let them make you feel ashamed
of your boundaries,
for you need boundaries to shine.
You need borders to emanate the rays
of your particular infinity.
Don't let them make you feel ashamed
to savor the fragrance of your rage,
or the musk of your desire,
nor ravel up the tangled labyrinth paths
into your own inscrutable knot,
the clustered starry hot mess
of self-revelation, for this
is the only universe you have.
Don't let them make you feel ashamed
to weave the blood-stained ragged threads
of All into one immaculate Person.
For you have a right to breathe,
a right to feel the widening smile
in your solar plexus,
the rise of ineffable sap from your sacrum,
bursting in a blossom of golden tears.
And when they try but fail,
you have a right to inhale their pain,
their grief, their charred and broken
wing-feathered fear,
then breathe out and bless them.
Harvest their darkness.
Ferment it in your belly.
Transmute it into sacred wine.
You have a right to savor the vintage
of bittersweet compassion
in this grail of flesh.
Don't let them make you feel ashamed
of your beauty.
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Hear this poem read aloud: LINK.
Painting by Gabriel Dante Rosetti