Sometimes A Phrase Can Get To You
Full Moon in Aquarius Poetry Slam August 1, 2023
Good morning, friends!
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:54 Sometimes A Phrase Can Get To You—read by AstroMommy
3:34 thank you
Some housekeeping before I read my poem for the Full Moon in Aquarius.
You can find word list #15 for this poem here if you’d like to write one, too! Remember this is not a poem about full moons it’s just a poem using the words in the list in the order they are in. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please read this post that explains what a “word poem” is and the directions for how to participate.
To share your poem with the AstroMommy community, feel free to post your poems in the comments section below or, if you’d like to keep your poem private, but would like to share it with me, you can reply to the email newsletter or send it to astromommyastrology@gmail.com. I love reading your poems!
If you share on social media please use the hashtag #astromommywordpoem
Thanks!
Sometimes A Phrase Can Get To You
by AstroMommy
Sometimes a phrase can get to you
Stalk you like a tiger in the cool morning dew
Pounce on you when you least expect it
Knocking you over out of your repose
Send you tumbling down the hill like Jack
Sometimes you can step outside your own skin and watch your body escalate as it goes careening head over feet
But you don’t feel a thing
Other times you can’t escape the confines of your flesh
And the pressure of the words enmesh your soul into feeling every rock punch, every blade of grass slash, and every pinched bug squish
As you somersault
And when you reach the bottom, you sit
In your pathetic-ness
Hair in your face
Drenched from head to toe
Like a hippopotamus in the water
With your emotional spill
Sometimes a phrase can get to you
But instead of it sending you reeling
It sweetly caresses you
Makes your heart smile
And your mouth waters for more of those gentle mushy words
Like setting your sights on the yam on your plate at dinner
You long to feel it crush inside your mouth and mingle with salty meat
And when you swallow it, it doesn’t disappear like a Mountain peak on a New Moon
Or dissolve like tiny newt footprints in wet mud
It lands inside your tummy and fills you up and…
Inspires love to pour back out from You in the form of your own sweet phrases
Sometimes a phrase can get you to
Laugh so loudly your cheeks start to hurt
And all your muscles go through a test to see which ones can keep up the bawdy response the longest
Your belly may begin to ache
The tumble of laughter squeezing your sides
Your bladder starts to feel the pulse of every bellow
Like sitting on a water balloon at a party
Daring it to erupt in the face of your friend
Who is eagerly inviting the inevitable splash
And when it comes it doesn’t stop the laughter but starts a fresh round
Like a typhoon picking up speed
It just gets bigger
Sometimes a phrase can get to you
Send you back in time
To ride your bike on the nostalgic dirt roads of your childhood
Feeding the horse at the dead end
a crunchy carrot
The fresh and slightly sweet smell of hay
Transporting your feet and mind to the cool air
And quiet calmness of the remembered moment
When it was just you in the world
feeding a big horse an orange root
nothing else mattered
nothing was knocking you down
making you cry
making you laugh
making you question your very existence
nothing
was getting to you
except maybe a barely perceptible phrase
like a low-resonant hum
whispering in the shadows of your soul
swirling through the grass under your bare feet:
At Peace
Previous word lists can be found in this master post.
Previous Word Poems by AstroMommy:
You Are A Mirror (Word Poem #1—1st poem-New Moon in Taurus/Full in Scorpio)
My Eggs Are Perfect (Word Poem #1—2nd poem-New Moon in Taurus/Full in Scorpio)
The Biggest Hill (Word Poem #2—New Moon in Gemini/Full in Sag)
You, Up? (Word Poem #3-New Moon in Cancer/Full in Capricorn)
How Do The Stars Speak? (Word Poem #4-New Moon in Leo/Full in Aquarius)
On The Beach In Fall (Word poem #5—New Moon in Virgo/Full in Pisces)
I Smell Like Peppermint (poetry/free write in place of a word poem for New Moon in Libra/Full Moon in Aries)
Terrible Poem (Word poem #6—New Moon in Scorpio/Full Moon in Taurus)
Broken Thoughts Spew Across The Page (Word poem #6, again…)
I did not post any poems for lists 7,8, or 9.
The Dream Garden (Word poem #10—New Moon in Pisces/Full Moon in Virgo)
beyond the wall, a torch burns brightly (Word poem #11—New Moon in Aries/Full Moon in Libra)
The Spider On The Gatepost (Word poem #12—Hybrid Solar Eclipse in Aries/Full Moon in Scorpio)
The Devil In My Dreams (word poem #13—Full Moon in Sagittarius)
To Be More (word poem #14—Full Moon in Capricorn)
Thank you for listening to this month’s Lunar Poetry Ritual word poem.
Until the next Full Moon,
AstroMommy
Thank you for the encouragement! I gained so much from this round, and also loved and gained so much from yours, which was so satisfying. Isn’t it interesting that my favorite part also involved yams 😂
..
Sometimes a phrase can get to you
But instead of it sending you reeling
It sweetly caresses you
Makes your heart smile
And your mouth waters for more of those gentle mushy words
Like setting your sights on the yam on your plate at dinner
You long to feel it crush inside your mouth and mingle with salty meat
And when you swallow it, it doesn’t disappear like a Mountain peak on a New Moon
Or dissolve like tiny newt footprints in wet mud
It lands inside your tummy and fills you up and…
Inspires love to pour back out from You in the form of your own sweet phrases
..
Sweet, edible words that metabolize into a deep, rich knowing. Thank you again, wise one.
Waiting
I lie like the tiger in repose
my supple body still, contained
waiting
I feel the hunger escalate
enmesh me with its need
Not to draw salty blood from the hippopotamus
sunning on the riverbank
unaware of danger
but to feed from a sweetly burning desire for life
thick and honeyed like an autumn yam
freshly baked waiting to be opened with
the knife’s tip
flesh steaming with internal heat
a mountain of butter sliding in rivulets
deep into the hidden interior
I turn my head on
the outspread blanket
waiting
eyes half-closed
the earthy scent of warm grass
penetrating suspended awareness
A newt navigates across a stone slab
long forgotten by whoever placed it there
I follow its tiny stubby toes as they progress
across the gray expanse and disappear
and I wonder
what part of myself
has placed me here
in danger
like the sunning hippopotamus
I am aware of
the tiger within
and the tiger without
who will soon tumble me
who will soon test its will against mine
who will soon try break me
into shards of sweat
and pounding blood
and misted vision
But I will break myself upon my own life’s altar
until tiger howls and screams
of liberation and love erupt
and lava courses and cools and changes
familiar landscapes forever
I am the schooner in the harbor
waiting
for the typhoon to blow in
I spread my sails willingly
to receive the tempest
I think I am prepared
They say old lovers are forbidden
They say we should not wait
They say we should leave them
with the nostalgic bones of our graveyards
with their forgotten stone slabs
with their unkempt paths
with their sharp, crunchy gravel
still digging for blood
in tender flesh
The exercise was an unexpected gift. Boy did it surprise me! It also prepared me by surfacing some hard but necessary truth. The last two weeks have been outrageously powerful, clarifying, and liberating. Thank you so very much. Big gratitude also for the excellent daily weather reports which have guided me true through these stormy seas ♥️