This week’s Shi Sai is growing on me. For several weeks now, many of us have reeled from the incomprehensible aftermath of our failed Democracy. Yes failed. There are no winners. We are all losers. And with each passing day the lunacy of it all spirals faster and faster, boggling our minds. To think that an angry, easily duped minority put us where we are is just plain crazy!

And yet this is our reality now. A parallel universe where rewards are presented to the highest bidder, where those who object are vilified, where truth does not matter, where opinion is the only thing that drives our conscience, where facts are inconveniences to be twittered away, where lies are embraced and repeated until they become mantras for the deplorables among us…the racists, misogynists, nationalists, white supremists and evangelicals, where the incoming leader of the free world is less interested in governing and more concerned with how his newfound title will affect the bottom line of his brand, where laws and the constitution don’t matter, where privilege has finally reaped its ultimate goal…world domination.

Sounds like a nightmare doesn’t it? For a majority of us, it is. It’s like some bad dream we can’t wake up from. And yet…and yet…for those of us who are most definitely awake, this is no time to curl into fetal positions, hide under blankets and hope for the best. We’ve been here before after all, and our forbearers fought for those of us who would come after. They believed in us and the future, saw that glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel, dreamed beautiful dreams and marched through their collective valleys of shadows united, not in misery, but in love and unity of purpose, dressed in a peace that confounds understanding…yes, in peace.

How can we aspire to anything less than? When the dust settles and we are faced with the reality of what we have inflicted upon ourselves, yes all of us, for none are innocent, what will our response be?

In a perfect world faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, our response must be to remember who we are, to do justice, to have compassion and mercy, to love, to forgive, to walk humbly, to be the change.

This is why this week’s Shi Sai is growing on me. It’s a clarion call rising from the depth of my soul, nudging me out of hiding, into the light. I know what I must do, I’ve always known. And even if I can’t trust anything around me, even if I can’t believe what I am seeing in the present, I can hope in the future and trust my intuition. I know what I need to do and be. It’s simple. It’s four letters that mean everything…L…O…V…E.

Peace and love to you. Remember who YOU are and listen to your heart. It knows the way forward. ❤️

Shi Sai Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 11 December 2016

A woman’s heart remembers things
should I tell them I know?
when someone plays on my trust
proof they’re not well (b)read
behind our locked doors and walls
memories in shades of gray
a great victory the unraveling,
she is everywhere
it’s the cock’s clarion call
and crying babies
to rouse those who sleep
following
my intuition
always gives
me peace.

~kat

The Shi Sai (formerly known as a ReVerse) is a new form I came up with during Poetry Month in April 2016. I’ve actually been writing shu sai for years but was inspired to give it a proper name. It is a poem created by taking one line of verse from several poems of an author’s own collection. The shi sai is done as a review of a series or collection of poems and therefore, each line should flow in chronological order of the dates the poems were written (from oldest to new). The lines chosen should be the author’s favorite from each poem. This form works best if the author resists the temptation to read the full new poem before all the verses have been added. (It helps one to resist the impulse to change a line to make it “fit”.