I think it wild and wonderful that so many of the sacred sexuality retreats that I have attended include poetry. Poetry appears in talent shows, in offerings by participants, in readings by leaders. It shows up in handouts and materials, in suggested reading, and in exercises created for the events.
I delight in it, but it does not surprise me in the least. If love is the erotic heart, and sex is the erotic body, then surely poetry is the erotic mind. After all, how else might we blend emotion, sensation and cognition all into one bright, essential thing? Dance comes close, but dance does not need words. It takes poetry for that.
Many people don’t try to write poetry, thinking that they have failed after two or three attempts. But as someone who has written since I was nine, I will always encourage you to pick up your pen and go again. Do you feel better after writing? Good. Then it is a good poem. It does not need to rhyme. It does not need to make sense to your head, only to your soul. And in writing our poetry, we enter the body sacred; our holiest of holies, because we are breaching the boundaries of our souls.
Some of my most beloved poets are Rumi and Hafiz, ancient Sufi ecstatics who poured such a lust for love and God into their lyrics that we continue to enjoy them seven centuries later. This year, too, we honor and deeply grieve the passing of our beloved Andrea Gibson, queer superstar of verse, may their voice never be silent.
This is a portion of one poem that Gibson wrote, among so many other amazing things:
“…Never go a second hushing the percussion of your heart!
Play loud,
Play like you know the clouds have left too many people cold and broken
and you’re their last chance for sun.
Play like there’s no time for hoping brighter days will come.
Play like the apocalypse is only 4…3…2….
but you have a drum in your chest that could save us,
You have a song like a breath that could raise us,
like the sunrise into a dark sky that cries to be blue.
Play like you know we won’t survive if you don’t,
but we will if you do.
Play like Saturn is on his knees
proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that we give every single breath.
this is for saying–yes.
This is for saying yes.”*
Happy New Year, my beloved community. Say yes this year.
*Taken From “Say Yes,” by Andrea Gibson (1975-2025)
