'Twas the Week Before Christmas

I put this on TikTok two years ago, a poem inspired by “The Night Before Christmas”. I was up to my ears in angry coercive men at the time and fielding the worst of their hate in the comments. A few had even taken the time to track me down by DM, on other platforms, and even email. I was thumbing my nose at them here.

And I didn’t know it at the time, but I was transmuting their energy. This was something I began doing intuitively the first time I ran into negative comments on TikTok. You can see it in the characters I play with filters, like Millie the Misandrist and Daisy the Dingbat. And of course, the dingbat himself, “Sup, it’s Mat—with one T ‘cause I’m not a douche.”

Playing these roles to poke fun at them was it’s own form of healing. It’s a form of alchemy, to take the energy we’re given and move it, reshape it, and redefine what’s happening in the moment. When a man intends to do me harm and I’m able to take his lemons and turn them into lemonade, I’ve changed that energy. It’s positive energy now.

‘Twas the Week Before Christmas was a way I could summarize what I do on TikTok in a way that’s creative and lyrical. This brought me so much joy I began looking for opportunities to transmute energy. I deliberately sought out angry men to use for fuel. It wasn’t exactly healthy and I had to learn balance. I had to learn to use the energy already coming at me rather than seek it out.

‘Twas the Week Before Christmas

‘Twas the week before Christmas
And everyone bold, they had to speak up, every last troll.
The comments were open and sarcasm flowed,
in the hopes they could prove that sex should be owed.

Of course they don’t say this in so many words,
They think what they say is not what I’ve heard.
But I and my cat have seen all their tricks,
Not a thing to be said that’s new from these pricks.

So I block the worst and silence the rest,
Hoping a timeout will bring out their best.
I want them to think, to see a better life,
To save a marriage, or at least a wife.

But though I try, there are one or two
To my surprise are able to slip through.
“Wifely duty!” they cry, all verklempt.
“He has needs!” they shout with contempt.

Round and round in the comments we go.
When will they stop? I can’t possibly know.
So I set them aside and keep talking away.
For as long as they push I’ll have something to say.

No matter how they kick and they scream
My heart will continue to follow this dream:
That come hell or High water the words will be said
until every last wife is free in her head

An interesting find in this poem is in a typo. This past summer I was out walking in the woods and I remembered this poem. I was talking about it in a TikTok video when I decided to pull up the text and read it again. The second to last line has the word “High” capitalized. I didn’t intend that when I wrote it. I never caught it and never fixed it, for a reason. I believe there was an element of God in my writing back then, like a mother watching from backstage, quietly.

Although I’ve released the Christian God, I still believe there is some higher power guiding me. I believe she may be me, my own soul, outside my body, outside of time, showing me the way because she’s done all this already. My higher self. And here, she was flowing through me as I wrote.

This poem is one of many I believe to be “channeled” in that the words come to me. I don’t think them up. It’s a distinct difference in the feeling as I’m writing. When I’m writing, I regularly pause to think about what to write and rearrange the words. I make regular edits as I write, changing the word and fixing spelling as I go.

When I’m channeling, it’s more like a typewriter in my mind is typing the words and I’m reading them one line at a time. Each time the writer hits the enter key and a new line begins, I’m reading the one above it and taking down the words myself. It feels more like I’m dictating for someone. There’s no time to pause, no time to even read what’s coming out to determine if it needs to be edited. And most often it doesn’t. I rarely make changes to a channeled poem once it’s all come out.

These poems come quickly out of nowhere. I’m not asking for them, I’m not sitting down to write and wondering what to write. They just come, and they pour out fast. This one took about 5 minutes to get out and required no changes when I was done typing.

Channeled Poems

For more like this, get my book! About 10% of what I write these days is channeled. Below are a couple I’ve already shared here.

Upside Down

I didn’t know what I knew 
When I knew what I knew,
That the feelings I felt
Were the feelings that felled
My friend and the feelings he felt

So little by little I was leveled 
By the little of the love
That my lover let me love

And before I can believe 
My beliefs of my beloved
I must first believe that my below is above