pupmorningstar Poetry Podcast

I forgive myselffor the maps I did not have,for the names I could not yet speak,for the doors I walked pastbecause I did not knowthey were mine to open.I forgive myselffor mistaking endurance for wisdom,for believing survivalwas the same as choosing well.I did not fail to see sooner.I was still being taughthow sight is earned.Some lessons arrive onlyafter the cost has been paid,after the body learnswhat the mind could not hold.Time was not withholding mercy.It was building it.So I loosen my grip on hindsight.I set down the weapon of if only.I let the past be what it wasa classroom, not a courtroom.What I know nowwas never meant for then.It belongs to this moment,to this breath,to the hands I am learningto place on myselfwithout punishment.Forgiveness is not forgetting.It is understanding the conditionsunder which I survivedand choosing not to indict myselffor being humanbefore I was ready to be whole.MusicEscape by SappheirosBreakingCopyright on YouTube

I have wanted to write this poem for a while .. but I never felt worthy of the phrase. I would always run from healing becasue it was too hard. I would try to find shortcuts to make things easier. Writing this poem would have been disingenuous because I did not embody what it means.I now feel worthy.Not as a promise,not as a banner waved from safety,but as a truth learned with dirt under the nails:the stars are not reached by wishing.They are earnedby walking through what resists you.By letting stone teach your feet how to endure pressure.By letting darkness stretch your lungs until breath becomes deliberate.Ad Astra Per Aspera does not glorify suffering.It refuses to lie about the path.It says:there is no clean ascent.No unscarred becoming.No constellation that does not requirepassing through weight,through doubt,through the ache of wanting to stop.The hardship is not punishment.It is fiction.It is the gravity that proves you are still alive,still choosing,still in motion.Every trial carves a little more sky into you.Every failure teaches the bodyhow to hold itself upright when hope thins.You do not rise despite the difficulty.You rise because of it.The starts are not waiting to save you.They are waiting to recognize you when you arrive shaped enough to stand among them.And when you finally look up and see how far you’ve come,you will understand:the struggle was not the cost.It was the forging.Ad Astra Per Aspera is a Latin phrase that translates to:“To the stars through hardship.”or“A rough road leads to the stars.”But the deeper meaning matters more than the literal one.It is not about suffering as virtue.It is about becoming through resistance.The phrase acknowledges a truth that many motivational sayings avoid:there is no ascent without weight.No growth without friction.No reaching toward something higher without first passing through difficulty that reshapes you.In its original sense:Ad = towardAstra = the stars (ideals, higher aims, meaning, transcendence)Per = throughAspera = roughness, hardship, uneven groundSo it does not say despite hardship.It says through it.The hardship is not a detour.It is the path itself.At its core, Ad Astra Per Aspera is a refusal of shortcuts.It tells the truth that what is worth reaching for willdemand something from you:time, endurance, honesty, transformation.You do not arrive at the stars unchanged.You arrive forged.MusicGoodby My Dear by SteffenDaumBreakingCopyright YouTube Channel

A Rite of Thunder, Rain and RebirthO storm-born Father, breaker of sleep,Thunder-wolf prowling the mountain steep,You howl through the pines in an elder tongue,While runes of the tempest on night-clouds are hung.Rain-Maiden whirls in her silver delightVeiling the fiends in her shimmering white,Her bare feet drum on the bones of the land,Waking the seeds with a cool, blessed hand.Oak-Lord of lighting, bright spear in your hand, Striding in power to hallow the land,Your fire-bolts carve in the sky’s dark hide,The burning sigils of gods who still reside.So we circle the stone where our offerings lie,Arms lifted high to the thundering sky;For storm is the breath of the deep-living Earth,A wild-word of ending, a wild-word of birth.We chant with the wind and we drink from the rain,Letting it scour us of sorrow and pain;For each rolling thunder, each cold drop that falls,In the Old God’s answering when the stormfolk call.Music Under the Stars by RexlamboBreakingCopyright YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfP6i5T0-DkIviWiMcjJkt1urg8ky-xrZ

What Stands Beyond The DoorFear does not define us,it only names the roomwe were told never to leave.I have lived in the darklong enough to knowit was never empty,only waiting.There is a door here.Not torn open.Not forced.Just ajar,as if something on the other sidehas always trusted me to decide.Light spills outnot as purity,but as truth.Every color I was warned against,every hue they said would undo me,falls across the floor like a mapleading home.This is not escape.This is arrival.I do not step forwardbecause I am fearless.I step forwardbecause fear has failedto keep me small.I have carried it,named it,listened to it tremblein my chest,and still,I choose the threshold.Let them keep the darkthat taught me how to see.I walk where the light breaks openinto every version of myselfI was told could not existat once.And I exist anyway.MusicBloom by OnycsBreakingCopyright YouTube

Original Post: https://pupmorningstar.substack.com/p/empty-cup-gospel?utm_source=youtubeI learned early that love was proven through offering. That being useful was safer than being witnessed.So I became the keeper of hours, the voice that answered in the dark, the one who knew which words to place on the tongue of grief so others could keep walking.I learned how to hold chaos like a bowl of water, how to bind the broken with my own sinew, how to call it devotion instead of depletion.They name it strength when you never call for aid. They name it virtue when you vanish quietly. They name you generous while they drink deeply and never ask what well the water came from.I was the healer without an altar, the fixer with no iron left, the savior no one circled back to bless.I carried the sorrows of others as if they were vows, mistook endurance for holiness, mistook silence for peace.But here is the old truth the bones remember:You cannot pour from an empty cup no matter how sacred the rite feels.There is no blessing in burning yourself to ash to light another’s way. No wisdom in bleeding unseen so no one has to be unsettled.And the hardest working was not learning how to give. It was learning that devotion that only flows outward is not love. It is erosion.So I am unbinding the martyr. I am setting the cup upon the earth. I am asking the question the old gods always asked:Who tends the flame when I stop feeding every fire but my own?MusicWaiting For This Moment by Vlad GluschenkoFrom BreakingCopyrighthttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfP6i5T0-DkIviWiMcjJkt1urg8ky-xrZ

I wish every parent who throws their child out on the streets because they are LGBTQIA+ and every parent who abuses a child would be rounded up and locked away so deep they fear running out of air to breath.
No, I am not okay but I am thankful for the universe directing someone to me.

This is dedicated to a stranger that reached out because they needed someone to care about them even for a moment.To the pup who has struggled,
To the pup who never deserved the life you were given,
To the pup who at least for a moment for life felt that someone cared about them.I did not save you.
I know that.
I know better than to pretend
I could lift a lifetime
with one voice
on one call.But I heard the way your breath changed
when you realized
someone was still listening.You told me about fourteen
about sidewalks learning your name,
about nights that taught your body
to stay awake even when it slept.
About adults who were supposed to guard you
and instead taught you
how to disappear.I felt the weight of it
move through the line,
felt it settle somewhere behind my ribs
like a stone I did not earn
but could not refuse.I spoke carefully.
Not like a rescuer.
Not like a fixer.
Just like a human
placing their hand on the table
and staying there.And something softened.
Not the pain.
The grip.You didn’t stop hurting.
But you paused.
And in that pause
there was space enough
for breath.When the call ended
I stayed sitting in the quiet,
heart still open,
hands empty,
wondering how something so small
could matter so much.I am carrying hope now
not the loud kind,
not the kind that promises endings
but the kind that says
you are not alone in this moment.The kind that trembles
because it knows
how easily it could be crushed
and still chooses
to exist.I helped you stand
for a few minutes
inside a life that has asked you to kneel
for too long.And that knowing
has changed me.Because tonight
there is someone sleeping
with a little less weight on their chest,
and someone else
learning how to hold that truth
without breaking.Music
Waiting For this Moment by Vlad Gluschenko
From the BreakingCopyright YouTube Channel

Music:Embrace by SaappheirosOnly Memories by Hyden FolkerFrom the BreakingCopyright YouTube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfP6i5T0-DkIviWiMcjJkt1urg8ky-xrZ

Not because the world is kind do I believe in tomorrow, but because it can be kinder by the work of our hands.I have seen what we are capable of at our worst and still I choose to stay. Still I choose to mend.Hope is not naïve here. It is scarred. It limps. It knows the weight of history and carries it anyway.I believe in the slow repair in cracked things learning how to hold again, in people unlearning harm one difficult choice at a time.The future is not promised, it is practiced. In the moment someone stops and listens. In the refusal to let cruelty be the final word.Let the world be unfinished. Let it be rough and uneven and human. We are not waiting for salvation we are becoming it.Not perfect. Not pure. Just better than before.And sometimes, that is enough to change everything.