FRIDA by Tadiya Dasi

This poem is about Frida Kahlo and how her art has comforted me for years…

"The Broken Column" by Frida Kahlo

 I simply adore her for many reasons. I feel a sense of connection with Frida because, like her, I went through many surgeries as a child and had to spend time at hospitals. The experience has left me with some scars and trauma to deal with. 

 I still remember the first time when I saw Frida's The Broken Column -painting and just felt like crying...

...because in that portrait she had painted EXACTLY how I felt as a child and still often feel.

She's the only painter I know who's captured that sense of being broken in your body perfectly and that deep sorrow that comes from living in such a broken-cut-open-repaired body and that feeling of being deserted in your own experiences of pain, sorrow and suffering. 

Her paintings are like visual poetry to me, and her life story and art are a great source of inspiration for me. And, like I say in the poem, I feel she has, in a way, been a loving teacher for me. I simply love her - hence the love letter to her in the form of a poem.

Frida Kahlo

FRIDA

Frida, this is my love letter to you.

You, the patient teacher,

and

your art the healer that got under my skin:

taught me comfort

in this uncomfortable skin

taught me the vital how:

how to feel whole

when you're just body parts

on an operating table;

bleeding first blood, then just tears.

Frida, you must have felt

the surgeon's blade

as it rips you open again and again, and how it always

cuts so much more than

the skin; how it breaks you

and how you are

strangely injured in the very act of healing:

how you resurface from that cutting

anaesthetized and under water;

floating in the ceiling

your body no longer how you once knew it

your body no longer yours,

what once was whole is now in parts and bleeding.

And so you are

left running around  wounded and

scared like a little deer. Karma, you said it simple.

Frida, you must have also known

the endless hours every patient lies in waiting,

inpatient for something to heal, for something real to heal:

for the bones to fuse together

for the casts to break and break free

for the wounds to close,

and

still

there are the injuries of the self and the soul, harder to heal.

Frida,

you made those hours fly in all the colors of the rainbow

and

your pictures from the sickbed are

the healing and the comfort I know to be real;

without a word, you let me know

you've been there:

in the haunted house of a cut body, bleeding soul

yet you also showed me how to be fertile

as

from the million pieces of your brokenness

from

the flesh, the blood, the bone and the pain

you made art and learned to walk in step

entirely your own;

one sweep from your flowing dresses

hid away the scars,

instead of the crown of thorns,

you chose to wear the flowers in bloom.

Frida, you must have known

how it feels

when joy , once monkeying in wild abondon on your shoulder,

has flown away like a bird,

no longer sitting on your shoulder like a dear pet

when

despite the transfusions of art,

life pours out of your womb

in sudden miscarriage

but there is still life, still life;

the flowers, and the fruit testify!

Still,

you have had to grow a spine of steel to bear it all,

and now there are nails everywhere;

your broken column and

the long road of recovery always behind

and before you

Still,

it's a strong woman

who bares her broken parts

Still,

you seem to say:

I held so tightly

to the hand of life

that

even when

my fertile land was turning into a desert

- I made it bear my art, if not my child

and though the million pieces of my brokenness may still lay on the street:

I am not sick, just broken

and who needs feet, when

I have wings to fly!

You seem to say,

There's a frame for all those fragments,

the pieces all come together after all,

painting this reality your gift.

Frida, I hope you know:

when the broken one declares her absolute wholeness,

the world is comforted.

"The Wounded Deer" painting by Frida Kahlo (1946)

Tadiya Dasi: "My poems are the outpourings of my heart. My inspiration comes from seeking the heart of yoga through bhakti. In poems, and in life, I seek to embrace the questions and live the answers of my heartfelt truth to the highest degree of surrender possible. I search for that truth through heart-centered, meditative, yoga practice." You may connect with Tadiya on facebook here, or via e-mail Tadiyadasi@yahoo.com.

~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~