Chris Ferreiras

Our first home on earth is a woman I don’t know where we come from any more than the child who asks. I want to say look around, this is how we got here. see the tension of opposites, the way things touch by not touching. how we come from what we’ve gone through. If you really want to understand, look to the land. take a hand to soil. consider how the earth holds all we take out on her and still gives us more days. I want to say hold a caterpillar to the sun, & you’ll see what they mean about the body as a temple. in the right light her inner architecture tells tales of fortune and future. how her insides are lined with the matrix of her wings long before she finds flight. ask the chrysalis, whose body is half dream and carries within her generations. how she is what came before & what shall be after. what I know is what my love taught me: that a woman carries in her body all the women who raised her. that when her mother was in her mother’s womb she was also there receiving her elder’s prayers too. so was I. so were you. our first home on earth is a woman. & what makes a woman is her choice. when they ask you how say because of that. when they ask you why say because of that.

Excerpt from my collection The Sun Underground & All The Colors in Between if it is love let it be love. if it is love, do not be sorry. if you feel a will to give your all & all to give what does it matter that another did not ask for it? this energy. this awakening. might feel because of them but it is not. what is for them is also for you. the way you love is who you are. the way you love is who you are. & this way you are is about you. this surrender, flow & flourishing. its life is as it is for its own sake. so few can tell the difference between what they know and need. can anyone really say what they want? seasons come and go as do we. want more & need less. days where nothing is enough & nothing is just fine. then there are those who seem like seasons but last lifetimes. those who miss the world right in front of them looking for it. & that’s them. that’s who they are. don’t torture yourself thinking about who looks but doesn’t see you. those who hear but don’t understand. don’t torture yourself thinking you shouldn’t have when you had it in you to give. better that you aren’t losing sleep wishing you would have, could have done more. it is not on you that they didn’t know how to hold it all. their hands may have felt enough to touch you, but such hands weren’t enough if they couldn’t stand the ways you didn’t hold back. so don’t hold back now. if they miss the heart set loose, at least the wind will catch it. if it is love, let it be, love.

Protect What I want From Me - Chris Ferreiras "I mean truly, what do you feed the heart that wants it all?" We all have our hungers and ways of eating. Growling. Watch the full performance on youtube. Link In Bio. Presented by: @poesy.ca [5/8] #creativeproject #poetry #protectmefromwhatiwant #artist #spokenwordpoetry #motivational #inspirational #creatives

Chris' Protect What I Want From Me poem breakdown is out on youtube! Watch Chris explain the lines of his poem and get to know a bit more of his thought process 👀 Presented by: @poesy.ca #poetryexplained #creativeprocess #poetry

You don’t get any of it back. None of it. The weightlessness after lift off and the thump after touchdown. The high of arrival and the storm of emotions getting there. They stay where they happened. All of it lives behind this invisible line on the sands of time. You can do as we’ve all tried—study the slant of light more intently the moment you notice it won’t last. Breathe a little deeper in hopes the warm sea breeze will find a room in our lungs. Encase scents in words. Words you’ll write and eventually forget. Collapse the difference between the warm sand on your back and your bed so you can return to that late summer feeling stuck in traffic on a snow day. You can cross this line but you’ll never reach the other side to the point where you can do it again. But here’s the thing, the sweat and tears of both sacrifice and joy, they evaporate into the same clouds. And eventually they rain back down into the ground upon which you build your life. And they nourish the roots at the foundation where you’ll build a home. And little by little this home will resemble your body, the way a window resembles a picture frame, and the grey in your brow resembles salt after swimming, and that one branch of your orchid plant with flowers budding on it resembles a smile line. You don’t get any of it back. But what’s of the essence carries on. That stuff comes with you. Love from the heart next door, from Prague, Croatia, Bosnia, Montreal, Toronto.

“Protect What I Want From Me,” a poem by Chris Ferreiras @itscarus , is an excavation of desire as hunger as it both lives within and is imposed upon us. We recently had a chance to sit down with Mariana, the creator of Extended Mic @extendedmic . Chris Ferreiras is one of the poets who have been featured on this poetry series. With a magic for depth and universal truths, Chris is an established poet, the author of “The Sun Underground & All The Colours In Between,” and clothing collection, ‘Salt Into Gold’. Read more about Extended Mic, the artistic grouping spotlighted in our latest issue, here: 🔗LINK IN BIO🔗 👉 The 44 North is a digital bi-monthly publication that aims to inform, empower, and inspire young people. Do you want to write for us? Support lifting up young people's voices? Head to the 🔗 LINK IN THE BIO 🔗 👈

I used to feel bad whenever I wasn’t creating. But consistency isn’t only measured by frequency. Intervals of inactivity are still part of larger pattern of activity. It’s as they say, nothing blooms all year long. Retreat is as essential to the creative process as winters are to spring and shedding is to transformation. How you return after the retreat is what matters. That you return at all makes all the difference.

radiance doesn’t only come from the sun, it comes from doing what lights you up. you glow when you follow your heart.

when you’re a student of the unseen, the strings between things reveal themselves to your intuition. it comes in many forms. at times as tension, a hum in your bones like someone struck a bell deep in your core. your hair up like antennae to something in the air. the tug and pull between words and worlds. the veil is always thin when you’re sensitive to the invisible. you feel them because they’re there.

There’s freedom in knowing you can’t do it all by yourself. Liberation in our limits. We’re meant to be in community. But it takes humility to be in community too.

At the heart of being is transformation. An ouroboros chasing its own tail. In pursuit of our becoming, what is of the essence in us is revealed. What looks like change is only a stage in the process of shedding into ourselves.

a series of rebirths and little deaths.