Your Poetry Oracle: Week of April 17th

A "lucky" poem to inspire the week ahead

Apr 17, 2023

Welcome to the Self Love Confidential Poetry Oracle, where the universe sends you the message you need to hear by way of a poem from one of my books (or as is the case today, a new poem). I’ll select the weekly poem(s) by trusting my intuition, the very thing I hope you’ll start to do as a member of this self love community.

I hear a lot about luck lately. And manifestation. And the stars aligning or planets misaligning. I’m sure you’ve felt astrology seeping into our collective ether too. Last week, I read that April 11th was the luckiest day of the year. Instead of this filling me up with hope, I felt the weight of it: I should do something special to soak up this luck! I should journal, meditate, make the day count! So I did all the things: I gathered with a friend under the light of the moon, we lit an abundance candle, we shared our hearts, we journaled. Did it lock in the magic of the day? Who knows. It felt like a normal day to me.

This week, I read the opposite: on April 21st, a mere ten days after our luckiest day, mercury retrogrades yet again and will send us into a collective doom spiral. Don’t sign contracts! Expect things to fall apart! It’s not a lucky time, so don’t move — instead hold your breath and wait for the luck to return. So now I’m scrambling to make the first few days of this week count. Can I get the green light on a project I’ve been pushing forward since the first week of March? God I hope so. I rub a crystal and light another candle.

My friends, I think we’re thinking about luck all wrong. You know what made me realize this? The Super Mario Bros Movie I spent $150 to watch with my husband and kids this weekend. (God, going to the movies has gotten expensive.) Stay with me.

Super Mario Bros. Movie new trailer but just Princess Peach being badass - YouTube

The mighty Princess Peach, who was without a doubt the best part of the film.

Watching the Mario Bros movie was nostalgic on every level: the characters, the music, the settings… They all transported me back to my eight-bit youth, where I spent hours upon hours playing Nintendo. My Dad was in the video game business, so we always had the latest video games. Super Mario Bros., though, was my absolute favorite. Before the onset of three-dimensional worlds you could get lost in, I loved that with Super Mario Bros. I could play on a linear path and as long as I kept trying, I’d get better and eventually succeed (we wonder why we’re all obsessed with the mythical linear path — more on that later). Oh the patience I had back then. What I wouldn’t give for my pre-iPhone attention span.

Very minor unimportant spoiler alert from the movie (I really don’t give anything away):

The movie actually touches on this in an early scene between Mario and Princess Peach. She challenges him to run through a gauntlet to win the right to go on an adventure with her. He kept trying, and failing, failing better each time. In that moment, I realized something:

Luck isn’t divinely ordained. It isn’t something we earn from the stars or planets (or crystals or candles). It’s something we earn when we commit, with intention, over and over again, with our actions. It is ritual yes — but more than that, it is routine. The magic is trapped in the mundane. What are you willing to commit to? Which path are you willing to return to over and over again, to be who you want to be, and get where you want to go?

Until I am ready
To claim my own magic
With pointed vision and
Viscous commitment
No potions and no matras
Will manifest the revolutions
I am so hopefully awaiting

There is solace in this — knowing that I am not at the mercy of the planets. There is also responsibility in it, too — knowing that I am at the mercy of myself. Like I said, I don’t have the patience or attention span of my youth that compelled me to practice Mario, or the piano, or all the other things that I was so “lucky” to be good at. But what I lack in attention span, I have gained in self-awareness.

Self love has taught me how to see myself with crystal clarity and without judgment. It has also taught me to prioritize knowing what I actually want — not from my ego, but from the depths of my essence. If Mario can learn how to get to his desired power up without falling into a pit of bubbling fire, so can I. No astrological forecast required.