Keynote & Inspirational Speaker | Author | Activist | Advocate | Survivor
CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT KIND OF IMPACT PIPER MAKES W/HER SPEECHES?
I AM
I AM stepping into the vast ocean of wisdom each and every day-moment by moment- from the rise of the SUN/SON to the going down of the same. I am seeking the origin of my sacred wisdom-my purpose and promise-from teary midnight reflections to the shadows of yesterday’s dawns.
Wisdom is a poem written on the spirit and flesh of life unfolding.
I bleed like a virgin and a man in the killing fields. I know the metallic scent of the escaping of life very well. It perfumes my walk-as does expensive fragrance and drying branches of sage. I love with abandon- freely, awkwardly-without boundary or distinction.
My love has given me the greatest pleasures and the deepest sorrows of this life...and yet I still believe in love. I laugh until it hurts and cry until it no longer does. It is a poem that will never be completed- a mosaic of the fragility and brilliance of the broken and mended pieces of our lives.
I am just one temporary song of the ages-passing as quickly as thought and young love into nostalgia, into forever, into forgetfulness, into history.
I transcend and grow with the ebb and flow of seasons; I am cleansed and made still in the fingers of rain storms; I am phoenix on the rise- pressing through the frozen barren earth of winters dread and winters beauty-
I am a survivor-
I am the promising and budding birth of spring awakening beneath the icy feet of trauma, illness, insanity, genius, compassion, love lost-love made-love given and love birthed .
If you are truly listening, even in the silence and secrets of me, you will hear the composition of my very breath.
I will give my last drop of life to my children, my community, a stranger, a nation, and GOD. I am a writer, a filmmaker, an activist, a survivor, a worshiper, a mother, and a scarred shattered masterpiece of distinction.
I am clarity and hypocrisy-stunningly ugly and oh-so-beautiful. I am fame and fortune- poverty and elusiveness- desperation and contentment- seen but invisible- bigger than life, but smaller than atom/ADAM.
I am supported by the rock of ages and the rock of wisdom from my father- that both overwhelms and sustains me. I am women-I am scarred- I am an aging and wilting rose-I am ethnicity-
I am intimate expression and insecure flesh-
I am life-
LIFE IS EVERYTHING and never replicated-I fear life more than I fear depth-and yet, I have no fear. I am.....
That..and THIS… has to be enough as the wisdom of me-the sponge soaking in all that exists-continues on the path set before me-and then, I will be no longer here...but there...where I belong.
Hold me down, like a ravenous lover, in this photographic moment-press me as a flower into the album of time that represents NOW.
See me in this light-for tomorrow who knows what the eye of the sky will create in me.
I AM...