No More Wishy Washy

Me and N pinky swore and I liked what he said in the car, and it ran through me at the post office.  It was something like, why be anxious chasing new things, when you could just love what you already have? These friends, you know?  His best friend is moving away.  We will talk about it some other time, cause right now, he has nothing nice to say.

We hung out for an hour after the dance.  I crawled into a cubbie mistaking butterscotch for sweetened condensed milk and got called on it.  What is this color?  How many gross words can describe it?  It's not even gross in the end, because it's probably the color of your gross, because in the end I am shifting around on my toes trying not to have a new crush, eating snax, failing horribly.  It's hard trying to decide to stick to what I decide when what I decide could take ten years and no part of my life wants THAT right now, you know?

I got in real close and told him real sternly,"There is something you should know N. People want to hang out with you not only if they are bored, but because you are cool.  You don't have to qualify each invitation with that."

Oh splendid recovery.

The best part of today was the laundry list of the best part of today. The best part of today was everything.  But mostly that time when we were saying goodbye and everyone was coming over to begin again.  When we showed D our symbols for courage and she laughed and laughed.  When P knew about your energy work because I had told her; that somebody knew something about you and that I had helped.  When I remembered we had hung out earlier and melted, the sweat on my upper lip, the polar pop for 74 cents, my first anchovie!  I was scared I would vomit but you of course had advil that O had given you.  Of course she called you to bring some because I told her you still had it. How you asked offhandedly before you left if anyone else needed any, and of course M did.  It felt like caring for each other.  It felt like D's first kale smoothie.  It felt like B admitting he had found one on the table and one in the fridge and he had eaten them both.  Everyone was glad that had happened.  Even me.

H called.  Their trip is over and now they are home.  What was that emotion at the computer?  I want to tell everyone and no one and overflow and gush with this. Oh yes, an appreciation for who we know and what we do for each other.  We should hang out sometime, I have some new poems to share and I am going to learn that song.  How do I know what the words are for this?  Because B called so I had a reason to talk.  "We're just going to post on the website and see if they get to it."

Hey girl.  Remember you ordered a computer part off of ebay without having a meltdown?  Remember you completed a 6 month budget report on excel without having a meltdown?  See. You have courage. See. You are growing.  You're like ten steps closer to having a smartphone with that maneuver.  So what is the wish?  What is the wash?

Self Portrait as a Storyteller

Before we become friends, there is something you should know about me.
I'm not an independent person.  I don't aspire to models of individual success.
This is what I need:
to cast vulnerable expressions in casual conversation
to know my desires have a place to land
to be reminded of lightheartedness and struggle,
of children and revolutionaries.

I didn't expect to know these kinds of stories.  I didn't see this for my life.  Stories of pain.  Stories of empathy.
I wanted stability, but now I am learning how to just be in the boat.
With you and whoever else is here and deciding that yes we are all being in this boat.

There was a dragon, and a lady holding a cup, and a battered soggy flag, and they were the same.
They did an experiment.
Where the dragon tried to make herself small
by slowing all of the avenues that led to pain.  As if these avenues were the root, and they would always lead to pain,
and an external strategy was needed to change the course.
The course was of the lady looking for a drink of water.  

The lady did not go very many places.  But each place she went, she tried to find out more about becoming herself, which looked liked learning to not have a self, which looked like becoming an ally to everyone else.  Becoming a mirror.  Becoming a sponge.  The flag ached for a slight cool breeze.

If we become friends there is something you should know about me.
I am not a codependent person.  I don't aspire to the loss of choice.  This is what I need:
to be the insatiable whirlwind
to walk and dance at the same time
to tell you everything that happened in this lifetime of a day
to speak up when you pause for a moment.

I don't want my quietness to be confused for thoughtlessness.
I am basking in the shades of our shared experience.
I am holding back because of my monster complex: the fear of being too much all of the time.
I know we haven't met for very long, but if you heard what I heard about poetry, you might know what I mean. It's all in how the brains go. And I love how you just go and go and go.

The lady eventually lived what she knew. That things could change at any moment.  That it wasn't all waiting. That there was water in potholes and in saliva. She wrung out the flag and collected a few drops.  The dragon grew because it was in her nature to grow and become everything.  The flag flew.  They started a new experiment, which was loving unforever things.  Which was letting go, I mean really.

The lady sewed a heart patch onto the flag because it was in her nature to reflect love wherever she went.  The allies found her, and the dragon beamed.

As we are friends, there is something you should know about me.  I am an interdependent person.
I aspire to the empowerment of us. This is what I need:
to listen to what you have to say
to remind you you are whole and sweet and strong
to absorb how you move into my own moves.
to utilize your metaphors and share your vocabulary
until there is no me for the sake of me,
only what we've made,
and a mutual understanding of how it is moving us forward.

A Long Road Home

Stick in the mud.  Stick along the fence.
I once gave a birthday present that was an exhibition.
It was at a church on 37th.
There are these tree branches.
They are all detached, and scraggly, and trapped in the panes of a fence.
I can't tell which was there first, or now, if they need each other.

It's St. Patty's day, Hip Hip Hooray.
I walk alone, around the warehouse, with my stick. wwwhhh.
I was never good at sound effects.  I was never good at facial expressions.  I thought I was good at a lot of things until you.
You proved hundreds of unforeseen variables.

My heart is broken.
I didn't know until my jaw started hurting sometimes, and then all the time, and then a lot.
I've never had such a strong body reaction to an emotional problem, but I've talked enough abuse and trauma and chronic pain to get it.
Sometimes when your heart is broken, your jaw starts to hurt.

The doctor thinks maybe it's bell's palsy.
She gave me some handouts on TMJ and told me to come back if I wanted some work done.
I didn't go back.
I started inventing poetry on the spot.  Toni Braxton was playing in the waiting room.  I have a lot of friends, and eventually it will all come out.

We love each other.
I only say it when you say something so perfect that I can't hold it in.  And you only say it after you get out of the car, just before you close the door.  But when I joked the world would be a better place with more yous in it,  I wasn't joking.

I don't know how this story ends.  I'm not a librarian.
I alone will not decide.  I'm not the writer.
I'm just a mirror, a minnion.  A sponge, a kitchen dweller, a super effective stander, a body inhabiting a life, feeling the tension between the two.
Basically a lady walking around with a cup,
looking for a drink of water.

Hey Pinky

After Tom died, I began hearing the expression "bucket list" in different places.  I decided to dye my hair so I could rest, knowing it had been crossed off the list.  Well I have a confession to make. There isn't actually anything else on the list.

The most unexpected thing that has happened as a result, is that all of these older women, whom I previously met many times but had nothing in common with, could suddenly reach out to me.  I'm not sure what it is.  I think it's something about the salon now being a part of our shared experience, or a want to change looks or do something different.  I imagined them younger, experimenting with their own shades of pink. I remembered talking about hair with C at Penn and Main, going to the grocery store in cornbread.  I don't know if we'll see each other when we are older, but I imagine us very much the same. All mouthy and with long, streaky old lady hair.

Nothing Moves

Nothing moves until we reach a threshold and we are not there yet. 
The bathroom is atrocious, poison ivy on my forearms, 
my brain shut down days ago. 
If it's permanent I will still have to laugh; I will still try.

She's exhausted the DVDs at the library.
Terror creeps in and wells up,
slouched in a chair at the office.
"I can stop fumbling these papers if you want to talk.
Is it the action films? The war mongering that turns you off?" 

"No.  Romantic Comedy." 
The man and woman play too close to home, but not in their similarities. 

She remembers the tomatoes in jars in her kitchen, with
her pots and her pans and her cooking utensils.
She regrets giving him a chance to be better.
She was wrong, she regrets.

This week, some judge will weigh in on the future of the loveliest:  baby boy, yellow bird. 
I'm not sure we'll recover if he says the wrong things. If he favors separation
of her lifeline, her blood. 
What role is his and why? 

Unloading a list of all of the people saying and doing the least helpful things,
"You should cut his hair he'll be more presentable, you know, I'm paying for all of this."
But she won't cut his hair.  She won't back down.
She won't conspire to erase more history.

The history of her people,
my people I've never met.  Trifled by
photographs next to Disney World statues of your pretend ancestors
do you even know what you are saying to me?


It was she who wanted children least of all.
Not into this poisoned world.  Not into this poisoned city.
The water, the air, homeowner, trapped. 
But it's different now.

"He will have beautiful braids," she says. Training his part down the middle.

I listen through my migraine, slowwww, concentrated,
trying not to vomit.
I want her to know that I am there. 
I want her to know that I am there even though I am afraid.

I am afraid we weren't made for this kind of courage.  For this world
disconnected, content in its unwell.
We get bigger and smaller, and smaller and bigger
eluding emotions flowing emotions
trying to relax. 
We don't know how to relax.

We shouldn't call this the living room because we don't live in here. 
We should call this bebop from one problem to the next. 
We should call this trying to stand.

The Last Song

From Jean Grae's internet bio:After working with groups including Ground Zero, she joined a hip hop music group called Natural Resource in the mid-1990s, along with rapper Ocean.

I want to say something about last night, but I don't know what it is. Something about dancing in public and something about the last song. And a little something about how that woman could sing, my god, could she sing.

We were at the Born in Flames Tour. I didn't notice, but we hadn't danced together in public in a long time. Jean Grae was bossing us into it. Calling us boring and everything. I know we really didn't need all that, but I don't blame her for trying to bring us all together. I'm not proud. It was nice to get lost in the music and feel less alone.

At certain moments, at specific resonances, I looked back to where the tall people were standing, to see if you were bopping along. My only sidetrack was thinking about college resources, the hot tub, and the grandeur of the student activity fee, and if I was being an okay stander. You could have been thinking unspeakable things. Unthinkable things that you didn't even consent to knowing. Flung onto you like a booger on a bad date. As if your limit hadn't already been reached. As if you had space to hold anything else. As if your brain could handle another layer.
And how the one person who can help you isn't going to help you. How the one person who can help you isn't going to help you.

Invincible gets on the mic. "This last song I want you to say it with me to the beat." And Jean Grae is asking us what the one thing is that keeps us going when we get to the very very bottom.

The people were so ready and knowing. Did you see how the people were so ready and knowing? B led off with love. Integrity, Trust, Consistency, and Peace were offered from the crowd. The people I thought. B and Buscrates did the two step onstage. There was a little girl who said, "my daddy" and a daddy who said "myself."

We all got into it. "Keep Going. Keep Going." And it felt like a party that came from us. From our participation. The last party I organized was a funeral, but I think I'm ready to give it another shot. Apparently, hard times require furious dancing.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

Today when I came home I was thinking about my Dad's discomfort with strangers and I thought, "These are not strangers. I trust these people with my life." I think the movie life follow up to that would be, "I'd take a bullet", or "I'd push her out of the way and get hit by the train." But my rationale that immediately followed in the next thought was, "If we were in a situation where one of us had to die, we would be able to reach a consensus about it."