We assume squirrels bury acorns and loose them
But what if every acorn they bury is a lovingly planted tree
And they only eat the acorns that they must.
Can you imagine a kind prayer with each scoop of dirt through those tiny paws
"Grow and be strong.
Grow and be strong."
Well folks. This is the end. It's been good! I'll probably see you in April.
They say pride was the first sin. The first and
The deadliest. Not that I would know much
About that. Being a Jew and all. Still
It is a lesson that anyone born
Woman learns: You are but dust and ashes;
Don't go getting any big ideas now.
Look around you at the tragedy that
The rise of man has become. Why would you
Presume to do any better? How would
You stretch your small hands wide enough to catch
The world? How vain to assume you can save
Anyone else. How vain to assume you
Could save yourself. How vain to assume you
Could create, could build, could destroy, could love.
Alive was a word too big to carry
On your fragile wings. So instead you fell.
It started because an angel had the
Audacity to believe in herself.
Still Life with Frying Pan
Thick strong wall that crumbles
In an instant.
Clear liquid joyfully escapes
Running together
Runs into warmth and
Sizzles
Crackling and snapping at the sudden welcome heat
Color changes into
Bright white and dafodil yellow
A private landscape with its own sunshine.
"I mean everybody likes eggs but I like like eggs."--Simon
Just the slut poem, again
There are so many people coming and going from me that I could make a subway car jealous.
But did you know I teach environmental education?
I've had more fingers inside me than a communal glove at a baseball field.
I also have a close relationship to my parents.
More people ride me on the daily than a zip bike.
In eight grade I taught myself to read palms, even though I dont believe in god.
I was once a never have I ever question "never have I ever fucked Monya". More than half of the room had to drink.
I love reading science fiction and fantasy ya books.
A friend once called me "the bisexual steryotype"
I can identify almost every street tree in New York City.
Another friend told me that "you can't be shut shamed if you don't have any shame."
I go for runs almost every morning.
I like sex like the ocean is a little damp.
But one of my lovers, giving me a massage, once commented on how little surface area my vagina takes up on my body.
I love to celebrate sex with my friends and lovers and sometimes strangers.
I'm rarely shamed for it.
More often I'm "slut resduced"
Like if you put the essence of Monya in a big sauce pan and just simmered it
Until the writer evaporated off, until the horse lover evaporated off, until the outdoorswoman evaporated off.
Until all that was left was joyful lust.
The problem with being slut reduced
Is sometimes when I look in the mirror, tinted by society's constant agenda
To reduce women to their values as related to men
I see my own slur reduced self.
I see my ribs and my breasts and my back where it meets my ass
And not my feet
Or hands.
Or the point of my nose.
Other people's compliments start to feel hallow.
Sure, I'm confident and good at sex.
What about my qualities as an educator?
A sister?
An activist?
A friend?
So yes, the subway is jealous of how many people have a fabulous time inside me.
But I want to make a 3d printer jealous of my dimensions.
I want to make the visible light spectrum jealous of all of my colors.
And I want narcissus to be jealous of how much I love myself.
Why I hate Harry Potter
I'm so tired of men being rewarded for their mediocrity.
Maybe Mcgonagall should have been headmistress.
And I bet Ron gets promoted at his job before Luna.
And what exactly did Harry do to not be the chosen one again?
Oh. That's right:
Not die
The problem with fantasy
With the richest, most elaborate worlds
Is that it's still only the fantasy of the oppressive society it stems from.
Where are the black people at hogwarts?
The disabled folks? The Jews?
But mostly Ginny and Hermione should have ended up together and in love.
An evening's dalliance
He smirks like he knows exactly what I'd like to do to him tonight.
My hips are a cocked and loaded gun and his hands are the trigger.
He pretends his beer is my lips and pulls
It all down his throat as quickly as he can.
I tease the rim of my cocktail glass and
God. The eye contact.
I swear his brown eyes are seeing into the depths of my soul and for just a minute I consider following him into hell.
He tells me people are a game to him and I think about his clever magician hands and how it would feel for him to dismantle me.
I hope he will take me apart.
There is no chance I will let him.
Everyone in the club wants us both and we lap up the adoration like dessert
But we gyrate back to each other once and then a dozen times.
We are magnets without a sense of public decency.
This particular brand of intoxication is better than drinking has ever been and twice as deadly.
And then somehow my hand is pulling on the chain he wears around his neck and
His lips are on mine and its everything
I've been wanting all night.
The brick of the graffitied alleyway presses smudges of spray paint passion across my back.
Solid, unyielding, I press back.
I claw my approval across his back in an act of vengeance.
By the end of the night I am left lying dressed in nothing but my emotional armour
And my knee socks.
I am on my back and pulsing and moaning around his fingers.
This act is an act of taking.
I reclaim ecstacy in the shape of his name.
Apoligies
“I'm sorry. I have to work late again”
“I'm sorry I just can't do this anymore”
“I’m sorry I want to provide for us”
“I'm sorry I could never find the words to make into poetry for you”
“I'm sorry I forgot our anniversary.”
“I’m sorry you put money over this family”
“I’m sorry we can’t eat love”
“Me too”
“I'm sorry I forgot how to taste the chocolate you bought me with the last of your paycheck. That I ate without considering the luxury”
“I'm sorry I forgot how to run my fingers through your hair in the way that you like. That they always got tangled.”
“I’m sorry I forgot the miracle of the way you move around the kitchen on Sunday mornings. That I slept in.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t stay in bed with you.”
“I'm sorry I couldn't melt all my hurt into a mug so that you might hold the warmth of me in your hands.”
“I'm sorry I was always so cold.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t read the love in the way you touched me”
“I’m sorry I only texted in single syllables”
“I'm sorry it ends like this”
“I'm sorry it lasted so long.”
**I do not own the song ophelia. The lumaneers do.**
Ava
"Oh, oh, when I was younger, oh, oh, should have known better"
But don't you remember how intoxicating your breath was?
"And I can't feel no remorse"
You were the best dancer in the hall
"And I don't feel no remorse, and you can't see past my blinders"
Every star in the sky shone for you and the streetlights masqueraded as stars too,
Hoping you might notice them.
"And I don't feel nothing at all"
The break-up didn't really take for a few weeks.
"And you can't feel nothing small"
The sadness seeped into me like dry rot.
I missed you in ways I didn't expect.
"Honey I love you, that's all she wrote"
I wish you didn't hurt like this.
I wish I could stop you hurt.
"Oh, Ophelia, heaven help a fool who falls in love"
Eat, Pray, Love
I am the patron saint of wanting.
Of that feeling as I lean in to kiss someone I've had a crush on for two years.
The feeling like coals smouldering in the pit of my stomach, just waiting to ignite.
I am the patron saint of desire
Of walking down the subway stairs and feeling every single eye on me.
Of skirts just a little too short.
Of biting my lip because I'd rather bite your neck but I shouldn't.
I am the patron saint of leaving fake flowers under bridges in the hope that a stranger will find them and smile.
Writing love poetry to my best friend and
Buying my roommate chocolate with the last dollar left in my paycheck this week.
If you want to gain my favor,
I can be invoked with a kiss, or
An oil pastel drawing you made when you were high
My altars are trees growing off cliff faces or out of cracks in the sidewalk.
My altars are empty crab shells by the ocean or roofs or parking garages.
Worship me under open blue sky or in the basement of your favorite coffee shop.
Leve at my altar a poem you cried on
Or a white dress you spilled pasta sauce all over
Your favorite lacy underwear you wore when you forgot it was your period and then bled all over.
In return I will whisper to the wind about the way your eyes catch the sunlight
I'll leave notes under your pillow telling you that I find your inner strength inspiring
I'll arrange the magnets on your fridge in rhyming couplets about the way you smile.
In return I will remind you how many wonderful people want to kiss you.
I will send you a friend with strong, warm hands for a shoulder massage.
In return I will show you how much the world wants you back.
This is not a love poem
Home is
The feeling of sinking into the softest couch after standing for countless hours.
The cushions give under your weight,
Yielding to gravity, letting you sink towards the earth.
Home is
The smell of peppermint tea
And the feeling of warm pottery in your cool, dry hands.
And the way it feels to breathe in the gentle steam.
Home is
Driving in your car with the windows rolled down and the music turned up
The sun on your back and the wind in your hair
And the love of your life in the passenger seat.
Home is
Taking off your backpack after a long hike
A shoulder massage from your dearest friend
Being eaten out until your calves cramp with pleasure
Fresh baked challah bread from your grandma's recipie
The exact number of steps across your childhood bedroom
A song where you know every word by heart
Seeing your joy reflected in your best friend's smile
The smell of autumn
The taste of sugar on your tongue.
Home is
A pair of boots that fit your feet perfectly.
No matter where you take them.
Do you believe in love?
I remember when I didn't.
Because I knew I'd never seen love
I knew I'd know it when saw it.
It wasn't love at first sight, certainly.
It was not an ephiphany.
I didn't go over a waterfall and end up on the other side of love.
It was more like floating down a river.
You start at the headwaters so thin that you can stand one foot on either side.
And the stream grows so slowly you dont notice it
And then one day you look up at the roaring headwaters and think
"Ah love. This is such a simple place I have been for so long"
The thing I learned from the TV is that I can be gay or three dimensional but not both.
That homosexuality is a death sentance.
That to be gay and happy is to be sacrificed as a heterosexual platitude within the next 60 minute episode.
That Hermione will never end up with Ginny and Dumbledore is dead anyway.
That I can watch (and mastrubate to) brokeback mountain as many times as I want and it will never have a happy ending.
That blue is only the warmest color if heterosexuality is hot.
I learned to love in broken metaphors and unfinished sentences
I learned my own sexuality in rejections and convienient diversity brownie points.
They say homosexuality is ruining traditional marriage and I would be proud to slay marriage and stand panting over its bleeding carcass.
I would be happy to fall in love but I would never be as presumptuous as to fall in love to be happy.
Self portrait as the box of junk on top of my dresser
Look at me and the first thing you'll probably see is the glitter
Sparkling throughout the box
Mixed in along side the hairbands and chapstick
Catching the light and cheerfully reflecting back at you.
There are five colors of lipstick vibrantly shining out of my box
And seven chapsticks, waiting patiently to be practical
Which they often are.
They come and go with gratitude and love,
Glad to be of use to friends and strangers.
Glad to be returned to their home after long journeys in pocket books and handbags.
There are sharp things in my box of junk too.
Nail clippers
And bobby pins with their tips broken into points.
I have learned the new hard way to always look when I stick my hand in my box.
It's not a deep box or a large box
But it always has just one more band aid
Or cough drop or a comb I thought I lost a week ago.
Whatever I need, if I dig patiently and gently,
I can usually find it within my box.
A juxtapo-pigeon
Pidgeons and doves are likely the most common family of bird in the world and are distributed everywhere on Earth, except for the driest areas of the Sahara Desert, Antarctica and its surrounding islands, and the high Arctic."
And mostly, they eat our trash.
They eat grasses, and grains, and nuts, and berries when they can find them.
But in new York city there's a lot more trash than grasses, grains, nuts or seeds.
So they eat what they can find on the sidewalk
Do they know how many there are? Do they know how resillient?
Pidgeons were used as messengers in both world wars and 32 pidgeons have recieved wartime metals of honor.
The other day I heard someone call pidgeons "flying rats"
Doves have been worshiped as devine since ancient Mesopotamia
Ever since the first agricultural civilization
Pigeons have been gods.
And they live in the street
And the peck through the grit on the sidewalk for food.
What is the dirt to a god?
An ode to the way I SHOUT
This is an ode to the way that I SHOUT
The way my voice reaches across a room
Or subway or hallway with a BOOM
This is an ode to the way I am heard
I am loud, I am proud,
I cannot be deterred
This is an ode to the way I can fill
Up a room with a sprawl,
With a SHOUT, with call
This is an ode to the way I demand
To be heard, to be seen
To have you understand
I wish you could hear that the way that I SHOUT
Has to do with my mother
And her mother too
And the way I am woman and queer and a Jew
And sometimes I SHOUT just to prove that I can
And to hear the echoes
and know someone agrees
And hear my own voice from the sky and the trees
And sometimes I SHOUT so loud that I scare
Birds out of nests
Still hardly dressed
They wave their wings, scream, and they take to the air.
Men can be startled like birds to the air
Fragile, perched on their biases
They argue with words that attack and tear
Scared by my SHOUT, so they rip me apart
But my shout remains true
Along with my heart
This is an ode to the way that I SHOUT
In my shout I pray,
Laugh, beg, and say
That I will not be silenced, I will not stop SHOUTING
Until the world hears me
Until I'm done fighting.
Happy unlucky 13. I'm impressed with me. Are you impressed with me?
Never have I ever
Hold up your fingers
Five in a row
One for each sin
That no one should know
Hold up your fingers
Ten in a line
Put them down slowly
Stalling for time
Put down your fingers
Without any pride
Without any fingers
Theres no where to hide.
Put down your fingers
Beg to repent
But without your fingers
You'll make no amends
How to fall in love
Notice how green the grass is
How blue the sky is
How orange the autumn leaves are.
Treat the ground as if it is carpet laid gently on the ground
Walk as if every step is a dance to music only you can hear.
Turn up every song on the radio and sing along as though they were all written for you.
Paint your nails flamingo pink and paint your lips war paint red and
Wear your nicest underwear on a weeknight just because you like how the lace looks
Splayed out across your skin.
Decide you're going to learn to play gitaur
Decide you're going to learn to paint water colors
Decide you're going to learn to speak french
Look up a youtube for one, and fall asleep watching it and eating chocolate.
You will never learn, but each time you imagine you might.
The lament of the manic pixie dream girl
When I play with my hair I am cross
Or sometimes simply at a loss
For words or maybe joyful too
I do play with when I'm blue.
Don't do my the violence of trying
To read me like all of my signing
Is easy or simple
Or one dimensional.
I am an enigma, a strange
And irrational range
Of emotional expression
And to read me would be oppression,
Or at least oversimplification
And don't assume I need validation.
You accept me for me
And all my idiosyncrasies.
It may seem like a lot
But for a man, it would not.
I just don't want to be read
Like a book, but like a person instead.
Forgiveness tastes like sweet corn
And the worst part was, when the crowd came with
Pitchforks in hand and they did not know her name.
They bound her, led her to the wooden pyre
No humanity in their eyes, just fire.
All that was left on that barren field was
A smudge of blackened ash and then nothing
But rich earth where squash, beans and corn stalks grew
Up tall under a sky of heartbreak blue.
So it was in this was the witch was mourned.
By living fields that never knew her name
But breathed in the air and breathed out the sky
The summer winds waved through the corns "goodbye".
"Sometimes I wake up and think that the world has ended."
And instead of grief there is only silence
I float in a void
Weightless, soundless, sightless.
And I think about how nice it is that I don't have to go to work now that the world has ended.
And maybe today I will finally get around to cleaning the fridge.
Until a car honks on fourth Avenue or
Someone shouts in the hallway of my apartment building
Or my roommate bangs some dishes in the kitchen
And the illusion is shatters
And I am dragged back into the mundanity of existance.
This is my protest poem.
This is swarm the street like ants poem.
This is my small-but-mighty
If we all link arms they can't arrest us all poem.
This is my a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step poem.
This is my I probably won't be arrested because I'm white poem.
This is my I can't read the news anymore because of the pit of despair in my stomach growing a despair tree poem.
This is my mourning poem.
This is my grief feels like a glass breaking on the floor poem.
This is my numbness to tragedy because it's the only way I can get up in the morning and that's the greatest tragedy of all poem.
This is my rage poem
This is my stand up for injustice because that's what I would want someone to do for me poem
This is my "stand up, fight back" poem
This is my stand up and fight because if I don't fight now, there will be no one left.
This is my protest poem
This is my singing in the street until my voice gives out poem
This is my march and vote and burn it all to the fucking ground poem
This is my "this is what democracy looks like" poem
The Ferryman
Let me help you cross this river.
I know that the water feels cold
But it will not get in your tall rubber waders.
Unless you fall.
You will feel cold
And the water will press into you
And the deeper you go the stronger it will press
But trust the waders.
They almost never leak
And worrying now will do you no good.
The trick with wading is to be sure of each step
Pick up your foot but do not push your weight onto it until
You are absolutely sure your next step has steady footing
Do not think about the step after
Just where your foot is going now.
Do not fall
Or the cold water will rush in.
You must have a steadiness about your every step.
Do not make any sudden movements
If you rush your steps, you will lose your precision
And almost surely slip and fall on the slick rocks.
You may feel things bump against your legs
They may be sticks
Or rocks.
They may be fish or snakes.
The things that lurk about your legs most probably cannot get through your rubber waders.
Remember to be slow and precise when you move.
Can you see the other bank?
Remember that you are trying to get to the other bank.
You cannot stand in this river forever.
You must be going the right way because the river keeps getting deeper.
Probably it will not get deeper than your waders.
Probably the current won't sweep you away.
Probably you will make it to the other side.
Are you still paying attention to just the next step?
Where will you place your foot next?
Are you sure?
REMINDER TO VOTE TODAY
An apology to the child I will never have:
This is not a happy poem.
My neverborn child.
I am so sorry.
I cannot fathom bringing life into this world.
To labor for nine months
To divert my very heart's blood
To this other thing I put before my own life
And for what?
So that your first breath of air will be the stale and processed texture of a hospital room
And that your second may be the exhaust from the billions of cars across the hot and dry asphalt highway that the earth has become.
So that you will feel the blistering heat of California's wildfires on their tender and new skin
Be torn at by the winds of hurricanes that level islands.
So that your lips and tongue will dry and crack in the dessert land that India has become.
I cannot imagine bringing you into this world where the first thing you hear is
A sex that will haunt you for the rest of your life
Whether or not you try to leave it behind
A sex that demands you to be murderer or murdered
Hysterical or emotionless.
A world where a proclamation of joy is damning, so what what must a proclamation of damnation sound like?
A world where you would see the faces of white men in power
And all the hate they hold in their eyes
Hundreds of sick and homeless and starving on the walk from the hospital to the car
You would see disaster
Tragedy, devastation, every time they turned on the news
A new cause to devote time and money to
A new hill to die on
How could I have you in a world where you won't have enough to eat?
In a world where you won't have a roof to sleep under?
There will be no money to pay your medical bills, to send you to college.
How could I birth you into a world where I could never give you what you deserve?
How could I create another soul's suffering and pain on top of a world of suffering and pain?
Another drop in a bucket of misery
Another straw on the dying camels back?
I said this was not be a happy poem.
Vulnerable
Today one of my black students said to me "nobody has any power."
"Except god" Another added.
Her name is Eternity. Or Essence. Or Nicelle. Or Ithiliua.
And every time I stumble on it I feel the echo of all the other well meaning white women who has stumbled on her name today.
I once saw Essence and a woman who looked too young to be her mother walking down the street.
Her too-young-to-be-her-mother was on the phone while Essence danced about her, pulling on her sleeve for attention.
Her too-young-to-be-her-mother ignored her for a few minutes before putting her hand over the receiver and shouting
"Shut up! Can't you see I'm on the phone?!"
I my class Essence smiles hugely every time she raises her hand to answer a question.
We did a unit on camoflauge and Essence was so excited to explain how zebras blend into the grass around them.
What would I tell her mother?
What could I tell her that would help?
What right to I have to imagine I could help?
Help her. Help Essence.
"Nobody has any power."
"Except god."
For extra credit, kiss someone when you're done reading this poem
Tonight I want to kiss someone
Doesn't matter who
I'd like to hold someone's face in my hands
And make a sacrifice of my lips.
I'd like to bare my neck
To the sharpened white teeth of another.
The vulnerability of naked flesh
The intimacy of a tongue swirling on skin
Tonight I want to kiss someone
Doesn't matter who
I'd like to fall into their eyes and drown.
With no hope of recovery.
I'd like to press my lips to theirs until I'm breathless
Until I've memorized every crease of their lips.
Every swell and dip of their cheeks and eyes.
The oscillation of their body against mine.
Tonight I want to kiss someone
Doesn't matter who
Just matters that they're standing in front of me
That their body is solid and unrelenting
That their hands are firm and unyielding
That they stand there. And that they want to kiss me.
A love poem in A minor
Would you help me take off this pack?
I know that the weight is so great that the backpack is pulling apart at the seams
But perhaps with the two of us it will move easier off my back.
Would you set it gently upon the mossy earth and sit beside me for a while in this forest?
And watch with me for the sunrise?
And when the sun crests the horizon, peeking golden between the trees
Will you help me lift it
And set it again upon my shoulders?
A memoir for the me who didn't love herself.
Some day you will look at yourself in the mirror
And you won't pinch your cheakbones
Or your belly
Or pull on your eyelids.
You know, even now, how smart you are
But you can't quite grasp why that's not important
Like a smell you remember in quality but not in source.
You don't have any idea how how charismatic you will be
Or how you will find joy in dancing
Or how you will find joy in other people.
You haven't yet seen the sunrise.
But you have your own sunsets of joy
I forget the worlds you discover in fantasy books
The worlds you find in the woods
The worlds you find in a well written essay.
Someday you'll have a whole day of joy.
These moments in the mirror are just that
Just a moment. Let it pass and the sun will se again.
The sun will rise again.
Hello my loves! It's that time of year again. So buckle your seat belts and put on your flying goggles because we're heading into this month's nano at full speed and without air bags. That's right, a poem a day for the entire month. So without further ado, day one's poem:
Antithesis:
Martin Luther,
When you posted your theses to the great church door, did your hands shake?
These words you had written painstakingly, letter by letter
Did they tremble with the enormity of what they were about to do?
What do you do when all you have is a small flame of conviction burning in your heart and the entire world is a thunderstorm of dissagreement?
Martin Luther,
When you were on the stand,
A jury of your equals telling you that everything you had written was
Wrong. Misguided. Treasonous.
Did your faith waver?
Did you imagine that maybe these bishops and deacons,
Knew more, knew better
Than you?
Did you ever think how easy it would be to just admit they were right,
This whole thing had been a great mistake,
How warm and safe it would be to return unto them?
Martin Luther,
When the Pope excommunicated you
When the emperor banished you
When you left Rome with a bible in one hand and what was left of your life packed in a neat roll on your shoulders
Did you ever look back?
One night from slumber woke abruptly
I shot up and peered about me
Across the room and scarcely moving
A man in black stood cowed and cringing
Black gloves wrapped with careful strength
Around my most treasured Monet
I inquired "Do you desire
To collect, curate, inspire?"
"I just wish" he roughly said
"To not live life in scraps of bread"
"And at days and to know and lay
My head in home with rent I've paid."
"But this art holds value here
From its mantle place it peers
Down at houseguests of high status
Surely you see how that matters"
Alas I knew I could not reach him
There was nothing I could teach him.
Morality annot be taught
And ignorance cannot be bought
Unlike paintings, homes and bread
The only things in this thief's head.
Security disposed him then
I never thought of him again.
In some ways blues dancing is a lot like seining in a marsh.
Seining is a type of fishing that requires two people each wearing rubber overalls up to their armpits and holding the end of a long sheet of netting to drag said netting in a circle so that fish are forced to swim into the net and be caught.
Blues dancing is a form of social dance that emphasizes the connection between two people. Blues draws from the most basic beat of the music usually to move in very close contact with another person.
One of the first things I learned about blues is to pay attention to the space between the steps. Never pick your foot up with the intention of putting it back down again, always just pick your foot up. Be mindful of the way you sink into your foot that is left on the ground. Be mindful of the multitude of places your foot could go. Engage your abs and remain balanced and when you're finally ready to place your foot in a spot you've carefully chosen, only then should you take your next step.
I certainly don't reccomend this philosophy for all things in life but for seining it's certainly useful. In huge rubber boots in waist or chest high water where the bottom is obscured by dark muck the next step always warrants careful examination. When you're unsure of your own footing it pays to find your center of gravity. Feel the ground gently before you put any weight onto it. Investigate each step as an individual and significant choice.
The other thing seining and blues have in common is that they're both hell on knees.
Happy coming out day my loves.
I've been thinking on this pretty long and hard because although I'm openly queer in person, its definately worth considering that as an educator this post could cost me a job someday. That said, I think that's sort of the purpose of national coming out day. To make the world safer for me and other queer folks, however out or closeted you may be.
So here I am. I'm here and I'm queer. Sometimes I also like the labels gay or pansexual depending on the day.
Have a lovely and gay day ❤🧡💛💚💙💜
A love letter to my ex
These days I have trouble finding the line between volatility and vitality.
Just a few letters, syntactically.
The difference between being delicate on the cusp explosion and full to the point of overflowing.
A glass beaker filled with unstable glowing chemicals and a porcelain cup overflowing with love.
The problem with new York city is that it is too convenient a metaphor.
It's so full of grief and joy and death and life and poverty and wealth and fear and hope.
I don't have to feel when the city feels for me.
I walk through the streets with a blank cardboard mask.
The problem with new York is it's so full of grief and joy and death and life and poverty and wealth and fear and hope that
I feel it all.
Every smile, every tear, every house fire, every pet rescued from every house fire.
I weep on the subway and laugh on the sidewalk.
You taught me it was ok to hurt
But I taught myself the difference between hurting and wallowing.
You taught me it was ok to be a contradiction.
But I taught myself the difference between contradiction and hipocracy.
You taught me how you love me.
But I figured out how I wanted to be loved.
I miss you. I'm glad you're gone.
I am but dust and ashes
God created the heavens and the earth just for me.
New York city is my favorite lover.
She lights the night sky for me and begets
The most vibrant and lingering sunsets.
Each night I know I could never leave her.
New York and I love with passion. She stirs
Joy at a street magician, grief for a
Homeless man, rage for screaming cars and days
When I lose my keys. She has strong tempers.
After her rage has passed, she always cries
And promises "never again" with sun-
Shine and fantastic art. We go for runs
Together and I drown in her eyes.
The city tells me she's my favorite lover.
Someday I'll love her enough to believe her.
I see the sunlight that slants through the trees and turns your eyes gold.
I see that this dress hugs your shoulders and pulls my eyes towards your collarbones
I see the way you throw your mouth open when you laugh as though your body literally cannot contain all the joy it holds.
I saw you when you stopped traffic to help a single frog across the road.
I see you pour love, like maple syrup into your job.
Day after day, I see you come home exhaused because making sap is ahrd work but the end result is so sweet.
I saw you when you coldly informed that teenage boy that "gay" is not an insult.
I see you wear that knotted rainbow friendship braclet every day, daring anyone to notice.
I see the joy you take in painting your eyes in glitter and I know that bright red lipstick is the armor you put on before heading into battle and I know your name is your war cry.
I hear that when you ask "are you alright?" you're saying"I love you"
And when you sing loudly and out of key that's because you believe that every human should have a voice, no matter the pitch.
I hear you shouting "fuck" into tunnels just to see if there's anyone on the other end.
I hear you whispering to stay cats "it's going to be ok. It's going to be ok."
I hear you silently counting seconds between thunder
I hear you impatiently tapping out rhythms on your legs.
I hear you hate to wait.
I heard you the time you called me on the phone. Seconds oozing into minutes as you searched for the words. I heard you when you told me I was your first love, words tender as a baby bird, and just as vulnerable.
For a long time,
I only wanted to fuck you with the light on.
I like to look at your face,
Your eyes, your arms.
I am in love with the way you bite your lip when trying not to call out.
I am in love with the freckles starring constellations across your shoulders.
A few weeks ago, you asked to fuck me in the dark.
You told me you like to feel me.
At the time I didn't understand what you meant.
But tonight
Tonight I lead a dozen school children in a night hike
Tonight every detail of every tree popped out at me.
Tonight the stars of the milky way were pinpoints of sensation across my skin
And I think I understood
Why you'd like to fuck in the dark.
New York city is concrete and granite. Basalt and sidewalk. Sometimes the rain falls and it doesn't know where to go. There is no comforting green to welcome it home but hard pavement and unrepentant, undulating car tires.
The water panics. It can't go anywhere. It rushes the water treatment plant in howling whirlpools and frantic waves. It flings itsself into New York Bay and brings the filth of the city with it.
My duffle bag is ripping
Orange fabric straining to hold together
White cotton poking through the seams.
The bottom of my duffle bag was once a bright orange to match the sides.
And now the bottom is the brown of the dirt on the roadside
How do I describe the particular joy in burning out?
Kind of like how in hitch hikers guide to the galaxy they describe flying as "falling and missing"
I can't decide whether the feeling in my stomach is excitement or dread.
The reason they call it burning out is that the flame is so bright.
And you hope that maybe the burns will be superficial.
That the light is worth the pain.
Because you know you can't tear your eyes off the flame.
And my duffle bag is falling apart and I am falling and missing and one of these days something will hit the ground.
It's hard to write in metaphors when you live in New York city.
Today I saw a homeless man's penis. It was shocking and horrifying and I felt anger and anxiety and pity and I don't know a how to wrap that expierience neatly in a metaphor and tie up the lose ends in a bow.
The subway systems are maybe a metaphor. Vital and important and dying and screeching.
I got harassed by a man on a nearly empty subway. He waved his hand in my face and as I stared straight ahead he called me a bitch. Homeless men and women wandering endlessly through the cars. Hoping for money.
Or maybe there's metaphor in a street fair. The block closed off and the smells of food and bright colors of clothes and the overlapping chatter and the tight, hot press of bodies.
New York city's packed street with the passenger cars and taxis and bikes and pedestrians.
Prospect park with dogs off leash and big, green lawns and homeless people sleeping in the tunnels and hidden kayak rentals.
This would be a terrible poem.
There's no theme. There's no rhythm. Just a jagged, throbbing life. A heart blood being forced through the streets and the tunnels and the tragedy and the joy.
Too fast to understand and too slow to even notice.
It's hard to write in metaphors when you live in New York city.
Bound for Manhatta on the morning train
Sweating in the obtuse humidity
To return to a land I'm not sure is worthy.
But still the tide must rise on the hudson.
Tonight it will fall again:
The river that flows two ways.
Love poem to the silverware drawer:
I find you next to the sink or under the dishes
With your straight lines and steady sections
You bring order to a chaotic world.
Warning:
Product is so hot you might burn yourself
So sharp you might cut yourself
Couldn't hit a note if it was standing before her taunting her and
Deeply afraid of commitment
Product doesn't know her own strength
Sets forest fires to see what will burn
Can maim a man with her pinky but sometimes cries 'just 'cause'
Cries a lot
Product kisses without thinking
Kisses and tells
Kisses even when she doesn't want to
Kisses with abandon
Doesn't use tongue when she kisses
Product has two strong legs
And two strong arms
And beautiful eyes
And poor impulse control
Warning: product bites
You smell like smoke and fresh earth
Reach into the dirt and feel the soil under your fingernails
Feel the life throb through the soil
The roots of the plants drinking in the water
Flowing through the depths of the earth.
You look like sunshine and lipstick
And I want to cover myself
So that your cool hands will put me out
You feel like velvet and skin and glass and water
I want to run my fingers along your back until your soft skin has rubbed off my fingertips and
I can melt effortlessly into you.
"Something good will come of this."
Wind
Leaves
Open dessert
Legs
Strong
Run
Fast
Loud
Big noise
Bright light
Antlers
White and brown fur
Rough
Pavement
Rubber
Silver metal
Blurred movement
Noise
Stop.
Pull over
Put the car in park
Get out
Can I open the door?
Door opens
Good
Roadside
Call help.
Dead deer
Live girl.
Two nights ago I called you
On the phone you cried almost
Silent, hitching breaths over
The phone. After 13 months,
I can tell.
It plays like a record in
My head "you hurt her" over
And over again. You say you don't
Understand. I don't know what's
Not to understand. I love
Her and you hurt her. I'm pissed.
And she's heartbroken and you're
Crying over the phone. So
Where does that leave us?
"Go and catch a falling star"-- John Donne
Chasing falling stars is one of my favorite hobbies
Hiking towards the horizon,
Seeing the gentle pulse of the star
Just beyond my sight
Each step laden with potential
Springing forward towards possibility of stardust
And glitter
And other beautiful things.
I do this for days and the world opens before me
Like a pop-up book
Elaborate lattices of delicate paper spinning the world into something beautiful and new.
And then
You find the star
And it's a dull gray rock
Warmth long since seeped out of its center.
**DAY 21! 3 WEEKS IN! I'M A BEAST**
Song of narcissus:
Narsissus flower looks a lot like a dafodil
Vibrant face surrounded by a mane of petals
Bent and staring silently into the water
Pride was the original sin.
Crush a petal
And smell the residue released from the soft petal
Pause to enjoy the sweetness of your own fingertips.
Pride was the original sin.
The wind caresses the edge of the flower
Pushing it gently back and forth
It enjoys the juxtaposition of the breeze and the sunlight.
Pride was the original sin.
Take in the lake.
And the sunlight warming your back
And the warmth of the sunlight reflected in the lake
And all the vibrant trees growing into the sky.
Take it in and fall in love
Pride was the original sin.
On not being Tony Harrison not being Milton
So I am not by nature a poet
I'm teacher; and I pour my blood
Sweat and tears into my trade. Milton could
Never know what it feels like to walk through
The Bronx and see the invisible, the
Homeless, proverbial huddled masses
Who don't even know how to yearn. Let
Alone tackle pentameter. But let
Me tell you, Maslow's hierarchy of
Needs is some classist bullshit. There is
No virtue in being able to quote
Milton or even being able to
Quote Tony Harrison who's not Milton.
But joy, love, and kindness exist outside
Of literary precident.
Picture
Two women for an evening.
One, her lips red with blood.
The other.
The mirror watches.
One lays out on the table
The other over her shoulder is next to move,
To grasp at something vital in the night to come.
The closest she can come to praying.
He walks in shadowed night alone;
He has no story of his own.
I'll cannot stand the love of men
I'm good at destroying them.
I move to New York city or if I can make it here
I'm overfucked, underloved, tired, and queer.
I look on the devisation with resignation and chagrin
Leaving an emptied-out carcass of what once was an atlantic salmon
I watch with wretched envy
At their willingness to give
And I wonder at their shining light
And their driving will to live
When I am human
Is when I am woman.
Make me a bread of somedays a not-yets
Let recipe cool in its own shame and regret.
Birchbark and flour could burn down a bilding.
Which, obviously, I wouldn't teach to children
Do not trouble me with pettt constraints like gravity and other lies.
I rule undisputed and fuck the society who would say otherwise
Even when I look I cannot seem to find her
(In the) Faces of the other passengers
The coming springtime
Sounds just sublime.
Even a monkey knows something beautiful when they see it.
They'll shout it from the jungle vines, they'll wildly decree it.
I do not know why you are vexed.
Sex. Tomatoes mean sex.
I forgive you?
I outlive you.
While I beg you to let me erupt
I know that I can make you corrupt.
Oh, god, no more!
Of guts and gore.
WO-OAH WE'RE HALF WAY THE-ERE
WO-OAH LIVIN' ON A PRAYER
TAKE MY HAND, WE'LL MAKE IT I SWEAR . . .
Anyway. Today is napowrimo day 16. I doubt this is what they meant when they said "play poem" but we're here now.
Tie me up in metaphors about the sunset
I want you to bind my hands with vermilion and scarlet
Wrapped in puffy lavender clouds so they don't leave marks
Suspend me from a metaphor of a bird in flight--
Make sure it can support my weight and
You have a sharp witicism nearby in case
You need to cut me down in a hurry
Tease me-drag slant rhymes down my skin, so gently I'm not sure I can feel the assonance.
Tap out iambic parameter with your fingertips against my things until I beg
Pull my body tight against the curve of your smile,
And watch it tremble like like Pompeii
While I beg you to let me erupt.
"In all the wrong places"
I play this game on the subway
Where I try to guess who's wearing
Make up. I'm not sure when this game
Started or why I play it all
The time these days. I don't know that
Anyone else has ever played
This game. On the other hand I
Don't know that I *am* the only
One that plays this game. For all I
Know there's someone else playing right
Now. Looking at me unobserved
While I look for myself in the
Faces of the other passengers.
**sorry! Day 10 coming soon!**
"Are we a nation of states/ what's the state of our nation?" -Lin Manuel Miranda
"I contain multitudes"-Walt Whitman
"The Body as Nation State"
My brain would like to think of my body as a dictatorship but my brain also believed in Santa Claus until I was 10.
Despite being a Jewish athiest.
The heart, in her steady way would tell you that it's a pure democracy.
She always was a romantic.
My vagina would paint you a polarized republic,
her against the brain in a never-ending battle for justice.
She might be move convincing as a hero if she didn't love being bad so desperately.
My feet consider themselves an overworked proletariat and they will rally in protests if they feel they have been grossly overword.
Whatever the power structure internally,
I can assure you,
Strange man on the street,
That you have no place in it.
You have no power over whether I wear that short skirt
And I do not owe you any time to respond to your misconstrued attempt at seduction.
My body is dept free and the factory setting fo not have an
"Obbligation to men who I've never met who call me baby" setting
The truth of my body is that no matter whether I'm making decions with my brain. Or with my pussy. Or with my elbow.
I am the sovereign.
I rule undisputed and fuck the society who would say otherwise.
"I am on the bus and thinking of you."
There's a game I play with kids sometimes when I teach.
We have an inflatable beach ball with a print of the earth on it.
We toss the ball at the kids and when they catch it we ask
"Is your thumb mostly on water, or on land?" And,
Because the earth is about 70% water, the kids answer water more often then they answer land.
You do the math.
Now, let's play pretend for a minute. Let's pretend that my brain is the ball and the water is all the times I'm thing of you.
And every hour, on the hour I toss you my brain so that you can see
How many seconds in every day I'm thinking about you.
And missing you. And wishing you were here.
Thinking about how my lips feel on your neck and how your fingers feel in side of me.
Which, obviously, I wouldn't teach to children.
"Recipe for disaster"
*disclaimer: this is not my poem to write*
Ingredients:
3 hours of sleep
A lot of weed
A society that constantly bombards you with messages devaluing your rights, personhood, and opinions
Personal experience with abuse
A kind of shitty but somewhat hot man
Optional: shame
Instructions:
1) mix together the oppressive society and personal history of abuse. Let sit for a childhood. Results should look like an emotional mess. If the results have some semblance of self confidence or emotional stability, add shame until those impulses are gone.
2) slowly mix the asshole man into the recipe. Add bits at a time. Just so you're always charmed by his asshole hijinks. If the recipe starts to seperate from the asshole at any time, just pour more shame and social conditioning into the recipe.
3) hotbox the kitchen. Just get unbelievably, tremendously high. Do not inhale oxygen. Only inhale weed.
4) once you are completely physically unable and socially unwilling to stand up for yourself, the hot man will decide it is time to put the recipe in the oven.
5) bake. You will be unable to say no.
6) recipe may seem unenthusiastic, even unwilling to be cooked. Ignore it.
7) let recipe cool in its own shame and regret.
We're on one week!! Here's some more thoughts from my brainpan.
In the mornings when I wake up
I am a runner. I pull on
My shoes and tattoo my defiance
Into the earth. Every footstep
Is as loud as I can shout at
The sun. Proof that I can carry
My body on my own two legs.
A declartion of the strength
In my calves and thighs as ritual.
With every morning sun as my
Witness, I am a runner.
Some nights I go out and
I am a dancer and
A rather adept one
At that, watch me twirl in
Graceful circles around
My partners. Watch me move
As proof of my freedom.
Watch me use dance to play.
See the joy in my face
As I alamand and
Add an extra flourish
So that my skirt spins out
Exactly as I mean
It to. My glitter is a
Mural on my face. My
Skirt is a triumphant
Victory flag. Witness,
I am a dancer.
Sometimes I am walking alone and a stranger
Catcalls me
And I am a woman.
Someone knocks into me at the bus stop
And *I* apologize.
I don't make eye contact with men because then they think they're
Entitled some of my time and as much
As I'd like to tell them they're wrong
Pissing off strange men is considered bad for woman's health.
When I run I am as strong as steal and as powerful flowing water.
When I dance I am as light as a feather and as beautiful as an ocean sunset.
But when I am made feel helpless.
Powerless.
Ugly.
Useless.
Is when I am woman.
"In the hands of a capable poet"
Honey
I want to feel your words travel down my spine
In neat lines
Of black and white ink
Sweetheart
I want to feel your metaphor
Wrap around my neck and grasp my jugular
Baby
I want your slant rhymes
To tap rhythm in all the right
Places
At a pace
So slow it kills me
Lover
Wrap me up in meter until your line
Breaks
'Cause sweetheart
I know
What the hands of a capable poet can do
The cave in the mountain
Drip, drip, drip goes the water from the cave
Stone stacked up like unmarked graves
Rocks lined up in aquifers
Adorned with moss, saplings, and ferns
Years and years of patient, slow
Work, first piling up the stones
Then the dirt so plants could grow
Along the tops of earth's old bones.
Finally I walked here today
In this sacred pilgrimage
Remind myself of folks long past
And their driving will to live
Lust
Last year we visited a fishery and watched people breed salmon.
The fish were bred in adirondaks and eventually their spawn stocked rivers around New York State.
The facilities reeked of fish. A deep, penetrating smell that lingered over my clothes and hands.
The machinery pulsed deep and low. Syncopated moans escaped a huge conveyor belt.
The fish were big. The length of my whole arm.
Irridescent and streamlined.
The female fish were tipped out of a tank and rolled down the conveyor belt.
They thrashed at the sudden shock of air; harsh on their gills.
At the bottom of the conveyor belt stood a huge man with a baseball bat and when the fish would come he brought the bat down on their heads.
It was quieter than expected.
I could barely even hear it under the machienery's constant moans.
And after,
They were whipped across a metal table towards the next two men on the assembly line who would dig a hook into the fishes' neck--right below their jaw and split the fish open jaw to tail.
They tore the fish in two and
Thousands
Of perfect perlidescent eggs
Came rippling out in waves
Leaving an emptied out carcass of what once was an atlantic salmon
Chapters of my life so far
I am born or the beginning of the universe
I make a friend or I learn to use magic
I deal with anxiety or the world ends on a nightly basis
I go through middle school or the Pitts of hell
I go to powell house or sometimes I'm allowed to be happy
I examine my self identiy or the first brick in a wall that will never be high enough
I move out or the beginning of my one woman battle against the world
I get a boyfriend or I am the worst queer
I leave said boyfriend or I begin to improve my queer quotient
I work at summer camp or skinny dipping in stars
I learn to dance and run a half marathon or loving my body
I leave college or the first day of the rest of my life
I farm for a while or the year of eternal summer
I work for the ECC or relearning that I am enough
I get another boyfriend or owning my queerdom
I move to New York city or if I can make it here
The subway is a vocal creature
Squeaking as it races down the rails.
Taking turns by force
Shaking with the pleasure of speed
And gritty power
It moans beneath me.
I love to watch the
Snowdrops sping out of the ground
The rain, I love less.
I love to bear my
Arms to the sky and proclaim
"Now I am alive"
I love to see the
Buds on the trees and smell the
Grass growing. Spring comes.
It's hard to be queer when you don't like poetry or astrology
When you don't look the cute futch part exactly
With your pierced eyebrow and your shaved undercut and your plaid flannel shirt.
Your slim body and hip bones that poke into your high waisted faded jeans.
Its hard to be queer and fat and trans and not able bodied and not neurotypical and not white and just sad some days.
It's hard to be queer and American but it's harder to be queer and Russian or queer and Packistani or queer and Iraqui.
It's hard to be queer and in love but it's harder to be queer and single.
Queer and alone.
Or NRE
This is the second time in three days I'm on a bus, grinning like an idiot and thinking of you.
Thinking of how soft your lips would be
Thinking of the tiny gasps you would make when I bit your throat
Thinking of how you're all soft places and curves and gives and how have you survived the world chewing you up and spitting you out with all that soft intact?
The color of the sky just after the sun sets below the horizon reminds me of the feeling in the pit of my stomach when you smiled at me.
The rumbling of the road keeps me company while I try to conjure your voice in my ears
Your hands on my skin
Thinking of you.
For Amanda
Your pulse pounds out a rapid beat that runs
From your neck to my fingertips and I
Know that this feeling cannot be outdone
By anything: I know your soul is mine.
I would make every nerve within you sing
And watch you squirm, shiver, and squeal for show.
I would see you gift wrapped up in string
Wrists bound up, and desperate moans pitched low
My teeth ache for your sweet and tender flesh
I long to see you writhe, whimper, and beg
For mercy. I would like to see you blush
Down your face and chest and in between your legs
Bringing you ever closer to the sweet
Release you crave. The death you want to meet.
Drive west into the sunset.
Watch the golden light sink below the horizon.
You'll find me there in the sunlight reflected off the car hoods and headlights.
In between notes of bad pop songs and
Warm hands on shoulders and peanuts for the road and
The empty bottles of Arizona iced teas on the floor of the passenger seats and the the frozen lakes and hawks soaring overhead.
Find me in the easy and mindless chatter and the slushy sweet bottom of seven eleven coffees.
I hope your memory of me lingers here by the roadside forever.
*for T and A
Please stop blaming consumers for destroying the climate.
Yes, recycling is important and it's great if you're mindful of your personal impact on the climate. But here's the thing. Even if very single person in America never used a plastic straw again, even if we all brought reusable bags to the grocery store, even if we all carpooled to work, the environment wouldn't be saved.
Because there would still be miles and miles of factories polluting gallons and gallons of polluted water into water sources. There would still be acres upon acres of factory farms depleting soil and killing fish enmass.
Here's what you *can* do:
1) consume mindfully. vote with your money, when possible. When you give money to companies who have policies in line with environmental policies you support, you're sending the message to this company that you want more of this and to other companies that they should be more like this. Boycotts have made some successful movements in history.
2) write. If you can, write letters, if not, send emails. Send them to companies asking them to directly change their policies. Send information to your friends about which companies are better to support and write to your local, state, and national government asking them to regulate big business and protect the environment from big business.
3) vote. It may feel futile but your vote can and will make a difference. Vote for local, state, and national representatives that will regulate big business and protect the environment. Vote for policies that do the same, if you can. Get others to sign up and vote. Get involved with a local campaign.
Someday we will overthrow the oppressive and exploitative capitalist system we all live under. And in the mean time, don't worry too hard about your reusable grocery bags.
Close your fucking legs
You inconsiderate ass
Think of someone else
