Napowrimo day 30: unbelievable facts

*pause*
At the earth's equator, the earth is spinning at about 1,000 miles per hour.

And I have trouble sitting still.

My hands are always moving.

They draw, they finger knit, they tie braids in scarves or hair or little bits of string they found somewhere.

I always spill water when I'm trying to pour it.

Or rice or pasta or cereal.

Too much movement to put in whatever container I'm trying for.

And the earth is revolving around the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour.

And I have trouble sitting still.

I go out a lot.

To see friends, to dance, to make music, to farm, some weeks I clock over 60 hours just at work.

A friend once asked me how I did it and I joked

I fall asleep every time I sit down.

I fallen asleep every single day on the subway to work

For the past two weeks.

And the solar system is turning within the galaxy at 514,000 mph

And I have trouble sitting still.

I don't remember last time I slept in a bed for longer than ten days

I run every morning in hopes of pounding my restlessness into the ground

I tried to learn spanish but I couldn't stick with it. 

I set fires to see what will burn.

I make explosive art but I'm never around for long enough to finish a project. I've started writing four novels in the last year but didn't make it the first chapter in any of them. I've fucked so many people in the past year I've lost count. I'm not sure what day of the week it is and I don't know what time it is because my watch broke and I don't have the time to go out and buy a new one and the milky way galaxy is moving through space at 1.3 million miles per hour and

I have trouble sitting still.

Napowrimo day 29: a love poem

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.

Napowrimo day 28: post card poem

Napowrimo day 27: a tarot reading

Napowrimo day 25: warning label

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

Napowrimo day 26: sensory poem

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.

Napowrimo day 24: hopeful ellegy

"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.

Napowrimo day 22: sound poem

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?

Napowrimo day 23: impossible things

"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.

Napowrimo day 21: narsissus

**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.

Napowrimo day 20: rebellion

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.

Napowrimo day 19: found poetry

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.

Napowrimo day 18: poetry as response

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.

Napowrimo day 16: play poem

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.

Napowrimon Day 15: humanizing your villians

"Nostrand ave"

First: please stop.
You make me feel unsafe.
It's not a compliment.

Second: I'm sure
You have women in your
life. Do you catcall
Them too?

Third: I am
White. You are black. I know
There are upsetting race
Dynamics at play here.

I do not know what

It feels like to have my

Culture and history ripped

From the hands of my ancestors

And left raw and bloodied

And with the word "black"

I do not know how 

It feels to be afraid of the

Police. But I know

Fifth: What it

feels like to feel unsafe

Walking home. Clutching at the

Pepper spray in my pocket

Like a prayer.

Sixth: When are

you afraid for your life? 

Certainly not when

Seventh: I turn

and tell you "That's not an

Ok way to talk to women"

And you scream "bitch"

To my retreating back.

Eight: How many

Times have you walked

Home with your gaze trained

Over your shoulder? How many

Times have you kept your ears

Tuned around silent headphones,

Listening for any footsteps 

Following you? 

Nine: How can

I condemn you?

Ten: How can

I forgive you?

Napowrimo day 14: dream dictionary

Hello, my name is Monya Relles and I'm an expert in dreams and imaginary worlds. I've been dreaming and practicing unconsciousness nearly every single night for over 20 years. Some of you may be familiar with the time I slept through every single one of my AP american classes junior year of high school or the time I fell asleep durring sex and proceeded to talk about oysters in my sleep. Nonetheless, dreaming can be challenging, confusing, and disorienting for beginners so without further ado here is an incomplete dream dictionary.

Rowboat:
Place a coin in your mouth so you'll have something to pay the ferry man.
He only accepts cash.
Where are you going?
Why is it so hard to get there?
Who are you fighting?
If you stopped fighting the current, where would you end up?

Wheelbarrow:
Did you know that the term redneck is not only a classist but also racist?

Red neck is often asscociated with people who do manual labor all day--

Turning their necks a burnt red day after day under the hot sun.

Red neck is also a racial slur aimed at the Appalachian farmers 

Who intermarried with the local native tribes

Coming from the degragtory term "redskin"

Brick:

Stacked neatly, strong

In layers. Who's kept

In and who gets

Kept out? 

Tea cup:

Generations of women pushed your foremothers and forefathers out of their vaginas

So that you could be born.

All of human history leading to you.

Take a sip.

Be careful not to spill anything.

Dentist chair:

Fear. Dark. Pain. Night.

Have you ever been asked a question you knew you could never answer?

How many things do you want to do every day?

How present are you in every action? 

Tomato:

Sex. Tomatoes mean sex.

Napowrimo day 13: Upend a traditional saying

"some snowflakes have identical crystalline structure"
Watch the snowfall. Catch each snowflake before it hits the ground and line them up in a lacy line. twining from here to the moon. Look at each under a microscope--examine each closely and catalogue their differences. Where between here and the moon do you begin to repeat. If you had infinity monkeys on infinity type writers for infinity time one of them would eventually type Robert Frost's "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" and the rest of them would pause in appreciation because even a monkey knows something beautiful when they see it.

Napowrimo day 12: Haibun

Transplanting tomatoes

Take the tomato out of the seeding dray. Gently unhinge the tightly curled roots. Break off the lower branch-lets. If this seems cruel, remember that it will only help the tomato flourish in the future. Put the tomato in the bottom of its new home. Nestle it in soil. Dark potting soil packed gently around the stem. Secure. Give your tomato a long drink. Watch as it sucks in water, sweet and wet. 

Tomato wrapped up in earth

Sweet and soft, excited for 

The coming springtime,

Napowrimo day 10: simultinaety

"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.

Napowrimo day 11: body as a nation

**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.

Napowrimo day 9: size matters

"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.

Napowrimo day 8: a magical realism

"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.

Napowrimo day 7: power and vulnerability

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.

Napowrimo day 6: line breaks

"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

Napowrimo day 5

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

Napowrimo day 4: explaining the abstract with the concrete

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

Napowrimo day 3: made up titles

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

Napowrimo day 2: Secret shame

I'm very good at hurting the people I love.
It started as a game almost.
Well, that's a lie. It started with my father.
Doesn't it always?

My father who I love as much as anyone in the world.
My father who would fight with me.
Me, who would fight with my father.
Me, who got very good at fighting with my father.

And my mother.
Who is also very good at fighting with my father.
My mother who burns ice cold and nasty, like frostbite.
My cheerful loving mother who shines joy and light and warmth
Until she has a seventy hour work week and her coworkers are incompetent and she hasn't had time to eat since this morning and then the cold snap sets in.
My mother who can undo my father in a word.

It was a game in the middle.
How quickly I could drive my father to the edge.
Not on purpose. Not in the beginning.
Middle school was hard for me.
I just wanted to feel heard.

And then I figured out what I was doing.
I tried to stop on my father but I knew I could then
And then it was a tool.
I added it to my arsenal and started to sharpen it on other people.

At first it was purely thought experiment.
Sam hates being mocked. Josh is sensitive about his sister. If I teased Ronald about his grades he would lose it.

The thing about the human brain is the more you think something the more it manifests in your reality.

Then, it went back to the people I loved. Maybe it's because they can't or won't leave me. Maybe it's because I don't think I deserve love. Maybe it's because I think that because I love them a bit of harmless ribbing is fine.

I'm not just good at hurting the people I love. I'm good at destroying them.

Napowrimo day 1: Voice

I see: A woman with bleached hair looking angrily at a man in a denim jacket. In one hand she holds a glass bottle of kimbucha. On her other side is a bag slung over her shoulder. A fluffy lap dog pops his head out of the front of the bag, cuddled up next to a stuffed toy cow's head.

The dog sees: The man and woman who take care of him are fighting again. He's sad. He wishes they were happy. Captain Moos keeps him company in his sad. He wonders if they break up which of them will take him.

The woman sees: A shadow of the man she fell in love with years ago wrapped up in his own shame and self pity. Years of repressed resentment. Someone she tries often to remember why she loved. Someone she wonders why she tries so hard to remember. The dog that is a reminder of her shackles to him. The kimbucha she deserves as solace for her shitty day.

The man sees: The love of his life. The woman he knows he needs to be with but life keeps getting in the way. Something that was so good, will be so good again as soon as they get past this rough spot with his job and his car and his brother. The dog who is a reminder of their love for each other, the life they're going to build together. The kimbucha he bought for her as solace for a shitty day.

Captain Moos sees nothing. He is a stuffed animal and exists to build everyone else's story. He has no story of his own.