All my poems are about me

Your world is manufactured; made of forevers.
Of smaller countability infinities

Manufactured neatly on an endless assembly line to fold inside a single human life
Your forevers are pieces on a chaotic spice shelf or budding needles on a pine tree
You use phrases like "In ten years" and "mentor my children"

But you see, my world is made too
Made in broad sweeping strokes of the sound of the word 'wanderlust'
I know that my butterfly wings are beautiful, but I also know that they will crumble beating fruitlessly against the glass jar of mundanity.

How could a butterfly explain to a rock the infinite nature of now?
When I land on your solidity, how can I explain how the knowledge that I will one day take off is not the wind under my fragile wings but warmth in my tiny butterfly heart, keeping me for a minute longer?

How can I explain the vastness of now?
The vastness of all the water in the ocean,
All the air around my wings, all the colors of the sky when the sun dips below the last horizon

How can I tell you the true enormity of my "now" is vast enough to encompass any of "the rest of our lives"
How can I tell you that your forevers are as cryptic to me as tectonic plates are to a butterfly, able only to rest upon a rock, resting upon countless miles of dirt, unable to fathom the the earth shaking movements below.

My poetry teacher told me never to write in absolutes.
"Start small," he said, "avoid *eternity* and *love* and *forevers*"
I think he would have found your attitude disturbing.
I would like to see you and him go head to head.

Perhaps this poem isn't fair to you.
Probably, there are things you would like to tell me
About the power of eternity
About the beautiful mundanity of alphabetizing a never ending spice cabinet
About the joys of discovering turmeric and oregano and that last bit of cinnamon you thought you finished
Probably you'd like to tell me about how there's always another spice to be found behind the last one and the job seems less intimidating when you break it into sections.
Probably, something like that

But not at all.
Don't expect a butterfly to be fluent in geology.

I'd like to offer some exposition, please
Because when you were celebrating weekly shabbos dinners with your family, I was leaving high school behind for college.
By the time you got to college, the wanderlust took me over again.
For a year and a half I roamed, never in the same place for more than two months.
I snapped up facebook friends like berries on the side of a trail.
I left "keep in touch"s behind like dust on a gravel road.

I heard “forever”s burnt up like matches in a wind.

Your friends have stayed since freshman year of your high school,
Before, even.
Since freshman year I've worn through more pairs of hiking boots than I can count.
I've changed my hair, my clothes, my hobbies, my friends, and even my name.
No bed is more familiar than another to me and I fall asleep every time I sit down because I've had less comfortable places to lay my head than this plastic school chair, more times than I can count.

Do you remember what the bed in your parents’ house feels like?
I don't even remember where the bed I slept in last night was.
I just know my back is getting sore.
And when I arrive, aching and disheveled at your doorstep, you offer me a shoulder rub.
And then you use words like "forever".

I don't know how to tell you that my "now" doesn't exclude "tomorrow" or "next week" or "next decade".
But when I don't know who I'll be "tomorrow" I can't say if that person will love you.
I can't say if that person won't love you either.

I imagine you build to last.
I think that in all likelihood, when the earth has boiled and the stars have flamed and died, your love will be left alongside the ancient pyramids and the towering skyscrapers of manhattan.
For you must take love brick by brick and lovingly lay each one into a tower of babylon, soaring until you can reach out with your fingers and touch the sky.

How can I explain, bricklayer, that my love is like the air in my lungs?
There one second, gone the next, and completely vital to my existence.
How can I explain I learned the futility of holding my breath?
That I tried and my face turned blue as the slow seconds ticked away and my lungs cried out for oxygen.
How can I explain that for every exhale, the next inhale tastes just as sweet, sweeter, even?

But I would have you know, if you read no other of my labored ramblings

That a shoulder rub from you feels as close to home as I've come in three years.

That your face has been one of my only constants for the past four months.

The easiest “solve for x” since basic algebra.

I know the curve of your smile better than the curve of any road I drive.

That terrifies me.

That delights me.

That I looked upon a rock, beat my wings in the warm sun, and that here is where I landed.

Some beautiful nonsense

The sweetest feeling in the world,

Better than the best meal I've ever had,

Better than the best orgasm I've ever had,

Is a drink of cool water

After a long run.

I reside at a crossroads of truth and beauty.
If you find yourself wand’ring on a lonely Thursday, you may find me, sitting among the daffodils.

It is always Thursday in this place.

This crossroads is sometimes the winter tundra,

No features on the land but endless white plains of snow,

Perfect flakes lost in infinite copies of themselves.

If you visit my crossroads when they are tundra, make sure to wear thick socks,

Too many people have lost fingers and toes to my crossroads.

Sometime it is summer at the crossroads

And the sun is warm and the grass is soft

And there are flowers and birdsong.

Wear a swirly skirt if you visit

And we can dance under the sun.

Mixed Metaphors

Sorry my loves, that I have been gone for so long. I'm going to try to go back to twice a week, although expect more irregular updates due to spending long periods of time in a park.

She tells me she "treats her body like a temple" and I know

What she intends to say. She means to say

Her body is exclusive. Not just anyone can wander in.

She’s a peaceful mountain retreat and the snow falling

Leaves her body a blank and barren landscape.

On the most worthy of intrepid hikers are allowed a glance

At her holy spaces.

I agree; "my body is a temple too." But I mean

That to me my body is a holy space

Pleasure is my worship and anyone of pure

Intention is welcome.

I tend my body through worship

Soft hands polishing spires

Candles sending gentle aromas and curling smoke to the domed ceilings

I plant flowers every spring and place plush cushions on the many pews.

I would be only too happy

To offer any pilgrim who kneels before me

A temporary salvation.

My body is a temple and it cannot be made less holy.

No matter how many times

The grand doors swing open to admit a new spiritual quest seeker.

My body is a spiritual experience

No matter the atheist or evil-doer inside

I clean the stained glass windows carefully every day. Bad intention

Will not tarnish them.

My body is holy because my legs can run half a marathon

My body is holy because my mouth can taste the sweetness of chocolate

My body is holy because my arms can lift and my lungs can breathe and my heart can beat

I mean literally beat,

With all the violence and rhythm and anguish and joy and abandon the word implies.

My body is holy because my uterus demands blood and suffering

But my body is holy because my vulva gifts the most exquisite joy.

My body is not a temple because it feels

To hit me is not to smash a stained glass window.

I will bleed.

My body is not a temple because I live in it.

When hands caress my spires I feel it.

The hands must be welcome hands.

My body is not a temple because temples are not afraid

Temples do not walk down streets at night looking over their shoulder.

My body is not a temple because it lives and breathes and feels and

I will treat my body like it is holy,

But more importantly

I will treat my body like it is mine.

Boys who love Bukowski

Inspired by Ashe Vernon’s “Redefining the classics”

He invokes Kerouac and it hits me like a falling rock.

His poem is all heavy handed metaphors and dulled cliches

And it leaves blunt force trauma in its wake.

If my poems are lipstick stains

Smeared, imperfect and gone after a good drink

Than his poems are a hickey

Bruised, painful, and not much fun after the initial rush.

Hickeys are an archaic mark of ownership:

This neck is mine

I have held this jugular tenderly in my powerful jaws

And through my mercy I have spared it.

His mercy is a frozen rain in March.

He tells me it will bring flowers but on the days I need the sunlight most

There is only cold wet ground and dead grass.

He tells me I speak too much in absolutes

But moderation is easy for him.

He has never been cornered against a wall, spitting and clawing for breath.

He is holding the torch,

Not cowering away from the flame, hiding in the bushes.

When survival is the single objective

Everything is in absolutes.

He likes my wildfire but in bite sized pieces.

Pieces he can season with his heavy handed chauvinism

And fit neatly into his poetry.

I am an experience to him.

Look, in this poem I am wowed by the beauty of a dear

Watch closely in this next poem as I tame the wild woman

And in this poem I examine the splendor of the grand canyon.

Does he remember that little fires spread?

If I am wildfire than I will spread up the curtains, and lick the walls

If I am wildfire than I will touch the open sky.

If I’m wildfire then I’m going to die as soon as I run out of things to burn

Might as well take him down with me.

He’ll probably dismiss this as another absolute

But

If he writes another god-damn poem about Kerouac

I’m going the burn this whole place to the ground.

Darkness as good

I wanted to play with darkness as goodness. Usually dark is bad and light is good. There's probably a lot to be said about the way this is inherently rooted in racism but that seems like a different post. That said, it came out kind of spooky anyway because I've been reading a lot of Gunnerkrigg Court which is sort of spooky in a lovable way. 

Imagine a mirror. Its face is dark. Ripples spread out across its surface in dark velvety waves. There is no light in the mirror but rather a pulsing, comforting, fertile sort of darkness. The type of darkness a seed could take root in.

Or an empty dance hall, if that works better. Hardwood floors reflecting moonlight and tall arching windows bouncing the last echoes of a tune long forgotten. Imagine the tall shadows stretched into the corners, keeping the lonely ceiling company.

Imagine a deck of tarot cards, edges fuzzy and well worn. They sit against one another, close but comfortable. The space between the cards simultaneously imperceptible and vast. The design on the back of the cards is familiar but unknowable, like a familiar face in a foreign country.

Think about tree branches at the end of winter. Imagine the leaves curled up in tiny buds. Imagine waiting in darkness, protected and nourished. Imagine.

Snippets

Hello (possibly nonexistent) readers! Long time no post. I've been busy with the usual. Work, sex, fighting the systems of oppression and eating good food. So here are some snippets from the void of when I was gone.


What is a sense of place? What is queerness? Where do I belong in my own queerness? What is my my femininity and how does it interact with my queerness and where do I belong?


Who lives in the hole in your sternum? The holes in a violin?


Passive misogyny: Reinforcing the patriarchy through micro-agressions since the agricultural revolution.


The following poem is made mostly out of paraphrased lines from other poems. Please don't sue me. None of this work is original, but really no work is original so still please don't sue me.

Pomegranate:
And don't you dare make a victim out of Persephone
Pomegranate:

Set fire to this fruit; one succulent bead at a time

Pomegranate:

Beautiful, not like a model but beautiful like a wildfire

Pomegranate:

Gay, not as in happy but queer as in fuck you.

Pomegranate:

And nothing has ever felt so sweet as undressing her softness, plucking the wings from his shoulders one feather at a time.

Pomegranate:

And she still looks like religion in high heels

Pomegranate:

And give me your tired, your poor, your huddles masses yearning to be free

Pomegranate:

And forgive me, for sir, I ham a very bad hand at righting

Pomegranate:

And so, the spear Danes, in days gone by

Pomegranate:
My vegetable love could grow, vaster than empires and more slow
Pomegranate:

I think of queerness as a spirit that haunts me

Pomegranate:

Girls like me were made for the rain

Pomegranate:

Maybe there were fireworks when I met you but I didn't notice because you were the brightest thing in the room

Pomegranate:

She had the face that launched a thousand ships

Pomegranate:

And baby, we're going down swinging

"I went to kill the king but wound up kissing him instead." -- Ashe Vernon

I went to kill the dragon and save the princess but wound up saving the princess and killing the dragon.

I went to kill the king and I did.

I went to kill the king and did and then married the queen and then I found out I was the prince and cut out my own eyes.

I went to marry the princess but wound up kissing the king instead.

I went to kill the king but wound up finding myself instead.

I went to wake the princess but wound up falling asleep instead.

To hold wildfire in your palms:

Which is a particularly convenient metaphor for how she feels:

Pain, beauty, destruction, heat so hot it makes the air shimmer around her, and light to keep the monsters away.

The problem with the fire is that it's hard to fit all of her into a single flame

She is duality: The sizzling heat of flame and the comfortable warmth of her living flesh

Femme as Weapon

I see you there in the corner, sharpening your lipstick on a whetstone.

Yes, you.

I see you building your 'lipstick and work boots' aesthetic like a brand.

When they held up a skirt and called it 'flimsy'

I saw you sew on the rivet reinforced pocket.

I know that when the see your femme they think weak

I know that to you femme means strong.

You find support in the stilettos of a red heel,

Reclaim your eyelids with gold glitter

Smelt that shade of fuchsia into a color so bright it'll burn the inside of your eyelids.

And secure the whole effect with countless bobby pins.

I see you reclaiming femme

Claim it for the queers, to prove that flannels aren't the only thing women who love women wear

Claim it for the tall women, the strong women, the loud women, the women who are told they take up too much space

Claim it for men, and anyone not a man or a woman.

You will fight for femme for yourself and then for everyone else and damned if you won't use razor-edged earrings as a shank if you have to.

I see you fitting femme over your head like a body conn dress

One size fits all and makes your ass look fabulous

Work boots and lipstick and carhartts and pink skirts with a poodle sewn on the rim

Dancing and farming and camping and knowing how to cook some bad ass challah bread

I see you under hashtags like 'gamergirlz' and 'fangirl' and 'basicbitch' learning how to use their language to define yourself on your own terms.

I see you claiming femme for yourself

So that every time anyone asks if you're dressed up for a man

You have a snappy comeback written in curlicues

So that every time someone tells you men don't like women in makeup 

You have a winged eyeliner glare sharp enough to draw blood

It's hard for them to understand that your femme isn't for anyone but you

You don't measure your value tallied on compliments and dates

At least, not on a good day.

So that your femme belongs to you and no one else.