Napowrimo day 9

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

Napowrimo day 7

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?

Napowrimo day 6

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.

Napowrimo day 5

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."

Napowrimo day 4

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.

Napowrimo day 3

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?

Napowrimo day 2

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.