some thoughts on spring. [new poem 4/8/18]

some thoughts on spring

sometimes, it can be hell

to live in a place

where the weather is always happy.

where everyone exclaims over

how glorious that sunset was.

and that one.

and that one.

and don't even get me started on the sunsets.

i mean, have you ever?!?

who knew you could grow bored

of technicolor miracles

in picture-perfect skies?

become so easily ungrateful

for the beauty you never quite earned?

it's just so gratuitous, this splendor.

where i come from,

people are generally quietly miserable

or loudly despondent.

did you see the rain today?

or the day before?

or the day before that?

don't even get me started on the weather reports.

i mean, can you even?!?

we walk around, umbrella-less,

and are surprised to be damp

every time.

it's so predictable, this seasonal misery.

but.

in exchange,

we know that sunlight costs us something.

spring stops the complaints rising in our throats.

cherry blossoms become their own form of praise.

crocuses are fragile hallelujahs

to the god we figured left us

when the rains came.

the land of the always sunny

is a gift, to be sure.

but a heavy one for a girl

used to being soaked in the mists of sorrow,

accompanied perpetually by grey skies.

but people can acclimate

to all kinds of weather.

which is only partially metaphor.

sometimes, though,

i'd swap all the bright clouds of Magritte

and the suns of Van Gogh

for one lone cherry tree

in spring,

right before the storms begin,

right after the complaints

died on our lips.

don't even get me started on the apple blossoms.

i mean, can you even?

New, heavy poems...

Untitled 1 - 6/2013
*****************
When I was little,
I developed a crush on the Illustrated Man.
My reasoning, such as it was,
centered on the fact that,
when we fell asleep together at night,
I would be surrounded by stories.
I was young enough to think that stories
were the most exciting nocturnal activities two people could get up.
Obviously, I know better now.

But it is also true that bedtime stories told on skin
are a wonder to behold.
Like how, when you wrap my sleep self in your arms,
a raven stares me in the face.
And the story of that raven
shows me you in new ways,
and knits into my skin, too.

Your stories are walking away soon
and some other person
will see ravens in their sleep
and wake to dandelion men.
I will try not to envy these invisible someones.
You came along when I needed a lifeline
and it will take time to absorb that,
instead,
your stories are signs
that point to the inevitability of bodies coming together
in a way that might last longer than tomorrow.
So thank you for that.

I think it is true that some people
leave a trail of broken hearts behind them.
But I think you are the opposite -
behind you is a trail of startled, awakened people,
grateful for your stories.

If you were anyone else,
embarking on a journey into the unknown,
I would tell you to be safe.
But you've got a skin filled with stories, son,
and an honest heart.
You're one of the lucky ones -
everywhere you go, you'll always have all that you need.

Your raven told me that before I fell asleep,
so you know it's true.


Untitled 2 - 6/2013
*****************
I don't know if you can see,
from where you are,
but my spine is a mountain range,
covered loosely with skin.
And every time I start missing you
so hard I lose my breath,
I stop
and breathe in mountains instead.
I think
"I am strong."
"I can endure."
"I am mountains."
"I am strong."
"I am mountains, mama."
"I will live."

And it helps.
Until it doesn't.
Until that day
where the range of my spine crumbles,
like yours did.
"I am weak, mama."
"My mountains are falling."
"I am weak, mama."
"I will die, mama.
Don't leave me alone."

Can you hear me from where you are?
Those angels have such noisy wings.
Human voices must seem like static
amongst all those hallelujahs.
So I will learn to climb
the crumbling mountains of my own spine
and create my own pulpit,
there where it all comes apart.
And I will speak truths I hope will reach you.
"I am weak, mama."
"I will live."
"I am mountains, mama."
"I will die."
"We all will die. You just got there first."
"I am mountains, mama."
"We are mountains, mama."

But you were mountains first.
You will still be mountains, mama,
long after my spine crumbles
and turns to dust.

New poem

I finally went to the Art Museum here. I don't know much about art but I know what I like, as far as that goes...

Chagall's Blues
++++++++++++++++++

tonight
as i lay down
i saw Chagall's blues
wash over me.
and i thought to myself
"we are all made of art."
even you,
who first taught me
how to see.

everywhere you touched me
were streaks of color.
red, when you were happy.
and a terrible and condemning beige,
when you were not.
and, at night.
we swam together
in a room the color of Chagall.

for over half a decade,
these colors have been on my skin.
what do you do
when you realize you are somebody else's masterpiece?

today, i saw that
i am a different color inside
and i got back a bit of that canvas
which was always mine to begin with.

i loved the portrait we made
in our time.
Stark, bold, vivid -
like Lautrec's whores.

but, in my old age,
i've gone Monet-soft
with Van Gogh's blurred edges.
it would probably seem to you derivative,
uninventive, even.
but it's inhabitable
and easy for the amateur to understand.
and it's solely my own.

tonight,
with Chagall's windows rising slowly
out of my chest,
i can see it all so clear.
we're the same, you see,
these windows and i.
we both let in
a different kind of light.

a new, too-honest poem

"an apology to some chicago youth from a white girl who should know better"
(February 25, 2012)

tonight, i looked up and saw
an actual crescent and star sky.
i started thinking of you, all of you.
i started imagining that black men can fucking fly
up, over the skyscrapers and this city's hideous teeth.
i saw you in that sky, filled with Allah's sign.

there is so much they don't teach us
in do-gooder school.
so much that only you have taught me.
you.
wards of the state.
that's the true word.
wards.
prisoners.

you are inmates of this city.
someone shuffles you along
into abuse after abuse
until you count
fucked-up foster homes
like birthdays.
and your tiny checks are given out
by unkindness personified.
and no one asks you
about the last book you read
or your cousin who got shot.

we owe you so many apologies.
we owe you so much more.

i am sorry that,
behind everyone's eyes,
you can see that
there is no hope
for you here.

i am sorry i thought i could hide
being a nerdy white girl
from the wrong side of the west coast
who has never seen shit like this before.

i am sorry for all of my terrible dance moves

there are few,
if any,
ways to let you know
that these apologies come from a sorer place
than guilt.
guilt i know.
it is the minuscule price i pay,
along with a few words i don't use
and a few places i don't belong,
to try to understand this broken world.

the rent you have been asked to pay
has been far higher
since the day you were born,
since this broken world's axis
tips so wildly towards
things that look like me.

you are disappearing so fast these days.
we have failed
to snatch you from the jaws
of these lock-down, white-washed
monsters.

we twist your words and actions
in the worst possible way.

i hear her on the phone say you "deserve it."
say "crazy."
say "locked up."
and then hand you your food stamps
and ask you to say "thank you."
we fear you
and demand your respect.
exactly like the prisons
they think you are aimed for.

i want to tell them what they don't see,
the words they haven't heard,
the things you know about us
and our terrible lies
but are too polite
or afraid
to say.
but i cling tight
to the bullshit boundaries of this job,
too afraid to say how much you are teaching me,
without meaning to,
without being asked.

two months from now,
we will fade from each other.
i will be just another white girl
who left.
and people will gather around me
and tell me how much good i've done.
i will be tempted to believe them.

but then, when i think of you,
i will remember the truest thing i learned:
given space and leverage enough,
black men can fucking fly.
we just need to get our
white hands
off of them.

i will never tell you this.
but somebody should.

two new poems...

it's nice to get the muse back, even a little...

babel and bare hands
-11/10/11-

there were some beautiful moments
at that ol' Tower of Babel...
but it was always going to fall.
and since then,
we've been separated by words
and a thin veneer of failure.


and i need you to tell me
that fallen things can be rebuilt
and constructed things can be torn down
with eager, bare hands.
but you don't exist to me.
not yet.

when we meet,
in the wreckage of that idolatrous tower,
i will know you
by your eager, bare hands
and you will know me
by my words.

the Revolution is a terrible place
to look for love.
because why would you love a woman
when the Revolution's coming?

why am i looking for you
in my weakness
when my strength awaits me
outside this modern-day Babylon?

i think it's because scattered tribes
always count their dead
on the one hand
and their missing
on the other.

we know where our dead are.
it's the missing who make us wander.
i have gone far in search of you
and your eager, bare hands.
the Revolution is coming, love.
we have things to build.

***********************************

poor Icarus
-11/16/11-

our mothers always told us
not to look directly at the sun.
our fathers always lit fires for us
so the flames wouldn't lick our fingers.
but it is parents, not children,
who are hurt most by incendiary heat.

Poor Icarus!
his story and sad, broken wings
spawned a thousand parental nightmares.
what if our children fall?
what if they follow us to the sun
but we've given them
the wrong coordinates?

there are so many things in this world
that may kill them
and so few things
that may save them.

but the children remain unaware
of this unspoken anxiety on their behalf.
they continue to throw themselves down rabbit holes,
step nimbly over landmines,
kiss the wrong people,
make all the wrong choices,
some of them twice.

fire does not phase them.
it is their nature
to dance this closely
to the edge of the sun.
they will never know
how close they came to burning.

new poem

oh, innocent, broken things!
-by me
*******************************
Water sprayed everywhere when I saw her,
the tiny, fragile baby bird
fallen out of some anonymous tree,
no feathers to break falls,
barely even eyes opened.

her beak opened and closed needlessly,
crying for help that would never come.
what kind of mother does not drop anything
to find her fallen child?
surely that is nature, not nurture,
at its finest.

a feeling arose in me as i realized my utter futility
to be savior for this innocent, broken thing.
and all those feelings i'd been playing hide-and-seek with for years
returned.
we will die.
and it will always be worse for those who die last
and are forced to watch the death of innocent, broken things
with impotence, futility, and many tears.
it was the same with you.
it will always feel the same with you.

the dying baby bird, with her tender, veiny skin and broken wings,
has the better part of the deal.
of the two of us,
only i will remember this moment
past tonight.

Guantanamo Poem

I was reading, and remembering, the men of Guantanamo and their amazing poetry and was prompted to write this.

The Fear and the Poets
----------------------

As poets we are dangerous people,
living in a land that views all truth as metaphor
and all our griefs as codes
for destruction from the inside,

so that when you say
"i miss my mother"
we assume the bombs will go off
any second.

and when you say
"the tyrants are corrupted with power"
we point our finger back at you
and your strange metaphorical tongue.

and when you say
"they have beaten, are beating, will beat me"
we look around, and scratch our heads,
and wonder at your strange choice of words.
we can't allow that it's true.
we aren't those kinds of people.

but we are.
and we are afraid of more than just metaphors.
we're afraid that our unshakeable faith
in life and in liberty
will come tumbling down
with the poetic quakes
sent from Guantanamo
from Bagram
from Chicago
from the font of our own imagination.

yesterday, a man laughed
in a courtroom
when confronted
by all that he had done.
his unshakeable faith in his own righteousness
is not metaphor.
nor was the question posed to him,
("why did you do this to me? you were supposed to be the law")
a metaphor. or a joke.
but he laughed, all the same.

in the end,
it is not words we should fear.
it is our unshakeable faith
in things that, in the end,
are just terrible metaphors
written by people afraid of poetry.

3 poems from the border...

i'm a little more raw than expected and not able to completely explain my experience yet. but i did have 3 spoken word pieces that came out of my time in Arizona and I thought I'd share 2 of them.
*******************
-hands full of baptism-

the only radio stations you get
this deep in the desert
play Christian & ranchera music, respectively.
floating through the airwaves are stories of redemption
grace,
& love,
both heavenly & earthly.
but only half of them make any sense to me.

sleeping in a desert that's always moving,
yet always quiet,
i only understand half the stories anyways.
the barriers here are unintelligible.
this great nation has woven intricate borders
between us
made of language & idealogy & money & hate
& sealed with barbed wire & promises.
it catches at your heart & keeps you stuck,
like some man-made desert plant
that needs ugly soil to grow.

give me the honest desert,
the space between borders,
where time slips away
& you're not entirely sure
who you are
or
where you've come from.
i want to leave
the land of beer & honey
for a space
where water baptizes survivors & victims alike
& where we remember our dead
in places as everlasting as mountains,
& just as beautiful.

let us not run from the harshness.
let us bleach our souls in the desert sun
until our ragged hearts are clean.
let us walk without stopping
into a land which doesn't belong to us alone
but which contains our ancestors
our friends
our enemies
our future,
a land where the sun beats down
on the just & unjust.
let us step out of the shadows
with dirty faces,
bleached hearts,
& hands full of baptism.

stepping out into the harsh light of truth,
we look like a busted-up army of seekers.
nobody knows we've got a map on our body
that says where we are & where we're headed together.
all we have to do is face the rising sun
to find our brothers & sisters
& ignore every border we see.
from there, we will tell our stories into the air,
until they form a song all their own,
more beautiful than any airwaves could capture,
& more lasting.

**************************
-what i can say when i don't speak your language-

here's a list of things i can say in Spanish:
heart,
love,
water,
revolution,
mercy,
left,
right,
eat,
be,
table,
i'm sorry,
ice cream,
police.

compared to the way words trip off my tongue,
these confines are immense
& reduce me to child-like sentences
& chaplin-esque hand gestures.

but when i look again,
i can say a lot
of what i to tell you,
stuck as you are,
between your world & mine.
i can say:
"i'm sorry."
"your heart is right where you left it."
"feed your revolution with love & food & mercy & water
& leave everything else to la migra.
they're bound to take it anyways."

looking at it that way,
it's all the vocabulary i'll ever need.

electronic kairos

tonight i was trying to prepare something for the Kairos reflection tonight. while it ultimately devolved into a much more enjoyable night of feeding friends and chatting, i was glad for the time to reflect on the intersection of "ordinary" time and storytelling. it's been coalescing in my mind, as we head into Ordinary Time, that within all the work we do and the issues we address, story can sometimes get lost under fact and hyperbole and official excuses.

for example, i have been thinking, as i am sure many have, about the situation in Gaza. not only was there the needless deaths of those trying to get into Gaza with humanitarian aid, but there have been reported air raids into Gaza as well. All of these things are massively horrifying, but i found myself most moved and saddened and convicted by the first-person stories of what happened on the Freedom Flotilla. The first-person stories of what it was like on the boat contained some incredibly touching moments. It can be found here. those stories, while not eclipsing the broad picture of facts and strategies and solutions, throw into high relief the real cost of doing nothing. these people, with names and faces and a story to tell, narrowly avoided losing their lives. others didn't. thinking of these people - the ones who lived and the ones who died - moves me more than facts. i feel like that must be true for more than me.

in planning for the night, i found this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, which also helped me realize the beautiful power of story and the ordinary, even in the face of violence and oppression.

The Words Under the Words
(for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem)
-Naomi Shihab Nye

My grandmother's hands recognize grapes,
the damp shine of a goat's new skin.
When I was sick they followed me,
I woke from the long fever to find them
covering my head like cool prayers.

My grandmother's days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,
lost to America. More often, tourists,
who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.
She knows how often mail arrives,
how rarely there is a letter.
When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,
listening to it read again and again
in the dim evening light.

My grandmother's voice says nothing can surprise her.
Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.
She knows the spaces we travel through,
the messages we cannot send-our voices are short
and would get lost on the journey.
Farewell to the husband's coat,
the ones she had loved and nourished,
who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.
They will plant themselves. We will all die.

My grandmother's eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.
When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,
when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,
He is her first thought, what she really thinks of His name.
"Answer, if you hear the words under the words -
otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,
difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones."

In this "ordinary" time, I'm committing to finding the story in the ordinary. This Sunday, we'll here again the very extraordinary way that our Savior performs the ordinary act of feeding people. There was a story there, but there's a story every time we feed people who need it. There are stories in the ordinary work we do. i want to commit to finding those stories, collecting them, and bringing them as presents to the One Who Writes Our Stories.

scrap-of-paper poem

[found part of this written on a teeny piece of paper in my purse today. i love when i keep things around.]

sometimes i think i'm in love,
but it's really just the blues,
sudden and explained.

i get thrown off-kilter
and everything looks beautiful
and loveable,
just because i think i'm not.

those blues
bleed into melancholy
and i could keep myself down
for days on end.

it's so much easier to think
that you've caused it,
that my heartache comes from
somewhere other than
this swollen, beating thing
in between my own ribs.

i'd pick love
over the blues
any day.
but sometimes,
a girl
just doesn't get to choose.

an oregon poem

-gorges-
-4/23/10-

as i laid down,
head cradled in hands,
your peaks and valleys
washed over me.
mountains beyond mountains
crowded in
behind my eyes
and i missed you
with all the longing
your native sons and daughters
might have felt.
but that is their story,
not mine,
and it has many more tears and
grief
than this one.

regardless, we share those mountains
and those riverbeds.
their heart's land
is my heartland, too.

i remember standing,
arms outstretched,
on the top of a mountain,
with my feet planted firmly in snow
and my head lifted up to
the bright May sky.
i could search this world over,
and not find a better way of explaining
what roots me
and makes me grow.

there are no mountains here,
and, somehow,
it's beautiful anyways.
i don't want you to think i'm ungrateful.
but my children will not be flatlanders,
and my ancestors won't be gone from that place
for good.
i've only taken them with me here,
so i can bring them back again.

fasting day #1 poetry reflection

i like the idea of finding poems that speak to me and posting them as reflections...here are two (one by me and one by someone better!)

gift
-by leonard cohen-

You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
"This is not silence
this is another poem"
and you would hand it back to me.

**************************************************

everyone's hungry for something...
-by me-
this talk about your struggles got me thinking about the math of our lives.
if you subtract alcohol or love or sweetness,
what do you add to even the score?
because everybody's hungry for something
& the scales have to balance somehow.

when i gave up writing, i got religion
& it worked out so perfectly
that the two became almost mutually exclusive-
i could have words
or i could have the Eternal Word.
but not both.
never both.

this is what fascinates me about people
but it doesn't make for polite conversation.
most people want to tell you their successes
or assumptions about current weather patterns.
they don't want some stranger to wander up and say
"excuse me.
i was wondering if you could tell me
about everything you've lost
& what crazy things you've done
to try to make balance where there is none."
Judging by all the blank stares,
this must not be part of
How to Win Friends and Influence People.

but i don't care,
because i find it truly amazing-
what we're capable of
when we struggle like hell to survive.

& because the only balance i can find
between writing and God
is making my little, busted up corner of the world
a prayer.
one that begins
"O God of the eternal equation,
help the alcoholics
& the swaggerers
& the hobos
& the haters
& the lovers
& everyone who hasn't found you yet.
help us find the sum of our parts,
and help us exceed it, even briefly.
help us all find words for you,
the Eternal Word.
Amen"

in preparation for longer days ahead...

i stumbled onto this poem on a site i love (wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com - check it out!) and it moved me like few poems i've read recently. i'm not familiar with the author but am now moved to check out more from him...

**********************
THE WORD
-- Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

*(image taken at the hostel where we stayed in Haifa, Israel - September 2008)

a very belated semi-valentine's day poem

i wrote this right before valentine's and prevaricated about posting it. reflecting on relationships, and how i am in them, involves two sets of feelings. but, with some objective reflection from others, i decided that this poem is much more about me than about others, so i've decided to post it. also, because i might be a little proud of it...

"just biology"
2.13.10

outside our window
grew one of those epic, all-consuming trees,
casting shadows on our faces.

it was so much a part of our romantic landscape,
that it was easy to think that it grew
by virtue of our laughter,
the tears we shed,
and our long midnight sighs.

it was so easy to imagine that its photosynthesis ran,
somehow,
off the light of our love.

so, imagine my surprise when,
after so many tree-filled days, we split.
but the tree didn't die.
there were no cracks in the heartwood
to remember us by.

after all, trees know a little more than we do
about weathering storms
and surviving the seasons.
that's not a metaphor.
that's just biology.

and i'm glad that tree lives,
now impersonal
and a part of someone else's story-
lit by someone else's love,
surviving someone else's regret.

and we lived too,
even when i thought we wouldn't.
hearts kept beating.
feet kept moving.
mine led me half-way across the country,
to almost make the same mistakes again.

it must be how i'm wired -
loving comes just a little bit harder,
filled with a little more doubt
than seems necessary.
but, some people get good, easy hearts,
and some people get challenging hearts.
it all depends what you're born into
and what you survive.
that's not a metaphor.
that's just biology.

grappling with jealousy...

i have everything the world could give a girl to make her happy but, every once in awhile, without meaning to, i get jealous. i get jealous of people with children, people with lovers, people without dead parents, people with actual self-esteem. and i can usually pray my way out, before i become too crazy. but when i can't - when all my coping mechanisms fail - i go back to this poem and, while it's not optimistic, it's brutally honest about this crazy, jealous condition...

September
By Jennifer Michael Hecht

Tonight there must be people who are getting what they want.
I let my oars fall into the water.
Good for them. Good for them, getting what they want.

The night is so still that I forget to breathe.
The dark air is getting colder. Birds are leaving.

Tonight there are people getting just what they need.

The air is so still that it seems to stop my heart.
I remember you in a black and white photograph
taken this time of some year. You were leaning against
a half-shed tree, standing in the leaves the tree had lost.

When I finally exhale it takes forever to be over.

Tonight, there are people who are so happy,
that they have forgotten to worry about tomorrow.

Somewhere, people have entirely forgotten about tomorrow.
My hand trails in the water.
I should not have dropped those oars. Such a soft wind.

January 25th, 1954

Tomorrow, my mother would have been 56. When she was alive, her birthday was spent as a brief pause in January and I always struggled with what to give her. I always found her difficult to shop for, and it was, honestly, usually a last-minute affair. Tonight, I prayed that, if it was possible, I could have all her birthdays to do over, to do right, to give her even a little of the love and care that she gave us. So I can be sure that she knew how much we loved her.

Since I can't do that, I figured for her birthday this year, I would give her two poems I wrote while she was alive but dying. I never read them to her and wouldn't have ever been brave enough to do so. But it seems like the thing to do. Happy early birthday, mama...

the final depot

In the end, it's just an ending,
it's just the end of a really beautiful tunnel
and the pulling up of all the inevitable train tracks.
there will be no detours, no stops between here and that great light.

There will be only one passenger left, and in her luggage she will have only love,
and pictures of children who have grown up wild. And it will be alternately too much and not enough
for where this train ride ends.

And we will stand, waving, on the platform until she can no longer be seen.
And we will continue to wave,
even after that, in case she can feel our hands from where she is.

And we will go home with the knowledge of a train, and a passenger, and the intractable pain that a one-way ticket causes. And we will carry engine whistles with us wherever we go.


******

a prayer for one heavenly and one earthly parent

to have been made, not a mistake and not a miracle, but some perfectly balanced in-between state - it's a constantly broken marvel, like some sort of carnival in a town that's sick of magic.

how could it have happened and so fast, this feeling that living is just the cracks of one broken heart and that love is just similar scarring between us?

i just want to focus on you before your gone. i want to love you like you're meant to be loved. i want to love you like you've loved us all along.

but loving those that are leaving feels both perpetual and inconstant. i will always be loving you, and from this point forward, you will always be leaving. even after your gone, i will remember the leaving more than anytime you were here.

i asked you one day, before any of this, what's it like to be one parent short? what's it like to live with a little less love than before? and your answer shows me now what i have to look forward to. it hurt like hell at first, you said. every day was raw and some were just unbelievable marathons of pain - christmas, his birthday, their anniversary. and then, some day long afterwards, it hurt just a little bit less. and then it became easier to remember his face, the way he danced with my mother, the way that he kept things together, and not just focus on the day it all came apart, the day we ceased to be a constellation and became just a set of stars apart. well, you didn't say that exactly. stars are really my father's thing, not yours. but it sounded something like that.

and i am trying to prepare for that day that our constellation will come apart, mother. i am trying to be a very good star. but the process of shining with grief is difficult and painful. and i focus more on my brokenness than anything else these days. it's not your fault - sickness (yours or mine) seems to exacerbate my inborn weaknesses and break me into big shards and little pieces, and it makes a mess that cannot be put together. i want to ask you to forgive it all - forgive my absence and my frustration, and most of all, my brokenness. that's the part that's so difficult to solve and so painful to live through.

forgive me, mother, my brokenness in sight of your brokenness. and Father, help me remember that this brokenness is not the sum of all my parts.
Amen.

what i was doing when i learned my friends got arrested...

...which may be why my friends are so much more productive as activists than i am...

************************************************
Don't Pretend This Is an Allegory for Life
11/30/09

sitting at the back of the train
reduces the whole world
to light & sound.
everything is garish,
collision seems imminent,
& the only things you can see
are the places you've already been.

but the tracks are all well-marked
so you know just how to navigate yourself
around destruction...
or into it.
which helps, i guess.

and you get to catch people off-guard,
& see what they look like
coming & going
from places they love
or can't stand

screaming past the backends of houses
is a reel-to-reel of vignettes
of other people's lives
in 2 second increments.
it's a lot of tvs
& crying
& odd taste in furniture.
sometimes there's a kiss
that no one was supposed to see.

and after you've watched
miles of strangers flash by,
you're the last person to know
that you've arrived safely
at your final destination.

the imminent collision
must just have passed you by.

happy. sad. happy. sad

two new poems, written on the train. God bless long commutes...

windowpane faces
11/4/09

in the middle of the stairstepping rooftops,
and the crystalline brilliance
of a frigid, sunny day,
the light of God shines
with fierceness of all the love
in all the worlds
we've ever created for each other.

the light lets us know that
we shouldn't fool ourselves -
God already knows we're all
see-through bones
& windowpanes faces.

but love makes us solid
& loss makes us crack, so,
without this fierce sun,
we look like
neglected waterglasses
and busted-up vases.
But in this irrationally radiant light,
we shine
like infinitely valuable things,
like shards
reflecting The Greater Glory.

we shine
like we've got nothing better to do.
and we don't.
********************************************

oh, broken world
11/6/09

oh, broken world,
i walked your streets today
to the beat of plastic jug rhythms
& impatient feet
and i wanted to ask you
how did that beautiful man
learn to sing & lean on anyone,
when the night is so dark?

and do i say to my brother
who's yelling and crying
because his world doesn't add up to ours completely?
who's supposed to help him understand?
who's supposed to help us listen?

oh, broken world,
how can we possibly be the ones they're waiting for?
how can we put one foot in front of the other,
when we know we'll have to step over heartache
whichever way we go?

oh, broken world,
i'm tired & frightened of everything i've seen
& i wish it wasn't too late
for you to pick someone else -
someone faster,
someone braver,
some less-broken saint
instead of this scared little girl

oh, broken world,
you've wounded my brothers
& strangled my sisters
& everything tells me to run,
except that small voice that says
"everything you love can be saved"
and, oh, broken world,
i love you...

we, the revolution...

so, even though i just finished chatting with jerica about the ways that blogging is sometimes so closely tied to self-aggrandizement, i felt called (after a particularly challenging catholic worker roundtable) to pull up the poem i wrote of which i am most proud.

i wrote this in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, at a time when i was much more active in the peace movement. in the intervening years, that energy, necessarily, moved towards more diverse activities, including taking care of my momma as her life was ending.

i'm proud of the things i did and thought when i was 23, and i'm not entirely comfortable with things and energies i've given up on now. but i know i'm more peaceful in my inner life than i ever was in my 20's and more capable of relationships with people unlike me, which feels important, too.

so, anyways, i wanted to remind myself (as i am SO self-aggrandizing that i blog to myself) about how i used to view the world and my place in it...
**************************************
Last Night I Joined the Revolution
2003(?)

Last night i joined the revolution.
I was sitting, smoking, wasting my time.
I was thinking about groceries, books I wanted to read but had not found time to, & the million other deaths we die daily in this quest to maintain the status quo. I was not thinking about the world. I was not thinking about the revolution. Somewhere along the line, I bought into some sort of hippie American dream that offered me organic cigarettes & cruelty-free everything, but still made me complacent and dull. See, I figured the Revolution would move on, that I would find some new distraction, that i would grow old & bitter because the thing I love left. But the Revolution waits - the Revolution needs soldiers armed with words & i have always been a good fighter. But, more importantly, the Revolution waits because it loves me. It's nothing personal - the Revolution loves everyone. So I sat there, thinking crippling, petty thoughts when the Revolution sat down next to me and stole my lighter.

The Revolution lit up and, breathing deeply, told the story of my life. The Revolution said, "You know, it's not about the poetry or the punks or the politicians or the ones who walk away, or the ones who come back. You know, this is bigger than you, bigger than matching children, matching houses, matching frustrations." "I know," I said. "Then, what's it about?" I started crying cuz I used to know - I used to live it. But I couldn't remember anymore. "It's about love," the Revolution said. Don't worry - the Revolution's not going soft. The Revolution still aches to kill indifference. The Revolution still throws rocks at glass ceilings. The Revolution still marches through the streets. The Revolution still hates abuse, cruelty, misused power & the smell of napalm at any hour of the day. The Revolution hates that the children are not loved & that all of us, most of the time, are not even respected. But the Revolution hates these things mainly - no, only- because they are not love.

The Revolution will not be televised. The Revolution will spend that time in a bar drinking with a man who just spent his last dime & his last wish on a bottle of Jack. The Revolution will leave, along with a huge tip, a note to that man. The note says, "I know your story - I see how it ends. Don't give up - we need you. And you are never, ever alone."

The Revolution will not interrupt the latest musical subjugations & slavery on sellout FM to spin pretty little lies over jagged teeth. The Revolution will topple radio towers. The Revolution will use its voice & the tallest mountain it can find & scream truths until its throat is dry and it cannot stand anymore.

The Revolution does not read the New York Times or the Washington Post, although sometimes the Revolution will flip through the Weekly World News because the Revolution secretly wants to take BatBoy home. The Revolution recognizes that headlines are really the same lines we already know except bigger, with pictures.

The Revolution understands that we know truth when we find it, but the world makes us doubt what we believe. The Revolution wants us to believe again. The Revolution wants us to believe that change tips the scales of existence to favor those who want to LIVE. The Revolution wants us to believe that what you say makes a difference, especially when you only say it to yourself. The Revolution wants us to know that true leaders are not the ones with the biggest bank accounts, penises, or thirst for glory, but the ones with the biggest souls, because only they will have the tools to save the souls of others. The Revolution wants us to believe that the fires of justice burn in everyone, no matter how hard you try to hide them in the gritty, every-day-city streets.

The Revolution wants to be fuel for your fire. The Revolution wants to buy you coffee & talk about the world. The Revolution makes people smile who have not done so in years. The Revolution always hands out spare change & cigarettes because Malcolm X said you never know when a drunk man may need food.

The Revolution is waiting for you. Because the Revolution got sick of turning around & seeing the identical goosestepping marchers of progress turn its cities & its soldiers into the next big thing when all they wanted was to be the same old thing they were before. The Revolution waits on you because the Revolution knows how scary it is to realize that there is nothing you cannot do. But the Revolution knows that the fear passes & is replaced by an urgency to salvage anything you can for the struggle that's coming. You will find yourself gathering words like stones & sticks, to hurl at Goliath, with his striped suits and white lies.

The Revolution knows what you don't. The Revolution knows that we are David & if you could see this eternal battle spread out, you would see that we always win. There could be no other way. The Revolution will wait for you & when the Revolution comes, you will never be alone again.

another "L" Train poem

untitled
9/21/09

if you judged all of life
by the subway,
it would seem like an exhausting affair,
with row after row
of sleeping passengers in transit.

and it's true-
life can be such a tiring pursuit.
but the awakened ones,
those who fight their drowsy impulses,
see the grey skies and graffiti
and draw meaning from them -
meaning which allows them
to ride the rails,
connected to the lives around them
with tenuous strings

and to see a world
within, but beyond, this one.
a world where
even the sleeping ones
arrive on time.
they just miss the story of the journey
that makes the destination worth it.