Where I'm From

I want to be Free

I don't know what I'm doing

And I barely know who I am

But I'm tired of being censored

By every woman and man

I'm tired of hearing outcry

And alarm from "my clan"

I want to be praised

Want to be someone worthy.

The chastising scowl

Accompanied by a single oft repeated phrase

"That's no language for a lady".

But really who decided that's the goal?

Or that a "lady" has to speak a certain way?

Why is my voicing my opinions or cutting my hair, or saying damn

An act of rebellion? Of feminism? Of being on the lam?

I'm not running from the law of government but the law of the land

I'm fleeing the fences that surround me

Expectations that choke and bind

I'm running for salvation not knowing what I'll find

Hoping I find redemption and a clue into myself

That someone has a plan to take me off the shelf

I'm no porcelain doll, I'm strong I know at least I could be with time and a gentle hand

But maybe that hand is mine, maybe the plan is mine, maybe the time is mine

I've made a decision

I want to be free

I want to be healthy

I want to be me

Airports

There’s something romantic about airports

I don't mean romantic in the way of falling in love but in the way of how its an in between hub

airports are a stop from dream to reality

from sadness to joy

from missing to hugging

from chance to certainty

And as I sit in this airport, the day after the longest night I can’t help but wish I could sit in this moment forever 

This moment of chance, this moment of opportunity

I COULD get on the flight that I booked ahead of time and go to my planned destination

I COULD continue on with my life completely unchanged waltzing from plan to plan as some fall apart and some fall into place

Or I could not

I could follow my feet where they want to go

Pick a random gate, buy a ticket at the desk and board a plane to destinations unknown

See what I can make of life in this new place

If I wanted, the option is there for me to start completely over in a new place with a new name and a new purpose

Who would I be if I chose that? Would I still be me? Would a new name and a new place and a new job change me so completely that even those closest to this current version of the person I am wouldn’t recognize me?

Or would I surface the same? Would I have the same insecurities and personality? Would my music taste change or my the way I liked to dress? Or would I be even more me? Like a less watered down version of the me that I am currently?

The Not Yet Now

The future past flashes forward in my head, I see blue eyes and long shaggy hair in my periphery with a warm hand on my waist the strength of the hand matching the strength of the musk on the hoodie that protects my wet swimsuit skin from the evening chill. 

We’ve spent all day together and a warm feeling enters my heart and my vision blurs as I come back to reality after seeing one of my fondest memories before it happens. The trees in the rove I lay in whisper “Lover you’ve returned to us” the river refers to me as daughter, the waterfall beckons “Child, come kiss your grandfather” while the wild mountain bid me fall into its warm motherly embrace. 

I am the child of the wilds raised as a meek human and thought to be of angelic broods

Stars

And as she sailed across the plain,

The men awestruck stared at her wake.

The beauty of her grace so sweet,

Forever gone from his embrace.

The king so sad, destroyed was he,

Her life was once his great escape.

The prince distraught, his mother gone

He’d miss her touch tender yet strong.

The star she was shined brightly through.

The years she spent on earth now done.

The blessings of her days endure

While she ascends to take her place

Her place among the stars awaits.

we invented and perfected the idiosyncrasies of the odd art, we are odd and we are not 

but are the vibrant dread, a constant antithesis of all we should be, we are alive truly yet floaters in a world we did not design and we deign to love 

the universe of our creation we are forced out of by the necessities of those who have and always will persecute that which they know not of and all are naught to understand 

To He Who I Once Loved

I promised you something, laying on a curb in a tiny town, bits of broken asphalt digging into my back 

I made a vow under the stars holding your sweaty hand in mine 

I cleaved my heart to yours through a conversation to rival those had by ancient philosophers looking up at the same moon we beheld on that fateful night 

I promised to hold you in my soul even as my body got used to being held by your hands, large and unsure aginst my waist feeling like maybe we were too young to truly love 

I remember that night the snell of the freshly cut grass of the suburbuan maze we wandered deep into the night 

Do you remembeer the years to follow? Telling me I was special but treating me like normal 

Do you remeber breaking my heart? 

I kept my promise but not in the way you may think, I still think of you, the reminder of what we were still makes me cry and I still pray for you I pray for who you may have been and who we could have become but 

my dedication to those promises has been fading even as the skin you touched sloughs off my body in sheets of replacing cells 

Maybe by the time all of it is gone I will be ready to break my promise 

I dreamt of a Man

I dreamt of a man, with long black hair, curling and twisting like laughter down his back 

I dreamt of a man with bright blue eyes, sparkling and winking and closing at my touch 

I dreamt of a man with long thin hands, strong, graceful and grasping against my skin 

I dreamt of a man taller than I, with head thrown back and face raised high 

I dreamt of a kiss, tender and sweet 

I dreamt of a million kisses all meant for me 

I dreamt of a Man who one day, could belong 

A speech spoken over the body of an enemy

There are things they don't tell you when you are a young bright rebel,

With the taste of wrath in your mouth, a rally cry in your ears, and a mission in your heart.

They didn't warn you of how blood bounces on snow when you are chomping at the bit for action against inaction.

They're stories of glory, not of sweat evaporating before it leaves your skin, never of the smell of blood in a forest cooling on the damp ground. Or the look of an empty battlefield.

But there are good things.

The satisfaction of a job well done, the knowledge that you're saving lives and times, like now, when one finally beheads one of the true evils.

The rush of relief in knowing that the broken bloody mass at your feet will never again cause pain like he once had and that his last moments were ones of misery, misery that you meted out as recompense for his crimes.

They send you out with a sword and a promise that your anger can be used for good and it's moments like this that make good on that promise.

Our righteous anger bubbles like lava, biting at injustice and growling at inaction.

We, the young and restless vibrantly bash against the rocks of tradition. Slowly changing the world, an inevitable tide never coming in fast enough for our liking.

We longed for change, we would burn the world and remake it in our image.

We would kill

We would bite and scratch and tear to protect what we love and seek truth and justice for all.

I walked amongst these thorns along a dangerous road, but I do not walk alone.

We stood and will stand together against conformity, relentless and strange, enigma on a cliff waiting for wings.

It's hot but it's not too hot it's hot in that summer, carnal, sweet sweat and hard work smelling strong of sawdust and body odor way

And you only get it from working in the sun, sweat doesnt smell the same if it's a hike or just sitting outside or a workout indoors in the winter

There's some . . . Visceral about hard work sweat in the summer

It's original sin

A wet hot American summer

Adam eating "the apple" under a blazing sun feeling the sweat bead under his curls at the back of his neck at the same moment that sticky savory juice graced his lips changing forever how he saw the world

It's what the pope fears more than anything

Raw

Humanity

Unfiltered

Un fettered

Animals running flat out across a grassland under golden rays

Laying in the shade of trees older than their speech

All their warts and beauty on display for anyone to see

Drops of it, stories encased in wet salt hit the ground and color it dark in a silent plea for rain

Ours

Ours is a life of certain uncertainty and frustrating simplicity