“What Would You Have Me Do? O Great And Powerful Man?” 

Be not afraid

Be not afraid of that to come, for you are stronger than you think 

Be not satisfied with pictures of places, long to see them and be 

Be not afraid of success, that which opportunity affords those who risk 

Be not complacent in your life, but show your feelings and strive for the best 

Be not afraid of emotions, raw and powerful, but let yourself express and experience 

Be not who you were 

Be not afraid of who you could be 

But love who you are 

Where I'm From

I am from packed out bleachers and cheering teammates, momma's delicate hands covered in popcorn butter as she cheers me on from the concession stand but before the spikes and serves ....

I am from a quiet gym occupied solely with paternal affection, a father teaching his most precious treasure the game he loved all through life, small hands being held by callused ones showing how to dribble and shoot when attentive intention turns to giggles and those calluses seek to tickle forsaking the familiarity of the sport

I am from weary shoulders a woman running for her life from a madman, taking her gypsy brood from the bloodbath that her home became, her clutching hands desperately grasping those of her daughter and sons an sons running as far and as fast as she can away from all she knows

all she knew

to a new life,

to save her life

and mine

Self Medication

Caffeine, Sugar, Copious amounts of sleep, food etc. 

“I had a crappy day and all I want right now is a glass of wine”

“I can’t believe Brandon broke up with me, I need ice cream” 

Coffee, Bitter and black running down a throat while heels black as her coffee make threatening click clack on the tile of her office in anticipation of a stress filled day. 

An ADHD diagnosis accompanied by a denial of medication while leading to a dependence on Mountain Dew and Monster energy drinks that chew away at stomach linings just as surely as ritalin chews away at personality  

Trolling bars buzzed and horny looking for a one-night stand to forget powerlessness and rejection. Looking for release of negative emotions. Looking for an answer to the question “God, why are you so bitchy? when was the last time you got laid?” looking for something in others that they themselves lack 

Why do we feel the need to self-medicate? Is it that we really just can’t cope with the world around us is it that reality is so painful that we desire and require some form of escapism and change to the norm and harsh truths that fantasy shields us from. 

Video Games, Harlequin Novels, Lord the Rings, Marvel Movies all forms of escapsim and self-medication. 

Humanity requires distraction, but why and what would happen if someone rejected distractions in all her beauteous forms?

Tired

Is anyone else exhausted by all the violence?

The needless and senseless bloodspatter patterns that decorate my television walls and the wallpaper of my brain.

From the procedural made commonplace turning horrific crime to daytime entertainment for the lonely and alone at 2pm on a weekday contrasted and compared with the graphics and lies projected on channels with three letters and a failed promise to tell the truth.

A battle rages in my living room, the combatants painfully familiar to each other yet only one is aware of the war going on. The other believes it merely youthful idealism soon to be squelched by the tint of age and cynicism. 

The man medicating with food and numbing the pain of a capitalistic hedonism born lack of hope with the gunshots and head wounds of his favorite "more stuff blows up" drug. And me, the far from peaceful activist cooking and tuning out his chosen coping mechanism with my own, music played louder and louder, that preaches a similar method with drastically different goals. 

One child resigned to nothing, so preemptively tired of the fight that he wishes not to engage in the warfare at all. Running, constantly distancing himself from the truth that another whom he loves totally disregards the pains and existence of others whom he lives in concert with. Those the child sings and dances with, those he performs alongside creating spectacles of beauty and emotion to make the world feel again. 

The other dedicated to the fight long before she even knew there was a war. Desperately trying to explain why and how to care for other people to the ones who first taught her the very empathy she attempts to raise in their hearts. Running towards the fight at home and the fight on the front lines. 

I am tired of sighting, tired of fighting, tired of seeing the tension so broadcast and obvious and yet having the same conversations over and over and over fruitlessly watching those on the other side slowly slide into the muck and drivel they are fed from the very hand that bites them. 

I wish they would choose love, 

or at least

choose me

Ours

Ours is a life of certain uncertainty and frustrating simplicity

Sad in the Desert

Its harder being sad in the desert

The wind bites instead of hugs

The voices of people who shouldn’t have been there in the first place, dug their heels in and decided to die just to spite the people who told them to leave

My ancestors don’t whisper in the long pull of an American Spirit, not out here

My grandfathers voice doesn’t sit at the bottom of that bottle of Jack saying “girl if you don’t straighten up”

Its harder to be sad in the sands and scrub

Its barren and cold

You cant get away from your emotions by walking through the trees and just crying out to the leaves, telling the wind to take your sorrow

Theres just sand, sand and dry

I guess that’s one thing about being sad in the desert,

The tears evaporate right off your face like the desert is taking everything from you, even the salt and water from your tears, even the salt in your blood you give to the desert it takes and takes

Doesn’t think about what to leave so you can keep on surviving so it can take again tomorrow

Its harder to be sad in the desert

Oblivion

there is no such thing as oblivion. We are enduring we have souls that live on after our corporeal bodies run out of reasons to endure. We are eternal. We were created, yes created; to live on forever in some form whether life or death we do endure souls are forever things not just here and now things. Oblivion is a myth. Oblivion is impossible unless you don’t exist. Because, as Newton said, every ACTION has an equal and opposite reaction; living is an action, an action that creates another action that creates another action that creates many more actions that never end unless an outside force acts upon it and an action as powerful as beginning eternity would need an action as powerful as a beginning to bring oblivion about. And besides that, we are remembered.

We are remembered by people and then when those people die we are remembered by the people who were told about us and even if we become a legend where events are altered and names are changed and no one can recall who exactly who I was the places I was will remember me. My footsteps will haunt the places I’ve walked. The mountains will remember when my eyes looked upon them. The trees will whisper to each other and say “I remember the girl who stroked our branches and caressed our leaves.” The rocks will say “I remember the girl who cried out to the creator alongside us.” The wind has memorized the shape of my face, the sky holds the color of my eyes, and the stars know the whims and whispers of my heart; the earth will remember me. The earth will remember you. Hallways know every foot that has touched them. Walls can recollect every mark made on them by hands big and small. Cars know who has been pushed up against them and kissed like their life depended on it. Bleachers know who has sat upon them and who has stood in front of them but rarely sat because they were too excited about the event happening. Every single thing you touch with your fingers you leave a piece of yourself behind when you pick your finger up.

Life is like that as well. You leave cells everywhere, you leave pieces of yourself everywhere for others to unknowingly pick up and carry with them until their days run out then someone else will pick up their cells and your cells together. You see? We have all connected through so many bonds that it is impossible to break them.  The way we talk, eat cereal, walk, read, write, type, poop, sleep, shower, love, feel. All of these things each and every person does in a perfectly unique way so if nothing else you will be remembered by the universe for being the only person to do things exactly the way you do them so that no one else will do ANYTHING exactly like you. Ever. End of story.

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 

It's. . . Odd

I'm deeply Appalachian

Fundamentally claimed and cursed and part of that mountain chain that's older than words and hides and traps things older than that

Those mountains were my womb, where i first hurt and where i first held, how i learned to heal and harm in turn

Those mountains are the spine of the world, sinking under the weights of ages, settled in their rage and power but no less dangerous

These mountains are flash in a pan

Young and loud and tall and prouder than they should be

They take and take and take and forget that if you want to keep taking for long then you need to take less and more kindly

These mountains are barren in a way that Appalachia never was

Stripped of life and all emotion except numb fury

The things living in these hills aren't tricksy and wily and powerful, they're injured animals on the run and they're cornered in by the press of toxic humanity

They don't know me

And i don't know them

But they see me, sense me, look for me

And I'm afraid sometimes

I don't dislike them

They're alien

They're wild

They're not home

But i could learn to work with them

But also? I miss clever jack, i miss the plants i know by heart and smell and sight

I miss the ghosts of those who should've never been there but dug in deep anyways

I miss the AGE

I feel old my dear

I've been around too long, this is not the first meaty church my spirit had occupied and these mountains make me feel old and weathered and like I've walked into a party i was not invited to

but my heart went west so now thats where we make our home, itll do for now

Nightmares Part 3

The door opens to a small grey room with only a table beside a bed to furnish it, a girl sits at the table writing ferociously in a journal the only thing visible about her is that she is exotic and has been beaten and tortured other than that she could have been any girl in any room and any journal because you could not see her face for the tears and the hair spilling over her head and into her eyes. As she writes a woman comes in and asks her a question, without hesitation she replies savagely. The woman seems unimpressed and strikes her then walks out leaving the girl laying on the floor with blood-mingled tears running down her face. When she looks up all of the walls have transformed into glass and on the other side there are men, taking notes, she looks down and seems to notice that the floor has suddenly become water. She begins to swim, the climate continues to change and the men continue to take notes and the girl continues to cry, and wail, and try, and survive.