Light

Control

My emotions are like currents under the waves, deep and powerful and yet on the surface I can seem completely calm. 

I am tired of having to seem calm 

I want to rage and gnash my teeth against the light, 

I want to scream and bellow my anger and sorrow to the winds 

I want to use this power I feel, this passion to wound and break and bend the world into my image, into what I see fit, into what would suit my whims 

But I don’t 

I muzzle my rage, I suppress my howls of pain and tether my biting indignation to other calmer outlets, like logic, like patience, like fore thought and premeditation 

I direct my anger inwards, I point my passion at myself and shape it into a desire to cut out injustice and create better lives and healthier places for those I love. I turn it into a drive to do better, to be better, to accomplish more. I seek to improve, to inspire, to incite others to also be better and do better and yet. . . 

I am still left angry, my self hatred battering the walls I so carefully construct to keep others from being harmed by my emotion. And when the walls crack I am reminded of why they are needed. 

I hurt other, I twist and my face contorts into venom and malice and reveals an inner core of ice caps broken over a volcano. The hot and cold fighting for control causing the winds to whip ever louder, ever stronger, ever wilder. And I wound. I take offense to words that should not hurt, I bite back viciously at perceived attacks and stab using words meant to wound in such a way that I can twist them later to soothe the pain I have so caused. 

and so I must maintain my control even as I weep from the pain of being caged

"I think I have cancer, no really I think I have cancer" she said as she shook his shoulders trying to get his attention

"babe last week you had the avian flu and the week before that you had ringworm and the week before that you thought you had meningitis"

"seriously though look I have a growth on my neck just below my ear" she pulled his hand around to feel what she was talking about, he felt the spot and yes there was something there

"okay, I'll call the doctor tomorrow and we will get it looked at" they went to bed peacefully and awoke with all the trappings of the next day forgetting about the previous nights conversation, she mentioned it a few more times and each time he promised he'd go with her to her doctors appointments, or remind her to call the doctor so they could go get it looked at

-but they never did, just like he didn't believe her when she was convinced her cough meant avian flu and her spot on her arm meant ringworm and her headache meant meningitis but this time... they should've

Most of the famous love poems begin at the writer,

“Shall I compare thee to a summers day?” “How do I love thee, let me count the ways” “When I love you, I become Liquid light”

and the focus is on how the love affects the author.

You are not loved like that

You are loved from afar by a host of witnesses, partial observers who sing your praises and laud your name. I am merely one of many who’s life’s been changed by your black girl magic.

You are the flower and the sun, an entire ecosystem of beauty, pain, feral aggression, and nurturing softness trapped within skin and summarized with stardust.

You are the rot that consumes, dark slick fertility doing away with that which is dead and dying, prying life away from the undeserving.

You are an all-powerful inevitability, like mycorrhiza, interconnected and an engine of reincarnation turning that which you kill with your terrible, exquisite existence into vibrant life.

You are the power of a fire set spinning into a void, so intense that it attracts life and inspires art and who’s mere proximity is the Prometheus of existence.

You are an illustration of regeneration in motion.

You are not just a pretty girl, or a smart woman or a good person.

You are a vision of the universe manifesting itself to experience life and doing it with such style and grace that it takes my breath away.

And so, I will not disgrace you with talk of the love of possession.

the love of self, reflected in the face of the other.

the love only begat by desire

or need

or lust.

Instead, I will pray to you in the way that the moon prays to the sun.

I will describe the love of a devotee as they turn their face to the façade of their goddess and stand in awe of her power, majesty, and the ineffable certainty that they are unworthy.

I will set a record in stone of the magnificence of you.

I will, if given permission, promise to learn you

I will cleave my soul to yours leaving behind a love that endures and will never end, merely change forms

I will inscribe my adoration on the monolith of you, perfect, deific, angelic, demonic, human,  you

I will learn your habits, like how you take your morning coffee

I will create tender, intimate moments where I simply watch and wonder at the gift of you in my life

I will love you, with every burning, bared, imperfect part of my broken, bruised, and barely beating heart

More poetry for you

A short one this time

I'm a Summers child

I sup on rays of dust suspended in oxygen and filtered through sunlight

My bones are simply vehicles for the green scent of life growing against all odds on a cliff face

The cold pulls the will to live out of me, away from me, like a sieve my pores turn to the gaping maw of winter as all the me-ness of me seeps out and freezes with the tulips buried under snow

"Sit down" she said

"Stop fidgeting" he reminded

"I swear if you don't stop MOVING" they threatened

until one day one didn't

The teacher didn't say "Sit down" or "Stop moving" she said "here, when you get bored or finish an assignment I want you to describe to me what you are going to do on the playground"

This simple kindness to a small hyperactive child turned into teams of paper preoccupation detailing the grand adventures of various heroes, heroines, dragons and ponies as they battled vicious creatures discovered new locales and made friends along the way fostering forever in me a childlike wonder for the magic of the written word.

Ours

Ours is a life of certain uncertainty and frustrating simplicity

Where I am From (again)

I am from warm hugs

From sweet child O` mine lullabies and a star wars bedtime story

I am from rowdy boys crowded around a bridge ready to jump

I am from puppies in a bin baying and crowding around a mother basset

I am from apple pie dreams and hands older than me and stories spoken over

Laughter and the smell of food cooking in the oven

I am from the morning

Warm sunshine smiles and daisy chain afternoons

Brothers with too tall bodies and too small sensibilities

Confused and wonderful

I am from a garage

Alternative rock, the smell of grease and men and fixing the problem

Pieces clicking together like a puzzle

I am from a field

Scratches bug bites and high grass

Scrapes and bruises falling out of trees and into fun

I am from costuming

Bright sequin, improbable characters, and laudable performances

Lines not quite memorized but somehow funnier that way

I am from competition

Racing past a sibling or cousin to get through the kitchen first without being scolded by that one aunt

To

Racing through the air trying to get to a ball just beyond my fingertips so I can pound it into the ground before it’s blocked

I am from a kitchen

Smells that evoke nostalgia in every southern heart

All the sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmother gathered in the kitchen with bustling mouths laughing as they cook turkey, potatoes and cranberry jam and the menfolk watch football and the kids play a façade of the game of the day

I am from elegance

Being taught table manners, learning how to walk in 6"s and how to do my makeup from a favored aunt for the prom

Learning how to be a lady

I am from vibrancy

Spinning sepia-tinged memories filled with stars dreams and sadness

I am from a field lying between my parents learning Draco, the dippers, mars, and planets chasing the sisters and running from Orion’s bow

I am from the stars

A new adult wandering the earth

My head in the clouds with lofty ideas, hopes, and longing to be the cause of change

I am from a promise

A promise to learn

A promise to live

A promise to laugh

A promise to cry

A promise to succeed

A promise to fail

A promise to be me

Nightmare Part 1

The most peculiarly specific smell of a hospital in Maine assaults my senses. I hear absolute silence, and then, frantic scratching. I am in a white room, strange stains surround me splattered on every surface, and I sit on a plain white bed, writing furiously in a leather-bound journal with yellowed curling pages, as I write the words disappear just before I can read what I have written. A man walks in, he is tall with darkish curly hair and caramel eyes, clothed in white scrubs with a yellow eye logo above the pocket and covered in the same stains. He takes the journal and leaves me screaming in anger and crying in fear. He deposits the journal outside the door in the visible hands of a man unseen. He trots over to where I lay, picks me up as if I am a rag doll, holds me close, and whispers in my ear It was a strangely familiar voice that brought back memories of days spent playing in the sun and lying in fields of wildflowers. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.

He softly brushed my forehead with his lips, set me down on the bed and left. As he closed the door I heard screaming, muffled gunshots then silence. Utter and complete silence, I called to him with my voice till all my voice was gone; and shaking I called to him with my mind. When there was no answer I accepted what had happened for he had not answered the call that only death can silence. As I left the door the tears would not fall, the tears would not come and the only escape I had was in sleep.

I miss the rain

Or better, i guess i miss the way it rained there

Fat heavy drops

Not like delicate tears on your skin but so full of water you could feel the individual impacts like your grandmother's hand patting you on the head

But just like grandmother's, not all rain was soft and kind, it also raged and thundered

Loud screaming into the night and the sound of those heavy blows on the roof like rocks from the heavens

To go out, to experience the storm was to feel whole and yet also wholly small

The rain is

Quiet, here

Tamed and angry in it's taming

Anger of futility

Anger of frustration

Maybe some others would call it gentle or kind or soft

But there just isn't enough of it to be those things

Not to me

To me it's just a drizzle, never more than a pattern of calm and too still even in it's movement

The last remnants of a still dying god killed long before it's time

The rain here is dead

And so

I miss the rain

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