ego masturbation mixed with
crisis aversion mixed with
late night whispers of revolution
told to help you get up & go to work
in the morning

i hold all our shit down
do it out of love when really family
is my only calling and
you don’t even know
to offer me
home

the first of many callous lines
scratched into
the ground

let me grow myself
a cold heart

a breathing, beating
indifference

a hurt so pulsating
it propels me into an easier,
(necessary)
goodbye.

hesistant fingers stick to slick creases
of sweet pear summer skin

old idioms kneaded into the tips
of new tongues, i reword lust
into something wholesome
well-meaning
friendly
“cute”

all the while,
bitterness grows
thicker and
thicker and
thicker

resentment eager to choke
closed this once courageous
throat of mine

let this be
a summer night’s prayer
for brave desire

my throat is still burning
my skin still seething
my bones still outraged

that white cop still won’t get more than 2-4 years and
involuntary manslaughter is still
considered
“progress”

our bodies our blood our babies
still means nothing
to nobody and

oscar grant in oakland
sean bell in new york
kenmara ‘k-roc’ davis in fayetteville, nc
they’re all
still dead.

if i had time to make a zine, i’d put all these poems together. april is national poetry month so a bunch of radical women of color poets and i attempted to write a poem a day. this is what came about for me (ones on the top are the most recent):

brown skin

dust has never licked
these heels of mine.

my thighs have never broken open and blistered
from walking too far for too long
for too little.

when i grow dark, it is because i bared shoulder
at some political rally
or chose to wear little
at a picnic.

white friends grow jealous of the sun grazing my skin
my family gets confused wondering what kind of
silly girl would want brown skin

they always say

“your mother married a white man and
your white daddy gave you everything, like
full-moon eyes and
big american lips and
light skin and
expensive make-up if you want it and
a life in the united states and
a college education and
the ability to keep your face white

you’ve been blessed with light skin
why would you want to be brown?”

and
when black and brown folks get the brunt of everything, like
racist immigration laws and
two different hammers banging on your door at once and
the way that the hell my brother catches is compounded
by the fact that he does not have
the choice to be white

sometimes i wonder that too…

if one day you must say goodbye to your closest friend

i do not know how to purge
you from my life.

however,

i do know that
over these past few days
i have not run your name
across my tongue
nor have i
recited a favorite anecdote or
thought on something funny
you said

i am filling my days with bad tv
and new kinds of ambition
coming to terms with yet another
reinvention

maybe, my friend,
these are the steps
to begin
an end

(this is the last thing i will say.)

dear shug,

i write god i write nettie
why should i not write you?

i’m not sure what i feel for you but i know
that when the trim
of your skirt
twirls
above your head
(kissing the clouds)
the earth and i both find
ourselves
in a similar predicament:
jealous and praying that your feet
will touch ground
blessing it, even if just for a moment

you spun into my life
said you loved me
do i love you?
yes i love you, god knows i love you
i am not like the others
or maybe i am because
you are gone again and all i have left is the scent
of your cigarettes in my bed
and the trail of your perfume
on my skin

please write and please
leave that boy…
come home already!

love,
your celie

scarred skin
please do not be mistaken;
i have never burned
your name
into flesh

my scars are my own my own my own

sacrosanct symbols
marking my history
of survival

crush

today i woke up wondering
what would happen if we found
our bodies suddenly
pieced together

would they work like magnets
automatically knowing what to do?

or would you tell yours to find me in the twist
of spine as i told mine
to look for you
in the bend of fingers

i have no answers
just a sneaking suspicion that your head
would fit just right
in my arms

easter 2010

as the shepherd lays the round of his palms on her, people gather
forming a circle
stretching out hands
praying for her
never knowing her name

how many times did they touch you
when you did not want them to

how many times were you pushed
when little girl gut told you to stop

how many times were you told you needed divine intervention
when you knew the church would never know the salvation you could bring

go ‘head on
eat their bread, drink their wine & never look back
you are a beautiful relic
of a faith
left behind

the day my love stopped being patient

you casually mentioned her name and my anger
unfurled into a surprise spring hurricane
unleashing its fury without any form
of discretion

my face turned so red with rage,
you sat immobilized, falling over words
not knowing what to say

who would have guessed the quiet disabled girl
the sometimes-asian woman
would make a scene

i found myself deconstructing your lyrics today…

groove rough against my fingertips
all my time spent crate digging
through these rhymes
looking for the one line that would say
all that you could not

we call back and forth to each other
a bridge crossed, another hook to pull me in
my feelings in the linear notes
yours in the consistency
of the beat

or maybe…
this is just music
meant to be shared

cliche
too much imagination, isolation
intoxicating

i carved a self out of your
stories salvation breathing
possibility into lungs worn down collapsing

this a reality you created for me
i created for me

let me not get lost in this hansel and gretel falsity
a cliche
any fool coulda seen coming

(this post begins with a poem that may be triggering.)

left to my own devices, i make myself write poems.

pls help me

ableism makes it impossible to have space where i can talk about physical pain i feel. if you say you are hurting, you are in pain, you are not feeling control over your own body, they combine that with mainstream ableist notions of disability and use that to justify stealing your self-determination from you.

i cannot talk about pain or feelings of powerlessness openly with friends either. it seems like my community depends on me to be this picture of strength and power. especially disabled people. somehow my queer, shittalking, consumerist/shopaholic, bossy ways has turned me into this larger-than-life persona of someone who is proud, loves her body, has a lot of love interests, and always knows what she wants and gets it. even though i tell people that this is just an image, that i am shaped by insecurity and full of frustration, there is still this expectation of not having fear or weakness. as if i wasn’t taurus enough already.

the truth is that chronic pain makes me feel powerless. poetry sometimes helps me retrieve power. the other night i decided i was going to force myself to write poetry because even though i was tired, it would distract me from my pain. i wrote until my eyes were heavy with sleep. sleep was my goal. it worked.

poetry is a distraction from pain and a journey into it; a companion and a place of solitude; a system of pain management and medicine you create for yourself ; a reminder that your body is your own and acknowledgement that there is little we can actually control

i love poetry because i can just be.

soon everything will erupt soon everything will release and soon there will be a downpour
so loud so intense you are not sure what the outcome will be
but somewhere in there is a quiet that comes
a quiet that is gentle enough for sleep
help me get to that place, poetry