3.28

there are a thousand ways to be a woman

right now i am the kind with dirt in my mouth

the best parts of me live underground

my roots entangled with redwoods and pine

i am silent, steady


there are a thousand ways to be a woman

right now i am the kind that dances fast

waits for the snakes to find my ankles

climb my body

find their way to my head

medusa's daughter


there are a thousand ways to be a woman

right now i am the kind that swallows the earth

waits to feel you all

inside me

Black Out Poems for Mom

3/7/17:

Let it be known
I never wanted y'all
I am broken
in a million ways
I did what was best
for me
I was dying
you remember me on my knees broken
I've said heartless cruelty
I had to leave
BOTH of You
without love
I just want to be happy
I wasn't happy,
but now
me.
me
me
me.
me..
That hurt // will never go away

1/4/18:

I removed you

I'm not going to see who you are

I'm deaf and blind to the manipulation that's happening

I release you

I am the reason love is no longer in your eyes

You are released

I have no love for you

My truth is best for me

Raven, I hurt you and

I will never change 

My Mother Was Here

my mother was here

until she wasn’t

my sister and I search for her

in the hearts of other women

we pass them all by

just ships in the night

we find motherhood in each other instead

when our tongues are heavy with grief

for a mother that has not died

she is gone just the same

I sometimes see my mother looking at me

in the mirror

the pain in her eyes looks so familiar

I trace the lines on her face

feel the sins of a thousand lives settle

onto my shoulders

I tell my mother about the daughters I will never have

how i would have loved them

how I would have taught them the truth of

what the world will ask of you

I tell my mother I love her even though she is gone

and it almost does not matter

that she does not hear me

Super Thundercock Lightning God

When I tell you he's got music in his blood
What I mean is that his life makes me sing, dance
Stomp my feet into the earth, push forward
Encompass me in sound
What I mean is that he is everything music should be
And always has been

No one warned me about the darkness in love
When love is so strong, so present
Creeps into the seams of your everything
And you do not feel worthy
But suddenly you are
Because he deserves it
Because you deserve it

When I tell you he is the light of my life
please understand that he is the sun, swallowing the sky
Interrupting the flickering bulb, the slow burning candle
To show us all how to shine

Wolves

Sister, we are 7 years old
I am telling you a story about three little pigs
and a wolf and you are laughing and wanting to be the pig with the brick house
then we are 12 years old and we are bleeding confusion and anger
cursing the feminine parts of ourselves for being too much too soon
and we build straw houses right next to each other because don't know where to find bricks
and we are 17 and we love him
We are 18 and we love ourselves
We are 19 and now we don't love either
We are 20 when we try to be big bad wolves but it feels like too little too late and we don't even know why we care these pigs anyway
We are 21 and I am telling you the story of us and how the women in our family have been building houses with their bodies since forever and how wolves have always come to blow them down
and you
sister, you are laughing.

Booknerds

BOOKNERDS OF THE UNIVERSE:

We breathe stories like oxygen, 

Then spreadwords into our world like wildfire

We hear the call of the wild from the pages of a worn paperback,

We understand the power of myth

We stare into the eyes of the world and see narrative

Dear readers, we understand how worlds are created.

We let stories live in the spaces of our minds

let the magic fill our veins

we grow Halloween trees in our hearts and

search the skies for moving castles 

we steal kisses from Kafka

and we know that every love story is a ghost story

because we live in the best of times and the worst of times,

drinking bathtub gin,

and smiling because we understand that a hero ain't nothin' but a sandwich.

We vacation in Narnia and Lusitania,

and we love Jo but goddamn is "Albus Severus" a stupid name.

We are friends of elves and cacticae and hobbits and dragons,

We find truth in pages and understand how words can change lives
how language is alive 
We follow words down the rabbit hole that is empathy 

We have lived Bukowski's low life

danced in Neil's Neverwhere,

and we know fear

know loathing

know Las Vegas

We got through Wuthering Heights twice before realizing that we hated it, 

and we've spent many a day wondering exactly what combination of drugs we'd have to take to get on Lewis Caroll's level

Falling in love with our tell-tale hearts

we embrace stories like old friends

and inhale the perfume of binding glue and parchment like the scent of a lover

worshiping in library cathedrals,
we know that books are not just paper and ink but containers for ideas and change
we read because we know that to value imagination is to value our humanity
we read because in language there is freedom 

My husband got music in his blood
Got rhythm in his bones
Got songs in his mouth
Tap tapping on a drum set

a steering wheel

our kitchen table

I hear him

My husband got broken up beats that hide behind his teeth 

His heartbeat is my bass line 
my life line
when the world crashes into my rhythm
he is there

keeping time

Tap tapping on a high hat when I am low

Most days his music is all I can hear
when depression has taken hold of my body
filled these lungs with anxious melodies
shoved songs of doubt
of insecurity
of hate
in my mouth
When my demons are a symphony of destruction in my mind
I listen for his voice
and as I hear his tongue sing with sweet harmony
I want to throw myself into the song
but I

I do not know how to be anyone's metronome

Yet here I am 
wife, friend, lover
my husband and I dancing through this life

And just when I think I will fall
he catches me


And I heat the music in his blood
Feel the rhythm in his bones
and taste the songs in his mouth