A MEMORY
We write our signatures on air
On air money
I remember when the sound of
Change
Jingling in a pocket
Meant a Grade A or a Red Hot
Do you remember?
Did you ever walk into a candy store?
Where a big glass cabinet
Housed a reflexive kiss for
Everything within
An involuntary tightening
Of orbicularis oris,
A pucker.
(Candy was the closest thing to love I knew.)
Years have passed, many counting themselves,
As I never kept track except the big ones,
Except in the most general ways
Others can tell you times to the tenth
But I barely know how I got here
Nor will I ever need to
This is all that matters: thisrightnow, thismeoment,
Thisthisthisthisthis…
VISITS ASEA
Never have I lost your sounding waters
Stream of consciousness
I have missed the tiny whirlpools
But never the great Tides
Which swing my world so in & out of balance
I have learned only that balance is flexible
That it’s changeable, malleable,
Balance lifts us up into manageable.
Yet I claim it not, not fully, not without first
Looking around for railing, or a handhold
Balance was a for-granted
But it has gone the way of faith
The chair will be behind me when I sit…
A variable where only an inalterable ever existed.
But that doesn’t stop me.
I watched a baby walking, thumping along
After being put gently on the floor
Leaning into his future
Walking, forehead jutting ahead of his feet.
I walk like that sometimes now.
I don’t lean back, if I claimed my past it would
Claim me. I choose not to dwell there.
So much so I rush from it.
Somehow I have seen it all before
I am bored by the repeats
Bummed by the reruns
Interested in the growth & the new
In the place where I can claim some experience
The holy bath of experience
From which no one returns the same
The reruns are off, the endings
Jacked up. How could I have counted them ever?
But the not understanding is okay with me now
The wondering & the laying on of syllables
Like strips of bacon making grease in a heated brainpan
The smell will intoxicate me; I wonder if I’ll also have eggs..
I mean ideas, I mean ways to get out from myself & away from
Me awhile. There’s that place where it’s okay to sway.
I am there now.
REPTILES IN THE OFFICE
In my supposed comeuppance, your one-line flick of a forked tongue
At me, I watch you, woman.
I am a threat. You are right to watch me back,
to rattle a warning accusation of
A crime I know nothing about; One thing: I will not dance it again.
But you know all, having discovered we’re out of
Paper…the accusation precedes the announcement:
This from the woman who says have no fear,
Unity does not do fear!
But running out of paper is a hostage situation a 911 bristle, a threat
To the future of major proportions.
Staples being two miles away, n’all.
But there is a humidity of accusation cloying a measure of self-protection & I
Understand, as I was there, too, in the beginning.
Every Unity I know breaks apart, succumbs to Great Change
We are thinking it will be one thing
When it might be entirely another.
Now I have a measure of self-protection in place
This is just how it is; it’s nothing personal
It is how each explains herself to life
With a bang on the counter, a jarring of the bell
Heard in far reaches of outer space…
These women purport to ministry but live a self-crafted life
Involving much validation in finger-pointing
An air of mayhem-in-waiting
Of corrupted effort & diminishing returns
Saying one thing to another
Neither quite true or trusted.
Only demanded.
I can feel my armor dented in places
The shin-guards worn away
the covers over the ears newly heated
by accusation by disbelief by not “get it right, but you’re so
stupid you got it wrong.”
I think it’s because I feel it hit my Translator
& bounce awry instead of smoothly smoothing out.
I have no respect for the one & am rapidly losing
What I have for the two…histrionics accomplish zilch.
Something broke today when you harried me in front of John
Who was just waiting to speak to you
But seemed unmoved by what I perceived as a full-on Tantrum.
Like the ones 3-year olds throw on the toy aisle.
For many of the same reasons, a parent would say.
I’ll say, too, I can’t get there from here. I do not know how.
It is not my understanding of what you asked for two weeks ago
This is some wish you cobbled together in the fiery pit
Of I know I asked her this!!
Nonesuch.
DEPARTURE, TAKEN PERSONAL
If this is how you feel, just go.
If it is coming to the point that you decide four weeks in front of leaving that we need to know every single solitary thing you know,
Only the God of Heaven can help us!
But we are not the women who ask for help
Before designing our own program
Buying our own uniforms
Building our own pillboxes
Designed beyond your getting in
Which is funny, because you built it
By how you treat me.
The irony of it all being you likely
Do. Not. Even. Know.
IN GENERAL
The tension in the room & the torsion in the air
Accelerate an already fast-moving iteration
Of Situation
Into international waters, traditions count out here
And One People do not mix With Another.
And don’t try to tell me these aren’t all over the planet
These whorls where someone made bad juju & no one ever
Redeemed it with a blessing.
Cuz I recognize them.
From before, some my own
You enter here at your peril
With the potential of your sorrow
For I am only a battery
Only a mirror
I will up the energy of the situation
Since what I think if it is on my honest face.
Someday that face will look into your own
I amplify & reflect back.
I clap endlessly one-handed
I walk the forest listening for downing trees
I cannot play that game of throwns any more
I want to belong to a vibrant community of like minds
Who do not throw away their own decisions, but do not force them either. What would it take to not be the problem but the problem-solver?
ALL EARS’
Could I be a Listener?
A listening device of analog proportions?
What would it take to be fluid of body once again,
To have a man, once, lift me to himself & cradle me
Set a seal upon that Seer Eye: awaken it with unexpected vision
There is a reason they slay the spirit there
But I seek not even the smallest of deaths
To bring it to the surface, to lead the light
To have a unicorn kind of magic: emergent,
Masculine, parting the very air
For in between the particles
I would go
To achieve the feminine.
It sees me to be: finally whole,
Not foresworn in the belly.
My spirit parts are strong, but invisible here
Jovial, they push other stuff out of the way to have theirs.
Riding the Light 