by taking brutal belt to my hide
‘cause it’s hard to wanna survive.
And all the great therapists of this world might say,
“Maybe your anger is good.
Maybe your rage is you emerging from the cage
of everything you’ve been.”
So I try to be Zen, singing mantras of
om mani padme hum
but god fears me too much to hear me,
and my heart beats another kid in the candy store
and his mother calls the cops
and every time the clock ticks
I start tick tick tick talking more shit,
my voice sounding the crucifixion of everything holy.
There are blisters on my tongue
from pounding nails into hearts of prophets,
and just when I think I can stop it
satan resurrects inside me
and everything around me turns to hell.
Last night I stole pennies from a wishing well
to buy rope to lynch the last inch of hope from the planet
and all…
because you have a new girlfriend and I can’t stand it.
I wanted to be eighty together,
wanted to birth poems like babies together
and watch them grow up to save the world.
‘Cause girl, you’re the only one
who could ever raise the sun inside me.
And I swear the ground beneath my feet
is only soft because you walk beside.
There were times I thought I was so lost
even god would never find me
and then you came up right behind me
and kissed a cross onto my back.
And it’s things like that that got me going crazy,
‘cause I was thinking maybe the breaths we’d take together
would make us live forever,
and now you’re killing me.
Look at me, I’m dying,
not even trying to evolve when
I wanted to be there forty years from now
when the doctor called to say
your mother might not make it another day.
And I wasn’t gonna be just ok.
I was gonna be perfect.
Was gonna make my love feel
like the first time you rode your bike without training wheels,
kneel before you every day
like there was no one else before you,
‘cause I’ve heard your heart beat
like that breeze that could bring any violence to its knees
and the best lines I’ve ever written…
I plagiarized every word from the thoughts of yours I heard
while you were just sitting in silence,
staring up at Mars
but you never wish on shooting stars
you wish on the ones
that have the courage to shine where they are,
no matter how dark the night.
And how now do I turn away from that light
when I wanted to be eighty with you,
birth babies like poems with you
and let them write themselves.
Was gonna hold your heart to my ear like a seashell
‘til I could hear the tides of every tear you’ve ever cried,
then build islands in the seas of your eyes
so you’d see there’s land to swim to.
Hold your hand and say, “Storms are born
from the same sky we write hymns to when the sun shines.
Sometimes it takes tempests to wake rainbows
that will wind our pain into halos.”
Was gonna carve your name into my wrist
so my pulse could kiss you.
Was gonna love you so well
I’d wake every morning
and tell you things like this,
“Bliss is the moments you’re with me
when you’re gone my life hurts like hell
but I’ll do anything to make you happy
even if it means setting you free
to be with someone else.”
Swing-Set
“Are you a boy or a girl?” he asks,
staring up from all three feet
of his pudding-faced grandeur.
I say, “Dylan, you’ve been in this class for three years
and you still don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Well then, at this point I really don’t think it matters, do you?”
“Um… no. Can I have a push on the swing?”
And this happens every day.
It’s a tidal wave of kindergarten curiosity
rushing straight for the rocks of me,
whatever I am.
In the classroom we discuss the milky way galaxy,
the orbit of the sun around the earth or… whatever.
Jupiter! Saturn! Mars!
“Kids, do you know that some of the stars
we see up in the sky are so far away they’ve already burned out?
What do you think of that…Timmy?”
“Um…my mom says that even though you’ve got
hairs that grow from your legs
and the hairs on your head grow short and pokey
and you smell really bad like my dad
that you’re a girl.”
“You’re right. Thank you, Timmy.”
And so it goes.
On the playground she stares up
from behind her pink powder puff sunglasses
and asks, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Ohhh ” she says. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
I say, “No, but if by some miracle twenty years from now
I ever finally do, I’ll definitely bring her by to meet you.
How’s that?”
“OK…can I have push on the swing?”
And that’s the thing.
They don’t care.
They don’t care.
We, on the other hand…
My father sitting across the table at Christmas dinner
gritting his teeth over his still-full plate
his appetite raped away
by the intrusion of my haircut,
“What were you thinking? You used to be such a pretty girl!”
Frat boys drunk and screaming
leaning out the windows of their daddies’ SUVs
“Hey, are you a faggot or a dyke?!”
And I wonder what would happen
if I met up with them in the middle of the night.
Then of course there’s always the not-quite-bright-enough
fluorescent light of the public restroom,
“Sir! Sir! Do you realize this is the ladies’ room?!”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.
It’s just I didn’t feel comfortable
sticking this tampon up my penis
in the men’s room.”
But the best is always the mother at the market,
sticking up her nose
while pushing aside her child’s wide eyes
whispering, “Don’t stare, it’s rude.”
And I wanna say, “Listen, lady,
the only rude thing I see
is your paranoid, parental hand
pushing aside the best education on self
that little girl’s ever gonna get
living with your Maybelline lips, Stair Master hips
synthetic, kiwi, vanilla ’spilling beauty.
So why don’
t you take your pinks and blues,
your boy-girl rules
and shove ‘em in that cart
with your fucking issue of Cosmo,
‘cause tomorrow
I start my day with twenty-eight minds
that know a hell of a lot more than you do,
and if I show up in a pink frilly dress
those kids won’t love me any more or less.”
“Hey… are you a boy or a… oh, never mind,
can I have a push on the swing?”
And someday,
when we grow up,
it’s all gonna be that simple.
Tadpoles
A tadpole doesn’t know
it’s gonna grow bigger.
It just swims,
and figures limbs
are for frogs.
People don’t know
the power they hold.
They just sing hymns,
and figure saving
is for god.
Blue Blanket
Still there are days when there is no way,
not even a chance,
that I’d dare for even a second
glance at the reflection of my body in the mirror
and she knows why.
Like I know why she only cries
when she feels like she’s about to lose control.
She knows how much control is worth,
knows what a woman can lose when her power to move
is taken away
by a grip so thick with hate
it could clip the wings of Isis,
leave the next eight generations of your blood shaking.
And tonight
something inside me is breaking,
my heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of her pain
I could give every tear she’s crying a year, a name,
and a face I’d forever erase from her mind if I could.
But how much closer to free would any of us be
if even a few of us forgot
what too many women in this world cannot.
And I’m thinking, “What the hell would you tell your daughter?”
Your someday daughter
when you’d have to hold her beautiful face
to the beat up face of this place
that hasn’t learned the meaning of
STOP.
What would you tell your daughter of the womb raped empty,
the eyes swollen shut,
the gut too frightened to hold food,
the thousands upon thousands of bodies used?
It was seven minutes of the worst kind of hell.
Seven.
And she stopped believing in heaven.
distrust became her law,
fear her bible,
the only chance of survival…
don’t trust any of them.
Bolt the doors to your home,
iron gate your windows,
walking to your car alone
get the keys in the lock
please please please please open
like already you can feel
that five-fingered noose around your neck
two hundred pounds of hatred
digging graves into the sacred soil of your flesh
please please please please open
already you’re choking for your breath
listening for the broken record of the defense,
Answer the question,
Answer the question.
Answer the question, miss!
Why am I on trial for this?
Would you talk to your daughter,
your sister, your mother like this?
I am generations of daughters, sisters, mothers,
our bodies battlefields, war grounds
beneath the weapons of your brothers’ hands.
Do you know they’ve found landmines
in broken women’s souls?
Black holes in the parts of their hearts
that once sang symphonies of creation
bright as the light on infinity’s halo.
She says, “I remember the way love
used to glow on my skin
before he made his way in
now every touch feels like a sin
that could crucify Medusa, Kali, Oshun, Mary
bury me in a blue blanket so their god doesn’t know I’m a girl,
cut off my curls,
I want peace when I’m dead.”
Her friend knocks at the door,
“It’s been three weeks,
don’t you think it’s time you got out of bed?”
“No, the ceiling fan still feels like his breath,
I think I need just a couple more days of rest, please.”
Bruises on her knees from praying to forget.
She’s heard stories of Vietnam vets
who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs.
She’s wondering how many women are walking around this world
feeling the tingling of their amputated wings,
remembering what it was to fly, to sing.
Tonight she’s not wondering
what she would tell her daughter.
She knows what she would tell her daughter.
She’d ask her, “What gods do you believe in?
I’ll build you a temple of mirrors so you can see them.
Pick the brightest star you’ve ever wished on.
I’ll show you the light in you
that made that wish come true…”
Tonight she’s not asking you what you would tell your daughter.
She’s life deep in the hell, the slaughter,
has already died a thousand deaths with every unsteady breath,
a thousand graves in every pore of her flesh
and she knows the war’s not over,
knows there’s bleeding to come,
knows she’s far from the only woman or girl
trusting this world no more than the hands
trust rusted barbed wire.
She was whole before that night.
Believed in heaven before that night,
and she’s not the only one.
She’s not asking what you’re gonna tell your daughter.
She asking what you’re gonna teach
your son.
Love Poem
You
are the music of two grasshoppers
making love in a school yard
where four-year-olds ask me,
what are the grasshoppers doing?
and I tell them they’re dancing to the music of
You
are the gaps in my ribcage
where the sunrise winds through to my heart and
You
are the part of the sunset that is so pink
the grasshoppers think maybe we should stop and watch
You
are the moon when it bloomed for the very first time
and a child inspired unwound the lid of a jar
that set ten-thousand grasshoppers free and
You
drive me fucking crazy.
I mean insanely.
You make me wanna take a fork to my eyeballs,
rip the hair from my armpits
and shove it down my throat
‘cause I would rather choke
than argue another minute with you
but you are so
pretty.
And smart.
You know
so many words.
You’re every poem I would write
if ink could ever hold the light
that glows from your toes
when you’re climbing up trees.
Girl, I swear ya got sap running thick in your veins
and I never love you more
than when you’re mourning the death of raindrops
falling forsaken on pavement.
God, I love how you hate pavement.
But you make me wanna smash my skull on pavement.
It’s true.
When we argue you make me wanna rip off my nose,
bone and all like my uncle Billy used to pretend to do.
He’d say, “Girl, I’m gonna rip off yer nose!”
Then he’d tug at my face
and hold up half his thumb
and half the time he’d fool me and I’d start crying.
But I’m older now and I’m not lying
you make me wanna rip off my nose.
Except when you don’t.
Sometimes you make me wish I had an extra nose
only to smell your hair,
because I love how your hair smells like… hair.
I always hated the smell of shampoo,
Besides
I love you.
It’s true.
The way you pretend to chew gum when you’re nervous.
The way you stick out your tongue
when you look in the mirror
‘cause you think your face is shaped better that way.
And I love the way you pray
and I love the way you chew
and use chopsticks like you’re from Japan.
God, you’re a woman of culture.
I wanna eat you like a... not a vulture
a swan.
I wanna eat you like swans eat flowers.
Baby, if swans ever ate flowers
I would eat you like that for hours.
Except when you’re sour
and acting like a self-righteous grumpy old grump
like ya do sometimes,
‘cause those times
you make me wanna run to the edge of the fucking world
and hurl myself into a black fucking hole
and never come back ever.
And then there’re the times I wanna
be with you forever and follow you forever
wherever you go
if only for the freckle in the middle of your belly
that’s just like mine,
or the time you corrected me for saying man
instead of human kind.
I can’t believe I did that.
Do you know how much I love your boobs?
Almost as much as I love how