women, poets: do not do this

“Do I fall for men not this girl’s father—as fuel? As a tonic for the waiting? As a way to ruin? As a way to subvert some painful remnant?

It is so easy to abandon the self—-as the lover becomes the constant daydream which life interrupts.”

From Kimiko Hahn’s “After Opening her Text” – from The Narrow Road to the Interior



Dammit, is there something on my skin?
Cut the mane, cut the cords, I look into menboys eyes
and see their soul, the space between Them and Everything,
like the emptiness between neurons—
love is a neurotransmitter of height, and bluebluesky,
and dark earth and skin-toned rainbows.

Love is the chain around my heart,
the locket that clicks: open, close,
swollen joints, like a bone spur, two synapses, a scent-memory…
The sea air in France.
Then San Francisco.
His cologne like redwood bark, sharp woody earth scent, soft as skin that’s never seen day.

Darlings need IVs of meaning into their energy ducts,
set their chakras spinning with wild food and OM and an open-eyed kiss.
They come giving me their feelings, their second thoughts,
and I don’t know what else to do but bury them.
Pick up the shovel and run. Send them back, reroute
faux passion: you think you can get that love from me?
Honey, you are higher than I thought.

Sink down, turn around, look to me for the road
but not it’s ending
both heart and hearth are in that pinpoint of life
that keeps you whirling like a pottery wheel,
you are the kenning and the poetry and the song that won’t stop singing.
Baby quit chasing me and take it straight—
I’m willow of wisp, I’m siren of the sick,
to fall in love with anyone but yourself is the ultimate sin,
put your hand in the fire and I vanish like dawn mists, like desire,
like smoke and your soul I am everything, nothing,
the spokes of the wheel and it’s ever-beginning—how can I inject this connection?
How to show you: run your hands down both our lengths and tell me they are not perfectly mirrored, that after wethey implode in a lightgasm of chance all is not rightfully balanced.
Close your eyes for two hours.
Bury yourself in a mountain.
Watch children, ocean waves, learn how to sew yourself up and roast good meat.

But I digress: think:

Priestess as psychologist?
My hormones are phosphorous
but darling you glow just as bright if you’d take those pennies off your eyes.
I can only sit back, assess, diagnose and confirm,
send you away with white bottles and smudge sticks and a message you may not even hear.
I can’t read for you, can’t dream for you, can’t fuck for you,
even from the couch you are sad enough to break my heart, but no…
Can love you, yes, but you’re choking on a culture that demands finding fullness in the other
and empty tv screens and blank hearts and hate,
spit it out and put something good in your mouth for once:
green clover,
the truly wanted, your lover,
yourself,
hold it there.
taste.
then relish the hollow in the back of your tongue, the lump In your throat.
Stop goddamn running and start godbless praying, baby, ask and ribbons will spring from your fingertips, bridges and railroad tracks and sturdy hands will grasp the farthest things, bright loving edges of a horizon, a fulfillment you thought you could never hold on to--

Paralyzing Commonsense

"The paralyzing commonsense notion that everyone,
even the most radical of the radical, plays a role in the status quo
hides the subversive possibility that all of us--even the radicals--
can refuse our roles." - rtmag

A lot of stuff that's been buzzing in my head lately in terms of society has been voiced in the issues of "Rolling Thunder". The articles are incredibly interesting, and I suggest at least downloading the PDFs of out-of-print issues, if not buying the current ones.

This "Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living" states (in Issue 2 available on PDF) that the only way to make a difference in society is to break from it's ranks - but that's not where S/He/It has directed me. Or has it? To most of "me", it doesn't make sense to change a society from the outside. Obviously we/I cannot mentally subscribe to culture/society if we want to break free from it, but can you really affect a huge change in something you're not invested in?

It really makes me take a look at my life from the witness point of view - I recently overcame a big ol' inner crisis regarding whether to continue my college education and what to study. I suppose that's all up for debate at any time (re: financial ability) but for now I'm here at school, making the most of the system while not locking myself into it. Just reading the "mission" statement makes me take a second (third POV?) look at my Self: as a student, consumer, queer, artist, lover, yogi, and woman. In simple identity--even choosing to NOT identify--how much am I a head in the rotation?

And while anarchy may strike me as a particularly angry and destructive way of reform, aren't rage and destruction part of the balance as much as creation and love?

As always, I mentally wobble between "I have no idea; I don't know" and "I have every idea in the world, I definitely know everything I will ever need". In words I cannot form yet, I know that on some level they are the same.

photo courtesy of xXPunk_14_AngelXx's photobucket. (Hah - ironic, I know.)

Constructing the "I"

What makes you fall in love with yourself?

(This may sound like the same question, but it's not: What makes [made] you fall in love with me?)

How do you prove yourself to yourself? To others?


My answer: I don't know yet, specifically. In my own mind I am an energy, a taste, a be-ing, but I think of specific things: my poetry, the sweetness of my own skin, a desire to serve, good listening skills... it's good, but am I really in love with it?

It's ironic that when in love with another (or as "another" we can be) things to adore just bubble up, but how often do we do this for ourselves?

So what makes you unique to you, what makes sends you head over heels everytime you look in the mirror?

I have no idea how this relates to our current reading, "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki, but it was what we discussed in my humanities seminar today. Interesting as all hell.

Paths and Standards (whilst chanelling Pinkola Estes)

I will not brush my hair for you. I will not pull these haphazard waves into a smoothshiny sleekness, I will not put my mane under wraps. I will not press a pillow over the face of my hips and thighs so that I sway to your liking, will not take down the talk for you, will not wear heels to make my ass and back tight for you, I will not unfurrow my brow or unarrow my eyes or sheath my claws: I will not do anything that you wouldn’t do for me.

City-living is far more like a jungle than I’ve realized—I’m learning when to keep my shades on, when to look him in the eyes, when to run, to stride back…. Whether to judge a man by his gender or to trust, or to keep my head bent forward like he isn’t there. It’s like I’ve been walking this line all my life, blind, and now my eyes are open: when to turn on the impassivity, the knowledge of whom I can’t pin to the ground, that I have just as much right to be here—this dorm floor, this sidewalk, this classroom, this dark street—as you do. When to open those buffalo eyes their way, to open up enough that divine light can stretch from my eyes to theirs, like morning glory vines, the way smoke longs for the heights of the sky. When to defend and when to heal. Can you do both at once? Yes, yes, you must, something tells me. The same thing that tells me what girl has got her claws sheathed, when to go to bed, whether the shadow in my room is from moonlight or something far darker.
Something drew me to this city—instinct, my gut, my third eye seeing the poverty and injustice that lies wherever there concrete and cars outnumber life forms. The city that ties it’s Monterrey Oaks to stand upright, the city that just now finds it’s community gardens full of mercury and lead. The city that is the stage for immigrant rallies and Ginsberg and revolution…I know my calling is here, but what for, exactly? And how long? How long before my heart calls me back to the hills, to the sharpness of ground and true prairie-gold winds?
I’m not saying I don’t love it here—I’m walking my path, but I know it’s not the only path I could take. My life’s work, in my mind, was always a specific scientific computation: take path that offers maximum help to maximum people. Now, now it is more complicated: Where, exactly? Low-income housing? Veggielution? Immigrant education? Health education? Women’s rights? Advocate for battered women? I don’t know, I don’t really have a set of interests, except in the LBGT area… Social work has so many opportunities that the only way I’ll know is if I work in every one of them.

And then there are men. Oh, men, oh, boys. Boys make me forget my wild-womaness, my night-eyesight and my integrity. Boys make me want to frolic and laugh and forget, but I can’t: the lake of my soul reaches to earth’s corners, I get my fire from her roiling depths, so how can I forget her call? The boy-men here, I want them, but get to close and they scare me into running, fleeing without my claws and big-toothed-grace, tripping over roots in the night…. Alone, night, again.

But somethought bubbles up, lapping at the shore in waves: need, want, need, want, the three layers of myself: the lake, the trees, the sky. Water sinks as low as it can, as close as it can, seeps into earth like a lover; and sky, the wind of the mind flows confident as a stream, but the trees in between? My soul is in the earth and I cherish her like a lover, and my self, well, I love it too and am confident in my own being, but isn’t there something… closer? Something between self-love and earth-love? That missing piece sings in the trees a lonely song, the way redwoods do when their roots find nothing to cling to. There are only boy-men here, nothing substantive, but still my nose twitches and I find myself hunting, falling, forgetting… Cycle cycle spiral, samsara, great wheel, big red road…

My footprints sing my four directions song, my uncut mane whispers which way the wind blows, which turn is the instinct of my heart and my lust longs for her other and the horizon is but a haze, I can do nothing but follow that call…

soy una quien busco

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can’t be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, “Why did you come
so quickly?” he or she would say, “Because I heard
your helplessness.”

Where lowland is,
that’s where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don’t just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair our of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight around your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps...

-Rumi

(Ran into this poem at Herbwifemamma's blog...)

The poem is called "Cry Out in Your Weakness", and it's mostly about being strong enough and trusting enough to let "the milk/of loving flow through you". And I vibed with that part too, but the first--the medicine, the flowing pool, "one who helps"... That's me. That's me in a nutshell and a universe every atom.

I'm taking a career/major exploration class in order to find how all my abstract talents and wants and needs in life fit into the concrete workcareerplace, and surprisingly, poetry isn't up there. I love poetry, I am poetry. It is god's gift to me, my words and flow of language, but I don't see myself writing full-time... Maybe this is cognitive behavioral, that the first "real" poetry discussion I got into was MFA's vs. Local poets, i.e. the idea that it takes a degree and proffesional career to write good poetry vs. the value of having a day-job and how that expands and grounds your writing. I still believe in that, and that is why the best, most relatable poets had day-jobs--Plath a professor, WCW a doctor among other things, Al Young held a bazillion different jobs, as have Kimiko Hahn and Marge Pierchy.

Anywaya, so I'm researching majors, and unassumingly open up to the S's.... and to sociology. And social work. And women's studies. (Well, that last one was a given). While I can take all the English courses and pass them and yeah, it'd be fine, these were the ones I'd go out of my way to take. These are the classes I want the reading list for, and to talk with the profesor after, classes with real-life application and learning how society works and analyzing it all to hell--That's what a love about feminism, the way findings and articles are always being criticized and picked apart (man, more positive verbs would be good there), and it's mostly good-natured and expected.

New plan?

Sociology or Social Work Major (with concentration in Community Change)

Double Minor in Women's Studies and Comparitive Literature (which I think will enable me to teach high school social science and English.)

Other news: Joined the Americorps. Will be tutoring and helping run a homework club, k-8, 12 hours a week. Just attended 10 hours of training in communication, classroom management, literacy tutoring, ELL (english language learners) tutoring, phys ed activities, proffesionalism and Americorps Stuff. I feel 10x more confident about working with kids and am really excited!