salvaging

Keep falling for boys that can't love me,
trying to salvage what's left of us,
children of the age where the war is never won—
like backroad trucks pulled by magnets away from ourselves,
sold for spare parts.

To distant from that loss, of being wantneeded in the world,
I salvage
other things—
cedar planks by the railroad tracks
where bone-thin birds nest—
these once were a barn,
held sweet hay, thickropes calmcows
some young man's livelihood.
Piling them in my truck, each splinter
is a hail mary, a curse I let rest
against my teeth. The house of love
is not filled with velvet or satin,
covered in glitter or stripped clean of
bright hair, or even bound in black leather...

As a child I saw houses collapse in upon themselves
like trees falling, some ghosts's life
imploding nail by nail,
sometimes for years.
Houses came down and fences
went up. Dad told me how lucky we were,
to have redwood fence posts,
their invincibilities
while my life continually crashed down
around my ears, left my sparrow bones
ringing shrill as bells.

I could barely see over the
blessed golden grass
that fed each sweet-eyed cow of ours,
clambering over russet posts
I thought I could smell the sea,
the shaded dirt, baby ferns curled
like sleeping cats—I thought
why not build
with this
as the years got leaner and leaner
and the boards on windows I looked through
were torn at by breezes and typhoons,
sometimes pulled off by pianist's fingers and
doe-eyed promises. Saving relationships--
with my father, girl-dog, old car,
these boys that come to me all soft hands
and words that twist like willows
is a dusty age-long fight,
a journey by bus and foot pushing
a shopping cart, folks avoiding
your crusted crinkled eyes, and you trudge
up the road towards a dirt floor
and missing walls and sagging cross beams
and a single chair you could never find
a cushion for, thinking why am I trying
and how will I eat tomorrow,
staring at a pile of redwood planks
as boys leave helplessly,
wordlessly,
one by one.

Some step on nails,
some I send the dogs after.
They never think to bring tools
but termites, magpies come in their wake,
a reverse plague of reminders and constant cleaving.

When the fences go down
the houses will still
be falling, ravens always at the door
as I struggle to lift one
last beam
one steady once-tree
to keep the roof from caving...

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--

a response to: people who say I worry to much

for acs

to worry for her,
einstien of strings and written word,
is to fall into a groove--my addiction to
defending what I hold dear.
A high school career spent in
worry and wonder,
my stomach flips when her parents name
flashes on the caller id
hoping it isn't time yet...
it's a habit habit habit I can't break--

spent hours last night staring at
our empty phones,
the clock in my head - 12 1 2 3 - he whispers in the dark
she hasn't come back yet
what are we afraid to say?

her mother at my doorstep,
have you seen her
our worries twin in the gray morning light.
teenage frantic phone calls,
clawing myself apart with anxiety
fear of and for another's life -

mis conmigos family of soul energy
intertwined like branches and shared sweatpants
all our mugs filled with bitter coffee.
always those I turn to, those I think I can walk away from -
how far would I have to go -
the reason I no longer need Adonis,
no more honey-eyed savior-heartbreakers for me--
Only my firefly self and lightbright friends

Listen:
if you found your wolf-spined lady,
your lion-eyed summerlovergirl

woke without them

what would you do at midnight?

spent last night dreaming of
the dark rain world outside,
a night haunted by men worser for
the year's wear
our naivete
what I should've done - should have asked for numbers,
called the house,
should have given her my pepper spray -
pray and how close those words sound
both defense and plea

my fire-souled manic girl of stringed things
would you have loved yourself a little more
if I had said it sooner?

better safe than sorry darlings -
how to say or show it? I love you and
I don't think I can ever worry enough--

First Rains

First rains of fall are here in the South Bay! Happy new year!

The moment I noticed the rain falling I threw on the least amount of clothes possible (ie less to dry) and headed downstairs. It feels so real and right, to be soaked through and shivering along with the juniper and the pepper trees. And yeah, I’m in the middle of a city, and it’s probably acid rain, and I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow with extra eyes or toes, but it is worth it for the cleansing.

This is when the real Autumn begins. I miss the Falls of home, water running down the hills in rivulets, the culverts full and gurgling… Pulling on a yellow raincoat and too-big boots to slip and slide up the Little Hill behind the house, my hand small against the rough rusted water tank. Slopping through 2 feet of mud in the barnyard to get to whatever animals in the corral, the heady-earth scent of wet horse- and cowflesh slick against my cheek…

I grew up on a cattle ranch, where drought meant so much more than letting the front lawn go a little brown. The months leading up to the rains were full of worry, of “navy showers” and my father and grandfather checking the sunrise, the cloudfall, riding out on the quad each day to make sure the cows and calves had made it to water. Some days they brought back little black bodies of calves that laid down in the hot sun and never got up. The first rain would bring a little relief, a short coat of grass for the hills, and prayers for a wet winter.

We don’t do it for the money – my family works hard to barely break even every year … I’m not sure each family member’s individual reasons: it’s been tradition for the past hundred years, the need to be close to the land, that if we sold out our 80 acres would become a landfill and cookie-cutter houses. We’re stewards of the land and cattle, and if it means going a little thirsty, letting the lawn wither, that is fine. Putting something both higher and equal – the earth, innocent animals, the grass and the eagles—before yourself is a powerful thing.

When I’m waiting at the busstop after work soaked to the skin, or get my books wet on the way to class, I’m still going to thank the universe for this rain. Though this water may be poison or polluted, the earth is still trying to get her cycles back in order and I am so thankful for it, even as I dance between raindrops and feel my soul filling up like a crystal glass, even as my Self drinks her fill and the gutters gurgle and run overflowing…

remove, rewind, slow motion

Poem taken down for two really good reasons:

This girl

helped to create

this mag.


It looks like good times. I'm pretty excited!


(thanks to davka for the heads up... Tomorrow I get to sit through three student assemblies and story-times, so I'm heading to bed... I haven't even started it, but I love my job. :)

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!

Dear Universe,

I want-need, in this order:

1. To have my ideals, intellect, goals, ideas, and body mutually respected--not overprotected or singularly revered.

2. To be held.






With love, T.


(I could say a million other things, but honestly: this is what I am starved for.)

North Prayer

I give thanks for the fish my man-family greedily steals; far over the limit though not beyond what we can eat. They gloat over sizes and granddaddy stories, whine about aching feet and I know we could have afforded another meat for our supper, but even if our bellies are filled their souls will only be stilled by the rhythm of the fly rod, the focus of the deep pool and softly-loud stream. Is that not need? I ask the corn mother, and yes, she says, men with unhappy day jobs and concrete between their toes seek to be gods on the weekend pursual of innocent bucks, the rocky silence of wilderness and brash backslappings of boys.

Where else can we be men? they ask, and sky father answers, All places under me—but they do not hear. This thankless ungrounded society deludes them, tells them men take and take and power over and beat down and conquer, and they carry this harsh unhonoring with them, from degrading their mates to chasing the antelope until their aging bodies throb, then go back to the cabin full of cheap brews and steaks that died afraid, where they will scrape out their gut-souls with more granddaddy stories and feigned fireside anger. Men? I ask, and as His bearded breeze sweeps through the aspens, they quake with Her laughter, they carry away my whispered prayers of gratitude as I stand by the tail-gate, enraptured by rainbow scales and cold eyes trapped in a Ziploc—brown trout, fingerlings, rainbows, people earth-darker than I say that their wisdom comes from always knowing which direction home is.

Even in my father’s oil-stained hands the hooked trout twists strong as a snake, as a bent willow, seeking the water, the upstream. My boy-family is as out of place in cities, in Wal-Marts and strip malls, but where is their fight to seek the ground? Ten minutes ago this fish was slipping through the stream beside me, unaware, and now lies on my plate floured and browned. I never enjoyed eating fish, and I still don’t. When they take fine-boned meat within themselves, what do the men-boys learn, I ask? Plastic, uncaring, downpayments and empty screens—how much more can my father take, how does he keep his gills fluttering so long away from the hills and the oak? With this, the trees murmur through mud in my jeans, the wind coaxes answers from my creek-washed hair. And I give thanks, for warm muscle sliding down my throat, for my father’s fumblings, for the quaking aspen, for the lies that drive us to seek the intensity of these long hauls and payless days, this condensed, desperate forest loving.