The Hallway's Hell?

I was late yesterday morning for a meeting in my own office but certainly not from lac of trying to get there on time. That was one of my intentions for the new calendar year at the end of December/early Jan: respect people that you are in union with by showing up to meet them on time. I am historically a dawdler. Anyhow I was up with plenty of time to spare but I was just so sluggish there was no going any faster than the mud under my skin. It was rainy out, sooo rainy that there are coastal flood advisories all over the shore. And mostly, I was tired, like blinky blinky mostly sleeping tired all day.

I was quiet for the first half-hour of the meeting even though it was very informal. Quiet in general is not usually my way. Then it came out--Kim was finishing up a recap on the latest details of her own personal transitions when I just said it, the truth of the matter. "I've been over the bridge every weekend since I quit my job. I leave Fridays and dont get back til Monday morning, sleeping on friend's sofa and hanging out late every night. I love it I'm having so much fun at home I barely am even connected to the life I still have over here! It's all I can do to keep a single foot in the game..." I was whining, had thrown myself across the conference table but in a silly, self-indulgent way, and smiling, too. Brenda laughed, said "Well if all you've done is work for the past two years all you're going to do now is party! Who can blame you? You're an overacheiver!"

And that is it. Last night I was so exhausted, just tired tired tired. And it's true, I haven't slowed down. I was sinking fast in to a drained, hopeless place when I got home from work and I willingly let myself go there. I laid on the couch and watched Seinfeld and let the hopeless feeling take me. I took a little nap. Then I asked myself what I needed, and no answer came. But I know now that that bad feeling is actually remedy-asking, a specific language of my own personal soul. I looked around my house: unpacked suitcase still in place in the corner, where it's been for three weeks in order for me to just switch outfits in and out. Dishes piled in the sink, literal stacks of papers and bills in three different places. Dust bunnies everywhere in clumps on the stained wood panels. The old me, pre-Choptank, would have been so self-scrutinizing. But last night I just sighed, smiled and realized what I needed was to clean up, to set a little order around here in order to daily enjoy the little time I have left in this fabulous place of my own. I left the tv on and took intermittent time doing dishes, watching sitcoms, sorting bills, folding clothes. I ate dinner of potato chips and cheetos bc I have no other dinner food. I even eventually vacuumed, too.

God it feels good to go easy on myself. To take care of myself, and to listen. When I first got sober this lady Debbie told me that the first year is just about learning to name your emotions, and that the only ones we can usually identify in the beginning are good and mad. And then she told me that we are like pendulums, we get plucked and off we go in the direction of happiness, and it's so good to be there that when we move then wooaaaaah now we flail over to the other side, mad. And so we go, until we learn to honor all the little subtleties of in-between. The process. Really, I believe this: if I dont care for and cherish and nurture my self, if we dont take the time to listen and be quiet, and also to run and be crazy and vital and party and embrace, then who will? Who will be gentle with me if I'm not? No one lives this life for us you know? It's up to us to be open to our selves, our incongruencies and our own funny swings. I woke this morning, quiet, peaceful, aware. Aware of how blessed I am and in acknowledgment that the transitions, the in-between places, the time when waiting in the hall for the next door to open, how that can be hell but really it isn't meant to be, or to be seen as a problem to have. How come that's how we approach life, how come that's so commonly the attitude we take to change? Despair. It's so exciting to have the infinite horizon on the distance. Exciting, yes, and terrifying too. But to get the chance to be out there--doing it. I mean, that's just it, isn't it? That's just where I am and just where I am amped to be.

Poem. O Powerful Windhorse-Goddess

LUNGTA
The Tibetan word for Windhorse

Sounds like true love to me you say, and I roll over in bed
my eyes at the far wall where the two dollar junky furniture
I bought at the Crumpton auction junk sale props against the wall
a shelf for my jewelry, of which there is a lot
my couple movies and my few remaining CDs.
The shelves have cobwebs in the square corners that glisten dew-like
in the sun. There is no sun out it is late now. The shelves are painted barn red.
I like the junk piece and won’t throw it out because it reminds me of earthen clay.

Is that what it’s like? I ask and cover deep up under the softest sheets I own.
The ones that never get washed because I always need them on my bed as home.
I sigh and close my eyes, I am caught in the parallel between
the floating obvious of the everyday and the permanent parts
settled in me the wired lines at night, there when I go to sleep.
Fleeting thoughts I label as whimsy. I guess I stopped believing
those because often there is not enough energy to try.
I drink water out of a hand thrown mug given to me by Brook
made by Mare. That was when I had nothing but whimsy the birthday
I spent long days lying in the dirt on my farm talking to the sun.
Brook is in bed, probably, with Brandon right now.
You are a good friend I think, but do not say this out loud.
I marvel instead at how the phone cut out, your cell battery dead
3000 miles away from here, Newport, in your own bed. The last thing
I said before I lost you: I deserve that. I deserve to be treated like gold.

The Tibetan word for self-existing energy of basic goodness translates
in English to Windhorse. Think of that. When I first moved to Oregon
several of my poems featured a horse and when I met you it was clear
by your hair that you were made of the breeze. In your essence there
could be little pink forgetmenots braided in, and sunlight that actually
looks like linked ribbons and keeps certain curls warm and in place.
The way the sea pitches between the light of the trees on the Coast is
a miracle, cities are built and torn and ravaged for the lac or the
want of it. You are from Kansas, but came there because the land
Gnostic as it is, had secret currents run in its cave. You are archeological.
You piece clues together, sit Ashram in your bedroom, divine the code
you now call Anusara. This is goodness Beth, same like you said to me
on my back on the purple mat Whale Cove over my Northwest shoulder
where Crow always met me for coffee in the trees: Breath. Just Breathe.

O, powerful Windhorse-Goddess of muscles secret land-work and breath.
It is so good to have friends, it is so good to have a friend as you.
You are, we, the Princess Path. We take steps and the Anasazi dance
around fires that today smolder only as lichen or what is left in the
red clay. We celebrate, we yearn more, we beckon ever-forward.
The sea and the trees and the cavernous glee is our yarn and we sew
it all back together in this dance. These steps are yours, are me,
are unraveling a secret code that is and will always be gold. And I get it
when you say, That is beautiful, that is beautiful. You are saying Friend,
my friend, you are beautiful. Just breathe, just be. My friend, o Windhorse
you sweet sanction of grace and air through trees, you who works hardest
with hands and wrists and hips and muscled sinewy legs, you who carries
all on her back, who is never and ever loaded all the way down, who runs
and gallops and whinies with ribbons flying and sometimes screams:
You are beautiful, sacred. You are beautiful, as said to me
You deserve gold. Just breathe Just breathe…Just be

Personal Agnostic Creed

by Brooks Long

I believe in the twin justices of peace and murder
I believe in the benevolence of my father and mother
As much as I refuse the truth of their failings
I believe in the one story, its depth and wonder and tragedy too heavy to escape the throat of one voice yet slips from every lip every day
I believe in the child whom can not be defined even after a lifetime
I believe that God looks after fools and drunks
(and there is no God)
I believe in the love of Jesus and the grand tyranny of a joke and its jester
I believe in the indignation following a tree and a rope and
No hate, only
the denial of love
I believe in myself twice daily
I believe myself always
I believe fiercly in the ballet of a junkie
I believe in the grandeur of harsh vernacular
I believe in pussy
I believe in the hush of a kiss
I believe in one American color: brown, yellow, black, red, white and blues
I believe in Rock and Roll, which most certainly exists
I believe in my grandfathers own church and pulpit
I believe in Fayette Street
I believe in a promised land
I believe passionately in calm rationality
I believe in the fist
I believe in the knife and the rifle
I believe in the atomic bomb, which most certainly exists
I believe in the survival of me and mine
I still believe in the twin justices of peace and murder
I believe that after life is death
And know nothing
Amen.

~~~

I dont know much, but I believe in love and santification through imperfection. And the holy light coming in through the least expected cracks in the cement and holes in the wall when you're too fucking tired and broken and dust-filled to even think or strain to look. This man has saved my life, again again again and once more again and again this year. So many times I could never quantify or possibly relate them back for you all to even try to make sense or comprehend. But where once there was none, there is love and light again--trust. Thank you friend travel well I so, so believe in you xoxo

Poem. Smallest Pebble.

There is nothing rosy about this
some beautiful Blanchard spoof
with dusky oils and pastels and far-off
faces with far-off eyes appropriate the way
far-off looks are supposed to paint it: longing

C’mon. That’s my eyes rolling.
Take a puff knock it down don’t forget
muthfkr to pass. I will garden the soils
great with rain, the wetness will spill out
my legs. Alloy. It will smell like metal
cuz all things do, unwashed. Purity
that doesn’t look it always is labeled
pain. Elemental
where it all goes
& where it all starts
& ends again. So what baby
I aint got time for this Now what?
I aint tryin to hear that shit
Closer to this is the cure. Where the ground
smells like metal it takes like fangs, there is
bone there, calcium, which is part mortar.
Mix it up a little with your own bag of salt.
It smells rotten it always should, it always
will. In the sex light the afternoon burns
orange shades of palsy that even the lungs
cant destroy. Even the uterus and wilted sac
can’t maim it instead hang holy like ornaments
decorative after emaciated calling. Little bells with
sanctified Christmas songs inside the machine.
Yell it out, hear? Stop, don’t stop! Start the
radio going again play that good old shit,
move your ass to the music you got down once
don’t forget you can, again

Nature and Will

Last night in the middle of the night at like 4 I turned the light on I was awake and the only thing I can say is that I was anxious, but in an excited way with an alive mind that I think was anticipating the weekend. I blog-rolled and looked over my own blog reading recent posts, which is something I am neurotic and narcissistic about every so often, and thought to myself I dont know I think I am going through one of those times when I dont have much to say. I realized that what has been on here on my blog the last couple posts is about tidying up the remnant hurts that still are left "at home." And I think I've about wrung that free of all there is left to say.

And now it is now, and I am here, and that is the untruth: because as often as it is about my voice and the capturing, it too is about just downloading and processing and getting it out. Which is when I most feel sorry for you Dear Reader for reading when the truth for me is sometimes like today I just need to blabble spontaneous download and it is an exercise in futility but then, isn't that what all art in some slants of thought is? I am writing literally to bring myself in to the day or really, just to clean and charge my mind.

I fell back to sleep around 6:30 and was bumming when I felt the blanket of rest flit finally over my consciousness: it's going to be late when I get up now...and it was, it was after 9, I wanted to be in the office already. I am meeting with my writing partner tonight, and spending the night at Mandy's after so we can late night catch-up. It is golden sunny out, the little blue speedwells are popped out everywhere and the air smells so stank of wet earth and high-nostrilled sweet salt cooking from the creeks and muddy riverbeds that all I want to do is wander in to the woods and hug armfulls of pineneedles and wet lacy leaves to my face and chest.

I have data to review and submit.

Ah, poor me, no? I am so silly with my Will. I've been thinking a lot about nature, about one's nature and the larger, macro Nature of things. How in that fabulous magic double helix way of manifestation One's Nature, and the larger Nature, are convergent in the nebulous with actual Nature as well, with the elemental base of all things. Through which we get to act out project on to and portray this walking dream. I have a couple women who are hella close to me, who I've grown up with over the last decade or so and we coach and mentor each other through life. Three of the four of us are Aries, and I was thinking about this because it's come up a lot in our recent discussions--our impulsiveness, our fire, our Will. Aries is just about upon us--the Equinox is Saturday!! and after all this mutable rain--all this watery washing away of things--now will come the harnessing of change. The worst thing one can do is fight their nature, I believe that in the dance of Wills, inside the limited human understanding of morality and religiosity and ethics and Free Will and submission, there is the beautiful meeting place where the seeds of what we want birth the potentiality for the highest possible example of how and who we could be. Where Free Will and High Will transmute and are one and the same. Ahhhh, Magic! Doubt, and fighting these impulses, are the truest sin? In meditation under the last full moon I was long and quiet and then the trance slipped on, and my medicine Owl came to me and I had a brief but clear reminder of the importance of Intention, and aligning our truths and not fighting what we want. And, too, owning clearly what we dont want "because when we ignore what we dont want this becomes guilt."

Woah, well it is St. Patricks Day I guess in the fashion of this tradition (O mama Brigid my first and true rune) what was meant to come out today was some good olfashion Celtic esoteria--Nature Wisdom for all of you.

Yea so. I was all amped about this weekend in the middle of the night, for my little fancy dress and dancing and celebrating Saturday night. I didn't sleep well in excitement and allure and wakefullness aligned with the Nature of things. The sun is shining and so I will go now, get dressed, and walk to work. Be well be well be true to you...!

Support INDY Art

The Spring Standards

Po'Girl

I was overhearing a convo at the counter at the coffee shop last night and of course had to butt in.

K Records? I asked the dude. You know about K Records?

His eyes lit up and he's like yea I'm a total music nerd I nerd out to stuff like that. Of course now we are talking about 80's indy and riot grrrl music Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy. That all shaped my sensibility, like pointed me to who I am at such an important time I say to him and all the twinkly lights are on inside me the way only the twinkly lights come on when I talk about indy art and riot grl and loud stuff and power to the ppl hand to hand doing it ourself.
I am blogging while we're talking so the convo gos on in bits and pieces. He asks me who I like now I say Dude. I was out of the scene a long time. But the last year, year and a half I am totally into obscure stuff, stuff that I find on the internet. Unsigned. I mean I like a ton of music that's popular but you know, myspace art. That's definitely what I care the most about.

Two weeks ago I saw Po'Girl at Night Cat and in the break talked to one of the members, Awna, for a while. We were both jazzed: their new album was produced entirely by advance sales from their mailing list. The band offered handmade covers for the first 200 sold, and that is how they made the money for the new release they were touring behind. They were signed before, they chose to leave their label, to go indy. Last night The Spring Standard happily announced that they did the same thing with the album they are about to release--presales paid for the full production. It was clear how proud they were to be doing it themselves. I hooped and yahood from the front row I was the only one clapping at first, but whatev most the crowd was middleaged meaning only that perhaps they're a bit set in their ways? I am so amped about this real and legitimate movement in art right now--it too extends in to writing and the lit arts, to poetry and of course self-produced zines and chapbooks. In general, social media is empowering us for the first time ever to successfully and effectively reach audiences in ways we've never been able before. And as anyone who understands culture, sociology, tribe shamanism or magic will tell you--what happens on the periphery edge, what happens on the outside, is actually the first indicator and direction of the tide from within. In other words, the edge of things in art or any ppl-based movement is the true direction.

YES!

Right now I am laughing, I got my eyes worked over at my doctor who is the most competent peeper peeker I know, but she lives in Elkton, which is like so far east of Baltimore it's kinda considered the Eastern Shore and so far north of Kent County it's considered "over there", as in the other side=the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. Ppl on the shore talk of the other side with pariah grimacing. My eye doctor dilated me and then sent me off driving down 95 in the grey wall of mistrain and my trippy no short term vision softeyes. Now I am all the way all the way from there in Annapolis, where I drove literally to buy my cousin some pie from the Amish Market and it's funny to me bc visual reality is still a little teeny bendy from the dilation. Despite my tripeyes and the rain, this is the first time I've been "over here" since I quit my job last Friday--since I told them the only thing keeping me there on the shore, the only thing is my job and for two years I tried to make that enough, but it's not--and I am so, so happy! Needless to say end of summer after a moneymaking quikie down the beach I am hella hyped to move back "over here."

Support the indy art movement people!! and uhhh, btw?

I AM STOKED.

Letter to Mike, from the Detention Center, for the last time

I haven't been here since 2004.

Wow & now I remember how it used to be so easy to talk to you from in here. I miss you so much--the most out of all the ones I said good bye to--your freckles and white play dough skin. The time you insisted on walking in Kittyhawk, along the strip, in the 80 degree sun, til Mandy & I found you drenched--your jeans even wet w sweat, on a concrete slab outside 7-11. There is no room, no time in here to dream, I didn't know enough back then, 25, 26, to bring hope in.

I barely had my own.

I guess I did tho. One of my boys got his diploma when he got out--another learned all about Ghandi, X & King. Other success? They learned metaphors, wrote stories for me of their lives. One guy we started on his multiplication tables I was so gentle when I talked to him and he softened and was even shy--tho I bet they teased him about fucking me when they got back to their cells. I was proud of them, sent post cards when I went on the road. There's a health care debate in the US right now--that there can even be debate about basic human rights : health care--tells you, proves, just what we're all still about. If health care isn't available bc it's not affordable rights aren't equal, that is just a common sense equivalent, a fact. So it goes. A white grl private school kid gets locked-up for drugs what happens? Another addict punished for crime bc of her disease. Yes. She gets out tho, makes good. She dreams well & she blvs she can chnge the wrld. Black man almst done hghschl, poor fifty-seven yr old white woman frst chld by 9th grade. They get out, what's her path to make good? What's his? What will they blv?

Yesterday I enrolled new mom's from the early childhood program in to english class. One from Guatamala, one from Mexico. When it was done I drove to my office & inside one of the guys from Workforce grabbed me and said you have a student she just walked in. She was pregnant. Another mom from another early childhood program this one meant to help with her GED. I been trying to track you down you're hard to get a hold of she said, then out of the blue at lunch today It said to go so I said to my mom, I gotta go now I gotta go see the lady from the college now.

& Why? Why does It talk to some of us but others never know? Why do only some of us listen, or believe?

After you died I dscvrd diPrima. Even called her one day on my own. It didn't take long then for my words. After you left & the jail & the family center broke me & then I went to Oregon to cry. How did I get here? How?

One thing I never talk about is how I called you the day you shot yourslf. You never called me back. You were looking at pictures of us when they found the blood chunks of your head.

After all that I went on the road again it took me back to Chestertown, it was April 05 we were fighting in our little seafront apt Lincoln Beach when I knew he needed to go home.

Did he? Or was it I? I talked to Patty & Brenda it'd been a long time since we talked heart to heart & I alwys scrtly felt bad when it came to them like maybe they thought I'd done smthng wrong when I left Brandon. But they hugged me & loved me & it was just like when I was young--like before--when my heart broke ovr our students again & again & they just kept teaching me the ropes & saying let god fill your heart when you've got nothing left. They were like moms to me when it came to Adult Ed back then. But when there's nothing left in there what do you follow how do you know in what direction to go?

When I turned 30, that was the spring I learned or started to be willing to learn to be true. I was studying Gandhi then, again--Gandhi who started his adult life in London dancing fox trots & eating 4 star meals dressed in the finest hand-tailored suits. That nagging that ache that heart that said I was on the wrong path doing all the wrong thing. I told Patty then--whtvr it is I will go inside & I will listen & I will end up going where I need to be. That was when I turned 30. First thing that happened is Brandon said he would never move. I was back there Truslow Road under the pines trees it was about to be spring. & second thing--the poetry came back to me--it was Josh this time--I hadn't had words since you, Mike, since I stopped finally talking to you. & this time it was to Josh & when I stopped fighting the words just came & came, they just flew...

It's all different now--I've done my best to listen to & follow me & it has been hard & led me here all these yrs later. I used to think or be convinced but now I know--there is nothing or no one to blame. It takes a whole life to make good. It takes a long, long while.

I miss you but I am glad you went on & never ended up in here. Detention centers are one thing--prison totally something else. So much worse. Mayvbe it is better to un*see. To pretend you cant, or choose to not. I dont know? It is sad, so sad here. Basic human rights. It'll be different some day? Basic rights to what? Human rights. Food. Clothes. Shelter. Health.

Pursuit of happiness?

Been a long time coming. Can one be an activist & blv in both? The opportunity & the "right" to choose? Life daunts you, no? And love breaks your dreams. Are words contraband? Are visions, song, illegal as dreams? I dont care Mike. Even after all that's been done. All the places I've gone all that I've seen. Pursuit of happiness=vision of what could be. I used to tell my students in here QUESTION EVERYTHING. Dig a little deeper--dont just believe. But sometimes you've got to--in order to know what to choose. To know you have the right. I still will, I still will believe, I will choose hope.

A Place Of My Own

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my apartment?

When I first moved in here all I did was sit around in wonder, with a pure-eyed peace-feeling stare. I loved the lines of the walls, the smoothness, the light. I used to open up the great tall window in front of my writing table and smoke cigarettes sitting on the ledge with my feet on the roof and my heart in the tree. I would talk to the moon, or just listen in a satiated way to the traffic going by.

We moved out of the suburbsprawl that had tangled its way down route 2 from Baltimore and in to a house in the woods when I was a pre-teen. We went from a neighborhood full of kids with rat tails and kickball games and swingsets and snowball stands and dancing under the street lights in driveways purple boomboxes pumping to no one, just Sean and me, and the woods. And Lindsey and Darby who lived across the street in this big old farmhouse that had secret cellar tunnels cemented off but that you could access through trap doors in the field. My dad left three months after that he moved to New York. Manhattan always terrified me and repelled me after that. I started smoking cigarettes then and stealing from the liquor cabinet they kept downstairs with the heavy-hinged door. I put a sign on the door to my room, it was a manilla envelope with a fake address and it said Kelly's place on it and I think maybe that is when it started, my need and ache to always have a room or place of my own.

Later, after I graduated college mom was selling the house. I stayed on in Chestertown where I got my degree and got clean, it was 2002, for what was meant to be only the summer. I was working three jobs, two in town and one two hours away at the beach. My dad's best friend died and my dad was suddenly back--just like that, 12 years later. I was an adult now or supposed to be so I made decisions like an adult should. He was depressed and didn't get off the couch at my grandparents and aunt and uncles little wood house at the beach. I worked there at the beach it was beautiful fall and pulled doubles at a seafood house uptown three days a week and tried to feed dad peanut butter and jelly but my father, who loves food second only to gin and golf, wouldn't even eat. Then I drove to Chestertown to be a coffee shop barista in the days and wear a button down tux top at a white linen the other nights of the week. At the coffee shop I fell in love with a quiet boy who had soft brown eyes.

He was from Chestertown and so it was that I stayed.

By December of that year they offered me a job teaching night classes ESL. I didn't want to I had no background for it but she kept pressuring so I agreed. The first night I was coming up one hall there were students coming towards me from another, I closed my eyes and took a breath and relaxed so I could feel my heart open then just said a prayer in my head: Direct my thoughts and actions. Help me to love. Hola! I shouted to the little Mexicans with strong bright eyes and they smiled so warm and that was it, eight years ago, I was done.

In November, last year 2009, I moved here to this place finally for the first time in my life, my little tiny place all of my own. I love to be here and revel in how much I've I enjoy my own quiet home. It took me a long time. On Friday last week I stepped down from my job. That two nights a week gig teaching ESL eventually led to full-time at a Community College, where I worked hours on end with three other people to establish the community english and high-school diploma program. I poured every last bone breath and blood in to that job since they took it from the public schools in 08. It carried me through one of the most difficult transitions of my life, but now I am through, through the change of being my own woman, being single, being strong, being alone. May 14 is my last day and then soon I will leave the Eastern Shore.

It's been a long, long time coming. Who knew all along I just needed a little tiny place of my own?

Whole-er now

It was one of the longest weeks I can remember.

Years ago, in the Nez Perce wilderness in Idaho on the river, I had my period and laid long for days on the rocks in the sun. The butterflies were nesting and we hadn't seen them on the return trip until then, not like how they showed up every day after day two on the road when they marked four corners next to truck, the blue sky morning after the protection ritual I did around the tent in Vermont that first night. In the Nez Perce it was a full moon and I cried for days, I cried deep, meaty throttling choking tears, we'd been on the road for 16, 17 months, for well over a year, I knew I was crying the river, and for the moon. For the great, deep, the retched Mama wound. In the tent on my back the mama staring at me her wide white eye I knew for sure in that airless clear way that when my heart broke the first time all the way back over a year before in the Black Hills, when Crow came to me and then the natives in the dream and then I was too scared to do the Sundance we encountered on the Res the next day(it all would have been different then, had I, this I know) that this, this in the Nez Perce, butterflies nesting there, full moon tears and me, was a continuation of what had been. God wasn't breaking my heart god was finishing that night, finishing making it whole. The breakdown that paves the way for breakthrough. Turkeys came, fat ones, big wild turkeys through the woods turkey the give away bird--you will give it away, your whole new heart grl, for the world.

Ten days ago I looked at houses in Baltimore to buy and start my boarding house. I was so syked and none of it came thru. Nine days ago the tears came in the wordless way. They fell for no reason and wouldn't stop and then my heart closed, and then I knew: it is happening again, not the breaking of the heart but the making of it whole. It hurts so bad when the thread and bandages go through. It chokes me and feels like sucking dust and I still haven't learned how not to shut down. But I am learning how to fight to re-open because if you dont do nothing well then months pass, you are deadened, grey inside, it's become you this new state of numb. Sooner and sooner each time after I close now, sooner and sooner I am able to re-open. I saw two concerts, two plays, and took myself by myself to the ballet. In these ten days with all that community and indy art I still lost my faith. I went through the motions tho, fed the vegetable body with all the food I know. On Thursday, the day before I signed my fate, Justin Sirois' book came by mail from Baltimore, and Erika's book she keeps telling me about a memoir she wants me to read that she didn't tell me she was buying me came, too. I kept trusting, I kept trusting that these were little pieces of me, of the river, of the eye of the moon. I kept breathing even tho I couldn't feel it or when I did it felt so hard. Even though I dont have anything to tie my lot to, to go forward, to catch me or latch on to when I fall. Or leap, I should say. Now that I've lept and can't see where I'm going. I kept going will keep going all the same.

I danced all night last night. All night long. I let the vegetable body transmute it all through song. I dont know what's coming, but I'm a little better today. I saw crocus' two houses down from me yesterday and more important my medicine most true, the first dandelion. I will keep going, I dont know where, but I'm for sure whole, or wholer now, and must trust in that. Must trust that I'm on my way must trust in all that I know. Must trust that all will be, or actually, that all is well.

Poem. The men, from when I was wild.

I woke up from a dream this morning that ever-familiar distant ache of longing and loss too present and I'd been dreaming...about? O yea & then it all comes back, and I am on my knees then & I am praying, but not really praying, but doing that deep silent witness thing that I do that is most meditation but also praying bc I am letting it go, all the waves of thoughts and emotions that are scary or wavery or confuse me or make it hard I watch and feel as they move up and out and I let them go. It is a prayer bc I beseeched the Mystery to please, please be w me now. It was the recurring dream space of basement with all the additional rooms that spread out and out and on and on in the underground and there was a party, and all the guys, all of them, all of them were there all the men from when I was wild. And it left me feeling so weird, and confused. We were having fun, in the first place it started in a pool and me asking these old womyn please to show me, cuz no one ever taught me to swim. Then I am out of the pool and kickin it, smiling, so happy to be w all the boys.

After the prayer I am curling my hair and taking my time getting ready bc it's a fake it til you make it kinda day. And then it hits, the words, and the vision, & holy hell it all comes together. This next part of my memoir. Woooohoooo wooohooooo WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

It all sorta hinged on what was in that dream. So anyway, cuz it's connected in a way that at least I understand and bc it's one of the recent styles that the formatting can be copied as is w/out any probs on to my blog, here is part of a poem that came out wayyyyy late the other nite.

Def having to do w the men, from when I was wild.


the city
I
i’m driving w walsh we’re coming down
new york ave right aftr
it turns from hiwy to city,
ol rt 50. nothin on the radio
i start rappin method man:
you’re all that i need i’ll be there for you
keep it real w me
i’ll keep it real w you
lovin your whole skee i’ll be in there boo
on top a that you got the good, power you
& now I’m looking at Checkers
the black & yllw flags & dark yellw
hang lites the crner right there soon as you come in to dwntwn.
i am rmmbrn phil, all you fools, shaeffer & my baby mudd
who seemed bynd it all or skeeved but who cld tell all
yall boys used to front so hard then. you fuckin fools
in the back a brad’s Cherokee toothless blowjobs for 20 bucks.
& we grew up in the brbs.

now, whn i thnk a you
it’s too bad yer gone.
my hearts a bone yrd but
i aint done in thr yet, not
building or done scowling,
i miss you but it’s not
so weird & hard now,
most times i laugh
& rmmbr thse
wld wndrful eyes it makes
me happy jst to be able to
do that

II
rmmbr
that frst nite you wr gone
your grave site.
i rolled arnd like a virgin
shannon moaned. i thnk i
mghtve been w the drnk
bfr i’d quit for good.
the special brew, tht
fruity juice. hold me
close.
r.kelly.
i lied, o god i lied i do
miss you.
the way you used to hold me
in bed. you’re like a bear
a big blck smky smellin
bear. you were my frnd i
lvd you so mch. i cnt blve
ur gone, even
aftr all this time.

IV
circles & tides
my first memory of lew reed is wild side &
i am in 7th grade. there are lollipops on the boards
for sale so large they take up two of my hands &
the spit down the side of my fist. we lick them
up the center that’s what we grls do.

i was smoking cigarettes, had em in my purse.
we stayed downtown in the belmont-hearne it was
the first time i ever stayed in town jess’ mom single
mine too & jess’ curfew way more late than mine

jamie and fran held hands across the driver &
passenger’s seat in the front. jamie the little sister
of jess. i think about jamie a lot more than i do
jess. it’s funny what gone makes you do.

ltr, this becomes a story. it is called peir one.
kevin is in it he is not dead yet but at the end
of the story he cld die. who knows?

the kids in the lit house get angry it’s not neitzche
it’s not even tom robbins. i don’t want trouble
it’s just, look dumbasses. what dya want from me
it’s all that i know.