O woman, o woman o woman O

The Language of the Brag
by Sharon Olds

I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw,
I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms
and my straight posture and quick electric muscles
to achieve something at the centre of a crowd,
the blade piercing the bark deep,
the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.

I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,
some heroism, some American achievement
beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,
magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot
and watched the boys play.

I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire
and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around

belly big with cowardice and safety,
stool charcoal from the iron pills,
huge breasts leaking colostrum,
legs swelling, hands swelling,
face swelling and reddening, hair
falling out, inner sex
stabbed again and again with pain like a knife.
I have lain down.

I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and shit and water and
slowly alone in the centre of a circle I have
passed the new person out
and they have lifted the new person free of the act
and wiped the new person free of that
language of blood like praise all over the body.

I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,
I and the other women this exceptional
act with the exceptional heroic body,
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud American boast
right here with the others.


Happy National Poetry Month

She aint crazy she right

Here is a poem that I opened up to and just read as means of ritualizing the end of my very productive last two hours of writing writing writing. I like it bc it called out to me, from the same place of illustrious space within where the heart light glows, called out to and moved me in there so that when I opened the book this is the poem that fell out before me.

I like it a ton, also bc it is the theme of my life. In that double sense way all language has that is the very reason I love love love writing-as-art-as-craft-of-life. Or it was the theme of my life, but now, in celebration, no more no more no more....

Poem to end my day, by Sharon Olds

Everything
Most of us are never conceived.
Many of us are never born--
we live in a private ocean for hours,
weeks, with our extra or missing limbs,
or holding our poor second head,
growing from our chest, in our arms. And many of us,
sea-fruit on its stem, dreaming kelp
and whelk, are culled in our early months.
And some who are born live only for minutes,
others for two, or for three, summers,
or four, and when they go, everything
goes--the earth, the firmament--
and love stays, where nothing is, and seeks.

Yup.

...I will tell about it...

Two days ago the doctor, in less time than it took me to turn off my car in the parking lot of the walk-in clinic and unbuckle my seatbelt, told me I had infected tonsils.

An infected tonsil looks pretty gross.

This morning when I woke up I felt like I'd been holding my breath, my whole body clung frantically to a rock, with gnarly whitecap tumblers breaking over top of me all night long. I couldn't tell: was it my tonsils or had I just slept wrong?

But by the time I was up and out of bed that certain headache that comes, the one that sucks my whole breath from me, was fast on its way. I only get those kind of headaches when I've been clenching my jaw in my sleep.

Then I remembered: I dreamt these funny, peaky-feeling dreams all night long. The half-pulled curtain in my consciousness was throwing fresh images: me, with bruised and bloodied, swollen faces--several, like a series of comic book characters, shots of me--all in varying different proportions of having been beat-up, and each with a doopy grin on my at times toothless face.

On Tuesday night at the funeral for sweet Meggie's father, my buddy Ronnie and I talked forever--Meggie tucked safe the whole time, near the casket, in the corner of our eyes. He told me tales and tales of his family, all based around the coal mines of West Virginia. Two nights before my friend Tom went on about where he's from and the lifestyle that influences society there: the coalmines of North Central PA. Driving home, or to my cousin's home, from South County where the funeral was, a song bittersweet like a sourpatch kid on the tongue caught my attention from the IPOD: Coalminer, by Mia and Jonah.

My grandpop. How'd he come to Baltimore? I dont know. I should know this. His dad, Orlando, came here from Ireland. Had 11 kids. Worked the coal mines in PA til he died.

I got up this morning with this binging headache trying to start. I drank lots of water, ate some cheerios then took some Advil. Then I put two hours of work in from home, and then cancelled all my other plans...

Infected tonsils, according to Louise Hay, indicates creativity stifled or repressed emotions.

Does it really mean that? What if it doesn't?

What if it does?

(Sharon Olds. From the untitled first page of her poetry book Strike Sparks.)

All I know for sure is that I believe, I believe with out question in the deep life, the deep inner world and those inner lights being made real, and shining my way day to day. After those dreams, and the connections about Pop, and my flightiness over some decisions I've got comping up, what I did for the rest of the day was take some much needed quiet time. I got gentle as I could with me and gave myself, in my sacred space, long uncharted time to just be with me, and listen.

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it...Our myths are our lives, as magical and myth-filled as we let them be, as we choose to make them, as we choose to believe...I choose to believe in the magic inside, and the signs without. In my We'Moon calendar the forecast for Aries for the year said to take the quiet time to seek the voices of my ancestors.

I am sitting down to write late in to the night on my Memoir.

I hear you, Pop!