The Infinite Gladness: 8/2/09

02 August 2009

i'm a blessing baby
ripped from the womb of
a woman notorious for
being not so obedient.
my first vowels were
something like redemption's
steady retreat.
my first love like
god's forgiveness and
fuck you
all in the same breath.
i read the bible straight through
i knew it took more
than shiny binding and
blinding red words to keep my attention
so i bought the version
with the pictures
and noticed jesus didn't look
anything ilke a terrorist
but he should have.
i'm not saint
i bless people with words i
don't even pretend to fully understand
but i understand that breathing
takes a hell of a lot more work
than speaking and if
dhaarma taught me anything
it's that we are all blessing
look here
your hand curves and emulates
the movements of god creating
your heart beats like the
drum song that bound
your mother's heart to your tiny hands
that moon you wished on every night
because you knew it was the biggest star
and could afford to lose
a little light
that.
is blessed.

prompt 1. august 1, 2009

Prompt: Write a free verse using "sparrows"

they land so easy,
easier than me
or this love
or past loves.
they land on collar bones,
couples that make me jealous,
on fragile wrists
lined with plenty of little branches
to call them to shore.
and when there's nothing to land on
i'm convinced the sparrows
will fly to forever,
finding a safe place
for our hearts to go to
to wait out the storm.
they will sing life
into our prayersongs,
breathe under our wings
and dare us to fly, too.
they are not swallows
or doves
they will not gulp down our grief and insecurities
and bring them back
as moonpearls.
but they dance on air
like dandelions
on a sunbaked sidewalk
to the tune of the ghettos.
they carry dreams to
the lost at home,
fly out with a last hope.
with so much,
you'd think gravity would
take hold and send feathers
tumbling beak over tail
over heavy hearts.

not so old. July 31, 2009

on the day i decided to leave you,
you traced a map on my tongue
and told me
it would never be too late
to find my way back home.
we were always lost,
running toward
or past something,
never taking the opportunity
to be.
i wanted to stay.
i wanted to tell you, but
i couldn't lie
so i sat in the shadows
by your doorstep
and counted to 3,
ran to the wind
and haven't looked back since.
your windows
were always open, even
in the dead of winter
when my shivering carpals
were dialing my mother to
send me some sun and orange juice.
you were never good at heat..
you couldn't sleep
without at least one arm
being cold and lonely
there were five million issues i had with this.
one.
was that it was always the arm near me
two.
was that for some reason
that meant mine had to share the
same symptoms of solitude.
my hands were always quivering
in response to your back always turning.
i don't reach solutions
easily.
i teeter between stay
and go and hope
for someone to reach in and decide.
for two months,
i knew that we were
changing our ending.
i knew that the 'happy'should probably be
omitted and replaced
with something more fitting.

not so old. July 31, 2009

i was born from metaphors
i'll never pretend to understand,
from sand that tourists
take home in little
tiny bottles with seashells.
sometimes we spend too many
seconds staring at nothing.
once, we stopped on the side of
the byway. our mission:
georgia peaches, rustic sun,
bull god, vertically stretched legs.
i was born to ridiculously mimic
your actions,
like somehow if i believed what you did
we would share the same skin.
we were fishing for things we didn't understand
our pride bulged out like a bullfrog
whenever someone suggested our ignorance.
you were one thing
i could never
figure out
how to go about
taking you off the tip of
my tongue
never tasted fruit like this
like we were biting the flesh
of 'no'
like tonguing the seeds of something
we still dont know the title of
hold me to this
stretch of road where we saved
our last breath
to wish for the innocence
we used to be.
we never wished on time,
never wanted a reversal of being
because being
wasn't something we had a definition for
and if you lose that in your travelling backwards,
how then do you describe it when you long for it again?
there are plenty of poems i left
in gravelways on the road to tennessee.
i planted the seeds
by the cherry trees that
weren't cherries at all
and hoped for the color to seep in
and bite the insides of their cheeks.
i was left knee-deep
in a current that looked me over
and decided i wasn't enlightened
enough to sweep me under just yet.
there
i was born enough to want
to walk on my own,
but not bold enough for the consequence
of simple existence.
i could've taken something then,
could've learned from the people
who'd never seen people like me,
could've figured out from the
hand-touch
that there was more to the story.
could've listened to the bedsongs
in the cherry trees.
we were born from instances
we will never remember
but they'll spend our whole life
attempting to scramble to the surface
and breathe
bluefaced
until their lungs are filled
with windsong.

old. July 1, 2009

i forgot how close it all was. and how close i always am to falling in love. and losing it all. how proximity speaks volumes and distance is volume at its highest, loudest setting. i forgot how loud silence can be, and how close women have to huddle to break that silence. i forgot how close we had to be to hold hands around that pole and remember how close we all felt to being beaten. i am always so close. then i remember where i am, like the night i spent with you, waking up in a terror because the sheets were foreign. i wake up in your arms and wonder where i am. and then i remember how close we were. i forget how close my breath clings to my lungs whenever i think the sound of my voice is growing smaller, how close i am to screaming when i feel the suffocating. i forgot how much it means to finish something, to say what i mean. to think for myself and maybe for the ones who can't speak. i forgot that memory plays the meanest tricks. that honesty is the only fix and honestly i forget how close i am to lying until it's already in the air. and this writing, i forgot how much it meant to get it all down, how much more expansion in my chest when the words are black on white. i forgot how much blurring the lines affects, and how close we all are to the effects of graying vision.

old. Wednesday, July 08, 2009

i never knew who i was
i made up stories to tell you to
make you fall in love with me
i have never been good at details.
the meat of the narrative is beyond me
and this is what you long for,
the things i've forgotten to tell,
like when i was a girl,
i was in love with sabrina
she was a native american from alburquerque
we hunted for arrowheads and treasure chests,
fought the ghosts of our ancestors
on the basketball court with no hoops
dug holes by the fence looking for the seeds of 3-leafed clovers
it was over before i could invite her to watch TV sometime
in the third grade, i wanted samantha f. to like me
i let her stand on my back to reach the monkey bars
and i was sure i would get a christmas present
my friends tried to tell me that all her presents were
toys her parents made her give away
but i was desperate to be called over
to reach inside that treasure chest
but i never was
and one day, walking on that yellow line
on the right side of the hallway
from the library to our classroom door
i said samantha i have let you hop on my back
for the last three days
and you can't even do so much
as to offer me a christmas present?!
she said, slowly,
because she was talking to an angry black woman
marcea... we're not friends. and i don't have to give you a christmas present.
i was happy when she moved to orlando
in the sixth grade, i was sure i was scott's first 'black girl crush'.
i waved him off
because even then i was especially aware
that racial boundaries made things impossible
he looked at me one day during group work
and told me my eyes were beautiful
in the seventh grade,
i watched my grandmother watch helplessly
from the door as my mother drove me
gracelessly away for the longest time
i'd ever been away from home
i started writing poems
to keep my memories
and burned them with our new gas stove in york
when they were too much
i started blurring out the details
and later started filling them in with lies and half-truths
so when you ask me about where i've come from
my first memory plays tricks on me
i might tell you i remember a pink house
and the first time i split my lip
when i rode my two-wheeler down the driveway
and into a tree
i might remember lemon and orange trees,
a dirt driveway,
my nana tending flowers while
my great-grandfather taught me to read
i might remember thinking my days were made up of fifty hours
and that the moon was so close,
we could probably touch it
if we really, really tried
car rides with my grandmother
and her attempts to change my mind about god
hearts i left scattered up and down I-83, 95,
and in Chicago
Chicago and the way it scooped me up
and made me believe in something bigger than myself
philosophy and the teacher whose son
taught me about the things i ignored.
nights walking and wandering by myself,
going to events to be unnoticed
the way i dreamed of australia
and my determination for it to come true
and i tell you that i don't remember,
that things were too fuzzy back then
and all i've tried to do since was forget
my mother lost the photos in an accident; nothing must have ever existed.

old. Thursday, July 09, 2009

i met you on street corners, in alleyways where the light danced on your liquored breath. i was young, too young to follow you and still small enought to want to fit myself inside your pocked, hoping you wouldn't notice i was there so i could stealthily memorize your scent. i never saw the inside of your home, never met the woman you slept with and the one i should probably call stepmother. i met you on the porch or in the driveway, school fundraiser clenched to my fist and sticking to my sweaty palm, begging you to help me reach my goal. i met you on the avenues where you and my mother would scream until your voices were indistinguishable. i never met you for a test, though i'm sure i would have if i'd asked for anything more than that fundraiser blood money. i can't even say that i wanted you to love me. but after you were locked away for defending someone the way you'd never defended me, i told you that all those years, all those times i met you in alleyways, in moonlight, on street corners where the light shone on mhy inability to make you acknowledge me were the only reminders i had of you. i sent you a recital of my accomplishments like spelling them out for you, telling you that i could do all these things without you, that my hunger for life and words didn't begin with you and your silence and absence damn sure wouldn't end it.i wrote it down into a four page- front and back- womanifesto so that you could not see how much i needed you then to help me become less jaded, to put feeling in my limbs because, really, they were an extension of you and they extended constantly toward you and that bottle in your hand.

old. Wednesday, 15 July 2009

lately, i've been thinking a lot about victoria. and it's not something that's highly out of the ordinary, but, at the same time, it's been years. years. since i've physically been in the same vicinity. this morning i choked up thinking about distance and the things it does to people. anyway. this isn't a love poem..

i keep my promises..

in my pocket.

in the locket you never gave me,

in the pauses that never saved

your promises

vanished before you even

thought to stand by them, by me.

what we are carrying

now is forgetfulness at its peak,

a ripe fruit i forgot to hide from you.

i never meant to be your eve,

never meant to give you that one taste

that would destroy us,

but here we are.

you have risen from the ashes

of Palestine and I...

am still climbing that ladder we sing about

without our hymnals.

you never liked the binding anyway

you said the stitches never let the pages breathe

and i got your metaphor.

the doors of the church though

were open and we sailed through the pine

to meet the sun.

there are things in this life

i have not yet begun

to understand.

there are songs in that hymnal in your hand

that neither of us have learned

how to play

but i know how to sing your praise.

i know now that when i take from the well

i must give back

'cause you're no Jesus

you can't feed me from nothing.

i know.

that your promises were miracles

waiting to happen,

that i threw them in a wishing well

and drowned them.

there are some things

we just cannot come up from.