I want to see what I
haven’t seen before, and
I don’t mean “The Alps” or
“The Eiffel Tower.” I want to
see things that matter.
I want to see through the
eyes of my more colorful brothers
and sisters, to find out what life
has really been like for them.
I’m vanilla white, sunburn-prone,
and privileged for no good reason.
I want to know what people have
suffered and what I can do to
make it better. Hope is power.
I need to see a way
forward, a clue, a shred of what
might be if we dream, if we
dare to see maybe and perhaps
as mighty and in the end
something worth living for.
To see that, I need
to listen. To hear hope I need
to see. You, me, and everyone
are a family in a whole new way,
use consonants to create space
and vowels to punch holes in
our sentences. We speak
because words are power. We
listen because it’s electric. It
brings life to our lonely sentences
and makes humans out of all
our shattered ways.
Month / January 2015
Class time
I put on my stage clothes, my
particular shoes. My notes unfold
themselves, each letter
connected appropriately, following
the others like trains on rails.
Your fingers deftly snatch each of
them from the ground and toss
them into disrespected heaps of toys.
I could let my rounded lips loose,
my staccato consonants pelting
you like sleet, but kindness is one
of the things that’s important, like
oxygen. It can even control the
weather. I bundle this fact in paper
so you’ll have to unwrap it over time,
if you can find it, while I stare at my
particular shoes.
PTSD
I was derailed that day, steel
wheels spinning sparks until
they tipped and ran to nowhere
in the air. Trains are funny that
way. So secure, but for a rail,
and moving so fast they don’t
even know they’re airborne
until they hit the ground.
It was only a spike, a missing
connection, a missed wish and
a fear and off I went, unconsenting,
in the dark.
There should be a warning, some
kind of system that would tell me
ahead of time, but what should be
is merely whistling ahead, someone’s
daydream, a Turing computer with-
out all the parts.
I was there. Now I’m here. I owned
my own body, spoke my own
words and then, as one spark lit
a bit of grass, I was all outside
myself, watching. Thank God
for people who see me, who find
me floating there, find my hand,
and pull. I am dependent at times,
but otherwise, I am a train.
Elf Warrior, Bunny Lover
I decided to wait a couple days before writing any more. I’ve been depressed, and it’s shown in my poetry. Who really wants to read “Happy new year! We’re all going to die!” It may eventually be true, but it isn’t particularly helpful to dwell on it. And if I’m honest, death isn’t the real problem anyway. The difficulty is in how to live life fully, and how to keep facing all of life’s disappointments and troubles without becoming disillusioned, angry and generally grumpy. I interact with people who deal with these challenges on a visceral level whenever I ride the bus or walk very far downtown. Seattle’s center is wonderful. Nevertheless, it is a collection area for human beings who’ve suffered things I can only imagine, and been filled with so much hurt that there’s no room left in them for joy. Or at least this is the way it seems.
Yesterday we went to see The Hobbit. I read the book once when I was a kid. I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy seven times. The Hobbit just didn’t grab my imagination to the same degree. Nevertheless, I found myself tearing up as the “good guys” triumphed over such obvious evil in the movie. It wasn’t fully logical, getting misty over an Orc beheading, so my own emotions caught my attention.
Today we saw “The Imitation Game.” It was so tragic on so many different levels. I weep for Alan Turing. There’s so much in the world that’s heart-breaking and broken and even what you might call “evil,” although the last word makes me squeamish. I think we’re too ready as a society to ascribe that word to individuals when in the vast majority of cases the fact is that when people are hurt, they hurt other people. I would argue that most atrocities (and atrocities they remain) are products of brokenness and admittedly poor to horrible decision making.
This makes the world a much more complicated place than I originally thought. I was taught that everything is black and white, concrete and absolute, and that people who believe otherwise have been lured by “the world” into a system that allows grey areas to exist. The truth as I see it is that we live in the world, with birth defects, human trafficking, homelessness, PTSD, mental illnesses, physical illnesses, loneliness, poverty, climate change, racism, pollution, and a host of other horrifying realities. All of these are enmeshed within systems that deal only partially with the causes and effects of each of these things. Sometimes we even live inside systems that nurture some injustice or another in the name of economic progress or blind tradition. The suffering seems endless, and the grey areas irrefutable.
I have watched my own mother battle daily pain for my entire life. I’ve watched my father, emotionally unequipped by his upbringing, as he’s worked three jobs and kept a stiff upper lip the entire time, never confiding in a friend or leaning on anyone else for anything including encouragement. Of course I’m not angry with them for how they’ve emotionally harmed me along the way (or at least not fundamentally so), but I’m certainly outraged at disease, and broken social systems and pain and loneliness and despair. I’m entirely pissed off that people can be on earth for over 70 years without ever really living. So when I watch some kick-ass elf chick kill an Orc, something that is so obviously ugly and deeply wrong, I wish so fervently that I could do the same thing. I want to whip out my glowing elf blade with runes enscribed on it and slice that hideous creature’s head off.
I know. Kind of gruesome, especially for someone who loves baby bunnies and feels bad for buildings when they’re neglected. But of course, it’s because I love so much that I feel this way. I want to protect those I love with every ounce of strength in me. Instead, I have to accept the fact of the survival of the fittest, the carnivorous circle of life and the human incursion into nature, with all its economic and humanitarian complexities. If someone I love gets sick I want to bomb the hell out of their disease, but I can’t. If someone of color is treated unjustly in the courts, all I can do is sit in town square holding a sign. I’m relatively helpless on a dangerous and unpredictable planet. Just once I’d like to have something in front of me obviously in need of extermination, and have the ability to beat the fucking hell out of it. It would be clear. I want to be an elf warrior, damn it, but I can’t. I have to watch, accept, understand, let go.
I don’t know where exactly God is in this equation. Maybe he’s in our love for each other. Maybe Jesus is wailing with us in our loss and confusion and pain, but I find myself empathizing with Jesus’ disciples, who were really expecting him to blow the imperialist Romans to hell so justice and peace could reign on earth. I know the answer is much more complex than that. For one thing, there’s plenty of injustice without the ancient Romans. I “get” Jesus sacrifice for all people of all time so everyone can see God’s love. I just can’t seem to separate myself from the here and now, and right here and now God feels far away and uninvolved. So I guess this is an invitation to a power infinitely greater than myself who seems historically to take a mysterious interest in the human race. I’m inviting you, God. Show up.
January 1
There’s so much pressure
on the first day of the year,
perhaps why half of us get
drunk. So many hopes
that this will be better than
the last. If life were a tree
each year would come
swirling singly down, golden
or red or downright brown
when there hasn’t been
any rain. I’m looking for
rain this year, a nice Seattle
mist to cloud the air and
give everything a bright
shine. Clean air. A slower
pace while we sit at the
fire and stare, thinking of
words that describe how we
feel when we’re together,
and sharing so we’re really
not alone. Too much sun
and there’s no color at the
end. To be clear though, that
isn’t a metaphor for suffering.
I’m not running toward pain
like some brutal ascetic
fundamentalist nut. I just
want life with some color
in it, damn it, and not just
because I’m burned or
bleeding. I want rain and
some sun and ranunculus
running wild. Which is why
we have champagne and
Jesus, I suppose. Because
all we’ve really got is a
fragile tree.
The Illusion (w/a nod to the Tardis)
“So many things are bigger
on the inside,” she said and
ran to open the door. “Things
will never be dull,” her grand-
father said when his eyes
could still summon a twinkle.
Right, both of them. Out-
side-in all around set
spinning with monsters
from under the bed and
the wolf with a red bonnet
on. And friends, she met
them, too, of course, with
their pink hair and house
pigs and all their very own
cages. She wondered if
everyone had a cage, but
only had to decorate.
Maybe some called it home.
Then spinning about and
around again she flew, with
a complete absence of
bedding, mind you, hoping
at once for more of the same
and a stationary room with
an address she could use for
mailing. All an illusion. A
motionless room still glides
through space around a
flaming, gravitational well in
a tiny corner of the universe.
So she grabbed the rail and
hoped to God a mad man
from the sky would save her.
(So much for not being abstract. Sometimes I just have to
be me)
12 Stories, 18 years and a Thousand Times
The men and women on the street
are cheering and blowing those
things like kazoos that go
by a different name. Some
people are stuck in their
cars for the fireworks display,
sitting helplessly in rows
while the excitement happens
elsewhere. My cat is
startled by the firecrackers,
his ears back, tucking down
his whole body and then
jumping to the windowsill to
see what can be seen. He’s
on the other side of the fireplace
from us, where we’re doing the
same thing, 12 stories up, with
buildings blocking the view.
I can’t tell if we’re glad to
see the new year enter or
happy the old one is done.
I hurt you, just trying to
love, and you hurt me just
trying to be. We’ve done
this, eighteen years now.
I want your hand but
can’t find it. Maybe this
is the year we find each
other, glancing over dinner
and seeing something new
we’ve seen a thousand times
before. I miss you when we
eat apart, at the same table.
(Sometimes I really do try not to be too
Abstract)
Not Quiet Any More 