I opened,
inhaled
understood,
and
my floor was not
grass, and my sky was
low, my heart
cracked in that old
lost line of
withering
with the withoutness
of you.
Author / bcmiller2014
Misconceptions
I am a note in a barely flat
down from birth,
breathing loud and crying
quiet. Carried in circles,
the music of my silent
self undressed, ashamed,
and just a little too
human to go back where
I came from. I
am an unmother with open
arms. Define me, if
you dare but know I
carry your tears in my
pocket and they’ll
return when your eyes
glass over. I
am a learner who
shares to love the thoughts
I feeling buy and make
for dinners, some
healthier than others.
I am no chef. I
just try to eat the
real stuff.
The Lie that She was Small
Her mother said she only ever
could rely on family,
misty-eyed recollecting
isolation, the inescapable
feeling she was a
smaller species than others
she had met. Her mother was
taught by her parents, of course,
both of them djins released
from bottles, booming
names with cloud-trumpets
and opinions pulled from sandstorms.
Magic was full bright but
sadly mathematical with them.
They felt small, too, probably
taught by their parents.
Their daughter
was different. Of all the
DNA combinations
possible from two tempests,
her recipe twisted around
itself and dreamed. She was
flowers in a music garden, white
eyelet and patent leather shoes,
unruly red hair, magic
filtered soft through the evening.
That was her destiny, poor girl.
To them, she was smaller still, though
she could bellow a pipe organ
beautifully. In the end it was all djin
air and it made its way home
to the bottle.
Generalized Anxiety
10:29 on a Sunday night. It’s
the hard night, the
night before the possibility
that I will fail, disappoint,
fall apart. I fear this night
without thinking about it.
I have breathing exercises,
prescribed pills, and routines
to keep me calm. My heart
thumps faster than it should
and I know there’s no reason,
except the world isn’t a
safe place and a person
never knows. But except
for that.
What are you
doing here? Where were
you born and how old
was I?
You are here and
you are big. I cannot
conquer you. I can’t
pray you away. I can’t
meditate enough or breathe
enough or ignore you
enough to un-create you.
Quite frankly, you’re a
problem.
You are here
and you are small. You
have no facts, even when
I can’t argue. You will
not kill me. I won’t give
up. We’re going to have
to be roommates for a
while until finally, I can
maybe get my own
place. Until then, what’s
your name? I think we’re
in this together.
Anniversary
Five years are nothing. In five
years we breathe, we wake up,
we shower and go to work, we
go about all the business of
living. We eat pancakes and
decide what kind of syrup to
pour. Pure maple from a tree
for me or nothing, but you
weren’t so picky. You said you
were our campy friend,
and always sounded a little
ashamed, as though being down
to earth and able to start a fire
were something bad. I never
got to square that with you. We
always just laughed, and I never
told you, in a way that you heard,
that I loved that you were campy.
I loved that you were a fire-starter,
a seer, an enormous voice. You
were so, so big. You were the full moon in a sky full of stars, gleaming on the rough Sound of all the lives around you. I think you still are. I see you, your hobbit feet all swimming in green in a pocket, just to the right of the moon, but close, in the know of all our outs and ins. You piss me off sometimes, grinning there where I can’t touch you, as though your hugs were unimportant. They mattered, you know. They made me a person who was wanted and that made me want to live. I don’t know if you knew that, but I guess you do now, five years later, since you passed between pages from the book we know here to another one, where you can see all the colors. I miss you. I’m sorry it hurt so much. First brother, adopted late, I love you a billion years more.
Hope
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.
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.
Not Quiet Any More 