I will feel joy

It hits

a pop

and my body sighs with relief

my body, atlas, bearing the load of my woes like a shroud

my body sighs, whispers, weeps,

thank you, thank you

How hard it is to see the things we carry day in and day out

Our burdens like a limb

We forget life without pain

and then

the package topples from our back

the spine erect sighs and

blesses the load bearer for giving it a rest

Don't forget

the burden you carry weighs

down upon all within you

a thousand back bent by the load of one

Set it down my friend

Walk next to me a tall woman

Proud and free

the sea

it is here in my throat

i thrash

i cannot contain it

cannot express it

cannot release it

it is all that i am

how could words be enough

how could body be enough

i shiver

it lies deep inside us all

lies deep

but we know when it has been offended

just as the wave speaks for the sea

i see the sea within you,

i see the sea within me

and the power we have to make waves

to throw stones

to watch the ripples spread

one day i will touch you

one day i will speak to you

one day i will taste you

one day we will look into each others eyes

and see through to the infinite sea

that lies deep within us all

In some other world

In some other world

We're all growing old together

We were there when we all turned 21

Just like we were there when we turned 16

We watch clouds on blankets

As the wind rushes against our cheeks

And "how have you been?" has no meaning

None of us have learned what it means to live in the cold

and changes come in increments

as they should

No one asks what we will do

And we all know everything can be worked out

We carve deeper and deeper infinities inside each other's hearts

and no one can say that a gesture is her own

Yes, in some other world

I've been there often

in smiles and touches and understanding

But today I wonder

If in that other world 16 or 21 really had any meaning

If maybe our desperation, our dreams of separation

Carved the first nicks into which

the stream of our understanding has flowed

in that other world

Could I write poetry

Or taste coffee

Or feel so sad and alone and connected in suburbia

Under blue skies and palm trees on a winter's day?

Goodbye other world

remain in my heart

but today I wake up among paper bags

and plastic and strangers and a million good byes

and a million hellos

But today I will laugh and cry and taste and see

Because I know, deep in my heart, here,

and in some other world,

we're all growing old together

It is I

It is I, the eternal illness

the eternal sick

the eternal dark

the eternal knowledge

that i will never be with you

that we don't see eye to eye

that we claw at one another's

souls

that we were separated at birth

that the cord was cut

that i can say where your body ends

and where mine begins

it is I

eternal lonliness

eternal longing

eternal existence

I am pain, nausea

a heaving torso, a writhing spine

and wet eyes

I am sick with grief

even we are sick with grief

A gulf that pierces us all

right through the center

black stitches through a colored quilt

it is I

I that holds the world together

Autumn

Oh how terrible the beauty of the first day of fall

The girl can only cry

She senses deep power

She senses the wind within

And if she were to perish

So she could dance

But what to do with the body of a mortal

Such power would kill her

Trample her to death

As unharnessed horses

for they know her not

though they rage within

But how to harness the wind

How to tame the sea

to forestall our own deaths must we kill?

She dices her own pain with words

The sea is calmer now

But oh such power

She must be the power

Or she will surely die

of grief

of a broken heart

of the waves crashing into her shell on the sand

But to live

To face the wind with dry eyes

How?

Create her pen whispers in black

Create

Translate

Translate

Translate

May your words sing the wind

Your steps the sea

Your eyes the skies

Your fingers the trees

Your face the moon

Translate, she dries her eyes

Saturday Afternoon

She was a young woman now. She sat on her bed and her heart ached. It ached with deep longing for completion and meaning. For relationship and a shared life. She sensed that depth existed. She felt the call to intense waters, to balance, to encountering a soul, a place, that would shift her own and give the whole a moment of ecstasy. Give her a moment of ecstasy. To fill a latent potential. To strike her match. She longed to burn. Every shifting center has a million purposes through which it is fulfilled. Through which it provides fulfillment. A match when lit, a doll when played with, a car when driven. The earth, we, endow beings with the gift of giving. And those moments of realization of purpose are orgasms, fulfillment, divinity, life. This pen, this ink, this paper, ecstasy. They satisfy the greater situation and so satisfy themselves. But she, where did she fit? Who could write poems with her form? She longed to spill ink. Longed. Was a writer near? She was within her grasp. She smelled a life that she knew long ago. Before she understood anything at all. A candle stand, molded, elaborate, a foot or two tall reminded her of a bygone era, that lived deep within them all. What were all the surfaces referencing? Children, technology, money, Africa, god? Her bedroom told a story of enslavement, though she could not exactly say why. Four walls, a single window, sharp edges, space. No matter where she looked, there she was, within those four walls. They contained her mind. The "outside" shaded and glassed. And there she rested in the middle. Minute, staring at herself from all directions. Floating in space. She breathed in chilled air. Her mother told her people believed in empty space once they stopped seeing the air as a being. A being she had an intimate relationship with, yet she could still only think of molecules and space. A wall separated her and her brother. Floating in boxes in space. Calm because it was Saturday afternoon.

Relationships

My thigh is creamy and very white. Splattered with pinkish, brownish dots that must be my hair follicles. At least twenty very obviously freckles or maybe moles are interspersed with probably a hundred baby pecks of light brown. My hair is short, nicked by a razor a least a week ago. I'm soft to the touch, although the hair prickles. And if I grab her I can get almost an inch of thick grip between my thumb and fingers that jiggles into place for a few seconds after I release it. I think about my thighs every single day. About their girth, about how the world sees them as I strut down the street in a skirt, as I dance, as I run in Carolina. Do they think cellulite, fat, sexiness, normality? Do my thighs draw attention? Do they please your eyes? Do they hurt your eyes? My relationship with my thighs consists more in gauging the petty relationship between my thighs and you. I'm never satisfied with that relationship. You should always be more pleased, I scold.
And then today, I looked at you, at me, and I love you, just because I can. Because I can choose to love you or to scold you. Didn't I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder? And my eyes they streamed tears because they beheld the beauty and the power to behold. And the insanity of relinquishing this power, of living in fear, in self-loathing, just because these eyes can't see what they have the power to see.
I look at my thighs and I see them as my own. My own to love or despise, and though you may love them or despise them, never yours. I want to love mine. Because loving them makes me cry, makes me feel, inspires me. Because when I love them I know I want to love them. And when I hate them I can't even know that I know nothing at all.