If I have a story

If I have a story, I have to turn off my phone.
I have to ignore the fact that I am sitting imperfectly,
That my bladder is not completely empty,
That I could be blowing my nose.

I have to ignore the fact that the temperature isn’t quite right and I am forced to live in a moment
Where a sweater is too warm but my tank top doesn’t quite protect me from the chaos I am so desperately trying to
Quiet.

It isn’t always easy. At least not for me. An awkward 25 year old woman trying to offer a unique awareness and getting someone to listen.

My mother has always been so much better at this. She commands it and smiles at me whenever I don’t get it quite right.

When I was younger she would read me stories, in Spanish. The words flowed out of her vocal chords as through a river, never once minding that I had no raft. No paddle with which to guide me except for the vibrations of her voice. Like a blind girl attempting to find where things were, I had to trust. It is only now that I realize how powerful she thought I was, even then, when I so desperately smeared her red lipstick on my face and tried to make my voice deeper because I wanted to claim something and I always thought I was too small to claim it.

She always thought I was strong. And when she read to me, she offered no paddle or apologies. I have to live up to that. When I write, I have to have something to say.

Never mind that other poets have said it better. Never mind that every corner of the world has been documented, classified, and raped with description. With words.

Perhaps this body has something to offer. Perhaps a little girl in a small township like Guguletoo will step into her mud hut and pull out my poem from inside her oversized sweater and read. Perhaps she’ll read the one about my first love, or my awkward attempts to get my father to be my hero. Perhaps she will have read these stories before and I’ll collect dust on some bookshelf in a home in the upper east side.

But at least I’ll have traveled. At least my body will have entered consciousness and there will be permanent documentation that somewhere, at some point, I succeeded in quieting the wild life that does not quiet, my bouncy curls that are never quite tame and exemplify the fact that I am visceral and made of dirt.

But maybe, just maybe, I can be powerful and survive off of that, until the next time
I have a story.

For my patient

I read your poetry last night and found myself, a voyeur
Speaking of your loved ones, your dreams, and imagination

Last night I dreamt that you grew wings
And found a home, in a place where you could always sing

In a place that you did not need a key to get out of
And a team of “experts” staring at you
Proclaiming your diagnosis
And destroying your spirit

You cry yourself at night, sometimes, in that room
And wake up with a smile, and feed me your lines

It’s the closest thing to normal that you know.
You are grandiose.
The world is against you.
I wonder how your emotions feel, stuck in that body when they are so big

Your son peers at your picture, somewhere far away.
While someone explains to him that you’re very sick.

And your father yells at me, believing I can cure you.
You are beautiful, as you are.

I wish you could see what you look like with those wings.

We raised your medication and your eyes glazed over.
You stopped creating your own concertos and tragic heroes in your mind.
But it was your home.

I wish you knew what you looked like with those wings.
Even as your body flails against you.
As we inject your muscles with a calming syrup
Even as our keys rattle on our wrists.
Even as the thoughts destroy your mind.

When Love Dies

When love dies, there is no parade.
No one holds your hand and tells you it’s going to be alright, and if they did you didn’t hear it.
Like a bad guest, it doesn’t even announce its departure.
Rather you come across it one day, as you are picking up some socks.

When love dies, it does not wait its turn.
It does not wait for both parties to stop loving.
Nor does it tell you how to prepare for the passing.

Rather, you stumble through the planet with the same confusion of a baby learning to walk.
There are no maps or directions.
It doesn’t even leave you change for the bus.

When love dies, it does not care how good you were,
or how many times you dived in, not even knowing how to swim, in order to save it.

When love dies, it only cares about freeing itself.
It tiptoes out and leaves no note.

So you make do.
You act like there is not a piece of yourself missing
And you accept the clichéd advice
Because you have no better rules to follow.

When love dies, it takes piece of you with it.
But soon in that hollow space new things emerge.
At first it’s just weeds.
You hack away.

When love dies, you learn to accept your place in the order of things.
When love dies, you learn to save the only person you could save.

Visceral

You are standing at my doorstep now
I open the bright pink gate and there we stand
Two souls open to knowing each other

And so it floods in
Our secrets and your veins protruding from your wrists when you sit on my bed and take your pulse because you’re scared
And as I rub your back it floods in

We weren’t cautious
And what have you done with my whispers and tears?

I’ve saved yours. Not on purpose of course.
The visceral memory of you is so suffocating it makes my bones crack
And I feel betrayed by my intellect which had spent all of its life convincing itself it was not an animal

Not this thing that sees the way your eyes droop at the corners
And your exigent laugh that cries out to fuck the world
Or the way my head fit so perfectly on your chest to take a nap and as your chest expanded to let in air I knew you were already broken
Your kisses placed along my spine and the way you reminded me to breathe
The way you reminded me to breathe…

Lungs expanding
5am and there I am in the streets of Compton looking for you
Like the crack rats I studied convincing myself I was superior to them because I could analyze and word them.
I could know them, but the only reason I could was because I was them. 5am and I’m convincing myself I’m not a crack rat while you’re convincing yourself you can conquer the world on your own
except there I am.
Fragile and in front of you, a mirror of you.

Were you afraid to be weak?
Was I afraid to admit who I really was fighting for?

And what became my medicine now poisons me
Silly girl
I should have known those eyes were a cautionary tale

When we were together I made it my job to memorize you
Guess I’m a masochist.

I walk through world with an image of you not in me but all around me.
I’m fine.
And then the wind blows and I smell you.
Or I catch a glimpse of curly hair and suddenly my stomach betrays me
Or I see that red coca-cola shirt or I feel deep within me
Deep within me.
There you are.
I’ll salute you every morning and say goodnight to you when it’s dark
And the only ones left are those with
Visceral memories that betray them.

The pink gate
That bandana
Your hands
Your hands…
The artist hands that painted my sorrow.

Your Light- 1/23/11

I should be asking myself how the poets did it
Writing about beauty when there is little more to do but sigh

And stare at the way his eyes glimmer against the sunlight and reflect the bright pink off the setting sun
While the birds circle their own world, playing their concerto
Oblivious of the part they are playing in my love song

His hands shielding himself from the harshness the weather has exposed
Or maybe from my burning gaze attempting to save something as precious as the poets muse

Because I know as soon as I look away it will be gone
And I will be left with a vaporous trail of sweet nothings
And melt into a pool of stupidity
From where one certainly couldn’t conjure up a poem

So I must refrain and remain content letting the poem breeze through me and releasing it back into the atmosphere
Because there is no time to write what I see

Your hands, layed flat like a beautiful plane
Against the curvature of your face
As the sun recedes into the background
And takes with it, your light.

Birthday Wishes

It’s your birthday and there I have you
Sitting on my bed as you rest your head on your motorcycle helmet

I’ve done myself up
Covered up the sadness and knowing
And I try to breathe
You don’t notice and again, I fish for the compliments

It’s times like these that you make me feel five
Dressing up in mom’s high heels and smearing that bright red lipstick
Attempting, desperately, to be taken seriously

You’re wearing that bandana that I hate and we’ve both at this point gotten very good at our roles
But this time you’re uncertain, you don’t know where were going, and for once I have the power.
I’ve been dangling it over you for days
Rejoicing in how it feels
But as you sit in my bed now it feels awkward

You’re favorite word…

I walk you over to get a massage and I play the role of good girlfriend as best I can
Don’t worry; I’ve taken notes all my life
Be agreeable
Always be there, even if he isn’t
Always answer that phone
For heavens sake don’t argue

Is that good?
Stick your cock wherever you want

And so I proceeded.
I wined and dined you and prayed that this would be enough
To cover up the fact that earlier that evening you wouldn’t even take my clothes off
To cover up the fact that earlier that evening we stopped playing our roles
And simply became them.

After

It’s been a while since I studied.
I mean really studied

The books sit on a table that isn’t even mine in a foreign room
But I still read
Sometimes my own poetry
Sometimes yours
I realize its edges are yellowing and it looks like one of those old withering photographs
Or a flower so falling off its stigma
One touch- disintegration

The words are old and decaying and it’s quite miraculous that it’s only been a year.
Since then I’ve replaced the images in my head with real ones
And these new images are so sharp and bright, and sometimes painful
That they’ve replaced the need for poetry
Or really, it’s just that they’ve taken over any room to create it

I come home exhausted, forgetting really what it is I dreamed
Creating newer, simpler dreams
I hope she goes to her group today
I hope we can decide on a discharge plan
Let’s not have to call a code today

My stories fill up rooms with laughter, sadness, and overall amazement
And as I tell them I feel myself growing bigger and less tied down
like a balloon
Stories get reconstructed, dolled up and shiny, like a Hollywood starlet
or those bags of fake gold you get as a kid after taking that field trip to the gold mines

And I find myself asking to go back to the dream
That original one
The student one
While I get dressed and ready for another day
And at work one of the patient’s looks up, smiles, and says “Thank you”
And there’s no bigger dream in that moment than wishing that was enough
And that this image could replace last nights
In which she was strapped to the bed in restraints
and she cried out to get the fuck off her
as the janitor picked up the broken pieces of porcelain
and the children lucky enough to be on the other side of the fence
ran after the ice-cream man

End of Summer

I spent a fabulous weekend soaking up as much sun as possible at the L.A fair and gardening and I realized- it's happened. It's getting darker sooner, colder at night (keep mind I live in Southern California so cool to me is like 70 degrees F), the children are back in school, the parks have found their quiet, and the community pool is closed. It's officially a few days into autumn, which means summer has ended. This is the saddest part of the year for me. If I could, I would have it be summer forever. So, to say goodbye to the summer of '09 I've compiled some of my favorite pictures of this summer.



Goodbye sand wiggled in my feet.



Goodbye summer flowers.



Goodbye walking the dog barefoot.



And last but not least, goodbye to practicing for the hula-hoop olympics.

Until next year.

Check out these good end of summer poems at poetry archive.org

Poem of the Day

I had one of those situations today in which you look up something on the internet, and it leads to something else, then something else, then suddenly you don't know how you ended up from looking up a GRE word, to watching a 1930's neurosurgery video, to poetry by Pablo Neruda. Mostly this phenomena takes hours and is completely useless (oh right, I'm supposed to be using my day off to study), but sometimes you do find a rare gem. I've been in love with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda since I was first introduced to him in high school, and I found this beautiful reading of "Me Gustas Cuando Callas" in the abyss that is YouTube. Much apologies to those of you who don't speak spanish. At any rate, I've included the video followed by the spanish text and a very sad, but only one I could find, english translation.



Me Gustas Cuando Callas

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente,
y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.
Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado
y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca.

Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma
emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.
Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,
y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.

Me gustas cuando callas y estás como distante.
Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrullo.
Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:
déjame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.

Déjame que te hable también con tu silencio
claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.
Eres como la noche, callada y constelada.
Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.
Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.
Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.
Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto.

I Like for You to be Still

I like for you to be still: it as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.

As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.

And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
Your are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.

And I am happy, happy that it’s not true.

Incidentally, it appears that the woman who does this reading is a published poet herself and has many other videos, including one which I greatly enjoyed entitled "Me Gustaria Ser Lesbiana" or "I would like to be Lesbian"



Enjoy.

The Poetry in My head

For some reason I woke up today with Allen Ginsberg's A Supermarket in California in my head. For some reason, for me, this poem reminds me of summer nights. Poetryarchive. org is a great site if you haven't heard of it. It has some pretty famous poets reading their own works.

Give it a listen.