Sometimes we don’t
sing our redemption songs
in temples or stadiums
sometimes we croon out
our saving grace
in dark parking lots
outside of dive bars
at 1 a.m.
and I am playing
her like a piano
I am striking the chord
she does not want to hear
and I know…
I know.
It is knowledge
born of experience
and while I’ve never been
much of a singer
I am holdng her notes
singing her song back
to her here in the dark
and she just keeps talking
and she won’t shut up
and she is babbling about
wishes and wasted chances
and regrets.
and she is not feeling
she is only thinking
and she thinks too much
when what she needs to be doing
if she is going to sing this song
is feel.
I am going to make her feel
that’s the plan, anyway
but how do you make someone feel?
is it ethical?
is it logical?
Is it even possible?
About to find out…
“I saw how you were
looking at her,” I whispered
and she looked like I had slapped her
“That,” I told her, “was longing”
and she stammered,
“I just wish I had a way of knowing
I just wish I had explored this before
I got married”
and I cut her off
I said, “I don’t think you need
to explore anything to have your answer
tell me, if he wasn’t in the picture
would there even be a question?”
ethical?
logical?
possible?
her face crumpled
and I folded her up in my arms
and her aria poured out of her soul
and onto my shirt
and I relived that hurt of knowing
that nothing would ever be the same again
and she shook her head back and forth
against my neck
and her shoulders felt frighteningly
frail
as they shook in my arms
and she shook loose the song
she had held so tight
and she found not only that
she had a voice in there after all
but that she had vast range
and was capable of hitting the
high notes

ten years today
and I love him.
truly
still
always
no less than I did then
really, I will love him
Forever

I didn’t know what that word meant
not really
until well after the end
now Forever has a context
that I can grasp

Forever is wedged
like an ache in my heart
between the memories
of his tears at the end
of the red carpeted aisle
and his tears the nights
our daughters were
born
and his tears the day
i choose to stay away
instead of coming when he called.

you know,  love has nothing to do
with gay or straight or
the number i select to represent myself
on some scientifically proposed
continuum of sexuality
or whether this is my definition of
intrinsically right
or someone else’s definition of
inherently wrong

because love lives in
an entirely different
place than dogma
and structure
and schemes of classification
and division
and it even lives in a place
beyond time

today i balance
the need to honor this love
for him
without dishonoring
her
because
both are a part of me
now

you see
regret is not always a synonym
for mistake
and it is true that
self-inflicted wounds
often take the longest
to heal

and so today
ten years later
there is no celebration
no sappy love cards
no declarations
but there is the memory
and those exquisitely beautiful girls
who are the reason for everything

and the love
there will always be the love
Forever.

You miss me, do you?
{but wait a minute, not all of me}
Not the rainbow bits, you’re cool without those
You want the girl you knew before
That tiny sliver of me that was safe to show

Come back into your life, please?
{but don’t rock your boat, thankyouverymuch}
It’s not about a debate, you say
We’ll just wear our rose colored glasses
Special ones that erase all you prefer not to see

The answer is no
{no, we can’t.  no, I won’t.  no, this is not negotiable}
Because it’s all or nothing now, darlin’
Time is limited and life is a gift
And to get either you’ve got to celebrate me with all you’ve got

You really want this?
{think carefully now}
Because I’m going to push you
Far outside your pretty white heterosexual christian fundamentalist bubble
Past sunday school and rationalized prejudice and safe fences built to keep others out

And you need to know
{you really do}
I’m still soft as anything on the inside
But outside I’ve got an edge
And it might cut if you close in at the wrong angle

Because before I had no idea
{not a freaking clue}
What it would be to live a life
Where the random people who stand behind me in the grocery line
Are given the right to cast vote against the quality of my soul

It makes you fierce, somewhere inside
{When you gain a history like this, and this and this}
It makes you ferocious and solid and strong
And tender and gentle and broken and built anew
And you emerge quiet and careful and centered on exactly who you are.

So if you want to open your heart
{and your eyes and mind and the depths of your spirit}
Take my hand and walk into my whole life
Not just a slice of your choosing
Because I’m not leaving anything at home to make you more comfortable

So yes, we can do lunch
{and go shoe shopping and chat about the kids}
But let’s wait till you’re really ready to take me as I am
Because the cost of anything else is far too high
And sweetie, your benevolent tolerance just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

So think about it for a bit
{and I’m sorry if this seems harsh}
But baby, it’s gotta be this way
This is who I am
Take it or leave it.

but what is time,
really?
just a convenient
way to measure
the complex
activity of our
hearts
and if that is all
that matters
(and I believe
that this is
so)
then perhaps we
should expand
our discussion of
time to include
other measures
like the number of times
my hair has brushed
softly across
your face
or how often your teeth have
closed on my
skin
or the numerous tracks
my tears have left
on your shoulders
or maybe even
(if we blow our minds wide open)
how salty those tears
tasted when our
lips joined to
intercept their fall
(because who says time
must be discussed in terms
that can be counted, perhaps
time is just another sense
like touch
and smell
and the sound of your laughter)

we have encompassed
rush
and reality
and burden
and bliss
and fullness
and emptiness
and have been each
of these things
to one another
and everything to one
another
and sometimes
(in the darkest moments)
nothing to one
another
we have swung
from understanding
to questioning
to accepting
to rejecting
to knowing
but somehow
we have always
swung back
together

we know
with the certainty
of two who
understand that love
is not always
enough
(not nearly enough)
that we don’t get a
guarantee
and we push against
cynicism and yearn for
blind optimism
because we want
to believe
in the notion of forever
the way we did
before

but I think sometimes
our doubts are
our biggest gifts
because they keep us working
keep us from our blindness
keep us from expecting too
much
and accepting too
little
keep us seeking
and striving
and stretching
beyond the surface
and into the depths
of us.
and most of all
they keep us saying
yes
yes to the insanity
and yes to the chaos
and yes to uncertainty
and even yes to ugliness and heartache
and resentment and dismay
(because those emotions
must be honored too)
and then yes to
laughter
and family
and future
and home

yes
yes to time
(in all it’s
complex measures)
yes to future
and what it brings
yes to not knowing
to working
to bliss and floating and melting
yes to yelling and crying and pouting
yes to ecstasy and agony
and all the in crazy
mixed up in between
and certainly
yes to trying

Yes to one year
Yes to us.

there was this one night
just last week
when i saw these
at trader joes

b. thought they were
b-o-r-i-n-g
(being all one colour
and pink at that)
and so tried to
direct my attention
to some
brightly coloured
daisies

but these
for some reason
in their softness and
strength
captured my attention
and so I bought them for
her

(and to make b. happy
we got the
daisies
too)

and much to my surprise
when we got home
we found that sometimes
love and flowers go
hand and hand
and there was
another bouquet
waiting for
us
(because she
wanted to give flowers
to her girls).

isn’t it nice
when things just
come together
like that?

and that night
when i watched
as her eyes closed
and her neck
arched
and the ecstasy coursed…
well
the closing
and the arching
and the ecstasy
they were all poems too

yesterday
when my words
burned and she
snapped and
went outside to work off the fire and
i sat silently on
the edge of our bed,
her voice
and the sound of the door sliding closed
and my silence
were also poems

of course,
the first time I saw her in glasses
was definitely poetry
as was the hot chai
(with vanilla and soy)
in the earth-brown mug
she made me before work this morning

and don’t forget the patterns our feet make
when we dance in the
living room.
that poem is one
of my
favorites.

you wouldn’t necessarily
think it but
the fact that we both hang our bras
on the handle of the
closet door
and the fact that
her virgo-self constantly needs to reorganize
the tupperware
are just as poetic as
the way she likes to watch
me when i read
or the feeling of her arms
around mine three nights
ago when i had used up
every last ounce
of myself taking care
of others and just
needed so badly
to have someone
take care of
me

and because all
those moments are
poetry
it is understandable
that sometimes they
flow from our hearts
like ink on smooth
paper
and other times they come in
fits and starts
and with lots
and lots
of deleting and
that sometimes we choose
all the wrong words
(but don’t quite realize
until the poem is
completed what
was not quite
right about them)
or that sometimes we begin
what we think
could be a
great poem
but it fizzles out somewhere
and never really comes
together and we want to crumple up
the paper
and use it to play
basketball
in the garbage can.

but the
thing
about poetry
is that
there are no rules
or at least
that you get to make
your own
(like the way
i cut up my
sentences however
i want
and don’t use
capitalization
even when spellcheck
gets upset
with me)

and so our
poems
can be what we want
them to be
(or not be)
and nobody can tell us
how many verses
or where the climax should occur
or get angry because our sentences run on
or that we’re not doing things
in the correct order
or edit it to fit into
some predetermined
form

and so
we’re free to
keep right on
making poems
when we make love
and when we fight
and when we wash dishes
and watch movies
and clean toilets
and when we dive deep
and when we release
and when we live.

and so its
okay that
this poem didn’t really
get finished
because I’m running late
and have to pick up
my wee girlie
at school
because
i don’t think
that this kind of
poem
ever really
ends.

it’s like
some nameless, faceless doctor
sat me down
in a cold white room
surrounded by windows
and said

here’s the deal…
i can either cut off
your right leg,
or your left

you get to choose
but one of them has
got to go
now

because your two legs
,though both strong
and beautiful
and necessary,
can’t balance your life anymore

so tell me which
right now please
because people are waiting
on your decision
(don’t you feel them watching you
through all those windows?)
and your legs are
quite anxious
(understandable really)
to know which one
will be left
behind

but you must know this
and know in the deepest part
of yourself
he said,
(as he looked me in the eye
and in the heart)
that even though you have the
power
to make this choice
(and not everyone does – so
consider yourself lucky)
you are still going
to feel
for the rest of your life
like a part of you is missing.

…..

don’t you see?
it’s been a year now
more than that really
since this all began
and being with her
is like finding home
and our bodies fit
and our hearts fit
and i fit
and this is right
and i love her
and us
and this life

truly.

but i still miss him
ache for him
ache for us
ache for our children
for our life and the unmet potential
and that third child
(i always pictured another little girl)
we were pretty sure we would
one day have

and when I see an elderly couple
eating together at a
restaurant
or a young family
together doing family things
i feel something inside me
crumple
and hear this sound bubble up
from deep
inside of me
this keening, primal, animalistic sound
of mourning
of grief
of anger
for what can never be
because we won’t ever be
again

and i won’t know what his hand feels
like in mine
when we are both eighty years old
and how can that not feel like a tragedy?
and after breaking that promise
i don’t know if any other promise
can ever count
really, really count
again

because i made a choice
that wasn’t a choice at all

and i have to accept
in the deepest part of myself
that always knows the truth
that although i belong is this life
there is a huge part of me that will always belong
to that life
to him

and to be perfectly honest,
i don’t quite know what
to do about that.

Andrea Gibson is a master of spoken word, an award winning slam poet.

“Gibson is also among the nation’s most admired and emulated poets. Her verse is at once personal and political, concrete and abstract, feminist and universal, filled with incinerating verbs and metaphor and delivered with gut-punching urgency. You can hear the ache in her soul every time she utters God’s name, and even her inhales sound desperate. It’s not uncommon for audiences to gasp at some of her turns of phrase or rise to their feet when she finishes a poem.” MATT PEIKEN

She is a woman of uncommon passion, her performances lit by an internal fire that powers her through her poems with the force of a freight train, slicing through lines with the sharpness and precision of sword. She spits her words out like bullets – hitting me right in the gut, and in the next second changes course and breaths out her message with a gentle caress that makes her words drift to my ears like leaves falling softly to the ground. Every word carefully chosen, unflinchingly delivered, cutting through bullshit and convention with the energy of someone determined to create change but also with the tenderness of someone whose heart is so big she has to hurt more than most of us. She performs with ferocity and with compassion and with so much feeling that I am left raw and exposed by the power of her honesty.

I want you to watch these videos. I want you to close your eyes and absorb her words, her passion, her activism, her fire. I want you to feel her work with every fiber of your being. I want your toes to tingle and your heart to pound and for you to feel changed by what you hear. I don’t know exactly why I’m telling you this, why I think you need instructions or set expectations. I can’t quite imagine that you could listen to these words and not do all these things. I don’t know that it is possible to be fully present and aware and NOT be wholly moved by the spirit and soul of what this woman creates in the performance of her art.

Blue Blanket
I am moved by every single piece I have heard her read, but this one – this one more than any other – brings me to my knees. It slams into me and makes my breath feel tight in my lungs and my heart thud in my chest. If you have ever been violated, if you have ever sat and held a woman who has been violated while she cried or sat in horrified numbness, then you will feel this poem with every last cell in your body and the final line will remain a part of you long after you have finished listening.

I do.
Love poem and political statement all at once, this is just one the millions of reasons why it matters that love just be love, without restrictions, or inequality or limits on who and how and why.

“i never needed more
than the stars on your grin to lead me home
for fifty years you were my favorite poem
and i’d read you every night
knowing i might never understand every word
but that was okay cause the lines of you
were the closest thing to holy i’d ever heard
you’d say this kind of love has to be a verb”

Dive
Life dosesn’t rhyme. Paradox, irony, mirrored reflections – it’s all the beautiful grey between stark black and white, it’s the ambiguous spaces between absolutes where the brilliance of life resides.

“”it’s your worst sin saving your fucking life
it’s the devil’s knife carving holes into you soul
so angels will have a place to make their way inside
life doesn’t rhyme
still life is poetry — not math
all the world’s a stage
but the stage is a meditation mat
you tilt your head back
you breathe
when your heart is broken you plant seeds in the cracks
and you pray for rain
and you teach your sons and daughters
there are sharks in the water
but the only way to survive
is to breathe deep
and dive”

Say Yes
The world needs us right now more than it ever has before…this poem is hope – empowering, uplifting hope. This poem is the life I want to live.

For Eli
This is how I feel about war – not just the one we’re in now – but every last one of them.

““one third of the homeless men in this country are veterans
and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops
with pretty yellow ribbons
while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands
tell me what land of the free
sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones
hones them like missiles
then returns their bones in the middle of the night
so no one can see”

Check out this link for a few more artists

Once again, thanks to the divine MLC for pointing me directly to brilliance and inspiration.

If you read awakenings with any regularity you know I often find expression for my emotions and experiences through poetry. I revel in the process and therapy of my ‘regular’ writing – of wielding words and digging deep and laying it all out in specific detail. There are times, however, when the structure and punctuation and grammar necessary for good, solid prose makes the words too distant, too removed, too separate to really connect with the heart of my experience. That’s when I turn to poetry.

In many ways, poetry is the truest expression of life experience for me – both writing my own, and reading the words of others. My favorites (Mary Oliver, Audre Lorde, Erica Jong, Rumi, Rilke), the passion and inspiration of spoken word and slam (Alix Olson, Andrea Gibson) and newly discovered gems along the way (so many finding their way to me through kindred spirit MLC).

Poetry lifts me, transports me, echoes my own experiences and takes me to places I’ve never been. I’ve said before that I could happily drown in a good poem, and that has never been more true than during this period of transition in my own life. I think that because these months have been so raw, so honest, so rooted in sex and sensuality and in the down and dirty of intense emotion – it is poetry that provides the greatest release. Poetry has the unique ability transcend my life and to ground me deep within my experience at the same time.

Tongue-tied Blue is one of my favorite bloggers, She writes, always, in poetry. I wonder sometimes when reading her words (words that take me to the most exquisite, sensual, erotic, succulent* places) if I met her in person would she speak in verse? Does she think in the same effortlessly luscious-free-flowing-stream-of-consciousness verse that spills from her fingers onto my computer screen? Her writing is so organic, so immediate, so stripped down to barest truth that as I read I’m right there with her – feeling, touching, experiencing, reacting, knowing – and it’s almost difficult for me to imagine that she exists in another form.

Today I visited her blog and found this:

i love the feeling of her
skin
how she does it, i don’t know
but her skin is
so very smooth and coolly
supple under my hands
endless caressing miles
i could gladly
i do gladly wander, marvel
across her sleek surfaces
the more i let myself worship there
the more i forgive myself
the years of holding this
the most passionate, truest sex mystery
at an uncomfortable distance
my relief and redemption
allowed yet still
in measured, serene, clean-shaved doses
and as to prove the paradox of all truths
and i struggle truly to find words
because this part is wordless
when i bring my full attention
to my face and
when i bring my face
between her thighs and
when i breathe in deeply
the earthy tang of her
the parts of my brain that kick in
are not the parts that bother with words
or with ideas of redemption
or with even identifying the self
instead it is purely sense and sensation
wet curls and silky flesh
hot and salty pressure rocking
deliberately and thoroughly
the tongue with it’s own agenda goes
time? fuck time
she’s moaningand here i am
with no guile, no pretense
sure and present
i know it in my knowing
being
all the way through
this is no theory
no opinion or speculation
no adopted facade to cover
the mad, confused scramble below
here, finally
i am

And I could attempt to explain what it felt like for me to read those words, and read them again, and again – maybe 15 times now – with shivers down my spine and a heart beating with the cadence of the words. I could attempt to explain how it feels to absorb of someone else but to connect so deeply within my own reality. I could attempt to go line by line and tell you why each one resonated with me. How the final words “here, finally i am” nestled themselves into my heart and roared from my lungs because they are my words, my thoughts, my feelings too. I won’t do any of that, because I couldn’t even come close to fully expressing what I want to express, and I won’t because if you’ve been reading this blog – really, really reading it – then you’ll already know.

Share some poetry with me, won’t you? Who are your favorite poets? What poems echo your own experience, allow you to dive within your own reality and explore yourself on a deep level? Do you write poetry? Share it with me here if you will, or email it to me (awakenings.blogsome-at-gmail.com).

*L – if you’re reading, yes…that word is for you…