Day 12: Epigenetics

I don't know how many
lifetimes a child must
die through to end up
sitting in my office with
eyes like caverns that
echo:

a body is not big
enough to hold that
grief and so it
hollows
like a grave.

Day 11: Love letter from a flip-flop to the arpeggio: A story of unrequited love

Day 11/30

So...it's not that my creativity is waning...but...I maybe needed an idea of what to write tonight, so I went to Facebook again.  This time, I planned for tonight AND I planned for the future, because these poems are fun, and I figured maybe I will do one more if I get some good words...we'll see how the rest of the days go. 

At any rate, here was the word call: "Needed for two upcoming poem challenges: Four random things.  (I need concrete item type of things.  They can be random, but they need to be items.  Like toothbrush.  Or printer.  Or ferris wheel). 

As was the case yesterday, they did not disappoint.  Here is the list of words:

buggy whip, giraffe, tank top, Purple Pieman & Berry Bird Pop! Figure, key lime pie, archipelago, flip flop, tea pot, arpeggio, koala, febreeze spray, pool noodle, palm tree, vagina, clitoris, vulva, tissue, diet Dr. Pepper, trash can, peach, geode, flute, puppy, tail, pollywog, kombucha, water bottle, credit card, metro card, keys

With that in mind...the prompt is "write a love letter between two inanimate objects."  I'm thinking, of course, of Sarah Kay's amazing "Love Letter From a Toothbrush to a Bicycle Tire."  I took a stab at one a while ago -- "A love letter from the bell to the air."  

So from that amazing list of words above, the most obvious and only choice to me is to write...

Love letter from a flip-flop to the arpeggio: A story of unrequited love

I have loved you since first note.

Sitting on my shelf at Target,

waiting for my forever home, I was

practicing my monotone flips and flops, when you

came over the muzak-playing radio station in

soaring, trilling, rolling, resounding tones.

You sounded like

the first flip-flop weather day, like the

going to the beach day, like the

went to the park and did not step in dog poop day,

and made me want to sing my droning song with

new life.

One time, I tried to tune myself to your key:

hit my flop square against a foot I thought would be tuned to G, but it was

just a little sharp:
you flawless stream of music.

I love the way you

start out slow and then

become faster, almost

falling over yourself -- like I do when I run and my flips and flops smoosh together

becoming flops and flips

down and up, up and down --

we have so much in common, you and I.

Dear Arpeggio,

bounce with me along the paths of life.

Let us race up and down the scales together:

you holding tight my strap, and I, holding firmly to your notes, and together, we will create a masterpiece of tonal flips and flops --

you sweet chord.

Let us rest together gently upon your staff and I promise

to forever bring you home

to middle C.

Day 10: Bathe Me Glorious

Things I learned just now:

Some of my friends are jerks and they're lucky I love them anyway.  

I had no idea what to write tonight, so I posted this on Facebook:

"Help a sister you commits herself to stupid challenges out:
Give me 8 words.  One word per person.  Any word/form of word.  First 8 words win.  And go.
(2015s version of this challenge can be seen here: http://autodidactpoet.blogspot.com/2015/06/day-11-i-wish-for-you.html)

It started out innocently.  The first 4 words were:

Grace

Blue

Revolutionary

Fierce

And then came:

Terpsichorean

Wallaby

Deoxyribonucleic acid

And the final word: 

Elusive

Luckily, I have been playing this game for a VERY long time.  And the more people are assholes and give you RIDICULOUS words, the better this game becomes.  This poem?  20 minutes and done.

First: definitions.

Terpsichorean - of or relating to dancing

Deoxyribonucleic acid is just DNA all spelled out and fancy like.

And this fella is a wallaby.

Bathe Me Glorious

In the terpsichorean mystery of time,

evolution beckons us forward from cells to

wallabys, from

deoxyribonucleic acid to

sponges and

long-limbed teens with blue hair and

snails, and ferrets, and

grandfathers who don't remember your name - 

this life

is evolutionary chaos I sometimes don't

know how to survive.

Grace, 

ever elusive in your splendor

bathe me glorious in your revolutionary light

and draw me daringly into fierce

and furious

dancing.

Day 9: Worse Sins

Worse Sins

Because there are worse sins than a sick day, I

go to the beach to baptize myself alone.  With

only myself as witness, I

wash myself in sand and

dirty waters -

each wave a whispered promise

of absolution.

Day 8: Why I hold vigil every month witnessing Black lives lost to police violence and proclaiming that Black Lives Matter

So, I am really tired tonight in a soul-tired kind of way.  I have had a barely medicated migraine most of the day, and my heart and my soul is just tired.  The downside of writing a poem every day is that you don't have a lot of time to fix/think/work on things before you gotta move on.  This is one I would like to fix/think/work on, and probably will...but I need to turn out the light.  

I dislike churning out poems about "big issues" like this quickly, because it feels more likely that I'll get it wrong.  I kept getting anxious as I was writing it, thinking "you're going to say it wrong" and "that's not right!" and "you're going to mess it up and *insert catastrophic thought here*".

But I recently re-listened to Lauren Zuniga's poem - "Confessions of an Uneducated Queer," in which she says:

"I was afraid to write this because I didn't want to fuck it up.
Writing poems about things you don't really know a lot about can be very problematic
but not writing poems about things you're afraid to fuck up can also be very problematic.
The world is problematic -- please.  Fuck it up."

This is me - being willing to fuck it up in this big, problematic world.  

Why I hold vigil every month witnessing Black lives lost to police violence and proclaiming that Black Lives Matter

Because I am white.

Because I have work to do.

Because I do not always know how to do it.

Because people mostly honk, and wave, and drive.

Because I waved at a white woman and she flipped me off.

Because, even here, we have work to do.

Because it is living my faith.

Because it is full-bodied prayer.  

Because I do not know all of their names.

Because we do not have signs with all of their names.

Because we do not have enough people to hold signs with all of their names.

Because there are always more names.

Because I do not know all of their stories.

Because there are always more stories.

Because there are hearts behind the names and stories.

Because the world was robbed of the rest of their story.

Because a mother asked to take a picture with me.

Because I was holding a sign with her dead son's name.

Because I do not know how that interaction does not change a person.

Because every month something in me changes.

Because I need to be changed.

Because there are small black and brown faces in the back seats of cars who look with

wide eyes and do, or don't, understand why we're there and 

why we need to be.

Because they will understand one day.

Because I want those babies safe.

Because I want them to always come home alive.

Because I never want to hold a sign with their name on it.

Because in the next car there is a small white face in the back seat with

wide eyes who understands, or doesn't, but

will never need to.

Day 7: Telephone

I almost left this one untitled, because any title I can think of feels either too obvious or dramatic or overblown.  But I think this one works for me.  

Telephone

"I went to lunch with your grandfather and grandmother," he says.

I go still on my end of the phone line as I realize

this conversation is not the one I thought it was.

I pause to weigh my options.

"Don't you know your grandmother and grandfather?" he snaps.

"Grandfather," I address him gently, "Doris was my grandmother."

"No no.  Nope.  No.  That's wrong.  Lynn is your mother," he says.

I don't know who Lynn is. 

I wonder if he does.

"Did you have a good lunch?" I ask. 

He rambles about his turkey sandwich and ponders 

whether I know Rose while I breathe. 

I don't know Rose - turns out she's the lady at the bank.

I store this in my memory for later:

there is so much living in the details.

"After all these years you're finally telling me that your mother is my daughter?"

His voice rises such that I can't tell if he's joking.

"I'll be damned."

We laugh and - for a moment - my heart eases.

"Happy birthday, Grandfather."

"Yeah," he says.  "Thanks, hon."

"I love you," I say.

"Well that's nice to hear," he says

and silence falls between us.

I remind myself to breathe.

Day 6: Wild Thing

Last night in yoga, we did the pose below -- "wild thing" -- and it was beautiful, and powerful, and intense in a "HERE WORLD!  HERE IS MY HEART!" sort of way.  

Day 6/30 days of poems - check.  

Wild Thing

Sitting with this stillness is

too much of not enough tonight-

What are you protecting?

You wild thing:

breathe your untamed heart to freedom and

let her fly.

From yogajournal.com