Small

Small

There are so many ways of dying to

believe yourself alive.

Bottles meet lips

fists meet wall

blades meet skin

food meets mouth - or doesn't -

fingers move to back of throat.

And when I wake, my body begs me

for a second chance.

Always too small and too

large for this world, I have only ever wanted to

bring myself to life.

To breathe inside this skin without

the ghosts who try to live here:

there is a constricting spaciousness in silence that

shrinks me smaller until I am

nothing - this physical body is too large,

takes up

too much

space --

this place of small is

familiar and

gives the ghosts the space they need to

inhabit this too-much, this

not-enough, this --

I wonder if

impossibility

is the only way I know to love myself.

Wonder if the only way I can be small

enough is by not

speaking, 

ridding myself of heart or

brain or

body, I let the

ghosts fill my empty spaces.

There are so many ways of dying to

keep yourself alive.

Shaking voice forms truths too

holy for silence, too

holy for speaking.

Coded tongues drop words from

bitten lips:

oh, Impossible One --

there is courage here

even when
everything 

shatters.

The one with all the signs

Lately, I find myself feeling as though I am standing on the edge of a precipice.  In many ways, I feel I have spent a long time standing on such ledges, looking over, and out, and down, and wondering how and where I would be going next.  I have spent so much time frightened and unsure, and convincing myself that I am strong, and present, and brave.  It was January 2014 that I first made the intention to myself to be brave.  While I told myself that intention was only a year, that intention never left.  That word has been my word for three years.  How desperately I have tried to learn it, to move into it, to embrace it.  How often it has exhausted me, pushed me past what was healthy or right.  And how I have also lived that word.  I have lived every ounce of life out of that word in these three years.

And I know that because it is no longer my word.  As I was driving yesterday, I was realizing how small the word sounds to me now.  In the face of the battles I have fought this year, in the face of the battles we as a nation are moving into, in the face of the questions that are rising in me, the word "brave" is simply no longer large enough.  The trepidation and anxiety and resolution I used to feel within that word are gone.  It is just a word, now, tapped of the power it once held.

I arrived on this thought in a roundabout way: I was thinking about poetry, and about words, and about my favorite word.  My favorite word is "vast" because it is such a small word that sounds so large, just like its meaning.  It creates this enormity of space in my chest when I say it that makes me feel like I blend with the universe in all its exquisite vastness.  (I love the word exquisite, too, because it sounds like fancy curlicues.  And this is why I'm a poet).   

Anyhow, this led me to feel this....this feeling of being on the precipice.  I am applying for a leadership conference and one of the three essay questions is "what question are you currently holding about your life or vocation?"  This process of answering these questions right now is so exactly what I need.  This process of discernment, of questioning, or breathing into the place of no answers to find the true question -- this is where the bravery has brought me.

Because right now, like many in this country, I feel angry, and lost, and disheartened.  As I wrote in my last poem, there are so many questions I cannot answer.  I sent an email to a former colleague -- someone older and wiser than myself, telling her that I am disillusioned with our colleagues and our field.  "Where the hell are we?" I asked her. "What are we doing?  Are we all wrapped up in our ivory towers of academia, too busy writing articles to come out and talk about matters of importance?  We are in a position to do so much social good, to make strong statements and take strong positions on matters of social justice based on what we know, and we don't. If we do not find a way to speak, aren't we failing our clients and our profession?"

I don't expect to hear from her.  I have spent so long looking for, searching for someone to be the person who will guide or mentor or show me a way through this.  This person is not coming.  S/he is not here, and attempting to live into the word brave did not stir me to action.  It was not big enough.

A few months ago, in the midst of a total, crying, messy breakdown, I had something happen that had happened to me once before.  It's something that could make firmly agnostic me believe in God, if I were prone to such things: I heard a voice.  Not an external voice like Morgan Freeman voice of God moment.  Like, just WOAH.  There's that voice.  Like happened that one time before when I was sitting at that stoplight in Ohio.  And the voice said, "what if you are the one you have been waiting for?"

Fast forward to yesterday.  I'm driving to church, and these things happened in rapid succession:

(1) As I was thinking about what I want to say in that essay, and about all of the unanswered questions inside me, and about this uncomfortable place I am in, and about how painful change is, and about how bravery is too small, and about how I love the word vast, I heard that voice again - so clear, and definitive, and not my voice, and it would be creepy as hell if it was saying something weird, but it's not, it said the same thing -- it said, "you are the one you are waiting for."

(2) I looked down at my forearm, my hand grasping the steering wheel, and realized the reason I have not gotten the tattoo I desperately want is because I have been imagining it wrong.  I don't want the words on my back.  I want them where I can see them.  I need them where I can see them.  I need it on my forearm.   

(3) The inevitable panic of "YOU CAN'T GET A VISIBLE TATTOO" set in, and I squashed it.  This body is mine and I want to find out what it's like to live it, to own it, to inhabit it fully and completely.  I am the one I have been waiting for. 

I arrived at church, sat in the parking lot, sketched out the tattoo, and walked inside.

It's not that I believe in signs, but the service was asking the question: "What is the light that you have to offer the world?" "What does the world stand to lose if you hide your light?"  I laughed, because -- seriously?  And then I cried, because -- seriously?  And it just was.  This is how the universe is playing right now.  Throwing me ALL of the signs.  

When I was in college, way back when I was a junior in 2005, I had to read one of Anaïs Nin's books for my humanistic and existential psychology class.  Either in the book, or in the class, or in my reading about Nin, I encountered the quote, "And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  I wrote it in the front of my notebook.  And since 2005, I have loved that quote.  I can't quite explain the way that quote just has been me and my life in so many ways -- or the ways I have hoped it would be, sometimes.  I have written that quote in journals, on my skin, in the fronts of books.  I have doodled it, zentangled it: it made 19 year old me feel hopeful.  It gave 24 year old me something to believe in.  It gives 31 year old me a sense of vastness, of blossoming, of expansion.

That quote is, of course, too much to say in a tattoo, unless you're going big.  So this is what I said instead.  This is the other side of all the bravery.

 The handwriting and overall design are mine.  The swirly design is found, but the words, the writing, the design -- it is mine.  On my body.  Turns out, I was the one I was waiting for. 

I wrote a poem last night that I will not share in its entirety -- but I will share the end, because I think it speaks to that place of precipice-standing -- to the risk, and the vastness, and the blossoming.

"...the light of my self cracks this body

open, leaving

broken wholeness in the wake of

destruction.  This body is not object.

Not function.  Not space to be filled or claimed.  It is

promise - vast and private, like

the whisper of dawn

just before it breaks

into morning."

There is so much that lies before us, as we stand here -- teetering on this precipice.  What if this is the day when the risk to blossom outweighs the risk of remaining tight in a bud?  Or maybe not the day, but a day?  One of many days, perhaps, when we make that choice?  What if we are the ones we have been waiting for?  What if this vast and private whisper is not destruction, but the promise-filled darkness of dawn?

I don't have answers -- but now, have a permanent reminder to risk the questions as they break into morning.

On questions and capes: A poem about post-election survival

On questions and capes: A poem about post-election survival

The cashier at the pharmacy verifies my name, address, date of birth,

looks me over and says, "Solomon, huh?

Is that Jewish?"

It is 3 weeks after the election.

We are standing in a Walgreens in a blue state

across the corner from where the

high school kids stood on election day with signs reading,

"build that wall" and "Hillary for Prison." We are

down the road from the Starbucks where I was lectured on

how young people will be the downfall of society because

we don't know any better, and up the street from the

house with the Confederate flag painted in its garage, from the

Trump sign that lights up in the dark, from the

pick-up truck with two Confederate flags flying off the back above the gun rack, from the

Safeway where men followed me to my car, tried to get in after me, where I

did not buy from the Kosher for Passover section because

a man in a Trump hat was in the aisle with me spouting ignorance and now I

wonder

why I am standing in Walgreens

trying to answer this question as

my mouth goes dry.

*****

Dr. Laura?

If Donald Trump is president, will he hate me?

Dr. Laura?

When Donald Trump runs the world, will he make people be cannibals?

Will they eat people with autism first?

Dr. Laura?

Is it okay to worry about Donald Trump?

Sometimes I can't sleep because I worry about him, like, about what he might do to my family.

Dr. Laura?

Will it be the end of the world when Donald Trump is president? 

Dr. Laura? 

Can I be a superhero and save the world from Donald Trump?  Sometimes I imagine that.

Dr. Laura?

I don't know how to be a superhero. 

I tried to fly once, but

I just falled down.

*****

Each session feels like a Bingo card of heartbreak:

a unique pattern of life on the margins.

I find newfound fear as the day's

headlines flash by.

Session 1:

White single father with mental illness raising teenage son with

disabilities on the Eastern Shore has to give up

a day of work to wait

for Medical Assistance transportation.

Session 2:

Muslim woman in hijab has twins with autism, works

nights to support them, about to lose her job due to

inability to find child care.

Session 3:

Non-English speaking, immigrant mother with

intellectual disability raising child with autism.

Session 4:

Black lesbian grandmothers, one with cancer, one an immigrant, raising

child with multiple disabilities on

food stamps in section 8 housing with a history of

multigenerational trauma.

Bingo.

*****

I receive an email:

"I don't understand why you're so upset.

Now is the time to send love and prayers and compassion."

I fire off a response:

"Fuck your prayers.

Now is the time to fight for the superheroes flying

across the margins."

*****
I feel so small in the face of the

resilience I sit across from.

What privilege it is to feel

shell-shocked and

curl into my

white, lesbian, half-Jewish shell when all day I

sit with people who only had a quarter shell to start with and it

leaks when it rains.

*****

Dr. Laura?

I was teaching my son to ride the bus.

He was going to do it himself.

Should I let him?  I'm scared.

Dr. Laura?

I want him to be able to work

but I don't know what people will say.

Have you seen all these hate crimes?

Dr. Laura?

He runs away from me in public.

He hugs strangers, he's

a grown man now.

A 14-year-old black boy.

What do we do?

Dr. Laura?

****

I spend days telling myself I cannot do this.

I cannot find my breath.

I ask myself: what if the next person you meet is the one the world is waiting for?

I give everyone capes in my mind so they are

flying as I

learn to ask the questions that will

imagine our survival.

//

Note: All clients portrayed above are fictionalized and/or composites of actual clients I see/have seen. 

No More

October is domestic violence awareness month, and I was asked to write a poem for a vigil for domestic and intimate partner violence tonight for a local organization (shout-out to Hopeworks, who does fantastic work!).

Do you know about the "No More" campaign?  The theme of tonight's vigil was "No More."  No More domestic violence.

I want to live in a world where there is no more domestic violence.  No more sexual assault.  No more abuse.  Let's say no more.  

No More

And the women say No More.

And the men say No More.

And the children and elders

and my trans-sisters and brothers

queer and straight, we

gather to grieve and rage and hold one another because this

is how we reclaim our lives.

We converse with silence and the echo of doubt

until we are hollowed.

Raw hearts rarely show the bleeding:

we arrive again with strangers who bring

the intimacy we crave and pocket

like poems. Some moments

are small enough to fit under our tongues, but we hold them like

beacons of hope.  This breath breathes

power into our lungs as we

fight to embody the subtle whispering of ourselves and

the weights we carry. 

Violence takes.

It takes air, and energy, and blood, and

life, and all we learned to live by.

We spend our days learning

the motions of moving our words from our shoes to our fists,

from our fists to our hearts,

from our hearts to our mouths.

We turn on our voicebox like a

sprinkler of truth-missiles;

tie our heartstrings to moonbeams to practice the art

of rising from darkness:

there is no prescription or miracle.

No love letter or checklist.

No law, or scripture, or prayer that rights this world,

there is only this-

the gravitational pull of your life to the moonbeams and the ways you rise.

The power of remembrance and owning your sanctity.

Candlelight, and murmurations of

the strength of survival

together.

A poem is so small  --

it is only words on a page, spoken and then

gone; I want to be large.

The vastness of my embodying reaching

out so I can expand to exist

beyond this:

take my hand and we will make

the moon.

Let’s beam her large,

together, rising holy into the darkness, saying:

hear me.

Believe me.

Value me.

Warrior with me.

Listen when I roar

when I whisper

when I beg and write

and pray:

No More.

Day 15: Grieving the war

I don't know how to explain the warzone I work in because

there are no tanks, or guns --

except for when there were, once, last year during the uprising after

Freddie Gray was killed and I

walked in to work past the National Guard lining the streets in

riot gear.

But it's not really about that because the warzone I work in is

the police problem and the

poverty problem and the

oppressed people problem and the

hungry children in a food desert problem, and the

shitty schools that do illegal things routinely problem, and the

no way out problem.

It's the "my house burned down in the snowstorm" warzone, and the

"I might get deported" warzone, and the

"they got rats in the daycare" warzone, and the

"don't speak the language and nobody gets me an interpreter" warzone, 

and the war of: "can't pay my BG&E bill," and "don't have a working car" and "got a kid with a disability" and "school keeps calling me to come get him so I lost my job."

And me --

most days I show up with a pen knife to the gun fight.

"With all due respect, ma'am," he told me,

"you say you understand that this is hard.

But you don't."

He's not wrong.

I can feel it in my bones, but I

will never have to live it.

I feel so

small, knowing there is not an

enough that can stop this

bleeding.

A patient arrived nearly half an hour late today.

He was pulled over by the police for speeding.

He left the session and I cried:

grateful he

made it alive. Praying he

made it home.

Allowing myself 5 minutes to

grieve the war.

Day 14: Unpoemed

Here's the thing: this isn't really a poem.  

Here's the other thing: this is my blog, and my poem, so I get to say what's going down...and tonight, I say this is as close as we're getting to a poem.  

There are things that are not poetic but can be poemed:

Earwigs.

Chapstick that melts in your purse.

The number of dead bugs collected in the light on my ceiling that I cannot remove.

The incessant barking of the dog next door.

And there are things that are poetic that cannot be poemed:

Your mother asking you to help take your grandfather's car.

Joint pain that radiates your body.

The raw hurt that comes when you read a person wrong --

or when you read them right, but hoped for more.

The aching wound that friendship leaves.

The ways our history lives in our bodies.

Feelings that float to the surface.

Looking for gratitude, and breathing only into the statement,

"I'm alive."

Day 13: Name This

Of course, I know this isn't technically day 13...but I needed to take two days off of poeming for lots of reasons.  So here's day 13 of my 30 days of poems...they just don't happen to be consecutive days.  

I shared this poem at church this morning.  I think it's actually the first time ever I have read a poem aloud and my body has not been shaking.  I liked that feeling.  

Name This

I have always been precise in my naming.

I want the just-right word at the just-right time:

I wield the power of my wording like a weapon.

Verbing nouns, changing phrases to make them new

and surprising, I move

to the matters of soul

heart-clenchingly quickly--

hold on, y'all.

This is how things get real.

See, as babies, our parents label our worlds:

"Do you see the light?"

"That's your shirt."

"Big yawn."

"You are so silly."

As toddlers, we ask the questions.

We point and show, and

each item is told to us over and over until

we can hold our world in our crumb-encrusted fingers.

My family cat's name was Coo Coo.

Coo Coo was one of my first words,

and everyone thought it was because

I loved the cat until, at age three

I told my mother that Coo Coo

was despicable.

I wonder how long it took me to find

the just-right word to name that, as playmates go, Coo Coo

was always a bit of a jerk.

I wonder if pride

surged through my three-year-old frame as I knew

I had found my just-right word, had

named the feeling exactly right, I

had spoken.

But just-right words are hard to find,

hard to use, hard to believe in;

naming our lives is not as easy as labeling

lights, and shirts, and

sometimes, I fall away to

solitude and quiet

un-naming of myself and my place, but wonder:

how do I name this worth?

this reclamation?

this embodying?

How do I name this way

I live my world?  I say

here is my heart. 

I named it Myself.

It is power.

It is existing beyond, it is

a word after

a word after

a word, it is naming:

here.  I am here,

holding my world in my hand.

Let me show you the color, the shape

the weight of it.

How heavy it can be.

Stay with me so I can

open my fingers.

Let me show you how beautiful it is

when it hits the light.