during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

last night i laid in bed next to my sister
and recounted the ways we had both
tried to squeeze ourselves
into the sausage casing
society said we should fit into

how she spent 2 years waiting
until 2 pm to allow her body nourishment

how i had made it to 27 and suddenly
had the epiphany that i could
starve myself to the size i wanted be

how our father and grandfather
spent endless moments passing
judgments on our bodies and
smashing us into the ground
with each pound that graced our wide hips

how she told everyone she
was a runner, but couldn't
hide from her roommates worried
glances at her bones poking through
workout clothes that never got a
drip of sweat on them

how i taught young girls to love
themselves day after day,
while i shook and trembled from
the lack of love i had for myself

last night we laughed about how
skewed our views had become
from our grandma and mother
telling us their weight, analyzing
their curves in the mirror as we
laid in their beds watching and learning

i vowed to harbor a warrior in my
womb one day who i could speak
freely with about the horrors of
self hatred and hopefully instill
a strong foundation of faith in self

i hope one day i raise someone
who never looks in the mirror and
wishes pieces of herself away

i hope one day i raise someone
who sees herself fully, not just as a shell
of a human worth nothing more than
the label on her clothes and
the number on the scale

i hope one day i raise someone
who sees herself most worthy of love

my brain tricks me into thinking
that i'm the only woman
who's turned out jaded
after watching a man eat
chunks of my still beating heart

it's easy to place myself upon
this island, silent and sorry
while i sob under pine trees
and curse the planets for
making me endlessly desire love

i see you approach the shore,
the boat wasn't built with
your own hands, but you're
still a better man than all
of the ones that proceeded you

i speculate that you're here
to hunt weak and easy prey,
truth is that doubt and not loving
myself will be the only misfortunes
that bleed me dry

it seems the closer i get to my dreams
the less gravity pulls me towards reality

i wake each morning nose to nose with myself
floating above my still sleeping body

as my eyelids flutter i fall back within my bones
and breathe deeply as i recount the strangeness -

lost in the docks of antwerp desperate for evening attire,
watching robed friends don masks and sing of sadness -

my past follows me into the great beyond
and stares me in the eyes again and again

for some reason i can see and feel you,
but the familiarity is gone and your voice is no longer yours

i wonder if that's the first thing to disappear
from the recesses of our minds - the sound of love

i am afraid -

i am aware of the constructs that i have created within my cerebrum, but still,
i am afraid

i dwell within possibility and i drown within pessimism, persistent prodding tells me,
you're not ready,
you're not able,
you're just you

within morning comes the mourning of every moment i've misplaced,
the dreams that detonate day after day as i don't dive deeper,
the wistful wanting for wayward worship of words that have lost their weight

i admonish myself with apologies as august replays again and again,
the shell of you sits there and sings songs of sobriety and sojourned slumber,
and i find freedom in the fact that i find myself finite in my finale- finally alone

it's not the truth that brings terror, it's the tired tongue that trembles,
the loss of lunacy and the latching onto looming, languishing logistics,
the halt of the hum that once helped me to heave myself towards hope

you are no one,
you are everyone,
you are whoever you want to be,
the words that imprison me illuminate an interest in introspective idealism

i am afraid,
but still, exposed, enamored, and enraged, nothing stops emancipation, not even -

i am afraid

i get that change is meant to hurt, to push
and pull at all of those bits that need it
i understand that i made the choices i had to,
that i'm strong, and that i live life for myself-
but the truth remains, none of this feels like love

i wake up cold and sweating, the echoes of you
bouncing around the room

sometimes i wish that folding was as easy as it seemed,
that we could climb back into my princess bed
and fight the chills with our body heat, that you
would wake me with kisses on my eyelids before
you caught the early bus to work, that you'd
hold my waist and dance barefoot with me as i
whispered old crooner songs to you in my kitchen

instead my backbone bends, but somehow the
weight of this loss doesn't break it

i know you go on living, but it's hard to define
what you're doing as life, i worry always that
the unknown number is someone calling to tell
that you've finally lost your physical self,
just as you lost your spirit so long ago

my strength isn't made for two, just me,
even though i lent it to you each and every
time your eyes became glued to the floor and
your body shook so much you lost your sense of self

i know now that i'm no jesus, that lover isn't
synonym for savior, that i did everything i could

there is no reassurance in reinvention, you see,
this time around i already know who i am,
the decision was long and labored, but came
about without question or hesitation

comfort doesn't come just because i could
see the fissure coming, instead the pain
is slow and deliberate, a dull ache in my bones

I live silently in the shadow of the Olympics, losing my center by one degree daily. Pounding through enchanted forests and taking in all of the negative ions I can before I return to my treehouse. I should come home and stand on my head, but lately I've been telling myself scary bedtime stories about everyone that loves me secretly not giving a **** anymore. I feel like I've locked my spirit in a cage that sits on my shoulder. I witness the strange and bizarre life of living outside of true self, but despite my awareness and understanding, I am still not whole. The truth is that living a life brimming with light, love and beauty takes daily dedication to the dream, despite what ego whispers to me as I drift off to sleep. I know how to float above it all, I just have to allow myself to become weightless.

When grandma laid me down to sleep
she prayed the Lord my soul to keep
and if I died before I woke
she prayed my soul the Lord would yoke

Post-psychedelic black door dreams
monsters climbing in the breeze
Running, falling, flying, stare
yet with the morning not a care
the wafting flow through morning light
Madame’s kitchen fueled the air

The children sang of fresh insight
With voices pure and futures bright:

We smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
We smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages


Slipping, sliding, sowing sin
Sipping cider in the sun
Seeking soaring savoir faire
Serenade non-sequitor

Life’s a joke at seventeen
Painful angst, gray misery
With one look the light pours in
Eyes to see, now born again

Fresh squeezed juice is just divine
Grapes and berries off the vine
over easy, over hard
Weeds have overgrown the yard

And all the brothers in their haze
with lifted voices sang their praise:

We smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages


Mother’s teeth and Mother’s paw
Mother’s cradle, Mother’s bough
Mark the day’s devotions done
in the back track He looks on

The Sun is setting in the East,
and though the Magi know the truth
The Book of Lies, lies in disguise
of jagged tooth with mangy hide

The night recedes, the morning calls
Memories of far gone days
Memories of yawning halls
Memories of random joy

Though the hand that feeds we bite
now sing we all, with all our might:

We smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages

15 years old:
invite a group of friends over
to sit in my empty living room
with brand new wood floors -
we’re renovating

proof: I’m not poor

16 years old:
hang out of my sister’s
bedroom window,
swing into wet mulch,
steal away to twone’s
to get hammered and
touch my first ****

proof: I’m not afraid

18 years old:
lament over the fact
that I’m the last senior
alive without a cell phone

you got the flip, *****,
happy birthday

proof: I’m one of you

21 years old:
rip six foot bongs,
squirt jaeger bombs
into mouths from a gallon jug,
***** black sushi sacrifice

proof: I can hang

22 years old:
get caught with drugs
in 90 degree Arizona desert,
make friends with drug dog,
tell the truth while you take a ****,
sit in a cell and make plans
to call brother for bail

proof: the truth won’t always set me free

11 years old:
go into a department store
with my auntie,
heavy footsteps follow,
head to the juniors department,
heavy footsteps follow,
turn round, see an old man,
think, ‘he must be shopping for
his granddaughter’

proof: innocence is blind

have to ***, head to the bathroom,
heavy footsteps follow
with ragged breathing,
watch as Velcro sneakers stand
just beyond the door my stall,
curl into a ball and
wait, wait, wait,
as my brain takes on silent screaming

proof: I am nothing but prey

hear the next stall door
creak open,
watch feet walk in and legs
begin to bend,
explode out of stall
into store,
find auntie and begin
hyperventilation and
true demonstration of fear

proof: I am a woman now

there is something inside of me that breaks
in front of every broken person out there -
and if you can find me one person that's made it
through life without being broken, well then,
my earth might just crumble where i stand -
but like i said, it's as if i mirror them,
like their emotions crawl inside of my heart,
and start to occupy my mind, and leak their
way to my tear ducts and my mouth and my limbs,
and i lose control of it, i lose it

for that brief moment, a piece of them lives within me

my sister and i are the empaths,
that's what they like to call us anyways, but
i'd like to believe we're human,
that we should all share and feel each
other's pain so that we can sleep
at night knowing we're never truly alone

i wish i had realized sooner that feeling
isn't weakness, that i didn't need to
hide something we all share, instead,
someone whispered that message to me
in slumber and i woke up with the idea
in my head thinking it was mine

as i begin to unravel ego i realize that
my ideas have been circulating for
longer than i can conceive,
and the more i meditate on the notion
the more i realize that i've just got to
keep the current going, keep stirring
that *** and send the ideas on to
someone else who might be able to
find sustenance within them

i've always known i'd be a nurturer,
but i never thought i possessed the
nourishment people needed within
the fibers of my very being, that we
all possess just what we need, what the
world needs, it's already inside of us,
waiting for someone, or something,
to draw it out