Silence
This idleness is driving me insane
My life is in the hands of the pilots
As I wait in this plane

I'm weighed down by a fog like haze
As I drift through this cloud
My thoughts are trapped in a maze
And there's no way out

Suddenly I feel a strange sensation
I awake from the dreamlike state
My body is impatient
I can't stand to wait

There's something grabbing at my heart
Attracting me like a magnet
I want to jump into the dark
To satisfy the need for attachment

My soul leaves my body
I'm soaring through the sky
The raindrops wave to me
As I pass them by

I'm drawn to the feeling
Like a moth to a flame
My thirst for oneness is unyielding
As I take my aim

I see the peaks of mountains
And the raw power of rivers
I visit city fountains
But as I travel through the forest my soul quivers

You're there among the trees
The tugging on my being is stronger than ever
I come to you like a cool breeze
My soul meets your heart, we are finally together

I realize what love is
And I feel complete
But than everything changes
And I'm back in my seat

Sylvia and Vincent
Won't you come visit
me in the night
He'll paint and she'll write

Tulips and sunflowers
I am counting down the hours
Till I meet you
But you are hard to get to.

She put her head in the oven,
he put his in his hands
but you're not so different,
Sylvia and Vincent.

Her pen races, his brushstroke
how did they know
what to say, what to paint
Did it come from their pain?

And you may never see the reward,
the effect on the world
of your gripping emotion
and how it made time frozen

But this comparison is nonsense
only two creatives plagued by madness
and so, like them, I hope for acceptance
from a world that barely notices.

They'll use Martin Luther King day to sell anything from mattresses to cars.
Even he has been ripped up and replanted,
capitalized, like Christmas or Easter,
by the people who give us images of a white Jesus,
but you bet they don't pay everyone equal.
We have boulevards, schools, and libraries named after King,
but streets over, we have Confederate soldiers carved into a mountain,
we call 'em heroes, that's what I was taught,
the ones who fought, the ones who ate lead,
But, they aren't talking about who really put a bullet in Dr. King's head.
What the **** is wrong with us?
America will go see Selma in millions,
this weekend, go back home to their all white neighborhoods,
thinking about how it was bad then, but now, it's all good.
Who are we really trying to fool?
Stand up for the pledge in school
Put your hand over your heart and forget
all this country denies you
telling you that there isn't a heart of a human beating inside you
because you're gay, you're black, you're not like that,
She was a flirt, she wore a short skirt,
Every day you try to heal the hurt
Justice for all? Like are you kidding me?
There ain't such a thing here as liberty
Do you know where you stand
was Native American land?
Ripped from their bleeding hands
And don't even get me started on Iraq and Iran.
You know that mountaintop?
The one I was talking about,
Did they tell you it was a KKK meeting spot?
Bet not.
I wonder, is the clay here red from all the blood?
We hide our history,
sing promises of liberty,
say that racism ended with slavery,
and it's Stonewall Jackson, he's a hero, they say
but never speak of Stonewall Riots any day
and I'm afraid for our children and what they will learn,
in classrooms, will they be silenced?
Come here kids, let me tell you a story,
of Ferguson, New York, Hong Kong,
about how people will look back and see they were wrong,
But some never did, some died with hatred,
some died because of it,
Let me tell you about homeless LGBT youth
Let me tell you about all these issues
Let me tell you the truth
And there are different ways of seeing it,
but only one way to say it,
you and I both know,
You just have to listen for it.

12/37/14



Our love flourished in the winter
In a place where it never really got cold
Your eyes were always icicles
And your smell like winter wind

You come off as cold
But maybe as winter progresses toward spring
And life reveals itself from under its snow blanket
You heart too will awaken

lipstick, mirrors, mysteries
i have a secret i can't keep
and it grows inside of me
til it is too deep

i see the ghost's grin, manifesting
through the glass, maybe
you were just a dream
when i slept in class

i know your name, but it doesn't fit
nothing could possibly contain your essence
through a hole in the fence
you saw me in the garden on a bench

and sometimes i pretend
this is all my imagination
break a dish, put it in the cupboard again
as if it never happened

watching the olympics
talking about who'd win
everything is a war these days
it's time we work out an armistice

As I remember how her lips felt as they plowed through the barriers of my insisted claims of heterosexuality I cannot help but think,
without falter...

wow

okay,
but this isn't why I'm a feminist.

My attachment to her,
my fellow female,
member of my legion,
has nothing to do with
my squinting eyes
at the
blinking neon signs of
inequality
that hangs about all of our heads every day