The teachers are striking
those were the facts.
And the parents grumbled, and the students sighed,
and the school board rolled its eyes
and laughed
Two years,
no contract.
The governor, he has given to political friends, to his campaign ads
to the prisons.
But the schools!
No, this budget-slashing man
this well intentioned
but selfish man
he makes it so my textbook in health
still calls them "VD's"
and that my friend Lauren
has to sit beneath the drip drip drip of a leaky roof bouncing off the desks
So the teachers are striking
and the board can do nothing
less money
and **** poor planning
that's all


Well,
I hear at least
prison quality has improved.

though it is the middle of july
i kept my promise
the sweat that drips between my *******, heaving from the heat
mingles with the smell of sweet candy being formed
in the bowl beneath my spoon
it is a constant dance,
watching that she heats past jelly
but not to hard cracked
gently stirring one minute
whisking another
and the heat
the sweet fumes
fog my glasses, cool from the ceiling fan
making love to my art
but more intensive
pushing and pulling
so much work for just one position
and
unlike a lover
she is hardened and cold
after i bring her just right
a disappointed sigh of bubbles
never been this bad on any man or woman i have pleased
but i am inadequate
to candy

You have an old soul
I can tell
your blue eyes look youthful, they still have a sparkle,
but they crack around the rims
like an old woman's,
and behind your smile
I see the skepticism
of a divorce
and your tongue laughs with us
but I know
and you know
that you're holding back sick venom

but there's something else
some of those smiles are still real
some of those laughs come from your belly
you have an old soul
but you still have hope

Are we really lives
or are we flowers?
Are we the lily breathes of fairies left behind?
Blooming, fading,passing away
to be breathed in be another.

I often wonder
what is in my chimney
I know that it's just
bugs
and smoke
that's it
but I expect to see a body
or something nicer
if I  were to push up there
maybe a postcard
or an entire time capsule!
from fifty years ago
saying
Hello!
It's nice to meet you!
With a return address.

Maybe I would find her
the old woman and me
and we would sip lemonade
and sing the songs of June
until the sun went down
and it was time for me to go home.

We would be the best of friends
she'd show me paintings,
I'd write her songs
and we'd both camp out by the rivers
and paint fish and people and space invaders
and laugh when people asked if she was my grand mother
No she'd say
We're best friends
And we would be!
And the Summer would be full!
And I would make her days so much better;
a lonely old woman no more
but my friend.

Anyway.

Any time I stick my head in there to look,
all I get
is a black soot covered face
and a little more jaded.

The curtain rod does not fit into my window
so the sun has a key to get in
My room is on the unexposed side of my house
and the morning light climbs into my bed
like a lover
that I had a fight with the night before
who I told to
stay
on
the
couch

and so, I wake up crabby.

At the heart of the city,
place where there is already a beat
already a steady pounding of secret music to dance to,
there are places for us to move
to see our heroes standing up with a bold bird flying off one hand
and a microphone in the other
guitars, violins, accordions, horns, and oh yes,
drums
to pound our ears into a joyous submission.

Last night
the sweat on my body can as thick as the beer that was dumped on me
the only place I can stand *****
and the bodies pushed against me,
slowly twirling,
quickly churning,
a maelstrom of people that a weaker girl would have avoided
but I left my umbrella at the door
and dove in.
When that happens, the only thing that is real is the music
it's what is controlling the waves
some mad conductor at the mouth of a symphony
made of shrieking hyenas
the order that occurs in chaos
the smiles on people's faces
the punches thrown
the glasses lost
and found again
my God
This
is where I belong

I love you more than the sun in the sky
the thing that banishes those demons from me
and scatters them to the four winds
just flax in the wind.

The boaters who pass by the canal
are friendly and cordial
like good Southerners
I love sitting out on the pier practicing my Japanese
suiei,
oyogu,
mizu,
and they paddle lazily by
hardly making noise
wave
smile
good evening, Miss

The wind from the ocean
shoos away the the mosquitoes
I almost feel bad
people from these parts are so sweet
I'd don't quite fit in
but they don't mind it

No one lives here
All the homes are rented
there's a silent understanding
that we are all vacationers.

Stretch out the veins in me
the roots of a willow
bent and strong
drinking in the autumn air
waiting to be trampled on
but this morning
it is all soft moss
wrapping my heart in cool comfort

My lungs push out,
my diaphragm pulls down
the tides pulsing back and forth
powerful and cleansing
sweeping out the toxins of humanity  
and pushing in the sweet sands
to build new life

My ******* shift softly
dunes on the edge of the sea
soft and unforgiving
hard to scale and smoldering hot
burning the hands and  feet of those who do not tread with respect

A woman is an ocean

Some children are like icing
and curdle on your tongue
the cheap crisco kind
that stains your clothes if it drops on them
chalky
oily
contradictions

Others are artwork
butter, chocolate, sugar, and cream
they remind me what I can make
of the sack cloth
and flour sacks
of man

I want to run
and throw my arms out at my sides
laugh and cry in the night
and feel everything I have struggled to bottle
That's all
I want to know what it is to be human again
not the saturated product of equalizing tokens
that melt in my throat
and hold me in place as who I am

The fear has subsided
The voices, the faces
but what am I?
My leg is broken
and I can't stand for very long
no matter how quickly I hobble
I cannot keep up with my running spirit
who is tired or being tired out

please
i need to not look at you right now
was it only last night that we were entwined as you tucked me in?
and even now, our hands are laced to the point of oneness and yet
with every turn of these wheels
you get closer
to being farther away
so please
do not look at me.

when you leave my side,
please make me hate you.
i do not want to remember how happy you make me
i do not want to remember the laughter of today
i do not want to feel every kiss you have so sweetly delivered
i do not want to plan out the family promised for years ahead
i cannot take your warmth
or another smile
a smile that is a lily blooming
i cannot take it

so please
i need to not look at you right now.

but every time,
like there's some planetary pull
the promise of love and fresh glances pulls me back to you
and when i look, for a split second,
we are both happy
blue and brown floating together
perfect and warm
and then
it shatters
and then
we remember
it will not be again in summer,
nor likely in the dance of fall
that we shall meet again.

please
do not look at me
do not make me look at you
i do not want you to see my tears
i do not want to wound you with them

I watched them fall
motionless, downward,
arms cast up
waiting for time to start
but time won't move
a clock never ticking forward

a creature of fury
writing in the summer winds
flowing like a rip tide
just dying to claw us all apart
me, you, all of you.
i'm an animal from it
and i would cut off my own arm
to sate the beast
such raging tempers
are hardly human.

a creature of misery
trying to drown itself
it holds its head down
and keeps being pulled back
by a force it does not understand
and does not care to
i have spilled so much of my own blood
to try and sate the beast
such billowing masochism
makes me hardly human

the two lock arms against me
but they will not work together
every noose one ties
the other chews through
every knife one holds to a throat
the other finds restraint
they are me
but they are not the other
and i would slit my own throat
just to stop the fight

have you missed my absolute *******
screaming in lower case
at a keyboard pounded harder than the **** of a fifteen year old boy
and twice as self indulgent
what the **** have you been expecting to receive from me?
a great aria of who i am
in pretty trills
legatto
i am a soprano only when i sing
and this is no song
this is a mad dash to get myself out
and if you're reading this, fine
but expect nothing else of me
but raw and angry *******
with a miserable side
that is all i am
*******
i am not worth reading
but i'll post it anyway
because why the **** not
i have embarrassed myself here
i have spilled secrets into the world
and you have read them gleefully
expecting greatness
i am greatness and a trash compactor at the same ******* time
and if you think otherwise
you're wrong

she can be a teacher
with broad soft arms
padded by the birth of children
and harded at the core
from when she could be a boxer
reeling from the punches
and spitting foul words
oh! the feeling of a fight
gives her swagger when she walks
in combat boots
from when she can be an artist
layered with paint and hair dye
all self expression and stardust
and thoughts
thoughts that have made me a scientist
a woman of science
a woman
is so much more
than the front of her
or even her insides
i'll calmly paint or teach a lesson
but i fight to feel alive
and no one no one
will ever take that english ivy life from me

My Nana is
well
calling her a bully isn't fair
but everyone knows she is
so we just put our heads down
That's nice Jann, That's nice

When the sun was starting to get stale
and she was thoroughly bored,
she set her sights on me
Now
the family regard me, I think,
as the fragile child
tough in some ways
willing to work, and work hard
but
thin skinned
and prone to moods
Nana doesn't give a ****
which is,
in a way,
nice
and maddening

So anyway
in front of the whole family
she told me
that I was going to be an unemployed failure
for my whole life
because I'm going to college
not for art
not for philosophy
no
for linguistic studies
(and this was after she started pushing me
to be an artist)

The family
was ******
shaken hornets' nest
Which is in a way nice
but somehow
maddening
and they stayed angry for three days
I got over it in one.


I have a bug bite on my ankle
I only noticed it this morning
the skin is cracking and peeling
like I had sun burn
but I don't
the skin is just falling off

Nana isn't speaking to me.