i pick you up from the earlobes ,
shining in the december of your adolescence .

this morning a 19 year old boy asked me how to spell achievement .

this afternoon i saw exhaustion in a single mother's fingers .

i saw peace in the bald , pink cancer patient seeking holistic remedies at Whole Foods .
the weary barista delights in his tip jar .

and this
this is the tip

of the glacier 
that is hope ;
a shipwrecked shore to call home

you are not from here
sailor .
do not anchor 
your worries to reality ..

we all beat the ocean 
in our sleep

i want a good heart .
i want it to be made of good stuff .
i want the stain glass window builder to be my drinking buddy .
i want to drink only the punch of a million gender queer school kids taking free martial arts lessons to survive recess .
i stopped calling myself a pacifist when I heard gandhi told women they should not physically fight off their rapists .
i believe there is such a thing as a non violent fist .
i believe the earth is a woman muzzled , beaten , tied to the cold slinging tracks .
i believe the muzzled have every right to rip off the bible belt and take it to the patriarchy’s *** .
i know these words are going to get me in trouble .
it is never polite to throw back the tear gas .
just like its never polite to bring enough life rafts .
they crowd the balconies where the wealthy shine their jewels .
but sometimes love ..
sometimes real love
is ******* rude .
is interrupting a wedding mid vow just as the congregation is about to cry .
to stand up in your pew to say 
“ is everyone here clear on how diamonds are mined ?” 
hallelujah to every drag queen at stonewall who made weapons out of her stiletto shoes .
hallelujah to the blues keeping the neighborhood awake .
to the activist standing in the snow outside of the circus 
holding a ten foot photograph 
of a baby elephant in chains ,
when it’s probably some little kid’s birthday .
hallelujah to making everyone uncomfortable .
to the terrible manners of truth .
to refusing to clean the blood off the plate .
bend this spine into a bow 
i can pull across the cello of my speech .
love readies its heart’s teeth ,
chews through the etiquette leash .
takes down the cellphone tower after millions of people die in wars in the congo fighting for the minerals that make our cellphones . 
love blows up the dam .
chains itself to the redwood tree ,
to the capital building when a trailer of mexican immigrants are found dead on the south texas roadside .
love insists well intentioned white people officially stop calling themselves color blind .
insists hope lace it’s ******* boots 
always calls out the misogynist , racist , homophobic joke . 
refuses to be a welcome mat where hate wipes its feet .
love asks questions at the most inappropriate times .
overturns the defense of marriage act then walks a pride parade . asking when the plight of poor single mothers will ignite our hearts into action like that .
love is not polite .
deadlocks our rush hour traffic with a hundred stubborn screaming bikes .
hallelujah to every suffrage movement , hunger strike .
hallelujah to insisting they get your pronouns right .
hallelujah to tact never winning our spines .
to taking our power all the way back to that first glacier that had to learn how to swim .
to not turning our heads from a single ugly truth .
to knowing we live in a time when beauty recruits its models outside the doors of eating disorder clients .
that is not a metaphor .
this is not a line to a poem .
an indian farmer walks into a crowd of people and stab himself in his chest to protest 
the poisoning of his land .
a buddhist monk burns himself alive on the streets of saigon .
a united states' soldier hangs himself wearing his enemy’s dog tags around his holy neck .
may my heart be as heavy 
as a tuba in the front row of the mardi gras parade five months after katrina .
may it weigh the weight of the world 
so it might anchor the sun 
so it might hold me to my own light until i am willing to sweat as much as i cry .
until i am willing to press into the clay of our precious lives .
a window .
might our grace riot the walls down .
may the drought howl us awake
may we rush into the streets 
to do the work of opening each other’s eyes .
may our good hearts forever be 
too loud to let the neighbors sleep .

at the end of your ten day meditation retreat
you got in your car drove thirty peaceful feet and ran over a bird .
splayed its holy guts on the pavement like god
finger-painting
*******
across that deep breath
you were holding the way your mother held her first born .

you , thank goodness , were torn from the bible the day before they burned it for the verse about dancing to tambourines .
once you saw the blood of christ on a knife carving redwood trees into church pews .
now every sunday morning you hear glaciers melting and you cry easy
as a one night stand never ever is
when you see the feathers in your rear-view mirror scattering like prayers
searching for a safe place to land .

hold me to my word when i tell you i will leave today ,
catch a bus ticket west just to stand in the center of your highway
blocking traffic ‘til every feather’s answered .
i’ve see too many prayers caught in the grills of 18 wheelers and folks like us
have shoulder blades that rust in the rain ,
but they’re still g sharp whenever our spinal chords are tuned to the key of redemption .
so go ahead world pick us
to make things better .

we’ve been building a bridge through the center of this song since Mother Theresa replaced the walls of her church with the weeping cries of calcutta’s orphaned ghettos .
you wanna know what the right wing never got ?
we never questioned the existence of god .
what we questioned is his bulldozer turning palestine into a gas chamber .
what we questioned is the manger in macy’s
and the sweatshops our children call the north pole .
what we question are the sixty swollen lashes on the back of a girl found guilty
of the crime of allowing herself to be brutally ***** .
what we question is the idea of a heaven having gates .
silly .

have you never stood on the end of pier watching the moon live up to her name ?
have you never looked in the eyes of a thief and seen his children’s hungry bellies ?
some days my heart beats so fast
my ribcage sounds like a ******* railroad track
and my breath is a train i just can’t catch .

so when my friends go filling their lungs with yes .
when they’re peeling off their armor and falling like snowflakes on your holy tongue .
god collects the feathers .
we are thick skin covering nothing , but wish bones .
break in .
you’ll find notebooks full of jaw lines we wrote to religion’s clenched fist .
yeah , we bruise easy .
but the sound of our bouncing back is a grand canyon full of choir claps .
and our five pointed stars have always been open to the answer
whatever it is .

i know david argued with the chisle .
i know he said make me softer
when those tourists come looking for a hero
i want the rain to puddle in my pores .
build me holy like that .
build me a kite flown out a bedroom window at midnight
the day freedom set its curfew to 9:11 .

my heaven is a snow globe .
the blizzard will always be worth the touch of your hand ,
shaking me awake like a boy taking deep breaths
all the way down to the dents in his shins
like he’s building a telephone from a string and two tin cans .
he knows god’s number by heart .
he knows it isn’t listed in any book .
look me in the bull’s eye ,
in the laws I broke and the promises i didn’t
in the batteries I found when the lights went out
and the prayers i found when the brakes did too .
i got this moment and no idea when it will end .
but every second of this life is scripture
and to know that
trust me,  we don’t need to be born
again .

there are days when there is no way
not even a chance
that i dare for even a second glance at the reflection of my body in the mirror and she knows why
like i know why she only cries when she feels she’s about to lose control
she knows how much control is worth
knows how much a woman can lose when her power to move
is taken away
by a grip so thick with hate it could clip the wings of god
send the next eight generations of your blood shaking
and tonight something inside me is breaking

my heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of pain
i could give every tear she’s crying a name
a year
and a face i’d forever erase if i could just like she would
for you
or me
but how free would any of us be if even a few forgot what too many women in this world cannot
and what the hell would you tell your daughter ?

your someday-daughter when you have to hold her beautiful face to the beat-up face of this place that hasn’t learned the meaning of
STOP
what would you tell you daughter
of the womb ***** empty ?
the eyes swollen shut , the gut too frightened to hold food
it was seven minutes of the worst kind of hell
seven

and she stopped believing in heaven
mistrust became her law , fear her bible , the only chance of survival
don’t trust any of them
bolt the doors to your home , iron-gate the windows , walking to the car alone , get the key in the lock .
please
please , please , please open
like already she can feel the five-fingered noose around her neck , two-hundred pounds of hate digging graves into the sacred soil of her flesh
please
please , please , please , please open
already she can hear the broken-record of the defense :
“ answer the question , answer the question , answer the question miss ”
why am i on trial for this ?
would you talk to your mother , your daughter , your sister like this ?
i am generations of mothers , daughters , sisters
our bodies battlefields , war zones beneath the weapons of your brothers’ hands
do you know they've found land mines in broken women’s souls ?
black holes in the parts of their hearts that once sang symphonies of creation as bright as the light on infinity’s halo ?

she said , i remember how love used to glow like glitter on my skin before he made his way in ,
now every touch feels like a sin that could crucify medusa .
bury me in a blue blanket so god doesn't know i’m a girl ,
cut off my curls ,
I want peace when i’m dead

her friend knocks at the door , it’s been three weeks , don’t you think it’s time you got out of bed ?
no.
the ceiling fan still feeling like his breath , i think i need just a few more days of rest
bruises on her knees from begging to forget
she’s heard stories of vietnam vets who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs
she’s wondering how many women are walking around this world still feeling the tingling of their amputated wings ,
remembering what it was to fly ,
to sing

tonight
she’s not wondering what she would tell her daughter
she knows what she would tell her daughter ,
she’d ask her what gods do you believe in?
i’ll build you temple of mirrors so you can see them
pick the brightest star you ever wished on and i’ll show the light in you that made that wish come true

tonight
she’s not asking what you would tell your daughter , she’s life deep in the hell , the slaughter
has already died a thousand deaths with every unsteady breath
a thousand graves in every pore of her flesh
and she knows the war’s not over ,
she knows there’s bleeding to come
knows she’s far from the only woman or girl trusting this world no more than the hands trust rusted barbed wire

she was whole before that night ,
believed in heaven before that night
and she knows she’s not only one , knows she won’t be the only one

tonight
she’s not asking
what you’re gonna tell your daughter ,
she’s asking what
you’re going to teach
your **son

the day you left me in the cold was the day i knew you loved me .
love isn't a dish served hot ,
but a flower that is frozen in an ice cube and put in a cup so that it may slightly touch your lips
every once in a while .
i told you that i thought icicles were magic ,
and the next day you brought me an icicle from the neighbor's roof ,
so sharp i could stab a hole in my heart ,
and placed it in my freezer .

i kept that magic in my freezer for 4 months , until i broke my finger and needed something to reduce the swelling .

love is like that ,
not always magic ..... sometimes it's just
melting .
sometimes it's black and blue .
sometimes it hurts the most .
last night i saw your ghost
peddling a bicycle with a basket past a moon as full as my heavy head
and i wanted nothing more than to be sitting in that basket
like E.T.
with my glowing heart beating out of my chest
and my glowing finger tips point toward our home .

you built me a time capsule full of juicy fruit and promised never to burst my bubble .
i want our first date to be at the batting cages ,
where i'll miss every hit , but you'll still look at me with your starry eyes like i'm a home run in the ninth inning of the world series .
now every time i think of love , i think
going , going ......

the first week you were gone to college
i kept seeing your hand wave goodbye like a windsheild wiper in a flooding car
in the last real moment i thought the hurricane would let me out alive .

yesterday , i carved your name into an ice cube and held it against my heart until it melted
into my aching pores
today , i cried so hard that the neighbors knocked on my door and asked if i wanted to borrow some
sugar ...
i told them i had left my sweet tooth in your mouth .

love isn't always magic ,
but i offered my life to a magician ; i told him to cut me in half just so i could come back to you
whole
and ask for you back , would you listen ?

i wrote too many poems in a language i did not yet know how to speak ,
but i know now
it doesn't matter how well i say grace if i am sitting at a table where i am offering no bread to eat .
so this is my wheat field ,
you can have every acre , love ..
this is my garden song
this is my fist fight with that bitter frost .

tonight , i begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneath
the night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheek
as i sang maybe i need you
off key ,
but in tune ....
maybe i need you the way that big moon needs that open sea
maybe i didn't even know i was here til i saw you holding me
give me one room to come home to
give me the palm of your hand , every strand of my hair is a kite string ,
and i have been blue in the face with your sky , crying a flood over iowa so you mother will wake to venice .

lover , i smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window for every wall inside my chest ..
now my heart is a pressed flower and a tattered bible ;
it is the one verse you can trust .
so i'm putting all of my words in the collection plate ,
i am setting the table with bread and grace .
my knees are bent , like the corner of a page ;
i am saving your place .