A bicycle is the most efficient transportation machine.  A little input and I’m gliding, moving a useful measurable distance but more than that. I like going fast enough so the wind in my ears is louder than my thoughts.  On a tough day I like riding until I can be grateful again; sometimes that takes a couple hours but every ride is a good ride.

My youth’s independence was a banana seat Huffy pulled from an under-appreciated pile of rust in the back of St. Vincent’s Thrift Shop.  No school bus meant riding to school, the first 45 minutes of every day in all weather. Afternoons were exploring detours; summers were expeditions to the city limits, sometimes beyond.  I needed an upgrade for high school; I found a spotless antique 3 speed Raleigh, the cultural English workhorse collecting dust in an unlikely garage for $50.

I kept it through two foster homes. The first one kept me busy with farm chores, but the second was back in town. There, I had the bike back, and as an aside, they had a phenomenally sophisticated wall sized sound system: reel-to-reel and amazing headphones. I would forget myself in records: Sgt. Peppers, Genesis, Yes, etc, and another favorite. Just a guitar and piano instrumental album with a simple melody called Bricklayer’s Beautiful Daughter. Something about that one song in particular I heard faint glimmerings of contentment that was denied to me.  I would replay it to cling to this hint of a simple happiness I didn’t understand; that if it was in the song, it was somewhere deep in me.
Without a car for 10 years, one used 10-speed or another got me to various eccentric jobs.  

Fast forward to the life-changer, after a divorce. Needing to reconnect with myself, I searched for a decent bike. I found it hanging dusty in the back of a cluttered boutique shop smelling of tire rubber, quiet with racers’ confidence. They had a Lemond thoroughbred on consignment, assembled custom 5 years earlier to race. It was slightly outdated, but a dent on the top tube put it out to pasture. It was steel though, so rideable enough for me.  My entire $300 savings and it was mine. Then I discovered the special pedals needed special shoes, so another month saving for those.  I wasn’t going to wear those silly spiderman outfits, until I started to ride more than 10 miles and my **** demanded it.  And those pockets in the back of the shirt were handy.  I met a friend who taught me how to draft: my skinny wheel a few inches behind the bike in front at 20 mph, to save precious energy in the slipstream. Truly dangerous, vulnerable, and effectively blinded; but he pointed at the ground with various hand signals to warn of upcoming road hazards. I was touched by this wordless language of trust and camaraderie. This innate concern is essential to the sport, even among competitors, so it seems to attract quality people I liked.  My new life expanded with friends.

I discovered biking exercise could stabilize the life-long effects of brain injury, lost some weight, grew stronger, and started setting goals.  First longer group rides, then a century (100 miles in one ride), then mountain biking: epic fun in nature, unadulterated happiness.  Then novice racing, then the next category up with a team, then a triathlon.  It became an admitted obsession but I won a pair of socks or bike parts every now and then.  Eventually tattooed two bike chains around my ankle, one twisted and the other broken.  I loved the lifestyle, and had truly reinvented and rediscovered myself.

A 500 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles with fellow wounded veterans helped dissipate the old shame from the military.  I had joined the ride to raise money for a good cause.  I respected the program and knew personally that cycling had changed my life.  They turned out to be inspiring, helping me more than I could have helped them.  Some had only just started riding a bike for only a few weeks, some were amputees fit with special-made adapters on regular bikes, some had no legs using hand cycles.  They all joined on to the task of riding 500 miles. No one whined, and helping each other finish the day was the only goal.  While riding with them, I began to open up about my experience.  I found a few others who also had TBI, and we could laugh about similar mishaps.  The other veterans didn’t judge me about anything, like when I was injured, the nature of my disability, how much I did or didn’t accomplish. I had signed up just like them, had to recover back to a functioning life just like them.  It was the first time in my life that whole chapter in my life was accepted; I wasn't odd, and they helped close the shame on that old chapter.  (Thank you, R2R.)  The next year I took a 1500 mile self-supported bike trip through western mountain ranges with my husband and soulmate, whom I had met mt. biking.

There was one late Spring day, finally warm after a long winter, when I just wanted to ride for a few hours by myself.  No speedometer or training intervals, just enjoy the park road winding under the trees. I had downloaded some new music on the IPod, a sampler from the library.  I felt happy.  Life is Good.  Rounding a bend by the river, coasting through sunbeams sparkling the park’s peaceful road, my earphones unexpectedly played Bricklayer’s Beautiful Daughter.  I hadn’t heard that simple guitar tune in three decades.  My God, time suddenly disappeared.  I was right back in the forgotten foster home, listening for the faint silver threads of the contentment I was feeling at this very moment on the bike.  The full force of this sudden connection, the wholeness of the life and unity of myself in one epiphany, brought me to tears. I found myself pouring my heart into praying hang in there, girl, hang in there, you’ll find it and I felt my younger self hearing echoes of birds singing in new green leaves.

My mind is playing tricks
flipping into reverse,
all is static,
I'm frantically sadistic.

I'm on the grind,
****'s grinding my gears,
you say my name like it's sounds I made up
even in our sheets we're ****** up.

The rat race isn't a race,
but a triathlon
we aren't athletes,
we're just dragging our feet along,
no ping to life's pong,
this is a poem
'cause I can't write songs.

1.
friday morning at the beach, you've got a pocket full of change and a stone in each fist, a mood ring on your *******, wind-brushed all purple, la la la. slowly now i drift across a world of all-blue and even from here i can read you right through and through: i know you and i know you want to pull me up from beneath the waves and cut me open, crawl inside my sea-weathered carcass and sail my skin out to god knows where, crooning to the heavens, la la la, la la la.

2.
gathering rain in the stoup of my cupped palms, carving your name at the base of every tree, you are a hymn, you are a prayer, you're in my garden dressed all in grey and you wont let go; i'm running and running, bruised to the bone, struggling to breathe. summer is here—the locusts are singing. the sky's pure gold. wont you say hello?

3.
its a papercut day, a hairs-breadth day, and i'm perched on the back of your bike like a splash of young love—a raincoat and a red-shirt and a pretty mouth and nothing more. i put my arms around you and squint up into the sun, watching an august shower find its bearings, and we hit a bump in the road as the rain hits us and you swear and you swear and i breathe into your ear and we keep on going, bird-calls in your mouth and clouds in mine: la la la, la la la…

When you say insomnia,
people think you’ve had too much caffeine.
That it’s something you’ve eaten that day.
That maybe you’re just a little stressed.
Those people do not have insomnia.
Insomnia rolls off the tongue.
It is a noun.
It is four vowels and five consonance.
It is staring at your ceiling at
four o’clock in the morning praying
to God that maybe you’ll sleep tonight.
Insomnia is knowing ahead of time
that you aren’t going to sleep tonight.
It is drinking four cups of coffee at 1:30
in the morning because your eyelids
are so heavy they feel like anvils
are holding them down.
It is seeing shapes and figures in the dark
that aren’t there.
Insomnia is dying a little inside
every time you see the sunrise.
It is watching the moon reach it’s pinnacle
and sink beneath the earth.
Insomnia is your mind working at the speed of light
and taking sixty years.

Insomnia is running a triathlon without training.
It is wondering how long your body
can take the stress before folding in on itself.
It is wondering what the hell is wrong with you
that you can’t function like a normal person.
Insomnia is taking pills that almost make
your waking nightmares look like children’s play
compared to your sleeping nightmares.
Insomnia is having waking nightmares.
It isn’t the inability to focus.
It isn’t easily fixed.
It isn’t something you deal with.
It isn’t caffeine or something you ate.
Insomnia isn’t just a noun.
It’s a disease.

sometimes getting out of bed feels more like a climbing
and some mornings waking up can be a triathlon of effort
I have completed many

sometimes I am all muscle
sometimes I am all skin
sometimes I am the long lost cousin of regret
sometimes I am the farthest thing from human

some days I am a Saturday
some days I am more Monday
some days I am both
it does not matter which day it actually is
it does matter if I can't remember

I get lost often
in poetry
in the process of writing
in movies
and moments of comfort

I don't think about the future a lot
but occasionally I'll wonder what it would be like to live happily in it
Now and then I'll draw people into mine and imagine how they'd fit

I take things day by day but tomorrow still excites me nonetheless

I was fifteen when I got my nose pierced
sixteen when I switched the stud for a ring
seventeen when I got my driver's license
and at eighteen I finally stopped sleeping with a nightlight

I am terrified of the dark
but I will never admit it

I am terrified of losing things
but I will hold onto my pride like it's my sole source of surviving

I will not always be smiling
know that if I am not, it’s not your fault
know that if I am, it is

it took me years to correctly pronounce ptsd
it took me a few, two exactly
to admit that I have it

know there will be days when the storm is too heavy to fight off alone
the winds too strong to fend off with just these arms
I will not ask for your help
I will think that I don't need it
I will

know that your laugh will never become secondary
your happiness, always a priority
I have loved too much for far too long to not do so consistently

I'm a hopeless romantic
but often times I will just be hopeless
this
is when I will need you most
when the loud of my vocality has turned itself quiet
when I can blame only tired for my weakness
this
is when I will need to be reminded
of that tomorrow that excites me so greatly
tell me
about all the times the stars were told they wouldn't glow bright and center
tell me about all those instances of defiance
tell me about the moments where the sun refused to let the clouds block her bravery
how she still manages to make herself known in the midst of chaos
tell me
is there anything more worth it
than being unabashed in your awareness?
to know that this is what I am
and it is all I have to offer
?

the thing is
I don't have a lot to offer you
only poorly composed sonnets and a good 99% of my affection
the other one percent
I'm saving for myself to have on a rainy day

the thing is
I don't have a lot to give
but I do have words I am willing to tie into stanzas
I will wrap them up and call them gifts
I've got a body,
not perfect but it's mine
and I'd love for you to know it

the thing is
there are a lot of things you should know about me
before you love me
but the truth is
a lot of them you really won't find out
until you do
and that alone
is the best part
about it

Her prized first bike
came out of a breakfast cereal competition.
Then sped her around London
from lecture to final examination.

Twenty years on it was replaced
by gleaming white and black carbon.
Bought, lacking in memories
faster, lighter with a baby seat for Bethan.

Fitness, a priority this year
swimming in the pool, open water and the sea.
Clare selected a running coach
cycling home at an ever higher cadence for tea.

Happy, with her performance
in her very first event as a triathlon novice.
A second, saw Clare pedaling faster
to race past fellow competitors with ease.

In her last competition she was pictured lithe
on posters promoting reactive sports glasses.
Winning a new Felt racing bike, seats in the VIP stand
for the Tour de France finish and her fit lasses-****.


My congratulations dear hero...

I want to speak French, and read more, and wear suits more often but in a casual way, and also wear a watch, and design book covers as a side job, while working for and helping children who don’t have great homes.
I want to be a morally better person, and live life to its fullest potential, and stay in shape because I want to live long, and not because I want to look good. I want to be able to have a great time and remember it, I want to remember to take my meds every day for so long that it becomes part of me and I am finally better, I want to be in a triathlon.
I want to create art that makes you feel so alone that you don’t care what happens next, but make music that makes you want to live forever because there will never be enough time to experience everything you want to feel. I want to share moments with strangers that make us life long friends. I want to feel things I’ve never even thought were possible, and fall in love with people that I didn’t even think exist.

The voices inside my head are taking over.
These u-u-uncontrollable quirks I have.
My eyes twitch as many times as a heart beats after doing a triathlon.
In my head of runs a marathon of thoughts that don't belong,
things I can't do because they're wrong.
Within my blood stream flows 1.26 grams of dopamine given to me by doctors who don't know how to fix my situation,
only mix prescriptions to intensify vexation. Pharmacists eyeball me fearingly because I appear to be nothing but someone with chemicals wandering around into the little bit of a brain I have left.
Serotonin to regulate my mood, appetite, and sleep but I still only wish for all of this to be nothing but a dream.
All of this making my intestines mutilate, slowly dying inside as if I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Otherwise known as I.B.S. but I know for a fact that this is all just a bunch of B.S.
My enterochromaffin cells may just burst, I am often told.
If only I could tell what was real from what was fake.
For I also have A.D.H. - whoa! What's that?!
Sorry, where was I?
Oh. Tourettes Syndrome.
I guess I just twitch it off.
Maybe these are all figures of my imagination from the hallucinogens.
Who knows?
After all, I am a schizophrenic.

Do parallel lines ever meet,
Or parallel worlds ever collide?
Can two lovers at a distance
Simultaneously feel the same thought?
What's it like to be a triathlon gamete
And be the first to cross that finish line?

Id say that "walking this long road" is a hacked premise, maybe life is a triathlon...  many long challenges to face and in order to win you have to... try, haha. Yeah I like that better.

some days I want to die,
lay my intestines out on the line
amongst the shattered pieces of myself,
just for everyone I love to see -
to remind them just how fragile
my bones can be.

some days I love to live,
to dance in the rays of the sunshine
while my feet feel the earth
touching my heart one blade of grass at a time
knowing exactly what it feels like
to be truly alive.

and some days I feel both at the same time,
lonely and aware of all the tragedy
but the sun is shining and the sky is full
with clouds that kiss the blue, kiss my blue-
and then I remember you.

A person should never dictate your happiness,
but what do I do when your mouth is on mute
and the words you do happen to speak to me are short
and unaware of the intensity they have
on these fragile bones I possess.
I can't help but feel like every word or lack there of
is a land mine waiting for my approach,
so caution is my middle name
and I don't know how to explain
these thoughts that race through my mind
and compete in an anxiety induced triathlon-
except to say that I'm scared
one day you'll wake up,
and won't feel the same way..

Late afternoon, tween twilight but before the dusk
in time for afternoon prayers, ******* followed by
the evening service, The Name reached out unto me
to touch my face, wake me from a lifelong slowing slumber.

My man! My good man, I’ve been numbering those days,
you will have no disagreement that you’re quite the closer,
close by, the chapter finale of our story, your living, a well
thumbed novella, enjoyed by many, and a favorite o’mine.

Do not restless rustle, no busing bustle, the Set Table^ cleared,
tabulations done, the sums and dividend distributed, in sync,
your words well distributed, remainders to be dearly shared, saved,
showings of great love, valleys of feeling, these your humble attire.

Look how easy the (our) words come, the fluids of a man for which
we have been long patient be awaiting, the company all in readiness,
for confession and days of permanent new creation, fast beginnings,
think on it, to be called child once more, how glorious this unknown!

Dimensions recorded, measurements tailor-taken, silk tuxedo deep bleu, luxe, a hint of violet, here-presented, patent, the leather for blue suede winged dancing shoes no airport dare ask you remove, before they beg you, say, save grace, just once, pronounce The Name, the one of Seventy!

To walk, talk, rhyme and theorize, to forget and memorize, always refreshing, knowing nothing lasts, except things that last forever, or last never, poems and decisions needing completion, choices, reordering songs loved best, repleting all sorrowed pains, uplifting prayers, hallelujah hymns, last rites...

You, a world to us, a microcosm of a triathlon life, juggling the many, last of a lineage who could^^ pray, making rain, reading poetry to angels, giving comforting absolution for making storms, plagues, tidal waves, volcanoes, concentration camps, death marches, stillborn children, incurable sadness.

Quick when the curtain calls, listen close for the cue, toe the mark,
take position, hands upward joined, eyes down, ahead are fearless words,
a soliloquy lasting hundreds of years, balances aligned, only now you  needed, to make mercy allocations, putting paid next to all my periods, all in place, properly positioned, now comes an  evening song.

then to commence the writing of only love poetry forevermore.


5:00pm
Sabbath May 23
5780

some talk of destiny,
like they have met before,
so much unrest in me,
going back to the times of yore,

needing quiet and above core of a bustling, busy
sleepless island streets, needing noisy trees and
a West coast breeze, needing some distance
to lend a farm hand a hand, needing times in
a city with not the tower, to refresh my batteries.

call me a dreamer, from where you are
the triathlon, want I to run is reading,
writing,
sleeping
so I can digest, express and dream of
kinder times where imaginings touch
is never enough.

Refresh not the force field, but the power
of the yield ... knowing when to stop
and when to go is more power than
you know, and if the veil and the
mail made of chain should brush
as they fall to the floor...
worry not for I will have already closed the door...

I wanna crawl into my sadness like my favorite blanket
I keep looking for the soft the familiarity
The need to stay in bed too late and for tears to well in my eyes
Dripping
Where did that hoody go? The one that kept me up late, my favorite one to run in
Run from people
Run from myself
Run from it all
I was a triathlon champion
Sleep all day, run all night, and cry till the stars wept with me
It sounds all so grandiose when you say it like that...
but I was really just a sad girl who couldn’t bare to deal with the reality around her

Cure me of my ills
And I shall attend
To what wills me to live;
No matter the circumstance
They should be the same.
A soft stare, a harsh glance—
All’ve entered the game.
If I run, will time catch up with me?
If I train for a triathlon?
If I sprain my angle fatefully
Will my hear reserve its song?
I never know when to fall
Or rise under water;
I never know whether
The land or the water is safer.
Cure me of my ills;
I have more time to smother.