How long this day seemed
Every minute was an hour
Every hour was at least three
the big question: how bad
And the even bigger how bad
would I be?
But after one day that seemed like three it
wasn't good, but not so bad
So there is still a struggle, a slight hope
And I feel like I am floating: it's over

Is the hardest struggle
Especially when it has torn you down
made you believe you are nothing and
first you have to believe I am something
that leap in your own mind is a chasm
a leap of faith and then comes action
riding on a cloud, your small difficult
glimmer of hope to change your outer world
I see why oppression can last for centuries
When one is trodden upon, even that first inner step
is monumental

When faced with forces
more powerful than you
Even when there is little hope
It's good to know, someone has your
back.  You may go down
but not alone. Not in silence
Not as a number, or a name
no one knows or cares of
but someone bears witness
Unions, never a help to me
have finally helped today with
my withered and strangled nerves
someone will be there with me
trying to see everything
is fair, a small miracle in
a pool of sharks, someone
has put a cage around me

And clawed and hacked at everything she hated
about herself.
My original ultimate authority: my mother
a woman who does not know who she is
I remember her being so tall and powerful
In the kitchen opening the refrigerator on Kaines street
A cold box with rounded corners and the brand in cursive
as I passed by through the garage where there
were mice the cat wouldn't catch she was furious and
I was scared about what she would do to the cat
So I went out into the overgrown yard, and made a little maze
I flattened down the long grass leaves and sat, protected
from her rage in the warm Berkeley sun
a rage to venomous and frightening I thought
it would **** me, or the cat, so I mustn't get too attached
to the cat because she may just vanish suddenly
and my mother is just an older woman now
but her ghost, lives on
my bosses, the authorities of my adult hell
scare me as only she could
But they are not her ghosts
No one will ever have such power again

Fatigue is setting in giving my affect a kind of relaxed
hereness, because there is very little energy for anything else
Tomorrow remains a mystery, but there will be a battle, I know
the forces will arrive, armed with ipads or paper or their phones
and their judgemental brains of varying sizes and capacities
I am tired, and I need to avoid the unecessary confrontation and most
especially desist from worrying about anything that isn't happening in the moment
the battery is low,  I have no grenades only a small shield and that's
not really enough to battle with, and really, I've always been out armed
and totally outnumbered and overpowered and yet somehow I'm still here
through sheer cleverness.  But I make mistakes and there is so little power left now at
the end that I must be shrewd and watch them like a lioness watching a herd of gazelles

The corporate sports shop has erased the swim section with snow sports
and I can't find those jagged ear plugs I like there
must go back local to where I got half a wet suit
made by O'Niel, the inventor from my home town
and I remember a friend who was a great skier and even
better ski ***, and he hung out with Tommy Moe in Wyoming and
he almost put his eye out going down a Black Diamond ***** ******
and maybe that's brave, but I don't think so really because true bravery in
my mind is rarely physical, and most commonly, but perhaps rarely mental
as I see the Christmas shoppers like every year doing the same things and dysfunctional
families everywhere pretending to get along when they'd rather **** each other
understanding why, like Freud first tried to show us, in his strange 19th century way
has led to a situation where everyone could understand why, what really drives them
and so few do, because it is scary and expensive and long term and frustrating and you have to go back
over and over and realize you are doing the same **** thing over and over and it's worse than
school when you were a kid, when it was just over and over and a teacher blaring at you until
you finally got it and moved on, because that can really happen.  You can get it and move
on and you won't need the salve of the alcohol or the forty big screen TVs or endless ballgames
watched as if they held some kind of key to a special universe and if just one more game, like one more quarter in that slot machine, and what you are really running away from is yourself and your pain.
And I am different, it is true, because that inner journey to understanding is essential to me and
psychology is amazing, how the mind tries to protect us from ourselves by creating more distraction
when we all have that Black Diamond ***** to go down and it is scary and frustrating
and we may fall but in the end we will understand.  And that is the most important thing.

Oh, I need a man, that will solve it
is what my brain tells me
No, really I need 500 new friends for my life
to really be
but the only thing happening is I'm getting kind of
nervous
and my brain has these few packaged things
that repeat over and over like customer service