every day a slow tendril, curling and unfurling – every acid washed blossom fever a call towards the wild – every wildness we all inhabit, a dream towards the unending future – this spring, the strangest springboad, the utter and endless transformation of the world into a new place altogether – all together // all tenderly cupping our hands towards each other, all reaching, all sitting quietly and asking for nothing more ;; the strangest thoughts have been coming to me, because my brain has to flip this or else I will be swallowed by it — I’ve been allowing myself to think — what a gift this time is, what a true gift (for those of us not suffering and ill) — to settle down, to need nothing, to race towards nothing, to be forced simply to live, with no goals or accomplishments or the ticking of tocks towards us — simply the ending time of spring unfurling like a slow bud — her glory all around us, unabashedly hitting us over the head with nature’s magnificence – everyone forced to stop their rattle train of thoughts, their mill wheel of endless hurrying — to be with ourselves – to sort through our thoughts – to sit with the uncomfortable feeling and to be forced to sit through it – to push past it – to be able to take the time for ourselves, to gaze inwards at ourselves and outwards at the brilliant limbs of trees outside ourselves – to look towards the sky and watch the blossoms bud — what a gift this time is
You gallup-giggle, splash through the Suds, a lump of fresh soap bubbles the finest joy this side of the Delaware river ; something profane transcended in the plastic blue body of your flying dolphin, soaring through this afternoon’s ocean – our own barrier reef in the bathroom – leaping, this dolphin as he flies towards patchwork tan tile – the wildest adventure in the neighborhood — screech shout and slosh about ;; now mush muddle and flop about ; now Donnie the dolphin floats effortlessly towards the triumph of the steel spout , sugar spice and everything meaningful — now swirling, now submerging, now surfacing – the sight; the singing sounds of so much important work being done
what riveting birth
To release the wheels ; to let myself release ; to wade into the muck of an uncertainty – to feel the spring bud all around you towards the starlight – i can do most anything inside of the spring ; I can withstand most anything inside of the marsh of the madness of March – the drooping tendrils of April and the fiery blossom sun of May –– I can do most anything / I can let my tapping fingers set themselves down / I can see new pathways, break all habits, forge new patterns, look at my time not like a metronome but like a ball of wild weeds cunningly spitting up from the Earth ; I can be the crazed bud season – I can pull myself towards the rooted structures that feed the banks of the canal ; the wild lettuce growing in patches out of the mud ; the air so filled with the smells of birth – no death rattling through the air anymore – the endless, endless chime of more than enough time to possibly know what to do with ;; what riveting birth
A wave of creative hum ; the slight smile at the end of the big Dipper dipping into the old world ; the ocean of timelessness – adolescent wish me knots and time worth tasting on the tip of your tongue – days worth wasting stacked on top of one another , making a selection of fossils waiting to one day be admired , millennia in the future
If this is all I had of my life , this would have been enough – these 20 some odd years ; the piles of sweet summer days hunkered beneath my left knee ; the traces of spring afternoons laced into my tibia ; my DNA will sing of blissful captures ; moments ratcheted into my brain cells ; hunks of breath laced into my lungs ; the best tasting laughter ; the medicine of always more – the growing towards creating – the moving towards the NeverEnding coming / if this is it, this was enough / I am grateful for this / I will always be grateful for these years I have lived so blissfully / and if we walk towards despair , towards economic depression , I am not afraid of what loss I will live through – this has been enough already , and the gratitude of my limbs reaching towards the yellow road lines paved down the street – the aching twist of freedom , that I got to run at all , that I got to stand inside of crowds of people and feel the energy of oneness at all , that I got to be doused in the rain in a concert sprinting through the all of us , that I got to race down the highway laughing with friends , fumbling into party , stumbling into bar , curled up in a sleepover , warped through a meadow, a bunch of people lying in the grass strumming some guitar , wading through some soft river , adventuring with strangers – that I got to do any of these things at all – that my body got to be blessed with all of these adventures ; all of these theatre’s , all of these casts , all of these strange creations with people I didn’t know who then became family , that I got to camp , that I got to trust any stranger next to me – who could ask for any more than this ;; I hope against hope for Jamie, that he will get to experience , that he will get to grow and unfurl ; and whatever children I have yet to be a part of ;; no answers anymore , just more questions stacked on top of one another ; but I will be there and I will be fearless , and I will try and try again to remember my fearlessness no matter how many times I forget, or misplace it, or place it on top of another person, I am always this fearless, this strong, this hopeful
will it take us
How do I live in service ; how do I live in joy ; how do we all live in community and giving and thanks and gratitude and awe of the incredible planet we inhabit — I can finish my words and I can hope that they speak to someone , I can be a good mother , I can be kind to friends , selfless, without vanity, aware of what feeds jealousy, pain and self comparison , I can be honest with myself and with others , I can be vulnerable and show that as an example – how we never need to be afraid of our own hearts – our only beating everythings ; I can be myself and show that we always can feel comfortable in our own skin / what if this is the dream come true in the strangest form possible : not violent revolution or bloody upheaval or confused economic battling but finally, finally the mother Earth itself spitting up and attacking back – a purging no less violent than the cross-cutting of a forest fire – for the way all things must die in order to make room for the next – the way the Earth always cleanses itself ; knows how to cleanse itself ; what if it isn’t the death but the upheaval ;; what if we show without a doubt that we are all one – beyond border, Nation, language, religion / what if it is proven as clear as day / what if the economy has to flip on its head simply because it has to respond / what if this is the earth responding and we have to respond back / but if it is always a little bit of chaos and a little bit of divinity and a little but of everything else, what if it is the chime of a beating heart / an antibody that rejects toxicity ; what if this is transformation and inherent universal catalyst it has to happen; beyond blame and what if what it shows is that humans are better than we ever give them credit for – that creativity and living and inhabiting our bodies is absolutely vital to our health and happiness ; that getting outside and communing and being together is what our bodies crave ; that we will help each other rather than compete against one another in our nature ; and that economic redistribution is what we truly truly need in order to combat crises and in order to live in a sustainable way ; what if we learned to dig our fingers into the soil and recognize that we are all interconnected and that we must seek joy and bliss over anything else // springtime lightraya shining through any and all pains / the buds that always come back – call us out of our skin – they call us out of our boxes and the useless competition we place on the other / the useless ascent towards profit , towards progress , towards accomplishing nothing at all , but we lack the recognition of the everyday grace of inhabiting a body ; inhabiting this world and sharing community with one another / but if we remember that — if we have to remember that — what if we necessarily have to follow upheaval where it will take us — and where will it take us
out damned spot
that house isn’t even blue anymore; it’s white now ; our scraps of memories tossed into the lake – the fresh scent of paint an everlasting reminder that the season comes again ; but the season does not stop tapping at the window ; and my reticent piles of privilege sit around me, just minutes from Trenton and we all find it so easy to sit and gaze at our new paint job and marvel at what wonders feel new and never wrap our hands around to the injustice of space topography geography and the geology of hierarchy which pummels our streets, our laid-bare foundations ; our tread-fast towns set next to one another ; blind eye after blind eye so normalized to the stratification – the sharp angles that twitch in statistics – the high schools stretch towards ivy league acceptance and the high schools just 15 minutes away where danger is an ever-present thrust // the revolution that needs to come, the rotating cries, a revolution that never ends through history ; hail back through the ages – an endless shuttering cry to be seen to not have a blind eye turned / we don’t want to see, we don’t want to know, we don’t want to have to care, we want to keep glorifying our own bloody hands / Lady Macbeth, teach us how to give a shit that we have blood on our hands at all – give us the awareness that we should even try to wash our hands clean ; because endlessly, endlessly we seem as if we are not even aware of the crimson stains — out damned motherfucking spot of endless corruption greed inequality – out damned motherfucking spot – and moreso, pluck my eyes out that I need not even know, let me equivocate and balance hate and radiate through my own fear that we should even ask for anything more – let me be so terrified of a specter that I somehow condition myself to believe that to ask for more is a foolish game.
endless and endless
you press your hand into mine – an immeasurable gift; i trace your still-tiny toes as they tuck up against my belly under the blanket — you smile some knowing smile i know not when you grew into – some bundle of knowledge that has blown through your brain ; i look at you and sometimes astonish myself with how large you seem, how grown up – the maturity just beginning to peak out in the smallest of features, the way you look when you’re concentrating on a problem, the tuft of your nose beginning to sharpen your features ever so slightly – the small mannerisms of language you add to acknowledge awkwardness or self-awareness of your own social foible (i cringe at this awareness, as i prayed you’d never have to meet it) ;; your giggle still sounds full toddler-abandon, when i get you to belly laugh from way beyond social convention , you still gaze in awe and wonder at beautiful things, ask for rainbows, sing to your stuffed animals, the sweetest pitch of a voice climbing over a perfect hill — you still ask for snuggles, greet my hand with welcome, nuzzle on to my leg — but you tell me you know things too, when i remind you of them ; you start to wander down your own path, when we walk together in the woods ; you start to groan when i ask you how your day was ; sometimes i even feel the first twinge of embarassment from you when i ask hold you at just too public of a moment — you grow up and out and away and towards, and still i know the love i have showered all over you was the best thing i have ever done with my life ; still i know it comes up endless and endless, and it will never stop being my greatest accomplishment : loving you, and watching you grow just your own way
the only everything
the roll of wooden chairs on in a red light – burning a hole in the stage, my character shoes piercing the dust, the chalklines of europe etched onto the paint — our laughter, our light, the gravity of history ; curled hair bits and short black wigs and fishnets and garter belts and all the ways i am tied and twisted into costume ; the way that melody warps its way around us all, the hum of our feet hitting the notes, the swell of our bodies rolling and rotating towards each other / the flush of greys, tans and german accents / the flow of trust, the curtain of sensuality, the rush of the band, the glow of the lights, dim; select – the tap of our heels as we tiptoe backstage, trying not to make a sound, the blue light of the wings swelling about wooden planks – the endless rush, the joyous sound, the love of creation, the curl of friendship / dragging my fingers across my legs, balancing on a wooden stool, placing my weight just here or there to make sure this rickety old thing carries me; heaving through sickness ; braving through personal trials, and endlessly finding comfort in the stage; comfort in the wings, in the glow of the lights, in the forgetting of problems and the finding of community; i would never trade it for anything – it will never stop curing my heart of any pain ; it will never stop giving me strength and clarity ; i will never stop being inspired and in love with the theatre ; the boards, the wings, the lights, the journey, the creation — gratitude is the only everything i take away
new orleans, louisianna
new orleans sinking like a bottomless note to the edge of the country – dipping its toes in the Mississippi, shaking off the excess for always ; friendship in the dazzled sunshine and street walks to vegan grits, jambalaya, liquor and coffee / the race and rush of bourbon street a song in my ear – the humbled splay of beads dancing out of every canopy , the flush appearance of grass and swaying pines ; of jungle leaves and dappled pastel houses like paintings pulling themselves out of the sidewalk // paint dripped on every corner, hushed lullabies of haunted windowscapes — voodoo wish words passed down through the ages — funneled in to some big brass instrument and swinging out for every jazz jingle that hunts its way down the bayou / yoga on the back porch in the sway of january breeze, gumbo and quiplash and air bnb wine and the dungeon and the bounce frenchman street ; of walgreens and CVS and stripper’s eyes – the mundane made magnificent, the glamour of a sunday afternoon paled in the french quarter and baked in something past cultural significance — the city swinging like a note or two out of place from the rest of the country ; held, like a wish star floating ; suspended by the billow of music within
nashville, tn
Nashville rotary, motor, hull-mumble guitar pick-stumble — rattle shack cold and flecks of Tennessee snow through the slits in the neon lights — the river pulling up to bridge light, now ancient swing pulling the future towards the endless sound of music,, now the music pulling is towards the endless sound of the south pointing north by northwest ; now a sequence of hipster gold leafed, fine calligraphy, bulbed, flecked, rusted wood ornamentation – now floating , now rushing , now playing an old song through a new bedazzled vision – crushed red brick and the manufacture of sound, a commodity sandwiched between magic and craft beer — now the reverberation of applause stretches it’s tinny sound towards the reflection of the sky ; turned butter grey with January smile,, now I hunker towards the isolation of freedom – i grasp it with both hands – and pull. And listen
when the sky turned black
rapture fire wrapping up a continent in the consequence of constant careening away into carelessness — the charred fragments of millions of years, the indecency of the sky to relent; the tumult of gum trees ; and silent afternoon sounds i still remember, the hum of insect choirs bouncing across the land – the sun a little more golden, a little more holy than anywhere else;; the air a little more clean, a little more rich with sensation than anywhere else — a country that still calls to me in my deepest dreams, some songline screaming out — some prophet, some shaman of aboriginal dreamtime singing this is what you always had coming, when you turn your back on what is holding up your feet;; when you rip the ancient names away from the hillsides, when you tear the ancient knowledge from where it is hiding – in the cracks in the dry soil, in the windswept tumble clouds of dust that swell over the plains – when you plummet into the soil to suck what magma has turned fossils of old magic into your profit ; when you tear through the great barrier reef with ships that slice through coral like so much flesh being peeled — when the conquerers conquer nothing but stolen forgetting / when catastrophe rings like a thunderclap ringing back – no lightning here, but enough smoke to smell who lit the fire in the first place ;; no names for these forests anymore, the ancient or the new ones – now they blend into the night sky, all ash and charred root systems gone silent, no longer speaking, no longer singing the songlines through the continent — where are the songs now — do they travel as deep as the fossil fuels? baked in to the crust – are the songlines safe? can the singing be heard? is it escaped now – pluming up into the great cloud of smoke (the size of europe) — reaching its filthy hand towards the southern cross? caught red-handed, caught black handed – wretching towards the ones who stuffed a pipe into the songlines’ ancient throat, until it gagged, burst up singing flame — and sang until the song ran dry and the sky turned black – the notes drifting back into space like so many stolen stars returning home
