12 Tuesday Mar 2019
I put myself down
sitting smaller after words from my own mouth
tumbled like rocks onto my own head.
I put myself down
so you wouldn’t have to–
having learned early if the insults would come
better from myself than anyone else.
Shrinking, inflated, making a joke of myself
before you could slip in, undercut, diminish.
Having grown up to be little
must break
at some point.
That point is now,
and I take it back.
I didn’t think I was special,
I knew I was.
08 Friday Mar 2019
Got long hair?
Got any hair?
Woman, shave your head.
And collect the assumptions hoisted upon you,
the ones you weren’t quite certain,
but now you know,
have been dragging you down.
Belly scraping the road.
Woman, got long hair?
Shave your head, and learn how confused
perceptions and expectations of you
are.
Where you may have been pretty, attractive,
desired,
suddenly the sight of that is gone
and people, most people, don’t have a clue
how to respond, how to comprehend–
But you were pretty.
You were attractive.
You were desirable.
Watch them turn their eyes away, unable
to look at you.
Hear them,
hating what they see and can’t understand,
say, “You look so…different.”
The least offensive, yet unasked for, comment
they can make.
Woman, got long hair?
Shave your head,
and discover what assumptions shove you low, in place,
a shallow ditch where you have been put.
Some react in adoration,
others with titillation, however briefly,
or with shock envy disbelief disgust.
Woman,
if ever you didn’t fully get it,
not in the tautness of your sinews,
how the appearance of a woman is believed
to belong
to the public,
that it is open invitation to
critique judgement opinion desire and rejection,
stick a personal act of transformation,
like dynamite,
within social view.
Woman,
if you want to know not
what others want you to be
but the stuff you’re made of,
Go,
Shave your head.
06 Wednesday Mar 2019
Launching from plush chair
to a seat below
and beside me
on the wool carpeted floor,
he comes closer.
Our talk bounces
ping-pongs
even spins some
between now and then–
the surprisingly many shared thens.
As his broad hands, accustomed to touch
in work, in nature, on board, on bow,
brush and pet, across and across again,
beneath and atop, thick warmth of blanket
upon which I sit,
I almost speak his unspeakable–
Why not bring your hands to the warmth of my flesh,
as they keep wanting,
and carry the rest of you right along with.
These inches between us
aren’t the turbulent ocean of your imagining.
05 Tuesday Mar 2019
If the book leaves you in tears,
consider it a friend.
What can’t salt water wash away?
A central gripping has
kept me off-kilter,
winter storms filling gutters and feeding
blue mold.
In a sense,
nothing is going as planned–
precisely how this melting,
sanding, scuffing and lonesome roll
is meant to go.
As the slow unfurling tightens me into
a speedy withdrawal,
reminders trickle in to soften,
a kitten-stretch of a soft pawed
softening,
when I can.
More friends,
words heaping page upon page,
sit kindly waiting nearby
in a generous pile.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 