Filosofías rectoras para tiempos de tumulto: un poema en hashtags

#novinimosasufrir

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#ommmmm

Taking of power

And then the words flow,

Like the brackish water lapping

Dirty river to tumultuous sea.

Not saline, nor sweet, nor fully integrated.

Some other thing.

An unassailable, nameless feeling.

(I think of you and your storms)

I look up at the billowing curtain,

Translucent vermillion,

Backlit in the afternoon.

I’d like to think that I learned everything I needed to

From this failure.

That next time,

Should there be a next time

(There is always a next time)

I will be a better version of myself

A deeper, more generous version,

A less afraid one.

I fear that maybe that’s a little lie I tell myself

To convince me that there’s some comfort

In a world that rips babies from their parents’ arms

In the name of some geopolitical boundaries
That I can neither see nor believe in.
Nor suffer.

(And yet we pretend, shuffling through metal detectors

And radiating our baggage--

The minor indignities of hands patting down our imperfect

Bodies in plain sight.)

I float, retching in a sea,

With each wave of nausea,

I am overcome, I relent, it all falls away.

You never liked when I cried,

And I’m crying now, defiantly, to myself

while the YouTube autoplay Gods

Cleverly play Jeff Buckley, then Linda Ronstadt, then Joan Baez

Then Joni Mitchell, because they know

The particular dimensions of this pain,

(Really, they only aggregate data and then make predictions)

This subterranean, prehistoric pain

That tears through me,

That is leaving.

I want to believe that I can let it go.

I want to let it go.

You say you want simple things,

(But all I ever wanted was to come home to you.)

An imperfect home, to be sure, world-weary and wounded.

And running so no one would notice what’s missing.

I look down at the toilet,

At my hand that cleans,

What’s left behind,

Damn, of course, I’m ovulating.

My face red and mottled,

Made uglier from the salty tears,

Skin puffy and showing my certain age.

And I mourn for all the children I never had,

Never will have

Never got to have

(And all the years of joyfulness that I can’t remember

Or that I do remember and miss,

Her tiny hands clutching mine,

Her belly laugh, her dancing eyes)

Because I was deafened by my own

Ambition

Or drive

Or fear.

I want to learn to listen to my soul,

Not just my body,

Prodded and palpated by physicians,

Debated by politicians and pundits.

I want them to let me be a woman, at night, alone.

(With no questions or comments

Or arched-eyebrow allusions.)

And then I want to do the same for her,

To show her what it really means
To be brave.
To be free.

Midnight Fugue

There is a mosquito that won’t let you sleep.

It’s not a metaphorical mosquito,

But a real, blood-bathing, ear-buzzing bastard,

That resists death, in the form of frantically flailing hands.

You wish for its death, like you wish for your own

Peace. You are safe. You tell yourself: I am safe

But there are those who are not.

Don’t bother yourself with the ugliness,

That chipper inner voice chirps,

The one that speaks to everyone else,

With gentleness, and aplomb,

But to you is just a shrill iteration of all the things

You’re not sure you can ever be.

Peace. Safety. Love. Freedom.

The mantra you invented while hands dug deep

Into your flesh. Can you feel it,

Can you feel it, Can you feel it?

Hands twist into you, but you can only feel yourself floating

Out into the deep waters,

Where there’s no more want, no more loss,

No more fear. Is that freedom?

To be free, you think, you must not care.

You must let go of the outcome,

Like the glass you’re left holding, after the party ends.

Forgotten, clutched too tight.

To let go is to let shatter.

To let fall. To shower crystal, liquid, air, nothing.

To be transformed.

The mosquito swings at your head again,

The bright screen illuminating your face for no one.

Words cannot save him. Words cannot

Protect him from the metastasizing, proliferating

Emptiness that has been laid at your feet, an offering.

A gift. A trap. A hope.

You give yourself to sleep, though the threat still looms,

The certainty of discomfort, cutting across a blackened room.

In the morning, you will be alone again.

It’s better that way, you know.

Your freedom is worth more than a few kind words,

A handful of kisses, blown on the wind,

and a hand that has no right to reach for your own.

And in the end, we’re all just tied up in knots

By the people that try to rope in our unruly bodies and minds

You announce that you need to write songs

And wish you could play guitar

Or make love for an entire afternoon,

By the ocean with windows flung wide

And curtains, white linen,

Flapping against the azure sky

(Writing songs involves less risk)

(It’s easier to accomplish)

(Less exciting)

We settle

It seems

Or we don’t

And we’re constantly wandering,

escaping the fundamental gnawing

Of our intellect against our emotion.

Too quick for the devil to seize.

Writing, too, is a fugue state.

You write: There are shreds of me,

Fluttering about the ether

There are pieces of my desire,

Pulled in undertow

Through subterranean lovesick caves,

Pulsing with the throb of the ocean

I need an audience of one,

It seems, to seek a set of eyes trained on mine

So I can perform for you,

Reflect your desire back to you,

Feel you sink into my flesh,

As if you had always belonged there,

As if you would always remain there

Even if we know that can’t be true.

I still want to hold you, taste you,

Wake up looking into your eyes.

Even if only for one night

Only one day, only one life.

I need to be known, once

To know from inside of you, moving inside of me,

Slowly, immortalizing, crystalline falling

Suspended in time.

A ringing in my ears.

The torment announces itself, and your senses fail you,

Reaching for freedom, in the dark, and finding only its shadow.

Lessons for my 40th year

Well it is less than two weeks into my 40s, and I thought I'd evaluate some lessons from four decades in the trenches. That is to say, lessons that I am still learning after 40 years on this rock-hurtling-through-space-in-a-highly-ordered-manner. It's a slow becoming.

Lesson 1. Less is more. Whatever you can't take with you, you probably don't need. And if you really need it, you can get it where you're going. And if you can't get it, most problems have a work-around, and there's no need to add weight to a situation. (Saying please and thank you when trying to solve the problem, however, is never out of style).

Lesson 2: Say "no" to what feels wrong, and "yes" to what feels right. How, you ask? Not quite as easy. Listen to your interior voice. (Damn it, listen, really listen. Be still. And slow. And deliberate.) Take opportunities to reset and find your voice, it's always there, but often hiding from the din of others and their urgencies.

Lesson 3: Exalt wonder in all its forms. Be gentler with your child, and/or your inner child. They are tender people, we all are really. Honor them, and cherish them, and don't get mad when they lose your shit, or forget something because they were busy imagining something wonderful. No momentary disappointment is worth the pain of their absence when they're gone.

Lesson 4: Love fails, but it is not your parachute. Love freely and fearlessly, and don't accept love that is too cowardly to open its doors fully. Don't claw at hermetic seals and don't nourish yourself with breadcrumbs, as you will be battered and malnourished and angry at yourself. Leap into vulnerability, if that is what you want from others, and if there is no one there to catch, you will LITERALLY not die. So live.

Lesson 5: It's not always about you. In fact, it almost never is. That is to say, everyone of us is in the middle of our own process, with our own emotional and intellectual metabolisms. It is easy to be angered, frustrated, or saddened when we don't get what we want from someone else, but people can only give as much as they have in excess of their needs, and that is determined by forces external to you. So don't add to your own pain by giving yourself more importance in the processes of others than is warranted.

Lesson 6: You don't owe the world beauty. Or thinness. Or athletic prowess. Or a smile. Or your time. Or neatly groomed hair, nails, cars, lawns, houses. You have enough within you and you are enough.

Lesson 7: Don't be a dick. Like seriously, don't go out of your way to mess with someone. Even if you think they deserve it. Even if they've done you wrong. (Remember, they are in their own process and navigating their own traumas.) Also, if you can easily make someone's day better with minimal effort, go for it. It's never the wrong choice.

Tu una y tu otra

Quiero ser tu una y tu otra

que me veas con ojos claros

como la luz de los faros

en la lejana costa

después del anochecer.

En tus brazos quiero hallarme

tu piel y la mía

confundidas en su cercanía.

Te quiero compañero

escalando montañas

recolectando historias como

semillas para plantar en tu jardín.

Que mi necesidad de recorrer

el mundo entero

bajo zapatos gastados

no te haga temer

porque te llevo conmigo siempre

aunque estés arraigado a 

tu tierra, tu labor, tu deber.

Quiero que tus palabras nutran

las mías y las mías se alberguen

en tu pecho, se conviertan en

el aliento que oxigene

tus vías sanguíneas

la oscuridad que llevas dentro.

Parting words

I see you there,
your arm casually slung around her shoulder,
as if this were the natural order of things,
as if this were the way your arm always is, always was.
Not ever wrapped around my shoulder,
tracing skin with skin,
fingers wrapping around my locks,
and tugging, gently.

She looks lovely, I think.
I don't need to hate her,
I simply can't know her.
Not for my pride's sake,
Lord knows I have none left,
but for me to hold,
as if frozen in a floating soap bubble,
the fantasy that you once loved me,
or might have in some alternate reality
in which her poised blonde head
did not form the perfect tête-a-tête with yours.

And I know now that you were protecting her,
not me,
and that it isn't her fault,
that the wind is knocked out of me
every time that you and I speak.
She didn't get the same memo,
signed carelessly,
the one in which you were "unavailable"
for a "relationship"
that you hope will never change.

And I want to stew in my own self-pity, too...
but I can't. There's too much to do,
too much teeming, insistent life clamoring at my door.
I wish I could unknow you,
and if such a thing seems unlikely,
that I could at least unlove you.
Gently pry out each and every tender root,
that your words have grown, variegated,
in my fecund soil.
Remove each tiny vessel that nourishes
my intellect, feeds my fantasies,
my melodious dreams.

You like to think of yourself as a good man.
A faithful man.
And you are, I suppose.
Like any responsible adult,
You only occasionally peek your head back in,
to check on the wild-eyed lupine lady,
who claims to see you,
to know you, beneath the mask.
To test that her certainty
your lives were meant to be intertwined,
earth and air, fire and water,
is still there.
Just in case,
maybe she's not crazy after all.

Dandelions

My daughter turns and laughs,

"Oh, my mother, she’s a wild one."

She says so with admiration in her voice,

And the needle that jabs the tiniest of pinpricks,

To my soul is suspended, mid-stab.

"You know," says my sister, "it’s true."

She holds my hand as my voice wobbles,

Across centuries, and borders, and bodies of water

Enjoy it, while it lasts, you always do!

And I pause, pen to paper,

Epithets thick on my tongue.

Part of me knows he’s not wild enough.

Maybe nobody is or ever will be.

But it is so hard to walk away from the beautiful things

That life has given you, and you may not keep.

And in that sisterly comfort

Wild-haired and laughing through another

Scraped knee, we make fun of our own pain

Because there is nothing else to do

When you are a dandelion cycling through your stages:

Green and rooted, tenacious, sticky,

Then golden and glorious, face to the sun,

Then wispy and ethereal, milky, weeping,

Then floating on the wind, scattered to pieces

Only to be reborn, a weed in some other patch of

Crumbling earth, or hardened clay, or desert crust.

Always sneaking in roots. Always hopeful, always free.