Eh, Uh, Uhg: An Assemblage of Starts Because I Just Feel a Need to Publish Something

This space is a chamber,
adorned with silence, solitude.
For extraction from being,
into the mind we fall.
Focus, now, our eyes open;
the floor moves.
So focused on elimination we did not see.
We sat on the living,
breathing
bodies of the ones that carry
and
we fall.

---------------------------------------

Cease fire, plain sire,
the acoustics are unnerving.


Once swayed by the wind, she now sinks deep in the sands of comfort. Soft, warm, they suck her down moment by mindless moment. Focused on the possibility of losses rather than the inevitability of gains, fear erupts as torment no longer distracts. She stands within forever, watching it collapse.

------------------------------------------

Shit fuck potato mister miser.

Bring on the rain.
Bring on the dust that rises
like sun lit fog.
But you did it
with your kicks
to my shins,
fucker.

There was a dick that hit my face once.
He cackled.
And you ask why I run off,
into the distance?

First it's warm.
But just for a second.
My fingers freeze as you turn away,
your flesh turned cold
just as I began to unzip
and take a brick from my wall.

These young men
who think they know love
better than I.
Act as though adherence to the task
destroys the thing itself.

But I love you, but I love you!
The words froth forth from me and I cannot apologize
for such vomit in your ear. All I see are rose petals.
Your fears are not my own,
so let me be.
I will jump in headfirst
and you can't stop me.

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On being a manic pixie dream girl:

I'm not a princess. I can take care of myself. I don't need to be put on a pedestal or have my every wish granted. Yeah, the world is gunna make me sad sometimes, and yeah, you are going to make me sad sometimes but that's just the way the world is! Don't deny me the world. I've learned to rely on the wholeness of things, the dualities of life and in treating me like a story book character, you stick me on a 2D page. But I am so much more and, sooner or later, I will reject what you do to me.

I am not your anything. I am me. And if you try to harness me I will run from you.

A Poem for the New World Order: Choppy, Like the Waters We Just Dove Into

Who shall admire the brilliant red trunks of the Madrones,
smooth as the soft new flesh of life,
wrapped in sun-warmed air?
The convergence of the senses–
perception–
lost in a moment,
with one flick of the wrist,
the swift crack of a bullet to the temple of a lifetime.

Who will spread the bird's humble song
cross continents, languages,
space and time;
extolling and sharing the beauty?

I will not bow to cynics
who find solace in the knowledge that it is all for naught.
If you scream love you must believe it.
Not for a while or for a few,
but forever and for all.
I cherish this body that enables life and encompasses soul!
And so, as the only truth I know,
I must cherish you, too.

My heart sits in your chest.
I listen to the beat and recognize my own.
Who gave us this blood?
Who gives us this drum?

I believe it was our mother.

She gave me life, born and bred from the depths of her oceans,
nursed on rain from her skies.
But here,
I present her no lanyard of gratitude.

Wrenching rock-flesh from her belly, I dive into her core,
searching for sustenance to fuel not my life, but my habits.
Mother does not scream.
She weeps acid.

Billy Collins captured her words:
"Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered."
And here (I replied), I lay my follies at your feet:
I covered myself in oil and set myself aflame.
My heartbeats weaken, my legs collapse.
My bones whittle to dust and my teeth crack.
My eyes remain wide as the smoke rescinds,
revealing the world I misread.
But with no water to drink,
and no mother to heal,
my last good day ends
and the world goes blind.

I can't convince you to see.
I can't convince you to care.
So I will love while the ship is sinking,
grieve while I still hold life in my palm.
Watching it seep through trembling fingers is the final gift given.
And so, I will stand strong.



Written from the depths of a remembered and ongoing grief:

Mom's Memorial reading: The Lanyard by Billy Collins from Kelly Zenn on Vimeo.

Yesterday Carries Tomorrow

I've never felt true shame about who I was until I found this place. Every facet of my being feels wrong... hollow... obsolete?

Interesting how I felt those little negative thoughts begin to nest in my heart and yet still could do nothing to stop them.

Here, I feel crazy, weak. For here, if you have all you need why would you complain?

My skin is paper thin. Please teach it how to grow.

I want to cease this nonsense.

Excerpt from Tulips by: Sylvia Plath

"I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted

To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.

How free it is, you have no idea how free -

The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,

And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.

It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them

Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.

Before they came the air was calm enough,

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.

Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe

Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.

Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.

They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down

Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,

A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me

Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,

And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow

Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,

And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself

The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.

Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.

Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river

Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.

They concentrate my attention, that was happy

Playing and resting without committing itself.

The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;

They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes

Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,

And comes from a country far away as health."

Undiluted... For Time We Never Have

I consumed three pieces of information this evening, each separately spurring deep emotional responses, and when it all came together I went into overdrive. It is 2 am. I don't have time to refine these thoughts any more (school is frustratingly restricting while also being necessary to the depth of my understanding). And because I want you to engage with them I decided to just let the whole thing loose. Don't expect cohesion. I am endlessly frustrated with how my words fall short, by miles. This is why I have reiterated my thoughts multiple ways (ah, a glimpse into my writing process).
 But perhaps you will process and create sharper words to share. This is my hope.

First Piece of Information
"America's farmer's had long been making political trouble for Wall Street and Washington; in the words of historian Walter Karp, 'since the Civil War at least, the most unruly, the most independent, the most republican of American citizens have been the small farmers.' Beginning with the populist revolt of the 1890s, farmers had made common cause with the labor movement, working together to check the power of corporations. Rising agricultural productivity [due to synthetic nitrogen fertilizers] handed a golden opportunity to the farmers' traditional adversaries. Since a smaller number of farmers could now feed America, the moment had come to 'rationalize' agriculture by letting the market force prices down and farmers off the land. So Wall Street and Washington sought changes in farm policies that would loose "a plague of cheap corn" on the nation, the effects of which are all around us–indeed in us."
–"The Omnivore's Dilemma," Micheal Pollan


... This quote, though, is the straw on the camel's back. It lays bare just how deep the meddling hands of the profiteers can reach, ripping the farmer from their land and replacing them with technology that rapes the land of its life-giving properties resulting in a complete dependence on a product that, financially, benefits the 1%.

Farming was necessarily unable to be hooked up to the capitalist system, for farming relies on various other natural forces for its survival. Therefore farmer's could represent interests more/less outside the capitalist structure. But those who profit found a way to plug it in and destroy the farmers in one fell swoop.

----

Second Piece of Information


Since when did we become so unrelentingly polarized that trying to find the "others'" truth is an unforgivable crime in the public's eye?

When attempting to navigate the undeniable fact of multiple opposing truths, how does one move forward?

Is maintaining ignorance of other peoples' truths, therefore bolstering your own convictions, necessary to getting things done in a timely manner? To what detriment?

How has it come to be that society moves so fast that listening is a waste of time? We need time to be careful (full of care) when approaching our (humanity's and the Earth's) future and yet we seem to have cornered ourselves into a space where there is practically no time at all. What do we do now?

----

Third Piece of Information



... We should mourn because sentimentality is what allows us to be affected. If we cannot be affected we experience nothing. Yet sentimentality has been vilified, defined as a form of weakness and cast out of societies' repertoire for tenacity.

What is that word? Weakness. Why are we so afraid of being weak? What does it mean to be weak? What detriment does being weak create for the individual, for society?

----

We humans have a population that exceeds the natural law of a carrying capacity. Our species' incredible ability to overcome that law must not be celebrated without a reminder of its cost. Our dependence on an ever-dwindling energy source now inextricably linked to our dependence on a system based on exploitation and oppression will destroy our descendants' future.

Is it too late? Are we doomed to rely on technology for our survival? Technology is not beautiful when it is our only choice... a 2D solution to our having destroyed the unfathomably intricate processes of life that sustained us. What is the point of human life if we can consolidate our entire existence into a few singular solutions?

I will not worship the drones that replace our bees. The drones did not kill the bees, they are the solution to the bees being killed. But if we did not have a solution to the bees being killed, would we have killed the bees? If we did not trust our own adaptability, our technological solutions, would we kill the coral reef? If we prioritized our connection to the Earth, would we seek solutions that move us ever farther from needing her?

My God is the intricate chaos that creates the ebb and flow of our universe. You can see it if you look closely at our cells, at our genetics, at the base of all life. For the first time I am realizing that we may have streamlined our lives to such an extent that we have removed ourselves from my God.

The bee is born of that intricate chaos and is connected to very many other forces than just the making of honey through pollination. The bee is beautiful. Each individual bee is unique. Within that diversity lies innumerable possibilities. That diversity is where beauty is born.

The drone is born of human's minute understanding of the forces of that intricate chaos that perpetuates life and is therefore connected only to our tiny thread of knowledge about the elaborate relationship between pollination and life. Each drone is identical. The possibilities of the drone end with its function. The drone will not evolve with its environment. It is not connected to the web of life, it has a singular strand that connects and depends on us. I do not view this as beautiful.

Perhaps it is time to cease our celebration for the solutions we devise and acknowledge that often these solutions arise from a problem we hastily and blindly created. Perhaps we should mourn.

We should mourn because we are limiting the possibilities of our future as it relates to our Earth's. If we remove diversity from our lives we disrupt and potentially destroy the possibility for evolution–one of the many results of that intricate chaos.

We should mourn because true beauty cannot be replicated as it is within variation that beauty is grown.

We should mourn because our free will is dwindling. We are plugged into a system others created for profit. If our farmer's are no longer feeding us then it must be a machine. That machine runs on profit, at any non-monetary expense.

We should mourn because no one seems to be listening.

Just Another Feminist Rant

While I recognize that there are other very important social justice demands that deserve attention, this particular piece arises from my personal struggles as a cis, white, middle-class woman and focuses on the singular issue of women's rights. If for any reason you believe I have unduly ignored the intersectionality of sexism and any other oppressive institutions, please feel free to express that to me in a clear manner in the comments or through email. 

This labor day weekend I visited a couple of wonderful old friends in DC and while I had a great time, entering city life also provided an unsettling look through the magnifying glass at humanity. Over the course of less-than four days I was catcalled and ridiculed, approached and reprimanded all by men I had never met. A man blocked my way in a liquor store simply because I refused to answer "how's your day going, honey?" At a bar many men attempted to compliment(?) me by gluing their penis to my butt without my even seeing them as I danced. A man walking past on the street mumbled, "girls look good enough to eat" while my friend and I walked along a crowded Chinatown street mid-day. I caught a man on the Metro clandestinely capturing images of me and other women on the train with his camera phone presumably for his future use. And even when not directly approached, the leers were uncountable, occurring perhaps most viciously in the seemingly safe establishment that is the grocery store. 

Over the years I have worked hard to maintain my girlish delight that allows me to continually play with the world that surrounds me. I cherish that part of me. But during these four days I had to sink deeper inside myself in order to avoid the psychological torment of the male gaze while ironically feeling safest in the presence of other men I trusted. I lost my quirk. I didn't want them to look at the child inside of me that way. I needed to hide her to protect her.

Then I re-entered the world of my nieces, these three young, silly, wonderful girls who will soon enter puberty and they, too, may learn that in order to protect themselves they'll have to hide from the world, make themselves smaller, disappear into self-hatred. And why?

Our world hates women. Our world tells us this both subliminally through unachievable beauty standards set alongside a narrative that our beauty is our most important asset; as well as outright, through songs declaring, "I've got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one," or, most glaringly, cases of sexual assault that are blamed on the victim. And yet as our girls grow into women, the best answer we can come up with for why they self-destruct–with eating disorders, self-mutilation, or the like–is hormones? Further yet, as we mature out of puberty and deal daily with our tumultuous relationship with this world that hates us, we are still dismissed as "crazy or emotional"? 

As a woman who fights for the girl inside myself and the girls I love in this world, I ask why? Why do you hate us so? Why do you love our bodies but not our beings? And why do you refuse to acknowledge the hatred?

I can't stand the debate any longer: the fighting simply to prove that something isn't right when those pubescent girls are screaming that everything is wrong in any way they can. When a woman on the beach is undressed by police officers against her will and people nod their heads and say, yes, I agree, undress her, how is it unclear? 

Just look at your daughters and feel the overwhelming love you have for them. Know it will never be enough to combat the insurmountable hatred the world at large feels toward women in general. They will not make it through unscathed, they will be battered even if they're strong. Unless you fucking fight with them to change the game and listen to them in order to learn how to make the world love them, too. And yes, I am speaking to all men (and women).

I'll even give you a hint on where to start: remove the phrase "who cares" from your vocabulary.

July

We're fragmenting,
A statue, once whole, now blows to dust in the wind and the rain.
What remains?
The pieces others hold.
Crumbling to bits around lovers' fingers;
they're keeping safe the parts they've always known.
The parts they need.
Regrowth cannot occur while they remain there, saving.
We must chop off their arms.

Oh, summer wind, breathe your faith of life into me.

As a toast to the closing of this chapter, I have decided to begin posting my many jumbled, unedited pieces that I've written and hoarded during the past year. I learned long ago to stop imagining the future, so it's an understatement to say I could have never imagined how this year of my life would turn out. There is pain and there is joy and there is oh so much growth.

August!

20, 2016

The unrelenting onslaught of water's power removes the rocks' rough edges, revealing a sleek, smooth surface. Many may call this true beauty- but it is the rock's only defense. Relent, become soft, and the water will move more quickly over your surface. The walls we put up to defend ourselves are not always rough-hewn. For many, they are the soft edges of our character--letting all things pass over us with as little resistance as is possible.



6, 2016

A child's grief extends outwards, as they have not yet been taught to turn inwards.
An adult's grief is limited by the skin; having forgotten how to unabashedly bare his soul, the fire in an adult's grieving eyes slowly ebbs and flows.
In the realm between child and adult, when we know the world cannot bare our sorrows and yet we have not yet learned how to keep that fire locked in our eyes, grief implodes within, creating a shockwave to those surrounding us. Our whole world is grief, and yet there is no space for such as we walk along the remains of our long lives.
So, we tear out a space, with claws or teeth–not because we are needy or are using our grief for attention. It is survival.
Locked in a cage of smiles, we break our bones on the bars and lay there bloody, hoping someone will notice and release us (into a world where everything is not okay).