Getting stopped by trains...

 My cheap thrill is getting stopped by trains. Eyes usually roll when I say that. What kind of weirdo am I, to like being delayed?  Am I one of those train-spotters - one of those birders of locomotives, trying to build my engine life list? No, not me. When I'm stopped by a train, I'm a child again. Overcome by the marvel of the machinery, its immensity, watching it fly before my eyes as I try to count the cars.  Is it fast or slow? Are there more cars than last time? How many engines?  There is nothing I can do about it. The bars came down and the train is coming down the tracks.  I have no control over it and that is an inexplicably wonderful release. I can abandon the need for efficiency and all of my time constraints. Again, the train is out of my control --- and isn't there a wild sort of freedom in that?  To know that there are things that are simply out of my hands with the small exception that I can decide how I deal with them.  Will I curse in impatience?  That's a resounding "no" for me. I will relish the moment of knowing that there are things that I don’t have a say so in. There is power in relinquishing power, in recognizing a poverty in actionable choices - the train and its schedule are beyond my sphere of influence. That's alright by me. I'm not going to be bothered and then, when those bars rise, I'm not going to rush. Wherever I'm going to, I'll say matter of factly, "Sorry I'm late. I was stopped by a train."

Say, look at that cool graffiti! 

Night Sweats... an answer to a question about inspiration

Today I was asked how I am inspired, what motivates my poetry.  I replied that it isn't so much motivation, it's more like sweat. You don't ask your body to perspire, it just does. You exert or become overheated, maybe you are slammed by stress and so your body cools you.  Poetry is the sweat of emotions and it has no choice but to flow and cool you when the feelings are too strong.

Night sweats

Turn down the heat

The words can’t sleep!

Bursting to the surface

A thousand glands of feelings

Triggered

Too much to control and so…

Thoughts connect to feeling

The dam is breached

Escaping my pores

Words flow

Break free

Pouring through my skin

Coursing down to my fingertips

Out, out --  onto the page

Organic they rush forth

Emotions spilling

Emanating from within

Tangled in language

Words for grief, for passion, for anger, for joy

Wet and salty they take their place

Syllables and sentences

I write release

I write and then… comes peace

I pull up the blanket

Sigh 

    and fall back asleep

2/17/24

Gravity...

Gravity

Water follows 

The path of least resistance

Maybe I am water

Gravity pulls me down

Sometimes over rocks

Sometimes cutting a path through canyons

But down, down, ever down 

Looking to unite 

WIth other molecules of water

Seeking to commune

At some low spot

Fluids minimize energy

My energy I expend

Elsewhere

Creating my own heat so then

Sometimes I am steam

I rise and seek the clouds

To be a cloud, to join a cloud

To float in the sky

But gravity pulls me down

Drop by drop

I freeze, I fight

Resistance makes me cold

A glacier

Ice dragging the earth with me

Slowly, heels digging

The pressure of myself

Holding back, against it all

But still, I cannot resist

Gravity

12/28/23

Chemistry...

 Chemistry (yet to be tweaked)

The things I wished I had

Paid more attention to

Like chemistry class

Never thinking it would

Affect me, I daydreamed

Doodled on the desk, thought about boys

How would I know about

Simultaneous attractions

About how the electron clouds

Might get too close together

Electrons pulling, repelling 

Two very different atoms

Organically drawn

My electron, shared in your valence?

Or is it the other way around?

Somehow this uneasy balance

Heteronuclear bonding

Created a something

Safe like water --

Or a devastating acid

My positive energy

Your negative charge

Now this -- molecular structure

Irresistibly joined

Electrostatic forces holding us

Naming us this substance we became

But I wrote REO Speedwagon 

In my notebook 

Drew a daisy in the margin

Never thinking of the heat

The light, the significance

Of energy required

To break a covalent bond

So a compound we are

Until a solvent or

An energy greater

A force more powerful..

But I wasn’t paying attention

When my teacher spoke of ions

Either

The Day You Became Strong

 The Day You Became Strong

They always say

“It didn’t happen overnight” 

And certainly, this is true

But it was one day

A day when the pieces came together

A day when you knew it

You were whole

And worthy 

And had value

All on your own

The words came 

Calm and clear

You said, “No”

You called out the voice

That silenced you

You pushed away the hand

That made demands

For too long you accepted

The backseat

You gave the benefit of doubt

When whatever benefit there was

Was certainly not yours

You were busy, trying to make pieces fit

Believing you could be gracious

And still kind

But just not knowing how 

To challenge insult

To deny admittance

To choose to believe

That your dignity

Mattered as much as theirs

And that day came

When being polite wasn’t as important

As loving  the little girl that was

And the woman she became

Telling her that she could speak up

And she did

That was the day

The day you became strong

Accessories…

This is about a problem many of us women find ourselves in. We somehow wind up in the relationships that we pour ourselves into and find we are the only ones pouring. It’s not about wanting love to drop everything, but it’s about respect and not feeling used. 

I am not a scarf

To drape around your neck 

Then the weather seems to bite

And you need to feel some warmth

I am not a hat

To tilt with a rakish nod 

When the occasion calls for  extra flare

And need to show some style 

I’m not an earring or a tie pin

A necklace or a ring

I’m not an accessory 

Meant to polish you up

Or add some interest to your life 

In the wardrobe of life

I want to be the pants 

That you won’t walk out the door without

The pajamas that snuggle you

When you are tired or feeling down

I want to be essential

So you are naked

Without me there 

Accessories are bullshit 

And I am more than bullshit 

  

Some slam poetry from 2019

 

Much better heard than read, like all spoken word verse tends to be:

Angry, tight thoughts

Tight throat

Tight lips

The silence slaps

It sneers

It taunts

And your depression

Like a cancer

Eats away at my peace

No. More.

The poverty of your

Lack of emotion

Lack of affection

Lack of sweet, tender words

Is an abyss that

Seeks to swallow me whole

Or crush me with the weight 

Of instability

It’s antimatter, babe

And it doesn’t exist in this universe

I won’t give it life in a flight of fantasy

Because happily ever after with you

Is so opposite from the reality

That darkens my door and 

Switches on a crazy mental loop

Where I ask am I of value, am I enough

What is my worth to you?

I won’t be an indirect object

Affected by your transitive verbiage
Until my joy gets eaten up by your abnormal cell division

And I get sucked into the black hole of being

An accessory

Not subject verb predicate

Damn that silence

I’m breaking it with the sound

Rhythmic freedom

Of my feet, my heart, my soul

Moving on

GEP 1/18/2019

In the poverty 

Of your attentions 

I discovered my wealth In the austerity 

 Of your affirmations 

I discovered those deepest riches 

All the things you would not give me 

That I can so freely share 

Your lack of verbal generosity 

Unwillingness to light a dim day 

Brighten a smile 

Or caress a bruised esteem 

I can see the gift now 

In my ability to see the need 

To pour out warmth 

To slather devotion 

And effuse an unmitigated joy 

In the beauties of another 

I am indeed rich 

And you, my dear, are so very very poor