Quirks...

At some point or another
We get the urge to find ourselves
Probably because someone or some article tells us that we need to
Find our true self - but wait
You are your self
Every day you wake up with your self
Your true self
Your authentic self that makes mistakes
That has successes
That makes decisions, big and small
All day, every day
You are not a fake self
You are a real self
With all of your quirks
With all of your sins and saving graces
Every action
Every reaction
All part of the evolving process
Which is you
Truly you

A feeling like I could be someone...

 While I’m sure there are people that don’t like the song “Fast Car”  by Tracy Chapman (and recently covered by Luke Combs) or feel it is overplayed ---  but I really do.  Over the years, myriads of people have written to her about how they identified with it. I know that Pat and I certainly did - complete with all the challenges and mistakes that youth makes when it latches on to a not-very-well-planned dream. 

Anyway, lately I have sort of become fixated on the part where she is singing about driving with her partner, his arm around her and she sings, ““And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged/I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone.”  How many of us feel we are “someone” because of a relationship or the type of job we have, on our education or on our level of wealth.  And how many times do people who are missing one or more of these ingredients feel like they aren’t “someone” because of the missing elements?  And how many times does society, or part of society, make “others” out of them and make them feel like they aren’t someone??? That they don’t belong?

Every single person is Imago Dei - bearing the image of God, filled with creative abilities, absolutely and undeniably embodied with value and worth.  Here we are in this political season and I’m constantly seeing human beings reduced to inconsequence.  This week I have seen so many nasty memes about “not giving our hard earned money to lazy people who didn’t work for it” or “help veterans and not immigrants.”  It’s so easy to lump people into faceless masses, isn’t it? But they aren’t faceless - each and every category of people we hate on and want to deprive is made of of individuals who are Imago Dei. To assume that each person who receives public assistance is “lazy” and “on the take,” or that veterans want us to spit in the face of families trying to escape violence, oppression, persecution or poverty.  Most American veterans worth their salt FIGHT for human dignity and don’t ask to be held up as a hammer to crush the hurting parts of humanity.

I want my students to KNOW, absolutely know that they have value - even if they screw up, make terrible mistakes. I want them to know that regardless of what society tells them they are missing, than they are valuable and worthy of dignity and respect. They are SOMEONE already.  Sadly, I see people so battered down by life and lack, that initiative can be squeezed out of them - and this devaluing of humanity and lumping it into groups to hate makes me frustrated, angry, and…determined to try, try, try to shine light on this. (Those who claim Christ should feel shame for spreading these).

I’ve rapped with gangsters, I’ve sat and spoken to immigrants, legal and illegal, and heard stories that should make people wake up - but one of the most profound moments I had was in downtown Akron.  A raggedy old man was out with his sign, panhandling for help.  Pat had died a year before. I’d been through some major challenges and personal hells. Anyhow, I felt led to give him what I had (and no, I don’t give a damn how he spent it - that’s not my business after I give a gift).  He started to speak to me and ask me how I was -- really ask me, look in my eyes. Now, I’d been crying earlier and my eyes were still puffy. That man prayed for me with genuine concern and treated my hardships, which weren’t nearly as profound as his own, as if they were monumental.  He blessed me in a way that has impacted me eternally.  

If you are posting memes hating ANY group, I hope you get the opportunity to sit down, eye to eye, human being to human being, and look for the light of Imago Dei. Desmond Tutu said that “If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” Whether you hate someone for rational or irrational reasons, you need to connect with them on a human level before any progress can be made -- and until then, remember, each is a someone.

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