blood ties remade...

louder
lips speak louder.

she tells me she went there to bring me home.

i was capsized by the very small place in the world that i felt i occupied.
death
and truth
all held a strong precedent to the forgiveness that came before.

i tell her now
sitting in the comfort of our home
that i never thought i could provide for her
or myself-
i tell her
that my life has been first and foremost a lesson in forgiveness.

simply put.

i would be an orphan yet again if i was stunned by the inflexibility of forgineness.

but then again, wouldn't we all.

so here we are, walking wounded in the world believing that we are martyrs for learning to forgive the biggest and baddest trespasses against us
regardless of religion inside.

never a victim
but merely in the places that didn't have our best interests in mind,
we walked into a moment that was unforgiving and weak with someone who was even weaker and forgive less.

no sense to walk out of what we walked in to
we witnessed
and recognized,
even if years or decades later,
that something,
some body was not where it was meant to be.

nevertheless
we moved through that moment
and into and onto another.

our scar tissue thicker and stronger the more wounded we became
the more resilient we were.

i have never wanted it to have been any different, really.
i have merely said,
shit happens,
and it breaks you
or it doesn't.

i have chosen to live by the later
and i am fine.

so, back to her strong sense of non forgiving
she is a self appointed reckoner of misdeeds in my life
she holds those memories and she holds the list of mis doings against me.

i tell her to breathe into the space between me and those past moments
to fill up the space the same ways i have

but she stands guard differently than the others
she is more awake.

i now know why that is.

she is my keeper
and to ask any different of her
would be asking her not to be her.

for her solidarity to me
i feel safe
i feel strong

and i feel more room to forgive..

under your breath..

seriously i'd give anything for her to give me a minute in her mind.
so much time in this life of mine showcasing,
reminiscing,
replaying,
remembering words she said and then the words she never said thereafter.

i have loved this girl/woman since i was 13. i mean seriously been in LOVE with his woman/girl since i was young. i have tried to make myself important to her but in reality i am nothing but aluminum cans in a bag to her. i am unable to move forward from her despite how far ahead i push.

first love is never ending the same way yelling 'falling timber' never loses it's meaning.

i don't know how to stop it,
how to digress,
or forget her.
she denies me and the memory of what she taught me. married with 2 kids she is hardly the lesbian vixen she was in 10th grade.
hell, none of us are.
but still i crave, and i want some recognition in her, something to admit that she remembers those adolescent moments where she moved me from girl to young woman.

same but not the same with those boys with their endless needs. i don't feel the need to reconnect there. i may have loved those boys and men but with tracy there is no comparing.
with her i want to go learn my lesson in love again and again despite the ceaseless heartache that would endure.

i am still manifesting her to me in some way. i don't want some drawn out love affair some 23 yrs later
i just want some recognition.

tell me, there's nothing wrong in that. i just want to end the back room yearning so i can bury the memory.

parsons bed...

it takes a while to shake this shit loose in me

it takes a while for me to step into the moments where i can make sense between the heart and mind.

in my ears i hear a profound rhythm and despite not having made one of my own in quite some time- i appreciate the movement and precision entering me.

i am ready to strip down
i ready to remove the city on my skin
and let the road take me away

it's been long enough that i know i don't belong
and i know i need to get back to something simpler.

it's sickening to never be reminded, in a world fabricated,
that we are merely moving in empty cycles that don't resemble and often overwrite our true intentions.

i am a perfect poster child for consumption. i want and i want.
i told her of how i wanted another in the beginning, someone who i thought beautiful and broken who was not even close to being fixed the way we endlessly work to be fixed. i asked her who she would want if she could have that moment of abandon and of course she mentions some top tier, totally together woman who no one could ever hope to evolve to, successfully.

i sat in admittance of failure in my lustful wish of make out dreams and i sat straight up and said- i recognize and am drawn to the unfinished soul merely because it's a comforting reminder that we all have work to do. why would i lust for the "perfect" being, unless i was convinced i was settling for failure?

needless to say i love my choice despite how faulty and human she is. it only made me love my ellen more, because i recognize how close to fine she is, which is so unlike me.

and i like that.

dizzy, loud and free...

time..
as i follow through the awkward movements of moving forward
i am suddenly summoned back
to the time when things were intact-
a little-
or perhaps more than they were thereafter.

i am reckoned by the mail i received
and the message shortly beforehand
and then again by the introductions that came many years and lifetimes after.

loudly they call my name which i recognize in the formalized spelling and swift emails.
i miss you all i think to myself
and then again i don't.
the faces and places that we shared remind me that life has moved forward
that life has carried on with and without the ones i have loved.

i am contemplating returning.
to those very places that wounded me.

words said by a big brother
darkness and ill intent all live in those places
in that state
that i was resigned to grow up in.

in one way or another
i want to return,
says the woman i am now.
i never want to return,
says the memories of the child that still resides in my bones, done growing and getting older.

i have memories

and some are not pretty.
some moved me up in the experiences i shared,
the loves i found,
and the stones i turned without direction.

in those places i have friends
some who never knew
some who had their own stories
i never asked to know.

still, we ask and we crave to see those faces that knew us when we were young
and presumably innocent.

i crave those faces
for reasons that have nothing to do with my place and my knowing in the world,
pushed further along in the worldly experience than i had a right to know back then.

i crave those faces because they set me up to return to a place where love lived.

and that is enough to release the unreconciled child in me.

do as i say...

I don't know how to make myself less available.

i tell this to few who know me and i get feedback that helps if only i could hear it.

i am lost.
i am in transition.

and i feel fucked up.

i am bleeding and
it's a full moon.
venus is passing the sun
and i feel compelled to allow the chaos to take a hold.

i climbed the fence
and i danced in the rain.
i am challenging my laptop to the rain
as i refuse to sit inside
and be un assertive to the weather that feeds my mood.

i am here
with who i am
and i am confused.

i am digging deep
for no reason other than it suits me
and i am no closer to conclusion.

the book(s) i've read
in the last year that almost marks the full year since your death
dizzy me in the forceful reminder of you being gone now for almost a year, brother.

they force me to believe
and give me strange ideas
as to who and where you are now
and further more how you are here with me.

i follow your shadows as they reveal themselves
and i call your name.

i call the names of others whom i don't yet know

and they all respond in their own way.

i don't know how to gap the living from the dead but i make sense of my reality as best i can.

i ask you brother to show me the way and i hope that you are still in a realm that includes me.
i get distracted messages and i hear myself in the midst telling me to just notice the silence of things and listen.

i am trying to listen
and i am also trying to ask the right questions.

i walk away sometimes defeated by my own voice
my insecurities
and i am reminded, by the right people, to stay true to myself.

i beg of the world one thing.

to call me out on my shit

and the world today said-
if you were listening right to yourself
you wouldn't need the outside world..

i heard it and i didn't.

i want interaction.
i know i can't do this on my own.
i need leaders
and i need mentors
i have been asking for them
and they have yet to appear the way i can recognize.

i know i have to first quiet my own discourse to see it
to feel it.

and i'm on my way.

but sometimes my own feet don't move fast enough...

my girl is..

anything than i thought she'd be
she's stronger than superman
she's lighter than a shadow of light
she's smarter than under dog and wonder woman the same

the girl has more on anybody than fishnets
on a drag queen or dancer in a dark hall.

she can mesmerize me with her logic
and she can woo me with her wonder
she's one of a kind in a million.

i like to work it loud
on my drums
in my voice
and with my swaying body to a mismatched rhythm

but she's there
winking at me from the basement stairs
on her way up
so aware
of what's going on
so in line with where i'm at
in the moment of release.

i can't forget that what i got is
better than what's out there
she's a believer and an advocate of
everything inside of me.

to her i owe so much.

my love,
my back
my everything.

as she sleeps upstairs amidst my yells of release in some top 40 song
with the dogs uneasy of my angst
i realize
finally
that i have someone who gets this
gets me


and that's everything

my girl is...

my normative..

the last thing before her death that she said was- i'm going to freshen up then i'll be back to suck you dry.

it was that that has stuck with me-
i am besieged by moments like these that represent both insightfullness and ignorance.

i am left with a feeling of despair-
not only in her death
but in the the lack of awakening-
at birth we lose ourselves as we evolve and subscribe to the awkward residence of being human.
i left the darkness of that stage disappointed with myself and everyone i've ever come across because we blindly and willingly lose ourselves to the status quo.

no one challenges the indoctrinated canon anymore.
no one thinks this is all madness to such degrees that they'd rather be blind than to witness such disgrace done to and amongst us.

i am one of "them" and one of "those"
and i hate that.

i hate that my chest is tight whenever someone and something creative breaks open and challenges the so called typical life that i've come to live. i cower to the outsider and seek the shelter of my fellow conformers.
i recognize that my creativity is so boxed- at least what i reveal to the world.
i challenge myself and i fall to the wayside of typical time and time again.

it's not about clothes,
it's not about purposely not using commas-
it's not about feeling like i have to maintain a certain weight to be loved by my lover-
it's not about being polite and feeling obligated to make others comfortable
and it's not about giving a shit whether what i say is kosher enough for the ears that over hear and secretly check in on what i'm saying and how i deliver my message.

i have become a product.
i have become another voice piece for brands.
i have become exactly what they want me to be.
which is nothing.
which is predictable.
which is not the real me.

i was born to a place where i was like everyone else
and i was raised in a place where few looked or acted like me-
yet somehow i have found my sub culture
blends nicely within the masses.

we are political
we are educated
we have opinions
and we are creative

yet somewhere along the lines
we gave in
and gave up
on trying to beat the big boxes
and the big white males
that already had a plan for us

and that was to be exotic,
and to have false impressions of ourselves
and our sisters
and to feel like our own bodies
were not truly ours-
but
available
and purposeful
only if someone could buy our ideas and our minds
and our bodies..

i am angry that i have so willingly given in to this idea
that america-
that loving women
and saying what i have to say as i have learned my truth
out loud is shameful
or likely to get me deported
or likely to get me punished for no other reason than to scare me back into my place.

i need
i want to change who i am
in this
i want to change who i have become
i want to claim myself
for myself
and only me
and be beautiful in my way and no others.

but mostly i want to undo the submission
and the lackluster life that i have come to represent
not just in theory but in every way..
that i know and don't know how..

fuck the establishment
fuck everyone who gives up
and takes the easy way out
fuck you for giving me few options
and telling me there is no other way
i will continue to find the way that is true to me
true to this
and true at all...