seeing and seen
poets have eyes
they have opened
stay peeled, even as they dry
without tears left to spill
for those chosen to be blind
telling how poets always see
literate, read, written, and weeping
poets have eyes
they have opened
stay peeled, even as they dry
without tears left to spill
for those chosen to be blind
telling how poets always see
literate, read, written, and weeping
“It’s really something to see…….constantly…
–Dr. Jordan Peterson to Piers Morgan
while choking up in tears
Because for me
it’s not so much about a house catching fire
and needing saving from oppressive flame
but a house sickened with insects
needing treatment for infestation.
Truly, we are a people further drifting apart
with the tectonal shiftings of infinite access,
but would you disagree that there’s a demographic
clearly not coping as well with it all?
Young men running into the incongruence
of reality versus the media they consume–
movies, games, pornographies,
and all the anachronistic ways
male role models say to be a man;
how divorced all of that is becoming from daily life,
how easy it is for one to lose their way.
Is this something that should be denied?
Yeah, maybe the words are wrong
and yeah absolutely, men are using those words
to justify bad behavior, but change
doesn’t and never has happened in a day.
Is it not better to keep a conversation going,
to maybe find and refine more effective solutions?
Ways to assuage unemployment, uneducation,
emotional damage and the many atrocities
men will commit against themselves?
‘Cause when we’re getting to those points
I don’t really care what it’s all called,
I just want to see issues actually addressed,
whether that’s simply giving a man space to speak
or, particularly by the good and wise men,
to show the new way that masculinity should be.
Or, you know, you could keep chasing them
back into the shadows
where they’ll bond in commiseration
only to return for next elections
in greater and stronger numbers.
She laughs.
She laughs as if her eyes are small pennies
that disappear into the mouth of a spiral wishing well.
She does this often —
it catches you like the optimistic flu.
She loves.
She loves everyone and hates no one.
She loves to give with grace and surprise your face.
She is the beaming sunflower that grows taller than us
both.
She listens.
She listens before she speaks —
a practice of many, a talent of few.
If you listen,
you’ll notice she says more than she doesn’t,
but only truth escapes her lips.
She lingers.
She lingers in the words of her letters.
Her blood is made of pencil lead that pumps every page.
She stretches her spine in the card catalog,
a collection of intentions to be brought to life.
She lives.
She lives in the honeysuckle hum of the rural hummingbird.
The whistle of the land sings her name.
All that she is
is all that she was –
unforgettable.
The most exciting event of my childhood was going to the circus.
The smell of cotton candy, peanuts and buttered popcorn
mingled with the snap of the whip and the frenzy of lions’ roars.
Silence reigned as we watched the barefoot woman on the trapeze
release and fall into the arms of her partner who dropped her.
She seized his foot and climbed to his shoulders then waved.
A white faced clown with a red nose circled the tent on a unicycle,
oblivious to everything until he ran into a pile of green poo
next to a trumpeting elephant standing on hind legs.
The clown fell headfirst into the droppings,
sat up and wiped his eyes, then pulled a
bucket from his pocket to pour water over his head.
Our ungainly gang of nine-year-olds roared with laughter.
The ringmaster, his top hat askew, blew a whistle and pointed to
horses circling, their riders doing back flips and handstands.
After they exited, tigers followed in a line to sit at attention.
The largest opened his mouth to let the trainer insert his head.
We held our breath, the clown juggling pots and pans.
Then we yelled ourselves hoarse as stilt walkers turned
balloons into dogs, releasing them to descend on the crowd.
Years later, I am the only one who wants to go when the circus comes.
The clowns are not funny, my friends say, the acrobats worn and old,
I go alone and sit with my bag of popcorn, checking my watch
while trying to recreate those feelings of exhilaration and excitement.
When I leave, I am much older than when I entered,
disillusioned by the unraveling of my memories of enchantment.
you tell me that i don’t seem like someone with borderline personality disorder
i tell you that i mask
i mask so well that sometimes i don’t even know what i am feeling
i mask so much i never know when it’s okay to take it off
i spend so much energy masking that i sleep for twelve hours a night
i mask to survive
the day, the stigma, the sterotypes
i mask to save my friendships
because i know i am too much
when i don’t mask
disaster strikes, my world crumples
no one knows what to do when i am not okay
trick is, i am never okay
i just mask to save my life
& to save your day
It seems like everyday I hear
some tidbit of trendy information
repeated as the truth
and the person repeating
has only heard it from someone else,
someone who thought that they were right.
The topic has been left unexplored,
the knowledge not in question
repeated as the truth
wholly unexplored
unearned and unchallenged.
I don’t see the point in correcting.
I don’t want to hurt the fragile egos of the masses, I don’t need to say “Have you considered…?” or “My training and my experience have shown me something different”
There are too many people who think they are authorities, and too many people listening to them and believing that they are. I have always attempted to test every theory, always questioned any truth, particularly if I am to repeat it without a disclaimer.
Do not accept what is handed to you. Do not accept what you do not know for yourself.
Do not even accept that your own mind has not skipped this important step.
And even if you do test, do consider there may be more knowledge, additional truth
that you are unaware of.
Before you open your mouth
to spread one more fact you heard from a person who heard from a person on the internet,
consider that it is just a theory. An untested theory. No matter how apparent was the authority. It is often the authority who is posing as authority. In fact, this is what authority is mostly,
-posing.
To my lover:
You return,
worn from the weight
of another long night
quiet,
not from absence,
but from having given too much of yourself
to a world that doesn’t always give back.
And still,
you come to us
to soft arms,
to open laughter,
to the sanctuary we’ve made together.
I see you,
and I thank heaven for the quiet ways you love.
Each kiss you give
is a prayer,
each embrace a remembering
of who we were
before the chaos,
and who we are becoming
because of it.
Yes, it’s harder.
Yes, it’s heavier.
But it’s richer,
truer,
holy even
because of what we carry
side by side.
You hold the world on your back
like anointed earth,
and you do it with grace
that humbles me.
If it were me,
I might have vanished
like wind through trees.
But you stay.
You root.
You rise.
I love you more
than any storm could shake,
more than flesh,
more than time.
You are
my sacred place
my living altar.
Maybe this life
isn’t the one you imagined,
but I pray you find
the divine in it.
In us.
In me.
Your love lives in my bones,
my breath,
my being.
No soul
has ever touched mine
as deeply,
as wholly,
as you.
Nah for real you really from Kentucky?
I been to Kentucky and you aren’t like
them folks I met on the border of Tenessee.
You really from Kentucky? ‘Cause you ain’t sound
like it; I don’t hear no drawl or twang or “kawhrn
bread” comin’ outta that voice of your’s.
Nah fuh reel u reely frum K’ntucky? Shucks.
That mean you ride them horses all bareback
and shit? You walk through briars without them
shoes? ‘U must be one o’ ‘dem religious types
beltin’ ou’ bIble versus an’ votin’ rePublican.
‘U mus’ be one o’ dem “good ol’ boys.”
Is you Really one O’ ‘dem Kentucky boys
ridin’ ATV’s and baaass fishin’? Rip roarin’
thru dem fiels uh bluegrass, drinkin’ lite beer
by’n open bonfire ‘n uh sundown town.
Goin’ do duh state fair with’n th’m blue ribb’ns.
Havin’ illicit relayshuns with’n yur cuhsin?
Nah. You CAN’T be from a place like Kentucky.
You talk too different. You ain’t got an accent
bouncin’ between poverty and antisemite.
You musta lived sum’were else, like New Yawk
or Denvuh. You been aroun’ the wes’ side, eas’ sigh
nort’ sign, Nawh’leans? Dey really writin’ ovuh dare’uh?
Yes sir. Yes mamn. Yes them. I am from Kentucky.
Fuck you for thinking so little of us.
