I made a list today, of things I'm going to accomplish soon. Things to accomplish in order to feel good. I enjoy feeling good. To have my body and mind in state that approaches resembling harmony. Bring it all together as I scream/breathe deep and swim from one end to the next pushing for that last inch of space to be there when I exhale into the clorinated water and then inhale the warm thickly crisp air of Prodecoops beneficio, once a hacienda.
Sleeping in plastic hammocks, talking with Traven for hours, I feel stupid and giddy simutaneously. No worries as the night comes with respect for my faults and carries me softly into the wind, lifting my dreams out of me like Amy using chemical wipes to lift the dirt from her pores. Cringing & burning feeling cleaner, breathing easier as the clorine settles into my skin for 8 hours, I dont shower so that it can dig in deep.
This is a battle for sanity, self respect, and more than that: a battle for self love, self adoration, self worship, self sustainibility, and some simple self driven ass kicking just burnt out its transmission, so here comes self denigration. I once filled out a personal add asking if I self denigrate, then giving me the option of chosing, often, sometimes or never. I choose sometimes, trying to come off as powerful yet honest and I was totally lying. Tear my fucking teeth out for each lie I tell to myself and I'll be eating baby food by the end of this week, move onto to hair and I'll be bald by the end of two months, lets not apply this to organs as I desire to grow old and watch my body give way slowly, so that I can anguish, feebly, in the dark groping through my pants, hoping that my dick will still work.
Kill me now, before I do it myself. I capitalize my eyes cause self respect still has a space in my mind. A space, like a 5 centimeter by 5 centimeter square, tucked way into the back so that self denigration cant find it, mostly cause its too fucking big to fit back there and my self respect is hiding behind the corpses of the afore mentioned others.
I hate leaving, I love going, and I hate returning to this god forsaken place. Every time the plane wheels hit the ground I steel myself knowing that within an hour all the peace and calmness, all the strength and sensitivity, all the curious patience, all the respect, all the fucking power and togetherness will flee back to the dirty spots on my feet due, not soley, to New Jersey's acrid air, but to my family's stagnant existence and never ending conflicts.
Poetry is religion to me. Turning to it in times of disaster, finding solace in its embrace, and power in its gift of fear. If only poetry was a lover I'd be satisfied and elope. If only I could eat words like food and drink blank pages like water I could travel with a pack full of empty notebooks and pens. Nothing more and nothing less. If mistakes could clothe me I'd need a house just for my wardrobe. If nervously shaking hands could fuel cars, I'd single handedly solve the energy crisis and save thousands of lives. But poetry can do none of those things.
The gifts that words, emotional truth, and an attentive audience give are finitely ephemeral, satisfying that space in my soul opened by consumer culture, cauterized by our education system, violently fucked by socially constructed gender roles, and left to rot by american individualism finds its only hope open microphones. Its only bandage with your gasps, ooohs, aaahs, and applause and its only salvation in your words.
You are the preachers, we are the damned with gaping wounds waiting to step up and be healed. so talk, talk fast, talk slow, talk hard and talk soft, but just talk, to me or to anyone. let it fly, let it all come out till you cant breathe and then push for that space. find it on napkins or upper thighs, in notebook margins or desktops on subway benches or dirt roads on suburban sidewalks and school hallways in cutting class or ditching work, find it ink or paint, find it in tears or sweat, find it in laughter or anguish, questions or exclamations, criticisms or compliments, but know that its there as it exists here in this very second - breathe in - it exists every where.
we are the conduits, the preachers, the saints, sinners, the seers. we are born fearless and scared shitless so we turn to words in search of ourselves and the world. We capture emotion like painters capture sunsets, we hold titles for orgasms and sobfests, cups of coffee, long distance phone calls, letter writing, midnight bake sales, gluttony & starvation. Walking barefoot through extremes and wearing 10 eyed steel toes in the middle ground to avoid contamination, we desire madly to feel everything but the mediocre subsisting, existing, resisting and listing our complaints and triumphs every where we go. We are the poets, prouder than lions, so stand the fuck up and let everyone know.
Hell yeah.