i wrote a photoessay about communes i've lived in

feel free to read it if you want; but i'm posting here to let you know that you might be in a picture or two in the early parts of the essay. please let me know if you want me to blur out yr face, happy to do it. but let's not forget that yr face is beautiful, as elz would say.

https://medium.com/@elialbert/adventures-in-post-scarcity-capitalism-d9919f06d1af#.jubhpibk7

resolve

1. make no hot baths out of misery when you run out of your own.
2. so don't try to reach for god for other people.
3. getting what you want is a reaction. 
4. women women women oh women
5. let your body lead you into prayer. it knows. it can speak the fluttering, the thin sheet of glass, the immovable wall, the silk dress on the chaise lounge, the stubbled knee, the breath stealing icy wind, the cornflower sigh. you don't have to.
6. keep your promises, keep clean, keep going.
7. deep Emma Goldman jewess
8. it simply has to cost. no way round it.
9. speak up but not over.
10. godly and ungodly AT THE SAME TIME.
11. stop performing when you're fucking. ugh
12. the dreams fantastical don't make you good.
13. when a person tells you that you hurt them, you don't get to decide that you didn't.
14.  hummmmmmm ahhhh mmmmmmm
15. get towed under by beauty once a day
16. not so many things quite matter as much as you think

i.
mira, my gerald ford landscape
the wide out flat kissing the fingertips of hurricane season
far from the shadowy wingspan of gargoyles
pricked by the spines on fallen palm fronds

there's the possibility of children in my body
who leave home too
and the diaspora rings its way back round the globe
wouldn't that be funny.
some child high above the Pacific, eyes looking to China
hoping to get away too

funny, i guess, if you believe that's where it started

ii.

she's got our names curled into an old piece of vellum
tucked into her fist as she strides down to the river

and on that mud-caked bank
she tosses us high in the air
and we sink and we sink and we sink

some royal Wilhelm gets an idea

iii.

grains of sand piggybacked on an old hex
make me
violet at the throat
salmon in the head
white for all my bones
where's the first cocking of the fist?
nor you nor i can say what sun shone on the first slip

iv.

a few months ago, i started thinking something like this. if we all repeat enough together, we're bound to hit something that works. it justifies all the bad. or it gives it a place. now, was i being charitable? most of all to myself? because i am no longer in motion.

"Poor little sausage- dedication, passion, beauty, empathy, emaciation, lack of self worth, desperation and abuse. Exploitation from men and jealousy from other women...poor little sausage... but is this exposing the dark underbelly of what it is to be an extraordinary young woman in a misogynistic world or is it glamourising and eroticising it? Is it exploitative itself? Lets see shall we, its a fine line."

"she leaves one cage for another with gilded bars, she must excell or be forced to return to that monsters clutches, poor little dove...I do hope they don't break her tiny wings, here's hoping she finds her strength and doesn't end up becoming some old rich guy's play thing"

and with her hand on my face, again "are we liberated or are we...liberated"
kissing her fingertips, strands of hair in her face
oh god

v.
it is hard to be alone with myself, though i am practiced at it

Um, hi

so I've been thinking of you. It's a quiet day so, of course I am. I don't think of you everyday anymore, but on the quiet days, definitely. I'll try to be plain. I'm less jangly nerves these days and I've gotten tired of wrapping myself in big, bright words to say what I want to say while maintaining plausible deniability.

I've been thinking of you and what you're doing and how you look now. Your faces have gotten a little fuzzy. But I still remember clearly the patches on your coats and how each of you smelled, though your mannerisms are beginning to fade too. I haven't seen enough of you and some of I out and out ran away from and some of you I didn't honor enough in the first place. I was unkind. I am sorry about that. You were my so many first everythings. So I was scared or else not paying attention. I now sort of know that's the way of things, that that is always going to have been the way things shook out for me, but it doesn't mean I like it. You were all big and important and amazing. For a while, for a very special while, you were all that mattered. I was surrounded by you and it was beautiful. So I'm thinking of that.

You know, some friends of mine from college (acquaintances of yours? I gotta be honest, I'm forgetting who you looked at that wasn't me) got married this past weekend and their whole little crew showed up. And I realized that we will probably never all get together again. That's okay and we can't be anything but ourselves and we can't do anything about the fact that we all wanted things far away from each other, but it doesn't mean I like it. I hear that they are also trying to make sense of what they meant to each other, but I don't think it's the same.

I'm still struggling. I have a hard time not lying about doing more than I am. I don't call my family enough. I try to shut out the world. I have to really work to not assume the worst. I'm building the childhood bedroom of my dreams. I still have all sorts of ideas that I don't do anything about. I misplace my love and stop myself from loving, to stop myself from hurting anyone. I think I moved to a place that everyone is destined to leave again. I don't entirely trust myself and I am still so afraid. I have shrunk from the big thing that came from me being around you. I've gotten small. I'm still flinching at everything.

But I am a little better than I was too, in a million tiny ways. I want to show you, but that's more for me than for you, so it's not entirely fair.

I think I'm looking for permission to move on and start building something new.  It's a cowardly thing to do here, you're all separate people, and you all deserve your own reckoning. But I'm not ready for that just yet. Most probably though, I don't even need permission at all. But you have mine, if you need it. I've got my fingers crossed for you.

So I guess, I miss you and if there was any doubt that I loved you, I did and I'm sorry.

mary oliver reminds me

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before, 

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb. 

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings. 

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or not.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves. 

A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life. 

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance. 

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling. 

Live with the beetle, and the wind. 

but oh man, i'm still afraid of so much everything

i can stand in the wind and
i am not taken away by it
with only my name now

the leaves look delicious as ever
our sun slants halos around us
only this time,
oh you are beautiful and ordinary
beautiful because you are ordinary

i begged for something so different
on the nights i fought to hear
some prophecy coming in on the wind
i was wrong!

i am my name now
how good to have a name
to find the light
in a word just for me

i am not your predator

look in my eyes

the key to my freedom resides between my thighs

it is not a flower

it is not a trap

it has only a fraction the pain associated with your mother's lap

i am a whole being

i bleed and i cry

i fucking fuck when i want to and not as much as i try

so why do i get stabbed with the knives of slut shame

why do i get snubbed and taken to blame

when my heart is so open

all i wanna do is listen to your days

when my true orifice is my soul

and i can feel all your pain

is it because i have long hair?

is it because all the stupid men want me out there?

you think i want that?

it's not a power; it's a drain

that they are so disconnected from sources of love

they have to drive those like me insane

i am not a magazine cut-out; i am not a patriarchal tool

i am a woman trying to unwind the spool

of history to find her own story so long now

ommitted

committed to shards of an urn that once told what it was to have breasts

and think them holy and to be soft and round and not feel that unsafe

and to be wiser than wisdom for crying out loud

for crying out loud

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD

because that is something women are good at

and doing so at this point of the world's eco-political evolution would be really wise indeed

i am digging the word Goddess out from images, tarot cards and consumeristic BS

to find something simple

like peace and something sacred to the spark

that makes me, well, me

i have fought tooth and nail to have a voice

and not just one that trails off like "right?"

i have fought hard to look my sisters in the eye

and more often than not, they look away

or don't want me to call them "sister" or "girl" ; I have to wonder why

have they been shamed out of knowing girls too can grunt and sigh?

have they been shamed out of finding roses beautiful,

having slumber parties all night

and acknowledging that even kesha holds a bright light?

i am not the virgin mary; her patience beyond mine
i am not britney; she too had tolerance for days

no, i am the fox and i demand the story change
that we all be free
and we keep it that way

because when you say that girl is a mess

what i hear is thousands of years of control

what i hear is what's not being told

that you want her small and to know her place

that you want her right where you can see her and to stay that way
we can all live through trial and error and failure is okay

but not if you are female

and you take up all that space

when i hear that girl is a mess

it is because i am doing what i want

because i dare to feel everything

and to hide nothing away

because i expose my naked tits and stir up all your shame

and there it is, a mess

but in truth, it's just exposure, and we all want nothing. less.

"right?"

a small peace

so here's what i've learned: we are, you and me are, the lot of us, we are born with a gnawing inside us. and you know, when it uncurls, it's so big, so frightening that we can only try to plug it up - you push someone against a wall, i eat those little cola gummy bottles, we weave some small thing out of grass and flowers, or we drink. there's years of stuffing things into the hole, wet rags and french fries and fingers - like, we barely even notice. and then after a time, after embarrassing incidents at snowy bus stops, we start thinking about why it's there and if we can know why it's there, that we can stop it. and we feel the gnawing in our bedrooms and in class and at parties and we ask it why it's there. we give it different reasons, but that's just another kind of stuffing too. listen, i'm not saying some people can't find out. maybe they do, but it hasn't worked out for me. the gnawing is never going to stop happening, there's some gasp in my code that is still echoing through me, but it's there like my hairline or my weirdly tiny pinky toenail, by accident. it's just an echo, a live-in ghost. i'm not trying to explain it anymore because it doesn't mean anything about me.

april bleak

blech blech blech
i am tired of living alone
i have a sore throat
there is no one to date
which really means
working in an oppressive environment without people who love me and think i'm gorgeous just the way i am
sucks.

ugh, today i'm bleeding and biking and walking and crying.
and things like this: where do i come from?
what's up that i need to move around and one of the most comforting things to do
is work on making a family tree
back to the 1600's
maybe just a reminder that i am connected to things
real things
real people and bodies and histories
places, villages, houses, love affairs, deaths

my friends are having babies and cancer,
twisting their ankles,
laughing,
working on their new house.
cancer cancer cancer cancer cancer cancer cancer.
i'm still smoking cigarettes. it's true.
it's not how i want to die; that's true, too.

i made a big decision in moving here
that was a little about not following relationships as much
you know, staying in the bigger web, southern oregon,
the wooded edges of the beast's belly,
but after that somnolent sleepy lazy fallow summer at versailles, itchy hands, sharp mind,
i am here,
why do i have to learn by swinging from one side to another? extreme to extreme?
i guess it could be more extreme, true.

i guess, here's the questions.
one, how do we love ourselves. [with everything else that's true, too]
two, what are the effective points of intervention from the beast's belly we're living in.
three, how do you decide if something is just too hard, just too much?
four, and what of the grass? and the darkness? and love? and happiness? and stars?
five, i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you
six, if you pull out or imagine a picture of you as a tyke, 3 or 4, what would you say? apologize for? get them excited about? promise? undo?

then there's things like this:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1379336189055386/
and this:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordeopenlettertomarydaly.html
and a cat at my calf
papers spread
goosebumps
shoulders hunched
let's dance, shall we?
let's dance
let's dance