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

i made a new thing

fridgemagnetswithfriends.com - take a look and let me know if you'd change anything?
came about because i was daydreaming with some friends about the best way to figure out a mission statement for a project we're doing.

a thousand muted cries behind glass of pains,

screens of intoxication

The pigeon man runs his private circus in the sky above the clamor

of trains, frustrations, the small broken glasses of wine

and big fights for space

There is a general and confused impression that the rich are doing it all

right

as we all of us sit side by side, traveling together,

pardoning the indifferent fur coat

while shunning the one who has less

the one in the corner offering out his evening drink.

Dogs scrapping trying to find some relief

in an ecology of only human invention.

Pay a visit to the most difficult city to live in

only to stare at gold on the ceiling.