kindness

"Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
Only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say

'it is I you have been looking for',
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend."

~Naomi Shihab Nye

my red hat is now also dead

sadly it was destroyed at the cleaners with a chemical solvent we probably shouldn't use anymore. and yes, i loved this hat enough to send it out for cleaning; so you see my pain is deep. let's hope the new year brings me more of a whatever color thumb keeps things alive. here's hoping...

a haze on your house!

a haze on your house! this must be the hex put on me today with the rain pouring and the apartment steamy from my post-war pipes, all i want to do is read poetry in silk and doze in a certain someone's arms. days like this should be built into the schedule. i truly believe they are good for the soul and yet, why, oh why, do i have this guilt about that infernal tug of work and no play always reaping at my door. i have decided today that the culprit is culture moving too far beyond people to be really ours any more. and yet i abet you to reach the infernal light at the end of the tunnel. for shame.

my orchid died

sadly, my orchid has died. this is truly a shame for two reasons: 1) it was a gansta' of love and life purchased for only $8 at a produce warehouse. it lasted through being plastic wrapped, denied water, wasting away forgotten in a locked room for two weeks, taking an interminable car ride sideways, a bowl transfer, and my city's smog ridden urban atmosphere. regardless of all that this little bugger thrived for several months and showed all signs of settling into life as my house plant. 2) i may have unconsciously focused all my secret hopes about being about to keep a living thing alive on this particular little plant thereby disproving my interminable black thumb. but alas, i suppose it is proven and my thumb is definitively black. this reminds me sadly of my reptile stint in high school when a best friend named bug gave me a pet lizard which i promptly killed and then proceeded to replace 6 times-in an attempt to not be a harbinger of death and simultaneously protect my friend's feelings-before I finally gave up. then i was just left with a tank full of uneaten crickets, but death eventually befell them as well. so sad.

regardless, let us all take a moment to respect my gansta orchid and pour one out for him/her. he/she will be missed. and not soon replaced both out of respect for the dead and a lack of the expendible income that makes $4o NYC orchids a responsible purchase. R.I.P. my love.

what if love...

what if i love soft-boiled eggs, new socks, the smell of frozen coffee when you first open the can, babies that are not my own like they are my own, toast with cream cheese and cayenne pepper, beautiful books and just being near beautiful books even when i cannot find the time to read them, the way he smells like warm laundry, and velvet slippers that pad when i walk. what if i love quill pens even though they are not sensible and red lipstick when i am sad? how about a tray of perfumes when i only ever use one and a collection of rosaries when one doesn't really need beads to say prayers or sweet figs that burst on your lips and flea markets finds that look too loved to survive...who am i if i love these things?

in train windows

in train windows

i am beautiful

there i live a life

of dappled light

with rugged shoes

and ubiquitous gowns

tattered sofas and

even more tattered books

where there is never not

an occasion for red lipstick

and love

hell cat and limited literacy

there is a homeless cat in my neighborhood, a completely unironically black and mangy one, that stalks the streets at nights looking for my community's contraband roosters to duel with and then dine on. while i am already itchy and reclusive near cats, this one makes me even more likely to scour my skin after our paths cross, due in no small part- i am sure- to the fact that we have met twice while walking under ladders. i cannot imagine what a double-whammy of superstitious meetings does for the witchy world but i cannot imagine it would be good for my karma-if karmas and superstitions can ever intersect in some sort of netherworld.

all of this though is a precursor to the gutural reaction i have when hell cat cries at night. this is the first cat cry i have ever heard that sounds like it has centuries of pain behind it and rings clearly up to my fourth floor windows. it scares the shit out of me and then makes me fear for the things i might lose. and that one possibility closest to my heart right now is reading. it is reading for the sake of reading and picking up a beautiful book on a rainy day and settling into it and letting it settle into me. and i fear right now that the masses of work i have brought upon myself for the sake of a degree that is still so far from being a light at the end of the tunnel that i have not even gotten to the point where i can see the %*(&)*)! tunnel will never subside. the point at which i can pick up a book, press it against me, and read it in a day or so seem so far gone right now, that sometimes, late at night, i think i understand hell cat's call.

grappling with the me of me

i am grappling with the me of me, wondering why i do not feel like myself lately when myself is always myself, is it not? it must be. and yet i think often of being lost and finding my way back to me and yet i wonder what does that mean i am now? who do i think i am? how do you go on a search for the self when the self is here for all intents and purposes? nobody really knows i am gone so i am i still me if i still have all outward signs of me? or am i just really good at performing myself?

3 a.m.: the dark soul of midnight.

i hate the three a.m. fight. i hate the blurry nature of the beast that lets you talk in circles but will not let the anger subside. i hate that all you can hear are the awful city sounds like banging pipes, glass breaking on the street below, hell cat in the alley. At three a.m. there are no children laughing, or good-natured catcalls, or dominoes clacking on the sidewalk tables. There is only hatred and quiet. That awful combination that breeds nothing but more of its sad sad self. I hate the night air filled with the sugarplum dreams i should be having swirling around me mocking me, taunting, saying, "You started this. You started this. You."

foucault

i am of the personal opinion that one should not read Foucault before bed unless one desires random, almost horrifyingly comical dreams about having sex with cousins. and giraffes. i'm just saying.

oh onions...

...you motherfuckers.

conversations with You

True Story.

So I am sitting here eating my angel hair when I decide to look up my future sofa online and check around for better prices, colors etc. because thriftyness is important in this global market economy. I see one that I like and go to check for the proper measurements on my Dream Living Room Diagram, the one that has been posted on the fridge the entire 11 months that was have lived here. But alas it is gone.

This is what ensued:

"Honey, have you seen my yellow Dream Living Room Diagram? It was on the fridge."

"I don't know; did it fall off?"

"Possibly; did you put it somewhere else?"

"Well, did you label it?"

(!?!) "No."

"Then it wasn't like a real thing right?"

"I mean, it had a giant diagram of our living room on it."
(I might have even doodled hearts in the top corner-don't judge.)

"If that fell then I would have thrown it out because that does not factor into what I consider to be my realm of real things."

What the F*&%?
Love you.

see how you fare...

take a grammar quiz today. see how you fare.
say nothing of my capitalization or i will banish you to the blog corner with a digital dunce cap.
as my mother says, "I will do it, young man. Beware."

happy punctuating,

the literate wor(l)d

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

Please Help

Emergency Action Item: Help us get the EARLY Act passed! The Breast Cancer Education and Awareness Requires Learning Young Act of 2009 (EARLY Act) HR 1740 was introduced by Representative Wasserman (D-FL), a young breast cancer survivor who carries a BRCA2 mutation. This bill has almost 200 Cosponsors. The EARLY Act calls for a nationwide campaign targeting women under 40 and their doctors. The Act is unique in its goal of identifying those with a predisposition to heightened prevalence of breast cancer- due to ethnic background, genetic mutations such as BRCA1/2 or other risk factors-encouraging genetic counseling for those in high-risk groups. The EARLY Act includes broad-reaching public and healthcare professional education campaigns, prevention research, and additional support for young women diagnosed with breast cancer. We need your help now! Send a letter to your Senators and House Representative. Visit our advocacy page for instructions and sample letters to send to your senators, representatives, and to the media! http://www.facingourrisk.org/advocacy/current_action_items.html Warm Regards, Sue Friedman FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered

the crash that is the dance

Some nights the humanity of the subway is enough to make me cry, to make with pulse with the emotions of this city. It is unlikely other places to get onto a bus and feel the earnest, urging beat of other people, but in this place on this night it is what seems right in the world. The night is balmy and bright and I was lucky enough to spend the day in the company of people I just love and the heart of this city does not scare me tonight. I want only to be a part of it. To have city dirt in my hair and and an ache in my feet and the lightest dash of sweat across my back. It is a wholesome feeling-not at all like mom's oatmeal cookies, if my mother made oatmeal cookies-much more like a perfectly synchronized swimming routine between yourself and the tidal wave above you until you look up and let go and realize it the crash that is the beautiful dance.

Lady in the Street

I may be a lady in the street and a freak in the bed,
however, if you talk to me on the street,
like a freak, you will never get me in bed.
FYI.

a woman with secrets

If I am a woman with secrets does that mean I am no woman at all?

Some might say that it means I have come into my own. But why? Why is the lie more honest than the truth? Are we really that far removed from the truth as a whole that it has now fallen into the realm of the surreal? Is the latch onto truth with all its messiness is so intimidating we avoid it so completely? And why if the lies are not mine do I feel they affect my womanhood so completely?
Maybe it is the pain that has altered my womanhood-or that has made me a woman. I do not know-today I feel there are no answers, only questions. Let me know if you have any of either.

i am from poems: the world in egocentric verse

the surface of me i am from the mother of all mothers and the grandmother of them all as well i am from the father who's work will never wash off his skin i am from books in corners, books in stairwells, books read under covers 'til dawn i am from so many sisters radiating laughter and so many brothers vibrating with brotherliness i am from meatballs, meatballs, meatballs with a side of spaghetti, please i am from walls torn down to make more space for more babies i am from the scent of her musk despised on anyone else i am from noise always always and people everywhere