Fast and Slow Down

you step out into the day
and you're not running behind
so those extra minutes find things
graffiti, bodegas, and gardens
grinning back at you and saying
thank you for seeing me

you go somewhere brand new
do something you've been meaning to do
and are not washed with fear
instead you feel lighter
and sit in that feeling
of why did this weigh on me

you come home for the first time
in a long time
to an empty house
your belongings just how you left them
and you don't feel abandoned
you feel like you belong to yourself

the rest of the night is yours
the small adjustments
you make to inanimate objects
the easy way you breathe
the easy way it could be
if you wake up a few minutes early

everyday I'm rustling

it is hands
and bodies
and the exchange of words
and currency
it is motion
and the crossing
and uncrossing
of hearts and legs
it is mountains
and rushing water
cattle pressed together
birds in cages
it is splendor and pain
of the bending
and unbending
of joints
it is the soft sound
a brush makes against a canvas
or as it untangles your hair
touching and changing the atmosphere
it is the past
pressing against the future
and the permanent fixture
the two make of our present
forever separating
there
from
here

Bent

I spilled my beer trying to hold on to that feeling
that two-fold feeling that validates everyone
and self
the feeling is hard to hold onto
comes while ordering a round
and leaves you as soon as the company is gone
if not before
when the glasses are empty
and everyone knows
no one else is buying the next one
but it's about more than drinks on the house
or coffee or ice or water for charity
it is self
it is everyone
wanting more
and working harder for it
honesty our only companion
whether anyone else knows it or not

another Fairy Tale story or Unfolding

I was naked under a gray silk dress
as the sun hit my skin like a ceremony
our likeness bent you towards me
you listened to my thoughts bend my voice

and you kept telling me you liked to look at me
but I always knew people liked to look at me
my breasts that bend my back
my back that bends with the memory of cheerleading

and my face is still young for my age
but old in its knowledge of unnatural bends
and everytime I notice someone looking at me
I want to bend out of view

but if you want to bend one knee for me
I will bend over backwards and collapse into you
and cry like I am crying now
I will unfold for you

the right place

yeah, I get sad and my friends are dying
we are all dying
and there is this cave
that was built to shelter the homeless
and everytime I walk by it
I think
we should save this place
for the hopeless
because all these pretty girls
and interesting boys
are crawling inside of themselves
while their parents put away money
for college and weddings and emergencies
but there all these violated girls
and all these battered boys
that enter into their adulthood
with the memories of rape and abuse
and some of them still find happiness
I guess, I think, you should just stop
stop feeling sorry for yourself
or at least, stop thinking
that your boredom is worth feeling sorry for
by God, or for you, by the right of intelligience
be glad for yourself
fate and circumstance were kind to you

-Kara

I love you with every piece of me.
There is nothing inside of me that doesn't want for your happiness.
You are a reason to confirm belief;
in love and beauty and hope.

I am yours.
Forever and for always.
With all of me.
-Kara

the ten minute poem

we made love quickly
with a chair leaned up against your door
because our bodies and hearts
were mad for each other
and I had always wanted to
lock a door with a chair
like I had seen in so many movies

you asked me not to move in such a way
said you wanted it to last longer
but there is only one way I could move
closer to you
as close as I had ever been
and you pulled away
and took my body with you
until I told you I couldn't take any more

we kissed and we laughed
and I let one of those thoughts
about one of those boys
that didn't know how to love me
crawl into my head as I fixed my hair in your mirror
and I could see you behind me
and a piece of me felt sorry for them
and closer to you

to: Robert Hass and Marilyn Monroe

everything I showed up to say
reminds me of my hands
the way they look old and young
and resemble charity

then you showed up with your elegant words
wearing your youth like a hangover wears last night
and I wished I was your age
or that I had spent last night with you

the book you were reading was one I had read
and everyone has read so I began our conversation
easily with a tease of the ending
all the while hoping you were a hopeful Holden

and some really smart and beautiful people have said
that no one can ever really love another person
but I'm sorry Robert Hass, I'm sorry Marilyn Monroe
I'm really in love with someone and he's in love with me

today I am going to do some good

some of us question
is there a good?
is there a bad?

and because I think like I do I say yes
thirteen

and I will qualify my answer with a question

what does the number 13 mean to you, exactly?

and I answer my own question with a prime statement

it is a lucky number and unlucky fridays

and lucky and Fridays are both a good thing to me

so you should believe in good and the number thirteen

it's just that simple

Comparisons

the only thing harder than
being the example
instead of the mirror
is being the example
instead of the reflection

she thought

as the light bounced around the room
and her lists begged at her, they begged
just be done
or just do one
in a voice that sounded like mine

before he died and when we were born

I was almost eighteen when I started smoking
my mother was almost the same age
when she had me

and my brother can drink with the best of them
so I guess it's ironic that mom was twenty one
when she had her first son

and five years before that
around the time most of us start driving
Kathryn Jolene found out about her first baby

that was back when she was fifteen
then she had a birthday and adoption papers were drawn
and somehow she still managed to drive Jacey home

abusive behavior vs. peaceful demonstration

sometimes
eight years
three months
twelve days
goes by
without
an end
and the
t.v.
just keeps
playing
the same
programs
over
again

other times you stump your toe once
and remember it forever

maybe everything I write ends so abruptly
because everything I don't understand
starts in the same manner

I don't know why the price of gasoline has risen
anymore than I know why we are burying children
in the same fields we dig for oil in

I don't do any research or raise any funds
for the country that bleached our fatigues
or the war that depleted our reserves
I just know that we are tired and we are spent

and I won't speak for you
but I will raise my voice higher than yours
when I say
I don't believe in war
and I don't believe in your kind of prosperity

I believe in people
I believe in wishbones
I believe in urgency
I believe in humility
and a freedom that permits admitting you are wrong
even after it exhausts the possibility of bowing out

gracefully