Free & Clear ...

You can always run away.

Just one more time—

                                         Like when your family moved,

                                              Miles beyond your reputation.

                      You worked out every day,

                      Until “Remember me?” made her eyes go wide.

                            “I didn’t recognize—you look…different.”

You swallowed spotted fungi & paper tabs,

Then crawled to the bathroom, sucking air as loud as an ocean cave,

Looked over the sink and introduced yourself:

          “That’s an alien; that’s an animal. I don’t think we’ve ever met.

            I. Am. Thisss.         {breathe} Are you too?

                                               Heh—right on.”

           You left a relationship,

                     heart flaking scabs, identity half-custody, soul geriatric,

                               And so dazedly climbed somewhere stinging hot/deadly high,

                               here traded smiles with another sweat-salted pair of cheeks and

                     remembered “Wait, I’m still 23.”

                               You drank numb your anxieties,

                               Until every moment not drunk was a buzzing tide-foam

                                         of “OhshitOhShitOhSHIIIT…”

                                         incoming.

                                                   You ate only vegetables and meditated,

                                                              Until every moment was Simple, still—

                                but that was unfamiliar, weirdly peaceful, lacking monsters, SO!

                 You went downtown and got in a fist-fight,

                  started talking politics and debating religion,

                          Until everything was a war of Right and Wrong.

You shaved, grew a beard, shaved again, ate bacon-wrapped IPAs,

ran off that bouncing sub-naval skin purse,

           Until you didn’t care what anyone thought,

           as long as you liked you—

                     and you weren’t 23 | or even 32 |anymore.

You can always run away,

Just one more time—

But what if?

What if you were free & clear?

Can you even imagine

Being fully you?

In every direction:

                                There is no kiss long enough,

                                       No sunset orange bold enough,

                                No loud laugh limb-jiggling violently enough

to convey

Everything in you, at any moment, conscious or auto-driven,

with and through the

once-you/will-you…

So pick a day.

Someone will call you crazy.

Someone will put you in jail.

Someone will laugh “that’s refreshing”

And if no one posts your bail…

           At least you were real.

You’ll sit on the cold floor.

Slow down all your dream wheels to nothing.

And feel.

—just one more time.

Sonny...

Sonny Liston. American boxing titan. He stood up for himself, took care of those around him. The public didn't like his brutish power or his desperate criminal past. So they made it his future, his fate, and his death. In private, with trusted friends or children or his wife, he was warm and gentle, smart and humble. May 1932 (Sand Slough, Arkansas) - December 1970 (Las Vegas, Nevada).

I don't look at you until I have to,

                                                             and then I use both hands.

On predators with gloves, or microphones.

                                                                          I wear scars on my back

                                                                        From when father thrashed

                                                                                   So I'd pull his plow.

Look at me now.

                                                           I rode tracks to another city

                                                                 at 13, on my own.

                                                 Where kids laugh at me,

                                                       quiet and solid—

dwarfing books.

                  Thugs and thieves smile at me.

                                  They like

                     my looks.

                                                                For God, I am rooted in the ground.

                                                      Jab a left,                                    throw a right:

                                               Press the air,                                    make them sway.

                                          Then hard stares,                       tight jaws

                                           all go soft.

                                            If I just lean into them

                                           in this quiet, honest way.

                                                                                              You don't trust me,

                                                               fixed on owning my path to survive.

                                                                                   Don't like me either,

  sliding home with                                          both hands on the prize.

But I am your champion:

                        I rejoice at                         unbroken children.

                                  I take                  the policeman's gun.

                                    Her                  gentle man.

                                Your              outcast son.

A Moment of Silence to Breathe ...

after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many more, and the uprisings sweeping across the country ~ 2020 June 2 (also pictured: Emmett Till, Tamir Rice, Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Geraldo Lunas Campos)

It is a deeply human, and valid, response:

To feel pain, in our bodies, for others' pain;

To feel fear, at witnessing the mouth → fist disconnect

Of those whom we most desire to trust

(our neighbors, peace officers, national leaders);

And to feel anger for others' experiences of unnecessary loss.

It is understandable that people are rising up,

Using the language of riots where simple and direct words

Have proven time and again to be too-little, too-late

In that dire moment (“I can't breathe,” “I'm unarmed,”

“I am not who you imagined”):

So bodies and voices are amassing before the next ___ ,

Desperate to protect

Citizens we do not know yet

From becoming more unwilling martyrs:

Who mark on the road

How unsafely far we'll need to go

From where we are to where our cities look

Truly by and for us: our faces in the halls of power;

Our alarm calls answered before they fall silent

On our streets, in our homes.

Let us take a moment of silence

Together, in the midst of this

Terrifying turbulence—

And breathe.