Short Poems: "you and i" ... (Nayyirah Waheed spur)

every day begins

by crushing things:

i want you this much—

bitter,

need you this much—

cream,

am you this much—

sweetsour,

closing eyes, and 

swallowing.

– breakfast

                                                                           *

every time

i shout “you are wrong”

louder, to cross the distance

i am laying out between

our breaths.

– wrong

                                                 *

now is the time

to cease breathing,

to hold nothing,

and un-learn:

grasping makes 

a closed-empty hand;

feeling makes 

a calm-growing wave,

knowing 

that all pulsing cells 

are such—

liquid.

– swim

                              *

i can only pretend 

every haircut 

is not 

also the same dream

that i am peeling away 

this wrinkle-rust coat of age

to be left with 

nothing but lessons,

a pale-fresh skin.

– shaving

                                      *

i feel 

fingertips 

laying

loose arms 

across my back,

melting down-and-out 

every hard word (and its opposite), 

every tight wish (and its muscle), until i am 

one simple thing again: a bubble, 

bound to (and rising from) 

a universe.

– hug

Insane and beautiful ...

His name             was tank.

A tortoise               who always

                        Silently knew

What he          was doing.

    And he was right;

     I looked it up,

  One night when I

  Was missing him.

The Wildlife page

Said—          The male tortoise

                     May go years without

                         Encountering a female.

                But when one comes near,

                            The males can smell her

                            From miles away, and will

                            All converge at the spot,

                     Battling and shell-hooking,

                Shoveling and flipping one another;

                     Dying upended as their lungs collapse

                        Under their body organs, or else

                      Finally entering her: to grunt

                             That wordless song “your body

                      Calls my body to move this way”

                      As each would have practiced

                 On wet rocks. And the female

                  Is thinking quietly, we imagine,

            This is not so pleasant as the first

                    Fifteen times today.

                          *

I bought Tank in a store,

Where they kept males

Together, lit calm blue

And separated by thirty-six

Inches                    (not miles) from

females,             lit pale-red. Constantly,

The               males tried to break free,

                            And every so often

      Bashed a hole and ran wild—

    Never for the daylight, just

       For the pale-red light

“Your body calls my body...”

              *

             When I brought him home,

          For the first few weeks,

              I found him masturbating

                        Along his water bowl.

                          But then he set in to his

                                    Desert mode. And just ate

                                             Melon rinds, moved dirt,

                                   And traded shade with sun

                                Like an expert thermostat.

                                           When he could see the hills,

                                                        He would break out, so we

                                               Upgraded to wood fencing.

*

                                        And then he seemed accepting

                                               Of the bounded obstacle course

                                                  And hut and water bowl. Years

                                               Of seemed. Then, one

                                           Watermelon season, I came

                                                 With a gift-bucket of rinds

                                                And found a bashed,

                                                    Splintered hole.

                                                          Did he see a hill,

                                      Or smell her in the wind?

                                                I won't guess;

                                              I'll never know.

*    *      *

                   I went back into

My box, listened to

Dance music, read

A romance,

Dreamt of rioters

Bashing on a

Pet shop latch:

Insane and beautiful.

The patch-up ...

Let me be very clear,                                 again,

about the nature of                    my apology:

I never said that I am perfect,

but I do intend things flawlessly.

I didn't want to           come to                              this day:

with this habit of anxiousness          in my chest,

seeing cycles of discontent in your cheeks—

an absence of passion, presence, rest.

And I did intend, in my time               with you,

to be kind and loving, fair and    open.

But I still have feelings; they hit me first,

before I ever imagine your          hopes and

worries, your wants and frustrations. Now

it took you getting really, violently mad

to finally tell me straight what you      wanted,

and show it in your face. And for that        I'm glad.

I'm glad we stayed in, and talked lying down

without opening eyes, just speaking          on breaths:

too tired for anything other than                         honesty;

beyond redacted histories and tricking                tests,

just our own values, aims, and the places        where

they meet. It felt like a first encounter  affair.

Like, “Hi— what's your name?” 

                                 Where a cautious

smile cleanses like lemon 

                                   oil, sage 

                                               in the air.

FOUND POEM: High School Writers, 7AM ...

{Video Here - click.}

Recently, I got to play 'Meet-the-Author' at Mira Costa HS, with a group of AP English students who've been reading my blog. This was my fourth time, talking shop with Alan's classes. These conversations always go dependably in directions I do not expect, pulling words out of me that I hardly recognize as my own: brilliant young minds, like an airy stack of leaves, igniting a damp log. This was a good morning. – 2017 March 31

~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~ * POEM 1 * ~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~

“What do you do when you get stuck—

like writer's block? Do you ever?”

Oh, yeah: Anybody who wants to say something and is not ready—

It's the Five-year-old Frustration Phenomenon: like—

“I really have something to say!

And I do not have the tools to communicate it right now.”

My advice for writer's block is:

Get out of your head, get into your body.

If you do yoga, do yoga;

if you like hikes, get out into nature;

I went out for a barefoot walk at 11:30 at night

and found a tree that looked really lonely,

and just hugged it for a while (

trees need love to).

And THAAAT—that centering—

that time when you fall into silence and just work:

you listen to your breath,

you realize that you are this miraculous pulsing thing...

Get into that for a while,

and your “writer's block” will disappear.

~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~ * POEM 2 * ~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~

“What's your favorite media to consume?”

Music? Simon and Garfunkle—

lyrics are really important to me;

that ruins a lot of music for me.

Clubs are, hellish for me:

you walk in, it's like—

“Mm-ch / Mm-ch / Mm-ch /

Shots! Shots! Shots! Everybooodyyy!!'

Oh.

Couldn't you have at least listed

three types of shots?

~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~ * POEM 3 * ~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~

“I guess my question is just like, Humor?

Because I feel like most people who are first trying to get out in the creative path, are trying to be very think-y and are very isolated and, trying to be Serious?”

Yeah. I wish I were funnier.

I think the Dalai Lama is hilarious; that's sort of my bar.

If at some point I can get to the point

where I'm just spontaneously laughing at things,

and making other people laugh—because they're happy—

that would be great.

Humor is a really important educational tool;

it's a test of the synchrony between you and your audience:

You can be serious, and

if somebody doesn't get your idea,

you can be like,

“Ooh! Yeah! I'm too good for you, blabla-Bla-bla-bla'”—

But if you make a joke and no one laughs at it?

You can't say,

“Well, that's because I'm too funny.”

[laughter]

No! It's because your joke sucked.

So—that's the next stage, for me.

~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~ * POEM 4 * ~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~

“What do you believe happens after death?”

Well, I think about that the same way I think about vegetarianism;

that these dividing lines that people put between

life, and death, and me, and you,

are—to a certain extent—fictitious.

Now, of course, if I go like this [finger-flicks her forearm],

I didn't feel that; you felt that.

Right?

But that's just because you happen to be the collection of nerves that are next to me.

That doesn't mean that we aren't sharing the same air.

And at some point I'm drinking whatever you're giving off.

We share everything.

And when you think about that,

then what is death?

It's the dissolution of the current collection of elements that you are,

and you're passing them on to other things:

it's your final donation.

So—but people ask,

“What happens to your 'self'? What happens to your thoughts? What happens—?”

Well: tell me any thought you've ever had

that is external to your senses.

Tell me about LOVE,

without telling me how it makes you feel like—

like the weight of the world is lifted off of you and your lungs are in free-fall.

Right? You can't.

Tell me about HATE

without talking about rising blood-pressure and the narrowing of focus.

You can't.

Everything is bounded by our physical experiences,

so when your body goes? Everything goes.

And that's something to make peace with.

And I think the fact that it's a donation,

makes me more happy about letting it go.

Because I've seen some pretty cool earthworms in my day …

they know their place, and they do good things.

And if I can be fuel for an earthworm?

I'm alright with that being my final legacy.

~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~ * POEM 5 * ~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~

“What's your spirit animal?”

I've been told a pit-bull.

“I don't know if I see that.” [echoes of agreement]

Okay, I'm sorry—maybe we should open this up: What is my spirit animal?

“If a bird and a dog had a love-child, it would be you:

like, a falcon and a lab.” [echoes of “Yeah”]

“I was just gonna go with some sort of puppy—

something super playful and vibrant.”

Alright.

“Maybe, like, a pit-bull with a jet-pack.”

~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~ * POEM 6 * ~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~

I am a 33-year-old; you are young high schoolers, who I was…

is there anything you want to know

about what's going to be happening to you

in the next 15 years?

“You seem very content with yourself—

what is the most important thing, in achieving that state?”

Recognize that Hatred, and Bitterness,

and all of those other negative emotions

are not laser-beams; they are ATOM BOMBS:

you think you can be angry at another person

without being angry at yourself—

that is bullshit;

you think you can hate one person

and love another person—

that is bullshit.

If you build love, you will have love;

if you build peace, you will have peace.

If you build complaints and excuses,

your mind will be filled with

complaints and excuses—

and it will make your life SAD.

Find the CONNECTION you have

with the people who irritate you;

find the connection you have

with your sandwich;

find the connection you have

with tables … [touches a table]

This used to in the ground, in a mountain, on a tree somewhere.

Appreciate everything that is around you, and has been brought.

And realize that [one finger] you owe nothing,

[two finger] you deserve nothing—

“You are imagining you owe

You are dreaming you deserve”:

We are here.

And that's like a small miracle.

And if you just keep your mind on that,

you will start feeling very PEACEFUL—

because there's no pressure on you:

if you just sit there, in that chair, and don't hurt people?

You're doing alright.

“Leave things as good as you found it; everything else is extra credit.”

That's one of my life principles.

Slave moon heart egg...

Some places,

I'm held in the cuffs

of my image: it's either

“Same ol' Billy” or “Billy

trying to break free?”

At some point, people

decide they're done

getting to know

the real me.

So then I

shave my head. I

get a tat. Quit my job

and change my religion.

Just to keep my oxygen

on. And so people turn to

equivocating: “You're

just going through

a hard time.

You'll

find your

self again.” Myself.

Was also 3, and 13; then

people asked what my dreams

were, what I wanted to be. Then

I felt like a cradled egg, warm in a

nest, stretching out my walls, barely

contained, forthcoming.   At   some

point, people wrote  down  my   ever-

changing answer,   saying,    “We

need to call you 'doctor' or 'pilot',

'soldier' or—or hell, even

'janitor.' We could say

that with a sorry

brow,

and still love you.”

Love? Me? Wrap your

arms around this: I've kissed

more faces, made more mistakes,

missed more   passing    strangers,

felt more moments of alive than I

could ever catch anyone up on. People

will never see but the crescent moon

of me. Nor I of them: to know

is to never stop re-tracing the

figure; to love is to pause

and be one with that

glowing edge.

The sin of giving...

Woke up,

Couldn't move my

Neck. It's. Still a little stiff.           Well,

                                                     I rub Your back always.

                                             So I Wonder if you Will

                                        Rub my neck Today,

                              If  I can sit still

For that Kindness: 

giving's Been, in A way,

Its own kind of

Wall, and Blindness. 

For I've got So 

good–at–Pouring

That taking in

Feels strange,

And if I'm giving 

more than

You've asked

Of me...                                       well, 

                                                   then Me is Resisting change.

                                               And that Is 

                                           its own kind Of self-

                                     ishness. And

That is

It's own kind

Of Greed.

And that is 

its Own kind Of 

vine-clingy evil:

That I Have to 

lay claim to

Your need.

And if 

someone should

Challenge

                                    My ways

                                  Or my motives, I

                              Mortar

                         Them: “Look how

                  I bleed!”

(I feel my neck.   Stiff as 

Your back. We all 

bleed.)