State of the Union on the Brain

State of the Union on the Brain:

When our fragile concrete views of the world shift and we are left with a "desire for community, self-esteem, a greater voice in decision-making, and an aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction" and letters to the US President just don't seem to be gettin' through. We are told by the President to continue to be resilient, continue to have the spirit of hopefulness and decency. We are reminded that despite hardship our unions are strong and we have an American government which embodies our spirit. To which I respond, "Really!?" followed with a remix of lyrics,

"Darkness is a harsh term don't you think
Yet it dominates the things I see
It seems that all my bridges have been burned
But you say 'That's exactly how this grace thing works’
It's not the long walk home that will change this heart
But the welcome I receive with every start.

Roll away your stone I will roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find
Don't leave me alone at this time
For I am afraid of what I will discover inside

You told me that I wouldn't find a home
Beneath the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal
And all the while my character it steals

Spare me your judgments and spare me your dreams
Cause recently mine have been tearing my seams
I sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind
Alone in the wind and the rain you left me
It's getting dark darling, too dark to see
And I'm on my knees, and your faith in shreds, it seems

But (you tell me) plant your hope with good seeds
Don't cover yourself with thistle and weeds
Rain down, rain down on me
Look over your hills and be still
The sky above us shoots to kill
Rain down, rain down on me

I begged you to hear me, there's more than flesh and bones
Let the dead bury the dead, they will come out in droves
But take the spade from my hands and fill in the holes you've made

But I will hold on
I will hold on hope"

This is one of the one hundred parties to be had.

Today on the day of January 27, 2010

this blog is its memoir

The question has been raised

"Next year you have 101 then?"

To which I say,

"Nope, not again until she is

two-hundred and ten

then I will celebrate again.

This time from a grander view."

He says, "Ah That'll be some good going, darlin'

Yes. A grander view

underneath er?"

"Is that where heaven is?" says I.

"Yup. Portland, Oregon.

Underneath a 100 year old home.

Don't you read the bloody bible?

its pretty clear" says He.

She's the tamer of ants
the killer of mice
Water creeps down my blinds

Voice and instrument of choice?
She longs to be a cello
making your heart yearn
And she will be a pianist
pulling moss from the trunks
of our bodies
in healing remedies
learned from her father

She claims our dad's would get along
to which I agree.
Pop will take him drift boating
Pop will fish
Dad will take turns
rowing.

There are nights when I am drinking wine, listening to Zoe play the cello while doing yoga on the floor in my long johns those are the nights that I wish was a ballerina, but it has been warned that it is best that I am not, because I would be full of myself and have a eating disorder. So I resign to the presence of reality: I take care of people when they are ill, I study the propaganda of a liberal college all the while trying to live more then I work. I whisper to the ants and shout death threats at the mice…well at least I did a few weeks ago. Two fatalities have since been which has temporary satiated my appetite to kill all the four legged ballsie creatures that use to run across my kitchen floor and wake me up in the night.

A few days later:
Lhasa died 5 fays ago
she was 37
breast cancer.
And today I find myself
a bit altered by that fact,
altered that this time last year I did not know
the weather.
Whether the tumor in my breast was cancerous or not
for almost 4 months
tick
tick
tick
February Sixth
I had surgery and somewhere between then and the
eleventh not the seventh day did the Lord say it was good.

I heard of Lhasa's death 2 days ago and today she is with me,
she is singing from my kitchen as all the beautiful of the night do.
No 1 else is here and I feel lonely,
you are at work and today I had fantasies
And you, where are you, you are with your sister
drinking red wine.
And I am here on the floor again
doing yoga, drinking red wine, trying to enjoy
my solitude once again
as I so often do, yet
Tonight I wan a Companion
outside my Mind.

But what is unsaid

Getting’ a little bit more absentminded by the minute
I can’t tell if it is fear or call
It is said that I make a better lover
Then husband or wife
But want would I know of Love.
Love, what is that? I have never stepped
Off of this pier
“I could step
Off of this pier but---
I have shit to do
And an appointment on Tuesday”

I didn’t go to the gym today
I sat on my ass and wrote
A grand final.
Today I brought together the abstract
Inkblots
Into linear, dimensional
Ba ba black
Andwhitelikeme
Salt and pepper.
Today I told you I would bare you a child
If
I could leave it to your care

We both know it would not work for
that is what we believe
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Yet I crush you and like you
Find intimacy in you
It is a two for one deal and I need to settle down before you run away
But know, no, know
it is okay, for I am not asking anything of you except for a distant
Amity
Because if you came near or outright expressed similarly I would be tracing my
Backwards steps
Fucked up? Or does it suit us? Maybe, it is a a a a ah aa all relative.

Maggie, Maggie
“I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more.
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more.”
There is a broom above my window
And I am about to come clean off your head
She is blond and gorgeous and sick of all the men wanting brunettes
She is ready to dye her hair brown
To which I wholeheartedly dismiss, “No!
You come here and be the sun which shines
And I will be the Moon! Agree!? Agreed.”
You love me and want to know the nooks of my life
Which I honor in the final seconds of our conversation
“I have a crush on a girl.”
Off to Coasta Rica you are, next month Mexico
February Nepal
March Portland?
Do I need to remind you of the $10,000 bonus
Mind you it is taxed
But count me part of the package
My friend
I know there are days when we know strangers
Better then our friends
But I like tulips
And I will give you roses
My friend
And I will know you better then strangers
And you will know me
Besides, there is a wall across from my house
That needs graffiti’d
Lets boycott Wal-Mart
Where do we get the tools
To paint alternative ways of life
I don’t know but
“La Otra Campana
Camina Sin Mana”
Asking we walk
Zapatisa!

Why do you get on your toes when you do the dishes,
Mess around your sink?
Are you strengthening your calves
Or does it have to do with a wish
Wishin’ you were
“…a little bit talla’
wish you were a baller
wish you had a hat
And a bat…”
Know, no, know
that I like to be your reach
But am also cool if you need to get a stool of
Self-determination and self-governance
For I do the same
I do the same

“do you want to go get high
the Mercury is parked outside”

As a poet, self identified or not
Do you share freshly written
Poetry or do you generally
Sit on it until it is mere fact
not
Raw and unprocessed?
I wait.
For months
Until I am able to disassociate and speak of it
As distant past of which I have learned
Loved
Experienced
No longer
Here
now
Me
Today
Though if you take it in the way I intent to deliver it
There is nothing to fear because I mean nothing different then
What I have ventured
Like we have agreed upon before
Honesty is hot
I believe honesty is not only is in what is said
But what is unsaid
So in order to live what I believe
There she is
Nothing more, nothing less

Sometimes I wonder if it is you or me that I am medicating-
After this line I will stop
Hurry, hurry before you forget
Sometimes I wonder if it is you or me that I am medicating-
Rose moans in her bed, morphine slips under her tongue
26 and dying, cancer
soundtrack provided
Sometimes I wonder if it is you or me that I am medicating-
You would do the night shift, insomnia helps
You didn’t like how robotic and detached you became
I can still feel the yarn twirled around my finger and I feel like
I need to through a stitch but I am writing now
Sometimes I wonder if it is you or me that I am medicating-
with this morphine.
As Roses lie in their beds

I have always hated the saying "she/he lost the battle"
This is not a fucking battle
And more importantly
Death is no loss
but gain

Maybe I should preface this...but I won't

To denial the capacity
Of which I,
You
Affect me, affect the world and child around you.

I sit and stew a judgment of your lack of responsibility
As I mirror your image
A mimic of your body
While uttering a breath of condemnation of your action

Foolishly made poor decisions
Intimacy between two peoples connection of desires and dreams
Lays way for tears of my love, my friend
And here I sit trying to process the aftermath of thoughtlessness and feel good decisions

To not take into account the boundaries which must lay way
To not respect enough the person that you claim to like and sign off letters with a
x.
To your door he hobbles broken foot and soon to be broken and disenchanted heart and spirit, for yet another failed relationship

Lord, might you, might you show me Your Word
You say, “unfaithful concubine, once pursued and taken to a city center.”
Temporarily rendered unharmed until
You come to the door demanding to have sex with my husband
But instead my host offers you his virgin daughter and me
You don’t want me but you take me and rape me
As I stumble home, I lay on the doorstep and die.
And you my husband, all you say as I lay at your doorstep
My cunt bleeding, from repeated entry of another’s decision, another’s action
And you my husband, all you say as I lay at your foot dead
Is, “Get up, let us go.”
But to this, to this I do not reply, I will not reply

You cut me to pieces and finally
Finally my wings spread and I am the eagle, the dove I always prayed to be
As I lay as a child in the log home of my parent’s American Dream

You riddle me with your words
And play with my thoughts
And you question my confidence?
To speak to me, to taught to me with such a thin red line
The higher I hold you the farther you are shattered and dismantled

The musk of the evening, blurs your face
You step to close and I will slam the door in your face

Is that all you heard?
Did you not hear me speak of the old man that took you in and gave you everything you need?
Did you not hear about the foreigners sitting in the city center with no place to lay their head?
The evil man’s decision is not the moral of the story. Did you not hear what I said?
Why did I give you a verse of the taking in of strangers, providing them with everything that they need?

You really are a beautiful writer you say with such grace and maturity
And all I can think with a sigh of relief is thank you, thank you for loving me beyond this curse, this curse of a look, of happiness and passion
I don’t really know what to say anymore
I am exhausted
Like Brooke’s housemate Kristen
I wander from room to room speaking to myself,
“I don’t know”
Shaking my head “I don’t know” I say
You don’t know what Kristen?
Pocket full of demons
It is just one of those days,
Those days, those days when you knock Kool-Aid all over you Bible, your computer and
hot dog.
Those days when you reach for the onions and your neck displace itself to drop you to your knees.
Those days when you drive to a meeting that meets every week, well that is
except for this week.
Those days when you mend and understand, and are forgiven and are redeemed by your dear friend.
Those days when I cry in your camera wishing to just be left alone,
You tell me you wish you could hold me and I shake my head saying to myself
I just want to be left alone
But I like you.
Those days when the air is blue, fresh and crisp
Those days when you ace your final
Those days when you begin to recognize your fallibility and inability to stand of virtue
Yes,
One of those days.

I hope that if and when
I come from this womb with my arm raised above my head,
As if to symbol Up up up up up,
You would do me a favor and accept that from this womb
A child not be birthed.
Would you do me a favor of acceptance of my stance
For if I do not marry I remain King and Queen
Where and when I was to marry I would be but a Queen

Today I found that the hardest part of change is and continues to be
You, me, we not accepting us, it, me, him or her.

I wander from room to room spouting off verses in my mind
I could stop write and record but-
I continue to move, to live, to breath

I do beginnings
Skipping the pages in between
Before you have room to exhale you find I am at the end
While you form, “Once upon a time” with your lips
and we think it is “The End”
The old man and the witch
coat the magic
“Why chocolate?” asks the Spaniard
“It helps it go down,” says the old man
Compressed from your abdomen
“Trrruuueeee lllloooovvvveee.”

The photo freezes and I see the dawn

As I draw symbols of Stillness and Healing in your hand

We found ourselves (by losing ourselves)
transcending time.
Sheltered
by our little bubble
we walked,
locked, key in whole.
I remember

your side glances,
your shyness that came
a pint into the pitcher of Porter
we democratically elected
as our beverage of choice.

You know the silver lining
we find around clouds?
I have seen it
resting on your neck,
and sometimes
I watch you reach for it,
fingering
your brothers pendant,
Once lost
in the practice
of "friendly fire."
Your soldier's swept
the house clean
to find you in the stall
falling to the floor after a fight.

I wonder if I was a bit more queer and
you had a bit more belief in it working
out, if we would both be in a space
where we would not only love
each others minds.
One of the reasons I love

Gustav Klimts paintings is in
the way he paints womens skin
The way he captures white,
the color which houses all the colors.
"Have I told you your skin does that?"
"No."
"Well it does Darlin', it does."

I see pinks and blues
yellows and hints of oranges
bits of brown with pintches of purple
and yes garnishes of green.
As I mentioned before-

Spiced to Taste.

As If Our Lives Depended On It,
Ivy