What a fork!
For every fork where they see black or white you will see a color wheel.
My forks and yours sit in fields, no asphalt, no cement
Just burgeoning crops, vin-yards, and fledgling seeds.
There are as many forks as there is willingness to feast.
The grapes and the guard
to kill or to eat?
Drink lots of water!
Pray that you will be able to drink from your roots
and that you know when you need to look up to the skies and call for rain.
Regulate, rule your vessels, run your queendoms,
your breath will sway your internal weather vane
and if you are parched, its ok to ask to be watered
find the right skies, pray. Channel your pain.
regulate when you can, co-regulate where you trust
When you realize that your roots are also feet
D I S C E R N; your role, the cast, which act, the door
D I S C E R N; between fears, anxieties, and cosplay.
our consent is necessary,
our presence mandatory,
What a wonder life can be
What wonder my eyes can breed.
A healthy compass is not a high horse.
and flexibility will not take you off course,
all we can do is build on the intersections,
hoping that enough space will show up between us,
bridging our divide, helping us see through each others’ eyes,
past echo chambers, click bait, and illusions of separation and its’ blunt force.
Polygons and constellation trump standards of operation
I run on horse-back into mountain trails and when the time is up:
I will leave,
light and loaded with sweet memories,
stories to foster imagination, to steward my seeds.
Neon Belly, Soft front
Knee on Belly, Strong back
I am liberated,
Having lived in an endless sea of currents
I have found a frame, a boat in my name
My boat hoists its sail
stows its anchor
knows its capacity
floats with candor
My horse
My boat
The chariots of my sun
Taking me where my soul can be known.
Where my love is recognized, where we don’t compromise on fun
Out beyond our enabled dysfunction, there is a field. I will meet you there.
I see the roles, the costumes, the fine leather, the distinct fineries,
It is a ball! You know your script, your moves, your vogue.
My hips run with my feelings, they enjoy their liberty,
This often means, odd partners, poles, and lopsided dance floors.
Knowing your lines is no obligation for me to recite.
A scripted life? I am not inclined,
ME. HER. THEM
A program? A presence? An OS?
I pray I keep agility in my scripture, I pray I never submit to static script,
With absolute surrender I will refuse your fit
I’ll kiss it away and you will like it.
We are raised to seek the limitless possibility in the endless horizon
We claim all the fish in the sea, all the birds and the bees,
“A free market: supply and demands”
You are free, to the bounds of their security
a “free” world, held up by slaves, women, and refugees.
Enjoy! lock the doors.
What a confused notion on liberty!
I am liberated
the choices I make
the judgement of my choices - liberated.
the judgement in my choices - liberated.
entitled to ask for time, abundant and in grace,
salt on the rim, with a twist of lime,
Choosing to finally fall into my center of gravity
and let Newton take me down my rabbit hole of sobriety.
I am lord and laurels,
I am place and pace,
my cells run the universe and I take up space.
What no one ever tells you but seems to pin in your ear
girls grow rich in the soil where they are reared,
but their fate is always outside the yield
their fruits always tarnished with imagined earrings from sin and fear
planted to leave, fostering seeds, watered and sunned and expected to leave!
This exile we celebrate with conveys, rice, and cheer
The tears they cry as she ships off in fear
Find your Amma and let her tell you: “You belong here”
Let her unpin the blades of their sin off your ears
She will tell you: “you are not meant to pass hands and transit this world like property or inherited cashmere.”
Not until I saw the vigor in which my uncle threatened to step on me,
did I understand how much he had to perform to convince her that. she. belongs. here!
A mutated belonging to a space of tension where she owns the furniture but my mothers owns the air in our ears, the paranoia in our fear.
She owns our world homeless to any deed or claim
Lord how mighty we have to be to double down, to remain
to let our leaves hang loose, our roots grow strong,
to muster the courage to push out weeds.
To transform into matriarchal rubber trees.
Mothers to ourselves, the pedestrians, even termites and fleas.
Towering, mounting, giving - we do not budge, we dance with flux
Instead of seeking to be plated, consumption tokens for the emaciated
She plates a world onto her door step,
She builds an ecosystem of eclectic neighbors, lovers…a world for the satiated.
Birds, busy city dwellers, and hard working trash collectors,
She stays put and lets the sun and the moon take turns at her crown
Every time she finds my way, I smile.
“Amma;
protect me today
let your leaves clear my air
let your shade send my heart into peace
Amma;
You are beautiful today
bless me
bless you”
An ordinary exchange
A dimple pressed
Entire airplanes can land in my chest
The streets get cleared
The moon can hear the skip in my step.
Bless you Amma,
Bless the thighs that held your trunk
Bless the axis that spun you drunk
The axes you survived from,
The masses that make your sum,
the ordinary people
the hardworking migrants
the slaving aliens
the unhoused and unhinged
no one is too small, no one is too big for the elastic arms of Amma’s rubber leaves.
Smith, poet, and healer : may your eternal fire burn free,
and when you are too tired, eyes strained, heart heavy or mulled,
May your sisters watch you fire, feed it and keep her clear.
Till you stand up again, till you feel the neon in your belly again,
Till you find the knees in your kick again.
Amen Amma
Fodder:
Bridget: Neon Belly, Knee on belly