synthesis

waking up requires getting my head out of my ass

the air is clear clear clear

carving a place where I can make my own quiet and yawp to the world, I have a right to exist

this can be hard but Anne Lamott tells you to put all the people and voices and reasons that are screaming at you, telling you that you owe them something, telling them that your being isn't enough, put all those voices in a sealed glass jar and watch them frantically throw themselves at the glass with all their spittle and jerks and thrusts and then attach a volume button to that jar and turn the volume way way down and watch their angry faces and limbs without sound, then maybe smile at them. then

turn away from all that,

repeat to yourself,

I have a right to exist




Who are my gatekeepers? Who leads me to womanhood? 

I'm thinking about my mouth and what we conjure for one another

I'm thinking about how careful conjurations are a grace

un-doing the laces of American social voodoos

seeking a way in which we don't put pins in one another

I'm thinking about spending months in the mountains of Costa Rica not being able to speak English and when I came home and my mom picked me up from the airport English words got caught in my mouth and I tried to tell her about the trip, I tried to say "certification" and it came out "cer-ti-fi-ca-tion" because I wanted it to be certificación and my mouth couldn't do it and I was

struck dumb

and I was

abstracted

because Who forgot to put the right stress on the word, "certification?"


I was

struck dumb

by the fourteen year old costa rican girl who was made pregnant by the fifty five year old man

now she lives with him in a tin shack in a parking lot

too scared to talk to anybody or go outside

stuck in the darkness and dirt and heat with her newborn



what chance does she stand

in a culture that tells her the role she must play, which desires and dreams are hers to pursue and which are not


what chance does he stand
in a culture that tells him the role he must play, which desires and dreams are his to pursue and which are not


and what chance do I stand 
in a culture that




cer-ti-fi-ca-tion




I stand a better chance after being
                
                                                               struck          dumb


abstracted from

myself

coming of age


face



falls


wake UP to you


how many experiences can I process to
how many experiences can I process to


Letting go is good. But letting go without knowing that        you resound      is irresponsible.


the earth is not a cold dead place the earth is not a cold dead place the earth is not a cold dead place the earth is not a cold dead place the ear



I   don't    think    it    takes     anything    other    than   being   here    to    have    some    authority


it doesn't take anything other than being here to say

I have a right to exist

I have a right to exist

I have a right to exist


people get swept up by watching somebody else get

swept into                              taste particles and pieces of each other

make meaning and make good meaning

climactic culture makes me hasty

sometimes makes me scream at a poem, say, I don't have time for you, and no one else has time for you either


I want to say what I want for how we are to be and it be enough

but 

keep eating with our baby teeth and we won't have minds

trying to own conduits is like trying to swallow god

the more I write the more I find it harder to end on an answer    

what                                                        is                                                                happening?



my meaning making structures keep not working for me,

because I am comforted by the bright and beautiful sky outside right now and that the flowers are out but I was angry that it was bright and beautiful and that the flowers were out when Karen died --


and in that moment my meaning making structures told me the world was full of hellish indifference 



living in a world that I declared hellishly indifferent was un-sustainable

so I had to let go of that

seeing life as a cheesy nature poem

and that maybe flowers aren't flowers because I had a good day today

and later

that little girls in tin shacks with littler girls -- I won't turn away form the world for having this


and I won't hate the man living with her but I will work to make him be struck dumb

and abstracted

from the things

he holds fixed



I   won't    make    a    human    being    only    one    thing

I will search for being struck dumb myself as many times as I can be


she shed she shed 

and all into knots before she shed again



flowers growing in fast forward and decaying in fast forward

one form is another and another and another 

and I think




not a gimmick




and I want to create a space where

and I'm saying I want because it's just the meaning making structure that I'm using right now

I won't turn away from the world for having this I think is an act of violent self-assertion but sometimes when I touch my toes to the bottom of my meanings all I can feel is a prayerful nausea          
           open moments frame a kick whole frame popped whole a peel a molten molting falling out        into         now





sow me one and hold us