Because I Said So.

I woke up yesterday and could not bear to dress in anything but black. There was no apparent reason, the sun was shining, I felt rested, I just seemed to be repulsed by brightness and could not be bothered with color. 

After coffee, I read the news, I smelled the fear, and understood the mourning clothes.  

I had thrown my back out, so a friend gave me a CBD chocolate for the pain, the back pain, or at least I thought it was CBD though there may have been a miscommunication because I got high. Really high. Too high. So high it shouldn’t even be called high it was so much more like being buried - like I’d surrendered my body, which I’m sometimes happy to do, but I did not sign up for this.

I went outside for relief and this tall blade of grass, with its ripe seedhead, kept swaying in my peripheral vision, distorting my balance and making me jump and dizzy. After the third time, my instinct was to walk over and tear it from the ground, just get rid of it, which I did, even after having this thought - even after seeing the oppressor within me -  I still did it. I could not bear the inconvenience of not being in control  - not being certain of my surroundings -  other lives not caring about me as much as I’m not caring about them - other lives caring about me as much as I care about them. I yanked the grass up and tossed it down - that’s that, right? Just grass. 

I circled around the thought of productivity for the day but I got dizzy and reached that point of no return – I’m laying down. 

I slept. 

I slept from three in the afternoon until eight the next morning, except every five minutes or so I’d wake up in a panic - jumping, clutching, my guts in my throat, something grabbing at me. 

I woke up today (or did I?) and did not change my black clothes. I didn’t wash my face or brush my hair or even my teeth this morning. I gave mirrors the cold shoulder. I did not wipe the tears from my cheeks before I walked into the grocery store. I did not suck in the soft paunch of my belly to look sleek. I did not put on my familiar shame when I squeezed into my black bathing suit and I did not trim the hair that sprung, out of bounds, between my thighs, to set other people at ease. I did not put on a smile. 

It’s not lost on me, though, as I walk into the shed to check on my rabbits, it’s the opposite of lost, it finds me and grabs my face and makes me look right at it, the absence of democracy in their lives. I bought them from a breeder. I keep them in cages. I meet their most basic needs like that’s some kind of a fair trade for forcing them to breed so that I can shoot their young in the back of the head and eat them, eat them with a smile on my face, no less.

It is not lost on me, but I am lost in looking for a way to live outside this contradiction.

A friend, who’s deeply immersed in the history of our nation and even more deeply invested in its future, said recently, of America,

“The United States is born of fantastic levels of contradiction, and it’s my belief that these contradictions are like the two magnets in a turbine that turn and they create this dynamic electricity between them that everybody wants a part of.”  

I can’t know if this is true of our nation, but it’s one hundred percent true for me as an individual, so it’s been a helpful framework to think within today and easy for me to extrapolate beyond myself.

This wasn’t what I was going to share with you this week - I had other plans - way more fun - but you know how planning goes. This isn’t something I feel comfortable sharing, but you know how comfort goes, goes, goes…

I’ve heard from a lot of people over the last two days - every one of them, including myself, upheaved. I have no advice or action plan, but in case you need extra poems, now, like I do - here are four that I’ve written, about this whirring turbine of a place and time we are in together. Press play and I’ll read one to you. Or read them out loud to yourself. Or don’t. Do absolutely whatever the fuck you want.

Because I Said So 
A black and white guide to being a good American.  
Avoid death - follow these rules.

Avoid new - follow old. 
Avoid truth - follow blame. 
Avoid thinking - follow the news. 
Avoid talking - follow yelling. 
Avoid pleasure - follow shame. 
Avoid pain - follow your prescription label. 
Double it. 
Avoid short skirts - follow orders.
Avoid being brown - follow white men. 
Avoid being brown - avoid white men. 
You figure it out.
Avoid nuance - follow hard lines.
Avoid love - follow madness.
Avoid time - follow money. 
Avoid healing - follow money. 
Avoid health - follow money. 
Avoid those drugs - follow these drugs. 
Avoid reading - follow this link. 
Avoid your needs - follow your cravings. 
Avoid hunger - follow the drive thru. 
Avoid food 
from your neighbor  
follow the dead rivers through eight states to get your pork.
Avoid plants - follow poison. 
Avoid grief and just shut the fuck up.  
Avoid queer - follow god. 
Avoid soil - follow scum.
Avoid yourself - follow culture. 


Avoid nature.


Avoid sin - don’t follow your instincts. 
Avoid life - follow me on Instagram. 
Avoid caring. 
Avoid each other.
Avoid guilt - follow blindly.

Shall we go on?
Can we?

---

Mothers

I was planting my pumpkins in heaps of warm ground
with a few beans each for company.
Two of three sisters 
is better than one.

I heard the news

about mothers.

I press the seeds in firmly.

I toss a handful, loosely, because I can. 

My dog Sal was curled up by my feet 
where I’d been swatting the deer flies away from her tender face.

We both heard a rustling in the woods 
she stood 
and I turned, 
she walked towards it 
and I followed. 

We heard a mother grouse clucking
for her chicks to run 
to fly
and they did.

Sal wanted to chase
but didn’t know who to follow 
I called her back but she just couldn’t cut her nose from the scene.

The hen gave her best sacrificial dance 
and flailed like an easy meal 
dragging her body away from her young
praying to drag the dog with her
and she did. 

But Sal just wanted to sniff - to romp. 
She’s just a pup, 
like me, 
still free from the knowing of what mothers do. 

I turn just in time to see 
the spider 
with her full moon of starry-eyed unborn babes strapped to her belly
climbing up and over the hills 
like she was born for it.

A loon cries out from her nest in the cove 
and I can feel it in my throat. 
She’s answered by the silent night - 
the song of every mother ever made -
dueling sorrows across the pond. 

I made a friend
which mom always said I should do. 
We went for a walk in the hemlock woods
to look for mushrooms. 

We followed an old logging road 
now a river of fragrant ferns. 
We raked our hands through them and pulled the scent to our noses
sucking it in hungry 
trying to name the smell we knew. 

Hay?
Apricots?
He stopped 
“Is it my mother?”
And it was. 

---

You Never Made A Sound

When I was born
My grandmother was there as the delivery nurse. 
She wrote me a birthday card years later, recounting the day, saying 
“You never made a sound.”.
I’ve gone on holding this in one hand as my private virtue and in the other hand as my heaviest shame.
Last night I dreamt I was a coyote running - fast
With a pack of hounds behind me - baying.
Their voices blind the woods.
They’re as loud as the world would be silent if the sea stood still.
They make all the sound I don’t.
Dogs the same but different
Don’t they know me?
Can I call them off?
Do I howl to my own for help?
I turn - they stop - we all stand panting in the dark - noses to the wind - sweet with fear and family. 
That’s all there is to smell.
I wake up
Read the news.
Read about other people reading the news
Put it down
Pace around looking for a door.
I don’t feel well. Heard other people are sick too.
Outside the sun is warm, the leaves soft green and I pick violets just to watch them turn my water blue.
It helps.
So I cover my table in flowers and roots and stuff them in jars.
This for her hip - this for his back - the scraps of them all into one jar for my heart or whatever the hell is aching.
I make enough medicine for the whole lot of us
But then wake up again and I put the jars away ashamed.
Who am I to say
What will save you.
I limp around all day kind of leaning like I ate a bad rat or drank from a green pond
Which I probably did
But I can’t place the pain.
Did I step in a trap?
Do I chew my leg off?
I see other people grimacing too
Defending their bodies
I hear my family howling now
I want to help
to tell everyone to stop running
and just follow their noses home.
But when is it ok to wail?

---

What Do You Expect? 
(read to myself upon waking)

What do you expect 
when you cut your hay in the rain?

What do you expect 
when you let the cat drag a rabbit under the house?

If you fetishize the nail through your palm 

or try to lean the weight of a nation on it’s wounded knee? 

Things are going to fester. 

What do you expect 
when you forget your lonely elders 
and ignore your children spilling over with joy?

When you don’t stop to notice how the new year’s fawn is the same tawny flame as the sunburnt orange pine - both lying quiet in the green grass?

When you don’t seek white flowers in spring, but,
you hope to pick fruit all summer?

When you pluck the steeple off the church,
the whole peak off a mountain? 

Some things cannot be undone. 
Some time is just gone. 

Why do you expect of your steep hills though 
any less than you’d hope of an apple tree? 

Wash the feet of fairness 
even when her hair’s a mess 
and she’s not singing you to sleep. 

What might you expect 
of your brand new unbroken heart,
 as ready as a rosebud 
with only one thing to do
come tomorrow? 

---