I’m going to ride your heart – Bleached
Have you noticed our conversations are almost always about safety?
Will you listen to that fear? Will you listen to my need?
fighting what feels natural
what has been conditioned to feel good
finding providence
hard-won wisdom
What imagination led us here?
he said practice creates habits
a reference to his dangerous life,
a prophetic retrograde
“So (re)invent us, still weeping the solutions we came from, imagining ‘things’ would be fine if only a single interpretation could be shared, meaning enforced.”
Laura Mullen, Complicated Grief
Golden fur and morning light warms calmly.
Energies, swirling, occasionally oppressive
as unconscious as the way we sell love.
The mural reflected a range of fruits found in this region,
geographic signifiers, orbs of light and juice. Positive
transformations expressed through practice, ritualized execution.
Repeat, forcing action. Asking for it, suppressing.
The real economics of what we dream, imagine, and desire
divided, found between centuries of exclusion, forced space.
Think about how resistance is holding what remains.
All my dreams have wound around need.
This time of year the radiator sings at night. The gray mornings are carbon copies of Cleveland’s skies. Those years full of bravado that only darkness holds or youth demands. To the east, the pastel light spins out into easter yellows, baby blues, and softened ripe peaches.
I watched him dip his boots into the fountain, one at a time, muddied from the urban forest he was paid to curate.
When we talk about the work be explicit.
Do you care
enough?
We all have somewhere to be
someone to hold (ourselves mostly)
accountable for what happens today.
She told me she cut her hair short:
she “didn’t want to look corporate”
like me.
I faced west.
You laughed softly
off to the side
watching me embrace myself.
I dreamt of a place where we had no values to derail the conversation.
as emotional as overhead
nothing so much as an ache
a wanting for tenderness
rejecting structure as destiny
believing too soon – too fast
as familiar as knowing too much
inside returns for counterfeit gains
competition policed through transformation
the early morning air was refined
smelling sweet with pastries and gasoline
a fountain’s song of resistance proportional
to the rush that values order over opposition
“That’s the biggest thing there is – the sky! It’s there, and it’s an abiding puzzle, presence and invitation.”
—William Stafford
What you have is what you walk away with.
Leave nothing behind.
A particular kind of status quo,
founding tensions of contradiction.
Yet, this is worth unraveling.
Where does all this information go?
Why are we competing with brutality?
When does resilience become fight?
I haven’t finished reading The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure.
Does that make me a bad feminist?
The Rocky Mountains were sunny
as snow fell thousands of miles
away from you.
It’s felt reasonable
to learn about scale
as a measurement
of time and impact.
We carry those
worth holding onto
get what we deserve
and survive by making
room for more.
that feeling when you are rendered invisible
that process when you have no ability to move forward
that entrenchment when you know everyone is battling each other’s evils
that line around and that territory where power thrives
14th St & Rhode Island Ave NW, DC
