Lessons in Insight

It was supposed to be
a day where the sun tickled the freckled lashes of the eldest little golden haloed fairy
dipping toes into the muddied pond waters with the flickering flashlights in fog silver of minnows
Suckling at her toes like fresh bait and the painted webbed tattered silken wings covered in earth
forgotten in her haste to laugh at the world’s attempts to destroy what it means to be ‘such a free spirit’
caught between a maelstrom and a volcano and everyone elses words like wild roaming mountain goats
bleating defiance to ears far more interested in the inquisitive tone of a younger sibling

And it was supposed to be
a day where the youngest tanned skin beneath the single shoulder buckled overalls boy laughed
head shorn like a sheep’s at the turn of the season, burning beneath the summer’s cruel kisses
kicked mud at the faerie with reckless abandon of a yelling mother’s voice – just car horns in city traffic
Learning how hard a frog like fresh cut mango slips between his fingers to startle the school below
Not a single care of what it will mean tomorrow or even an hour from now, caught outside of time
and the dying of youth with the shake of a single tambourine and the school bells irritating alarm

Maybe it was supposed to be
remembering how to unplug the brain from the digital age of noise and dial up modems
Long enough to remember birdsong not on loop from a 10 hour playlist
When the single pluck of a guitar string is joined in the awful off-key voices of far too much liquor
and the firewood scented arm sliding around shoulders with an offering of another kindness
To embrace the threads of friendship that seem as sturdy as primeval stone temples buried
Practicing antique rituals of the condition known as human

Even that it was about learning those baby steps again, how to be within the glow of light
touch of spirit’s flame spreading through forest and the feather breasted cry of the hawk in lazy circle
and the stench of old wood and fresh rain after winter’s cold finally let go (and thusly, melted)
but not about the one who chose to be absent, the one who stopped fighting years before for the souls slipping past that cusp of innocence into the cruelty of life. No, never about the one who wasn’t there, but the ones who were.

My Religious Intolerance (based on Jamaica Kincad's "Girls" style of writing)

"I don't have a problem with religion- I have a problem with it's followers." -some fucking person sometime, but I agree. and I know its petulant of me, I have no problem with good Christians and faithfuls, I have many friends of mixed faiths and this piece is laced with anger, sarcasm, and a bit of some pent up passive aggression on my end. It's not meant to offend, but it's likely going to. I apologize ahead of time, this particular heathen pagan practices and preaches tolerance and sometimes my levels of stomaching being told what I believe in isn't a religion or part of history frustrates me to no end. That all being said, I hope that someone finds humor in this, or perhaps a bit of repeatability. This doesn't reflect my actual views on Christianity.

God is in the TV child, and if you wait you can pay off your sins for only three easy installments of 999.999. And if you act now, if you only act now, child, you’ll find that you’ll be able to find God in every greased page of your favorite blue ray player but it’s only free after you pay, child, pay for those sins you’ve wrought just by breathing. But you’ll need it, a good old fashioned heaping of guilt and reaping of your parent’s sins, pay attention child don’t let that attention wander off that’s the devil’s tools don’t you see? Child I’m telling you the key to your salvation now is found between the thighs and the curved genitalia of the beauty you see on the television and in the newspaper ads, look at that? The closest thing to God is pure cocaine, child, and enough energy to speed through this life that they spoon feed you straight to that path of thigh-gaps and wigs because your hairs too brittle to bleed, child. God is everywhere, child, watching your nasty sinful self take advantage of that beautiful temple that those heathen evil devil worshippers will tell you was good and clean until we told you otherwise. God is in the strong male in his power suit with his boot against the feminine back of the broken submissive wife smiling like a good little table, child, he’s in the power suit of the cuffs of those who hold all the money because the church needs your donations to ignore the homeless at its doors. But I don’t worship like that. But you don’t worship? Why wouldn’t you worship? God is everywhere, child. He’s in your books, in your television, in your internet, he’s even got a Facebook if you look hard enough just praise the one who carried you through with enough likes and shares. He’ll forgive anyone for the right price child! Murderers, Pedophiles, adulterers but he’ll never forgive the ones who live their life pure because they can’t see his infallible glorious golden face. If you want to be a good one, a pure one, a child of God’s chosen sex and ideals you’ll have to read the scripture and listen to the way that we interpret it because we don’t count those other things as religions when we toss them in the spiritual section of our Barnes and Nobles. We’ll never suffer a Witch to live because we know that such a peaceful purified thing that tries to teach us our bodies are beautiful natural things is far more awful than the repenting murder trying to sneak into heaven child. Cover your bodies when the men bring you dancing, child, and stop trying to tell me otherwise this nonsense about loving something that isn’t written in the scripture the way I read it back when we still had all the power child. When you’re not covering your body child it’s important to God that you find a way to completely turn yourself into the object of a man’s fantasy, forget this bit about self-love and the things that ‘feel good to you’ child because that’s the devil’s work, no woman should know her body like she knows her husbands and absolutely no more nonsense about this loving other people regardless of their bodies gender! And get that ring, child, fight your fellow woman and go for that circlet of wealth and ruin because it’s the end all to the world and the proof of your ever faithfulness and child if that man’s eye wanders it’s God’s ideals that it’s your fault. I don’t think that’s what marriage is- but child aren’t you listening or are you determined to burn in the hells fire of damnation because eternity is a long time child to not have to think about your soul and you’ll look back one day and thank me on this. Whoever told you God is love forgot to mention that there’s always a stipulation, always some clause you missed in the tiny print of this great book written by the hands of man to interpret his word – and again child it’s important to remember that there’s no other religion besides ours everyone else is wrong. God wants you to know that they’re wrong. We’re all wrong, sinful, evil things at heart we’re born in sin and we’ll die in sin but never forget that Jesus died so you could buy this new car. God can reach you child, through the web or through your cellular device if you’d only love him enough to buy his new app.

Liquid

I feel like I should give a wee bit of forward on this, though it's totally, like anything, open for interpretation. I was given an assignment to write a 'love' poem, without using cliche or mentioning love or something like it. I put this off of course until the last minute, sat down, and stared. I'd been thinking for two days straight on what to write, where to start, what to title it, where to go with it... and realized that in being asked to write about love I generally turn to really destructive love relationships and try to write it from there. SO! That was out the damn window, because I COULD DO SOMETHING SWEET and not hammy dammit!

And I tried
and I deleted
and I tried again
and again again again... you get the point.

Finally I thought of the scene in V for Vendetta with Violet and her story written down and how much that scene stuck with me and how much still even typing about it I get an emotional reaction. I remember marching in streets in gay pride marches where churches closed their doors and we were terrified that violence was going to break out from the amount of ignorance around us. I remember beautiful speeches about donuts and rights in the proud city of Boston before acceptance became so widespread. I remember the fear in the eyes of my gay family and friends when they told me their truth, when they came out into the world with it. Ellen when her show was cancelled for nothing more than her sexuality, and how her hit in her career bloomed into something that gave more people the motivation to step out. And it was beautiful. And I thought of how accepting the world has become slowly, against it's will - as a pansexual woman who if I wished to marry a woman would never want to be denied that right.

And I wrote from there. and I tried, god I tried, to capture that.  I only hope I did it justice.

Thank you for reading this far,
Neveah.

Liquid

We held hands – like the flickering between tesla coils
yet – we were never how they defined “it”
(that is, we were never)
nothing like what you pictured,
you were made of stardust and radiance,
like a newly printed copper penny
blowing lazily through fields and I
the mercury bubbling through the mold
of expectation

We were that sound of the blade when it left
the sheath –
impatient inhales and twisted tongues
Another railroad on the crossroad
driven by the hammer of slavery hymns
and the weeping sounds of the gospel
chased us from churchyards
and we laughed and tripped in in fields of dandelions
humming vibrated melody through bloody noses
while they were slithering like asps
in writhing desert sands and all their faith

Caught up on elephant ears of the mainstream media
We remembered the feeling of
mice that caught themselves in ventricle tunnels
And hands that moved like waves against the rocks
and as we hid in the
dullest part of the bladed grass
and whispered about the depth of that universe
was the car-oil stained pothole
when we claimed we struck gold

I knew it then, the way the lightning bug
Danced along your skin, and onto mine
when those galaxies slid out of your gaze
That Gods lived in the temple of the faithful
and what it was?
Caught in your surprised laugh
and the curve of your hip in my palm
Was simplicity.