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.