A Mundane Pride (Clarification of Terms)

You woke up this morning
And even though your body
Felt like it had suffered a small death
In the dark, sleeping hours
You got out of bed.*

*(Bed: A location to sleep or relax. A resting place that is no longer a resting place, but a battle ground. No truce or treaty tethers the ghosts that pace around the perimeter of its frame. Just the suggestion of a threat straining for closure and resolution to a too-long siege on memory.)

You took a shower
And even though the pounding water
Echoed panic, panic, panic
Can't you see the world is flooding*
Go back to bed
You stepped out, shook yourself dry
And were clean.

*(Flooding: Present participle of flood where present particles of water surge in a seeking wave. A wave searching for the presence of landmines left behind as reminders that your land will never be mine and my land will never be yours. No common ground. No soil to foster a peace.)

You got dressed
And even though your reading hands
Said there was too much here
Or too little here
Or this stretch of skin just won't do*
You put your clothes on with
A mundane pride.

*(Do: Past tense: Do not give in. Present tense: Do not give out. Future tense: Do not give up)


You made breakfast
And even though your appetite
Felt like a loss of control*
You ate.
You felt your food hit the bottom of your stomach
And took comfort in the solid sound of the reverberation.
You are not the dark center of the universe
You think you are.

(Control: Synonym: Denial)

You went to work
And even though
The frantic sound of typing fingers
Sounded like the lurid language
Of frenzied dragonflies whose
Vocabulary consisted only of the words
Not good enough*
You made it through.
You were good enough.
Even if it was just for today.

*(Not good enough - direct translation: Giving up all hope for a better future)

You went home.
Undeservingly exhausted
You crawled back into bed
Pulled the covers over your head
Made no promises for tomorrow.
You measure your lifetime in days now
And there are still hours* left in this one.
There are still minutes left in this one.
There are still seconds left in this one.
And every tick of the clock is a step forward
On the lifelong road to recovery.*


*(Hour: How I measure the moments when your stretch of presence doesn't stalk my memory)
*(Recovery: A mundane pride in re-establishing a routine to increase the amount of hours that I feel good enough; in redefining control; in doing more than saying; in not becoming overwhelmed by the flood; in brokering a ceasefire with the ghosts in my bed -- ending the too-long siege on memory)

This Black Body Pt. II

Black body an assumption
Black body an expectation
Black body a projection
Black body in the media
Black body violent
Black body a problem before it walks through
the door.

80% of black bodies graduate high school.
Record breaking
Still can't break stereotypes.

Black body collateral.
Black body disturbed the peace.
Black body gunned down in the street.
Black body a weapon.
Black body brokers peace treaty with blood.
Black body scapegoat sacrificed on the altar of racial pedagogy.

One black body killed every 28 hours
by people sworn to protect all bodies.

Black body unknown.
Black body featureless.
Black body homogeneous.
Black body blasphemous.
Black body never nuanced.
Black body seen in its entirety in one glance.
Black body doesn't measure up to Eurocentric standards of beauty.
Black body feels worthless.

Unnoticed black bodies develop eating disorders.
Black body can never starve itself of its color.

Black body alone.
Black body afraid.
Black body looking, looking.
Black body never found.
Black body lost.
Black body drowning in pools of shadow.

Black body absorber of light
Solar panel - Unpredictable, inconsistent, an unstable energy source at best
Black body absorber of light
Black hole - Collapsing, unescapable, kept at a cosmic distance
Black body absorber of light
Weeded out - Photosynthetic, artificial, fibrous, invasive species.

Black body blood-borne.
Black body tainted.
Black body carrier of biracial bug.
Black body transmits shame.
Black body inherits blame.
Black body a legacy of chains.

This black body trying to break free.
This black body a destroyer.
This black body trying to destroy assumptions.
This black body trying to defy expectations.
This black body trying to demystify projections.

This black body is trying.
This black body is trying.

3 Ways to Use School as a Coping Mechanism (draft)

1. Establish a routine
   Get back into the swing of things
   Wake up Brush your teeth Take a shower Skip breakfast
   Get in your car
   Drive to campus
   Go to class
   Go to class
   GO TO CLASS
   Be late to class and hope your professor
   is only looking at you weird because
   you are late and not because
   she can smell the scent of
   undeserved tragedy wafting from you
   like a failed attempt at aromatherapy.

2. Read your textbooks out loud
   Practice drowning out the lo-fi
   Buzz of your self-deprecating self-talk
   By reading in a clear, even tone even
   While panic is pressing against the back
   Of your throat like a detonator
   Take pride in the fact that you can read
   About survivors of abuse and trauma
   As clinically as a doctor reading an MRI
   And preparing to relay a terminal prognosis of disease.

3. Go to lunch with your friends.
   Even if you're not actually going to eat lunch.
   Even if they're not actually friends.
   Even if they're just long-term acquaintances you've met
   From having so many classes with them
   Go to lunch.
   Listen to the things they talk about.
   Pay attention to the way they eat their food.
   Think about how there are seven billion people in the world
   All eating differently
   Talking differently
   Having lunch
   And realize how ridiculous it is for you to rationalize qualitatively
   That one person is greater than seven billion.

Themes of Fire - Model #2 - Cycles of Abuse

There are many themes of fire
That refine the bond that trauma builds

In the beginning, he will tell you
That you are the only one that matters
You make his world brighter
Like the only candle that can fend off the
darkness
He is the warmth and you are the light
In this theme of fire
The flames are passion, love, and hope
But above all they are false

They are tongues of flame probing you for weakness
Probing you for vulnerability
Did someone break your heart before him
Did your parents not love you enough
Does your mind ever become your enemy
He will blame you
Tell you that your misfortune is your fault
That if you loved him as much as you said you did
Your life would be in line
He will raise his voice
So that you will lower your head in shame
He will try to kick you out of his car
In the middle of the bypass
Saying no one has ever pushed him so far
He will threaten to beat the shit out of you
And give you bruises to match the ones on your heart
In this theme of fire, he shows his true colors
You will see them as works of art
And forget one of the basic rules of nature
The more brightly colored an organism is
The more toxic it tends to be
In this theme of fire, he will rake
You over the coals
Dangle you over the flames
And claim that his not dropping you into them
Is a sign of love

Eventually he will calm down
And you will think that this tranquility
Is the result of your ability to soothe
The beast within him
No, it is only lying dormant
Like an inactive volcano
Waiting to erupt
When strategy calls for it
What you have to understand
Is that his love and anger are tools
To use whenever the time is right
When the circumstance calls for it
You will be so grateful for this moment of inactivity
For this reconciliation
He will tell you
If you just stop making me mad
If you just stop talking to your friends
If you just give me money
If you just hate yourself
Then I will be happy
And by definition
You will be happy
In this theme of fire
You will soak yourself in gasoline
And beg for his spark

As you will learn
Nothing keeps him happy for long
He will drain the life out of you
Until you are nothing but a shell of your
Former self
His instability
Will manifest in you as anxiety
Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder
Anything he can convince you will be cured
By you appeasing him
Your friends will call
You will tell them everything is fine
It is easier than saying that you are ashamed
For staying
That you are embarrassed for everyone
To see how small you've become
How close you are to breaking
You will go through this cycle
Until something gives
And something will give
Something always does
Hopefully
You remember your own flame
The candle that existed before the thought of him
You will fuel it with the hope that there
Is something better out there
Even if you don't know what it is
You will gather up courage
In a last ditch effort
And say, I can't take it anymore
I'm leaving
He will react predictably
With volcanic rage
And blazing anger
He will tell you that you are worthless
And shady
He will tell you that no one else
Will ever love you the way he did
He will ask you
Who is going to love you now?
Who is going to love you now?
And with a voice that for the first time
Recalls its strength
You will say me
I am going to love me now
I am going to love me now.

Stifling Someone's Essence Is a Form of Violence - Model #1 - Intersectionality

I am not simply one
I say to myself in the mirror
Contemplating the different layers
That form the whole of my being
The different intersecting identities
Borne from struggle and discovery
Invisible to the outside world
Yet so integral to the world inside

A friend of a friend told me that his
friend's roommate came out to him the other
day
Gathered up the courage needed to tell him he was
gay
His roommate said - Can't you just not be that way
Can't you just ace the gay away?
Better asexual than homosexual
Better me feel comfortable
And you feel marginalized
Adjusting yourself to my heterosexist tendency

The problem with intersectionality is that people
Always want to censor some part of you
Turn you into a shifting microcosm
of adjustable identities
They always want to change you

Part Two - A girl from my hometown
Has an aunt who used to be her uncle
Aunt Lily used to be Uncle Hawthorne
And like all flowers, bloomed when the time
Was right and the bud was too tight
She tried to explain this to a friend
But the girl wasn't all that good at botany
Didn't understand the struggle of transit
The struggle of a woman beating her face up
With make up so people will stop calling her a boy
The struggle of slipping into heels sharp
as daggers arrayed against the slurs of people
who would call her a man to stifle her essence

The problem with intersectionality is that
people will always try to stifle your essence
and keep you from radiating it.
Stifling someone's essence is a form of violence.

Part 3 -
I know this girl from Lambda Alliance
that everyone keeps calling greedy
She's bisexual
Apparently she can't pick a team
Apparently she can't pick a side
She can't just be bi
She's always only "bi for now"
Always bisected by people with
No concept of spectrum
No concept of fluidity
No concept of the damage that's done
When you force a person into two closets

The problem with intersectionality is that
You often find yourself running in and out of closets
Trying to justify the permutations of self
That make up who you are
That people fail to understand
That intertwine so delicately
Like a piece of art
A carefully crafted figure
Forging self into reality.

A Mundane Pride

You woke up this morning
And even though your body
Felt like it had suffered a small death
In the dark, sleeping hours
You got out of bed.

You took a shower
And even though the pounding water
Echoed panic, panic, panic
Can't you see the world is flooding
Go back to bed
You stepped out, shook yourself dry
And were clean.

You got dressed
And even though your reading hands
Said there was too much here
Or too little here
Or this stretch of skin just won't do
You put your clothes on with
A mundane pride.

You made breakfast
And even though your appetite
Felt like a loss of control
You ate.
You felt your food hit the bottom of your stomach
And took comfort in the solid sound of the reverberation.
You are not the dark center of the universe
You think you are.

You went to work
And even though
The frantic sound of typing fingers
Sounded like the lurid language
Of frenzied dragonflies whose
Vocabulary consisted only of the words
Not good enough
You made it through.
You were good enough.
Even if it was just for today.

You went home.
Undeservingly exhausted
You crawled back into bed
Pulled the covers over your head
Made no promises for tomorrow.
You measure your lifetime in days now

And there are still hours left in this one.
There are still minutes left in this one.
There are still seconds left in this one.
And every tick of the clock is a step forward
On the lifelong road to recovery.

Always Pretending

I think about writing a poem
To bridge the gap between your pain
And my own
I burn the bridge as soon as I build it
Aware aware of the futility of the task
I could never hurt badly enough to arouse your compassion
So I put my pen down
I click "yes" when Netflix ask if I'm still watching the movie
I forgot I was watching because I was too busy trying to write a poem
To get an emotional response from anyone
Preferably you, or someone like you
I think about how stupid it is to include Netflix in a poem
As a literary device
I agree with myself that I shouldn't worry about it
And should save my energy for things that should be worried about


Like

When is the money going to run out?
Will I ever get married?
Should I eat today, or have I had too much?
I have had too much.

There's a point when you become so self-critical with yourself
That your life starts to straddle the fine line
between perspective and parody
And you realize you're just parroting the perspectives
Of people who died long before you thought
It was edgy to have a suicidal thought

And yet, the generation I come from
Has developed a morbid curiosity
For visceral authenticity
Hidden in inner realms
With layers and layers of psychic fabrics
To protect our fabricated sense of selves
Be real with me
Show me where your stitches are
So I can pull them at the seams and
Make you spill your guts to me
Tell me how they simplified your identity
Made you eat even though you didn't want to
Talk me through the moment when you realized
That making love doesn't mean letting someone
Fuck you as hard as you hate yourself

Don't pretend in front of me
We are always pretending
Aren't you tired?