I have been neglectful!

I have been away.
I have been changing, settling down into this new place and skin, really.

Here are some poems, part of something I am calling, for now, The Janus Project:

Reverse Dog

Our love is pocked with
the deep rivets of unanswered silences.
You lean down into one of them.
The holes allow us to breathe.


Reverse Tide

Give me the keys.
I will color our exaustion.
I will release plumed ideas
into the world.


I'll be back. With more or less substance, more or less meaning. In the meantime, fill in the blank(s):


If the answer is ________
If the question is ________
If the fable is ________
If the corollary is ________
If the hand writing is _________
If the predator is ________
If the spot light is ________
If the certainty is ________
If the planet is ________
If the antidote is ________
If the circle is ________
If the excuse is ________
If the ritual is ________
If the crying is ________

Short Bouts of Compassion Towards Children

First off, American Empire Project is up and running.

Next, a few more things:

1. The 5th was Jeannine and my's 2 year anniversary. She is incredible. I feel like I am in a reciprocal relationship, one that suits me, with someone who loves me for who I am, not someone who could be smarter or less crass or one of a million other ways I could change. She lets me be, leaves me alone when I need to be alone and doesn't harangue me to death, wondering why I am in a mood. She just lets me be. I still want her like I wanted her 2 years ago, and in new ways too. Grown-up ways, not just lusty teenager ways.

2. Today is the one year anniversary of my surgery. It's weird to me that I remember that it hurt, but not how it hurt. This pain amnesia must be why the human race continues to have multi-child households. I could go on at length about my fear of the cancer coming back, or my anger of having to look at this scar and be reminded of my mortality everyday at age 30. Instead I'm just going to say that cancer gave me my life, I am healthier now than I have probably ever been, more active, eat better, don't drink, don't smoke, don't eat meat, and am near giving up sugar. My friend told me I was meant to have cancer and survive it. I believe him because I have to, because if I give it meaning I can make something out of it, something good.

3. I love my cats. They are patient with us humans.

4. I've started doing yoga more consistantly than I ever have in the past. It feels good.

5. I love my job. I have the opportunity to be honest with strangers, to have short bursts of meaningfulness that can ripple beyond our conversations.

6. I hope very much that you all are happy and have some things in your lives to be thanful for.

7. A poem:

It Is Enough to Be a Body for Someone Else to Rest Against

Gravity holds us in strong airy palms. We fight
Back against the specter of what it represents.
In the struggle we lose parts of ourselves, the universe
A collection of spinning things that become
Unfamiliar because unattached they no longer keep us
Alive. The truth is they were always foreign,
Our organs and memories are particles of stars
We borrow to see. When those pieces are taken
From us we don’t lack functioning, we just
Reorganize. At night the lake looks like black cement.
And it is when you are falling to it. Short bouts of
Compassion towards children compel us to lie, it is
A sunny day, the water is warm, we are in love.

ER

On This Day in History:

I have been reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of American Empire" a sort of companion to his People's History. It is in graphic novel form. Jeannine got it for me for Christmas. It cronicles America's conquests and rise to global superpower via the massacre and destruction of all in its path. It starts, of course, with the beginning of the American Empire at home, the Massacre at Wounded Knee. Today was the day the battle happened, in 1890. I dare you to go here to learn more.


Also, check out americanempireproject.com for more information about the series this Zinn comic is a part of. For some reason (and try not to read too much into this) the site is down right now, But check back periodically to see if it's up and running.

An Eore Day

Sometimes, oh, say for the last week or so for example, I get a bit blue because I feel what could amount to as post "I went to a top five grad school for my discipline and I now work part time in a grocery store" depression. I feel like I'm not on the right track, like I'm a disappointment to my community, inferior to my peers, and generally not good enough to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide.

During these times I have to remind myself that since the cancer I have had the realization that all that matters is that I make a difference in others' lives. That my day makes someone else's life better, easier, because life is generally so hard for most of us to bear is what should be the point of my life. This is true, I believe, since when I got the cancer all of a sudden little else mattered to me than making good in the world. Sometimes I get tangled in my post "iwtfgsmdinwptgs" depression and I forget what is important. I forget the world around me and become surrounded in my own pity. It is a deep well to trudge out of.

Poetry makes me happy. Making others happy or more comfortable makes me feel like I belong. Like I deserve to be here. Like converting oxygen to carbon dioxide is the least of my talents. Buddhism is a good avenue to walk down when trying to remember the important things in life: that this is all temporary, that everything you need is right here, in this moment, that to help others is the greatest achievement. We all live until one day we die. It sounds easy and sad but it's not: its hard to remember and so relieving when you believe it. I am here right now, if I, everyday, do something to make someone else's life easier to bear, happier, worth living, then everyday's passing is not something to mourn, it is a miracle, it is a place to exist in, the present, a place to be thankful for the recognition of. I spend too much time worrying about the future and regretting the past, those places don't exist. Just right now is real. It is the hardest thing to remember, to believe, especially when I live in the make-believe world of poetry. Maybe it isn't make-believe. If it isn't make-believe, what is it? I am asking you-my poets, what is it poetry to you? What is important and real?

This post is all loose ends and beginnings, don't try to tie it up, but I do wonder what you guys think of these things, of life and death and poetry and what makes waking up worth it to you.

Mr. Obama, What the Fuck?

I'm sure many of you by now have heard the rumblings about Obama's pick of Rick Warren to preform the invocation at the inaguration. Rick Warren isn't just the pastor at mega church Saddleback Church in southern California. He wrote the bestseller "The Purpose Driven Life." He's also a hateful prick.

Sure, it's very easy for me to be disappointed by Obama's choice, but I'm even more disappointed by his defense of his choice. Fisrt, for those of you uncertain of my problem with Rick Warren, some highlights of Warren's ideology and practice:

-Warren believes my marriage to Jeannine would be akin to my marriage to my father, or my 3 year old niece's marriage to my father.

-He claimed Prop 8 was important and good because if gays can get married Christians would have to endure hate speech and hate crimes.

-Saddleback Church prohibits gays from becoming members.

There are the obvious beefs:

--the irony of a Christian claiming hate crimes and speech against them by the very people the term was invented for. Boo fucking hoo, tell it to Matthew Shepard. However this presupposes that Warren is correct, that Christians would be attacked by wedded gays: are you out of your ever-loving mind? I would be too busy filing for joint health insurance and sending wedding invitations to Fred Phelp's website to set crosses on fire on Rick Warren's lawn.

--the lack of Christian compassion: aren't you supposed to welcome into the flock those who need you most, and in your estimation, Pastor Warren, wouldn't that be the godless gays?

--I'm not a fan of people who think I should burn in hell for all of eternity for loving my partner, who has the same genitals as me. No people in the history of civilization, nay, the history of bipedal existance have ever had so much gential interest as the gays. My vagina, I guarantee, looks very similar to straight women's vaginas. I should know, I've slept with straight women and the 'ginas look nearly identical, sans some hairstyle differences. I presume gay dudes would say the same. So can we stop talking about what's in my pants already. Christians are the perverts here, not the gays. I have never once discussed or been interested in or written pamphlets about or stated websites on or given public orations concerning Christian sex practices or genetalia.

But this isn't about the bigot Warren, this is about the savior of our people, the optimist, the sage, the one true and noble and mighty and fair and everything else his campaign overtly or covertly, explicitly or implicitly claimed: Obama is fair, sane, morally sound.

I do love Obama, but the pick of Warren is a slap in the face to the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the gay* minority who helped put him into office. I have to agree with Dan Savege here: you don't see an any anti-semites in Obama's cabinet, and there is no out and proud racist performing any function for him either. Why is it that the only people who are expected to "agree to disagree," to shut up and take it, to make nice with those who openly hate them, are the gays?

Consider for a moment, dear reader, someone who outwardly hated an intrinsic aspect of your identity, something immutible and ingrained. Who would that person be? Are they, and others like them, constantly given the benefit of the doubt by our leaders and society in general? Are they heralded for all their other good qualities, and is their hatred of you ignored or downplayed at every turn? What if they were then chosen by the president as someone to perform a sacred and historical ritual in front of the entire country, as an example of morality and good character?

Consistantly the hateful, bigoted, ignorant Christian pastors in America are praised by our political leaders for their intelligence, their kindness, their temperance, their good nature and will despite their open and proud hatred of a prominent minority group. On the same night the first black man was elected president of the United States, Prop 8 passed in California (Warren had a big hand in that, too). While that night will be remembered by many people as the night that equality finally prevailed in America, my memories of it will be very different. Where were all those equality-lovin' straight people who voted Obama in California when Prop 8 won? If you are straight, or god help you gay, and you voted for Obama and also for Prop 8, all I can muster at this moment is fuck you, equality for some is inherently unequal.

I know you're not perfect, Barack, and I'm not asking for it: I'm asking for follow through on that hope you banked on, that change you promised. I'm asking for some of that consistancy you're known for: if you're so smart, your plans and politics so transparent, why make such an ignorant and calculated choice as Warren? Mr. Obama you claim it was to bring people together, but you have only driven me further from you, and many of the other gays that fought so hard for you, believe in you, wrote four figure checks to you, further into the margins. It's the wrong foot to start on, it's a mistake, and for the first time you look like a politican to me. John Leo on the Huffington Post claims that "Prop. 8 and its aftermath are the first time in the four decades since Stonewall that the gay movement has started to look like an organized tantrum" and God willing he's right. Again, to reference Dan Savage, no more Mr. Nice Gay. We have had it, and are no longer interested in pretending bigotry is permissible, inequality is warranted, or that we're cool with you despite the fact that you wish we would just keep our mouths shut and play nice.


*I'm purposely ignoring the rest of the acronym, and just discussing the G and L in LGBT. I am not transgendered and therefore cannot speak to their needs or opinions. Nor am I bisexual, and the bisexuals can at least marry 50% of their dating pool. This issue is too complex to discuss all facets in one wee blog entry, so I have willingly chosen just the parts I am capable of discussing at least semi-coherently.

I've been busy

and surrounded myself with snakes and birds and all the things I missed about writing. I was on the train the other day and this really beautiful woman was sitting across from me. I couldn't stop looking at her, so before I got off at my stop I wrote a note to her, something to the effect of "you're beautiful, someone should tell you that today. So I will do it." I dropped it in her lap as I was leaving the train. I want to live in a world where strangers are honest and kind. Auden said "Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another." Was my moment on the train profound? No. But it was genuine, and genuine is a start. We have to make our own magic, you know.



Public Transit

A pauper’s burial insures you never have to be alone again.
Is that what you want? To spend you life unfettered by the problems
Of others, only in death to be surrounded by the naked stranger,
One thousand strong and unflinching?

ER

The Lark Swooping and Swift

Lithe and cut the air, wind tatters
Swirled around and hung on themselves,
Dissolved and dissipated back to
A roving sea of the particles we breathe.

Then, her wing feathers cupped this breeze,
She glided to a stop, perched on the bookcase
And considered my upturned palm. I called
To her with your name, my tone tempered
by loss. I wanted to know this bird was you.

I shut the door, locked us in, the sheer curtains
Beckoned and you watched them ripple around
The breeze. I called to you again, wanted to see
You see me but the body just flinched, in the bird’s eyes

There was no recognition. Its little head ticked,
Registered the waning pleas from this world
For you to come back to it, my lowering outstretched arm,
Cresting waves outside, loud knocking from the other
Side of the door, a bird inside the house finding its way out.

ER