dreams and actuality

walks in purple, at dusk film, september 2014

This is my body.  I have weathervanes. They are especially sensitive to dust storms and hurricanes.  When I am nervous, my teeth chatter like a wheelbarrow collecting rain  I am rusty when I talk:  It’s the storm in me.  The doctor said some day I might not be able to walk  it’s in my blood like the iron  my mother is tough as nails,  she held herself together the day she could no longer hold my niece  we said,  “Our kneecaps are our prayer beds  everyone can walk further on their kneecaps than they can on their feet.”  This is my heartbeat  Like yours, it is a hatchet.  It can build a house or tear one down.  My mouth is a fire escape,  the words coming out don’t care that they are naked,  there is something burning in here.  When it burns,  I hold my own shell to my ear,  listen for the parade when I was seven.  The man who played the bagpipes wore a skirt  he was from Scotland;  I wanted to move there,  wanted my spine to be the spine of an unpublished book,  my faith the first and last page  the day my ribcage became monkeybars for a girl hanging on my every word  they said,  “you are not allowed to love her,”  tried to take me by the throat to teach me  I was not a boy,  I had to unlearn their prison-speak  refuse to make wishes on the star on the sheriff’s chest,  I started asking the sun about the Big Bang  the sun said, “it hurts to become.”  I carried that hurt on the tip of my tongue  and whisper “bless your heart” every chance I get  so my family tree can be sure I have not left  you do not have to leave to arrive, I am learning this slowly  So sometimes when I look in the mirror  my eyes look like the holes in the shoes of the shoe-shine man  my hands are busy on the wrong things.  Some days, I call my arms wings while my head is in the clouds  It will take me a few more years to learn flying  is not pushing away the ground  safety isn’t always safe  you can find one on every gun.  I am aiming to do better.  This is my body.  My exhaustion pipe will never pass inspection  and still my lungs know how to breathe like a burning map  every time I get lost in the curtain of her hair  you can find me by the window  following my past to a trail of blood in the snow  the night I opened my veins,  the doctor who stitched me up asked me if I did it for attention.  For the record:  If you have ever done anything for attention,  this poem is attention.  Title it with your name  it will— scour the city bridge every night you spend kicking at your shadow,  staring at the river,  it does not want to find your body doing anything but loving what it loves  love what you love  Say “this is my body,  it is no one’s but mine,  it is my nervous system  my wanting blood,  my half-tamed addictions,  my tongue tied-up like a ball of Christmas lights  if you put a star on the top of my tree, make sure it is a star that fell,  make sure it hit bottom like a tambourine  ‘cause all these words are stories for the staircase to the top of my lungs,  where I sing what hurts  and the echo comes back  “Bless your heart”  Bless your body.”  Bless your holy kneecaps, they are so smart  You are so full of rain,  there is so much growing,  hallelujah to your weathervanes,  hallelujah to the ache  hallelujah to your full, to the fall,  hallelujah to the grace,  and every body  and every cell  of us all.

MINAKO TRYING TO PROTECT THEM BY TAKING THIS BURDEN ON ALL BY HERSELF USAGI SHAKING HER HEAD AND SAYING, NO, MINAKO-CHAN, IT’S OUR TURN TO HELP AND SUPPORT YOU, YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS BY YOURSELF, WE’RE HERE TO HELP JUST LEAVE ME HERE TO WALLOW IN A PUDDLE OF MY OWN FEELINGS ABOUT WOMEN SUPPORTING OTHER WOMEN IN THE MOST BADASS AND HEARTFELT OF WAYS THEY ARE JUST SO, COMPLETELY, TOTALLY, 100% THERE FOR MINAKO AND I DON’T CARE HOW MANY TIMES I SEE IT, I WILL NEVER GET OVER THESE GIRLS’ FRIENDSHIPS

    Just zeros and ones

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I had to draw the sailor scouts! I miss them so much!

I know the pieces fit [8x]

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Dr. Alex Paterson - Loving You Live

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