i meant to say

When I said I had to leave I meant:

these 13th floor windows look too much like doorways. I meant:

I'm a fish drowning in all this air.

When I said I missed you I meant:

you are my water, my ocean, my sweat,

tears and blood, meant

everything smells like metal since

we said goodbye.

When I said it had been too long I meant:

time had become a foreign language.

I meant every number rhymed

with "alone."

When I said I needed to take a lover I meant:

I know no other names but yours.

I meant: every graven idol

eventually crumbles before God.

Rambling thoughts of a recently dumped fiancee

 In June, after four and a half years together (and my record to date), I asked him to marry me. By August I was dumped. I have needed desperately to write about it but have been unable to write. So instead, I turn the recorder on in my phone and just talk it out to the open air. Below are abridged transcriptions:

Fri, Aug 28 3:17AM

Always. After heartbreak or trauma I crave a tattoo.

I think because my emotions are so strong and overwhelming that they aren't just feelings or brain synapses. They are truly tangible to me and I need evidence of that. I need physical pain to match my emotional pain, to leave a mark on my body as part of my healing and processing. 

What's interesting is that I just thought about this today. Today marks two or three weeks since we had that conversation and it's the first time I've thought about getting a tattoo. And I wasn't even thinking about getting a tattoo, I was thinking how I usually would have gotten a tattoo by now. And I haven't even thought about getting one, only just now to think about how I haven't thought about getting one.

So if that's how I process emotions, what does that mean? Does it mean I'm not processing this? Does it mean I'm numb to the emotions? Does it mean I'm not emotional about this? I have no idea what it means. I think because I have no idea how I feel about it.

How I feel about it is changing from moment to moment. So for my own sake I'm going to start documenting the things I feel from moment to moment so that I can process what the fuck is going on with me.

For example: I have become unfamiliar with my body. And this manifests in a lot of ways. I had been wearing glasses every day but I just bought some contacts... but that's a minor thing and I don't understand why I did that enough for it to be a good example of what I'm trying to say. 

I could say that I have lost eight kilos. I only know this because I have to weigh myself every time I go to the psych clinic for medicine and I was 88 kilos and I knew that I had dropped to like 83 but now I'm down to 80. 

True to form I will always find the silver lining, which currently is: the weight is leaving what I have considered my problem areas mostly, like 75-80% is coming from areas that I wouldn't mind to see a little flatter, and only a small portion is leaving my tits and ass. Like, I've still got the significant majority of my tits and ass and that's what matters, so there's that silver lining.

In the meantime, I feel like I'm eating less but I don't feel like I'm eating lose-eight-kilos less. And I should note that I have no idea how many pounds eight kilos is at all. My last shitty breakup was extremely traumatic, and I lost twenty pounds, because I was still living in a country that measured pounds at that time. 

How else can I talk about what's happening in my body? I feel unfamiliar in it. I have forgotten how to sleep. Am I a side sleeper or a back sleeper? I feel like I occasionally used to be a stomach sleeper but I haven't done that in some time. I'm unsure if it has to do with the mattress I'm on, but it's been the same since mid-March. It hasn't changed, so it's got to be me that changed. So what changed and why?

It's like I sleep better on my back than I used to. I sleep better on my right side than on my left side. And that's because when I sleep on my left side, my heart starts getting a little palpitate-y like it's struggling under the weight of my lungs? sitting on top of it? Is that what's going on? What else would make it do that. I used to sleep on my back only rarely but now I might spend most of my night on my back, I don't know.

I have lost interest in taking care of my hair. And I have naturally curly hair so that's saying a lot, other natural curlies will know. I have found it really challenging to keep up basic maintenance on my fingernails and toenails. It's like, oh they don't need attention (repeat) OMG they all need attention at once oh they don't need attention (repeat) wait exactly 47% of my nail ends need attention right now stop everything and fix it now. It's so weird it's -- but then other nails haven't grown at all. Even my breakouts are different. 

I'm trying to make this new pillow work for my needs. I'm not sleeping properly. I'm sleeping entirely too much like I'll get out of work on a Friday, let's say last weekend I got out of a meeting at 4 or 5 and I came home -- 

oh, I don't know how to DRIVE any more! I used to be a very aware, conscious driver, even a little bit aggressive, like compassionately aggressive, because you have to be a little bit aggressive to drive in Taiwan without dying. But now I space out, not even thinking about anything, I just become an empty head and I drive at a perfectly boring speed and I try to keep to the right so all the other aggressive drivers can just go around me. I see something on the drive and I realize, I just missed the last three blocks. For three fukkin blocks I wasn't paying any attention at all, oh okay, I'm here now. 

What else is weird. Eating is weird. I was brought up in a food insecure household, so now as an adult having food gives me a sense of security. When I feel depressed I start spending money on food. However, when I feel depressed, I have less of an appetite so I'm buying food because I feel the need to have food in my house because it will give me comfort to know that there's food in my house but I'm not fukkin eating it, so it goes bad, and I have to throw it away, and then because of how I grew up I have guilt about throwing away uneaten food that I allowed to go bad or spoil and that just makes me more depressed and it's this fucked up cycle.

I really can't even begin to address how it's affecting my work performance because I'm trying to fly under the radar at work right now. If I start to talk about it and catalog all the ways in which I've been a shitty employee lately then I would have to face the fact that I've been a shitty employee lately and I prefer not to do that. I have been flying under the radar. I've only turned up as a blip maybe twice, and it has been resolved, and they know what I'm going through. I'm managing to get enough work done so that when classes start I won't be behind, I'll be able to do my job and god willing there won't be any more blips.

So what's weird: My eating my sleeping my body my driving my work - that's pretty much everything right? 

I feel like I need to catalog these thoughts that I'm having just to keep them straight for my own sake, because I don't really understand what I'm going through. Maybe this can help me make sense of myself. As far as what I've been thinking... I will start with a couple of thoughts that I just had and then leave it, then come back to it and continue to add thoughts as they come to me just to show how completely all over the spectrum my thought process has been. It's exhausting. I'd rather be fucking duct taped inside the world's craziest roller-coaster for 24 hours nonstop. Like that would be easier than my thought process these past weeks.

So the thought I just had was: He knew who I was. We were friends for a year and a half. He saw me picking up a different hookup for every night of the weekend, every weekend. He knew that I was nonmonogamous. He saw me in a relationship with another person and we were both dating other people, happy with it, happy with each other, having a great time. And so when we started becoming a couple and he said what he said on that bench on that beach on that island, when he said I don't know how I feel about it but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and I just believe that we can get through anything.... I believed that. It had been such tooth pulling work to get him to say even that much that when he finally did say that much, I just considered it a win and backed off. When instead what I should have done was right at that moment pinned him to the motherfucking ground, put my fukkin knees on his chest, pinned his arms above his head and been like, Say more about that NOW. Tell me how we're going to get through it NOW. What's your plan NOW. What's your thinking about that NOW. Now not five years from now, now. And I tried to bring it up again (repeat) throughout the years, the five years, the half of a decade that we spent together and he just kept being evasive. And I kept letting him be evasive. 

And it speaks again about the ways that the unequal burden of emotional labor falls upon women and the ways in which that fact repeatedly manifested in our relationship, that I kept bringing it up and he kept avoiding it. Even I am now saying I should have forced him to talk about it -- no he should have forced his fukkin self to talk about it, but since his ass wasn't doing that...

I keep waffling on my feelings toward him. In one moment I'm all--you know what fuck him and the thousands of dollars and the sixty fukkin months of my life that I wasted on him while he was pretending to love who he pretended I was.... and in that moment I mean it 100% from the poisonous pits of my blackened heart. And then fukkin 20 minutes later I'm saying to myself, if only I could have found a way for us to get married online on Zoom or whatever then he'd be stuck with me. And he'd be forced to work through it and deal with his feelings about it and work out a compromise that could work for both of us.

How do I feel right now right this second? Right this second I feel like if he wanted me in this moment, he oughta know what he oughta do if he wanted me, and he's clearly not doing anything, which must clearly mean he doesn't want me. And if one conversation about my needs can cause him to pivot that drastically, one conversation, then after 5 years! of me going through so many different kinds of hell just in order to stay by his side he can't be bothered to do what little it would have taken to keep me or even to get me back, then he Does Not Care At All. Clearly. That's where I'm at right now. 

Another moment and I'll think to myself, if he were to come back, I wouldn't want him. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't take him. And then in another moment my fucking heart cries out, I would take him back right now, he would only have to say one word, and I would take him back with each and every one of his faults that hurt me over the years, I would welcome all of those faults and that man who hated me so, I would welcome it all back in a fucking heartbeat. 

That's not where I'm at right now, but it's where I have been as I flit from moment to moment. I guess that about brings us up to speed.

Fri, Aug 28 7:47PM

Right now I feel like: I'm so relieved. Because I was willing to put up with a lifetime of his self-defeatism, his irrational anger, and his general negativity, but now I don't have to. I don't have to be frustrated by someone who just gives up and then complains about a situation while refusing to do anything to resolve it. 

This bedroom that I'm sleeping in right now, that I have been sleeping in for five or six months, has got the loudest air conditioner of any place I've ever lived in my entire life, and I just... go to sleep! But he wouldn't be able to spend even one night in this room without losing his mind. He would go insane he'd be so angry about it. And guess what? I'm doing just fine.

Sun, Aug 30 2:09 AM

From my perspective, nothing changed! Nothing has changed. From my perspective, nothing changed except we had a conversation. 

From my perspective, I am the exact same person right now that I was before the conversation, so... I guess I just don't understand how having that conversation means he can throw away... ME. and US. and EVERYTHING that we went through together and everything that we meant to each other, and all this is past tense now because it's been over two weeks, maybe three weeks, feels like a year, and I just keep waiting for him to fall all over himself to apologize and reach out to me and be like oh my god I'm so sorry what was I thinking I'm a fucking fool what do I need to do to make it up to you -- because from my perspective nothing changed, all that happened was we had a conversation and so I don't understand.

Because he is so defeatist and so pessimistic, I wonder if he believed before I even left Korea that we were gonna break up. Even though I never wanted to do that at any point, because he's so defeatist and pessimistic, he believed that and made it come true. That's what I wonder. I wonder if, when the conversation happened, he was just like, ope here it is, may as well just sever the cord and get it over with just like I knew nothing good could ever happen! 

If that's the case then that makes it even worse, makes it so selfish of him just to indulge his sick pessimistic fantasies and punish me, make me have wasted thousands and thousands of dollars, half of a decade, and to hurt me the way that I've been hurt just because he's such a pessimist and he just wants the worst thing to come true at all times and just insists on it. Maybe that's not what happened, maybe he never saw it coming and he was really blindsided and it just goes against all of his principles but that's hard for me to believe that because for me nothing changed! I am now exactly who I was five minutes before the conversation, during the conversation, immediately afterwards, and even five years ago, six and a half or seven years ago when we first met! I'm still the exact same person that he always knew me to be. I'm so furious for him doing this to me.

Sun, Aug 30 9:29PM

Right now if he called me up or if he sent me a message and said, I'm an idiot, I'm sorry, what was I thinking, please take me back so we can work this out, I would. No conditions, no questions. Right this second he could have me back. I wouldn't make any -- okay well we have to -- no I would just say thank god.

If I'd found out a way for us to have gotten married online then when we had the conversation he'd be stuck with me. He couldn't just say that's a dealbreaker and be done. He would have to talk it out, work it out, but because I couldn't find a way to do that he was able to just cast me aside.

Tues, Sep 1 1:19AM

I wonder if he has started cataloging all of the little quirks and traits and things about me that he won't miss. All of the little annoyances that used to piss him off but he would let it go because we were in a relationship. I wonder if now he's looking back, kindof the way I am and thinking to himself, well at least I'll never have to hear her say (whatever) again or never have to find her underwear on the couch again for example. We've all got little things that annoy us; Lord knows I'm over here thinking I'll never have to be the only one fighting to save us anymore, only have to save myself. Over here thinking at least my air conditioner isn't causing someone to get irrationally pissed off and just run their mouth bitching about it nonstop every day for hours on end. I wonder if he's over there doing that, thinking to himself, God I'm so glad to be rid of this and that and the other, never to be given a lecture on feminism ever again never to be told I'm using the word "triggered" wrong ever again... Is it shit like that? He's over there singing hallelujah? Is that why he isn't contacting me at all? 

I get -- philosophical is too big of a word for it and pensive is too small. I get caught up in my thoughts  in the rare times like these, which are times that I don't feel one way or the other about him. I don't feel broken hearted desperate that he would reach out to me and say oh my god you're the best woman i'll ever find, nor do I feel that fukkin asshole how dare he create a false pretense for five years and waste all my time and my money. I do not feel I wish we'd already gotten married nor do I feel I wish I'd never met him. Very rarely do I get caught in this I-don't-know-what-I-want middle place. I'm usually oscillating wildly back and forth like a pendulum on crack. 

When I get in this ambivalent indifferent noncommittal place it's almost more depressing. When I feel unaffected by any desires regarding him is when I feel most lost, and maybe that's because he has been an anchor for me for so long that when my purpose is tied to him (whether it is I hate his guts or please god come back to me) at least it's still tied to him. And the times where I don't know what I want, that's when I start casting out the longest fishing lines. 

I sent a letter to a director of education up in the aboriginal mountains and villages to say like heeyyy my contract will be out this time next year, are you going to be looking for anybody sure would like to hang out in the mountains... or I looked at google earth and I found the upper and lower latitudinal coordinates between which reside climates that I enjoy, and I started where I currently am on the globe and started rotating west, and wrote down the name of every even semi-inhabitable country. Like it had to be notoriously war-torn for me not to write it down (which is a surprising number of countries unfortunately). And when I got back to where I started then I scrolled down into the southern hemisphere, found those same opposing coordinates, and scrolled east, writing down the name of every country that fell within the two latitudes of the climate that I like. Now I've got a list of somewhere between four or five dozen countries and I'm writing down what is required to teach English (there some of these countries I haven't found any information on teaching English there, maybe it means they don't want foreign English teachers, maybe it means i haven't looked in the right place, or I would have to do something else or they don't want foreigners at all)...

but the ones I can find, I'm writing down cost of living, salary, whether I could save money, whether the jobs provide housing or I find it, what is the health care like... and then I'll use those things. (and there's a few other categories I can't remember) but i'm finding this on like 60 countries give or take right now in these moments where I don't fucking know what I want. That's the scale of how seriously I have no idea what I want, that I'm literally looking at the entire globe to figure out what I want. I am so ignorant, I am so devoid of any knowledge about my wants or even wants at all that in order to narrow it down and find what it is that I want I first have to start with the entire planet.

I know a few things I don't want, that's a little helpful at least for now. And I know that for now I should just keep living where I am, keep working where I work, keep saving what I can and just... keep taking my medicine, waking up in the morning, going to work, rinse, repeat... because apart from that I really don't have any wants. I have a few needs like I need to sleep, eat, shower...  But even those things become difficult to force myself to do. I'll stay up on Sunday night until fukkin 3AM putting off a shower when I know I have to wake up at 6AM to start the school week but because I don't WANT to take a shower or even work or I don't want anything ... 

I don't even want food so I just keep snacks around in the house. Because I start feeling hungry and it's the time when I would start preparing and getting ready for a meal, but when I start thinking about food my brain is like nah not interested i'm good and so I don't get anything together until the moment when I finally have enough hunger that I can't ignore it anymore. At that point still nothing sounds good so I have to just have snacks like small bread things that I can just put in my face, chew, drink water and they'll expand in my stomach and my stomach will just shut up and leave me alone for a few hours

so yeah basically i'm doing great.

Why I Can't Jam to CeeLo Anymore OR: Your Game of Thrones fanship is wrecking my PTSD.

Facebook asked me to comment on the return of Game of Thrones.  Shortly after posting this status update, I received the following question in my inbox.

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  

  The short answer is: Yes.
  
  Now I'll define support.
  
  Do I mean these people themselves go to the bar with rohypnol in their pockets? Probably the majority do not.
  
  Do I mean these people themselves, when they hear of an MRA rally, get out their posterboard and their markers and go join with misogynistic signs held high? Probably the majority do not.
  
  But let's look at the study conducted at the University of North Dakota, by two PhDs and one MA, published in 2014 in the journal Violence and Gender and first reported by Newsweek. ONE IN THREE of the men surveyed said they would "use force to obtain intercourse" from a woman if there were no consequences. Now, when the actual word "rape" was used in the question, those numbers dropped to much lower. But is that not the definition of rape?
  
  And that's where things get tricky. My rapist fucked me without my consent. I woke up, and he was inside me, and I did not want him to be. But he does not believe that what he did was rape. So few rapists do. In fact, marital rape in the USA only began to be outlawed in the 1970s, and was only finally illegal in all 50 states by as recently as 1993/  The definition is still tricky in at least 13 states. Marital rape is still legal in around fifty countries. My rapist, like so many others, believed he had a right to take what he wanted, and saw nothing wrong with that.
  
  I bring all this up to say, it's highly likely that a good percentage of viewers either do not regard the three horrible scenes that are most often discussed as rape at all - and if they do, it's easy enough for them to brush them away. Drogo's rape of Danerys? Well they were married, it was their wedding night, what did she expect? Ramsey's rape of Sansa? Again, she was his wife. Jamie's rape of Cersei? Well, while not legally married, they'd been in a decades-long committed relationship, right? Even the actor who plays Jamie has defended that scene vocally. I'll never watch another project he's in.
  
  But Drogo never gets Dany's consent.  He flips her over, goes to town, and the camera zooms in on her teary eyes.
  The actual dialogue between Cersei and Jamie in the “controversial scene” is as follows:
  Jaime: "You're a hateful woman. Why have the gods made me love a hateful woman?"
  Cersei "Jaime, not here, please. Please."
  Cersei: "Stop it. Stop it. Stop. No. Stop it. Stop. Stop. Stop. It's not right. It's not right. It's not right."
  Jaime: "I don't care."
  Cersei: "Don't. Jaime, don't.”
  Jaime: "I don't care. I don't care." 
  Cersei tells Jamie not here, please, don't, stop, no, it's not right, and he says "I don't care" and helps himself to her. I stopped watching when I heard about that episode, so I can't comment on the later scene of Ramsey and Sansa, but I hear it focused entirely on THEON'S REACTION TO THE RAPE and not the rape at all. And in none of these cases do we deal with the aftermath of rape. It happens as a plot device and the story moves on, leaving these victims and their healing unaddressed.
  
  Importantly to me though, NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE RAPES OCCURS IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT. In fact, the scene between Drogo and Dany becomes a celebration of gaining her trust and her consent. Cersei literally begs Jamie to fuck her, and Sansa isn't even in Winterfell, she's far away to the East.
  
  Perhaps most importantly, this is being intentionally done and therefore condoned by the writers, directors, actors, and countless others involved in this show, in the face of public outcry against it. After the first violation in the Dany/Drogo story, there was outcry. They heard it. They answered it with more non-canon rape in the Jamie/Cersei story. The outcry was even louder. They heard it. They answered it with more non-canon rape in the altogether invented Ramsey/Sansa story. This time the outcry has been to the extent that some publications, including The Mary Sue, have said they will no longer cover Game of Thrones with any stories on their website. There was further outcry from Salon, Wired, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Hypable, Bustle, Vox, the NY Daily News, and a US Senator.  This is being intentionally and repeatedly done. These people are choosing to continue to depict this abhorrent act.
  
  So when I say I believe these people are supporting rape, what I mean to say is that they weekly celebrate a show which needlessly and grotesquely depicts the sexual abuse of women by men, disrespecting and retraumatizing me personally along with an untold and uncountable number of other victims of rape. I'm not making a mountain out of a molehill here.  My PTSD symptoms have been through the roof simply because I see people celebrating the show's return.  I've forgotten my phone at home, shown up late for work, and yelled at students who didn't deserve it.  I find myself absent-mindedly planning self-harm, and have to fight myself not to commit it.
  
  I believe that these depictions lead us to become desensitized to sexual violence and that it is this sort of attitude toward rape and depiction of it that leads to instances of, for example, this woman livestreaming her 17-year-old friend's rape but doing nothing to stop it. I'll be the first to argue that music and video games do not a school shooter make, but frankly I feel we're dealing with apples and oranges when it comes to that.
  
  I do not deny that the books depict rape, but I feel personally that the books do a better job of dealing with the aftermath - repeatedly discussing how rapers are sent to the wall, Eddard Stark's declaration of Clegane as an outlaw and demanding he be brought to justice (mentioned only in passing in the show), and plenty of other instances.  While the books include rape, they do not graphically depict the details that the show visually places in front of us.
  
  People who watch this show are supporting the show. This show is indefensible with regards to how it repeatedly and unnecessarily depicts rape. Even before I myself became a rape victim (I do not yet identify with the label "survivor," though I hope I can one day) I would boycott problematic art and artists. I do not get to watch Woody Allen or Roman Polanski films. I don't listen to Cee Lo, or any artist who collaborates with Chris Brown. Cosby, Lennon, Sean Penn... the list goes on.
  
  Explain it away and enjoy the show if you want to. You have that right. I am incapable of doing so.

25/30: exhausted

I am Tired:

of being angry about houses
I don't have the tools to rebuild.
I'm tired of waiting for flowers
to arrive.  Tired of looking
over shoulders not my own.
Tired of counting and counting,
and counting things I need to be
counting.  Tired of math
and of language, tired of all
the things I don't know.  Tired
of not sleeping enough
and of sleeping too much.
Tired of sleeping around.  Tired
of Quit Playing Around And Get
Back To Work.  Tired of
Just Because You Write A Thing
Doesn't Make It True.
Tired of Mr Right Just Kidding Mr
Wrong All Along.  Tired of politics
and people tired of breathing air.
Tired of ain't got what I need, tired
of cain't get what I want.  Tired
of wanting and needing at all.
Tired of pay this and buy that and earn
earn earn tired of disparity
tired of depression and anxiety
tired
of exhaustion
tired of writing
this poem.

16/30: Catching up, and a silly ode

Today I woke up and my friend was still dead.

I took off work yesterday.  Keith and I hadn't been close since I left the Hot Springs area, but he was always someone who had significantly impacted me when I was younger, and you don't just lose that.  I was some sixteen, seventeen year old punk kid who tried writing and was scared, and he was one of the people who encouraged me.  He and a short list of others made me believe I had value, my voice was worthy of being heard, I should continue trying this crazy thing called art.  We'd catch up whenever I went back to visit, but he always seemed a little distant.

I guess now I know why.

Depression is a motherfucker.  And that ain't the half of the reality.  It KILLS people.  Don't think of suicide as selfish.  Think of it as tragic.  It is not something people do with the intention of hurting others.  It's something that happens when people cannot possibly hurt any more.  I wish I were back home right now, I wish I could gather with everyone who wants to honor Keith's memory.  I wish I could shake his daughter's hand and tell her how honored I am to meet her, after hearing so much for so many years about her, about how much Keith loved her.

My friend isn't coming back.  When I go visit home next month, I won't see him.

So I have to hug the ones I see even harder.  Love them even louder.

I love you.

Hi!

So you're reading my blog!  Wow!  Every year I get more readers, more views, more comments.  I remember once, talking to an ex-lover about something I wrote and said, I mean you probably haven't seen it---

He interrupted, "I read everything you ever write."

What kind of mad praise is that?  My whole heart sat with that and still sits with it.

I saw one day last week I got nearly two hundred views. In one day!  I mentioned it on Facebook, and a few different people said they'd been poking around, catching up, reading old posts... Think about how much it means to be SEEN in this world.  To know that people are looking at you.  On purpose.  Because they want to see you.

SO many of us don't know this feeling.  I think Keith didn't know.  If he'd known how many of us read his book, how many of us looked forward to seeing him again, would he still be here?  Would that have been medicine enough?

You are my medicine.

Say something.  Leave a comment here, or on a past post you enjoyed.  Or one you didn't enjoy!  One you hated!  Tell me what's working for you in the piece, tell me what isn't working for you and could be tightened up.  Tell me what you miss.  Tell me who you love.  Let's communicate and celebrate - we're still here on this side of the ground.

Yesterday's poem was part for Keith and part for all of us with depression and life-threatening mental illnesses.  Today's poem is part for Keith and part for celebrating life and part for poutine.

Yesterday was hump day.  The 15th of the month, out of 30 days.  So now we're coasting downhill toward home.  Why not write a silly poem?  I've been serious all month.  Today let's celebrate something that made me happy.  Today, that thing was a poutine burger from A-Chi, the best burger joint in Pingtung and maybe even all of southern Taiwan.


I neglected to take a photo before I dug in. I was too excited to have it in my mouth.  Halfway through I thought, I should write a silly fun poem today, for Keith, and took a photo.  No "after" photo because you've all seen a blank plate before.

Ode to the Poutine Burger at A-Chi:

Behold the meat patty,
so full of potential,
so undirected: raw
in the cold air, behind
a tightly sealed door.  Behold lettuce,
ripe tomato, white onion thinly sliced.
Pickles bathing, relaxed,
in their vinegar.  Behold cheese
and bun.  Take all of this and you would have

a burger.  But today
is not just any day. Today we add
mashed potatoes, brown gravy plus cream
and mushrooms.  Today, I glut.
I debauch.  I celebrate another day
on this side of the ground with
GRAVY.  There be no tidiness
here. No means to dainty my way
through these pillows of exploding mash,
these gravyfalls of deliciocity!  This
is bliss, and it's all over my face:
someone once
told me
a terrible joke.
I will now suffer it upon you.

What's the difference
between pussy
and mashed potatoes.

Pussy makes its own gravy.

BUT NO PUSSY EVER COVERED MY FACE
LIKE THIS.  Oh, poutine burger, inappropriately
named, in this country without curds I don't care
what I look like, seated outside at the table
in front of the restaurant, I wear you without shame,
I wear you with prize, nose to neck, sweet sweet
poutine burger, I left my last wife,
the chili cheese burger with real pickled jalapeños
FOR YOU, in this country with no chili
and no pickled jalapeños, for YOU, oh my love,
there can be no other above you, no day of work
is too terrible that you cannot wash
it away with your sauce, gravied potatoes, gravied
bun, gravied lettuce and gravied onions, gravied red
ripe tomatoes, oh my god, gravied PICKLES.
The occasional saucy mushroom tries to escape

but my fries are at the ready.  POUTINE BURGER,
never leave me.  POUTINE BURGER, never die.
POUTINE BURGER, only you
can stay
my wandering eye.

10/30: reasons to be angry today

1. Because I set my alarms for P.M. instead of A.M. and woke up just in time to not technically be late to work.
2. Because I can't use my air conditioner, because it pisses water all over my belongings.
3. Because I'm ovulating and there's no one around to Do Me Right.
4. Because I didn't see the sun set.
5. Because I never see the sun set.
6. Because Dove has a new Beauty campaign out that still doesn't address how much easier it is for white able-bodied ciswomen to claim Beauty than it is for their sisters in the struggle.
7. Because too many white able-bodied ciswomen leave their sisters behind in the struggle.
8. Because the struggle.
9. Because I make my students do their homework, but I still haven't finished grading their tests.
10. Because I don't know how to reach some of them.
11. Because I had to teach them about Ferguson.
12. Because Amerikkka.
13. Because maybe there is no good country in this world.
14. Because this world.
15. Because depression.
16. Because antidepressants.
17. Because infinite downward spirals of existential thoughts.
18. Because I didn't have time to eat until 10PM.
19. Because I've already stayed up too late again tonight.
20. Because tomorrow *isn't* another day.
21. Because I still haven't finished unpacking into this new place.
22. Because I don't know where my heart is.
23. Because I'm scared to visit home, because what if I don't want to leave, because what if I never want to visit again.
24. Because I want to be home now.
25. Because home is a place where companies turn the water off on poor folk.
26. Because home is a place where white men in blue shirts shoot black men black women black children black people who did NOTHING.
27. Because too many black family trees are missing limbs these days.
28. Because this makes me sick, but I have the privilege of being able to stop thinking about it because I'm white.
29. Because home is a place where businesses can tell me get out cuz I'm queer.
30. Because I'm queer and woman in a world that hates queer and woman and black and and and.
31. Because that should be so alarming that we all immediately understand how wrong it is and change it.
32. Because people don't find it alarming and don't change it.
33. Because at 10PM my alarms did in fact go off.

8/30: the first time i got tied up

He opened the drawer and somewhere
the cars of a roller coaster started ascending.
(click, whir)
(click, whir)
Allyship as reassurance: there's always someone
else in the roller coaster car. He brought out the soft
black purr of cord and I felt
(click, whir)
for the lap bar.
He wrapped my wrists like a gift.
Cradled them with hungry eyes as his hands did loops
twists
corkscrews
(click, whir)
my coaster car sunrise crescendoing up
(click, whir)
and up and there is a moment

(click, whir)
when the peak of the hill is in sight
(click, whir)
and I know (don't I?) what's coming.
(click, whir)
Seconds are lifetimes, look over my shoulder I can just
(click, whir)
see
(click, whir)
the danger:
where I came from,
(click, whir)
the earth, my home, my family, my death --
no one's ever asked at the peak did I check
the lap bar
(click, whir)
What a disarming question that would be
so I feel prepared for the plunge.
He surgeoned the last knot,
(click, whir)
tucked pretzled ends in
(click, whir)
with a mother's care, pushed my arms up
(click)
above my head
(whir)
and asked:

“Can you get loose?”
(click)

I tried.  Disarmed. And then:
Gravity unmade, stomach bloomed in my throat, heart
clung to my teeth, blood bullied my face I was there
in the car I was weightless, flying powerless and loving
surrender, feeling windthrilled and released, falling
elated with no net, we were waterfall and
rocks below, a most holy disaster, crashing safer 
than anyone
has ever will ever be whir click been.

30/30: this time it's personal and it's naked and it's ugly.

And it's prose.  Whoops.

I'm feeling extremely restless.  Something about spending an entire day expecting to learn at any minute that any number of people I hold very dear had died.  Something about this ovulation being extra cat-in-heat-like.  Something about too much introspection and existential thought.  Something about I love a man on the other side of a globe and what am I even stringing him along for if I will probably just let him down by going to bed with someone and never live near him anyway.  An open relationship in theory and in practice are different animals.  A past lover asked if I wanted to get down.  I wanted to get down.  I went to see him.  It was fun and it was fine but how will the man I love be after I tell him?  And I left still feeling cat-in-heat-like.  I wanted to go to any bar and go to bed with the first person who made eye contact.  I wanted a stranger to slap me full across the face and tell me horrible things about myself.  I went home and wrote a tender poem about my love then spent my whole dream fucking strangers who said yes.  So instead I drive too fast after school down rural highways and the wind is too cold because I don't have a jacket and it hurts my skin and I like it.  And a car in front of me is kicking up dust and it's stinging my skin and I like it.  I follow the car down roads I wouldn't otherwise have taken because I want the stinging to keep stinging.  And the cold and the sting is making me tear up and I like it because I have an excuse to shed tears and a reason for them I can name.  I'm driving too fast and I'm fantasizing about leaping off and flying for a few seconds.  I hold the accelerator down until it will go no faster and dream about brick walls.  And what am I even doing staying up too late every night and I just want to sleep all day and why am I going to work what does this work mean for me for my future what is a future do I even want one?  What is living for and can't I just sleep under an overpass and start drunk fights with strangers and get my teeth knocked out?  Why do I feel like shit and why do I want someone something to make me feel like shit?  Because then I'd have an actual reason for feeling this way that I cannot otherwise name?

25/30: Anaphora

YOU:

got me distracted
driving, got me daydreaming
at work and at rest, got me hating everything
I eat for tasting not one drop like you.
got me popping pens in my mouth
while I'm trying to write, at an angle
like that could invoke your girth,
got me missing the slick of you, saying
your name three times in the mirror like
it could make you appear.  got me staying up late
replaying memories then sleeping in trying
to hold on to dreams.  got me exclamation
mark.  got me restless interrobang.  got me hungry
ellipses.  got me aching like a high schooler
at 2:59 on Friday, got me afraid of what this means,
then relaxing into fear like an opening bud.
got me like a hobo listening to a whistling train, got me ready
like ramen craving falls of boiling water,
got me all sandy beach and you foaming waves.
got me crossing my legs to keep out my dancing hands.
got me tuned and soundchecked, got me kneeling,
head proud, hands folded, wide eyes open tight
and a stomach just as big, ready, praying, flag mouth
unfurled, that you will come on by
and get me.

19/30: write about the weather, but not really

There are rains here in Taiwan like I'd never seen.
Go to bed, rain.  Wake up, rain.  In between?
Rain.  And I love it.  Love it all over
everything, all inside everything, everywhere I go
it goes with me, everywhere I look it's all I see,
it gets in my food, in my drink, in my eyes, down
my ears and into my brain.  I wear it.  I breathe it.
I sleep with it and arise into it.  It bathes me
and my world; it soothes, it nourishes, sings, it


There are winds that blow on the southernmost tip
like I've never felt.  Just try camping.  The winds
will shudder the tent you'll feel shaking, sleep stirring,
rise moving, and in between, dancing.  Just listen
how the ocean sings with it, too, take naps on the beach
and ignore the stinging sand, take a jar of sand home
like setting it on the shelf could keep the wind with you,
like you feel your hair blowing when you look upon it,
and you feel how it felt on your skin, you can feel


And now here I am
in the town where I live
and his wind and his rain
have gone across the sea.
Left me with all this
fucking
sunshine.
Left me

18/30 - A Gram of &s

An eleven line form whereby the theme/title of the piece, its letters are used to make new words that end each line.  Get help finding your words here.  No fair changing words - adding "s" or "ed" or any of that nonsense.

Infatuation:
What it boils down to is I think it would be fun
if we spent a fortnight, just you, me, a futon,
and a kitchen full of food.  We fuck like Titan
gods, all thunder and smolder, like we might attain
some immortality from this electrified union.
After this, after us, after you I find myself unfit
for any others.  I want to curl myself into
the concave of your body like some infant,
like your skin could become my new outfit.
I think of your mouth and feel hungry and faint,
missing the way it makes me come like a fountain.

3/30, prompt from Megan Falley

Write about the past in the present (simple, continuous) and then chop and screw the sentences.

We are holding hands in a cup of hazelnut milk tea.

I smoke your profile as the sun sets.

We are drinking the dead coral.

The sand is changing what I thought I knew.

I suck rocks on the balcony while you watch.

The waves are crashing against us in the bedroom.

I am climbing on your skin like seaweed

You are unzipping my soft belly.

My skin is your new jacket.

Your hands are invading everything.

The wind is gripping us like a hungry snake.

Your eyes are shaking the trees around us..

I marvel at the taste of your ocean.

Your lips are cradling me in the dark.

My legs unravel when you touch me.

The music is threatening to knock us down with every step,

but we are exactly everywhere we should be.

Your sea is foaming at my belly.

We are naming the stars and then dancing among them.

6/30: It's Okay.

It’s okay to eat nothing

but cookies, or boxed macaroni

and cheese; you’re grown now,

an adult, as they say, and now

you can stay up late, you can watch

all those films your mother said no to,

you can brush your teeth or not

brush your teeth, you can have dessert

first.

You can take candy

from strangers, you can go home

with strangers, you can fuck strangers

until they are no longer strange.

You can confess

intimate details of your life

on the public transit

or on the stage, or on

the blank page.  You can cuss

to yourself, or in front of children,

you can still

dream about becoming an astronaut,
a mermaid, 

You can find sneaky ways to get

on top of buildings, you can stand on the roof

and scream at the clouds,
I am here, look at me,

you gods and devils;

I am arriving

all the time.

Exercises in Honesty

1.
I only make a promise if I know
I can keep it. Put another way, I never
make a promise I'm not sure I can keep.
Promises

aren't always words. Sometimes they're sighs,
glances that linger, pleading eyebrows
raised in fear, my mother's fist, fingertips
taking their lovelong time, my mother's slow-burning
whisper in public, each barometric syllable a portent
of things to come.

2.
The first time my sister walked in on my parents,
I refused.
Cuddling, canoodling, that's all, kissing, playing, that's all, how
can I love anyone if I can't love the woman
who birthed me, how can my father
love me if he loves a woman who burns me
how can my partner love me if all
I know how to do is burn?

3.
Fire isn't the only thing that burns.
My mother's hands, my mother's voice was a burning my love
for him is a burning, acid
burns too, these things don't burn
like fire. Acid touches
and takes hold, moves in, spreads out, consumes
in such a way that nothing
was ever there, leaves scars,
leaves melted, leaves raw, leaves.

4.
This isn't supposed to be another poem about my mother.

5.
I want nothing more than to stand
somewhere sacred-
a courthouse, a chapel, a childhood backyard-
to hold his hand, grip his gaze and say,
i promise. i promise. i do.
But what if some acid
slips out accidental?
It isn't polite to burn guests.

6.
I lose
my shit
if someone touches my head.
I never knew why
til somebody asked me, "Did someone
hurt you there?" and i'm two years old, 

six, eleven, fifteen, laid out
on my parents' bed, my stubborn curls
draped over the edge as she claws
the brush through trying
to square peg my round hole straight.
I like for my lover to pull my hair.

7.
In my dreams my fist is a brick and her face
is pudding, layered, vanilla opens to strawberry,
a slapthump symphony, sweet and wet, I like for my lover
to slap me sometimes.

8.
Our bodies promise, too,
without using voices,
knot themselves around other bodies, other hearts.
When I rest my head on his chest I can hear
his heart opening

When he wraps his cradle hands
around my head
I'm home.

9.
Sometimes I hear
her laugh claw out of

my throat.
I thirst
for acid.
But I stop.
I can not tell you
I love you
through scars.

10.
When I tell you
I love you
I want it to be
a promise.

My letter to CNN

Why does Kyra Phillips hate her own sex? This morning I watched as within five minutes of each other, she made two comments that each on their own set women back decades.

First she covered the republican presidential debate in which it seems Michele Bachman did well. Kyra's words, paraphrased, were: "Do we even need Sarah Palin any more?" She then further explored this tragically sexist question by even calling up a guest and asking his opinion which, as an apparently straight, cisgendered, white man of privilege was: "NO."

What on earth makes a quesiton like that acceptable? When Mitt Romney did well, did Kyra say to herself, "Do we even need Pawlenty any more?" The question is based only in sex and when boiled down to its core is, Do we need this token candidate with a vagina any more now that we have this new token candidate with a vagina? I am not a Republican. I have no love nor respect for Palin nor Bachman. But so help me, there is room for more than one vagina in a presidential race, and Phillips not only insinuating otherwise but bringing guests on to further such a discussion is disgusting and pathetic.

Then she went on to a story about Weiner in which she became the first anchor, journalist, or newsperson of any sort that I have yet witnessed to turn the microscope around onto the women. I'm amazed it took this long, to be honest, but never suspected it would be a woman who went there first. She asked of her guest a question she appeared to be wanting to ask the women, and her words (and again I paraphrase except for the pivotal word) were: "Ma'am, why are you such a HO."

Ho. The colloquial term for WHORE. As in: a person who engages in sex acts for money. As in: the word that is slung at any woman as an insult more than any other negative word in the English language. And what is this "whore's" crime? Presumably none. We have no evidence that these women solicited or even wanted these photographs. And if we assume they did - which, by the way, is a huge assumption - ...so what? The Weiner story is exactly what Weiner, our POTUS, and many others have said: A Distraction. The man is only guilty of being an exhibitionist, being a little kinky. Who among us has never done a single thing that might raise a neighbor’s eyebrow? In the meantime, Senator David Vitter gets away with bribing his sex scandal into silence with $96,000 and illegal lobbying jobs. In the meantime, Senator John Ensign admits to using the services of prostitutes. And in the meantime, Kyra Phillips would rather call these anonymous, innocent women WHORES on her program, compounding this terrible distraction and committing a grave crime against her own sex.

Not long after her program, or perhaps still within it, a story ran about Tracy Morgan, and how he is going to return to Nashville to apologize for his harmful words against the LGBTQ community. What, if anything, will Phillips do to “make right” her truly horrible actions and words against all women this morning? Here’s a hint: an apology would not be enough. This woman honestly needs to take time off of her job to get educated on what is and isn’t acceptable to say about women. Nothing else can prevent future errors, which obviously stem from some much greater problem, a negative and disparaging attitude toward females. There are those who would argue sexism is dead in today’s society: I would encourage those people to only watch five minutes of Phillips to see that it is sadly alive and well and even perpetuated by its victims.

7/30: For My Friend

For My Friend, Upon The Occasion Of Her Divorce:

Get
sad.
I mean it. Get as sad as you want.
Cry. Cry curled up in the kitchen floor
surrounded by too many dishes. Cry until
you snot on the floor. Leave the snot there
for days. I mean it. Ignore the dishes,
the bills, the laundry, show up late to work
and forget what clocks are for. When they ask
why you're late, again, just look at them,
like they've spoken a foreign language, like
they have no faces, like you are dying

to kill them yourself, like you don't even know
where you are. And forget how to fall asleep.
Stay up until five a.m. doing nothing at all,
flipping channels on the television and then
on the day you decide to turn it all around
and you do the dishes and you mop the floor
and you start the laundry and head out
to the grocery store to find something
for dinner, forgive yourself completely
for falling apart right there in front
of god and everybody when you see

his favorite cereal. Buy a box just
so you can throw it away. Then don't. Then
buy whiskey, or wine, whatever your poison,
drink too much in the parking lot
of the bar before you go in, and go in
and the first man who buys you a drink,
if you like the look of him, is your man
for the night. Laugh at his jokes.
Dance with him and when you aren't dancing
hold on to his arm. Let him take you home.
Let him remind you that you are,
in fact, beautiful. Fuck that man
for hours and then leave. Leave his bed

in flames, leave his house burning down
around him, take a cab home. Leave
your panties behind in the cab. The cabbie
will never forget you. The man from the bar
will never forget you. The bar will never
forget you. The man you're divorcing
will never forget you and you will never
forget him either and that's okay, because
one day you will realize at the end of the day
that you hadn't thought about him once all day,
not up until the point that just then
you only thought of him to realize you hadn't,
and you'll chuckle to yourself, you'll get

a new tattoo, a haircut, shoes, and you'll miss
those panties you left in the cab, miss
the man from the bar, even miss your ex-
husband but you'll love the woman you've become
since.

4-28, "I should be studying, I should be studying."

So you file her away, wrap her up and tuck her
in your sock drawer, back in the corner, bury her
underneath the pair with holes in the heels
you can't bring yourself to throw out.

You try not to think about her. She's too pretty,
too popular, too smart, too young, too blond.
She's not your type. She's much too good.
But there comes that time every humid evening

when you lie down, turn on the good music and
take some time for yourself. It's your right
as a single person. You try to think about
that one hot musician. It works for a while,

just long enough to get things going
before you lose the vision. You bring up
the face of that professor, try to imagine
his or her body and it gets you nowhere.

Your hand starts to get tired, you can feel
your wrist getting sore. Picture the comedian,
the actress, the friend of a friend, the one you met
in this bar at that show. You don't want her,

you tell yourself, as you hear a rustling
from the drawer next to the bed. Not a bit,
you whisper, as she climbs out, lands on the floor
and heads your direction. Not me, you yell

as she claws her way up the side of the bed.
You scream, Nooo, a loud wicked howl
as she leans in over your face and you come
and you come and you come and you come.

5/30: Inventory of Lies

I love you.

This is my first time.
I'd love to go out with you again.
Of course I remember your name.

This is my first time with a boy.
I don't mind if you stay the night.
Why yes, I just love to fall asleep cuddling.
I'll call you again real soon.
That was amazing.

I think you're my soulmate.
I'll wait for you.
It really is a good size.
Of course your religion won't be a problem.
I've only been with five people.
Don't worry, it's my first time with a girl, too.
I don't mind that you have a wife.
I don't mind if we date other people.
I'm really happy for you both.
I do.

Don't worry, it happens to all kinds of guys.
I want to grow old with you, too.
No, I would never tell my friends.
I only want to make out.
It's okay, we have an open relationship.
Of course I'm over him/her/them.
I love you.

I'm sorry.
All we did was kiss.
We've stopped seeing each other already.
I never thought you'd get hurt.
I love you.
I mean it.

It's not his fault he gets angry.
It doesn't hurt as bad as it looks.
I don't mind if you do a little coke now and then.
Haven't thought of her much lately.
No no, I'm not falling in love.

I promise, I'll call you next week.
I love you.

Nat'l Po Month day 17: Conventions

When I was not single, we'd walk my dog together
every night, same route:
around the new hotel, tall pristine and proud
down the long convention center with its landscaped paths
curling back around the old hotel falling slowly apart
and then home again.

Conventions come and go and
the groups that visit them stand out with their similarities.
Scrapbookers wear pajamas, eat too much and carry
rolling suitcases behind them, laden with stickers.
Fishing enthusiasts also happen to be
very-large-truck enthusiasts and jeans-with-boots enthusiasts.
High school musicians like to sit out front of the hotel
waiting for the pizzas they've ordered all by themselves,
playing guitars and pretending they don't
want to kiss one another.
They come to town in so many yellow busses
lined up all in a row like a box of twinkies
and most of them leave their doors open.
We slipped inside a door one night, closed it
behind us, gave a toy to the dog and made
clumsy frantic love on three different seats
before we spotted his leash trailing behind him outside
and hastily snatched up pants and shoes to run him down.

Now, I enjoy being single. I swim in its freedoms,
take pride in actively loving myself:
I take me out on dates, buy me dinner,
buy me drinks, sneak a flask in
to the movie theatre and eat just as much
popcorn as I please before I take me on home
and respect me in the morning.
But it's summer in my city once again
and conventions are coming more
frequently. I round the corner with the dog
and see the Corvettes come in, so many rows lined up
for the show, bright shining hood after clean polished hood,
right in the middle, a pair of perfect seventy-six stingrays,
with absolutely no one to fuck on top of them.

day 13 bonus sonnet draft: don't take it personal.

i am not proud of the time i spent with you
but refuse to bear for you the power conceived
by regret. if i had known her flavor infused
your kisses i would have made you leave,
called you back and made you leave again.
i would have laughed in your face and called you
ugly names usually reserved for teenaged janes
whose only crime lies in that they had the gall to
blossom first. i'd have become a voodoo queen
and painted chicken blood across your door
in the shape of her name. if i had known her unseen
fingerprints were mapping highways out on your
skin i'd have cut it off to make a lampshade
and never lit it up, never let it be displayed.