Guard Your Position

Even though this poem looks like musings on painful things, it was written in the spirit of moving on.  I found myself at a turning point: 

Do I let all of those old memories, habits, negative things I was taught, hang on to me?  Do I let them calcify in my soul until I'm frozen in cynicism and defeat, like the people with the bone-forming disease?  Or do I carefully arrange my soul in a position where good things are always welcome?  If I inevitably grow stiff with age, can I possibly stiffen with my arms wide open to happiness?  I'm not sure how I might change the poem, except to add this preface, and to note that I have, in the time since I wrote this, become very open to joy. 


In the small bedroom of my childhood, my books and teddy bears protected me from the emptiness of the house.  Outside, a dark and lonely night, my bedroom door is shut like magical iron. 

Guard your position. 

School, a place of learning, what it is to stand up at the top of the tower where all the children long to be, King of All.  The boy I displaced is angry, waits after the recess-bell to throw a ball of mud at my new shirt as punishment.  Humiliation of his fragile ego, worthy of violent rage.  In my world, this is Male : Female.  I should have stayed on the tower, let a teacher sort it out, but I had reason to believe I was invisible. 

Guard your position. 

There is a disease where the body takes every injury as a prompt to lay down bone.  Every bruised muscle fills with calcium and sets where it lays, position contorted or denied; body a prison, a sculpture of the positions each limb took before they were entombed.  If you must live, it would be wise to choose the way your new bones set up.

Guard your position. 

I am not at the midpoint of a lengthy life, but near.  There are choices to make.  I always thought—promised myself—that I would be fearless, that I would not become embittered, cynical, defeated.  I told myself that, before I believed in the existence of fear, and cynicism, and defeat. 

Guard your position. 

I see the way others live their lives, where they have arrived, twenty years from now.  There are choices to make.  If I must live, it is wise to choose the way my heart sets up. Not lay down at night in fear, wake with fear encrusted like misplaced bone.  Keep moving, keep moving, but if I stop, be sure to stop where joy is, and hope, and willingness to love.
Guard your position.  

When the Revolution Begins, 2010

When the Revolution begins, will you get up out of your chair

from in front of your TV, leave your nice warm living-room

and take to the streets, in one angry riot, deserved in every way

by the ones who own us all? 

Do we remember how to be angry now?  Is it all movie-violence

accompanied by buttered popcorn,

worlds in a fantasy, distractions from the pain of real life;

or do we remember how to stand

with the flag clutched in our fists, ripped back with all our might

from the ones who have waved it in our faces for so long

telling us that it stood for something

as they stomped--jumped on it like children playing a game,

making their point--do we remember how to be angry?

Have no Fear of the Revolution

or that it will not come. 

It will come.  When your television has shown you enough lies

when your armchair is tattered, but you've learned

that the cold of your living room is more important than looks

heat turned off for want of money. 

Then we hold our Revolution.  Then we go after money and power;

riot on the streets.  Then the police come, arrest us all

We go to prison for our beliefs. 

When all the poor are locked up there, we have our Equality

There will be none but the thieves of our country,

the ones who act like they own us

to pay for our food, and warm beds, and our health care. 

And so we win at last. 

December 2010

Two months after this poem was written, students from nearby East High School walked past my bedroom window, headed for the Wisconsin State Capitol.  I took the bus to beat them to the top of the hill and took video on my cell-phone.  Like thousands of others, I spread the word of our peaceful, powerful protests by way of Facebook and YouTube.  We spent the rest of the day watching and waiting to see if an ALEC-authored bill pushed through by the new governor, Scott Walker, would be passed by the State Senate.  I cheered alongside my fellow Wisconsinites when we discovered that our brave Democratic Senators had left the state in order to prevent a vote before the People had a chance to learn about the bill and express their opinions.  The protests in Madison were the largest the nation has seen in over a decade, with a crowd of nearly 200,000 in the middle of March.  While under-reported, misrepresented, and suppressed by the mainstream media, the events that occurred right outside my own door touched off a national firestorm of protests against other corporate-protectionist, ALEC-authored bills being pushed on an unknowing public throughout the nation. 

The World is Round

I hang my heart from the highest tree

Every time I head into town

And I’m headed into town every time

I step out my front door. 

Into the city, drowning in sound

I’m looking for the point, but the world is round. 

So I run away in my speed machine

When I drive my eyes are drowning in green

Drowning in green like golden pennies on the pavement

Things you never see in the city

Where gold is locked up like

Trees squared in by boxes of sidewalks

Driving through the forest where

At least the trees outnumber me

ten billion green leaves, and I feel

free, just another little animal who doesn’t need

anything that kills the whole world

Like the plastic-wrap on my groceries

I’d rather get groceries in a blackberry patch

Scratched up and sunburned to pay

for all the small wet purple packages

made out of dust and sunshine

I could catch a fish, wrapped in water and slime

Walking along in a cool brown stream

If I learned to be fast enough with my

plastic fishing pole

With my heart hung safe at the top of a tree

I’m locked in my plastic speed machine

Driving faster and faster

Buried in sound

I’m looking for the point, but the world is round. 

Crash, by the Numbers

12—o’clock on a November night

1—sweet little blue pick-up truck driven by

1—lone woman headed for a new home

1400—miles away in Wisconsin

75—the speed limit on I-80 Eastbound, central Wyoming

0—signs of bad weather as I drove up one side of the pass

50—my speed as I drove past mile-marker 247, I-80, Eastbound, Wyoming

1—black-ice patch waiting for me at the base of the other side

10—seconds to spin and roll

20—feet down the

40—degree slope

2—complete rolls

180—degree spin

2—head lights staring off at

100’s—of sagebrush and

1000’s—of blowing snowflakes

3—pounds of pink-gray tissue contained inside my skull

1350—pounds of force when my brain followed the same path as my truck

1350—pounds of force when my brain followed the same path as my truck, again

40—pound computer monitor missed my head and slammed into the passenger-seat

1—quart of liquid laundry-soap glanced off my head and exploded in my lap

18—inches shorter than my truck had been before

2—fewer windows

33—miles from the nearest town

50—mile-an-hour winds

29—degrees Fahrenheit

20—minutes after the crash they closed the freeway due to blizzard conditions

0—bars on my cell-phone

20—square feet of 9-1-1 reception

3—times I had to walk to the nearest mile-marker before I could remember what it said

40—minutes before the Highway Patrol reached me

15—minutes to become hypothermic

90—minute drive to the hospital

1—medic in the ambulance was

21—years old and the only kind face I saw all night long

3—CAT scans I did not agree to at

3000—dollars each

12—days since my health insurance ended

8—dollars for the cab ride to a hotel that was

3—blocks from the hospital, but no one bothered to point that out

0—calls from the hospital to my family or friends

0—clue what town I was in

0—idea where my truck was

0—concern for what would happen to me when I left the ER

1000—dollars to rent a U-Haul

3—hours to track down my sad, smashed truck and belongings

36—hours I’d been awake by the time I stopped at a hotel

17—hours before I showered off the laundry soap that was causing chemical burns to my skin

3—more days to reach Wisconsin

2—hitchikers with

3—dogs were company from Nebraska to the Mississippi

6—days before the adrenaline faded and I felt the pain of

100’s of sprained muscles and

1—mild concussion

6—months I could not work

2—months I was homeless

15—months for my body to heal

2—years to heal my mind

2—years to figure out how to pick up and keep driving

compiled 2011

Sixty-Five Years

Sixty-five years ago today, who remembers?  Old men in obscurity.  I
assign their grandchildren to go ask; they do not know.  Grandpa won
a Medal of Honor.  What's that?  They don't understand my awe.  He's
just Grandpa. 

I've seen the white cross high in the pass where the airplanes flew
across the island.  Surrounded by green, it looks small from the
highway.  On another mountain, we walked past the ruins of a
warplane, one of ours, buried by jungle.  We thought about wild-boar
attacks instead, and kept watch for trees to climb in case one came
along. 

I asked my teacher to tell about the war; when she was 8, they did
drills at school with gas-masks.  Sirens still run on Sunday every
month, just to be sure.  It's ancient history now, it was my
grandfather's war and he was gone before I was old enough to talk.

Sixty-five years ago today, and even I'd forgotten, but then, one of
my students asks "Isn't today some sort of celebration?  December
7th, 1941?"  Who remembers?

December 7, 2006

I went to Kaiser High School in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu, from 1989 to 1991.  The history of World War II was everywhere, from the downed airplane on the side of a steep hillside I once hiked along, to the barbed-wire fences that ringed Diamond Head, to the white cross on the far side of the island.  I was always intrigued with the men who fought that war, the last in our history that, in my opinion, was fought for a virtuous cause. 

In 2006, as a middle-school science teacher, I offered an extra-credit project to my students to interview any relatives who were veterans of Vietnam or World War II.  Few students did the project, and none could understand why their science teacher had assigned it.  Few of these remarkable men and women are still among us, and I wanted my students to have the same sense of history I had had as a child.  Science subject-matter was not the only, and certainly not the most important, thing I hoped my students would learn. 

I was amazed to discover that the grandfather of one of my twelve year-old students had received the Medal of Honor in World War II.  The boy was certainly the reflection of his grandfather; kind and loyal by nature, respectful, with a noble, strong spirit.  I wrote this poem partly because of the loss of those old men who built all the wealth that our nation enjoys today; partly out of awe for some of my students, who are surely not too different from the boys and girls their grandparents once were.  

Into the Green Lands

I took a trip into the Green lands

the wet lands, full of water
and dirt that isn't salted dead
I didn't want it to be a vacation
not a trip at all

transplant myself like some great tree,
with branches high into the sky,
fingers negotiating interlaced places amongst the other trees.
And I thought that I would sink my roots deep into soft wet earth,
drinking deep after such long drought.
Feeling earthworms feeding on the leaves that fell at my feet,
birds on my limbs, singing to each other.

I must have come from beside the road of some ugly desert
where the salt stunts roots and branches,
so it's hard to ever grow again.
Somehow condemned to be a spiny shrub,
I fear to be confined to a pot,
rarely watered by the kindness of others.

So I walk outside as often as I can, trying to drink,
and stand beside the other people:
trees, their lives too full for the likes of me,
branches already well-intertwined.
Small beside these great green People,
so aware of all the bitter salt wrapped up in my tissues.
If I let it out it poisons the soil,
the trees step back and look at me with condemning eyes.

I took a trip to the Green lands,
knowing only how to hold fast,
frozen in fear of my potential
for destruction, and hope of love
gaining satisfaction secondhand, watching trees

trying to learn how they drink

It is beautiful enough to see that trees are green and soil is deep.
It is kind enough to know that water falls from unreluctant skies.
No matter how much I may wither,
I refuse to be a desert creature anymore.

7 May 2010

Talismans

Talismans of a former life gathered into boxes

how many broken things and lost memories

how much of a life can I

wrap up in rags of jeans I wore to tatters

what will break? 

Each treasure is a world, anyone else seeing them can only wonder. 

or scoff

I left behind my soul

in a room

traveled to a far-off land

where no one cared

about the new white girl at school

toys left behind

home left behind

childhood

now I seem to move on for a living

as if it brought something to me, instead of always taking away

talismans in my hands, but we all live only in our heads

little ceramic caterpillar that my daughter painted, do not break

you are the memory of her generosity

a little box she painted, with all her baby-teeth inside

pictures and the works of her hands,

now I remember how much I love this little girl

so far away

in miles

in years

I have no faith, anymore, in some mystical being

who will keep us together

I lose something every day, another day,

hopeful not to lose the memories

no one may die, none be lost, I hold the little plastic boat you gave me

the case of your father's memories

a candle that we burned together, three hundred wimmin in a field

it's time for me to move on again. 

This is why I remember;

I've lost too much, so you are precious

You

all our memories together,

all the Universe inside your head, I wonder what is in there, what you think,

and here are my talismans

I like to pretend they keep me safe

wrapped up in ragged jeans

cradled in boxes

I'm moving again.  

September 2010