...are not enough reason for jumping. The sun is threatening to come out. Summer hikes up it's blue skirt and the sky peeks mischievous at all the parts of me that need rain
water is not enough reason to drown
bodies washed with soap
smell different from falling
I am writing
writing
writing
knocking more of me out
for public scrutiny
who owes me
nothing
nobody owes me anything
but they give it anyway
strangers and friends who have known me for years
yesterday I lost
thirteen pages of a document
thirteen pages of my cousin and my brother
beating the odds
of how we were not raised by anyone after nine
after eleven
we were children of the whoever wanted us
the journaling is slow today
this morning I am less fluid in the lines
breaking my own heart this moring
I am frightened of being
by myself
in my own house
it passes
and I am survived by worry
and anxiety
traces of a self changing
stretching and leaping toward
the warm
hollow of my own hope
no one holds me better than me
these days
no one holds me really
wish I was a broken arm
steady healing
under the crisp white cast
six weeks and everything is as good as it was
before the breaking
drink and you shall not be thirsty
christ is generous guy
but be careful what you offer
people might come to expect it
DC this weekend
Pride
and the negotiation of a world
moving faster than light
almost eight already
the hour is approaching
time to pack
bras
panties
tanks
shoes
cold days they promise
not so much sunshine
I am here sorting through the muddle
of my lack of concentration
the words choppy and insecure
even the poetry
is bland
dark waters and bleak windows
here comes the rain again
the show opens in August
45 Bleecker
home of where I first knew I could stand alone
on my own art
and conscience
let me know what the weather is like in your town this weekend,
Staceyann
Listening to Democracy Now! online.
democracynow.org
It's more summer than winter in Brooklyn and June Jordan has been on my mind.
writing of her
reading her
pushing me to pull the new show out my ass
my ass is decidedly wider
it's good to be awake
quarter of one
I am not sad
just alone with the click click of these keys
and Amy Goodman guiding me through the maize
of this hard
rain of politics
and finding out how Jamaican
I am
how America has inserted itself into my mouth
my body twisting
with the clash of these borders
how is Border/clash as a title for the new show?
we trying to mount this motherfucker
at 45 Bleecker
in August
2004
I be loving my life
in small moments
memories of how I love tunnels
and the train from Westmoreland to Kingston
peanuts
warm from the whistling cart
a man with no face
sold us small treasures
my grandmother and the oranges
my brother
who knew everything about the sound of us moving
our small bodies not quite wanted by most
we survived
because Grandma decided not to go to America
I learned to read
to trust my own voice
as valid
because she stayed
because my mother left
because the smell of a polished red floor still brings me to weeping for all I no longer remember
of bruised mouths smarting from the stain of a green mango
eaten with salt
and pepper
and apples that do not taste like America
barefoot and rocks
in a place called Paradise
why would a place like that be called Paradise?
and my grandaunt
doing the best she could with the wild child
and her strange ideas of God
and reading of angels who wear brassieres
I read my way out of Paradise
good thing there are tunnels
and trains to take us over
the cross is crazy
borders beating my immigrant ass
with mango sauce made from sweet/sauce
and added to french toast
eaten in DC
June is the kind of place a girl could retire
and Karma is the center of all these choices
sometimes a girl has to wrap her spirit round all the rocks that life throws
bus' yuh arse
if you can't move your feet real quick-like
dance through tunnels
speak the jive-talk
walk the ranch walk
Holland Tunnel
Battery Tunnel
Midtown Tunnel
I love tunnels
they make some people wary of the water
and what lies outside the walls
for me
the soft litany of lights
running series along the length of the journey
the hopeful glimmer at the pinpoint of destination
the quiet ensuing
the radio
muted
slow motion of things not quite the shade you know them to be
Tunnels
soft
Anna Devere-Smith soft
coming
taking you somewhere
Paradise Redefined
lost to the struggle agaisnt self
and being thirty
and trying to tell myself it's ok to be all of three decades
who the fuck came up with a words like
decade?
ten years and you begin to decay
three times that and you have to announce you are still alive
not rotting like they imply
you should be
flesh
not the resilient freshness
of a single decade
or two
but the sturdy madness of three
one score and ten
and then some
and the years keep coming
and I have never been a fan of needles and stuff that makes you look
like a teenage boy
annorexia is no longer invited to my table
most days I eat all kinds of flesh
turgid with the plump of living
night is easier
longer when I am alone
but manageble
I fancy I might outlive these fears
afterall
maybe find a word or two not colored by the politics of America
under my tongue
maybe spit out some other thing
sounding more like the me I miss when I am alone
mutt of experience
child of a mother in Germany
father from China
Brother in Austria
lover from Chicago
heart/break in New Orleans
my words come from all these places
the smell of me traveling the continent of Asia
only in my dreams
I am yet to see
India
How can one long for a place not even seen in the mind's eye of History
I long to walk through the streets
of Calcutta
see Arundhati Roy's God of small things
in motion
smell the brown
colors
the silk made by invisible child fingers
the ache of it
India
exoticised bloom of the west
are you all we long for
New Dehli?
are the Mangoes fictive?
Do you smell like Westmoreland?
land of Indians in Jamaica
Night time
and I am nattering away
pen archaic in this idea of a weblog
all these journals online
and I am still writing in a leatherbound book
leather
and India
and why we treat animals like they could only be food
and I love a good piece of bacon
fried medium
with French Toast
eggs little bit harder than easy
Paradox of reasons
and a paradise I clutch at in memory
Histories I am rewriting
and parallel possibilities shifting out of pause
two a.m.
and it is no longer raining
the silence is as beautiful
as you and me
laughing
peace, poetry, and the pursuit of a non-fictive paradise,
Staceyann