New Diary

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dead sea soul dream tiger wings

"Wooden stairs scrubbed with red brick
Holy water
sprinkled on the floor.
St.
Michael slays that old
demon
quietlike behind the front
door."


Sleep all day, sleep all day- dream of Dead Sea saltwater stinging the scratches on my feet. It feels good, feels real, feels awake, so conscious, the water, I could cry. The way she wants me in her- all the way.

I read something about waves just that day, on the other side- you know, reality- where people beep and scream in traffic, and pigeons die just picking bread and passing children laugh at the blood. This is when you know you don't know.

At their age, you mourned every fallen thing- even iridescent wings with no body. You buried them or saved them in an alabaster box. You kept a wishbone in a lipgloss tin with a sliding lid until maggots grew and your mother made you throw it away. The children laugh and say, stupid bird, stupid bird. This is when you walk home to sleep.

The dreambook said that waves mean change, transition. I say that's shit, it's just what they always say- the one constant they can count on to make sense and sell more books. To me it just means get to the water, quick! Be like the water, quick!

The dream sun is hot on my skin. The dark skinned boys are bare, laughing, kissing on the cheek, waist deep, their AK-47's are asleep on the shore- when did I see this? Oh, that's right- years ago when I was living differently. Before I had to serve my time in a season of despair, which was actually, at times, quite beautiful. You don't know human love until you watch it die while it reaches its hand toward you for help. You don't know human love until you are helpless. You don't know strength until you are lifted out of bed and cradled, carried to your next day.

I fell asleep in you because I needed time to catch the horizon line. My soul was thrown out of my body: a tiger kite flying uncontrollably away, like losing a carnival balloon when you were a baby. Do you remember that feeling? Do you remember watching it float so slowly up and away? That's how I feel about you now. If it could be described, it would be a question. If it could be said, it wouldn't be.

Sleep, a silent, slightly buzzing channel- the comfort of an am radio voice so late at night when no one is awake, but you need to feel connected and you can't count the stripes of passing car lights on the curtains, but you wish it wasn't so cold so you could stand by the window naked and let them stripe your skin like you are an animal. Or if you could just recreate them, recapture them- even for a day. What would you say to him? If your skin was hide and your feet were hooves, would he even matter?

The tiger's eyes are torn from windshock and storm, but the face is recognizable. Way up there it was a myth, a loss, something to watch and wait for. Back in my hands- it's only tinsel. Bury it or put it in an alabaster box, it matters no more, but the illusion of meaning makes your day something to wake to. Put it in and bury the box. Come back years later and see if it's still there, silent. If you let it go and it doesn't come back to you, it was probably meant to be yours. If you let it go and it returns, you better run.

Self-Portraiture for the Broken Hearted

When he hasn't paid the bill
and the tao gets shut off
between you,
your lover disappears
like a face falling slowly
below the surface
of an ocean at night.
And even though he is right there,
you can't reach him.
And you are done trying
because you are proud
and somewhere deep down you know
you'll live through this.



In dreams you see his back receding.
It was once your safety, your roof,
your pleasure board,
where you traced the letters
I L-O-V-E Y-O-U with your trembling fingertips
after sex
because you were too shy to say it.

Look at the phone, just look at it-
he's right there, it's incredible-
he is right there
but he won't answer.
He is gone
and it feels like death.
He was so cruel, so cold.
So you, female, who let him inside
your body, your home.
You are left empty.
You, adult child of abuse,
you are left shattered
when he yelled like your father
about to bring down the belt.
Hatred burns inside you.
You saved his life when he overdosed-
mouth to mouth, deepest kiss
you have ever known
and the Chinese say
when you save one, it's yours forever-
but you don't want it.
Let go of the anger- it is attachment.
Rebuild.
Look at your life, your love is huge.
Be in your body, you must return to your body.
Do whatever it takes
to feel pretty.
Hope he's looking.
Hope you stop wanting
even this,
to even this
soon.

Open Letter To Shambhalla Sun Magazine

I enjoy your magazine, but I find it to be mostly oriented towards the rich and upper middle classes.

In "The Five of Us," Lily Koppel writes beautifully of her childhood friends and examines the different paths they took as they grew up and away from each other geographically and spiritually, while staying bonded through love and memories. In the preamble, it states that the author "reconnects with her childhood circle to explore the spiritual quest of a generation."

One must be very careful when writing on behalf of an entire generation. I do not find my friends or loved ones represented whatsoever in any of the five types she presented to characterize a "generation."

The Rabbi, the Buddhist, the Business Woman, the Activist, and the Writer?

How about the Junky, the Single Mother Struggling to Feed Her Children After Her Baby Daddy left, the Sex-Worker, the Drug Dealer, the Incarcerated, the Suicides? These may sound like statistics to you, but I assure you each and every person branded with such a label is a person full of history, idiosyncrasies, loved ones, and memories. Unfortunately for poorer people, we are more likely to watch our friends struggle through difficult lives with very rough choices and traumas and sometimes they don't survive. Are we not apart of the same generation? Are our voices not important to your magazine? Are we not equally empty, equally endowed with Buddha Nature?

Give me a nice heart-warming story of girls born into privilege growing into women with so many paths to choose from they find it overwhelming and exhilarating, fine. Give me a story of women struggling to breath through traumas you wouldn't imagine while still managing to love each other and live compassionately, and there you will find true wisdom. We could call it "Pranayama for the Drowning."

Please start appreciating real difference in your magazine and try to be a little more inclusive of people who are creatively struggling through desperation instead of meditating on mountains or relishing in the so many options and paths their friends had the luxury to choose from.

Thank you,
Davka: Deer Girl Medicine

icy cracking sounds

outside there are teenage boys and girls...."playing." what is that word for what they are doing? was it ever "playing?" i remember boys hurting me, not just pulling my hair- holding me down, spitting in my mouth, pushing me, putting their dicks on my lunch tray, hurting me. then we were told it was because they liked us. if i hear a mother say this to a daughter i will scream, shapeshift, snatch her up (the daughter) and run. mothers, why did you ever say this terrible thing? mothers, who mothered you when you were daughters and your mothers were fucked already? why did you ever teach us to equate affection with abuse?

outside my window the boys and girls "play" and i hear the boys with all their power of unassaulted embodiment and childhood- their sports and videogames and commradarie combined with the weightlessness of their unchanging, thin, lean bodies and I hear the girls heavy with makeup and fuck me way to early clothes and obliterated self esteem, their painfully growing bodies giving them up already to the lions of hungry sick men before their brains are even done dressing their barbies- the hypersexualization. the father who no longer takes you into his arms, but instead stares at you nervously and averts his eyes- you are now a shame, a something unsaid.

inside i am squeezing my fists so tightly my palms are bleeding from the way my lover just talked to me and i hear the boys hurting and abusing the girls and the girls are nervous laughing and pretending to like it. they keep trying to kiss ass because.... why? why did we ever do this? they were always boring and gross compared to the amazing things we were doing on our own. why did we ever try?

i tried to find a word for the specific crazy your self-actualization and joy and innocence gets lost in when you're on the wrong side of the Power Body- when you're the Other. When you're the color to white or the girl to boy or the gay to straight or the tranny to the bio and I cannot find a word. I search "men make women crazy" and find eharmony articles about "Ask A Man! Ten Things That Annoy Him!" Or "What Drives Men Nuts About Women!" And the things listed- just the way women are when we are existing in a culture of fear and rape and insecurity and memories of monsters creeping their leperous hands through the crib of our first dream. I could scream. Where is the compassion? The awareness? The god damned "sorry, that must have fucking sucked." The imagination to see one splinter of that pain. Nowhere- just songs in every store where a man is taking all the liberty he wants to shit on women and say their worst faults. Imagine a pop song with some woman singing about a man beating her and her babies, a nice catchy tune to what happens to your little heart (or hole) when your uncle comes in at night and locks the door behind him- Where? Nowhere.... Because you can't handle that.

Silence. Mindtwistsnapcrack! eyes-go-cold, she's staring at nothing through a black eye and she keeps nursing the baby. I'm here to help, I tell her. I love her.

What is the word for that crazy? What is the word? We must invent it and never let it be spoken to mean anything else but what it must mean to say. What is the word, give me the word.

i have so much fucking hate in my heart tonight.

do a google image search for man. look. what do you see?
do one for woman.

dead maple leaf

"There is beauty even in that which terrifies the heart."

i

At the rest stop we are on the run. From his habit, my nightmares, a city too familiar. We crossed the Mason Dixon line six hours ago and suddenly everyone is so friendly. I stand up after waiting for him in the grass and before we get into the car a crazy woman says form across the water fountains, "Girl, you have bones and feathers hanging from your dress!"

I look at her eyes and there is no confusion on my face. I want to remember what she looks like and everything else I can in this moment when someone snapped me back into who I want to be and always thought I was. I'm so tired. I haven't slept. I smile as he comes up behind me and pulls the dead and dry five pointed maple leaf from my ass. She laughs, "Oh it's a leaf." I wait. He's already in the car with it running. The janitors are watching, smirking, they know her well, but still never know what to expect. She shakes her head and looks confused. She narrows her eyes and nods like she understands everything.

"It sure looked like bones, girl. Sure looked like it."

ii

C texts me at three am, "dad- mom and i are in jail. call us call us."

I laugh into my pillow. My lover stirs and turns to read it. He loves C's texts as much as I do, even if they wake us up in the middle of the night. They are so bizarre and creative and alive. I write them all down in my journal. He is such a vibrant fallen star. It's sad to see his shine dying when he's twinkling like broken Christmas lights on the pavement outside of the show. I couldn't stand the music so he took me outside to sing me Jandek lyrics.

I don't even care if I'm in a wheelchair
Or in a bed
Unable to move
For all I know
It's better than what I did today

I'm out of beer money so I drink his light. He's blinding the gargoyles on the rooftop above, but nobody here even notices us.

iii

As I fall asleep I see a dead girl suspended in the sky. Everyone is asking me what happened. I tell them she drowned. Up there. In the sky. Somehow in that doorway of a dream, it made sense. It was possible.

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers!

Today, Dec. 17th, is a day to remember and mourn and get angry and get behind the committment to always speak up when sex workers are being stigmatized or bashed or assaulted. Click on the link to read suggested activites and/or stories of victims. It's real and it matters.

Best City To Embrace A Broken Heart In.

Scrying antique shop windows in the city of feeling and floods, I lose my face in the Virgin de Guadalupe right next to the civil war saber and the heavy plantation keys. Three hours of rain and my boots are full of water. Lightning behind me. Like the not too distant past,it strikes and splinters the sky. It sends my aura into disarray- radiant vibrations of remembering, real enough to break down my walls and send me whirling. I'm holding my own hand trying to hold on. What a small world. How can she hold so much love and hurting?

At the coffee shop, the traveling kids adorned with bells and patches had their dogs sleeping under the table. They smelled like trains and sweat. I recognized their faces so far away from home. They are Rick's friends and she was definitely wearing his sweater. That is whats-his-name, with the van named Pheobe that we parked next to Kenai when we were all healthy and whole, calling ourselves vanarchists and van cousins. What are they doing here where I ran to to forget? I say hello and we talk, they ask about him and they tell me exactly what they were doing when they found out he was sick. We remember together and she gives me a letter. I say it's lovely to deliver a letter by hand that traveled over land and sea. She says it's very Rick. I agree. I walk out before I show too much worry. I stop in front of a window and pretend to be looking inside of something besides myself.

We need Mary's and Saviours that cry and are remembered crying. How else can we trust the divine unless they are human? And why did the traveler girl tell me she thought of me and my tarot that day as the death card of her new deck laid daydreaming in her small, pretty hand. Are there always two cities inside me, there and here never clearly marked, never clean? Marie Laveau, was it torture doubling your spirit, being at two places at once? If you could choose your remembering, what would you forget? Do all these shrines and painted portraits keep you here when you need to be somewhere else? Maybe no one is as carefree as they seem. Maybe every drunk reveller on Bourbon street has a secret pain burning inside them. Probably. Surely.

I walk away from the me in the glass and I feel so guilty for not being able to just let go and have the perfectly happy vacation in a city of constant celebrations. I want to feel completely carefree and unattached. I want to float, not fight to swim. If I could cry, that would be better than numbness.

I sit down to coffee and I hear a man singing outside. It isn't unusual. This city is full of charm and life. People are always performing, singing, selling art and destiny. On any night, rain or shine, you can find a psychic reading palms and tarot cards on a milkcrate in an alley with one candle and two bricks to sit on. But this song- I know this one and it is exactly what I need to hear. Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." Everyone inside runs to the door to hear him. In this city everyone has a hustle and the homeless have big, amazing voices full of duende and feeling. He sings with his whole heart and body and I listen and cry. Behind him the old world cottages and colonial houses sit timelessly with gas lanterns and elaborate iron fenced balconies and lazy, enchanting spanish moss swaying in the wind. The skyscrapers jut up in the distance, perfectly out of reach. A frosty the snowman figurine leans against a palm tree. His wife waits under an awning, smiling, watching over their shopping cart as he sings. He keeps his eyes on my sister and me and we hold hands and listen. The song is so sad, but so hopeful, translating into something spoken that small seed of faith you always have deep inside you, no matter what you've been through, no matter who you've seen hurting when you couldn't help them, couldn't save them from the betrayal of bodies and flesh and time. He finishes and we drop money in his box and I run into the bathroom to cry privately. I cry hard and it feels like everything I have been through in the past two years is having its final say and leaving, happy to move onward. I realize there is no better place on earth to be sad in. Why not be broken hearted and humble and hurting here, New Orleans, where everywhere you walk, someone sings your pain right back to you as something beautiful? New Orleans, voted by me to be the best city to embrace a broken heart in.

I wipe my tears and my twin sister and I walk out into the rain. I feel so light. No pressure to pretend to be happy if I am not feeling it. But suddenly, I'm feeling it. Out of nowhere a huge crowd of people dressed in decadent Santa Claus costumes rushes past us. They are drinking and singing and all of them are half naked. They smile and cheer and try to drag us with them. We break free, laughing. We are walking to the riverfront. Seeing the Mississippi at night is big on my list. Two years ago I was driving home from Alaska and I was so surprised to find the Mississippi running way up in Minnesota. I knew things were hard and getting harder, so I left a prayer there by the shore behind a reststop and I said I'd meet it down here when it found its way. I saw where it began and now I need to see where it ends, or, at least, lets go into something greater.