Stealing Translations Brings Bad Karma!

Lillian Too, that is not very nice!

love, radically.

love-love-love is all any of us have, truly. rich, poor, s, me, you, us- it's all that we have. how do we get to it safely? how do we trust it when, as bfp states, it tricks us, can hurt us? how do we love radically, honestly?


*ache*

Wordless Wednesday On a Tuesday

"because when you don't have a job, you never know what fucking day it is." - Corey

"The Game of Life"

S and I once argued over the importance of money in happiness. He said, obviously, he was a case in point which proved money did not make you happy. I said I know a lot of people who would be very happy if they could stop worrying about surviving. I said every day was a struggle for me. For so many people I loved the struggle was not even close to romantic or artsy or beautiful- it was unreal, unimaginable.

I thought about it and relished a little in the amazing friends and experiences I have had sharing that struggle. S said, "See! That's why you will win the Game of Life."

When I had access to his money, suddenly all the soaps and miracle cures and vitamins I had always coveted at Whole Foods had suddenly lost their luster. The sparkling in the distance, when approached and picked up, became cheap, flimsy tinsel that turned immediately to dust. It was making me really depressed. I said S, S, it just feels like... like...

"Game Over?" He asked.
"Yes, exactly," I had to admit.

So now, I don't know. Ima do me, I guess. Just do what I do- that is survive. Love deeply along the way. Learn a way to really make a difference and give back because, honestly, I'm rich beyond words.


Breaking up is a tricky disappearing act- the Houdini falls into a secret trap door center stage, never to be seen again and the girl gets left laying there in the box, sawed in half. The good thing: it's all illusion. Usually, when I break up I have my beauty and brains to hold in front of me like a shield against the self-esteem eating demons talking in my head: you're unlovable, what's wrong with you, where is he, who is he with? But when you break up with a millionaire, you have a whole dominant culture behind the biggest, scariest voice: he is better than you. It's hard to talk back to this voice because we have all been learning this since we were little: money equals essential, indisputable worth as a person.

But, I guess, beyond teaching me that I want little to nothing to do with rich people in my life here on earth, this whole experience has also taught me that me and my poor, struggling friends are better. We are just better people and everything we have or make or give is ours, ours- so beautifully ours.

I am really proud today of who I am, where I'm from, and where I am going- my big, beautiful talent and my destiny that I'm riding to a radiant dying breath of total peace knowing I did the best I could and had so much love, innocence and experience, real, pure friends and pain, even my pain is mine.

So, to everyone out there who can only depend on themselves and have no parents paying the way, I dedicate one of my favorite songs. It makes me smile.




S, stop breaking your guitars when you're angry like it's cool when we all know you can just buy a brand new one. Stop wearing electrical tape on your shoes. I'm done being your courage teacher. I'm done being your slum. The holes in your clothes don't fool me. Malibu Barbie, just be you.

SOS

I need you.

I Don't Know What Any of Us Are

I don't know what any of us are.
I don't know where any of us are.

I know Jasmine loves vintage Alice in Wonderland prints
and her colors
are other-worldly, bottom of the ocean beautiful-
strawberry blonde hair and Kingfisher blue eyes.
I know she's afraid of the toxins in tampons
like there is cancer in her stars
and my cycle starts moving in cync
with her chart as we fall
in love over coffee and sex work each morning.

I know Ari's wicked funny, one of my favorite people,
when he's not on the hunt, hurting for a hit,
smoking crack in my basement- putting orajel on my lips
because he says, "Who doesn't love to feel their mouth disappear?"

I know we're all fucked up in some major way,
but our inner children were peaking out from the rubble
of the wreckage of our lives,
opening their tired from crying eyes
when they heard the ice-cream truck music
in the arpeggio of our laughter
as we traded glimpses of our belly buttons in bed

before you broke the glass of our prism
with your hunger and your hurting,
with your self-hatred and your guilt
coming down from your high,
your eyes were demonic
when you asked me where was Sarai
your lover who died
the girl everyone thinks you killed

you wailed and wailed,
and wanted to know
where is she where is she
as if I was hiding her in my hands
that were small and shaking
and human
and I
cannot help you.


I don't know what any of us are.
I don't know where any of us are.

I know Caro like the back of my life,
the inside of my eyes, line for line
and deep, primal crying.
She exhaled her orgasm into my lips
and I saw us as some kind of Cerberus,
connected at the neck and powerful as hell
in our secrets and our work
and our watching of whales,
our proud love standing
infinite octaves and chakras above
shame,
but oh how easily we frayed
fighting over a bone.

I don't know what any of us are.
I don't know where she is, where I am,
where there is peace
or a body to call home

but I know terror
so I take refuge in you
who opened my front door to a dying praying mantis
that came into the warmth
just before the Indian summer cicadas stopped singing.

I know we are all that we have, for real,
and the world is so troubling
so I will always love the troubled
and the question isn't of escape,
but learning to break
without pain,
keeping the heart an open hearthfire
no matter who comes to take without asking,
no matter how hard it rains.

I just love you. Is that ok?

My Poem in the City Paper!

Not to push down my hot lilies, but my poem, "richgirl poets" has been featured in this week's Pittsburgh City Paper! Go check it out!

One of my Greatest Joys is to Watch a Lily Open

Lilies by Mary Oliver

I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall
in the edge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful



as the old idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face

of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of coarse he wanted to save someone--




most of all himself.
He wasn't a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas

it would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river--

where the vanishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues--
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.

New Diary

(click on image to read the text)

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.