A Poem

To love you is such a simple thing
I open my eyes, I breathe, and there it is
smiling into my eyes,
with its lovely fingers twining about mine

Some moments it is so big there is a swelling
in the space behind my navel,
and my belly feels full of warmth and knowing

and a poignant not-knowing

I look at our love
and I know I cannot know its birth

I don’t remember if it lay in the shallows, waiting,
between my toes,
while I looked for you without knowing your face

I don’t remember if it sat, curled and sleeping,
somewhere within me,
or if it tagged along one midwinter morning,
when I was too busy to notice a small shift in the wind

Sometimes I am curious,
as it stares at me and I smile at it,
and I wonder if I am allowed to ask our love
a few polite questions-

I wonder if emily post would argue,
or if our love could speak what it would say,
and how

I wonder if it would speak with the voice of divinity,
a rumbling vibration of velvet or stars

would it be lighter than wisps of candy cotton,
soaring through the space between us-

I wonder if it would say anything at all,
or if it would just take my hand in the gray morning
and hold it

gently.

a creation of catharsis

I Realize that sometimes I forget,
But this is a reminder,
I Fucking Deserve Better.

I'm not asking for perfection or absolution.
I'm not expecting permanence,
But I Fucking Deserve Better.



I know it's hard.
Fear is potent.
The unknown abounds.
But I am here. Here is my hand.



don't mistake my empathy
for low self-esteem.



I know that I am a thing of beauty.
I feel it in my belly-
in the roundness, punctuated and imperfect,
I feel it in my hands-
raised fist and open palmed plea,
I feel it in my lungs when I sing,
in my teeth when I bite,
in my pride glazed cheeks after another day.


I feel my beauty in the depth of my soul
as the fears of this world yet again rip apart old beliefs to build new hopes,
as the thoughts I once revered come yet again under scrutiny,
as I watch myself transformed time and again
by the trials of this universe.


I am a thing of Beauty.
I see it, I feel it,
I hear it in the leaves as we mingle in the park.


I am proud of who I am
of my battle scars-
(not wounds)
I know my wounds will heal.
And even as I fear their lasting presence,
I know they are not a thing of forever.



I am Proud of my words. of my thoughts. of my loves.
I am a child of this universe.
No more than you.

No less.

I deserve to love. To love freely.
And I deserve love.



I deserve better than what I have fleetingly accepted.
I have (perhaps) misled you into thinking that I am just another
cynical,
self-deprecating,
misanthropic masochist.
And that is my fault.



but i am not.



and I fucking deserve better.



_

1.47 AM, Friday, October 12, 2007

Woman-
inconceivable
hands and hips
feet, thighs, breasts, lips,
Mind
-unretractable Mind-
burning into the night.
flesh without pause
Smooth, Scarred
rythmic in taste
and taut
over beating, breathing
Woman
without shame,
without blame,

moving in a spiral

of intention.
contention-
no rest but to move.