"The Diagnosis"

 

11/2/2020

 Wish I could hammock near you right now. 

Take a vacation like in a dream and be warm on a beach. 

Not care about incessant hammering, sanding and grating rattling coming from the painters next door. Or inside my veins. Can't tell which. Though I think it's the painter...

We could enjoy a frothy Colombian cocktail

Count parrots. 

We could exist on an island like heaven. 

Trace freckles on an arms that we'd say we remembered.  

St Patrick's brings up all my greenest heartsongs.

Of when I was a simple blade of grass 

Growing across the world

Wide and all at once.

Of when I drank Guinness 

In my grandmother's sweater. 

When laughter was a language I spoke fluently

With you.

🍀

What my mom said

You were born into the arms of wonder

of wonder who i am without all these children

or wonder what i could have been without all this marriage

or wonder will i ever know myself 

will i ever be free from the pain of molestation

of pain i didn’t ask for but felt was my fault because i stayed still

because i stayed quiet 

because i stayed breathing in time

with a clock

at the edge of the table

at the edge of the bed

of the bed of my father’s father

pain.

pain.

pain was born inside my body before i knew how to spell it.

pain was scathed from one unhappy hand to another before i knew how to break it

pain moved from his hand to my chest and i felt it

forever

burning inside my blood 

carried inside my breasts

inside the milk

that spilled when my child needed her drink. 

i held her and promised that nothing bad—to her— would happen 

like it happened 

like it happened

like it happened to me. 

All of my life, I’ve been after the fact 

protecting the knot from exposing my darkness

from exposing the rot that i asked for, forgot

and the older i get, the older it is, and i can not grow from the place i was shot. 

I’m lower now into the grave

my father, at his age in a haze of confusion, 

i dare not release 

what i know he should have seen

but did not 

did not

did not

Now that my son has a daughter

I feel it beginning all over again

I want to reach out 
branch over state lines and shade her
from splintering crimes 
committed by lonely, broken men

I want to start over again. 
In her eyes I’m divine 

she doesn’t know

I’m broken somehow
deeper than i know how to go

deeper than i’ll ever show

i want to be a sheltering tree 
for the daughters that come

for the daughters that come

after me. 

take me home to grace 

take me!
save me a space

i fill all my pockets with sage

i found a god, call him Father

call him better, call him judgment day

call him saving place, call him heaven

call it no place for people like you—like him—

See the scars on my heart make it hard to distinguish you from him

i’m never sure
never sure
never sure 

even my own husband can only touch me sweetly some of the time

mostly it’s tin foil in tin fingers down the lining of my tummy 

but as his wife, i befriend it

the shadow of abuse

the darkening the sky

builds, sprouting seeds in the throat

a volatility, a rage, a parade of malpractice

of dark

of heavy 

of clouds that wrap around and around

they never believed us, until now

until now

until now 

In the rain, i hold my granddaughter, rocking

In the spring, we will kill what winter did not  

K Jackson

I'm still uncovering
Pieces of you
In this place we lived
Together.

The label maker
When turned on
Said your name
Gravity landed hard on my thumb as I hit the backspace.

Eight times in a row.

Erasing my need
To place you.

in:sent

Joanna here.  

Sending you the warm of something that feels like vanilla. 

Wanted to let you know

I'm not crafting sewers anymore. 

heaps of trash 

with wailing arms. 

I've given that all up.

I want you to know
I don't hold your name hostage. 

I acknowledge the grey area. In all things.
Everything is a grey area, until it's not. 

A gnarled tree, rotting, nearly falling over, crawling with bugs

still sighs a kind of refuge. 

I just wasn't ready to jump into lover-hood.
It took me by surprise. Such a proposition.
And you must have known, I didn't come to you for that.
Immediately, I felt boxed in.
A feeling of trap grew around me
Blazed 'warning' in my mind.
It was innocent, enough... consensual on paper.
Still, my eyes blinked in smoke.

A man in power, reaching down to me.  

For sex.
While I was reaching up to him
to be taken seriously.

So, yeah, lately, I have been thinking of you.
What happened with us.
My path, crossed with yours.   

I'm writing, currently. 

Evolving.

Going in circles that move.

THOT

For you not in the know

THOT 

Translates to

That hoe over there

Now that you know,
Click it. 

Caramel Candy

You look different somehow 

I’m riding the train right now

Riding it clear outta town 

And someone here smells like you

The way your arm pit did

When I snuggled into it

And told you I’d never loved... 

Never loved like this before

Faith in men was restored 

Loved saved me from feelin forlorn

I was cast to sea

Till your arms found me

Three Children cry on the bus

Star dawn into star dusk

Lettin go is always rough

I watch the weeds below 

whip into a small tornadoe

I get to smellin you

I smile & think about

The laughs we’d laugh about

How fast the world goes round

Your Irish furrowed brow

I still could pick you out 

Pick you out of a crowded crowd,

But maybe the years without
Have changed us
Cuz you look different somehow.

Ripping off Paul McCartney's "Every Night"

In the dark I lay with my eyes wide / So full of the day.   / In the light I stand with my arms crossed / Not sure what to say 

Every sky gets cloudy some day

But every cloud's not framed by blue oo oo oo oo 

OO today I feel I'm flyin'

Straight into you...

Straight into you.

You oo oo oo oo oo oo oooooo oooo

oooooo oooo

oooo oooo

You oo oo oo oo oo oo oooooo oooo

oooooo oooo

oo oo oo oo

 In the dark I open the windows / It's winding me down.  /  In the light I pull all the shades close / It's blinding without

And every sky has its star-shine

But not all star-shine gets a view oo oo oo oo 

OO today I feel like fallin'

All over you

All over you.

Athena

To all the ex's

all the shiney heads

all the finger nail wax

to every crushed coke can

to each marble in the purple wine slip

beneath my grandmother's counter top

beneath all of her and Joe's pills. 

beneath the pile of mail

beneath the places I remember cereal and crumble sweets. 

To the way of life I grew up in love. 

Land. I grew up in loveland, no shit and i've got plotted land 

:or is it potted land? potable water? definitely high ceilings.

clear windows, fresh white paint streamed by sunlight. 

In my mind I see myself in all the settings I arrive in. 

On stage, In a play, playing Stratego with Ryan late into Christmas morning.

It must be strange to be a boy and grow up beside a girl. 

To see her take such shape before your eyes. 

To watch her take reigns of her own secret knowledge. 

By now, I've spent 6 summers  here. 

Back porch candle light second story studio

The power lines sure have blended into the night sky nicely at half past midnight 

But does time really matter? 

Isn't it arbitrary? 

People are working in the night. 

Lots of people work at night. 

Night is just as good a time to work as day. 

In fact during the day time, it's just too darn HOT to do much work these days with summer approaching

Which brings me back to you. 

you ex lover, you past marble breakfast -brother thought, turned syrupy. 

you. heat. hard. hot. man. 

Ajax. firm. Adorable. Simple. Sweet. Kind to the animals. 

sexy. hilarious. I'd love to watch him just sit by the campfire and fall in love with his war bride. 

The love they shared was real. 

The kindness she had was honest. 

The child they had was a son. 

It always goes like that doesn't it.  

to the son. to the son. 

Well guess what, I want to objectify the men and I will. 

Because I can.  

I will set you down and slice your throat. 

I will crush your ego and pin apart your soul. 

I will destroy you. 

I have snakes inside my bosom.  

And I'm unwed. 

You can see me can't you?  

I'm right here.
Why, I'm watching you from this stage watch me and these players. 

This story is about how the great Goddess survives. 

How she inhabits herself fully 

And manifests her own reality.

_______ poem ends here _______

_______But I just kept writing about my experience in the play, "Ajax: in Iraq"____

So, yeah, I'm a little method.  Yeah, so I like to get myself preparred to take on the She herself.  Athena.  

I need to do nothing but coordinate with my scene partner the grunts.  And dance inside the gestation of my masterpeice.  

It's not enough to tell you about Ajax I need to tell you about What I'm doing to AJ as well.  I'm reminding you of them.  Because they remind you of ME.  Of what happens when you go against nature.  You See What happens when a man crosses that line?  

All it takes is a day, is the best line of the whole show.  The world can change in an instant.  The right thing could happen at any moment.  In fact it is happening.  I'm not making it happen, but I'm watching, predicting, meddling, playing with.  Walking among.  Jogging beside. You bow down when I walk past.  You all honor me greatly, and you do right to do so. I am lifted and pledged alliegence to the globe that founded me.  I am the waters and desert. I am the Mountains and great Valleys, the clear water beneath the Mayan lands. Not that the Mayans owned land.  They didnt have the ego of others who came later with markers and maps, flags and ownership...The idea of MINE. The idea....that can never exist.....for too long. 

I am going to break the silence.  I am going to talk to you again.  Through her, the actress. I am going to have an intervention. We will speak. It is hardly a moment in time when I am not with you.  Just at the root of your navel, the warmth in your womb. Can you feel it? You can can't you?! yes. 

I never thought it would get this far! I mean I DID, like I knew it would...but still today things can just be done.....in a board room.  Emphasis on BORED!!!!!!!

Come on give me the heros!!! give me the Mastery of weaponry!!!  You've gotten so tied up in your ego you've driven yourself so far from nature that there is absolutely no going back.  #brexit! Mayhem let loose. 
---Now, it depends who you believe.....do you believe that the world is round or flat? 

Do you believe you go in a straight line to history or a circle? or is it a spiral?  Similar to the spiral pattern of our solar system as it hurls itself through dark space? 

Dark space like the warmth I feel in my belly....er my...beneath my belly.  In my womb.  These are my letters to god, these are my letters to theGoddess.  

She tells me we are all in her womb and mine grows warmer.  Like a water bed, except comfortable.   

Point is, I have and will never be dominated.  I rule the sky and sea and universe and the womb. Inside each woman is a holy space in which I reside.  So if you start fucking that place up--- The woman will be discombobulated for lack of a better term and her internal shrine co-op'ed by the patriarchy. 

Late March brought clouds three days in a row now

So of course you come to mind
the day i cave
give in and eat a slice a pie
that i fake enjoy
or kind of do
but inevitably don't
unless you understand, you won't.

It was Vermont Ave. and Los Feliz theater and all the old spots
where your beguiling good looks charmed me.
See when the days are chill like they are today, the clouds congregate
and two or three drops made it to my head,
engulfed in asle 'HH' at The Greek,
I thought of the 'one single tear' shot you'd romanticize about
detachment forced upon the one who promised to hold.
Like when you noticed I'd gone,
further adrift,
into an invisable wall for lightning bugs.

And I know you're doing fine.
 I know you are. I know you are.
but there is really no way for me to know
you are.

So I talk about you over pie to my employer.
Key Lime pie.
Whipped Cream. Small bites.

Home, to a new prescription pill
Mahalia Jackson and an old habit
strung out like some stocky bowler's pitch
I resolve to reach for you.

To reach out.
To sing a heartsong over all them cars
n' step with you in a summer dance.
To swim over to the island you dropped anchor at
n' lick up around your feet when you stand ashore.
Just to push-in on you, frothy.
To wrap myself around you one more time.

The SuperHero And His Charming Wife, Inspired Poem

I Get Messy When He Leaves

I get messy when he leaves.

I throw everything everywhere

Relishing in my space

relishing in the choices that I get to make 

because It's only me.  

My god it feels good to be alone. 

How deep into the sand the urchun buries herself in order to feel the pressure. 

Thin
excoskeleton thin,

the way she likes it. 

and Complete Choas
Filth

composed dips,  fragmented light
rare warmth only sometimes finds the sand
above the sand
above her.

going against the grain up my face I splinter

have to spliter 

Over nothing I will whip you

over soup, destroy you. 

Over draft. Almost Home. 

Retirement.

Not right now though.
Not when I'm here.
Printer teatering over the refrigerator ledge, a bottle of Nair facedown on the floor 

and me all perched up in warn out yoga pants
Top Dawgin'

just me 'n my goose bumps

realizing that I refuse nothing but being rubbed the wrong way. 

Punishment of such:  branding
with an obviously blunt re-write like a baseball bat to the side of

brain tissue

only the brain tissue is my own....

I like to feel pain.
for some non reason it's that I can know that I have the power to.
Feel pain.

Not right now though. 

Right now I'm a foggy sunday spring day in LA

on the fringe. 

west. 

And ain't nobody but me and my mess!

Janga pile 'a mail straddling tile and fake wood floors. Probably both formica. 

Hardback books tilt with bookmarks made of chapstick or blue pens.

5 of the 4 drawers, tounges out

Silks and socks
A jar full of walnuts, wrinkled sheets!

& DON'T EVEN GO IN THE KITCHEN!!!

Until I have to I will stay wild.

I will not know how to do anything 

I will cost you money

dent your ego. 

challenge your prowl with a sky full of queen bees and they will drive you over
while I'm more or less underwater
My ancestors' kingdom of skulls

Beneath the all of everything

---
---
---

You'll be up in your boat. 

Tahoe Mountaineering. 

Swimming by with some otha jazz trombone
While I --

---
---

Miles deep intensity wears like boots

That's some scorpion.

--

He comes tonight

Back to share existance with me here

until the next molting

----------

My face when Colin took it circa 2014 or #tbt

Maybe what I think I'm saying here is, 

I'm a dog gone goony gal!

<3

But thats not all,
probably it is.  but Colin would want something else entirely and we're all not sure what it is.
None of us do.
For any of us.
Colin stood on his tub tile so the light would be just right.
Curtain rod behind his neck.
"Go forth," he tells me in not so many words,
"Go Get it!"
You and your crooked tooth!
At least that's what I got that Santa Monica day Colin took my picture.

Binge watching Homeland may lead to questions of similar kind.

It's starting to rain
Inside
And I'm feeling the weight
And I'm eating to go inside
Forever. 
And the missing reports
And files
And people
And children
And all of it, weakens my capacity for love
I don't understand 
How does my phone know everything 
Calculating and un feeling
Music plays in all of our ears, 
But what is the song?
What is the cry?
What is the ringing?
Is it a bell
Or a bomb?

Are we working for the dream that our life means something?

Liken me to the needy man just outside the 7eleven, or the liquor store. The woman just sat down next to me I'd rather not engage with. Id rather not open my skin. Just not anymore. Tonight. 

It hurts to do it, and I do it often. I'll do it I suppose again and again and again and again. Circling like a plow into the space beyond the night star sky. I wonder how the farmer feels, knowing how many mouths he's feeding. I wonder how the man feels who makes the boats that the fishermen float on. Does he think of death approaching himself as he knows the ropes drag the creatures out of their breathing pools ? Does anyone get it? Are there philosophers I should read? Or would I sink even further into the never mind this mess. 

It's a successful day when I can simply wash my own hands without tumbling down the staircase of looking back. 

And I keep reaching. It's a desperate float, don't have to tell me how it looks when I dance. But what I know, is the more I shit off this clicking pencil drawer mind, when we all for those brief moments fall in line with the rhythm of this paradise, it's the most satisfying grip of lost known to our kind. 

Praying you're able to see how touching you brings me hope

one day there will be a recovery program called iphone anonymous Or January in Southern Cal

I had chocolate today

its made up for the lack of movement. 

when the skies grey up like this 

part of me spiders in

curls

its a matter of sinking really

and I can only seem to hear the soft folding of my leggings each time my knees bend

its not even a sound, more of a kiss

I enjoy my legs in the sleeves of stretchy fabric

more than Kyle does

his stimulation is sourced elsewhere 

as is mine really

stuck in the nasal passages inside this running face

running into the sheets

running into my hands as I remember the things I was supposed to do are un-do-able today

(national holiday)

plus the overcast-ness 

but it was rather nice Saturday

the fog at night

over the boarded up shanties lining the mostly abandoned Venice Beach

muffled the bench v can argument from one bearded slinger to what may have been a woman

I was too far away and didn't have my glasses

he was yelling at her for something

but my sneakers and Kyle's boots already had resigned to look at the big black water
first time this year
sleeping bag clouds slowly receded their nonsense sounds

expansive

the dark widening edge

the mass of darkening grey floating overhead

drifting pirate ships swam across the moon

Buffalo gals won't ya come out tonight 

won't ya come out tonight won't ya come out tonight?

buffalo gals won't ya come out tonight 

and 

dance....

she wasn't full
she was sifting in and out of sight 

there was no use
my chin let go we were nearly there

the waves hooked something in my chest 

a pulling then crashing source surrounding splashing around the sound in the divots of our ears

I imagined the great squid
drumming underground in a deep salt stadium  

I called to her, "Help me--

this new trip around the sun again?

wtf?"

crashing smash

cool froth sipping my fingers, "Take me with your momentum

take us both and teach us how to play under there!"

"Send me your coasting current!"

something to fall back on...

to know -- to know that something's there

Only the slumbering fog

sand beneath me caved

this grey fog'll stick around all month

clinging is a type of winter here

In a conference once

I saw you-
ducking under the table
and the room froze.
You reached out fingers that I've come to know
outstretched and the fly in midair hangs still.
But I can move
because you make me magic
and I sweep under this wooden desk
to my knees that have been swept under my heels--
And when my fingertips, marked with time, kneed the carpet,
your eyes lift.
Pools of excitement lit perfectly by the lights--
And I'm reminded of the lavender velvet sparkling 
portrait we admired once. 
Crawl to me.
No. Don't.
Stay there; in the frozen room--Captivated
while I crawl to you. 
Crawl to you so you can help me stand.
Stand proud in this unreal world that your hands
and mine have molded like a painter whose taken up clay.
Molding the biggest Vase that will hold one Red Rose.
I'm Thrown. 
I'll let you throw me anywhere.  
To find Red throrns.
To find Red rooms, lips, and apples--Cracked red fingertips.
What I'm trying to get at here --in this room with no noise--
Is that My deep brown hungry eyes have gone to you
every moment of the day, 
And if I could let them crawl to you, 
as you pick up your pen,
I'd kiss you here...In Front Of Them All.

Chameleon

This morning
My eyelids did not gracefully find the light,
The second after they opened my mind and body jerked.
around.
all over.
like a tantrum thrown in front of the entire super market 
just cant control
just couldn't control my feet as they chased each other in the earliest part of morning.
running.
running.
running.
putting into action what my mind has been doing
what my mind cant stop doing. 
what i escape from when I launch into characters in 
"the banana man"
or "the 17th of June"
or "Say de Kooning"
plays im in
characters i play
colors i change into.

banana girl is -...purple. deep deep purple.  
she wears multi-colored bracelets and tastes like rainbow sherbet but her true self is the deepest most royal purple.

i walk out of the class room. rain soaked pavement smacks the red stop light onto pink pants and the energy glides up my legs as they march on
 
to being Kat - a sister concerned with keys to a Camero. A pale Blue.  a color that is reminiscent of joy and ease, but too pale to actually fulfill anything. pale blue shirt, with pale blue sound in her ears, and pale blue eyes with far off thoughts that

when the hour is up-- fade back to whatever the color my eyes actually are.  And move through the arts center to my last destination, 

Mandy- color: orange.  But not the color of my shirt today (consequently the shirt I wore yesterday as well) but the closest orange to red--blood orange I've heard it called, but Mandy says vibrant orange, the word blood makes her queezy.  from the center of her passionate heart, this orange soaks up everything around her --like the ink from a sharpie when it spreads across a napkin. 

  And then I walk out the door and to this coffee shop, feeling the tints left on the windows of my eyes:  rich purple, pale blue, blood orange--and I feel the swirl of my own life tunneling in my head: green, blue, red, pink, orange, gray, black, pale yellow--colors I don't understand- and they take their turn with me one at a time.  

Ordering tea: i don't know, peachy?
--peachy with flashes of teal because I had to be sassy with the cashier.
"I meant HOT tea, not sweet tea..."   (then back to peachy, quick) "I'm sorry.  No, no no, it's me. i should have said Hot"
Walking around campus: on a great day: warm yellow, glowing
moments of doubt: off white.  
the color i am right now: a blue so blue it's almost black-- slowly fading with time to pink-- ill probably end up crazy-pink today..

i dont know i dont know...im just typing 
and changing colors, 

chameleon.
me.
Have I ever told you I'm a chameleon?

Chameleon: They are distinguished by their parrot-like feet, their separately mobile eyes, their very long, highly modified, and rapidly extrudable tongues, their swaying gait, crests or horns on their distinctively shaped heads, and the ability of some to change color

the ability of some to change color.