A Pattern Person

pandemic

I am angry at this June sky, filled with these stupid fucking clouds

I am angry at this world and the people who run it, for all the obvious fucking reasons.

I am angry at these fuckers who commit violence, just to prove the world is too dangerous to change

I am angry that these words in my head could fill a novel, but keep coming out as these stupid little poems

I am angry at the always waiting

I am angry at these voices in my head pretending to be people with nothing fucking nice to say

I am angry at stupid things that won't work just how I want them to work

I am angry at these messes that won't clean themselves up

I am angry at this cavernous grief haunting the edges of my life

I am angry that so many people are falling off the edge and I can't save them

I am angry that my body is soft and broken in places, that it moves me through my days in the same safe ways over and over again when all I want is to run and fuck and feel and kick shit

Today I am angry that I am angry

I will probably still be angry tomorrow, too

#bookofpoems #pandemic #revolution #quarantine #bookoflists

Remember this moment soft and full your child playing in the yard neighbors out on walks almost like the life you used to have

Remember this moment

A new world is being born with shouts of pain and blood and rage with sighs of exhaustion and fragile hope

Remember this moment

As we wait to cry

tears of joy hearing the sweet sound of the world’s first breath holding its tender body safe in our arms

or

tears of sorrow for a world lost in stillborn tragedy

Remember this moment

sunlight through teardrop leaves the chaotic refrain of a 4-year-old’s song the touch of a hand

Remember this moment

It may be swallowed up in the end

#bookofpoems #revolution #pandemic

Outside people rush to get their hair cut like their overgrown and poorly-shorn-at-home locks are not a badge of perseverance or a mark of passage still unfinished

Outside people rush to the next beginning before they have even seen the previous ending

#bookofpoems #quarantine #pandemic

Here we settle into long days with warmer air and grayer skies and the hopeful bloom of spring flowers giving way to green I yearn to feel the world churning, melting, in its metamorphosis But here the days just pass softly, samely, grayly

#bookofpoems #pandemic #quarantine

What am I writing Who am I writing for Who am I I want to write fire that lights up souls and burns down worlds Instead I am writing loaves of bread and flowers Like a woman tending her hearth But I am not a woman I am not a woman

#bookofpoems #pandemic #becoming

I’m sorry I haven’t done the thing I said I was going to do I live in a place where the hours are days and the days are weeks and the minutes just rush away and I am still learning how to tell time

#bookofpoems #quarantine #pandemic

The virus is creating new geographies of time. It has swept us up and dropped us in this valley filled with still air and sweet birdsong, with craggy walls and rushing streams, carved out of the lives we knew.

Where once time was measured in hours and days and weeks, now it is measured in the passing of realities, in the shifting tone of leaders’ words, like rolling storm clouds passing overhead.

We wander soft fields, looking for a path. We are startled when we stumble over objects from the past, delicate specimens preserved in amber. A crumpled receipt pulled from a pocket, for a restaurant where we gathered to eat and breathe the same air as strangers. A green houseplant, somehow still growing in its pot, not watered for an eon. A backpack, hanging casually on a chair, waiting to be taken to work.

Here with you time is a gentle stream. Cold water softly filling the space around my toes, gentle currents bubbling through my fingers. We measure it with moments – eating breakfast, drawing together, playing tag. With empty jars of applesauce and treasured loaves of bread delivered to our door. We sit on sun-warmed banks and toss our moments into the stream like smooth worn stones. Plop, plop, plop. All of them remembered, but each one forgotten.

Across the way time is measured in the flow of voices. It is a rushing stream, and I steal away to stand on the shore, reaching for something there. I shout, whisper, and awkwardly toss my words into the current, hoping they might catch the something I need, or be the something caught by someone else. Dipping my toe in, I am pulled under and tumbled. It is hazardous and enticing. I return in spite of myself because I am afraid if I stop, no one will notice that I am gone.

In the distance time is a precipice, carved from the valley walls and growing steeper and closer every day, with sharp edges and crumbling stones. Here time is measured in numbers – the number of tests, the number of masks, the number of unemployed, the number of people clinging to the edge, the amount of earth that must be dug, the count of souls we’ve lost.

#bookofstories #quarantine #pandemic #bookofseasons

Heroes

​​In the old world we had heroes. There were great men and their millions, who, like stoic fathers moved to a moment of warmth, turned the great eye of capitalism toward us, granting the gift of being seen by a world that would ignore us. In return we gave them praise and adoration, returning to them the virtue and privilege we longed for them to share. ​​ ​​There were martyrs and soldiers, heroes risking themselves to save us. They granted us the gift of being loved by a world that had dismissed us, told us we didn’t matter. In return we took their lives and their stories, writing them as we like, so we might never have to feel that this love was undeserved. ​​ ​​But these are the stories of children, longing to be seen, longing to be loved, but hiding from the world under blankets of fairy tales, unable to see and unable to love back. ​​ ​​In the new world, there are no heroes. No great men with their millions, praised for meager sacrifice. No martyrs, no soldiers, no one asked to give more than we would give for them. ​​ ​​And if anyone ever has to risk their lives, we do everything to offer them safety, to act with the love we each deserve, and to listen to their stories when it is done. ​​ ​​In the new world, there are no heroes. Just people helping people, in the best way they can. And the great men and their millions, were merely paying the price of admission to a world where everyone is seen, everyone is heard, and everyone is loved and fed.

#bookofstories #bookoffutures #pandemic

Everyone is tired now. Of course we are. Where once we moved past city blocks and streets to go to work, or school, or visit friends, now we must traverse entire realities. Climbing hills of the past and scampering over boulders of the future to get on with things that are stuck in-between.

#pandemic #bookofstories #quarantine

Hold your fear lightly like a trembling bird in the palm of your hand waiting just a moment to catch its breath and fly away

#bookofpoems #quarantine #pandemic