Condemned to Wonderland - 03/20/11

Well, you’re a goddamn mess
And worst yet,
This is your best
This is you trying hard
To make it far
And keep the crazy
All inside

You’re upset?
Girl, don’t forget
You’re not through yet
You’ve got to
Pull it together
Be stronger than ever
And never admit
You lied

So honey, honey,
I’m loosing my mind
And darling, darling,
I’m out of time
The life I’ve forged
Has just been floored
With ten minutes of silence
So I’m trying to find it
A place to rest
And this wonderland
Seemed the best
I’ll hold it close
With bleeding wrists
And hope it never knows
The normality it’s missed

The lights cut out
And dripping with doubt
You pull yourself out
The murky waters,
Keep it together
If anyone asks
Don’t answer

This isn’t the time to pout
Shake off the frown
Force a smile as you drown
In the murky waters,
Keep it together
If anyone asks
Don’t answer

And I guess it doesn’t matter
And I guess it doesn’t matter
And I guess it never mattered
But if you could hear the clatter
And the tears’ pitter patter
And if you could see me
Purposefully
Walk under ladders
You might understand
Why it might seem
Why I’m condemned
To wonderland

So honey, honey,
I’m loosing my mind
And darling, darling,
I’m out of time
The life I’ve forged
Has just been floored
With ten minutes of silence
So I’m trying to find it
A place to rest
And this wonderland
Seemed the best
I’ll hold it close
With bleeding wrists
And hope it never knows
The normality it’s missed

What do you see in wonderland?
What attraction pulls you in?
All I see
Are broken dreams
And insanity hung
On glitter-dipped strings
There’s something oh so wrong
With this whole scene

And I guess it doesn’t matter
And I guess it doesn’t matter
And I guess it never mattered
But if you could hear the clatter
And the tears’ pitter patter
And if you could see me
Purposefully
Walk under ladders
You might understand
Why might see
Why I’m condemned
To wonderland

What the Gardener Knows - 03/16/11

To a wet spring sky,
The color I profess my eyes
To be,
Sailing over the tall shining buildings,
Which stand like tendrils
Entwining people.
To the liquid diamonds,
Pouring down on fading motherhood,
Chilling my heart with each
Penetration of the skin,
Of the mind,
Of the soul,
Until every part of me is dulled,
Lulled into a diversion
From the tempests
Who strut by on satin clover fields,
Impervious of Satan’s gaze.
To budding hope
Covered in ammonium
And left to shrivel in the
Sidewalk cracks
And the backs of lockers
And behind closed doors,
And under messy beds,
Forever forgotten
Like a single little ladybug
On drenched tendril,
Coiling and coiling
To something just beyond its reach

Another Reason I Hate That Class - 03/10/11

It’s like delicate egg yolks
Wrapped in barbed wire
Shedding my insides
And it isn’t usually like that

Painful, sure
But not like this.
I shouldn’t be waking up
At 2 am,
Screaming and crying,
Because there is something wrong with that.

It supposedly stress,
Which I would deny,
But all my denial this week
Has been used too soon.
It was drawn like blood
When I held my arm to a heater
Until it went numb.
I wasn’t going to say anything
But apparently
That’s denial too,
Like cross bred plants
Still being organic.

In my history class,
We’re learning about all that,
And all the other things
Wrong with all of everything
In all of history.
I don’t understand
Why anyone would want to
Sit through an hour of pointless debate
Over events long passed,
Just steaming
Angry
Furious
As I hold my arm to the heater
And hope it burns and hurts,
But it just goes numb
And everyone is disappointed
When the bell rings.

I heard my English teacher,
While reciting a beautiful poem
That she had written,
Frightenedly mumble “fuck”
A wisp of what I’ve been told is
A powerful word.
Like someone was going to take offence,
Like a little anger would end everything,
Like if maybe someone got mad
And did something
Something might change
And like that was a bad thing.

You know what I think?
I think too much.
And I think all the time.
And I think in words,
And rhymes
With breaks in the lines
Like my whole life is just one poem
One depressing poem
That just doesn’t know when
To end.
And I think that I fall flat on my face
When there’s something I need to face
That I slip up
When I need to stick up.
That I pull out
When it’s time to put in.
That I can’t get angry
Except at myself,
And even that is slowly jerked into
The sadness of sticky red fingers.
That I want to bleed
But I’m afraid of blood.
That I do the worst
When I’m not paying attention
And then feel the best.
That you still don’t get
What I’m talking about.
That I really wish you did.
That I knew you wouldn’t
And thought that anyways,
Wrote this anyways,
So I could have another excuse to
Hate my poor, pitiful self.

So there should be some hope somewhere
And this is supposed to be the stanza
Where I add it,
But what do I know
About hope and love?
What do I know about happiness?
All I have is a heater
And the sharp point of a forgotten staple.

I Would Be Prettier If I Looked Like Her - 03-03-11

99 cent dreams
99 cent dreams
Come my children
Find the perfect fitting scheme
To wrap your life around
Until it all comes crashing down,
Find something to make your heart pound
Until the failure
Is unbearable
And you find yourself starting to drown
In your 99 cent dreams
All cast on the ground
Like wedding scene
From someone else’s hometown
With some other girl
In your wedding gown
With hundred dollar dreams
And your frown upside down
On the arm of a picture
You’ve tried hard to see
In your own blurry
99 cent dreams
She walks down the aisle
In hundred dollar dream heels
Looking at you
Like your supposed to smile
With your 99 cent squeals
Making her day
Like any other deals
Think about how her hundred dollar
Dreams will break
Once it’s too late
For her to fix even one mistake
But you’ve got practice
On taking stakes
With your 99 cent dreams
Turning peaceful nights
Into restless screams
Struggling to understand
Your fright
Or his flight
Or the famine of love
Or the absence of light
So with your shoes on too tight
You hold your head high
Don’t care who sees you cry
And run off to buy
More 99 cent dreams
More 99 cent dreams

Let Me Take a Note from Tunisia - 03-01-11

Ladies and Gentlemen,
adults with baby brains,
kickin’ back to the glare
and the snare
of FOX News,
listening to whatever
and whoever
is on the radio,
turning the dial low,
making your brain slow

Let me remind you Americans
what the people of Tunisia
recently discovered,
let me inform you
what the people of Egypt
have uncovered.
Come and hear the wisdom
of Yemen, Bahrain, and Jordan.
Listen to the secrets
of Greece, Algeria and Sudan.

We are oppresses
by the clothes in which we’ve dressed,
by the revolutions we’ve missed,
by the chemical lips we’ve kissed,
by the star lit crack addicts we’re caresses,
by the companies we’ve supported,
their causes we’ve donated to,
by the way we’ve paraded to
their mass sales,
throwing workers wages back at you.
The consumed consumer.
The used user.
The obsolete treat
to freedom’s enemy,
the television.
By everything you see,
all the Barbie dolls you try to be,
every advertisement you believe.

That moment when you stop perceiving
and start following.
The moment when you stop following
and sit down.
When we sign our votes to companies,
and disregard epiphanies,
and throw poets away
to the modern day Gulags
of writing crap pop songs
that someone else will sing.
When what Lady Gaga
wore to the Grammy’s
is more important than the riots in the streets.

And here’s the ultimate plot twist,
the deadly kiss,
the last lisped words
of hope:
they look to us.
People in other nations,
praying for freedom,
marching for liberty,
bleeding for basic, human, rights
look to us.
We symbolize freedom,
we symbolize progress,
we symbolize equality.
We have women senators,
but I still wouldn’t earn as much as a man
for the same job.
We have a melting pot of culture,
but Portland only has nine Synagogues
among endless churches.
We have the first black president,
and we beat gay men to death.

You know,
I won’t debate over the second amendment,
because we were given it
for a reason:
so that when the government
- our government -
commits treason
we can correct them
and protect
what we are currently
neglecting to respect.

Freedom.
It’s more than a constitution,
it’s a state of mind.
and the reason not every dictatorship is revolting
is because some have bigger things on their minds,
like their next meal
and clean water
and their children’s lives.

And we?
We have the Oscar’s.

Roaring 20s - 03-01-11

Should’ve been born in the 1920s.
Shouldn’t been a rebel girl
with my rain boots unlaced,
flapping around like jazz notes
blowing away all the German spiders
and sticking to billboards like price tags.
Should’ve bobbed my hair short as my skirt.
Should’ve given Queen Victoria the finger
and caresses Langston’s black neck
the way his words wooed my soul.
Should’ve sang with Margret Sanger
about ending the pain in my ovaries
and spreading my legs without worry.
Should’ve run around with DuBois
and lynched the freaks in the sheets,
not the knights in Harlem.
Should’ve run to the lights,
to the glamour and clamor,
to the growing cities like healthy children,
rocketing to the sky with hopes.
Should’ve laughed in the flowers
and gazed at the clouds with Georgia O’Keefe.
Should’ve head butted the traditionalist for firing Scopes.
Should’ve stayed out late with the Jewish.
Should’ve danced with the Polish.
Should’ve drank bootlegged beers with an Irish fellow,
out in the woods with painted lips
that sneered at mothers and puckered at men.
Should’ve seen the world for the first time
in a black and white news reel
with maritime music.
Should’ve cheered for Babe and laughed at Chaplin.
Should’ve lived and loved.
Should’ve drowned in culture and possibilities.



Historical context:
In my history class, we are currently learning about the Roaring Twenties.  This was a time of cultural revolution.  The traditional Protestant ways of the United States were being challenged by Pluralism - being of more than one belief.  This was the time of Woman’s Suffrage and the sexual revolution, where flappers wore short skirts, drank beer, and defied their mothers.  The flapper was named after the fashion of wearing rain boots without lacing them up so they made a flapping sound.  This was also the first instance of birth control, promoted by Margret Sanger.
This was the time of the Harlem Renaissance, an explosion of African American culture in New York, of jazz, poetry, and art.  Langston Hughes was one of the foremost poets of that time, and if you’ve never heard of him, please look up “Mother to Son” because it is amazing.  African America rights movement took off, With W.E.D. DuBois advocating for blacks to not just accept what they could from white, oppressive government, but to fight for their rights.
This was the time of mass immigration and the true beginnings of America’s “melting pot” idea, that, until then, had honestly not been followed.  People of all races moved into cities and learned about each other.  Old ideas were replaced with a conglomerate of the new.  Catholics in the USA formed a tradition of football watching.  A person could be of two worlds, that of their decent, be it Polish, Jewish, or Irish, and also be an American.
This was the time of learning about the world.  Mass use of radio and the first movies with sound brought news from all over the world to American citizens, letting them expand their view.  It was the time of the skyscraper, of the big city, of innovation.
I have been greatly inspired by this era.  Yes, I know it wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty freaking awesome, you have to admit.