Desert Ghost

I am a desert ghost
Drifting through rabbit brush
Glistening warmth on glassy waters
Running wild like mustangs and mountain lions
Humming with rivers and waterfalls
Windswept, lush, and longing
Traveling and tortured
For a place to rest and belong
To be seen, to be whole, to be known

Person

All I know is what I don't see
all around me,
all around you, this country.
Dragging me down like bottoms of feet,
wrinkled crease.
I am trying tired and fighting,
lending my hands out,
arms for longing.
Never a heart or soul bare,
Never good enough, never a person.
I am not a person, I am me,
My body moves, heart pumping,
I am the bending and broken,
Vulnerable limbs of a woman,
But with wind in my pockets,
air deep in my lungs,
I am heavy with life.

"A History of Everything, Including You" by Jenny Hollowell

First
there was god, or gods, or nothing. Then synthesis, space, the expansion,
explosions, implosions, particles, objects, combustion, and fusion. Out of the
chaos came order, stars were born and shown and died. Planets rolled across
their galaxies on invisible ellipses and the elements combined and
became.

Life
evolved or was created. Cells trembled, and divided, and gasped and found dry
land. Soon they grew legs, and fins, and hands, and antenna, and mouths, and
ears, and wings, and eyes. Eyes that opened wide to take all of it in, the
creeping, growing, soaring, swimming, crawling, stampeding universe.

Eyes
opened and closed and opened again, we called it blinking. Above us shown a star
that we called the sun. And we called the ground the earth. So we named
everything including ourselves. We were man and woman and when we got lonely we
figured out a way to make more of us. We called it sex, and most people enjoyed
it. We fell in love. We talked about god and banged stones together, made sparks
and called them fire, we got warmer and the food got
better.

We
got married, we had some children, they cried, and crawled, and grew. One
dissected flowers, sometimes eating the petals. Another liked to chase
squirrels. We fought wars over money, and honor, and women. We starved
ourselves, we hired prostitutes, we purified our water. We compromised,
decorated, and became esoteric. One of us stopped breathing and turned blue.
Then others. First we covered them with leaves and then we buried them in the
ground. We remembered them. We forgot them. We aged.

Our
buildings kept getting taller. We hired lawyers and formed councils and left
paper trails, we negotiated, we admitted, we got sick, and searched for cures.
We invented lipstick, vaccines, pilates, solar panels, interventions, table
manners, firearms, window treatments, therapy, birth control, tailgating, status
symbols, palimony, sportsmanship, focus groups, zoloft, sunscreen, landscaping,
cessnas, fortune cookies, chemotherapy, convenience foods, and
computers. We
angered militants, and our mothers.

You
were born. You learned to walk, and went to school, and played sports, and lost
your virginity, and got into a decent college, and majored in psychology, and
went to rock shows, and became political, and got drunk, and changed your major
to marketing, and wore turtleneck sweaters, and read novels, and volunteered,
and went to movies, and developed a taste for blue cheese
dressing.

I
met you through friends, and didn’t like you at first. The feeling was mutual,
but we got used to each other. We had sex for the first time behind an art
gallery, standing up and slightly drunk. You held my face in your hands and said
that I was beautiful. And you were too. Tall with a streetlight behind you. We
went back to your place and listened to the White Album. We ordered in. We
fought and made up and got good jobs and got married and bought an apartment and
worked out and ate more and talked less. I got depressed. You ignored me. I was
sick of you. You drank too much and got careless with money. I slept with my
boss. We went into counseling and got a dog. I bought a book of sex positions
and we tried the least degrading one, the wheelbarrow. You took flight lessons
and subscribed to Rolling Stone. I learned Spanish and started gardening.

We
had some children who more or less disappointed us but it might have been our
fault. You were too indulgent and I was too critical. We loved them anyway. One
of them died before we did, stabbed on the subway. We grieved. We moved. We
adopted a cat. The world seemed uncertain, we lived beyond our means. I got
judgmental and belligerent, you got confused and easily tired. You ignored me, I
was sick of you. We forgave. We remembered. We made cocktails. We got tender.
There was that time on the porch when you said, can you believe it?

This
was near the end and your hands were trembling. I think you were talking about
everything, including us. Did you want me to say it? So it would not be lost? It
was too much for me to think about. I could not go back to the beginning. I
said, not really. And we watched the sun go down. A dog kept barking in the
distance, and you were tired but you smiled and you said, hear that? It’s rough,
rough. And we laughed. You were like that.

Now,
your question is my project and our house is full of clues. I’m reading old
letters and turning over rocks. I burry my face in your sweaters. I study a
photograph taken at the beach, the sun in our eyes, and the water behind us.
It’s a victory to remember the forgotten picnic basket and your striped beach
blanket. It’s a victory to remember how the jellyfish stung you and you ran
screaming from the water. It’s a victory to remember treating the wound with
meat tenderizer, and you saying, I made it better. I will tell you this,
standing on our hill this morning I looked at the land we chose for ourselves, I
saw a few green patches, and our sweet little shed, that same dog was barking, a
storm was moving in. I did not think of heaven, but I saw that the clouds were
beautiful and I watched them cover the sun.

V. I

I don't know how it happened
but the lady who worked at the donut shop and I had a 20 minute conversation
about how being in your 20's is the worst.
I sat on her makeshift bench near the heater, ate my donut, custard running out the sides
and listened
to everything she had to say
because it was almost as good as getting a real big hug.
Lately I've been escaping home and heading to work early, that's how sad I've been.
Holidays do this weird thing to me
Fill me up with a chill
It's sort of exciting and liberating mixed with this feeling of being utterly alone.
I'm starting to not understand traditions
or why we do the things we do on specific days were told to do them
Is it really what we want?
All that turkey, all that stress.
I was telling David that lately it's been hard for me to feel connected to other people anymore.
Sometimes I'll be sitting at a table and thinking what am I doing?
Sometimes I really wish I had a grandma, someone "older and wiser"
Or an imaginary friend
Or Guardian Angel, I'll take whatever.
David asked me if I want kids.
I said, "I want to be a single mother."
"It's the only thing I've been able to picture actually happening for years now."
"That's how I know it's not a phase."
He laughed.
But it's true.
I told him that I can't imagine finding someone who can love passionately as well as be a good parent.
For some reason, I haven't seen them come hand in hand.
I also can't imagine being happy with someone for more than 10 years
I know something happens somewhere in there where eventually I'm not cutting it for them anymore
But the thing is, I know that I need to have something to love for the rest of my life
Something that'll never leave and that I can call mine
And I'll love the shit out of it, I will.

V.

Earlier today
I thought about all of the times Amy would French braid my hair
on mornings when I was hungover and had to go to work.

I don’t know if it was the pressure against my scalp that made me feel better

Or the idea that if I were to vomit, no one would feel like theyd have to hold my hair back.

Cause no pressure. Or anything.

My mother always told me ever since I was 9 and having friendship issues at a catholic school every night. Crying on the faded floral couch with my bowl of too hot to eat progresso soup.

That was back when I liked to put ice cubes in the bowl and watch it do its magic.

Shed say, “you have friends for different things, em.”

"Sometimes, if youre really lucky, you have friends you can do everything with”

You were right Ma

Sometimes
I think about tattooing my entire body with quotes

that remind me to love. To stay sane. To feel. For the rest of my life.

Sometimes I think the tattoo that I have quoted on my underarm
put a curse on me to do the exact opposite of what it says

I wrote down personal things on this scrap piece of paper at my third job and im sort of anxious about not being able to find it.

Maybe his phone died.

Maybe im done for now.

Thanks for listening.

Truckin Along

Broke down on the bus to Alameda.
A lady offered me a cute apartment,
move in ready with a great price
and I almost said yes
because
for the first time so far,
someone was giving me a chance.
Even though leaving Oakland is something I just can't think about.
at all.
But sometimes when I feel like Oakland's giving me a hard time,
I take that 51a through the Webster Tube
and visit the other side
for a feeling as close to a hug as I can get.
I bought a brightly colored slime green wooden bench.
Because I'm going through some dumb crisis I'm sure you could classify easily.
But I sit on it when the sun finally hits my room in the evening
and to be honest,
it's sort of put my mind at ease.
I think my life can be pretty absurd
Sometimes I don't understand the aches and pains of it,
with little light at the end of the tunnel,
more like a flashlight.
Something battery operated.
to keep us going.
Just not sure, exactly.
If you asked me to elaborate, you'd soon realize
I can never elaborate.
I'm only good for feeling, I suppose.
A boyfriend once told me the same thing.
What society is projecting on me is shaking me up.
I know who I am and what I want,
but you always seem to be wanting to tell me I'm something else.
If my brain could speak,
it would probably say,
"We'll, I guess it's time to go to work."
When all I ever want to do
is listen to blues
and let it cradle me away.
Sometimes I wonder
if it is the only thing telling me the truth these days.

Country Girl

put me in a cottage and lock the door
ima tell you everything you won't get.
but
lets face it;
i might be a country girl