A Poetry Reading!

 I read at a poetry reading in Ypsi. on Monday.  Some of this stuff is already here but this is what I read:

At the Washtenaw Coin Laundry

I love this town and all its colors
so many shades of black and brown and tan
on skins and eyes and hair and hands
accents that come from I know not where
languages lilting lyrical lullabies
myriad mantras
so many gods all one
All One
cultures not clashing
not shocking me
only calling to my eyes and ears
with whispers of lands I'll never see
secrets of souls
swishes of fabric and whiffs of oil
spices speak sustenance
words awaken wonder
music exciting in mixed-up modes
drifts from windows where
kitchens sit with laden bread
always a table to be filled with old places
aromas abundant call back in time
ancestral answers gifting with grace
a smile touching eyes
gives me welcome without words
human-ness beyond language
beyond any perception
of not-like-me

Sovereign

She walks out freshly into her
own world, that of her making
virtuously attuned to its every breath
ever entwined, ever open
receptive to the ebb and flow of
each cycle as it passes
intuitively present with every moment
giving graciously all the gifts of herself
never failing to abide by her heart

maybe I should eat

I need some more words
I think I'll have to start
eating dictionaries
because I can't seem to come up with
enough words
or the right ones to
mean what i'm saying like
how I love the word mobius
and I know what it is
and what it looks like but
sometimes I use it when
I mean something else and so
maybe i'll have to
eat up some geometry books too
to try to find a better shape
to metaphor with
and sometimes singing
even in words that have nothing to do with it
seems to get out or get across
what i'm feelin at the time
in the most direct, most satisfying way
so maybe I should eat some cds
or music books or my violin
and when it starts to become
too surreal like
life has gone
quite strange
maybe I should start eating
some of the old and true
fairy tales
warning us of how twisted
and mistakenly lovely
life can be

shrug

nothing ever touches anything else

not really

but right now

our electrons are

powerless

to repel one another

because you've invaded

                  you have entered

                              you've been invited into

the space that my body occupies

i sigh

i smile

physics shrugs

T A L K

I don't want a lecture from longview
I don't want to pant in pantomime
I don't want crazy accusations
based on incorrect equations
or conversations leading to
conflict or kamikaze questions
I don't want expressions that come so loudly
but without any truth behind
I don't want tangled opinions
poisoning what I'm pondering
I don't want auctioneering inauthentic audio
I don't want to dilute my language
I don't want closed-minded opinions
or discouraging dissuasion
I don't want to deal with drama
I don't want pompous pretension
I don't want judgment jumped-to unjustly
I don't want to mourn mortifying misunderstandings
I don't want to navigate needless negativity
I don't want side-long glanced suspicion
I don't want mistrust in advance
I don't want base, boorish behavior
I don't want tormenting or taunting
or shameful fingers shaken
I don't want the volume of violent voices
I don't want fists standing in for sentences
I don't want unsolicited advice
I don't want decisions made for anyone
I don't want labels obscuring people
I don't want anyone's nature negated
I don't want time taken toiling in talk of tedium
I want to hear something real
I want safety in honest exchange
I want courtesy to be common
I want Universally open minds
I want constant, complicit, compassion
I want recognition of our similarity
and reverence for our differences
I don't want there to be sides

Now, if you still can,
talk with me

and some bits

They say we carry the weight of the world

on our shoulders

but I know that's men talking

cause I carry that weight

on my hips

and they sure are sore lately.

They took away the beautiful figure of the truly feminine and injected her, instead, with saline, collagen, silicone, even extra fat, all trying to attain some mythic concept of beauty in a culture that so disbelieves in myth that they can't even get the moral of that story...