The Cherry Girls

"I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue"
She says; guy next to me
"and you?"
I can tie a noose around my neck
It'd be far more interesting than this...
I'm an introspective extrovert
Feel most alone in crowded rooms
I make love to blank pages

Tell me, what do you do?

Me? I belong to the night
To the moon
Diurnal, nocturnal lioness
a master huntress

Prone to roam

In deserted fields

Too much an animal

For antiquated rituals

I seek solace in the spaces

Between my sentences

I write poetry in my sleep

Forget it until brief moments

Of magic pull it out of me

You? You’ve already bored me

Each woman in your bed means nothing

Another warm body staining sheets

And if this is a conquest

You can’t beat the queen

Because I am all instinct

Following only the hem of my skirt

As I leave

I see the beauty of God in a fallen leaf

I walk the fine edge

Of every single precipice

A fatal attraction to the danger

Just to feel alive

Go ahead sweetheart

Show him what you can do with your mouth

I’ve got some solitude to seek

And sacred communions with leaves

I hold a razor behind my teeth

For all the men who try to kiss me

I tongue tie any gentleman

Until he bleeds

Sans the cherry

The Good, the Bad and Enjoying the in Between

It’s amazing to me how many people call to check on you when you behead your ex-boyfriend in one of your poems (like you’ve never done that?)

As a writer, you draw on the sadness or the discontent because for many of us, writing is a way to get those negative emotions out of you.  No one wants that festering inside of them.  It’s important to remember that hurt, sadness and anger are all nothing more than a moment in time.  Once I put things down on paper I feel lighter.  It’s a meditative exercise in letting things go (even if you behead people in the process).  J 

We are all just moments in time and moments shift.  Each one is different and as such, we are different.  I am not my past; I’m far too present for that. 

I was watching a Louis C.K.  stand-up bit how we constantly expect good things to happen to us.  He jokes around about some guy who spills coffee on himself and how the guy’s reaction to this extreme anger and then this victimization like  "how could this have happened to me?!”  He goes on to discuss how it's absolutely ridiculous that we expect ONLY good things to happen and then freak out when the bad happens.

As a society, we have a tendency to EXPECT that only good things happen to us.  It’s natural of course, no one says, “I hope that I fall off my bike today.”  No one wakes up one morning thinking: “I hope I get into a shitty relationship.”  No one says, “I hope my friends all abandon me and I lose my youth and beauty and end up living alone with 20 cats.”

Instead we say, “It's going to be a gorgeous day and I'm going to bike along the lake to enjoy it."  We say, “I’m going to find the one and we’re going to be in love forever and it’s going to be amazing.” We toast to all of our fine friends, “To our splendid future!  Friends forever!”

When things don’t go our way it’s devastating for many of us.  Yet, I wager we wouldn’t be half as happy with the good times without the bad.  How would we even recognize the difference?   Would we be as strong as we are without having to struggle?  Would we appreciate the times when we are able to relax and let it all go if there weren’t points where our muscles were tense and sore from carrying too much on our shoulders?

All moments should be taken in stride from the joyfulness to love to heartbreak to depression because for better or for worse, it’s a moment and it will be over before you know it.

<3 

Ashes of an Ex-Boyfriend

My face is emotionless

Staring at yours

In the guillotine of my mind

It wasn’t a long sentence

But your actions so horrendous

That the executioner now beckons

I have no interest in memories

The good times; the bad times

Any time involving you, really

Furthermore, I don't appreciate

Your guest appearances

in my dreams

The blade has been sharpened

And I feel nothing

I do not forgive you

Forgiveness implies an

Understanding I do not possess

I won’t mourn your death

In fact, after this I plan to wear 

The most colorful things I own

My last and final gift to you:

This poem

Rest in peace

Prickly

I’m a slow healer still

Hugging my chest tight

I know nothing of love

Other than it always leaves

I don’t want to pretend

“I’ve never done this before”

I just don’t want to do it again

A heart’s got that muscle memory

Breeding new instincts; new reasons to run

And the love-jaded women, hard on the street

Well, that’s just hyper evolution, baby

I’d invite you to take a look inside

If it weren’t for all this scar tissue

That envelops my heart 

A diamond scalpel couldn't cut through

I know my own loneliness

like cacti know the desert

I don't need the promise of rain to fill me

then leave me...slow to drain..

[insert happy ending here]

The Chicago Project: Bridgeport

I love going to places alone. 

It’s an odd hobby that I must have picked up when I was 18 years old and had just moved to the city for the first time.  I remember how I was then – so young and fresh and wanting to experience everything – the people; the places; the day; the night…

I’ve come back to that girl it seems; the one that goes out on her bicycle late at night alone to check out the open mic night and perform for people that won’t ever know her name.  The comfort about strangers is that you don’t ever have to live up to anything.  You just share in a moment without clinging to identity…

This is one of the many reasons I love to travel alone.  I love traveling because of the complete uncertainty of where the journey will take you or who you will meet along the way; the exoticism of new places and the seduction of a moment in different vegetation and landscape.

So Chicago: how do I experience you as a tourist instead of a resident?

Let’s start in Bridgeport, a southside neighborhood not too far from Pilsen.  I walked into Bernice’s Tavern’s open mic night because I wrote a poem I was dying to read to a room full of strangers.  I was disappointed to find that it was only music.  I then scanned the room thinking about how poetry would probably not fly well here as I eyed the décor.  Signs that read: “work is the curse of the drinking class,” and “never trust a man that doesn’t drink,” permeated the walls.  I could hear thick Chicago accents over the Neil Young cover songs.  The Sox game was on in a tiny t.v. in the corner of the room.  Bridgeport is Sox country, make no mistake about it.

I knew immediately that there were two things I would not do here today:

1. Tell anyone I’m vegan 
2. Read my intense feminist poetry

Instead I noticed the little things one tends to when in a new place.

As a writer, it’s the external stimulation that drives you inward to put it all into words. It’s overhearing a conversation that inspires a poem or noticing the way the light dances on foreign walls over music. It’s reading the silence between the words; it’s contemplating life’s riddles as you watch the man and the woman in the corner whispering into each other’s ear…

Or, if you’re Bridgeport, it’s scanning the bar full of burly men in Bears and Blackhawks jerseys and baseball hats wondering if anyone is a secret Cubs fan. 

Deep thoughts.

More Chicago adventures to come throughout the summer!