Go Ahead (A political post that has nothing to do with poetry)

I’m going to say something controversial.

I don’t give a shit about POC looting. In fact, I hope they got all the shit that makes them feel good about their homes. I hope they got nice cuts of meat and over-priced bottles of wine. I hope they got books they can keep and I hope their children got the toys behind lock up cases. I hope the trans women snagged an outfit in her size without a cashier judging them. I want the parents to get themselves something without feeling like they took something away from their children’s needs or desires.

I hope they got new sheets no one else has slept on. I hope they got enough formula to not skip meals to pay for it anytime soon. I hope they got cleaning supplies to fight COVID and medicine to help ease the everyday sicknesses they couldn’t afford to treat. I hope they got something decent to eat. I hope that kid with dreams got whatever bit of technology that can help them create their vision.

The looting doesn’t blip my radar because POC, especially Black POC, have been systematically shut out of the opportunities that would allow them to legally obtain the products necessary to live comfortable lives. I don’t condone stealing but I get in this context.

People say if you can’t afford the nice things then you don’t deserve them. But how is that okay when they’ve been kept out of the places to earn those things? Gentrification, red lining, gerrymandering.... do not get me started on systematic academic gatekeeping- I take that one extra personally because my maiden name and heritage played a role in my academic upbringing. I remember you racist white teachers who talked down my progress and praised every white named kid in class but me and my Hispanic classmates- you’re okay with people not surviving because they couldn’t earn it? When your life is dedicated to surviving and playing the American Dream game (bullshit that white people are suffering delusions of too but can’t face that they have been manipulated themselves) that was set up for you to fail... Yea you should be pissed off and want to take some things that make you feel differently.

You want to say this isn’t about race (I remember when I thought that way too. It’s one of the steps you take to see the bigger picture. Keep going). It’s been about race for a really long time and it’s going to always be about race until you accept that it’s about race!! This is shit is uncomfortable, I get why you’re not talking about it. I get why you want to ignore it. I want to ignore it too because it would be easier. But ignoring it is why it’s not getting better. We can learn to be uncomfortable until it’s not. If you just get through it for a bit, it’ll get better. You jump into uncomfortable things all the time because you learned your body will acclimate, you can do the same thing with this. Only this time, it matters beyond just your life.

You’ll say, “You’d feel differently if your stuff was stolen!” Or “it’s not your home being burned down!” -and you’re right. But here’s the thing: history is full of white people burning down POC’s homes and towns to enforce their will. To enslave POC because they didn’t want to till or harvest their own lands. White people took lands that didn’t belong to them, they took MY heritages lands. They erased our cultures. They said our languages were “unintelligible babble” because they couldn’t be bothered to learn- and I didn’t learn a language that belonged to my history because I believed the racist rhetoric of English academic supremacy. I am part of the problem sometimes too.

So yea, losing my stuff would suck but it isn’t something my history doesn’t recognize. My ancestors survived it, despite all hopes of white colonizers and oppressors, so I can survive it too. And the thing is, I have the privilege of KNOWING I’ll survive because I have home owners insurance- I might not be so bold if that safety net wasn’t there. If that safety net wasn’t there I might snag an extra thing or two myself. I can’t know because I have been privileged in my survival being met. How can any of us know if we haven’t been there?

It’s all just stuff. Let them take it because there’s going to be more stuff.
Just because the system is working for you doesn’t mean the system isn’t broken.

This post isn't about small businesses and homes but I do wonder, if we dug deeper into who was looting those specifically... what would we find? More specifically, who will we find?

Free write Haibun/Haiku

I keep thinking in montages of "before". I see myself omnisciently moving through life; the retrospect of the camera's ever present eye. Condensation from my drink watering sealed floors, waiting in hallways and uncomfortable chairs; lining the walls gracefully, tactfully, like every time before. It was like moving through sludge; I am floating through the thick ambivalence in which depression is kept at bay. Head back, eyes closed, hair absolutely everywhere and gasping for air granted from stolen bits of adrenaline. When you cannot be moved to feel, you feel like a thief when sensation is near.

concrete steps un-level
old illuminated fog
past is just prologue

Undated writing from my teenage mind "Sleeper Sidewalk"

Welcome to Sleeper Sidewalk
where life is nothing more than a dream
morning never comes and the clouds never cover the moon or stars.
there are no worries, no stress of the real world.
The only fear here on Sleeper Sidewalk is of waking.
But here you don't need to know about the world.
This here is the end of it
nothing like you ever thought it would be.
no heaven, no hell
no demons with angels wings
no devils upon an angel's halo.
There is sleep, peace, and fear is only in your mind.

_______

No idea how old I was. Judging by the mess of handwriting and how it is on the page I would take a guess that I was probably fifteen. It's kinda got COVID-19 vibes, don't you think?

"Sleeper sidewalk" man I like that. I guess I liked it then too. This feels like a good project to rework.

Free Write 2/25/2020

I am a girl who day dreams of running away.
Pack a few things and come what may.
Scatter my words into the wind like the left over dust of a life that was never to be.

And if I would, I could split apart -

be here, be there
when the sun crests the mountains and the valleys are crushing me out of reality, heavy with the weight of perspective infinity.

-I would.

I would slip beyond my mind, like silk screens wrapping
my hands
up, bound
down to
the earth
away
from the
beat of
my oth-
-er heart.

The miles fail my memory. Mark the odometer because I only remember the smell of hunting my spirit in the redwoods. I feel the crunch and hear the passion under boots as I stand on a Mobius Arch becoming one completely undone like all the other girls waiting for the words to take us away to the crystal castles promised by all those midnight tales.

The Forrest Smells Like Home

My life looks like a bunch of words that I have yet to find the right order for. Like a tangle of strings that once unknotted would not make a single thing. What use is string if you have nothing to tie together? Will the string be little reminders at my fingers for all the things I could not remember?


I am grappling with my insides the past couple of months. I have been looking at my hands waiting on them, and begging them to come up with all the right words that will make everything right. Not perfect, just right.

Depression is a strange thing because it does not always look the way we expect of it. Some days I am the little Zoloft bean glumly hopping from place to place with a cloud over my head. Other days I am strapping on my helmet to jump on my bike for a quick hit of adrenaline to distract me from the darker things. I have no words for what that really means, "darker things". Maybe I should call it a place instead. Because that is what it is for me. Depression is like a journey through the damp woods. You think that if you just turned around and came back the way you came, it would be alright. But the woods smell like home to me, the chill lulls me to a quiet surrender in my mind. And I have been day dreaming of getting lost in the woods for as long as I can remember.

I get up every day and I make myself coffee.

Less Defined

I have been neglecting this blog. Vulnerability is a weird thing for me. I try to live with confidence, bravery, honesty, and a damning self awareness. My brain is filing away the nuances of observation. Words used seemingly out of context can keep me up as I work through the possibilities of various meanings.

Headlights in the fog
thick blankets obscuring everything
one small brightness surrounded by noise

The more I want to write the more impossible I find it. Where do the words go when they are not with me? Some times it is easier to let your body work it out.

So I have been dancing and thinking about such casual words, "put on something that is you". But something is off beat in my body. Flipping through songs trying to find the right one. A million choices and nothing feels perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twix375Me4Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwvLlEtxX3o