B-Roomie

I don’t like watching myself brush my teeth.

It’s too vulnerable.

I can’t speak or I drip. I’m muffled by the paste.

On the toilet and gotta run? Drip drip.

It be like that in the bathroom. Or lavatory if you fancy… or not so fancy ‘cause you’ve got no tub or shower.

I might drip. Leak something. Tell you something I wish I hadn’t.

Or need to stand up (for myself) and be confined.

That room.

That intimacy is not to be disregarded. My eyes look wide. I return back to the womb. Complete dependence on being safe while I cleanse and release.

I grew up in a house where people were in and out of the bathroom like a revolving door. One person would be showering while someone was pee-ing and maybe another brushing their teeth, dependent on the time of day. Sometimes a tap tap on the shower curtain. Can I help you?

Late night, I would revel in that quiet bathroom time. The time when I had silence and safety.

I’d roll around in cradled infancy.

And when those eyes widen, I get nervous.

Who’s gonna be pee-ing next to me?

Biscuits

It was a cozy, crisp morning. I rolled over to my notebook as I often do, brimming with the hum of thoughts.

I asked for a word and giggled of writing a poem.

B replied: Biscuits.

…Biscuits; they are not triscuits.

Though my love for them dare not sink. I hold them high, like flowers and the color pink.

When I think of their puff, their infinite fluff, my heart tears like the sweet soft layers of their circle, semi-squares.

Alone or together- it depends on the weather.

Golden or browned, I will never frown.

My love for you is very rare, I leap as if you were a bear.

What a scare!

So be still, dough, that I can’t say no-

I’ll see you again,

when we meet with my eggs and bacon friend.

We had biscuits that morning. I was into it.

Big Wheeler

I got this bike. For the first time since college, I’m a big wheeler.

I remember when I learned how to ride a bike. It had training wheels, and my dad taught me in a playground behind my elementary school. It was scary and exciting, filled with fresh air and fresh hope.

My father pressed his hands onto my shoulders for balance, while I nervously looked at the long rode ahead.

My daddy was there. I’ll be fine.

This was that precious time in my life. Before I broke.

Daddy was the best.

I desperately wanted my brother to love me,

and mommy would read me stories before bed.

Picture-perfect.

He let go. He was my guiding light and he let go. Then the most terrifying thing happened: “Okay Alex bye bye, I’ll see ya late,” and he turned the corner and vanished.

My fear drove me. I put my big-girl pants on, zipped along on those four wheels, and turned the corner only to find my father beaming with joy at what his little girl had done.

Driven by fear of abandonment. Ain’t that somethin’.

I own a bike now, for the first time in nearly 10 years. This pandemic.

It folds and I thought that would be practical. New York City. Small spaces.

This bike has two wheels. This bike gave me independence. It gave me freedom, safety, ocean and parks. Refuge.

My big wheels have replaced my training wheels. No one is leaving, no one is coming. That light I saw in my father’s eyes now lives in my very own eyes.

My childhood is dead, a wise woman once told me. Though it be harsh, it bees true.

I guess my little red rocket (don’t be cheeky) is a gentle reminder that the training wheels are off and I am A.O.K.

I can leave. I can go, and abandonment can transform to freedom.

Burnt up with gasoline.

I feel empty. Like a car. I liked being in his car. Moving. I want to drive. I want a car, and I want to be in a car with someone I love, going places. Traveling.

That unlocked in me. In that brief time. Though C was not the most fun. Quiet and average. The music we listened to was quote ‘emo,’ the stuff I listen to when I’m depressed or when I was in my youthful angst.

Probably a red flag. Dang.

He was tatted and had just enough simpleton in him to calm my nerves. Until the man-child came out, and I felt I had to get a ba ba and ease the situation. What a drag.

He had some workings of a great travel buddy. Ready for adventure and often times of the athletic kind, not bad to look at, looked at me at first with admiration, and then… inspection.

He began to try to suck every semblance of creative genius out of me. The beauty is, that these suckers are just that, ‘suckers.’

It’s impossible.

You can position yourself with your tattooed garb and your low trailing voice to be some artist, but you’re not. And you won’t get it by osmosis. Ya screwed the pooch on that one, bud. You are average. In the most boring of ways, the most trivial of ways. You want your mama to save you, or your next girlfriend. Either will do.

But here’s the deal little boy, you can’t have this.

You need to put your big dick away and your privilege is ugly. It wreaks of run of the mill studded belts and swooshed bang boys that have never gone a day without dinner.

It’s big, it’s pathetic, and good luck growing up.

But you're so pretty when you smile...

(VO recording has nearly 6K plays on Soundcloud)

I hope your strapped down and zooted, because this is what the presapice feels like.

This is what the wooshing winds and epic force feels like.

The all emcompassing and bold brash realities of what we aim to be and what we truly are.

What we tell ourselves over a period of time to be true so that at some point, by way of osmosis, the thought becomes the ice burg and there is simply no way around it.

Until we crash directly into it and are forced to examine the cool, white smooth surface.

I sympathize with the disabled.

In any which way a human being may be disabled.

All stemming from one of two factors, a wackty woozy of the mind or a boppidy boop of the body, either way, leaving the human to be stunted in some way.

To have something that needs some focus on, some energy invested in.

Most of the people I know are disabled, in some way, or at some point.

Robbed of their esteemed garb, and forced to sink into the trenches with all the hope in the world of dodging the missle storm.

I’m here, hangin’ in the trenches, practicing all I know and in wonder-ance of how this magic, this ability to sense, can be most useful in every fragment.

How directly can I take this and simply put it into another medium, or another story and make it helpful. 

Expressive and articulate.

To an audience, that sees these traits as bizarrely beautiful.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve got the nail on the head and then I spin until the paper speaks for itself, or my vehicle speaks for itself, and sometimes.

Sometimes- no matter the intellectual cognizance, I can’t help but doubt.

Disabling MYSELF.

Stunting my own self.

Knowing well and still dodging missles.

I am aware to beware, but these days can not trap me in a corner where the only view is down the rocky end of earth.

This has got to clear; now.

Or a much larger spiral up needs to commence, and these smiling counterparts help and frustrate, but please.

This one thing- don’t tell me to smile.

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(written in 2017, in the before times…)