I came out of the closet.

I totally came out of the closet to my mom when I was 26.  I came out of the closet.
And no one believed me.

No one.

Now I have a different thing that people can make fun of me for or not believe me or call me silly for.
In fact, 2 different things.

And you'll never know until we're close friends and/or you thoroughly examine my book collection.

Everyone has been missing for four months.
Amanda said she was hanging Xmas lights outside all day for Jay's mom.

So, like, now, code word for 'you're an asshole and no one wants to answer your call or texts' is that 'I was out hanging Xmas lights and also my phone died.'

Syphilis?

Sisyphus.
Sisyphus.

Oh, riiiiight.  Right.

That Graffiti Looks Like a Tarot Card

Persephone blogs twice in a night as tenderness was lost in the Internet
She weeps for her longings as musings of what should be are lost
like a lighter in the bottom of her purse
except worse.

The music stopped, but we're still dancing as the kids roll face around us
in Miami
under the freeway
you'll usually find something you weren't looking for
especially when you're so actively looking

Conversating with a vernacular that only comes out at four in the morning

The darkest part of night, dew on the car windows, mist in the air
A lost person in a Lexus, then a Honda hum past
Distant enough not to see

Like illegal tint on the front side windows--- you're not allowed not to be seen
To let them see your face is to shame yourself

Frozen in a time capsule in the living room, day dreaming of 2008
Day dreaming of lost love
Day dreaming about advice given and not heeded
Dreading admitting that society's paradigm is bigger than us all

Fighting an uphill battle

Kk said to wait a few months and tell her again that divorced guys are good
And I wondered how she knew or if she knew anything in particular
I could have pressed
But didn't as she nodded and batted her eye lashes saying 'you'll find out what I mean, so don't even ask since you're so smart'
Smart ass.

I never take advice.
Not even my own.

Feminism is totally dead, I can tell
Because whenever I write about it in public someone explicitly
implies that I am racist for it or something along those lines
And that kind of makes me not want to analyze anything anymore.  

"You don't even want someone like that THINKING about you."

Keep your head down.
Even though I am a master at applying theory
If I am creative enough, any theory can be applied to any THING

So what's the use when there isn't a real authority on anything?
Rebels without a cause commenting all over the Internet like ugly graffiti

And that's real talk because I'm an avid fan of graffiti in general
It makes me feel alive when I see a masterful piece of work with heart behind it
With color and flow and placement
Train cars are the best; a traveling art show like an anonymous circus

Into the shadows like a mythological woman on a tarot card
awaiting a magician
awaiting a throne and a scepter

A chalice

Don't even talk about a chalice.

You've got to be kidding me, Persephone.
It was over before you started.

You get the death card.

True Simple Desire and Relief

I once met a four year old who couldn't sleep without watching Tom & Jerry cartoons
And it made me remember a time
when I believed in comfort

I believed there was a source of comfort

I knew there was respite

I wanted things

I demanded them and waited

And they were real ; I could get what I wanted

True simple desire and relief

Someone to talk to who will bounce back all my ideals
Question me when I am wrong
Accept it when I am not wanted

Someone to dribble the ball down the court with

And make shots.

It's a three-pointer or nothing?
What?
You don't even want to rebound?

Tuesday Truths.

Stepping sideways and spinning
Bending; and molecules react in my skin
like a backward magnet
So, it could be over and it's not my fault
Except for my being less confident than I should be
...considering...

This was not available
Not for comment
Not for warm embraces

Not for mystery
Not for a mid summer night

Whistling in the dark and hoping
isn't the sign of the times

And my sharpness, my edge is too dulled out
Halfway not so much
Half way is soft to touch
cold to touch

Niceness polite ; too deep
Is not enough

Anymore, anymore, anyone.
All you get is a grocery store, elevator version of it.

I drive away.
I have about ten friends and no one is available to talk it over.  I came to this conclusion myself.

This is what I want.

I want to feel excited and blinded,
and dizzy; like all the fishes do : swimming in a school...
Like I have iridescent stripes along my ribs.

It would suffice if I felt like a jellyfish.
It would suffice if I went to see the dolphins
and painted the ceiling until my arms were stiff and I couldn't move
and you would talk me down

From the ceiling.
Talk me down from the ledges
When I do things like try to argue that everything is bad.
And your argument will be convincing.

That's what I want.

This is what I have.

And it's wickedness.  It's making fun of evil.  It's sorcery.

Really?  It would be fun.  The seeds are sown for now.  Questions.
Public.  Private.  Escaping.  Rolling.  Relaxing.

No pain.  Thank Bagavadgita.
The timing is off.  It's a cheap fix.
A belt.
A rubber band.  Loosened.  Fixed, passive.

Mundane.  Love.  Checked.  For a white lie on Sunday.

Leads to truthful Tuesday.

Driving Wild

Re-write your life.
Making it a biography about a famous mastermind,
Pull out all the stops,
Make yourself a strong runner with an unbeatable stride,
Win points,
Be competitive
But also loving.

Pinpoint what the people around you care about and get at it,
to make more of it.

Bring joy to the table.

Be consistent.

(If you watch me for long enough, aren't I ? )

Jump to it, mastermind.

Backfiring plans are just coincided with a re-directive.
Do it strongly
And surely

As they say, "Change Positions"

Look opposition in the face, lonely bird.
Fly at night,

Fly by night.

You always knew you would be here.
Masking this does what ?   NOTHING.

Using quotes for no reason like a marble copy book full of dreams,
Write on the walls.

Write a mantra in lipstick on the mirror.
Kiss it.

Always kiss it before you kill it.
Kiss the roof when you run a yellow light

Bellow at the moon
Find your birthplace
Draw a line to the equator and jump on it like a zip line.

Be wealthy.
Be warily aware of poverty thought.
Don't stock up on things like it's the end of the world, Baby.

It has just begun.  

A Subtle Pause Every Day for a Lifetime (when Frank was dying)

Sitting in my living room, almost sweating with the heat at 85 degrees, I listened to a Rolling Stones song that I listened to on repeat when my father died.  In the past, I would not be able to breathe when I heard the song.  Now, it is not so much the case.  I'm not sure why.

What do people go through when someone dies?  

I have used a story I know about elephants grieving to allude to what the human emotion is around death.  I can tell the story because it has resonated with me and saturated my experience with a deep and earthly understanding.

For me, I went through regret at first, as if it was my fault he had died.  I was overwhelmed with guilt because I wasn't a good daughter and we weren't like the fathers and daughters I saw in movies.

Yet, I relate to Ariel and Poseidon in the Little Mermaid.  My father knew everything, but he still didn't understand me.  It wasn't until I was an adult that I found out that he DIDN'T HAVE TO understand me to be there for me.  And he was.  And I was a teenager doing what most teenagers do.  And he was like my best buddy when I was growing up, which brings me the literal & very realistic relation, most relative to human grieving.  

When your buddy dies, you call out.  You make a call.  You sound the alarm.

It is exactly what the elephants do.  They live as long as we do and longer.  They are younger than Sea Turtles, perhaps, but the elephants are mammals.  They are like us.  Their brains are the same size as ours, if not larger.

When one of them dies, they make a call.  Their herds call to each other and the signal reaches hundreds of miles.  They congregate.  And they form a procession.  And this is a fact.  

It is how I understand death.  It's been that way since I was 16.  I got a hold on it.  

I can meditate on the image in my mind and I can feel it in my heart and my gut.

The bottom of my feet become warm when I think about it.  

When I think I know it all, that means I am in trouble, so I say this with the sentiment that the unknown things in life are OKAY NOT TO UNDERSTAND, as long as the elephants know what to do.  

My cousin, who was my father's best friend when he was a child; she wrote a poem that won an award.  She read it for an audience recently.  And it was about an elephant.  The elephant was beloved.  And I don't know exactly what she wrote because I wasn't there for the reading, but I am certain it was 'something else'.  That's the word on the street.  And I mean, literally, when I was walking with an agent of the Mayor on the sidewalk on Gay Street, he knew about the poem and made an "Mmmm" sound when he thought about it in recollection.  

My cousin describes my mother and I as "other worldly," and I like to think it means we're tapped into something else.  The other stuff that we can't quite know about, but we coincidentally make connections that make for a subtle pause.