Sparkle & Purple

Before the poem, another great event going on Tuesday Dec 30 at Busboys & Poets at 5th and K. Sparkle is a queer driven reading and open mic that will start at 8:30 pm. and will be hosted by Regie Cabico.

A hot little poem bout me:

My life is a hot mess too untamed for Crayola definitions
Purple
The sunset of summers spent on hallowed back porches
Splintered tongues twisting around
Eggplant shells
Secrets captured in wooden walls

Orchids dancing through the garden
Carefree, Rare
Hard to raise
O’Keefe

Relief
Like female

My life is a sprinkler’s sunbeam reflection
Clinging closer to greens than blues
That hue
That keeps the splash behind my eyes
Reeling

On nights I fight shadeless dreams

My life is that sacred cup
The perfect buzz
Bring it to your nose
Inhale
That’s some good shit

My life is purple
Propelled permanently towards the next freeway
Past comfortable
And straight on till morning.

Plucking past lives like orchids
To create the radiant light
That is my life’s backlit TV screen
Glowing off
Your now sleeping face.

Purple haze
Purple nonsense
Dancing around #107
That moment that sheds the reds ad blues
From my day’s hand worn blisters.

Purple heat
Screaming through the walls of the apartment
Like static.

Like something barely palpable
But violent violet
Like magenta

Like a shade so familiar
Yet so undefined.

District Winter

Written in a workshop last Thursday. The prompt was something vague about seasons and detail. 

This apartment has a view when the leaves hit the ground
It opens up like red and orange bursting like
Full-bellied angels before the winter hits the city

I see clearly now

My eyes wet and foggy with the resistance of yet another season
Life
It’s just brief jogs between floor board heating and
You
You’re all radiator heat
And fleece blankets

You spell out warmth like the braile behind my eyelids spells discomfort

You comfort my limbs
Make me whole again before spring rushes in without notice

See, I’ve lived in a place without seasons and I’m a girl afraid of change

Afraid of revolving four times around the sun four times yearly
Like I’m always looking for the next season

I want to stay here for a minute
Here in this bare trees and barely breathing
Here in this cold dancing the edge of snow globe
Here in this sheepskin boots and thick stockings

Here in this cold comfort of reds and oranges
Half lives coming to and end
Like summer always seems to too soon

But I’ve stopped missing her

Stopped wishing black ice was puddles to jump through
Stopped tugging on my scarf, praying for tank top
Stopped praying for time to give me back more sunlight

I’m here
Swirling in the surf of yet another cycle
But present at best

Basking in the gloom
And the view
From my apartment.

Letting cold rush over me like juice of a baptism
Never forgetting to let it
Leave me
Breathless.

Karen Effing Finneyfrock in DC Tomorrow Night!

MotherTongue DC will be hosting Seattle poet (originally from DC) Karen Finneyfrock tomorrow night at 9pm at the Black Cat. Okay, so it's $8, but it supports a great local nonprofit, Our Place DC which helps formerly incarcerated women get back on their feet. A few of them will perform on the open mic (and so will I) and Karen is worth it people. 

As for Finney, one of my favorites. "My voice turning 20 years younger in my throat. My voice growing a mermaid tail and a unicorn horn."