My Body

How do I feel about my body 

My body is a void. 

A painting that has been hanging on the wall so long that you don’t see it anymore. It’s just part of the decor. A thing you know is there, but don’t feel the need to look at. Sometimes the painting can be so painful you intentionally try to avoid it. This painting was given to me. I did not choose it, but I cannot get rid of it no matter how much I want to. I can’t change or alter the painting, no matter how hard I try. Some days I feel like the painting is beautiful. Some days it’s abstract and I can’t see anything in it or make sense of it for the life of me. 

How do I feel about my body 

I don’t feel, I don’t look, I don’t touch. 

I ignore, I cover up. Like a piece of old furniture that you will not discard, but put a cover on to make it seem better or new. You can tell there’s a couch under there, you are not meant to see what it looks like. 

I pretend like it’s not there. 

If I feel anything, I pray that it goes away quickly. For fear that if I start to feel I will never stop. The feelings will consume me like a tidal wave and wash me away with the ocean. I will no longer exist. 

How do I feel about my body 

I distract, I make my body small and hide it beneath layers upon layers to make it seem like it’s not really there. Perhaps if you saw all the flaws, if you knew what I really looked like, felt like, you would see straight to my soul. It might be too painful to bear. 

I get mad at it for being hungry. I get mad at it for being in pain. Not all feelings are the same. 

I tell you maybe it’s better if I don’t feel, don’t think about it. Perhaps it’s better if I’m too distracted to care. Detached, uninvolved, unaware. You tell me this is unhealthy. Balance is out there somewhere. 

I’ll keep searching for the elusive body positivity. It seems to have missed me. 

I hide my body. I hide it like a child playing hide and seek with themselves. I forget it’s there, and then I have to find it again. Relearn what it feels like, what it wants, what it needs. 

How do I trust something that I don’t acknowledge? How do I listen to something I go out of my way to ignore? 

Why does my body always want more? 

What if my body needs too much? 

I hate when you talk about it. I can’t stand when you look at it as if it’s a thing to criticize, as if my body is for your eyes. As if it’s a sculpture that has been made for you, to judge, to tempt, to decide what you do or don’t want to do. 

Do I have control over my body? I don’t like when it changes without my consent. It’s a delicate balance, giving in to my desires and being disciplined. I haven’t found perfection.

If my body were a child, I’d be a bad parent. 

If my body had a relationship status it would be it’s complicated. 

That’s why 

When you ask me how I feel about my body 

My silence tells you 

I don’t know. You are asking me to identify one fish by name in a vast ocean. To pick out one flower in an endless field and identify it. 

When you ask me what my body image is

I tell you I have none 

I have no image, no snapshot of myself. 

There is no portrait that can capture a time point of what I see or feel. 

I have a never-ending wave of highs and lows that I try my best to ride. I try my best to walk the line despite stepping out frequently. Despite the discomfort of my frequent missteps. 

I tell you I will try. 

And try is the best I can do with this friend that is sometimes a foe. That tells me what I need, even though I don’t want to listen to it. That forces me to pay attention even when I don’t want to. That saves my life and then threatens to take it away. 

My body keeps the score, an unwritten history of things I can’t ignore. But I can try. No matter how hard I try it holds on to things I don’t want anymore. My body keeps all my secrets. I chose not to explore, not to go meddling in things behind closed doors. 

But I will try.  

I will try to feel things and not run away. 

I will try to not let the feelings consume me, knowing these unwanted guests will not stay. 

I will try to pay attention. I try to see.

I will try to let my body be.

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Loss

I lost you
Before I even knew who you were
The memory is not real
But shaped by years without
The reality is a blur
Filled with doubt
The first pain I felt
The first blow I was dealt
Was grief
Disbelief

Who would you be today?
How different would my life be
If you had grown older loving me
You were my protector
My security
My father figure
You made everything better
With your presence

Sitting in your wood-paneled station wagon
I was too young to know what happened
I was left alone, without an explanation
Only an absence, an imagination
I imagined that you could see me
From somewhere out there
A child’s rationale of death, inconceivably

I imagined you knew all the bad things
Everything I had done
That you could see from the sky
Nothing now escaped your eyes
I couldn’t explain grief until I was older
Until I had words for these things
The feelings that loss brings

Grief comes at strange times
On the airplane, in checkout lines
At the DMV, when I’m empty
20 years later in therapy
It sneaks up on me

Maybe I grieve you all the time
Yet you are only a memory
A photograph I keep with me
A frog that jumps across my path
And I imagine that you see me
After all these years you laugh

Since you’re not here
I can make you anything I want
My loss grows flowers
I feel your love in the present

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Student Debt

You want to cancel debt
But you haven’t fixed the problem yet
Will you take away the sports centers
The luxurious salary of tenured professors
The constant updates and new computers

Our debt piles up
While campuses expand
Education inflation
Loans on demand

What does an 18-year-old know of debt
Their brain hasn’t formed yet
Tricking kids into an expensive education
Before they’ve got the information

Can you cancel the problem without a solution
Will you also forgive the exorbitant institution?

Erase the debt, erase the problems
It’s easier to erase them than to solve them

How will we change the education system
For we must change, everything is different
What we now pay doesn’t get us what we want
An education no longer pays the bills
Our debt stays with us until we write our wills

A student comes out with no opportunity
For what do we pay this enormous fee?
When it’s all on the internet for free
Perhaps college should teach financial security
Critical thinking skills could come in handy
How can you cancel debt without reducing the cost
It seems the point has been lost

Wipe the slate clean
For the American dream
You’re forgiveness doesn’t mean a thing
When the colleges are still charging

More than we can pay
Another student takes a loan every day
Just to get through
Without a thought of what this will do
You’ll never to be able to buy a house someday
But all of this we won’t say
A mountain of debt
An unsustainable way

To grow up
To start a future
Does college really pay?

We are paying till the day we die
We can kiss the college dream goodbye
The universities are getting rich in front of our eyes
Do you see what our debt buys?
A stuck generation
Don’t cancel the debt
Cancel the lies

Make the colleges pay the bill
For they are participating in the problem still
Getting fat checks from wealthy alumni
Dedicating buildings, while the rest of us stand by

First make the cost go down
Address the hole we have not stopped digging yet
Until then we will continue to drown
In student debt

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The Watcher

Everybody is watching me
Eyes in my walls
Holes poked through
An inner view

At once I realize
I’m being watched
I weigh the cost
I’m aware of the eyes

And don’t know what to do
Seeing my inside
When I’m alone
Vulnerable at home

I replay all my actions
All that has already happened
The eyes don’t go away
How long has it been this way

An intrusion of privacy
An anonymous view
A subtle crime
That will go unpunished
The discomfort is mine

And then I wake up with a start
Replaying my surveillance
In my waking state
I realize my fate
I’m being watched at any rate

Awake or asleep
Privacy is a luxury
My nightmare is that everyone can see
I’ll no longer be alone

I’m being watched through my walls
I’m being watched in my home,
I’m being watched by strangers
By my computer, my phone

I’m being watched by myself
At every moment
But who is the watcher?
Are the eyes my own?

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How Do You

How do you move through the world
When the world is against you
It will not admit it out loud
But will hint of injustice
In ways that you will feel
Yet will not be able to explain
It will make you question what is true
The pain will be your pain

How do you move through the world
When you are set up for failure
When you didn’t get the same
Amount of
Time
Love
Money
And you know it
Others know it too
But will not acknowledge
At least not to you
They pray for you to
Go to college
Work harder
Change
Deal with it
College doesn’t fix broken dreams
College doesn’t sew up the seams
Of unfairness, life’s cruelty
The heaviness of humanity
Resting laboriously
On certain beings

Others will not say
Not to your face
It will be talked about
You will be talked about
Not by name
Impersonally
Theoretically
Speculatively
In offices, in meetings, in expensive rooms
With catered dinners, stuffed pockets
Fancy watches, privelge
But nobody will do anything about it
Except you
It’s up to you

The makers of the problem
Will not offer a solution
But who created the problem?
How can you blame an institution?
The individual lingers
Behind corporate names
Government agendas
Money and fame
There are too many fingers
To point
Not enough to touch
To change

Help is offered
With things expected in return
Help is not free
It is not given willingly
Some people deserve things
Others only accept what help brings

Who decides who gets help
Help is a transaction
Not a gaurentee
Success is not equally distributed
Help is not equally distributed
Despite the need
The desperate plea

Acceptance
Prayer
Pity
It’s life, it’s just hard
You’ll survive

These words run marathons
Around dispair
By people trying to care
These words are easy to say
Smooth utterances of the fortunate
The card dealing
The ones in control
The lucky ones
Things are going thier way

How do you move through the world
When you don’t have a voice
When you can’t speak
When you don’t know what to say
To get what you want
And even if you said it
Wrote it all down
It would be in the wrong language
In the wrong font

Nobody will tell you the rules
You fumble around in the dark
Looking for tools
Finding only a spark
It’s not enough

How do you move through the world
When you’re invisible
When no one sees you
When no one cares
Eyes averted
When you are painfully aware
Of the feeling
Of it being unfair
Of the meaning
Not going anywhere

Empathy is not possible
Without knowing
A society of hostile
Feelings growing

How can you fix
What you’ve never experienced
What you don’t understand
The ones who have the power
Seem to have the better hand

And you
The one who never got to
What do you have planned?
Will you be able to demand
Something different

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A Prayer

What is a prayer
A hopeful plea for someone to care
Something or someone
That’s bigger than everything else out there

A request for help
A feeling that we are in control
Softly pulling the invisible strings
Addressed to a God we cannot know
A mysterious force
Reliquished to the void
That manages all things

A comfort in a sea of insecurities
A negotiation for our impurities
A twisting of God’s arm
Despite the selfish nature of prayer
We mean no harm

We pray for our team to win
For something to remove our sins
For a clear day
For our sickness to go away
Prayers so deep and insignificant
Almost fully prepared to repent

A universal drawing of strings
A selected day to receive blessings
What of a prayer that helps one
And harms the rest
Some of are surely cursed
While the others are blessed
I suppose we are all just trying to do our best

Maybe I don’t know how to pray
I think I believe in something
But I don’t know what to say
To get what I want
To tip the Universe’s favor my way

I’ve tried with my eyes closed
Standing still, laying down
Walking around
Even on my knees, on the ground
If my prayers are heard
Who knows, who believes

I do know how to cry and sweat and scream
I do know how to fantasize and dream
I do know how to let go
I do know how to admit that I don’t know

Who do you pray to
Is there something special I have to do
I pray to the grass, to the sun
I scream my desires to the mountain
I forget my problems when I run
When to push myself to go far away
Just to make it through another day
When I swim in the ocean
Let the music and waves move me to fun
When I finally allow myself to play

Have you ever laid in the fresh summer grass
Let the sun beat down on your face
Beads of sweat rolling down
Knowing you will burn if you stay in that place
Not caring, letting the bugs crawl on your skin
Savoring the space, taking it in
The sweet smell of flowers, the summer season
Letting the clouds and time pass
To get up and begin again

Is that a prayer?

What do you pray for
Do you wish upon a star
Send a message to sea
To help you on your journey

You tell me to will pray for me
But I don’t want your prayers
I want kindness and empathy
Can you listen without a prayer
Listen to the Universe if you dare
Don’t offer a prayer of judgement
Don’t offer a prayer to have something to say
Your prayers won’t help me anyway

Is silence a prayer
Maybe awareness is the only thing out there
Have you ever sat for hours in meditation
So long you can feel your body, your hair
So long that your become intently aware
Of energy, of feeling, of the world that’s unfair

Have you ever run in the rain
Have you ever fully embraced your pain
Have you ever loved so deeply
That you will never be the same
Have you ever loved someone different from you
Proving our silly biases untrue

What will a prayer change?

There are billions of voices that must be heard
Hundreds of languages
In which prayers are offered
Certainly no one is favored
We are all trying to make it in this crazy world

Wether prayer is fact or fiction
Belief is the only thing that makes a difference
Claiming your space in this broad expanse
A belief that maybe you have a chance

If you believe it works then it is so
It doesn’t matter where your prayer will go
It doesn’t matter if it happens quick or slow
Keep praying so the world will know
You exist, you matter

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Cancel America

Cancel America
Our cancel culture
Where we can no longer make mistakes
All errors are now public
Forever recorded with high stakes
Forcing us to be censored
Compelling us to be fake

We all must agree
Apparently, that’s the rule in 2020
We can’t have diversity
Of thought, of option
That would be considered a sin

You must say the right thing
Suppress your true feeling
Our values are virtue signaling
We are so afraid of being wrong
It’s easier just to go along
God forbid we offend someone
Say what you’re supposed to say
Ignore the obvious, the science
It’s now more important to belong
The unpopular opinion will just go away

Who gets to have a voice
And who should be silenced
A forced social execution
A quiet violence
Free speech was a milestone
But now you must make a choice
Speak freely without hesitation
Or risk losing your reputation

Whenever someone has a social platform
We dig through their closets
Looking for that one blunder
There’s got to be one
To make their career go under
Ruining lives one misstep at a time
Social shaming with no chance to rerun
Having the wrong view is a crime
The battle has been won
But by whom? Who has won?
This battle is not fun

Are there any perfect presidents?
Has any leader not made a bad decision?
Who among us has not said something dumb?
At one time we were all young
I’d like to think that we are still growing
We all are embarrassed by something we’ve said
Something we’ve done

Does every great man have a dark past?
Can we judge someone a hundred years later?
For their flaws
Erase their names from our papers
Make them pay at last
Humans have the capacity to love and hate
To build, grow, create
And to destroy, enslave, placate
Denying this is childish
We refuse to allow some to participate
As a punishment
Instead of dealing with our sad state

Cancel America
Where media is king
The only place you can say anything
Social media platforms now have the final say
Policing what we can talk about
Putting people away
How long do we pretend like this is working?

Social media has fallen into the wrong hands
It’s too complex, too big
No one understands
How to make it work best
We’ve failed the social test

Tear down all the reminders
Rename mountains and towns
Change the maps
Paint over murals
Move our history around
Dance around truths
And make it seem sound

Can history be erased?
Can we cancel all we don’t agree with?
Wipe it clean
The person who said it might be mean
But they are still here
They haven’t gone away
We can’t take away a voice
But somehow we must make them pay

The more we suppress
We fuel the flames of unrest
We must be able to have an honest
Conversation about our humanness
Our darkness
The flaws of our nation

For if we can’t be honest
If we can’t speak freely
If I’m offended by every opinion
That doesn’t suit me
How can I really listen?
Blinded by reality
We’ve become the emperor with no clothes
When we will address the actual issue
Who knows

How can we tell the truth about our history
If we can’t talk about our mistakes
Since we can’t talk about what we’ve done wrong
It has followed us all along

Cancel America
And our genocidal ways
Make all our ancestors pay
For their greed and cruelty
Double standards that haven’t quite gone away

Cancel America
Cancel our culture
False advertisement of democracy and peace
We could be honest at least
America is a vulture
That eats the poor, the less fortunate
And finds any reason to go to war
But hides it from the people
Yet we pretend that we are equal
We are happy and great
Occasionally we catch a glimpse of our fate

And we don’t like what we see
It’s like reality TV
Except it’s real
There’s no sex appeal

We can’t change by lying
We don’t learn by suppressing the truth
Let’s start by applying
What we learned in our youth

You can’t erase a mistake
We are all human
We need to have an open conversation
Acknowledge the beauty and the flaws
Acknowledge our weakness and silly laws
Hopefully, this gives us pause

To address what has gone wrong
We’ve known all along
This is just a distraction
A bad reaction

The adults have all left the room
And not a minute too soon
It’s easier to create a new problem
Then to address what we’ve failed to do

Cancel America
Cancel culture
Soon the only safe sculpture
Will be not human
In the future
It cannot take place
Can we become neutral
To save our face?

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Uphill

There’s something about going deep into nature that reminds me – I can let go. I don’t have to hold on so tightly to all the things I want. I don’t have to know.

This journey is slow

I zigzag across the river, falling deeper into nature, not seeing a soul

The desolate wilderness makes me feel fear but also whole

I’m reminded that I’m so very vulnerable

I have so little control

I choose a path and try my best to follow

But it’s hard to know what to do

When the path is no longer working for you

Do I keep going and try to see it through

Or turn around and find something else to pursue

I suppose I must take my cue

From my inherent feeling

The universal dealings

That I don’t understand

I’d like to think there’s a plan

The more time I spend thinking

The less time I spend listening

I dig my head in the sand

I’m completely alone, on my path

But the butterflies dance around me

The silence settles, the leaves chime in

Allowing my awareness to expand

To be in solitude is not a punishment

But an opportunity to understand

That everything changes

Including the scape of the land

Life is a kalescope

Shaken by someone’s elses hand

The colors and patterns may not suit me

But they will reform

Changing patterns is the norm

I struggle uphill

Yet the struggle is inside still

I trudge up a mountain and wonder how

I’ll get through what I’m going through now

Despite the sweat, confusion, and tears

This journey could take years

I choose to be happy now

Despite my insistent fears

Knowing it will all workout somehow

I stop and take in the sounds of nature

The wind, birds, running water

And keep trudging, just a little softer

I climb, higher and higher

My outlook becomes a little brighter

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Dementia

Your mind is a traitor that has betrayed you
It has left behind a body
But stolen your personality
Your ability to have a conversation
Your presence is here
Although not really

We all pretend like you are the same
What you have created still stands
Surrounded by your family
Reminiscing about who you used to be
Your wisdom and generosity

I found you a different person
Robbed of your energy
Greif with a side of dementia
To remember again
To be reminded again
Just to go back into that far away world
The fuzzy place of your childhood
A false memory that does no good

You look at me with blank eyes
Not seeing me
And ask where your soul is
Where he is
What can I say
Nothing I say can make it better

I don’t want to remind you
You know he is not here
Your heart breaks over and over
Every time you ask
There are no words for this
I’ll hold your hand through the fear
I’ll stay by your side during the loss

There’s an empty chair
And empty bed
Empty after sixty nine years
A house full, but empty at the same time
A table with the centerpiece missing
A room devoid of pictures and light
You can feel that something is different
But can’t place it, can’t explain it
There’s a void next to you every night

The walls have shifted
A desolate wilderness is left behind
You are alone in the desert
An arid land with no reprieve
Trying to find him

You are looking for water
He was your oasis
And has dried up, disappeared
The world has turned upside down
You don’t know where your place is

Your spirit left with him
Your love of so long
I can see it in your eyes
You have already gone

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