Come with Me

I wrote this poem after seeing an African drumming and dance performance my freshman year at UC Berkeley.  The women were dressed in bright red dresses, leaping around, and stomping on the stage to the driving beat of drums whose rhythm pulsed right through the air and into my veins.  There was so much life being lived on that stage, I wanted to go home and spread the gospel of really LIVING.

Come with Me

Mr. Business Man

Under that suit is a body made from earth–

a product 

of ten million years

of tweaking by a Darwin

tuning fork

But down your chest hangs a 

Fancy Silver Tie

severing that God-sculpted masterpiece 

right in two

like dynamite set by train track men

to blow a mountain straight in 

half

Fancy Silver Tie

hanging like a hangman's rope

ready to strangle your soul

and let it sway in the wind bug-eyed

So why aren't you crying then

poor Mr. Business man?

Don't you feel hurt 

all sliced down the middle

like that?

You keep on typing 

and that phone still sucks on your ear so hungry

like a piglet from its mother's 

teet

Come with me

Take off that tie

so your torso can fuse its fibers back

Unstitch your spine from the

scarecrow pole

Throw that posture to the wind!

It's okay to flop down all messy-like

down in a heap of straw

Breathe in sky as the drum beat pounds in your thundering thighs,

it's called music and it'll do you good

Now shake that belly like it's 

strawberry jelly

Spread your sweetness on the

toasty ground

Do it just like I saw those 

Mozambique girls do, all covered in red

and jumpin' through the air like

rose petals in

wind

When I rub this warm, orange mud

on your scrubbed and disinfected flesh,

you'll remember that you are Man

and I am Woman

and this land was made for dancing

My smile will arch up like the hull of a sailboat

I will have done what I aimed to do:

helped you find your Life that

got lost along the way

laying wasted and strewn on

the rotting corpse of

civilization

for all these

years

Joyful Dancer, 2010.  Acrylic on canvas. 24" x 30". Sold.

Old Poem, New Painting

I was looking through a binder of my old college poetry the other day and was struck by the similarity in imagery between one of my poems and my drawing, "Bottom of the Sea."  It's been 9 years since I wrote that poem, and I definitely wasn't thinking about it when I drew this drawing, which makes me wonder if this imagery speaks to an aspect of my subconscious.

Here is the poem.

Bottom of the Sea, 2009.  Pastel on Paper.  21" x 28"

Goodbye

A boat passes by
Ah, your hand on my waist!
An animal cries somewhere in the
salty air

It is a Moment!
But it vanishes quick like warm breath in the Arctic
I think it slipped through the cracks in the wood

You are thinking of her, aren't you?
Hush.
Don't hush me you know it is true

My heart and I can leave you
two alone
We can jump off this pier
and sink slow like
pebbles dropped

Don't worry about us
we will be just fine
My heart and I can find some quiet cave
to hide with the sea urchins and spiny things
Eventually, the oxygen will disappear
along with my strangled, unbeating heart
leaving you
up above
with her

Crouched like a crab and
peering up
Your embrace wears the obscuring veil of
watery miles
Your love looks like waking from a sleep–
diaphanous forms, enmeshed in rippled sparkle,
arm fusing into forehead like
honey poured in milk
That's your love:
Luminous, foggy, blurry, bright
the way the world looks through a post-dream
watery eyeball

That's your love and that's your dream
but merely bubbles from my silent scream

I was born to make this sacrifice
I was born to die this way
with amoebas and microbes
at the bottom of the sea
She was born to have the moon
Quiet!
I will sink slowly soon