I find myself thinking of the grammar of cause&effect she having said it takes courage to burn your bridges behind you while I thought of it more in terms of her bridges were (already) burned behind her and if there's an invasion moreso is it her own life she is taking over his is not up for grabs

I think of erroneous zones and errogenous zones
& I think of to coin, to usurp, a phrase the mundane violence of gender nevermind sameness

so we are all the same is apology for what same as what looking like I bet notme

in part I look like my name, not my first name which suggests i'm a girl, but my last name which suggests that I am eastern european and takeup space the way an eastern european can, for a--my father died my mother remarried--while I looked so little like my last name I stopped using it & then I got even further from the truth of a, my, name when I married and was tickled by the at the time seeming privilege of using my husband's name which I didn't look like at all not being either prim or proper

I realize that for all the if you were an animal what animal would you be if you were a car what car would you be if you were a color what color would you be never has anyone dared if you were (in my case) a boy what name would you be
does it really boggle the imagination that much
what does being a girl inform
what does your knowing I'm a girl inform
what does it mean to looklike a girl whatif I don't

if I were a carpenter and not a lady would you know me anyway

what if I look like everything you're afraid of what if I look like everything you wouldn't dare what if I don't conform what does it deform what does it transform what does it perform what can it reform
are you wearing at least three pieces of gender appropriate clothing
do you look like yourself would I recognize you would god
do you know what you look like
how do you know what you look like who you are what you want
what do you care if my eyes are brown or blue if I have breasts or two arms

by now it's the shape of my heart and the lines on my face the unruly graying hair and the cast or cant if you will of my breasts run free pert long since gone
it's the linger in my touch and making the time it takes for me and for me&you
it was sorted out a long time ago I would never be the prettiest
& it was always the wrong the measure
it's the belly laugh and willingness
a moveable chin a grit a wit
and I might beat you at chess and I'd for sure eat your dinner

nag hag bag I'm old as the minute share dare care come on I was already burned at the stake tough not so rough strong as willow relentless as wind bigger than I look smaller than I feel but you never know for sure loyalbut no follower no ones mother slut cunt bitch saint poet back pocket sister a boy named abe leafbronze eyes dancing fancy footwork

it's the woman eyes never looking away that give me away, top or bottom no matter

I beat the bully at his own game by dropping the ball and letting it lay

it dropped, flying before it was ready, to the ground...

the silence in my heart is louder than the clatter in my head...

the ladder is ready for the inspector who was scheduled erroneously to do a 137 instead of a 199...

his birthday excitement upset her need for sameness...

my mother always wanted to be queen for a day...

eye of the beholder notwithstanding beauty is anotherthing learned...

his smooth head feels like her silky thigh...

he'd made full use of the luxury of his predictability...

eventhough I need a shave, he'd simpered, do I look like a girl...

the tide coming in brought its wares useful for barter sculpture warmth poetry distraction
wind howled through the sun past the groin blowing sand torn tendrils and her hair

groin -- a small structure erected perpendicular to a beach and designed to trap the longshore drift of sand to promote beach accretion

a perfect day for a birthday he gave her earrings full of color and whimsy (following their tradition of he whose birthday it is giving the gifts) while he got perfect waves the girl on the beach fine wine & poetry

a day mostly like any other, thetwo of us

he'd asked if I knew about people wantingto excise exorcise amputate perfectlygood armsorlegs & I told him about the guy upnorth who'd gone out to lay down (asit turnedout) on a railroad track--it was hardest on the poor bastard who'd been out for his run and the surgical nurses who tidied it up and ofcourse my uberadministrative bosses who all had cows andso subsequently me from a paper point of view--he however was blissful hadn't ever felt this good the voices in his head that had been telling him all his life how bad he was, had finally stopped...

Wow, he said, You think that's all it was? Feeling guilty? Or am I oversimplifying? yeah he felt guilty for all the reasons people do not the least of which were his feelings which he had no idea what to do with except feel bad and no language or support to make sense of them or timeenough to get working on any of that & his religious upbringing was no help, which is to say it fanned his sense of contemptibility but
prestobango after said sacrifice he felt an incredible relief--good on him being able to decide one was enough

more politics than substance I heard myself say and I get a clear sense of how somuch easier it is to react to respond to cast aspersion instead of having to offer create initiate a different set of risks thrust into the stew just because my set is naive and still I'll without permission speak freely and say out loud this is more politics than substance ladies–and once again you're hoisted on your own petard–you don't like the product they've created then fashion your own and here they are again falling head on into the gumption trap of not-us think

it's the undisguised bringing yourself wherever you go and coming as you are this work ethic thing an interesting tag a fine distraction one of those redundancies you know like feeling sad feels sad whiners whine fact is I never leave home without my style my particular elan my class, ah yes money is an easy hook to hang it on but it's transparent, it's the ethic the sensibility the heart the compassion that peg a man labels a woman
I'd be a well read street corner whore any day of the week rather than prostitute for the company line

summer hot and dry home to burrowing creatures the crop already harvested I lay my work done kestrels harriers vultures overhead waiting, wind the only change on the horizon

across the way the ambulance came to take his wife to the hospital, she had a stroke after her morning coffee, he's abject and unmoored holed up with his drink, she if she only knew would be angry at the waste

in most cultures going to the hospital is a family outing on the same order as churchgoing, it's only the white people mostly the old white people who come alone

I sit like an usher at the church door at a table instead under the auspices of the sheriff's department meeting and greeting folks who have come to the hospital there are many versions of the truth as to why it got started, nine-eleven is as good as any, our neighborhood the citycounty hospital is gated now no longer open to the community it serves the tired the poor the misbegotten the shot, a sign of the times

under other circumstances I nurse with different tools

no under other circumstances I nurse on the seventh floor behind a locked door

I sit there because I'm disabled one in a club of weary&wounded or the driftergrifters left in the wake of fiscal turbulence, their jobs part&parcel of the bait and switch that went into negotiating the city's budget
looked askance at by those who think to know us recognize us but the context is not quite right we sit in the margin downclassed fraternizing below our station and worse goes the clucking wasting our talents
I beg to differ it's another in your face notso humble reminder that anything is what you make of it
it's what I bring with me

sitting meet&greet is not so much the task of daypasses it is a mingling getting involvedwith the thesaurus says with the people in our neighborhood in a short but elegant hello may I help you where are you going today relationship that builds accretes day after day after day after day
hey how're ya doing he'd said you look familiar where do I know you from
he'd worn the last time he'd come to visit his lover a quebec city t-shirt and he'd gone on while I was making out his day pass about the trip they'd taken there together

it's simply about deciphering us allofus about seeing me in you doing if you will unto others but I've been lifted in the mean time above my station to mingle in yet another venue where some would cluck I belong even less and others I'd guess imagine I'm aspiring to or think I should be having been allowed or invited to put my talents skills to better(sic) use & I think of pat underwood who when she accepted me into the masters program made sure to say this is about having better nurses at the bedside not therapists or administrators

there's a season
I'm of a temper that I'm slow to recognize out of context, this remove more winterish this fallowness more familiar in the fall on the other hand it's a whimsy rather than a wistfulness and an indolence born of fullness rather than the lethargy of melancholy nevertheless I'm out of touch moreso not so readily available I'm busy rediscovering editorial prerogative and remembering the power inherent in choice trumps any authority and having faith in my own senses

daaaaaaaaang now I wonder if I'm ready finally to find the story I was sure I had been telling

muggy early morning unusual for these parts used to ocean cooling leaving one sultry & never quite rested but never quite up to full roar either a pleasant balance I'm in one of those peaceful competent lulls not ahead or behind myself at all just walking along

kicking up dust gently but nevertheless

traveling in different circles walking different paths wearing different hats and shoes a contrived but poignant showing rather than telling about the power inherent in labels and categories knowing better not making no nevermind

invisibility is not in&of itself color or class based but absolutely about perceived power

1)complainers complain competitors compete followers follow leaders lead malcontents stirshit everyone does their job well ornot and I say comeon I can't be shortchanged deflated my dignity is integral my worth not prorated my heart incontrovertible pollyanna riverdame abe bitch nurse effeteintellectualsnob don't make me no nevermind I'm portable

2)we were setup and supported by the group's interaction around us my label reading "important person" hers "ignore me" to be adversaries to form opinions&distrust about one another though in fact she & I never interacted personally

3)it doesn't always dawn on me to remember not everyone feels important

as the idea for a longer piece started to take shape I could see where too close to home comes up like it might jinx the pathway or create a vacuum (opting out of california manifesting language here)but as far as it meaning wanting or hoping something was different well yes and no because it's not that I wish mylife was another way but it certainly is about imagining creating experiencing another possibility I mean that's what it is about isn't it and the isit true well... the effort is honest & I hope to hell the feelings are true

it's the ordinary that in the end gets you or not the ordinary belying the edifice that is what it's all for the ordinary that is the gold a day's work is what it is and when will we ever learn not to wait and absent that not to miss the journey that we call waiting there is no time to waste so belly up is the point and do it up in fine drag cause honey that's all you got, sisyphus job themarys uncle tom toto the good witch the tin man pinnochio beggarman thief snowwhite pollyanna, no matter

the rhythm is different walking in my poetry just the same and I fell in the flux in the changing of the meter dismantling my shoulder the metaphor is apt no longer willing or able to shoulder a different lesson I guess than facing or face to face presuming to carry what burden what choice had gone unnoticed on the other hand looking at wind as change one can not say it change pretends to go gently into the night in fact it's the clash of the titans

I'm such a fucking drama queen, don you'd be proud of me

don't call george should be don'tcallGeorge you know a name not a thing you take seriously as in not calling she died you know and she'd be pissed asin fuckingpissed but he's lost and (predicatably) says don't call but factis we know (him) well enough to extrapolate the meaning here of private & don't call rather than it just easing us off the hook of dealing with how hard it would be to have someone you love (how ever you do that) drop dead as in prestobango

just means touchyfeelyinyourface he ain't gonna do, never did, but hello is another thing

teaching as conversation as strategy as exploration of an idea rather than product funny how quickly I nearly fell into the gumption trap of concrete of agenda of THIS is how it must be me mistress & purveyor of messy hairdo's me born & bred at the roundtable of dialectic intercourse me from a long line of teachers who in unison would roll over in their not so collective graves at how so nearly I didn't allow for individual difference and how so nearly I didn't remember what it was I was teaching
which of course is how to conceptualize not what

unseeable
since no one sees me there metaphorically speaking no one sees me there literally, even looking straight at me, bent over as he was saying I'm the chief of psychiatry thinking he wouldn't need a daypass just the same as the housekeeper who'd left her id badge upstairs in her other purse or who the hell knows it wasn't until he was all the way through his litany that he saw mejudiwhoheknows looking at him as if I could give a damn about chief of psychiatry because the point is downstairs he's as faceless as the housekeeper is upstairs

so the task is to shift the I from which I've a wont to writerite a story to not-me which is to say I don't need to be me which is the point of the exploration once not everything is sodamn straight up autobiographical as in facts are just props and it's the feeling or the thought or an idea that's me that's true & the facts can be anything I make of them or not so I can be a 29y.o. man with one arm and green eyes or a 50y.o. woman with a strapped-on dildo screwing her husband
rightrite?

possibility
dreams full of stuff of anxiety of lists and details that are wrong full of I should be hurrying and I'm not and I'm not anxious just an amused observer it is what it is like looking for the perfect wave or deciding ahead of time what you're going to do how it's going to be it's folly cause just when you think you have it sewed up the whole damn thing changes that's the magic that's the gig it's the expectation that baffles that queers the stage fog gives way or not love is just around the corner

teaching
because you value what they know she'd said I do but it's also because they tell you what you need to know I mean that's the trick to mind reading isn't it reading someone's mind, daang it's about language and yes of course falling on my shoulder was an accident but as richard said about astrology it's just another language so when she tried to say that diagnosis is important yes I suppose it is but fact is that's not what most nurses key off so it was not helpful in getting them where she wanted them to go

the accretion of instruction was evident in the style of the notes a bit from this era a bit from that era who would've known there was an underlying style to which the nurses were infact expected to conform kicking & screaming after all we are by and large set in our ways but nevertheless and it's funny how we set about doing what we do without a notion, no without the language for the notion and without a thought to the changes
there was a time hallucinating was an nursingassessment now in&ofitself it's common and not worth $1000.00 a day

there is changewind magic afoot a moment expands to include all time silken threads from our palms reach over the mountains across the desert and we touch as sisters as temple maidens as story tellers as artisans kith at home in each other's hearts spinning casting weaving a spell a bridge a web of golden threads invisible to the unseeing eye which will have brought us in from the diaspora

you see why I love her he said
I do

he wondered how we knew which one he meant

we knew it was one & the same andso ever greater, amen