Heartbreaking Jerks and Staggering Genius, Part 2

That's right, you knew this was coming. Something about the "Part 1" in the title of the last post. It was just getting so long for a post on a blog that is ostensibly structured around a 17-syllable poem, but I still had more to say.

It's just that seeing Sybil Lamb read and hearing about her various antics reminded me just a little of my first girlfriend, who was also a terrifying genius, who I was afraid to be around because she bullied me and drove drunk, blowing through red lights in lower Manhattan, and started fights with huge cis dudes on the street and wanted to kill the president and wanted to know where I was every minute of the day, but who I hung around for six breathless months because she published slash fiction about PJ Harvey that freaked out a whole web forum and recorded an entire electronic music album on her computer about Super Mario and wrote semi-erotic poetry about her dog and took photographs of road signs and the moon. And who was almost six feet tall although not an actual Tall Girl.

It was a weird time in my life. I was a graduate student of creative writing at a conservative, Catholic football school in the Midwest (why???) and was living with my ex (because we were too co-dependent to do anything different), and she pushed all my boundaries and questioned many of my long-held beliefs. For example, beliefs that I wasn't all that interested in illegal substances. Which turned out to be true, but there's something to be said for testing our own theories now and then.

Anyway, J, if you're out there, I'm glad I knew you and I'm glad I don't know you anymore, and I hope you're still fucking shit up and making someone rethink everything they thought they knew.

Poem for a Mean Love

While on date with me,
Makes out with strange dude in bar.
"See? I ain't no dyke."

Heartbreaking Jerks and Staggering Genius, Part 1

Sybil Lamb is terrifying.

That's what I learned on the way to the reading and before she got up to read, from all my friends who had met her and also from the other authors who were reading last Wednesday night. She's all big boots stomping and loud, inappropriate banter and sheer dresses with dark, skimpy undergarments and acres of stick-and-poke tattoos and a grin that will eat you for breakfast.

She is also a goddamn genius. The kind that cannot be contained or measured or broken, even by a traumatic brain injury. As she read from I've Got a Time Bomb, she transformed from author reading from her recently published novel into some fascinating troublemaker you just met shortly after the apocalypse, reenacting illegal, illogical antics with friends named after baked goods, reciting dialogue without even looking at the page. At one point, she literally climbed and swung from the rafters of the Marlboro College Campus Center.

Also I'm not entirely sure she wasn't a little drunk.

Also it took her 13,000 years to sign books because she was holding court sitting on the end of the book table and drawing original comics in everyone's book and playing with a toy robot mouse and a ceramic sperm and gossiping/shit talking with Casey Plett and Imogen Binnie, and it was completely worth the wait. Apparently I was smirking the whole time, which is how I express enjoyment, BTW:

"Hey....wanna do book stuff?!" "Hang on I'm just finishing some office stuff... ..."

And if she's as scary as they say, maybe I'd be too delicate to be her friend, but I am so glad she's doing what she's doing and I'll support her work and read the hell out of it (p.s. buy her novel right now it's so good), and I'll totally worship her from afar. Like, maybe really far.

Poem for a Mean Girl

I appreciate
That you're in the universe.
I'll be over here.

That Time Locusts Ate My Bike, and Other Bible Stories

My mom just bought me a bike.

I am going to turn 39 before the year is out.

But she was never able to buy me a bike as a kid, and I mentioned to her I was looking at buying a bike but it seemed like a lot of money, and she said to buy it and she'd send me a check.

"Making up for lost time?" I quipped.

She quoted me the Bible.

Joel 2:25. "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten."

She quotes the Bible to me a lot, and always has, and I'll admit sometimes it's tiresome, but something about this was sweet. That such an obscure-seeming scripture was at the ready, that she had this assurance that it was not too late to do for her very grown-up kid what she couldn't do when I was little, that broken hearts can be mended while they still beat.

That's what I got out of it, anyway. Well, that and a bike.

Poem for Cyclical Time (See What I Did There)

Time gives more chances,
More a circle than a line,
Cycles round again.

I kind of want a tiny license plate for it that says EAT MY DUST, LOCUSTS or something ridiculous.

Calgon, briefly restore my energy a little!

I've been really tired lately. I can think of several possible reasons. (Seasonal change migraines the medication for the migraines trouble sleeping hormone changes playing a rock show on a week night stress at work Lyme disease probably not but my therapist suggested it might be possible Mercury in retrograde just kidding.)

Tonight I came home from dinner with friends and did not feel like I could do anything but lie down with my eyes closed and the radio on. But I also felt kind of dirty. So I thought I could lie down with my eyes closed in hot water and at least accomplish something before bedtime.

And surprisingly, the bath refreshed me somewhat. Not enough to go back out on the town or anything, but I'm here, ain't I? This confirms for me how much of my recent exhaustion is stress related. Forcing my body to calm down perked me up rather than putting me to sleep. (Also my local radio station just started playing really cute indie pop.)

Poem for still being tired, though

I just learned a thing.
Do I really have to write
A poem now, too?

Even action figures gotta take time for self care.

Now the DJs are talking about the Supreme Court and gay marriage. Zzzzzzzzzzz..........

OMG

On Sunday night I saw my friends' band play, and I'm really pleased that I've seen them enough times now that I get their songs stuck in my head. Also, I had the urge, on more than one occasion that night, to throw my hands in the air in a gesture that I associate with my evangelical Christian upbringing.

From infancy, I was surrounded by fervent, ecstatic prayer and song, often accompanied by tambourines, speaking in tongues, jumping, clapping, and raising of hands. It moved me greatly, until one day (around age 12) when it didn't, and I haven't looked back. Until the other night.

I didn't give in to the urge, even though I totally could've made it look rock-n-roll rather than holy roller. But I am still trying to put my finger on just what it was that made me want to reach out, reach up to something bigger than myself, hold my arms up to receive, or maybe surrender.

Short Poem for a Tall Spirit

How do I praise now?
How do I touch my heart to
Something that's not God?

Ooh, let's play a game. Rock concert or tent revival?

_____________________________________
Answers: 1. Rock. 2. Jesus. 3. Rock. 4. Jesus

Knock, knock. Who's there? Broken hearts.

It is surreal to be doing this again, so soon after the last time. It's not fair to me, and it's super unfair to those who were closer than I was to either or both of them.

I just want someone to tell me all her favorite jokes, because I never was any good at remembering jokes. And I want someone to hug me just a little too hard. And I always want to remember the sound of her voice the way I can right now.

She was the star of this magical adventure, which I think characterizes the kind of excitement and wonder and joy that seemed to constantly flow from and around her.

I started to write a song today, thinking about the people who leave us and go somewhere we can't follow. This is some of it.

Poem from a Song About Too Much Loss
for M.D.

Don't know where they go.
Can't be there, so I'll be here,
Picturing your face. 

In particular, this face right here.

Y Would You Say That, X-actly?

Because I had to change health insurance carriers twice in the last four months, I don't have a primary care physician anymore. So when I needed to see a doctor (somewhat urgently), I had to scramble a bit to find someone in my network who is accepting new patients. None of the doctors that were at all recommended fit both criteria. So, tomorrow I meet with a random stranger to talk about what hurts.

In making the appointment, the person on the phone hesitated audibly, palpably even, before asking me my sex. I did not give a one-word answer. (Hell, it was more than one sentence.) After hearing me out, they replied, "I'm okay with that."

Sure, I'd rather have them okay with it than not okay with it. But it's not like they offered their opinion about my birth date or phone number. Still, it was easier than sitting alone with a clipboard staring down two check boxes.

Poem Partially Explaining Why I Sometimes Avoid Healthcare

Cis professional
Is okay with my gender.
Permission granted.

It's so much simpler at Radio Shack.