Trolley Reflection

A friend asked two questions, "Do you write fiction?" & "What are you scared to publish/make public?"

Yes.  Not as much as I would like.

Most everything.  Especially what's personal.  I think about what to share... I have shared some personal information on my blog.  I try to weigh my own need for privacy.  I try to find the line between exhibitionism versus exploring universal experience.

I used to write a LOT of poetry.  I was the "Poet Laureate" of my graduating high school class.  I was published in some journals and performed frequently.  When I got to college, I was consumed with academic & personal, emotional work.  That path lead me quickly to an absolute commitment to social justice work.  My poetry had been a way to shed light on issues that felt unaddressed.  My activist community didn't know the meaning of the word repression.  All issues were illuminated, discussed, debated.  My creative work became coalition building and organizing with teams towards specific goals and projects.  My personal writing felt less pertinent.

I'm now trying to bridge that gap.  I still love poetry.  I love poets who are also political activists.  My favorite poets are Suheir Hammad, Nazim Hikmet, Pablo Neruda, Marilyn Buck, among others.  Hikmet and Buck were political prisoners.  All are or were involved in social justice work.

I've been cleaning out the house-- "shedding weight" as Kevin says.  I found poems I wrote while living in West Philadelphia.  I printed them on the back of wine menus from the restaurant where I was waiting tables.  I'm scared to share this, but I would like to write more.  I would like to honor the space between collaborative art, free flowing information and support, requisite privacy, and boundaries.  I'm scared, but I'm sharing.

Trolley Reflection

Seat's not wet so I sit next
to a man writing in a notebook.  I think
I read, "Reflections of a life..." in
sloppy script and then I quickly
avert my glance.  Those are not my words
to read.  I enjoy sitting by this man
writing, as his arm gently shakes against mine to
the beat of his cramped pen.  The trolley emerges into
open air at 40th Street and I am
struck by the deep, opaque, electric
blue of the sky.  The sight warrants more
description: it seems damp against inky
stains of black tree limbs.  My glance
falls to lime-yellow-green leaves on
the trees below the unnatural light of
street lamps.  I feel that image and
color stick to my memory as viscerally
as sweaty thighs or dried lips.  I see the stop
light change colors through the kaleidoscope and
smears of raindrops on the windshield.  The humidity calls
out fingerprints lodged on the panes-- dragged out
hands sliding easily across the glass only
recalled now in the reaction between cool air and
hot human breath.  The man beside me pauses, checks
a preceding page, and resumes his verse.  Mine is
mental now, thoughts beating, rattling his mind and mine in
time to that arm painting with a pen.  A tired young
girl stretches out her skinny leg, resting her
pretty eyes on her lap.  I silently pray that her
legs have only been touched by bath bubbles, swimming
pool splashes, and sunshine.  I press my lids
together and hope that the men in her life use
a pen to deal with beauty and pain, and not
her young body.  As my eyes release
I see my street through the sliding windshield wipers.  Descending
into dark night rain, stopping at the red light, then
home.  Footsteps over the same cracked walk, mind over
the same torn memories.  The sky drips rain into lamplight.