These Are Things I've Learned

This weekend, I learned a valuable lesson.

Today, I went hiking.

Now, I don't know if you know this, but hiking is at least 48% more beautiful if the person or people you're hiking with are comfortable letting their minds wander like the clouds.

Hiking is at least 65% grander
if you have the opportunity to hold someone's hand.

Regardless of which way the fingers intertwine, your hands suddenly have as many stories to tell as your legs do. A palm reader should be so jealous.

When you're hiking and holding hands with someone who has an open mind, this person will comment on the scenery that wanders through her mind, will let you know the kind of beauty she conjures up in words, and her hands will tell stories of sweat and personal triumph to each one of your fingertips. Your hands will be happy they have something so gorgeous to travel and connect with. You, in turn, will also be happy because holding hands is the nonverbal way of saying, "You're worth it" or "You've got a story worth telling" or "We've really got a shot to make this whole trip memorable."

Maybe this is why I like dancing – I have three minutes to share with someone the feeling of "You're worth it." I get the feeling "I am worth it."

This weekend I learned that being a poet allows me to hold hands with the audience.
This weekend, I learned that stages extend their palms face up and ask anyone who steps upon them, "Would you like to dance?"

Some stages phrase it as a statement. Something like "Show me your moves!" with all the bravado of a falcon.

This weekend I learned that I
am allowed to ask stages to dance.
This weekend I learned that poetry is my basic.
This weekend I learned that I really missed
holding hands like I do when hiking today and that
no stage was substitute for that, but
this weekend,
I learned that I deserve
to be on stage, to ask to hold
my audience's hand, and this
weekend, I learned that
every person has a story to tell, sometimes
they just need someone
to hold their hand and say,
"I love the way you wander."

It's Friday.

I like Fridays. I'm in line with the acronym TGIF. Today has lasted longer than a Friday should. Perhaps I'm showing my immaturity. I'd love to have accepted that the length of a day is no different, but I am Einstein's disciple as I share his birthday. Everything, therefore, is relative.

Friday falls in the realm of everything.

Everything falls in the realm of Friday.

Today, I have gone from fire to rain. From rain to shine. From shine to dark. Road trips have a way with words. They can tell you their stories. They will sing you to sleep.

In Japan, certain back country roads are grooved in such a way that music spins itself from the wheel wells when cars travel at just the right speed. The roads record your stories in song.

Kansas sounds like a lullaby with the melody of gentle grain. Nebraska roads unfold like carefully  orchestrated chord progressions. Colorado streets change pitch at awkward moments.

Today, New Mexico drove forward. It sung the song of rain, a heavy metal drum beat drowned out by poetry. Today, New Mexico screamed. This morning, Colorado wrote a ballad underneath our tires. Today, Colorado skies finally cried, and thousands breathed out catharsis in a crescendo of tears. Today, our tires flew forward over borders, under bridges, through wide open land soaked in sun.

Tonight, poets will sing their road songs. They will stretch their arms out like highways and pluck staccatoed melodies from their scars to show how far they've come and how far they've yet to go.

Thousands of songs have been composed in the three-quarter mile stretch of the road on which I grew up.

I can't imagine how many will find themselves written in dusty journals at the end of the 400 mile song we composed today.

The Poetic Heart and Other Musings

Over the weekend, the slam team met up. We had an amazing time getting to know each other. We told two truths and a lie. We discovered that none of us were good liars. I suppose that is a good thing.

We told each other stories. The topics ranged from past experiences to sprawling epics about travel. And love made many appearances. One of our team told an amazing story about finding and losing and finding love while trying to find himself. The team was enthralled. I kept wondering: Is someone out there searching for me? Am I searching for someone?

I wanted desperately to know that someone out there had my eyes engraved into their memory but were stuck searching for my name. I began to imagine that someone was searching in vain on Google Images with keywords like "green shirt" or "blue jeans" or "understanding eyes" or any number of other keywords they had stuck in their morse-code heart beats.

I suddenly wanted to browse every Craig's List missed connection post spanning the past ten years to see if someone desperately wanted to know that I was more than just a memory. I wanted to know if I was more than just a memory to someone; I wanted to know that I was someone's wish. I wanted to make someone's wish come true.

I wanted to dial a random sequence of ten digits on my phone and, when the person picked up (which I was sure would be a beautiful voice), I would say something like "There are ten billion possible numbers I could have dialed, but somehow I knew this was the one to call." It would have been romantic. Because she is a hopeless romantic too. Except recently I've only felt hopeless.

Even now, there is a cage surrounding heart. Each beat feels dangerous like a car speeding down a sharp-curved road with no brakes. But brakes feel dangerous because I feel like brakes have been breaking my chances at finding love – as though if I could just let my heart go and let life take me where it will and have the confidence to give that beautiful person a compliment, maybe it wouldn't feel so broken. I'm torn in two different directions at once, and comfort is so much more pleasant than its antithesis, but life is not meant to be pleasant. Not all the time. And poets, of all people, should know this.

Poets are the ones who dig up their pasts and tell these stories to complete strangers in order to share something with people we may never meet again. It's strange. And beautiful. It's art. And it's real, and it's truth. I don't know what it means all the time, but it gives me license to breathe.

So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take a breath and tell that one person just how beautiful I think they are.

I think you should do the same.

If nothing else, it will give you a beautiful story to tell.

~ DrewDat

Better late than next day...

Thursdays is the coach days...now we sip champagne when we thirstays (in my Biggie voice...lol)

Honestly...champagne is nasty to me. Not that I ever drank urine, but I would imagine that champagne is not too far off. Moet, ugh. I have no desire to try Crystalle (did I spell that right?) either. I am a cook. Knowing flavors is my life. So, it makes me think of all the rappers that rap about buying the whole club piss water and know it's more of a status thing.

"How much money you spent on that?"
"You ain't official; I spent twice as much."

My mother was the mother that shopped at TJMaxx for the faults.

"That should be another 10% off...there's make-up on the collar."

I will always brag about my discounts, cheap finds, and hook-ups. Mom used to let me talk them down, from young.

I wonder; could I represent for piss water if they were endorsing me? Hell, Yeah! I said I was a bargain hunter, not a fool. Just line up the interviews with the right questions.

Psst...can I tell you a secret? This one is just between us, okay? I make it a point not to lie, but being a poet has taught me how to dance around the truth, so listen closely and always pay attention. They don't call me Smart Ass for nothing *wink.

I want to know...is there anything you absolutely will not promote; no matter what they're offering? When I say anything I do mean any object. I have so many creative friends. I just know one of you were thinking genocide or something like that. But...being that you are so creative; I think it's time you shared. There is a comment section under these blogs.

Punch yo Light's Out!

Free For All Friday: Time Flies

The clock caught my attention yesterday. It was a few minutes before 4. I had been working since early on.

Suddenly, I heard a frantic ticking noise. An old building, I thought the pipes may simply have been acting up. Then I looked around. The clock on the wall spun wildly. I don't know how many revolutions it made, but it transfixed me from the moment I saw the hour hand running a race with the second hand and winning. My focus lapsed as the minute hand lapped the second hand several times and brought the hours with it. It spun and spun, wound around several times with incessant ticking. For a moment, I thought a spectre had eyes on me. I wondered if it had a time sensitive message it wanted me to decode.

Then, my poetry senses ticked on, and I thought that the spinning clock screamed sign language with its hands that time is short; that we never really have any control over how fast hands will move. That sometimes, a few moments can feel like hours, and conversely, hours can pass by in a matter of moments.

I then began to wonder if some kind of grave hands had reached out to tell me that my time was going by too quickly. That if only I'd let go of the past, I could focus on the new to know the now. That if only I could hold the hands of the clock like I held the hands of girlfriends past, maybe it wouldn't feel like running away so fast.

Then I remembered that I'm single, and I had exes for reasons which usually involved me letting go all too easily. So perhaps the hands were signing to not let go so simply. To hold on to what I could and turn nevers into nows, thrust my hands into the future, grab dreams, and let them pull me forward into a time I can't yet conceive.

I would have pleaded with the clock to let me know which interpretation was truth, but I never knew. Sometimes hands are quicker than eyes, and so when the hands finally stopped their magic show, I sat stumped in place. I brushed the rings underneath my eyes and felt old, tired, as though I had a story to tell.

I cracked the knuckles on my worn hands and set my fingertips to work.
I looked at the clock.
The clock looked back.