The Art of Being on Fire

      I was called by a friend yesterday. He wanted to ask about chronic illness. I wasn't apprehensive. I've told the story of getting diabetes type 1 so many times. Still, no matter how many times I tell it, something hurts. The thing that hurts the most is that this is an easily manageable condition. Or disease. Call it whatever you will. It is easily managed with the proper support. And how many conditions are like that? If we only had the proper resources, what could we easily deal with?

      In 2017, I wrote a poem about the healthcare debates that were going on in this country. The healthcare debates that, every few months, rise again like the horror movie villain you thought you were finished with. The thing about living in the United States with a chronic illness is that there is no real safety. Every day is a alleyway with poor lighting; it is a blind corner; a strange noise, although in a familiar place, is still scary. Even without having an illness, chronic or not, the specter of possibly getting diagnosed is enough to make most middle and lower class people afraid. Especially as healthcare regulations get more and more relaxed to favor those who run the system and profit off its heartlessness.

      Before the ACA, or Obamacare, was passed, I remember seeing so many stories of people being denied coverage for suddenly being diagnosed with a "pre-existing" condition. Imagine being kicked off your healthcare because you were diagnosed with something that wasn't in your family history. The only thing pre-existing in that is greed. I remember when I turned 24 looking for health insurance plans. Even the expensive ones did not accept me. My life was prohibitively expensive for them. Put another way, my life was not of sufficient value for them to invest back into me.

     I'm not here to mince words. There is no free market when the choices are to pay or die. Without the support of healthcare, too many people have met death too early. Before the ACA was passed, 45,000 tombstones a year should have been inscribed with the lament that loose regulations, greed, and lack of investment caused a body to be planted long before it should have been. Said another way: by prioritizing profits and greed over care, we are allowing capitalistic eugenics to take place. By this I mean that if one does not have the right amount of money to survive, one will die. This happens due to our country's laws prioritizing profits over care.

      Let me be a bit more detailed about what diabetes type 1 is. It is a condition in which the pancreas no longer produces insulin. Insulin is a hormone which acts like a key to allow sugar to be absorbed from the blood stream and into cells so that those cells can use the sugar for energy. Without insulin, sugar can build up in the blood stream and cause some really nasty long term problems such as nerve damage, kidney damage, heart disease, loss of eyesight, and in particularly nasty situations, the loss of limbs. This happens because the blood may become blocked and be unable to give oxygen to parts of the body. If this happens, that part of the body dies and must be amputated or risk the death of the rest of the body.

      However, the good news is that the condition can be managed and is successfully managed by millions of people with relative ease. All one has to do is check their blood sugar to ensure it is in balance and, should it not be, take the appropriate action to re-balance it: if the sugar is too high, take more insulin or possibly get some exercise to cause the body to absorb more sugar. If the sugar is too low, eat more food. It is simple in its execution, but it is complicated by the availability of proper resources.

      One of the most important resources for a diabetic is money. Money buys testing supplies; money buys insulin; money pays for insurance plans. Money is prerequisite for life in America. Especially for those who have a chronic health condition. As with anything in the United states, some things cost more than others. Even if they shouldn't. For example, there are several testing supply companies which make it so that a diabetic can poke their finger and get a small amount of blood onto a strip in order to know what their sugar is and respond accordingly. Without insurance, some test strips cost upwards of $1 per strip. As a diabetic, I should be testing about 5 to 10 times a day. That is $150 to $300 extra every month. The good news is there are sets of 100 test strips available for just under $18. That's about $27 to $54 a month. Far more manageable.

      Unfortunately, testing is only part of the equation. If I test my sugar, and my sugar is too high, then I must take action. Although earlier I said that one could exercise in order to drop their sugar, this is assuming that they have some insulin present in their body. Without insulin, the sugar will not drop no matter what a person does. Cells will not open. They will not get rid of the sugar in the blood stream. This, along with some history, is what makes the upcoming information about the price of insulin so grotesque.

      When insulin was originally invented, the inventor sold the patent for $1. They wanted to make sure that no one died needlessly. When I originally began taking an insulin called Humalog, I was 12 years old. At that time, each 10 mL vial of insulin cost about $21. I still take Humalog today. The price is now around $270 per 10 mL vial. It is the exact same thing. I need about 2 vials of insulin a month to survive. Insulin is non-negotiable. If I do not have it, I will die. It will be a painful death. My body will begin to break down its own fat and muscle in order to try to feed itself. It will be swimming in sugar but won't be able to use any of it. I will likely slip into a coma. I will die. Regardless of who reads this, it should be unconscionable.

      The poem below is the piece I referenced so long ago. I felt that I needed to explain a lot before I got into it because otherwise, you might be wondering why is this fit white man yelling about healthcare? Because it is a system that has turned people into profit and our politicians do nothing about it except to defend the system which keeps winding up on so many people's epitaphs.

      If you feel the same way I do: that healthcare is prohibitively expensive; that no one should live in fear of something easily manageable; that our politicians have a duty to protect their citizens and hold people and systems which do harm accountable for the harm they cause; that the best apology is changed behavior, then I implore you to vote only for candidates who have explicitly stated they are fully committed to medicare for all. The people we invest in grow; this is why the wealth of the rich has increased by trillions while the wealth of the middle class has fallen. This is why nearly 530,000 people cite medical expenses as a reason for bankruptcy.

      I cannot do it alone. For my and several others who cannot or do not have the ability to speak for themselves, please make sure that your vote reflects your values.

Thank you for your time

Drew

American Narrative: Controlling the people through story

I’ve been thinking a lot about some things that I think are wrong in this country. I know, I know; it’s a long list. 

The thing is I think there are several “myths” we take as truths in this country. Whether they are designed and put in place by people in power or merely a byproduct of a sort of social ecosystem (where certain ideas sustain and feed other ideas and thereby maintain order by keeping people complacent) I do not know.

For example, corporations have a ton (at least a few billion if not more) riding on the idea that unions are the enemy of workers. That paying union dues is the thing that keeps laborers’ paychecks low. This is not consistent with truth.

There is the idea that taxes are similar to union dues. Or that they are theft. This is absolutely a stunning mischaracterization. Granted, many taxes could be argued as theft in their current form, but this is due to where those dollars end up going rather than the fact they are taken: When most of our tax dollars go to support endless wars, corporate subsidies, and tax breaks for the wealthy, there really isn’t any revenue left for education, food stamps, or collective social programs. In a way, America is laundering money to war profiteers, and they’re making a killing.

The last myth before I post this poem is the idea of a zero sum game. This basically states that if one person is winning, then another must necessarily be losing. This is not true, but it feels like it is. This is not true, but it forces people to see society as enemies rather than contributors, as competitors rather than facilitators. It’s damaging and unhealthy. The following poem talks about presenting the idea of people winning just enough to not stake what they have on any sort of revolution. The more we fight each other, though, the less energy we have to tackle the real problems.

Keep It Consistent

Change isn’t necessary

As long as comfort remains consistent

And comfort comes too easily

When complacency replaces care.

In order to keep rebellion to a minimum,

Make people

Just happy enough

That they will be afraid to lose

What they could have had

If only they had kept quiet.

Convince them

That everyone else

Is born with hooked teeth

And sticky hands

That the other people around them will be unable

To do anything

Except attempt to take what’s yours —

Convince them

That their greed

Is just a reflection

From everyone else’s eyes —

That this greed wasn’t theirs to begin with,

That keeping the consistency is less trouble

Than the heartbreak of change

Besides

The responsibility resides

With the ones

Who broke the system

The ones who were there before they were born.

They are bystanders

In a world where cops

Are nothing but trigger fingers

Looking for an excuse to get itchy

They are sheep in a world full of wolves

And always on the lookout for zippers peaking from underneath wool

Remind them

It’s a dog eat dog world

But leave out the part

That dogs don’t each other

Until people place bets on them —

Don’t let them notice

That there’s a billion dollar bet riding

On our ability to see

Consistency

As a form of soft control —

Create unhealthy habits

Then call it “trying to survive”

Say that being alone and depressed

Is better than being

With other people and awkward

Tell them that perfection is the perquisite for love

So that being loved

Becomes an impossible pursuit

Don’t let them see that faults

Are something that can make the earth quake

Don’t let them hear  

how water laughs

Even as it carves its path through granite

Don’t let them find out

That the glass-crack crash of thunder

Has nothing on the brilliant flash that blast it into being

Make sure they don’t learn their history

So that they’ll be doomed to repeat it

Cackle when they finally realize

They are all wearing wool

Celebrate

That they only see each other’s teeth

Instead of the size of their pack

Make them scared of everything

Except the comforts you placed in their cages

Tell them

That the outside is so scary

And that’s why you let them live here

But be sure to let them know

They are making

The logical choice to stay

The easy choice to not speak out

The sensible choice to turn the other cheek

Never let them uncover

The graves that silence is always so busy digging

Change isn’t necessary

Until it is

So

Keep things consistent

Personal Abuse and Recognizing it in Society

Recently, I dealt with a person in my community organization who, willfully or not, engaged in very abusive behaviors which included taking complete control of a project and not asking for help when needed. This might not sound like an abusive tactic until I realized that this person was doing this in order to then have justification for treating other people poorly including yelling at them, making them feel unwanted/undeserving, and squarely placing the blame on other people. It took me a long while to be able to come to terms with the idea that this person was using abusive tactics on the people around them. It also got me thinking: Why don't we teach about these kinds of things to people more broadly? One conclusion I came to got me thinking about society as a whole.

Along with blaming others, the person in question often said that anything the organization was doing would absolutely fall apart without that person helping to lead it. I realized, after some reflection, this is the same argument that people will fall back on when we think about asking the wealthy to pay for things like taxes. The argument goes: If we do that, then the wealthy will just leave. This person said much the similar thing: If I don't get things done the way I want them, I will leave and this will all fall apart. The trouble is, for the longest time, I believed them. And in so doing, I stopped justice short; I helped to put other people in the path of emotional and mental abuses. The point I'm making here is that people will use fear and superiority in order to justify the abuses they are committing and, rather than being held accountable for their actions, they will insist that the entire thing will fall apart without their being present. This has been proven completely false on the micro level of my organization. I started wondering, next, why did it take me so long to see these actions as that of abuse and to stand up to them?

I think the answer to that is partly to do with the narrative we have received here in America as citizens. While there is certainly a trend of anti-intellectualism in America, there is also an idea that we must be more than we are in order to truly deal with a problem. The underlying idea behind many of our problems and why they still persist is that of: I don't know enough to deal with this properly. I don't have the experience. I don't have the time. I don't have the skills. I'm convinced that fire was either an accident or needed so desperately that we found a way to do it. I bring this up to highlight the idea that humans are incredibly resourceful. We always have been. The difference between making a change and staying the way we are often times falls to the choice of either doing something or doing nothing. It may not be the smoothest transition in the world, but if I were to liken societal change to art, then I would say that it is a matter of experimentation and observation in terms of trying to get something just how we want it. Recently, even, I learned that the myth of Icarus was changed to exclude the following line: Don't fly too low, for then you will surely perish. Instead, Icarus becomes a reminder not to challenge the sun; not to fly too high; but the real peril lies in assuming we must fly low in order to survive. There is too much sky to be swallowed by the waves. Beyond our narratives (super hero movies, I think, have a small part to play here too as "normal" people are often relegated to watching in awe as the hero saves the day), we also have a lack of education with regard to abusive behaviors.

Our society is built on them. The only way to survive is to stay quiet, to not speak up when we know something is wrong because that change will wake the sleeping dragon; it will cause all of our demise (or the wealthy will leave). We cannot educate people on abusive techniques used like the slippery slope (if you ask people to do X, they will eventually leave which will crash the whole system and then everyone will die), gaslighting (the deaths in Puerto Rico didn't happen; that's all fake news), and several other ones because, to do that, is to make people aware of how the system maintains control or would at least expose one of the levers of control that is used so often by abusers and authoritarians alike. If we don't have words for something, can we really see it? If we aren't educated about something, how do we learn about it? In order for this to be amended, I think we need a lot of change to happen.

Similar to what was done about the person being abusive in my organization, action needs to be taken. We need to demand justice and equality. If you're thinking, with that last line, it sounds as if this is an arm of the civil rights movement, I would absolutely agree with you. I would also say that America's racist past along with its insistence towards individualism makes it difficult to see the fight toward racial equality as one which also is about economic equality.

Many of the fights we are scared or at least apprehensive to engage in are absolutely necessary for a thriving middle class and for economic justice to be procured, but they are also mired in abusive tactics along with our general inability to call or see something for what it is. The good news is that we've had many, many people rise to organize people to vote and to take on the system for what it is: one that peddles false narratives and blames everyone else for the problems that it has caused. If we get enough people to vote, we can hold our powerful accountable and force changes to happen without having to rely on weapons or war. With elections coming soon, this is my greatest hope and, on the other side, one of my biggest fears.

I'm getting really tired of the healthcare poems I write staying relevant...

According to former Republican congressman Mike Huckabee in 2010,

People with preexisting conditions are burned down houses

He said this

In response

As a talking point

As casually as a cough in polite conversation

As serious as a diagnosis

But all I could hear was that crackling sound wood makes as fire consumes it

All I could smell was smoke

And bullshit

Bullshit because he worked his words into a spell

Or a curse

And let millions of people be recast as objects

I smelled smoke

Because

In 1996, I became a burned down house

With a diabetes diagnosis

In my memories of that night,

I am crying

My family is crying.

According to Mr. Huckabee,

My mom must have been crying

Because it was too painful to watch her son

Turn from person

Into property

Mr. Huckabee,

I don’t know how to tell you that your words have consequences.

I don’t know how to tell you that you should care about your constituents

So I am attempting to tell you that I am human

I am not object

I am not house;

I am not floorboard

I should not be used as one of the planks to create your platform

I am telling you that your words

Would have left me with nothing but ash

I am saying that if I had thought of myself as nothing but a burned down house,

I would have remained a cremation

And never would have been able to return as a Phoenix

This poem wouldn’t be necessary

And I wouldn’t be so angry

If Republican representative Pat Toomey hadn’t said the exact same thing as Mr. Huckabee

But in 2017

Dear Republicans

I don’t know how to tell you that your policies have consequences

I don’t know how to tell you that your words keep having this habit of becoming epitaphs

According to Raul Labrador,

A republican representative from Idaho,

“No one has ever died because they don’t have access to health care”

In 2009, there were 45,000 reasons a year that this statement is a lie

In 2017, there are still 18,000 reasons a year that this is a lie

Before any healthcare reform was passed.

I remember being terrified of day to day living

Diabetes is a disease that turns food into poison and insulin into antidote

So there was no such thing as comfort food

When I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough insulin to cover my meals

I can feel that same terror creep into the back of my head

Whenever I hear, read, or see about the current health care debates

And it is exhausting to always be terrified

Dear congress,

I don’t know how to tell you that your policies make you terrorists for the chronically ill and disabled

I don’t know how to tell you that you cannot be both pro life and anti universal healthcare

If people die due to your writing the laws of the land,

Then their blood is on your hands

I don’t know how to tell you

That I am sick of needing to prove myself human

I don’t know how to stop you

From seeing me as a house

But I know that being on fire for the past 21 years has made me an expert at rebuilding

So I am telling you to help us rebuild this system

Or get left behind

In the ash.

Based on a Prompt: Object and Location

You know, it's ironic
that you brought me up here.
This is the Great Wall of China
I am your phone.
You brought me up to something
that was designed to create a disconnect
between people
and
here I am
building a great wall between your face
and books --
Life is a funny thing
especially when you're just phoning it in.

You have hundreds of contacts
but barely remember the context
for acquiring their names.

You know,
just having someone's name attached to their photo and number
doesn't mean you know them.
I know your touch better than your last lover --
I know your likes better than your mother.

There might be an app for just about everything,
but I bet if we looked at your history,
we'd find more than the sites you've visited.
the comments you've posted --
I'm not saying you're more than you think;
I'm saying you're than a medium
for social media --
and you need more than face time or
Facebook.
The number of people who like you
doesn't make you more likable.

Saving the world
does not involve
posting selfies from famous places
or inspirational quotes on instagram.

Money is more a flushing toilet
than it is the settling of a sick stomach.

I'm sorry
that you're looking for moments to preserve
so that your followers will know you did something
over
finding stories worth preserving
or
dreams
worth following.

4/30 Based on a 10 minute free write

This is why gargoyles hate the cooing of pigeons

Shit
is so often preceded by cooing.
Birds
have no excuse to perch
because they
have wings.

But even
Pheidippides
is said to have died
after running 26.2 miles.
Sometimes
it's not the fact that we can fly
but that we're too tired to try
that seems so depressing.

Taking a break
is not an act of treason
against the light you've been given.

Asking for help
is not punishable by hemlock,
so stop acting like
you're going to die
if someone notices how tired you are.

Sometimes
the best way to get back on your feet
is to admit that you've fallen.

Sometimes, birds
get scared too.

A Surprise Treat Awaits You

I have been a little behind on the blog/poem posts... So today is a catch up day!
This piece is based off of a wonderful workshop where we wrote based on a Snapple Cap fact, a fortune cookie's fortune, and a tea packet's wisdom. This one came from a fortune cookie.
Note: This does deal with issues I have faced, and sometimes, yes, I do still feel sad/angry/depressed about it, but I believe it's better to write out your frustrations in order to help get rid of them. Catharsis is a wonderful thing.

A surprise treat awaits you --

I am a comfort zone zombie.
I am a specter of everything I currently understand.
I am a tombstone afraid to know its own inscription.

When your clinically depressed students tell you
that you need to stop looking so ghost
that your scarecrow stance is
making them weary of becoming an adult,
then you know
it might be time to listen
and stop telling yourself
that you're not worth your own wrist watch anymore.

I want to believe the fortune cookie's message;
I want to listen, but I've been scared to break bread
ever since diabetes claimed a piece of my identity at 10 --
dinner is a death row final meal;
breakfast is Socrates' punishment;
lunch is a poison,
and a savior.

Maybe I haven't been comfortable with Christianity
ever since I understood
that every diabetic blood test
is less sacrament
and more sacrilege to Jesus' promise --
my fingertips are lamb sacrifice --
I bleed to know how healthy I am;
my disease is a daily flirt with suicide
because knives that cut steak
are far too similar
to the knives that cut wrists;

weight that no one can see you carry
is the heaviest.

I'm trying --
I'm trying --
I'm trying to feel normal
to trying to touch tomorrow;
to let go of yesterday;
to move past
but moments can feel lead
and sometimes I don't feel strong enough
to lift this tombstone inscription
of everything I haven't become.

Snapple Fact Lolly Pop

"The lollipop was named after one of the
most famous Racehorses in the early 1900's, Lolly Pop..."

Type II diabetes has become an epidemic in America.
Maybe we've been betting
on the wrong horse
to win this graveyard race.
The body craves sugar because
in the early morning of humanity's childhood
before we domesticated animals,
before we plowsheered hunting into recreation,
before we buried gathering to reap crops from soil,
sugar was a lottery ticket.
And now we can find it on every street cornerstore --
we put the gross in grocery.
Our bodies
have not kept pace with our abundance.
Lollipops are winning this race
because we're such suckers
for everything that's easy.
Every birthday comes with cake,
but we have to be careful
with having our cake and eating it too
because if we're not careful,
birthday cake could become necrotic tissue,
could become retinopathy,
could become hear disease, nerve damage, stroke,
and these are only some of the side effects of diabetes.
Killing ourselves
has never been so sweet.

_________________________________________________________________________________

This poem is not finished yet. It was based on a wonderful workshop that came from kind of a joke: Buy a snapple... read the fact... That fact becomes your first line... And write.

I'll write SOMETHING happy... sometime... I promise. Today was just heavy. And I needed to expel some of the lead through my pencil scratches.

Thanks for reading!

Elegy in E Harmonic Minor

In 1880, Tchaikovsky composed the Overture of 1812.
It is a composition made famous
by the fact that it uses canon fire to act as instrumentation.
It's played every July 4th here in America,
but if you listen closely
you can hear canon fire covers
in distant deserts;
you can hear sons turn their bodies into crescendos;
cast their xylophone bones into a chorus of shattered silence.
The Middle East may not know western music,
but that's only because they only hear its dissonance
never its resolution
because an accord reached at the end of World War II
diminished holy land held by Palestine
and augmented land exiled from
into a land returned to.

If bodies are temples,
then every suicide bomb bent
on spreading holy organ chords
is just another form of graffiti
that tags blood over open doorways
to tell those around:
Pass over this place.

The trouble with holy land
is that it's only holy
because so many martyrs have buried their beat underneath it.

And somewhere a Palestine father prays
that his son will never elegy himself into an explosion.
Somewhere, a Palestine mother prays
that he child will grow instrument limbs,
that her child will have A sharp lungs and B flat feet
so that hate can't conscript him into its sepulcher.

And somewhere in America, a politician prays that the public
won't listen long enough to remember
that it was we who swung these scales in the first place;
it was we who thought democracy
would sing the right key.

We are not the correct composers
because we still think that the Overture of 1812
with its explosive instrumentation
commemorates us.

It doesn't.

That overture found its voice in 1880
to celebrate a Russian victory,
and that's ironic because the CIA taught a battle hymn of hatred
to Afghanistan when Russia invaded 100 years later.
That hymn still echoes with IEDs rather than canons.

The trouble with never having war on home soil
is we don't have a reason to cease
because we've never had to reap
crops sewn by the flesh of the dead.

We haven't had to hear dissonance's dirge,
and the only coverage our soldiers get
is flags covering their coffins.

I don't know
when our anthem became
the sound of a nation collectively covering its ears,
but there are still measures left.

This song isn't over.

And I don't want anyone
to fear their son becoming
an explosion.


This piece is based off a quote I heard on NPR spoken by a Palestinian man:
"I don't want my son to become a suicide bomber.
I want my son to live.
I want my son to become a musician."

Pain is Water

A few days ago, I participated in a jam night with blues music as its focus. I very much like blues music. I very much like jamming. I did not very much like this night's jam as a participant. Perhaps because my ego got involved or perhaps because the musicians were more annoyed than inspired. I got hurt. I was not happy with the way I felt.

No one made me feel these things. I felt them. I'm not confident enough in my own emotional control to say that I chose to feel the feelings.

The world is a reaction.

Everyone is a microcosm of the world. I can either turn the butterfly wing flap of their words into hurricanes of anger, or I can west wind them over plain states in order to turn turbines and make a change through the charge I was given. After all, turning wind into the way you're reading this post is the new transmutation, ins't it?

Pain is water. We are plants. Too much pain, and we can drown. Too little and we can become anemic. Just enough and we can grow.

Pain allows us an opportunity to grow so long as the pain we've felt is looked at as something that can help us pinpoint our difficulties and take steps to fix them.

This is where poetry steps in.

The Prompt:

Think of a memory that has a lot of pain associated with it. (Sometimes the farther back in time this memory is, the better.)

Let it all out - every negative thing you felt, put that down on paper and let that stuff go.

Now, think of what actions this experience led you into taking.
Who are you now that you've survived the pain?
Who might you have been without it?

As for the jam I talked about earlier. I realized that my knowledge on blues chords is severely lacking. I can comprehend what a 7add13 chord is, but I have no idea how to fret one on a guitar. For this reason, I'm going to learn a lot more about how to play those chords. And I'll try my best not to be upset that I don't know as much as I'd like to.

Epiphanies Seldom Happen When We Expect Them

Tonight, a student told me, "The real question you have to ask yourself is 'Why do you have a lower opinion of yourself than everyone else around you does?'"

 I don't know. But it got me thinking.

What assumptions do I make about myself? What assumptions do I assume other people make of me?

Try:
Think of a time when you assumed the worst. What crazy chain of events would have led to the world's destruction from that event? Then: How did the situation actually turn out?

OR

Write a list of your craziest fears (no matter how absurd)! It's a great list poem format!

Not Enough Hours.

Sometimes the phrase "I wish there were more hours in a day" feels more like a vodka soaked plea than a wish.

Still, I wish there were more hours in a day.

I guess 24 will have to do for now.

If you could have a conversation with your former self, what would you say? Do you think you'd listen? Which version of yourself do you think would learn more?

Tragedy Is So Easy

This is another topic that's been on my brain for a bit now.

Tragedy is so easy. Don't get me wrong. Surviving tragedy is not easy. But we, as a society, have manufactured a different idea of what "tragedy" is.

I present to you the following phrase: "First world problems."

The coffee you ordered was too hot/not hot enough.
Your unofficial parking spot was taken by someone.
You're having a bad hair day.

I think one of the biggest problems with American culture recently has been our refusal to qualify things. I think part of this is a reaction to a small subset of people who are so focused on the semantics of something that it feels futile to qualify your thoughts. When people get shot down, they tend to not want to fly. When the emotion we're trying to describe is met with "I don't think that's what you really mean," then we stop trying to describe. We stop trying to separate out the big from the large. And there becomes an agreed upon understanding that certain words are going to stand for much, much more than they were meant for.

Interesting, awesome, cool, hot, great, good, wonderful, amazing... these are quickly becoming nonsense words. Their meaning is lost because they are overused. They begin to blend together into some amorphous mass. If our culture were a person, they'd be repeating these words until they lost all meaning.

Tragedy, in some respects, is like this. Tragedy is becoming a catch-all. Tragedy is not a catch-all. Tragedy is not simplistic. Emotions are not simplistic, but I digress.

Tragedy is easy to apply to ourselves and others because we use it so much. Tragedy is easy to relate to because it's begun to lose its meaning. Tragedy is becoming misery. And we all know how misery feels about company.

It's too easy to talk about our tragedies.

And it's tragically difficult to talk about our successes or to compliment others for theirs.

Part of the reason I'm embarking on this journey is to clear my head of some of these thoughts. And, hopefully, somewhere along the way, remind myself that it's not all tragic. And that it is okay to be happy and to tell others how great they are.

It's also okay to tell myself that I'm pretty baller.

So, with that last thought in mind:

Write a list of all the stuff you're good at.

Once you've done that, try writing a piece about how one of those items is your super power. Imagine a world in which its continued existence relies on that power.

Now go save the world.

Perception

Okay, okay. It's March. Some might think that this is just a reminder that time is inexorably marching on towards "oblivion" or something equally as depressing. Sure. I mean, you could also look at oxygen as one of the most corrosive forces on earth as opposed to, say, the stuff that you need to be able to admire all of the other corrosive things on earth.

Really, it's all about perception.

Now, I'm not saying that looking at the world and imagining that it is full of butterflies (Yep, butterflies, everywhere!) will suddenly make an earthquake shake into the product of a billion butterflies flapping their wings at once... but that is a pretty awesome image... No. What I'm saying is that the way we view the world has serious implications on how we feel about it.

And how we feel about ourselves.

If you think that everyone is out to get you; that they're keeping you in whatever hell hole you've been trying to claw your way out of, then just keep in mind that "YOU" necessarily falls into that whole "EVERYONE" category.

Ever wonder why you hate Bill in accounting for being so damn lazy? Well, my friends, you're probably Projecting your own laziness on poor Bill. In other words, the things we dislike about other people are usually much more informative on our own crappy habits than they are honest assessments of the other's character. I'm not saying that Bill isn't lazy; I'm just saying you dislike Bill because you hate your own laziness. It's just that it's easier to dislike someone who isn't us first.

This is probably the greatest and most humbling lesson another individual can teach us.

Anyhow, back to perception.

The point of talking about Bill from accounting was to point out that humans very often do not have objective ideas about reality. We are stuck with our animal instinct perception of everything. Granted, you can train yourself out of this way of thinking by focusing on Mindfulness and Awareness (two good reasons to do Yoga, Kung Fu, or Meditation), but most people suck at being mindfully aware (self included - but I'm working on it). Ahh, but this brings us right back to Perception.

The world is a vast and expansive place. The oceans still hold mysteries. This place is pretty damn cool. If you view the people around you as miserable bone bags who just haven't woken up to the fact that this place called life is a Ronda Rousey fight (short, brutish, and ending in all your limbs being broken), then your view is essentially right. And painful.

However, if you view the people around you as trying their best and who just need a little help every so often and you view yourself as both student and teacher... Well, then you're right too.

I can view all the painful crap that happened to me as reminders as to why life sucks, or I can view all those as reminders that I wouldn't know the brightness of the light without seeing how bitter the dark is.

So, what do we do with this? Simple answer: write poetry.

It's not cold outside; it's the world reminding us to hold someone close.
I'm not sleeping; I'm rewarding myself for getting crap done.
I'm not crying; I'm offering up a salary of tears like a tithe.

The prompt for today:
Think of something from a minor annoyance to a big frustration and redefine it using a metaphor. What implications does that have for the rest of the world? For all the things around it? What changes must be made for this metaphor to stay true?

This can work to varying degrees with tragedy, too but that's a topic for another day.

Remember, perception is one of the poet's most important tools.

Untitled... Because that's not cliche

Listen. Or don't. But if you don't listen to the words, then maybe the voice in your head is broken. I can't fix that. I'm still trying to fix myself.

I decided that I need help. Not in an existential, the world is falling sort of way, but in a very real, "Sometimes I don't know how to deal with this" sort of way.

I am a performance poet, so I'm used to giving the audience a piece of who I am. Every performance, however, is just that. It's a performance. The stage is hyperbole. We inflate ourselves in order to stand tall and walk with bravado unbecoming our normally small stances. We deflate ourselves to seem small enough to be relate-able. But this is a monologue. No one ever asks the sun if it gets tired of shining.

I haven't asked myself if I'm okay in a long time. Maybe because I didn't want to give the answer a voice. It's easy to ignore something when you can't hear it. It's easy to pretend things aren't broken when you don't get them checked. Sorry, I just turned this into a stage again. Too much hyperbole in that last sentence.

I'm not broken. I'm just not sure where the pieces quite fit anymore. I still haven't come to terms with being diagnosed with diabetes. 18 years later, I should be warning my childhood about the dangers of smoking since its legal now. But I've been refusing to admit there's a fire.

Anyhow, I'm still hyperbolizing. I like the idea of being able to change the shape of my problems. Maybe, if I can blow them up, I can work them in reverse too. It's just a pity that my problem fits so well inside of me that I sometimes forget the difference.

I decided to ask for help. My endocrinologist, a doctor that works with the hormonal systems and, more specifically, with diabetics, gave me the number to a counselor who works with diabetics. Truth is a scary thing to let free.

It shouldn't be.

If you need help, talk to someone.

They say that the universe listens when you make requests. Every atom in our bodies was once inside a star somewhere. How lucky are we to have ears made of stardust? The universe is closer than you might think. Maybe that's why stars twinkle like eyes; why constellations are drawn in your palms; why your smile reminds me so much of the sunrise...

Why you think the wind whispers your name. It does.

Step one to recovery is being aware that there is a problem.

Step two starts today.

Musings on Math Pt. 1

Mathematics is pretty cool. It took me some time to be able to say that with a straight face, but I sincerely believe it's a cool subject (and I majored in English in college. To say that I'm a contradiction or somewhat outside of the perceived norm is a bit of an understatement). Mainly, I think math is great because it allows the practitioner to conceive of things in a new way. Let me throw out some examples.

Math is surprisingly Tao. Math strives for balance.

For example:

  (8 + 9) + 5 = (5 + 9) + 8

The numbers are in a different order, but their sums are equivalent. Moreover, what one does to one side of an equation, one must also do to the other side of an equation:

2x - 8 = 24

If 8 is added to one side,

2x - 8

    + 8

it must also be added to the other

  24

  +8

in order to maintain balance and keep our equation essentially unchanged.

2x = 32

Anything done to one side of the equation

2x

/2

must be done to the other side

32

/2

in order to maintain equivalency

x = 16

The answer is then plugged back in to make sure that everything matches up. 

2(16) - 8 = 24

32  - 8 = 24

24 = 24

Math tells us that just because something looks different does not mean it is different.

Math also tells us that certain things are the way they are, and if we know enough stuff, we can fill out the variables. The trick, however, is to know enough so that we know enough. In other words, we know enough to be left with one variable.

See, some people think that others are walking equations composed of multiple variables. They assume that people are essentially unknowable because they are too complex, too varied, too [insert word here]. But the truth is that people all want essentially the same things:

Love and Acceptance

If you give yourself love and acceptance, make sure to balance out the equation by giving it to others around you as well, and of course, do the converse: if you give love and acceptance to others, don't forget yourself.

Just because people look different does not mean they are different.

Of course, it is more complex than just treating everyone exactly the same, but I'm merely suggesting that we treat ourselves and others as an equation in the most generic sense. The only exception is we should always strive to add rather than subtract. Add to yourself to bring your end of the equation up; add to others to make them equal you, but you do not have the right to subtract from another nor should you have to make less of your own greatness.

"You have absolute value

You are an equation in motion,

a spinning cosmos of action and reaction,

your arms are the Milky Way,

so your heart is a God-given star.

This is why the space just beneath your ribs

is called a solar plexus."

New Beginnings

I'm not really writing with a purpose other than to write.

There is something beautiful about life.
Sometimes,
the cynic in me thinks that this is the greatest lie constructed by millions of years of evolution in order to deal with the fundamental truth that life is, in fact, anything but
Beautiful. Yet there it is.
A whisper on the wind, a wink of light from a distant star, a smiling moon cut into a crescent. Sometimes, it is as though Nietzsche's words can be reversed, or at the very least, another abstract notion can be supplanted so that instead of "the abyss" staring right back at us,
it is Beauty which also stares.

And sometimes, in all honesty, the only staring I do is into the mirror.
I wonder why.
A lot.
I wonder if there's a right answer.
I wonder if I should be searching for that answer.
I wonder if I've already found that answer but discarded it like jetsam to save some notion of an afloat life. We are at once alone and not.

There are some individuals who have postulated that the world is the way that it is; the world follows the rules that we know it to follow for the sole purpose of humanity's existence. The grand design of humanity's existence is so that the universe may observe itself. We are, after all, composed of as many atoms as there are stars in a galaxy, and we have this strange capacity to change - both ourselves and the world around us. This answer seems so absurd that it is very difficult to believe. Almost as difficult as belief in God. Almost as difficult as belief that we are alone, godless. Almost as difficult as the belief that I have thus far lived life right (whatever that term means). I don't know. I won't stop asking.
I won't stop wondering.
I won't stop.
I will live.
Because that's all I can do.
And
I suppose
that's beauty enough.

Dance of Life

I rather like the life of a poet. Traveling and writing; telling stories and meeting new people. Dancing. Okay, perhaps that last one is not necessary to be living the life of a poet, but it is necessary for my poetry.

For me, dancing is the missing connection between hearts. Sure, we can speak words which allude to feelings, and we can hold hands as though treating the other as a transfusion, but dancing creates a rhythmic connection as though the body is moving within the beat of a universal heart – add to this that two bodies are moving together connected by hands to make a circle unbroken – dancing is alchemy for transmuting music to movement through hearts powered by feet.

The common metaphor for life in today's culture is one which refers to life as a race. We are all trying to get somewhere the fastest. I'm still not sure towards what we are racing, but it promises to hit us with the casual snap of a broken ribbon. I am not so sure I want to know what is at the end. Races never really end. People are always running. Or training to be able to run that much faster than their opponent in the next race. What are we running from? To what are we running? Where does this all go? Why do we look so beat when we cross the finish line? I can't make sense of a metaphor in which little is left to interpretation. So, instead, I'd like to turn toward a different metaphor altogether. If one doesn't like the concept with which he is faced, one must invent new words or supplant the old ideas with one more fitting. So, I turn back the hands of the clock into a time less focused on time but more so on timing.

In the Middle Ages, the prominent metaphor for life was that of a dance. I feel as though this makes more sense because music is ephemeral. It will not last any longer than the vibration of a string, the stirring of air. Lungs power music as much as hands do. Music has a definitive ending point, but we can replay the song in our minds a million times over without – melodies get stuck in our minds like stories. Music ends, but it can be replayed, and no one wins at the end of the song except for those who danced. If life is a dance, then we only need to tap into timings in order to tap into time. Feet don't have to move, but when they do to a rhythm, a beauty emerges. And it expands in every direction.

Life is not linear.

Music is not linear.

Dances are not linear, and music is interpretation rather than command. A poet speaks in rhythm just as bodies speak in dance.

Races have a right answer and a wrong time.

Dancers need not apologize.

So don't apologize when your feet feel too tired to move, you are not running a race with points to its end; you are engaged in a dance where the universe holds your hand. Listen to the rhythm and fear not the end of the song; we all will be dipped, but this dip is one of beauty and is not to be feared because we will not be dropped. We will not be dropped. We need not compete to get underground faster.

And I will remember to live, breathe, love, and dance.

Time Flies

Today marks the day that we officially have seen more days in the year than we have left to see. Days unfold. Hours fall out like loose leaf paper. But at least we have a chance to write our hours into poems if we so choose before they're crumpled and lost.


Sometimes I think hours fall off like dandelion seeds when we make wishes. Perhaps an intention gets intertwined with the seeds, and our wishes intermingle with earth when the pods finally find somewhere to land. Maybe this makes the wish come true for the fields. Then someday when someone lays his or head down to name the clouds, maybe a new dandelion will whisper that wish into his or her ears, and that person will be inspired to do something.

Sometimes, I think that the wishes we cast upon far away stars don't just burn to a crisp. I think that our wishes, like the dandelions, plant themselves in the stars and then wait.

Sometimes, I think you are the amalgamation of someone's forever ago wishes come to fruition.

Sometimes, I think we are all someone's forever ago wishes come to fruition.

I know that we all used to be stars. The earth on which we walk used to be 10 million degrees or more. I find it fascinating that far less degrees separate humanity from universe. All love is falling for stars.

Dandelions take our wishes and plant them in fields which used to be stars. We take our wishes and plant them in stars which used to be one mass until the Big Bang separated itself from itself. If wishes grow in fields like seeds, imagine how bright wishes must grow in stars. Unfortunately, stars have to die in order to add what they were to the universe like dandelions have to die for us to make a wish, and we are composed of the bodies of stars, so maybe trillions of years ago something made wishes and the stars held them inside until they died and had their wish-intermixed molecules flying through the universe to plant themselves on planets like dandelions plant their wish-filled seeds in fields.

I like to think I'm something's trillion year old wish come to fruition. I like to think that the best things are worth the wait, and I like to think that even as time passes like seeds falling from dandelions, we still do something with it just by existing. Maybe that's being optimistic, but I'd rather think that my presence is both a wish fulfilled, and way to better the universe's future.

Even if I am merely making wishes with my spare time.

I Came Upon Some Flowers

While walking through the neighborhood of Wichita yesterday, I saw bright, beautiful, pink, fake flowers. Pictured at the left are not those flowers. Lilies sprouting up unassumingly out of someone's garden.

Someone in my family likes to talk about how the United States is in trouble because of all the shady things that the government does... and the companies.

I'm not so sure. We are still a government by the people. At first glance this sounds absurd – nearly atrocious, perhaps not lacking a firm grounding in reality. This idea is like those fake flowers – beautiful but ultimately pointless. Trouble is, the fake flowers looked real enough to be real. And if I had gone about assuming that every single flower I encountered from then on out was fake, then I would have missed a lot of beauty. This is a trouble with people – it's not so much that we forget to stop and smell the flowers; it's that we assume we already know what every flower smells like.

But life changes everything. No flower can smell the exact same, and you miss out on opportunities by assuming. I've missed out on opportunities by assuming. We miss out on the opportunity to interact with each other when we assume that beauty is fake. Not all of it is. These flowers are living proof of this. Beauty grows out of the dirt; it doesn't live a comfortable life because beauty can't be beauty unless it intimately knows ugly, and fake flowers will never know ugly like fake people will never admit ugly, and it's a tragedy. And I know I'm saying two different things now, but the ugly truth is that we have to fake some beauty until the world can see what we're trying to show it, and we have to be real with our own ugliness or else someone someday may confuse it with beauty. And there's nothing worse than realizing, upon close inspection, that what you thought was real turned out to be nothing but fake.

So here's to being real despite the "ugliness" we think it brings. Everything is a matter of perception, and realizing this is, in itself, an act of great beauty.