What does love smell like?

When I was reading the dictionary yesterday

News/Break

Researchers of Earth now think there might be a warm ocean on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.

And I cannot help thinking: Climate Change

The human-made disaster formerly known as Global Warming

Right now as politicians revise language again

As if not saying something will make it go away

.

On this same Earth, in this same right now,

politicians in Iran are trying to deny Western birth control

while trying to erase       single as a

.                                      possibility for women.

To find balance in Iranian loss.

As if women are the saviors of a culture

Which they might be,

but not as body machines producing babies.

I want to say that this solution is wrong,

but I don’t know what to offer in its place–

how should Iran heal from

the war on                              terror?

Who am I to demand the selling

of Western birth control?

.

I once thought I was bigger than what needed to be held.

I once thought I was bigger than the trauma of the world.

This is not a mistake that one can afford to make twice.

.

Anonymous hacks Madison, Wisconsin

and the police wonder why they are being attacked.

Like Tony Robinson is the first unarmed black youth

to die at the hands of our protect and serve.

Have you ever decided not to call the police in search of safe,

because of racism?

.

Same Earth, same duration, my child has:

Taken an accelerated math placement exam, made it to the next level of the Spelling Bee,

and lost his last baby tooth.

He holds to the loss like it will be his last.

Like he will never hold a fragment of a human body again.

Privilege.

I take him to listen to a 62 year-old Hmong woman speak

about  working in a U.S. factory now

as she remembers being

hunted like an animal in the jungles of Laos

for 15 years, after the Vietnam war

and I wonder:

How much can he hold?

How does she hold so much?

.

My arms grow

in response to my heart’s breaking

but a body can be useless across the vast distances

Still, if Chinese pollution reaches North American snow fall–

Does human heartbreak warm the waters of the moons of other planets?

Or is it the love that embraces the break that gives off so much heat?

.

.

.

And can we ice the numb

without the snow?

If you have never shown up to a tarot reading, without pants, in two time lines:

Still movement.

.

Like when I bathed in the collection of today’s tears.  One big tear, collected from three.

Did you know it is the year of the Trinity?

(Actually I made this up.  But I have been living it as truth).

.

This is reflection.

But this is not a mirror.

.

Eyes see.

I sea.

.

Questions?

And there is fire on the beach.

.

Clarity:

Nests are a collection of thorns that baby birds are trapped in, before they risk ground(ing)–gravity.

Wings up.  Down.  Not because they question their capacity to fly.

They have flown.

It is landing that is tricky.

What does it mean to have spread wings, grounded?

Still movement.  Coming closer, still.

.

.

.

The answer might actually lie in the intention, that lies behind the question:

What in the fuck is “dog pile” in verb form?

.

But this is not a standardized test.  There are ants moving inside.

And everything is bugged: I am on capitalism’s terrorist list.

Considering 1984

What does it mean to have Gandhi assassinated in your birth year?

Prompted to Be Man Luggage

Prompt:

Photo by Shae Savoy

1. The light is out:

Instantly, I see a woman’s body

folded, we already

pre-shrunk her, to fit in

the suit case.

Discarded.

After rape

or aging.

Her folded body

used

for busy-ness quick

get off

her children have his last name.

2. How to Be Man Luggage:

• Make handles of your hips retractable
• Open and close on demand
• Have (w)heels for being dragged
• Hold out your left finger for his identity tag
• Be reversible
• Contain what he does not want to carry
• Hide his secrets
• Zip yourself sealed
• Carry more than you can hold
• Expand, but maintain your shape

3. How Not to Be (the) Man(‘s) Luggage:

• Travel, light
• Take off
• Show up
• Arrive
• Read the broken signs

(You don’t need to lug those social expectations anymore. Set it all down.)

4. Question Bergman as Baggage:

How do you learn to savor if you always carry, in stock?

5. Sometimes light is for highlighting what is there, but not lit:

(Be)rg(Man Luggage)

rg

real girl

ready go

Choice

I stopped flipping coins when I realized neither side of capitalism is the answer. 

What if?

What if the dog, Yoshi, who lives here, is actually a government spy?

What if the voice in my head doesn’t actually belong to me?

What if when prayer works, we are actually praying to absence?

What if when prayer doesn’t work, we are actually praying to presence?

What if my heart-shaped birthmark means nothing?

What if I fall in love with a poet? x3 x3 x3

What if I don’t kill the plant from my mother’s funeral?

What if I already did?

What if the dog, Yoshi, still living here, is actually your spy?

What if we work until we get there, but there is no there to arrive to?

What if capitalism is just a bad dream?

What if we have already arrived?

What if love is all you need?

What if the ending of a book, the space after the words, is as essential to reading and understanding as all of the words?

What if there is meant to be?

What if there is choice?

What if father’s didn’t look at their daughters like that?

What if I already replanted in the pot from my mother’s funeral and my brain is tricking me?

What if memory is like a family portrait?

What if the plant just died and it isn’t about me?

What if body hair protects us from spies?

What if the voice in my head is a spy?

What if you are reading the voice in my head with the voice in your head, right now?

What if you are essential?

What if I have nothing to hide?