How to Reinvent Yourself - original poem

Step 1: Have multiple conversations with different people from different perspectives and backgrounds.
Ask open-ended questions and throw away the answer that’s already prepared in your mind.
Listen more thoroughly than you would any other time. Listen to scripture with your heart open the same way you listen to rhyme.

Step 2: Make lists
Of all the bad things about that way and all the good things about this. Then flip the script.
Remember that the grass is usually just as brown on that side of the fence.
Assess your motives. Jealousy isn’t a very good reason to reinvent.

Step 3: Test it out.
Stop eating meat for a week or two, then treat yourself to a big steak cooked just the way you like it.
See which way feels more valid.

Step 4: Remember the deep conversations from step 1? You don’t need them anymore. That was just a way to introduce yourself to the questions.
Take everyone else’s answers, kiss them lovingly and kick them out the door. You’re trying to create a new self, not a new friend. Do what YOU think so that if you succeed you can pat yourself on the back. And if, or when, you fail, the blame is on you not them. That way there’s no resentment.

Step 5: Get rid of all your perceptions. Walk in the shoes of the new you. Break them in. Give yourself blisters and sing freedom songs while you massage them.

Step 6: Realize that all of this is bullshit. Time is relative and when it comes to reinvention, what the Universe wants it will get.
A whole year spent growing out your naps just to throw it away with one sentence? It doesn’t matter. You’re still young, and the best stuff is what comes after the mistakes.

Step 7:

This should be the last step because seven is the number of perfection, but it’s not. Just like I didn’t stop after three which is the number of completion, or five because it’s nice and round. I’m just getting to the good stuff now.
You are never complete, nor perfect. You should be contemplating one or more of these steps every day you live because the Universe is always fluctuating and you’ll never be happy if you can’t move with it.

So, step 7: Don’t try to give this meaning. Don’t try to make it a cause that everyone should rally around.
You admire vegetarians because they’re skinnier and you want to be able to choose to run with “the in crowd.”
You’re raising your Black Power fist so you’ll feel more powerful, and because you always feel less like a sore thumb in the midst of your own people.
You don’t have to prove to yourself or to anyone else that this matters. Everyone is entitled to their feelings and what you want is always what you should go after.

Step 8: Remain autonomous.
That’s means self-governing.
Never let your paltry desires enslave you like the system did. Everything you have you should be willing to give to someone who needs it, or else your soul, not your hair or your eating habits, is what needs to be reinvented.

Step 9: Last step.
Engage your mind. Make sure it’s as much a part of the process as your heart is – that is balance. Reorder the steps on this list. Make them fit your specific successes and limitations. Analyze. Passion without reason is anarchy. And regardless of what you say you believe, there must at least be some semblance of order to things.
Decide on a path and then follow it wherever it leads. Fear nothing. No mistake is too great for the Universe to iron beauty out of it. You’ve been reinvented.
Now remember these steps, because I promise you’ll be using them again.

Belief - original poem written May 18, 2010

Who knew the world would get so messed up
That the enlightened ones among us
Would hide behind books and pens
While the whole world disrespects itself to the point of crashing down around them?

Who knew that we would lose faith
To the point where the only thing we can all agree to believe in is the grave?

We can no longer unanimously say that a little black latchkey kid on the east side
Can someday grow up to do whatever he wants with his life.
We can no longer all pay homage to the American dream,
Because so many of us have united behind the belief that it’s a lie.
And maybe you’re right.
Maybe Thomas Jefferson never intended for Maria de la Roca from San Juan to be free
Maybe he didn’t really think that she and I and that little black boy up the street
Should have the knowledge and the power to change our family trees,
To start a new generation of kids who know that the world sucks the way it is
But who know that the only hope for life is belief in our ability to change it.
Maybe Abraham Lincoln cared more about the preservation of the Union
Than the freedom of the slaves,
But I promise you that the sharecroppers whose grandkids went to college,
Whose descendants were able to excel in public offices,
Don’t give a damn about motives.
We are just glad things finally changed.

Just two years ago
We were waving our flags, paying our dues,
Believing that America could be beautiful if her president looked, acted, and thought
A bit more like me and you.
And I was one of the worst.
I cried on inauguration day,
And I still hang on to every word that man has to say,
But now I know this:
Things never have and never will change from on high
No matter how bad any god or president wants it.
All sustainable social change must happen in our midst.

So what does that mean?
It means every day you choose to get high when you could be
Writing the lifeline that some small child will pull on to get back on even ground,
You are standing in the way.
Every time I choose to bull shit with my friends,
When I could be studying thoughts that will be the hands
That pull my people up out of their defeatist trends,
I am wasting time.
Whenever those who can do not
They strip others of the ability to be able.
Every time we choose to eat in the kitchen when company comes
We give up our right to sit at the table.

Obama can not free us; he could only free himself and he did.
Your words turned into poetic sentences,
Your arms turned into hugs for the fatherless
Are your contribution to a generation that has got to learn how to use our resources.
Teach a child to read,
so that he can write his way into college and off of the street.
Teach her to build up her strength,
So she learns to say “no” and she can make it to the top
By doing things her own way.
I’m not asking you to believe in God or the presidency.
But I’m begging you to believe in what society could be,
Or at least to pretend like you do,
So that they can.

peace comes WITH understanding

words. are. life. to. me.

the true colors personality test has just helped me understand that life.

knowing that i'm predominantly green (as opposed to gold, blue, or orange) - i.e. more analytical than the personality quadrant (expressive, driver, analytical, amiable) gave me credit for being - and that only 7% of the population is green explains why i never feel understood. knowing that i am green (deep-thinking, seeking correlation) followed by a toss-up between gold (driver, task-oriented, structured) and blue (amiable, focused on relationships, passionate, artsy) shows me the reason behind my desire for a connection to a spiritual community. it also shows me my intense passion for poetry - the most condensed version of meaningful art. and for writers - the juxtaposers of correlative information. and for philosophers - the students of the universe. and for theologians - the students of the Divine.
this is why i love Jesus. and Buddha. and Ralph Waldo Emerson. and Barack Obama. and Elizabeth Gilbert. and Lauren Zuniga. 

thank the universe.

i feel so much peace right now.

tidbits

i must balance a thing/person's flaws with it's redeeming qualities.
disney never made me feel bad about myself. i can love disney movies and hate cookie-cutter images at the same time. i can see the stereotypes and the plot problems and love the music and the morals.
a story is still good even if i don't approve of the ending.

i looove country music.
perhaps it's because i live in oklahoma and my family is from texas, but i most appreciate songs about the real life stuff that people try to ignore. "it's a quarter after one, i'm a little drunk, and i need you now." classic.

i think facebook and twitter are the best things to be invented since personal computers.
via facebook, i can get glimpses into the lives of people i have "grown out with" (yes, grown out, not grown up. to "grow up with" is to experience life with while growing. it's a time and proximity thing. to "grow out of" or "outgrow" is to leave something behind. it has a connotation of being better or smarter or more evolved than the thing that was outgrown. to "grow out with" someone is to grow apart from them, as in not in the same proximity, but not in a way that is removed as if you are leaving them behind). several of the people i used to know are wonderful people whose lives make perfect sense for them. we cannot be close because our lives are so different. but we are not far away because i think i'm better. our paths no longer cross, but i still think they're wonderful. via twitter, i can let out all of my random thoughts and comments and they can be taken or left off at will. no pressure.

i want to write a movie script.
my world is too aesthetically beautiful to exist completely in the written word. it's also too complicated to be a song or poem. a photo collage is too extensive. plus the writing would be good exercise. i'm a story-teller struggling to find a medium.

What If? A New Spin on Dead Rhetoric - NaPoWriMo #10

Dan Brown once asked, what if the greatest story ever told was a lie?
Contradictory to Milton, what if the Paradise you think you have to die
To find was never lost and is all in your mind?
What if the Greatest Sacrifice ever made is less about being saved
Than it is about modeling selfless behavior?
Robin Meyers and I wonder whether Jesus is wishing
you’d get off your high horse and make some changes
instead of sitting pretty doing lip-service to the idea of a Savior.

What if our disgust at Sally Kern’s villainization of the entire world
Outside of her is the way God looks at the members of the church?
Hate mongers so busy throwing Bible verses like daggers
That they have no real concept of the parts of law and Christianity that matter.
What if two men kissing each other in public
Is a reminder that we’ve forgotten the inherent risk in love?
What if the people throwing things and protesting
Is a modern-day image of crucifixion?
What if we’ve gotten so far from the state of mind called Heaven
That we can’t see God’s arm pointing, reaching?
What if all the rhetoric has drowned out the still, small voice
Of a Holy Spirit teaching?
What if, like Cuban said, we can no longer hear God over the cappuccino machine?
What if purity is buried so deep in the dark creases
Of our designer hobo bags that we can’t hear it scream?
What if the size of our cars and houses is so offensive to the Spirit of generosity,
And the right way of being is driven so far to the outskirts,
That we can no longer see the need?

What if your prophet is wrong?
Not because he’s malicious or he meant to do harm,
But simply because the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What if none of these questions matter
Because you are what you eat,
People don’t really listen when you speak,
We can’t really conceptualize the after-life
Because we are not dead,
And absolutely none of us were around to hear what Jesus really said?

What if the only thing we have is this moment in time?
Just like RENT, there’s only now, only this
Here I can choose to use rhyme to revitalize or to break.
You can choose to listen and take in,
Or to ignore and walk away.
And five minutes from now,
Which ever decision we made will be gone
And another opportunity will take its place.

So right now, I’m going to use the only meaningful things I have –
These three minutes, this mic, my voice, this stage –
And I’m going to tell you you’re beautiful,
Even if you never change.

Head/Heart Reason/Passion - NaPoWriMo

Sometimes our hearts
or our guts
commit us to a course of action that our brains refuse to follow up with

I think our hearts are the indestructible parts of our beings.
When we sustain wounds,
it's our psyches and our memories that show bruising,
not our hearts.
Our hearts recover quickly.

Your gut told you I was beautiful
and for a brief moment you overrode your inhibitions to tell me so.
Your gut continuously invited me
to what my heart and head could only logically perceive
as a beginning to something.

Our hearts are the home of our imaginations
and our bravery -
our willingness to desire things and take risks.
We often use the protective part of our minds
to manipulate our hearts into believing
that the bravery is frivolous
and that growth and maturity are more careful with emotion.
William Blake wrote that tameable passion is weak,
implying - at least to me - that passion should be
strong and unruly.

Your head told you that my untamed ways -
my lack of inhibition, my free emotion, my willingness -
could quickly and easily bring you pain...

...perhaps the same way hers had.

And I cannot promise that you are wrong.
I cannot be certain
that my willingness to jump head first, heart open
into friendship, intimacy, and love
will not some day cause one of us
to sustain another memory wound.
But I do know this:
Whether it's the naivete of youth
or faith in a Divine type of Universal Truth,
my heart has only grown stronger and braver because of the mental scars.

...that other man's hands pushing a bit too hard,
too far,
despite protests...

…yet another man’s complete inability to see
lips as the gates that freed or withheld knowledge,
his eyes only saw a vessel through which to slake his thirst…

…yet another man who claims to be a friend
but will use and be used
for the type of more-than-friendly benefit
that gives a mind pause before
and emptiness after each time…

I’ve been hurt too.
I get scared too.
But for better or for worse,
This young heart cannot help loving around the scars.

Your gut told you I was beautiful
And reached past your mind to tell me so.
Your protective armor told me no,
And my head can hear you,
But my gut tells me that someday
Your heart will tell your head what it already knows,
That real life requires a willingness
To view the scars as a new tattoo
Depicting the nonverbal elements of you

Written November 12, 2009

I am growing over
Returning myself to my state of nature
I don’t feel beautiful like flowers are beautiful,
But I feel real and honest like trees
With broken or naked branches
I am big, strong, sheltering, useful,
But not always pretty

My sex is drying up
Pleasure comes between covers made of paper
Not between sheets or on computer screens.
Please is moments of peace and quiet
In the middle of a chaotic world,
Not moments of bundled nerves stimulated by artificial vibrations
For the first time in months
I don’t want your arousal
I want your mental attention.
I want to partner (Ashtanga) yoga with you –
Engage our bodies through the efforts of our minds
And the strength of our hearts

So often a man is just a life sized representation of his sex,
A big penis with a voice
And we women stay disappointed because men
Are so often flaccid, at rest.
We always want them to be poised for action,
At attention, ready to perform.
I get so frustrated with the processing of arousing a man to action.

A constant arousal, readiness, would be exhausting
And would more often than not lend itself to disappointment.
Better to only come alive when you know the arousal will accomplish something

But women are in a state of constant, latent arousal.
We are walking wombs,
ready at any moment to be receptacles of men’s accomplishments,
to be impregnated with the future.
And, yes, it is exhausting!
But I find it near impossible to only act when aroused.
Sometimes, someone needs to me act
And I’m glad I don’t have to ask them to wait until I can rise to the occasion