Wednesday, March 14, 2012

pandora picks aaliyah


this song
takes me back
to what seems now like youth into saturn return
and you
and that crappy old car radio with the broken cassette
and all that washboard
and all that open space
and all that dust kicking up into our skin
into that tiny mountain cabin
candles burning hot we would fuck like the earth was opening
then primp for the bar in the flickering light
while the radio crackled and hissed
pop songs
drove steep dirt roads in the night
you kept a baseball bat behind your seat
you held my hips while i danced
this song takes me back
to need heavy
old as the hills butch femme
lust
damage
and revenge
and that old truck that broke your arm
you kept a rag stuffed into the hole where the gas cap shoulda been
you had to the hit the starter with a metal pipe to get it to turn over
i loved watching you pop the hood climb in there and beat that engine
made me wanna turn you over take you back
you pulled femme shine from my stone
like brilliant cholla flowers from santa fe sun

like prayer under my breath
i still ask
for your forgiveness
for my own anger made my breaking drove
our screeching
what i’ve learned from us
how i’ve changed
how together we were fumes and flame
combustion
but also climbed into the woods and sat
in wild silence
watched spiders spin webs
laughed at bird song

but you
like aaliyah
are gone now
just memories and spirit
kicking up like dust once
in while when music takes me unawares
turns me over
takes me back
like saturn returning
to you.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

haunt.

During a recent unwell stint, stuck in bed, i watched way too much of a show called Being Human (uk!). i’ve been thinking about the character annie, who was a ghost. she was bound, more or less, to the house she died in and her situation rang so true for me and my quiet life. the way that sometimes, if the circumstances were just right, she could be seen by the living. sometimes only by mediums and always by super naturals like vampires and werewolves. I liken this to how occasionally if i’m well enough and the circumstances are just right I can be in the world. move through the public like a normal person.
be seen.
spoken to.
touched.
how more often than not the people i can spend time with, because they are accessible, are other crips.
the supernatural. they are the ones that get it. they understand difference and isolation.

while i’ve been dealing with ei/chronic illness and access for over a decade and a half now, i’ve felt more and more like a ghost in this last year. I've been so unwell, especially since the house flooded last winter. The city, my house and my neighbors have all become too much for me. people know i’m around but never see me. or see me briefly. My crip lover that i live with plays the medium, he always sees me and is often the conduit to the rest of the world.

annie struggled with having a purpose in the world. feeling useful. she made endless cups of tea that she couldn’t drink. when she could be seen by humans she relished in the experience.
in being kind and helpful.  in laughter.
but mostly she rattled around the house she died in. waiting. scheming ways to connect.
sometimes succumbing to the non-life she was living.
just staring out windows.
waiting.

but thing is, i’m not a ghost. haven’t died yet.
not.
dead.
yet.
and believe me i know dead people. i know their ether. their reach.
and ghosts. ghosts are roaming haunting loss.
i want to be more than this. more than loss draped in a good laugh with a keen eye for tricks of light.
i want to feel -here-.
for ghosts there is no recovery.
my blood is moving and recovery is mine to embrace.
i've got shit to say and things to learn. people to touch and love.
supernaturally alive and spitting.

so here's to access eh?
and risk.
to remembering that the struggle to connect is precisely life.
i know this.