and Speak! the stage production
began, I thought about writing
about how words swirl in the brain
finding their match so they can
be written, spoken, so we can be prodded
not to keep silent, like
Xenogia Collective commanded
Speak! and I am talking to myself
random pieces of conversations
snatched from love, from life
from the many ways death stalks
humans, about how children have
to cower in the face of boom! boom!
gunshots ringing around, in them
the blood it takes to cry
the feeling that even the tears
are a joke in the face of
death
and I did not write but was thinking about it
as I frame the words to speak to you
my throat parched from the knowing
that words can heal or hurt
and choosing them carefully matters
is a thoughtful thing to do
unselfish love offering
and we fell in love through
words, caressed each other with them
stroked the soft exposed corners
of our souls with well-turned phrases
and so I thought about writing
all day--instead I laughed
with Melody and Cara over
lime-tinged fajitas and room
temperature water
walked the strip of stores
looking for one item,
finding several
stopped by Krispy Kreme
on Stassney out of habit
listened to my son's heart's longing
prayed as I listened, wondered
what poem I'd write about it
got a pedicure, succumbed
to eyebrow and lip wax
then to manicure
ironed the wrinkled lines
out of soft linen pants
and out of my face
hurry to the words of poets
at Vortex Theater, dangerous
theater and Zell Miller's intensity
that burns through the stage,
and every one sitting there
gasped out loud at his b-boy words;
at LaLove Robinson's bold sexual
healing phrases, describing the moments
so vividly panties got wet and penises hard
and moaned at Enrique Cabrera's love
poems, so expansive we could
all sit in them and have room from all
the universe inside;
and Ebony Stewart's precision
in metaphor made us snap and sigh;
and for Da'Shade Moonbeam's
hip-hop swagger, the daggers
he wields--"let this be
the moment" and we pledge
allegiance to the revolution
to save the human world
and the planet too
I thought about writing
because I sit in the river
that flows from Xenogia
poems were impregnated
because they were nurtured in that
amniotic fluid, that cord connecting
me to every poet, every playwright,
every storyteller, every essayist
that ever did or ever will
Speak!
so I write.
© Valerie Bridgeman
February 3 FOR February 2, 2013
IN Austin, Texas where great loves of my light live.
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