Pencil Strokes

Does the fire ever burn out
or does the dust simply settle
around our heels?

I want to see the small villages of
India, the towers of Russia, the
mountains of Chile, the colors of Istanbul,
the pyramids of Egypt,
the forests of Nova Scotia,
the breathe of my
first born moment.

I had an inquisitive dream that your
pencil strokes were incapsulating
the city with 50 shades of people
watching from the river.


This is a downward spiral
but nothing is as real as
your embrace on an urban
curbside, the salt water
still pulsing through your
fingertips, the ones that
drew the map to our treasure.

God talks to me, nightly.
I am his messenger, we
all are, he says.

The dream reoccurs, this
time with my lyrics written
in the sky over Paris, Milan,
Berlin, New York, and home.

What if all the people in all
the world could see the pencil
strokes, lyrics, embrace, fire,
dust, heart, peace, truth?

What if I could see you
walk through my door now?

Military Brother, Single Mother, 7 siblings, Jose

outside at old Church
on Friday evening, Jose,
14, sobs in his mother's
arms, dressed in cap
and gown, his 8th grade
graduation.

She says
"do you know how much I love you?"
over and over, rocking him.

I stand there.
I am lucky.

The moment passes, his eyes
look to me, his art teacher,
and he hugs me too, the
weight of his future on
my shoulder. 

"the beautiful dogwood on Buena street had no other choice but to become the beautiful dogwood on Buena street.."

Jose can be anything. 

* Jose is Louie's Brother

JUST DANCE

 

A few days ago, I let the rowdy third grade class into my wildly colorful, somewhat disorganized art classroom at St. Ann School. The assignment was to listen to several different genres of music as they were played, and draw pictures that represented how the music would you make you feel. Louie, who would be taken out of class soon to see the counselor for sever disciplinary and emotional problems seemed particularly restless,  I called him over and told him he didn’t have to draw if he would help me to pick the music. He seemed intrigued, and slid over by my side. He began to pick from the dozens of cd’s,, fast dance music, slow jazz, and whatever else caught his eye. Then he picked up a Mozart CD and I slipped it into the player. The class went quiet, as Louie stood in the center of the room and began to dance beautifully, gracefully, jumping, turning, smilling. His classmates, astounded by what they saw, their rambunctious friend awing them with artistic brilliance right before their eyes. I sat there completely and utterly amazed at how much I was blessed to be in his presence at that moment, how much life had been given to me this year through the eyes, ears, voices, and dances of small Latino children on the south side of Chicago. 

i just want to be in a place where they are speaking french.

a man, speaking french, with a navy blue suit on and blue eyes
and he is my husband, at my first book signing and we are going
to have incredible sex outdoors that night, or watch our children
in a play about saving the sun from the galaxy hunters of a distant
land.

i want to be a mother, holding the hands of little creatures
with bright purple band-aids on their playground battle wounds;
i want to teach them to revolt against the 9 to 5 and run with me
and their father and our community of almost nudists to europe,
south america, and other romantic locations.

i see myself watching the theatrical pieces and paintings of my
artistic students, who are finding their way, with my help, my
tired hands grasping a hand made mug filled with green tea
in the rehearsal room on a cold friday in late March.


i hear foreign voices and it makes me want to run back
to Valencia and chase the boy who stole my chocolate.

i want you to know, that no matter how far we get, i love
you. i love you.

i love you.

A man needs something he can hold onto

I still don't know what loves means 

i was laying on a rock near a polluted river last summer,

the sun beat down on my body, and your eyes were somewhere

between my forehead and hip bones.

this hurt confusion and loss of innocence has pushed

me into a discomfort, a wanting and longing for a 

sweet reunion that may never come.

when i give up, will you be there, walking on a pair

of stilts, accustomed to traveling, one year older

and wiser and further away from me.

i just want to go back over that bridge, naked

singing, running from 9 to 5, and finding your

hands resting somewhere between my forehead

and hip bones.

i think you might be gay, i think you might be afraid,

i think you might be the only answer to my sick

and lonely dreams. 

idealistic romance leaves me wholesomely 

hanging on to nothing at all but a memory

in a black box that read "ARTISTS"  torn

on my Chicago windowsill.

Someone may discover my talent, someone

may give me a job speaking, starting the revolution,

but I don't want to start it without you....

Lent Reflection

Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross: 13

I can remember, as a child, sitting next to my father in Church, and watching tears stream down his face while he looked up at the Crucifixion. My father also cried the first time he saw David’s Michelangelo in Italy, the first time I left home, the first time I rode a bike on my own. He was a crier, a man of expressive emotion, a person that inspired me to realize and feel connected to the humanity in all those I would encounter. This is perhaps the reason, that despite Jesus’ miraculous and divine nature, I am most drawn to his suffering, his time as part of mankind.

As Jesus died on the cross, he was bloody, breathless, weak and broken. The calm and loving hands of his mother and friends removed his body from the splintered bark of the tree he had hung from.

He was dead, heat slowly escaping him, as their tears must have mixed with his blood, their grief consumed them on the dusty ground, soldiers and crowds members walking away to continue on with their own lives. He was dead, yet
with his passing, it was realized that he had been loved on earth. Even if he were not God, even if he did not rise from the dead the next morning, this was a real and
true accomplishment in itself, perhaps the greatest accomplishment any of us will ever achieve. To be loved.

This year was full of challenges for me, and I think I can say, that a part of me died. Perhaps it was my nativity, my emotional immaturity, my attachment to the past, my unwillingness to accept the future. I struggled to be at peace, to be at my best, to be present, to be on time, to clean my room. Yet, during this struggle, this death of something inside me, I had new friends, new supports, new blessings holding me up, taking me down from my cross, preparing my body for re-birth.

My roommate Ed let me cry to him, and feel vulnerable, with a grace I had never encountered before. My roommate Eileen didn’t let me stay in the dark places for too long, pushing me with her spirit and optimism. All of my roommates, and the entire Amate community, were supportive of me, and although they may not ever know how low I actually got, it was all their hands that held me up.

My students and school community were also a remarkable blessing to me, although there were days that I was too weak to serve them effectively at all. Around Christmas time, several members of my small track team hugged me in my classroom, and told me they nothing more than for me to be happy again. My third and fifth graders promised to pray for me whenever they could. Sandra and Bryana, two conflicting eighth grade girls, sought my counsel, and told me how lucky they were to have a teacher that understood them. Erica, the school therapist, talked me through my toughest days, and always encouraged my strong points. A second grader, Ashley, gave me a book on Hope and finding God. My kindergartens wrote me a song on how I was their favorite teacher. Jacob, a seventh grader, who had been a real disciplinary challenge for me at the beginning of the year, came alive when I introduced him to poetry, and would slip me a new poem at least once a week with a proud smile on his face. Arturo, a challenged learner, in eighth grader, appreciated and thanked me for encouraging his breathtaking talent in art and music. Ms. Julia, the kindergarten aide, always spoke softely to me when she knew I was having a tough day. Ms. Heidi invited me to after school field trips and brought out my passion for the students at St. Ann School. David, Emilio, Nico, my fourth grade drama students, instilled in me again the power of a child’s imagination in creating art, and the innocence of learning new things each day. Kevin, a student with cancer, brought awe to my day with his undying enthusiasm and high spirits. My boss, and co-workers, presented undying patience and understanding as I struggled through my depression and uncertainty. My supports were boundless, and life giving, and although I wasn’t always able to receive these blessings with presence, my gratefulness was sincere and apparent. I may have stayed on the cross forever, if it were not for these people, who as my father had showed me years ago, had real humanity in them, just as Jesus had real humanity in him. Miracles are born, I believe, when human beings are at their best, serving one another, loving one another, fully alive.

I want to take this time to apologize to all of you for all the times I failed to be at my best, and thank you for all the times you removed the nails from my limbs, allowing me to die peacefully, so I could be re-born.

no doubt

I remember when California was a place where
all of my favorite teen novels took place.

A far off fantasy land that I have still never been to.

And because of prior commitments, my roommate
Eileen and I's dreams of catching our childhood favorite
band of all times ever No Doubt, in their home state,
has been crushed.

But we do have tickets, to see them in the heartland of America.
This is interesting. From a sociological standpoint, and I am actually
beaming with the idea of seeing middle America rock out, from the
city dwellers to the farm kids all under one hot sun.

I imagine it will take be back to my free concert days, pre-teens,
dead heads, pseudo goths, closet queens, bubble gum chewers,
slanted edge cheerleaders, wilde colors on their lips, hair, chests,
tounges....

No Doubt-July 2nd


Gwen---I'll be seeing you sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon :)