late for work

I’m sorry I was late for work this morning
but let me explain
No, there were no accidents
or traffic jams, my alarm went off just fine…
But as the clock sang songs about buttercups
and the sun brushed
my hair back like mama’s love, I rolled over to find two poems
stretched out in my bed, their bodies not yet tuned to time.
And I watched them breath.
For ten whole minutes,
I watched the universe expand and collapse
inside a cage I can fit between two palms
and I felt like God and I now had an inside joke
(humans think the Universe was created in
seven days but we both know that is was created just…
Now and Now and Now,
with each breath and each moment
it is created again and again)
and I watched as those bodies,
warm and pliable as lumps of clay,
began to take the shape of Beings whose edges
I could no longer locate.
I wish I could’ve gathered the smell of this morning for you,
flying through daffodil fields and leap frog clouds,
I would have brought it back here to this fluorescent- lit tower
of all things grown up, to remind you of
what is like to dream past 7 am.
I know you think what goes on here is important,
the big marble columns and the faces of old white men,
sure make it seem like it is…
and I know that you think that inside these walls,
these enormous walls built by brown hands,
painted three times a year by inmates,
adorned with the giant tributes to oil fields and stolen lands,
is where the world gets changed
but see enormous walls don’t make the world change…
out there is where the world gets changed.
Because on my street, six blocks away,
there is a baby drinking marijuana smoke
and fatigue for breakfast, whose diaper’s
needed changing for two days.
On the corner, a store owner is changing his family tree
by selling addictions to Americans.
Under the bridge, there is man babbling
about freedom under his breath, he clenches
his bottle for forgiveness as his fingers still
grasp for the trigger. The change in his cup
means more to him then any law you will make in committee today.
There is an ocean of progress between you and them
but you are too scared to get your hair wet.
I’m not saying you’re not useful, or darn right stunning in your suits,
but I’m just saying that none of this would be necessary if we had our priorities as straight and pointy as your boots.
I’m saying it would be more cost effective
to send a thousand memos a second
to remind each other of our divinity
than to continually pass laws that make hard working people into criminals
and maybe we could have little less brunches
and less luncheons and more meetings with the dawn.
We could borrow its colors of redemption to repaint
our history with moving on.
And then maybe we could add a clause to the law
just for single moms that makes you excused
if you are late to work because you had more important shit to do
like stopping your daughter just before she walks into school
and reminding her that even on her worst day,
when she has spiderman underwear on, no socks
and a knotted jungle of curls on her head,
that she is spectacular and then taking the time
to explain exactly what spectacular means.
This is the important shit ya’ll.
Like when I was 20 years old and pregnant
And my mother said, “but you had so much potential”
and “you were going to do so much…” and I told her
that if I never accomplish another goddamn thing
in my life I’ll be more important to this child than Gandhi
and that’s enough for me.
So… sorry I was late today. I was busy…
changing the world.