rapid eye movements

You used to move so fast in my dreams.
A superhero blue, a blur of tongues.
You moved like you wanted me to chase you.
I would run along the dream conveyor belt,
past the drag queens and dancing owls, hoping
to find your waiting mouth.

At some point, you slowed down.
Your skin became warm. Your melodic snores
became Barry White doing Tai-Chi.
We would float in our sleep. You moved like you
wanted me to know you. I awoke feeling like I had
just painted a mural inside your cheek.

I think my dreams became too loud for you. I think
you snuck out through my eardrum, to find someone
who sleeps less emotionally. You move like you have
an apology to whisper. Like it sits in your throat waiting
for me to take it with me, into my vacant midnight.

bismillah

i awoke to a flood
of vowel sounds.
cursive, satin tongues
as fluid as our last kiss.
a scorched earth song
that opened me like a gift.
i couldn’t make out the words
i just knew it was You.

You are the root word
that all of our names come from,
7 billion syllables whispered
in our sleep. some days it’s just
static in our radio hearts.
i want to know a hunger so deep
it turns the dial to Your frequency.
i want to know a language
that sways like the humble tide.
my every breath is kalimah.

(i’ve never felt the need for a broker,
but i’ve never met a prophet i didn’t like.)

fashion an altar that smells
like September, a quiet veil wrapped
around my swollen lips,
cement eyes, fragile ears
the only thing i can lay
before You is questions.

why would i rather count the hairs
on his arm than the jewels in your throne?
why does his voice fill me like iftar?
Insha’Allah, i will crave him no longer.

strip me down to my longing
until it is only Your name i can pronounce
write my sins across my tattered stomach
and remind me they are all just invitations
for salvation

the nickel tour

We always say, excuse the mess.
Even if it is cleaner than usual.

With you, I knew I didn’t need to.
You would recognize the piles of little
paper strips, the brilliant lines salvaged from
other peoples poems, kept like fortunes.

You would see the broken mirrors,
the torn certificates, the thin whispery
ego hanging in the closet and say,
I have these in blue!

It wouldn’t seem strange to you,
that I frame things, like concrete,
funny flavored pizza and night air,
then hang them up as decoration.
I could see it in your picket fence grin.

When you laugh you lean back and lift
one foot off the ground, the gate swinging open.
Your voice is a porch,
your breath the wind chime summer,
I knew we could sip each other.
I just didn’t know it would taste so good.

Your arms formed a living room
around me, my head rested on your sofa chest.
We read all the poems titled Guest,
titled Come Closer, titled Release
and it started to feel like home, like
we might have already finished the tour
but we were just hanging out to see if we
could match up all the pieces.

Or maybe this was just one place
where we didn’t need to dim our shiny insides,
didn’t need to sweep any corners.
We could be dust and magic and tender skin.
We could just walk in, look around and say,

I like your style…

Damn baby, I like your style.

the rebels

Earth citizens have always been near sighted.
Blinded with mythic misconceptions that,
“We get it and we are the only ones that do”

We know what a king looks like, and that’s not it.
We know you are gonna fall right off the edge of that ocean.
We know of course… that we are the center of the universe
and that there sun revolves around us.

And oh, the traitors and misfits that dare to challenge
that rightness. Like Galileo, in 1633, on trial for heresy
forced to denounce the ludicrous idea that this big ol’
sun-ripened planet, actually moves. That it has no beginning
and no end and it spins like vinyl, like b- boys like
spirit sounds rising from prayer bowls…it moves.
And he told them what they wanted to hear, what THEY
always want to hear. That they are RIGHT.

And then quietly under his breath, like morning sneaking
into the covers with night, he proclaimed,
“AND YET IT MOVES…”

no matter how wrong we are, we still
move in circles like our rightness,
dangle in this electric cobweb of IS-ness
we are the disco ball that the cosmos
dance to, the bling they can’t match
We move, and thank God for the rebels
that stood in the face of stagnation and
shouted…AND YET IT MOVES.

See, Galileo had no idea that 400 years
later his name would hang over the door of
a little café, in a little Spanish village,
in a little town in the middle of everything.

and the rebels would gather there
and they would stand in spotlights
and speak unpopular truths, but this
time they wouldn’t mutter it under their breath
the would shout it and mold it, fold it into

origami religions, hold it under their tongues
like hymns of contraband, like Christians
drawing fishes in the sand, like Hebrew babies bundled
up like packages and slipped into their smugglers hands
This is where it all comes out. Secrets become an aftertaste
in the suddenly quenched mouth.

They said that poetry is only meant for books.
Dusty ol’ books sitting on the shelves of Universities.
They said that ordinary people, people without degrees,
without letters after their names couldn’t write poetry.
So some said Poetry is dead. It is a small island,
in the middle of a still lake, a moment captured
and imprisoned on the page… but us rebels
we come here week after week to proclaim
like Galileo, “AND YET IT MOVES.

love poem for self

(this blog is for prayers and poems...this is both)

There are a thousand blond hairs on your arm,
sprawled out like hippies on the lawn,
lying on their sides watching for new freckles
to appear like history in the sun.

You shaved your arms once because
you didn’t like the furry halo
they formed around your chubby limbs,
like an announcement that you were not made
of gold clay like the other girls in the 7th grade.
They grew back with resentment,
or maybe that was just you.

There is a small bump on your wrist.
A souvenir of an accident that now, when it’s
quiet, I kiss because it reminds me of women,
a dainty hinge of forgiveness

I won’t tell you how beautiful your hands are.
We know how you hate them,
how you cursed their dimpled stubs,
but have you seen them move like language?
Have you seen them palm a phrase, hand it to
the air around a stage, or serve as a runway for
kiss blown to child’s face?
Hold them open.

Let me love them.
Let me love your full moon belly.
The thick trunk of growth rings
that recedes in and circles out, an
earth song swelling, you are marked
as a life giver.

So baby, stop describing yourself
with names only fit for cattle and feed lots.
You are a labyrinth of miracles, make your way
through the bends and angles to the auburn nest.
Part the hedge with your fingers. Plant names like
home and adore, gratitude and wonder
Watch them take root, pulse with nourishment,
burst into a pleasure wilderness
Can you believe your body can do this?
I want to draw the map for you
Plot the points of perfection.
Dig up anything that doesn’t think
your Being is a highway that leads to everything.
Take your stories out of their case and dissect them,
remind you of the whole scene.

Like the crooked eyebrow, the jagged eyelid
that you despise. When you were in a car accident,
they took on flying glass shards to protect your iris,.
Your hips, spread wide as wings, served as the opening
for the two reasons you wake up in the morning.
Remember how soft your hair felt
when you had it pulled back against your neck?
When you put your finger down your throat
like a coat hanger, unlocked
1000 calories of anger, heaved and trembled
till there was nothing left.
Can you believe that your stomach can hold that
much regret?

Baby,
quit trying to fold your self up
into a flattened perfume picture of
a girl, you are as 3D as the rumbling
city streets. Parks, gutters and laughter.
When everyone else goes away, when
the audience has faded, watch the way the
streetlights reflect on pavement, the way your
sounds clash and move like progress.
Let me love you like I know you.
Let me love you like it would end wars
if I loved you hard enough.
Let me love you like no one has ever been hurt.
Like you could heal the world if you knew
what you were worth.

getting my shift together

i've created a new blog just for my shifting process. this
blog will be reserved for prayers and poems.

check it out!

getting my shift together

earth citizenry

Here are some things I’m ashamed to admit:

I just recently started recycling.
I still use paper towels…. a lot.
I have a whole shelf full of plastic bags.
I waste in more ways than I’m probably conscious of.
Last month, I ate fast food probably 28 times.

Maybe it’s a result of the Green Frenzy or maybe it’s just my own awakening process, but lately I’ve become startling aware of my bad Earth Citizen behavior. I always look with awe at those people that seem to have this eco-awareness thing down. Like they were just born wearing Tevas and hemp shirts and carrying their own canvas bags.

Or those who are less obvious, like some of my friends who live in what outsiders refer to as “the dirty kid compound” which is actually a cluster of houses within the same few blocks that are bustling with magical stuff like container gardens, rows of bicycles, piles of salvaged wood, compost toilets and busy people living life for a living.
(Sure they don’t bathe as ridiculously often as us “achieving” folk, but they also don’t waste 8 hours a day in a fluorescent-lit nonsense land.)
I spent last weekend with them, when my kids were out of town and I had scheduled a No Agenda weekend. It was like a reunion. I’ve known most of them since we were kids. We went through all the same phases: from 11 year olds who listened to NWA to 14 year olds who wore flannel and only listened to music no one had ever heard of before to 18 year olds, who settled into themselves and listened to whatever they wanted. Some of us ran like hell to get out of Oklahoma, moved to cooler cities like Portland or Boulder or Boston and came back when we realized it was too damn expensive and others (like me) got burned out on bong parties and waking up in piles of Milwaukee’s Best cans and decided to get married and have kids and do all that making of the home stuff.
Several of my friends trainhopped across the country and went to Survival Camps to learn how to make their own tools and eat off the land. Some made statements through graffiti, protested the WTO, went to jail for their loud beliefs. I made babies, tested my own survival capacity learned to meditate and read books about evolutionary enlightenment. We’ve struggled with addictions and bad relationships but mostly we have grown into our own Beings. We’ve found our art mediums, our causes, our delights and vices. And I guess what has remained the same in us all is an idea that we live in a world that needs a tune up and we are trying our best to get the tools and the skills necessary to help with the repair. Sometimes our ideas aren’t popular. Sometimes our small selves pummel our Big Selves into unconsciousness with boos and such.

So, that weekend, because the Universe is a ninja that knows exactly what I need, there was a Garden Party. The Central Park Community Garden was buzzing with friendly neighbor chatter and glowing sun warmed bodies. We ate freshly picked strawberries and baby green salads. We played on the sun dial and sat in the Earth Chairs sculpted from leftover sod. I felt so at home. At one point, I went to give a friend a hug and she spilled her pulpy carrot juice all over my shoe. We laughed and she showered me with apologies and I remember thinking, I really don’t mind all this aliveness being spilled on me. We talked at length about our new discoveries and plans. I asked her about her latest artwork and she said she got tired of painting on drywall and now she was just having really great conversations and taking good care of her cat. This girl makes art every time she exhales.
When we went over to wash our cups with the garden hose, I paused as I watched her wash her cup. She sprayed a bit of water into the cup then released the nozzle and swished her hand in the cup to clean it, then rinsed it one more time quickly. It was just a simple still frame that illustrated the mindfulness that I had been lacking in my own habits. When I started washing mine, I noticed the urge to just forcefully spray the residue out without ever touching it, but I swished and conserved reverently.
The evening was full of still frames like that. Things I picked up on that, if I hadn’t been seriously re-thinking my behavior lately, would have gone unnoticed. Like the bulletin board with the water bill pinned to it, $30.00 for a house of 6 people. And the makeshift room built from salvaged window panes and old doors, the sign sarcastically scrawled above the door, “shabby sheik”. There were signs posted everywhere to communicate the needs of the house.
“Your mama still don’t work here.”
“Turn the compost.”
“Don’t put paper products in the toilet, homies”
The most beautiful thing was the overwhelming creative energy that washed through the place. Like you could just hold your cup out and drink from it. Two girls banged on drums with out regard to whether they could keep a beat or not. Outside, three boys bounced from freestyling to hilarious graffiti stories and back again. I sat with a fellow poet and scribbled poems in the empty spaces of a photography book. Words just came out so willingly. As we sat with sweat beading up on our necks and smiles dripping from our mouths, I noticed that the major difference between this gathering and maybe one I might have with my “successful” friends, the ones with mortgages and important jobs and carefully coordinated accessories, is the shift of priorities. The conversations were not filled with remodeling plans or shoe sales. There were real life smells like lavender and bicycle- riding- body instead of apple pie candles and mountain air disinfectant.
The overwhelming concern with convenience didn’t lurk in every corner. Instead it was just the desire to be. To create. To not exist frantically.
Though there are still some comforts and conveniences I am not ready to trade in, the experience reminded me of some of practices in my life that are not in alignment with my values.

Stay tuned for more on the Evolution de Lauren.