Going to Chicago

All anyone ever wants to talk about is the cold.
As if I am entering forbidden territory
A labyrinth
Or an Evangelical Church.
Chicago, eh?
they say
You ever been to Chicago in the wintertime?
No.
I was in New York once in January,
But it was 70 degrees.
Must have brought the Santa Ana’s
in my suitcase.
I’ll take the cold please.
The challenge,
The shock,
To cut through all my former me’s.
The she who wouldn’t leave home
So she ended up enrolling in purgatory
Some forbidden land outside of LA
Where life became Depressing and
Oppressive
like the heat.
The me who hated sweaters as a baby
and cursed the gods every time it rained.
I scoff at the audacity,
The gall to pass myself off as weak
so early.
No, not so.
I was a woman of twenty
Who went to the Midwest
On the eve of her birthday
Who turned 21
On Midnight
When it was below freezing.
I took a picture of the thermometer
As if to say,
Look at me now, bitches!
I battled the beast.
And when it first snowed
I became giddy.
Awoke in my bed next to my sleeping lover,
Took a look out the window and…
GASP
Hoo-wee!
Git a look at that thar snow honey!
Looks like somethin’ from a movie.
See, this is what I always think of when I see snowdrifts on shrubbery:
Wal-Mart
Cheap plastic trees
Covered in the snow my dad disdained so.
As if our desiccated California pine
Had any place in our bright dusty living room
On Christmas mornings.
Now I know what “real snow” looks like.
And,
Yes, I have experienced the cold.
I even saw it drop into the ‘teens
So, I say,
When people ask about the weather,
It is freezing,
Not windy yet.
No,
I’m making it out of here before it gets the best of me.
But I have experienced the cold.
Each successive day,
My. Coldest. One. Ever.
And I relish it,
Thinking,
Ha!
I can do this
(As long as I’ve got that down jacket Elly lent me)
I can do anything.

Borrowing my melancholy from Sandra Cisneros

SO, I felt melancholy earlier, but with good reason. I have a new favorite poet:

"Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity"


If
you came back
I'd treat you
like a lost Matisse
couch you like a Pasha
dance a Sevillana
leap and backflip like a Taiwanese diva
bang cymbals like a Chinese opera
roar like a Fellini soundtrack
and laugh like the little dog that
watched the cow jump over the moon

I'd be your clown
I'd tell you funny stories and
paint clouds on the walls of my house
dress the bed in its best linen
And while you slept
I'd hold my breath and watch
you move like a sunflower

How beautiful you are
like the color inside an ear
like a conch shell
like a Modigliani nude

I'll cut a bit of your hair this time
so that you'll never leave me
Ah, the softest hair
Ah, the softest

If
you came back
I'd give you parrot tulips and papayas
laugh at your stories
Or I wouldn't say a word which,
as you know, is hard for me

I know when you grew tired
off you'd go to Patagonia
Cairo Istanbul
Katmandu
Laredo

Meanwhile
I'll have savored you like an oyster
memorized you
held you under my tongue
learned you by heart
So that when you leave
I'll write poems

Me Myself and I

Being surrounded by all of them is like having my mind swathed in men. I swim in it. The thoughts, the repetition of thought and feeling, feeling unsure of what I'm feeling, and then reconsidering it all over again. The closer I get to something definite, the less I am comfortable with myself. The more I distance myself from chaos, the more I want to dive in. This head trip is maddening and exhilirating. I love the idea, the possibilities, and loathe the guilt, the doubt and the despair (sometimes). I am treading solid ground feeling as if its me that's crumbling. I truly have lost a grasp on what I value, what I desire, and what is in store for me. When I was fourteen, I wanted a tan boy and an elected position in Student Government. Now I want sex, sex, money, independent success, spontaneity, caprice, love, stability, a comfortable lover at home and one with wanderlust, another with no regrets and no regard for courtesy. I must be crazy to think I will be an ardent environmentalist, a greener fundamentalist than thou, when even my thought patterns are unsustainable, much less my desires and then my actions too... Who knows what is in store for me, and for them. I am eager, anticipating taking flight, and postponing the descent