You Know A Poetry Reading Is Going To Be Good When....

...a teeny, tiny seven year old black girl goes up to the microphone and says,

"My next piece is called, 'This Shit Looks Broken'....."

There's something about that that fills me with joy and hope and I don't know.....there's gotta be some phrase some where....maybe in French or Italian or Japanese....something that just loses everything upon translation....that would sum up/explain....my enthusiasm for....the idea of that.

Truth is Relative. Print the Legend. History is written by the winners. Family stories are my only fortune. Pecos Bill. Tall tales. Onion layer, skin. Evolve. Grow. Truth is Relative. Your side, my side, and the Truth -- and nobody's lying. Add. Cibola. Myth. Art. Cibola: Seven-In-One. Sacred. It is the Tale, not He who tells it. Clay. Ether. Stutter. Forget. Trip. Reforge. Morph. Changeling. Shapeshifter. Seven-In-One. Mummers. Cycle. Wheel. Stories. Rituals. Poems. Stretch. Ink. Flow. Run fast, Stand Still. Lizard. Dart.

I forget the lessons, the thread, long before I'm done telling the tale....every time.

But I know when something's funny. And that was funny. And it the little pantheon in my head, there are few things more holy, more beautiful than that -- making someone laugh, giving someone a story to tell, using your own gravity to send someone off in a new direction, with a new thought, juxtapostion.....all my heroes and angels and devils are, in the end, jesters, giving speeches with their pants around their ankles and pie on their faces....they make good moods worth having and bad moods....well, they make bad moods worse, not because of their absence....because bad moods are like losing the story, not getting the joke, missing the point, the thread.....but they make always make odd-in-between moods like the one I'm in now interesting. My serotonin should come equipped with a big door with an engraving on it that says: If You Don't Swing, Don't Ring.

I'm doomed to it, I suppose -- but on this side of the slide -- it doesn't feel so bad or boring or whatever -- it feels like there's all this time and energy and worm hole short cuts right at the tips of my fingers. Like this stupid fluke of genetics, of blood, may have some rewards buried in the muck. Top of the world. Top of the wall - dash away, dash away dash away all.

It's like I'm slicing up my own brain. My memories. Empathica. Absentia. What is the name of the black stuff in people's eyes? This next one is called....this shit looks broken. So happy I could cry. Or shit. Or shave. Or drink bleach. Tiny orange-ish pink bleach stains all over my brown pants. Historian. Librarian. Card Catologue. Dewey Decimal System. I imagine my grin must look something like a death's head right now. Why did I try cleaning the bathroom in those pants?

The tragic thing about getting what you want -- is that you get what you once wanted.