wish you were here

I feel like my reading’s being sabotaged, both by my venue and by the lack of any mention in this article.

The servers don’t want us there, and the university across the street won’t even cover us.

I want to quit. If I can’t get any support, then I’m going to.

I feel like I’m cursed or something.

We leave tonight for the red-eye. I really can’t pay attention to anything at all right now. Sorry.

Last night’s slam went great. It was the very minimal of a slam that we could have, but it was fun. I have more fun hosting than competing.

And I debuted a new piece last night. I need to work on the ending, though:

too many friends have become strippers and porn princesses.
I mean, if you got the body of a 14-year old
or shake your hips like dipped cones,
hell, you could have the fingerprints of America all over your soul.
I can imagine the Mexican explorers
when they came to this valley,
smeared with grass and wildflowers,
and the wind was probably sweeter than baby’s breath.
I’m sure the southern Paiute danced
like the gods had grown petaled hands from the dust,
opening to the sun in a language particular to children.
this place was a meadow back then.
now, it glows like a million frozen fireflies
caught in the most perfect mason jar,
and sometimes, they twinkle.
but those friends of mine,
they’ve all learned where light begins:
the bulb went off inside themselves
and spread like a star in supernova
because they finally realized that stripping and porn
are much like poetry
in that you learn by doing—
the fact becomes a lie because the truth cannot be denied.
those girls weren’t doing that shit because they liked it,
or wanted to do it,
much like we poets don’t much like writing poems like this.
cities like mine aren’t pretty,
and your cities aren’t pretty either.
much like the Spanish Inquisition,
nobody ever expects the poet.
so this is for the girls who can’t get out right now
because the power of survival rests
in their hips and not in their voice.
this is for the girls getting off graveyard at 8 in the morning
and for the horny men from all over America
who decided the warm arms of their wives weren’t enough.
you really have no idea
that some of those girls
just wanna see Redrock canyon once a month,
go down to Lake Mead
and pretend they’re lying on a beach.
my city has a beauty
like the girl who reads books in the corner:
stop looking at the cover and read her eyes.
poets talk a lot about loving everything
but we gotta love the bad sometimes
because sometimes the bad is just as loved as the sunsets.
and my god, the sunsets.
I imagine circled dances streaking ghost-like in pink dusk,
sunbeams like god’s fingers declaring
that yes, beauty lives here forever.
and I know that beauty lives in those girls
who never get to see the sun,
they just save it like rainy day pennies,
which means that in the desert, they hardly ever save it.
and those girls will never hear this
’cause they’re too busy not being dead
in a city where death is behind buildings
just like in your city,
where people die just as slowly but age faster
and the only reason hate gets perpetuated is because of ignorance.
ever wanted to know what my sky really looks like?
it goes on forever, like poetry.
like you finally figured out what heaven looked like
before you ever got there.
it’s a sky those girls have to imagine in themselves
while they forget their gods to survive.
I’ve seen too many of those girls.
and I’ve also seen those girls get out, just barely,
more versed in the real world
than most poets write real world verses.
we shed our souls as easily as they shed their clothes on a stage
and we are the ones complaining.
there’s probably a girl stripping right now
who has to recite her own poetry in her head
just to make sure the guy she’s grinding on
doesn’t look into her eyes.
she probably dreams of meadows.
of the children she’ll have, who won’t ever know
the poetry of knowing what you have to do to survive.
she’ll miss another sunset
because she knows she won’t have to much longer.
she and I both know how to navigate the labyrinth to a smile;
how the lights are just temporary, much like the sadness all women have to bear;
that love is just as hard for the girl who finds ugly
and the ones still looking for beauty.
we both have the freedom to get on and get out.
but we both love this place because it’s ugly sometimes,
just like America is ugly sometimes,
the magic always just at the edge of the neon glow.