Currently, I am in bed with 9:30pm pizza heartburn. Volunteering on Monday nights is fun, but the end-of-the-night pizza session really kills me. And, this pizza is greasy, you know, the delicious kind.
The kids I work with are amazing. They are serious and dedicated to their work. I’m considered a mentor, but sometimes I feel like they inspire me more than I inspire them.
I work with Books of Hope, a program in Somerville for teens who have nowhere to go after school, who want to perform and write. I’ve never tried writing slam poetry, and I don’t really think it’s my style, but these young slam poets do help me with that reading-aloud-fear. I read my own poetry to them once, and I was shaking. But, they create this really comfy community, where they share their deepest wants & fears with each other. And now, hey, I’m invited to share. How about that!
This is the poem I read to them. After I read it, I feel like they knew I was just like them. I’m just a person who has stories and feelings, and we’re all in this together!
I am the sun
for my father
I.
“The trick to this,”
he said – “when it is cold,
and there is no air to breathe –
this isn’t the desert anymore,
and the sky is turning –
coats are not thick enough –
the sun, not in the sky,
but you know what Loo-lee?
I am the sun; I am never cold.
All I have to do is think,
‘Oh, I am not cold –I’m not –
I am sweating’ – I think,
‘Wow, it is so hot today.
Ice-wind? No, I feel the Sahara.’”
II.
Machines like the cold.
A respirator breathing for him –
up down up down – his lungs
like arithmetic,
only stopping the pattern when
he tries to breathe for himself.
III.
That fire is over now – face crooked
because of a stroke – his blood
turned bad. And they have to
shut him off.
My last words to him were a whisper –
that I don’t even know he heard,
“You are my favorite person.”
The nurse came in
and she unplugged
the cold machines.
IV.
The tubes were pulled
and the carts were rolled
out of the room. His chest
beat / his heart up and down –
reaching for a branch too high –
and then his breathing stopped.
This is over.
The first thing I did, was hold his hand—
afraid – expecting the cold
balmy dead feeling described in stories.
But, no, not even in death
can the sun be cold–
His hand, hot and dry,
his blood, warm like the desert.
