Eye Shadow

~Performed this at Tri-District Slam~

She told me poetry just wasn't “her thing.”

But the way she said it made poetry sound like a color of eyeshadow that was only flattering if you were born with the right eye color

Like I was born with a poet's eye and hence smeared poetry on my eyelids was a shade only I could pull off

That I could wake up in the morning and say “I think a little Shakespeare sparkle would look good.”

Or was she suggesting that I don't wear lipstick because I already have sonnets stained on my lips?

But when I look through my makeup bag of dried out chap stick and caked glimmer I've never used, I don't see any bottles or compacts labeled “Prose, apply daily, twice if teenage angst breaks out.”

There's this saying that inside of everyone is the soul of a poet who died young

and I don't know what saved mine but I know she's isn't my substitute for a bottle of foundation

rather, she is my foundation.

Because Poetry isn't a way to powder color into my cheeks or pretend

I have a fairer complexion than I do

Yes, it's a way I view the world

but it's also a lifestyle I choose

I'm not getting on stage because I have a physical addiction to complaining in poetic form or I have a broken heart that oozes out lyrical love sick words promising to soak our feet in salty poetic tears

That's not how I view poetry

I once sat in a room of short haired, warm skin, soft souled old woman in a closed library as they taught be Japanese haiku and haibon

that room was the poetry

At lunch I like to pick wild flowers and weave garlands during science

and my favorite food is my mother's matzo ball soup

Every morning I see fog roll over Mount Tam like an ancestral dragon in the mist

When I look around me, I see, feel, taste, become poetry

Because for me, Poetry is love

my personal chicken soup for the soul, my soul cooking for the world

Poetry is the way I love

love of the idea that humanity still has hope as long as yellow flowers peek their petaled heads from dew heavy dawns

Poetry is my mom's sunny hair and sneaking outside late at night to talk to my favorite stars

their twinkled replies

The way I make sense of bruises, tears and broken history

by finding the poem in shards of glass, deserted dreams and scraped knees

It isn't a magical formula, a tube of cosmetics I apply to make myself look intelligent

It's just the weight of worn textbooks on my back

the copy of Little Woman I dropped in the bathtub 3 times

I don't have an amazing story

Just a lot of love

Love of others, of myself, of beauty, of words

Even when I'm yelling, even when I'm slamming words into your face

Poetry is the idea that broken emotion soaked thoughts sewn together can create something beautiful

And that's why, for me, poetry is love

So when I say, “I wrote you a poem, may I read it please?”

all I'm really saying is

I love you.