Seventeen was a banner year

The juice wasn't flowing well in the house when I first started this. I mean, I could see the wireless icon seemingly at full strength but nothing was happening when I tried to load things up. I got that color wheel of death, endlessly, and a "still working" message from Google. So I went down into the basement and turned everything off and on again.

While I was down there, I discovered a bunch of laundry that needed to be loaded into the machine, a set of stinky litter boxes (they're clean but smelly...), and the general disarray that happens when you actually live in a place. That disarray can get me down (clutter = mental distress) and it can also, if I think about it in the right way (think about it in the right way, Laurie!) kind of lift me up. I'm part of something that has lots of moveable parts, and that wraps me up in a good kind of chaos -- a thing that includes a husband, three animals, a grown up kid who's far away at the moment but still fully present as a force here, myself, piles of clothing and possessions and dust and tracked in dirt and now, thank the lord, warm skies and open windows.

I'm going to Poetry Prompts again because I can and because once everything booted up again it was already open. Here's the assignment:

Write a Slam poem. It can be about anything. If you need inspiration, check out Shane Koyczan and Button Poetry on Youtube. 

or

Use the words; Infrequent, Undulate, Overbearing, Out-matched

Hm. I'm not sure what a slam poem should really do (I like Taylor Mali's work) so I'll first have to take this advice and check out Shame Koyczan and Button Poetry.

Back in a minute.

Okay, I listened to the first video/clip to come up, "When I was a Kid," and it was pretty inspirational. Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOIGFMbgDUw.  Now, I don't have a back up band, and I'm not very good at innate rhythm or rhyming off the cuff, so I'm not sure how this is going to work. What follows will be my lame attempt with very little revision (I want to go out and ride my bike).

 *

Bike Ride

"I want to ride my bicycle/ I want to ride my bike/ I want to ride my bicycle/ I want to ride it where I like" -- Queen

Do you remember your first bike? I do --
banana seat in shiny white vinyl with rose pattern
and Y shaped handlebars with streamers, and the hours
after hours in the drive learning to ride, up and down,
up and down, falling to the ground, scraping my knees,
but still free and determined, then up and down the block,
the air in my hair, that feeling of flying, getting further and further
from the house where chores wait and little sisters and baby brothers
and dinner tables with stern frowning fathers home from unimaginable
offices stacked up and up into a sooty cathedral of learning
where other frowning fathers shuffle papers and clear their throats
and think of ways to make you clean your room between
beers and martinis and late night cocktail parties full of
shrieking women and fuck yelling men. I remember that bike
and also how it was stolen from the garage where I put it
parked against the left wall where it was supposed to go,
spirited out at lunch time while I suffered over math problems
and handwriting and the boring stories of Dick and Jane and
Spot, trapped in short sentences with three letter verbs: Run
Dick Run, so I ran home with a friend, the bike waiting for me
in my mind like the wind I could create as I flew on it
around the block, and there it wasn't, the blank spot in the garage
like a punch to the stomach, and Mom, Mom, where is it,
and she thought I'd left it out in the drive or in the back yard
but of course it was no where, it was in some thief's back yard,
chopped into parts, and I never got it back, though the cops said
my name on the handle grips, scripted in fat ugly ball point pen
helped them catch the criminals but by then my bike was all
over town, reassembled, and it wasn't until Mike, another father
but not as frowning because still a student put a blue bike
together from a pile of scraps, a blue bike with a fat seat
and fat pipes and dull fat tires but oh so fast and smooth
the way it tore down Elmer Street and then right onto Maryland Ave,
right again on Holden, up the pitted potholes and round the odd rocks
to the smooth repaved slide of College where the buses chugged
past and the wind tickled the sweat on my scalp and I lifted
my hands off the handlebars and held them out to the sides
perfectly balanced and flying, free from the house where naps
clogged the atmosphere with frustrated dreams and fish tanks
waited for the frowning father to arrive again and snap open
his wordy magazines in the forbidden living room, and the old
blank spot of the lost bike faded into garage dust while the blue
bike no one would want to steal hid its dependable speed and
fluid love under its clodhopper skin the same way my doughy
little girl body and knock knees and squinty eyes and nerd
apologies hid the flame of my eventual rebellions and the smoke
of my naughty girl thoughts from the prying eyes of the dirty old
men on the corner and the trapped wives and the mean boys
with rubber bands and paper clips and the frowning fathers
preparing a lifetime of disaster and shame in the papers they
shuffled and corrected and filed and never wrote, having forgotten
how good it feels to get on a bike and fly.