Twenty and I be tired

It's been a long day.

I'm back now, at home, uploading this thing that I wrote on my phone.

I did revise the poem a little, but not a lot.

bell hooks is an experience (see below) that I have yet to fully process. She raises in me a swirling series of conflicting emotions and reactions (I write this in a spirit of radical openness) -- some of those feelings are positive and some are negative. I'm left thinking that I need to further understand what she means when she says the word "love."

Parker Palmer was sweet and loving and just the kind of dad I wish I had.

Anyway, here it is:

So I'm in the Walter Theater on campus, it's about 6:30 pm, and the energy in here is already rising in anticipation of the upcoming conversation between bell hooks and Parker Palmer--

I'm tapping this out on my phone. Apparently we can't blog on our phones yet. Google: get on that.

I remembered out in the hallway that I had yet to write a poem for today. That's because I've been tied up all day at Lawrence University with a management training seminar (taking it, folks, even though I only manage one eminently manageable person who actually manages me). It's good to be a student again because I suffer all the interest, boredom and resentment of any student in a general education course she's not sure is entirely relevant to her.

Instead of writing to a prompt today, I'm going to write a poem for/about bell hooks.

*

being bell hooks

to be sharp

to be chiseled down to what's essential

to wake with the Buddha and Parker

to say I don't care what they think of me

and mean it

to be sassy and talk about sex

on stage when I'm over sixty

to inhabit my body and skin unapologetically

to flirt with whoever I want  

and call it flirting

to say no

unapologetically

and mean it

to travel with ideas and words

to point out injustice

to say white patriarchal capitalist misogynist machine

and mean some of the sea of faces

facing me

to speak of love

with some impatience and frustration

rubbing it into my knees

to call my father a patriarchal terrorist

to tell my stories

of a terrifying childhood

without saying sorry

to live alone and like it

to teach with love and fire

and a stern goddess stare

out over a sea of young hungry faces

who sometimes need a short answer

to be the woman

who gives it