love – LaDonnaWitmer

It’s my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to.

Although honestly I don’t actually feel like crying. I did that yesterday when I woke up to what certainly felt like the end of the world as I knew it. The dawn of a new world helmed by a misogynistic, bigoted, fascist, racist, hate-spewing, violence-inciting, completely unhinged orange despot-elect.

But then I got mad. I got together with my tribe of strong and powerful and brave women, with my men of quality who do not fear equality, and I made a commitment to raise hell. To say No More. To stand up for a better world, a kinder world, a more open and connected and curious and inclusive world. A world that embraces Love and rejects fear. This is what I will fight for what I will work for, what I will pray for–for the next four years and the next four decades and however long I have breath.

Change is coming. This election, this crisis, this unbelievable unfolding of events has awakened the Katniss in me–and in thousands and millions like me. We are not sitting this one out, crying and scared in a corner. We are standing up. We are marching forward. We are linking arms and raising voices and moving mountains. Hope trumps fear. Love trumps hate. Even now. Especially now.

I worked on this poem for 4 months, earlier this year and finished it about 4 weeks ago. It feels more true and more powerful now than it did when I put down my pen.

2016 has been an almighty shitstorm of a year. And maybe we’ve just barely seen the worst of it. They say things get worse before they get better, don’t they? But here today, on my birthday, I–the natural-born pessimist–am saying that I BELIEVE it will get better. Because we will make it better. We will.

SWEET CHILD OF MINE

I want to give you the world
but not this one.

Not the one where a boy
with dirty fingers
can stuff you with leaves
behind a dumpster
and get off easy
because he can swim 200 meters
in a hot fucking minute.

Not the one where a man
with a grudge and a gun
turns a dance floor
into an abattoir
where rainbow lights pulse
on the tortured limbs of dying men
who came out for the music.

And those bullets, oh child,
you have to dodge them everywhere,
take care, take cover
at the office
at school
at concert halls and cafes.
Even first graders here
know how to cower in a closet
while their teacher lays down
her body as a barrier.

Not for you, a world
ruled by moneyblind megalomaniacs with
big fears and small minds
and small hands
and small opinions of women
of poor people
of gay people
of brown people
of people in general.

There is no equality here
so don’t expect understanding
if the gender gifted you at birth
makes your very skin crawl
and you require stitches and knives
to make it right.
Don’t expect impartiality
if you share a bed
a live
a love
and genitalia, too.
That rainbow flag waves
in defiance here
more often than joy.

I want for you no limits
not the size of your curves
or the shape of your smile
or the purity of your unsullied sheets.
I want for you the assurance
that your sex does not determine your worth
or your health or your wealth or your freedom
of choice.
of voice.
Because this world does not want to listen, child,
this world will not give you ground and I

want to give you the sky but not this one
where dispassionate bombs
fall from the blue
obliterating schools
and hospitals
and hope.
Death delivered by remote control.

And people flee that death
and horror, that loss and
ruin unleashed by all the powers that be.
People run and they crawl and they swim
and even as their children sink beneath waves,
we won’t let them in. There is no room in this world
for the war torn
for the foreign born.
No vacancy for the burqa bearing.
No clemency for the keffiyeh wearing.
One whiff of otherness and
the door slams in your face.

I want to give you a window
to crawl through. I want to give you
wide open space. I want to give you
the ocean-deep depths. But the water
is choked with plastic and the prairies
are plundered for oil and
this place, child, this place
is headlined by blood by bullets by bastards
Every.
Gods.
Damned.
Day.

I do not want for you a world
where a cop fires his gun into a car
regardless of the
Baby on Board
because
the man behind the wheel was black
and then he was dead
and he was unarmed
and then he was dead
and his hands were up
and then he was dead.
And white men kill black men kill white men kill people
kill sons kill fathers kill sisters kill mothers kill brothers kill daughters kill people
kill kill kill.

And still
tonight
another man in blue will strap on boots
and his badge and his wife
will wait red-eyed by the window
while across town a black man slips on shoes
and his wallet and his wife
will wait red-eyed by the window
because this world, sweet child,
this world is ruled by fear.

I cannot give you this world, child.
Not the world that makes me
want to lie down and die
day after day after
24-hour news cycle.

But for you, for you
I will get up and go on
for one more day
and then another.

For you I will stand
and fight
for you I will kneel
and pray
for you I am woke
I will speak
I will vote
I will write
I will see
I will love
I will hear
I will hope.

For you, I will.

06.09.16/09.21.16/10.02.16/11.08.16

-Lo, who found her voice.

Tempest

It’s been a long time.

A long, long, long time since there was a new cinépoem in the house. Two whole years, in fact.

So I’m beyond ecstatic to announce a new cinépoem featuring the lovely Lucette de Luna (for the second time) and introducing the gorgeous and frighteningly talented Caroline Augusta (a formidable artist in her own right.)

The new vid isn’t on this site, however… technology issues and the need for a whole new website redo, my webmaster tells me. But you can find it at the usual You Tube channel for all my cinépoems, and it will probably show up on vimeo before too long, as well.

Go take a gander, and if you want to read along, here’s the poem itself…

TEMPEST

There is nothing civilized
about love.

Not the way she does it…
a living thing
of hoof and horn
of dervish whirl
and lunar howl.

She abides in the eye of a season of storms
where there can be no allowance
for abnegation–ask her to deny herself
and you ask the moon to abandon the sky
and orbit instead around your shoelace.

Her love is unfit
for polite company.
prone to violence.
subject to squalls.
she goes in for a kiss
and takes out your eyes.

Society will not stand
for such barbarity, will demand
a dress code and Corinthians
which is, of course, a language
she has not learned to speak.

But then again, she will never
lie or vamp or hide
behind starched and lacquered protocol.

What you see is what she feels.
unrefined. unrestrained. undiluted.

She stomps feet, she seizes hearts
in sticky-fisted strangleholds,
then guards her stash like a dragon’s hoard
roaring MINE and MORE.

The best strategy for survival is to Get To Her First.
hunt hard and fast, chase her down softly
like a wild winged thing.
(Do not try to tame her.)

Gather the Tempest in your arms
and hold her close while she rages,
for in her wake follows
the most dazzling sunlight,
the likes of which exist
only in dreamscapes
and photoshop.

In all your days you will never again see
a love so true.

-Lo, who knows from experience.

Double Digits

mood: celebrating | drinking: water, for now

bruce_lo_engagement

Exactly ten years ago today, there was a giant blizzard in Chicago that dumped several feet of snow on the city and outlying suburbs. The white stuff fell all day, delaying flights, wreaking havoc on the roads, and turning the whole landscape into a soft white dream.

And at 7pm that night, as the snow continued to drift and fall, Boy and I stood in a candlelit chapel and solemnly said our vows.

Ten years. Sometimes I feel like it’s impossible that so much time could have passed already. But then I think about how many lifetimes we’ve lived in the past decade, and it’s hard to believe that it’s only been ten years.

We’re celebrating tonight with a fancy dinner at a schmancy restaurant overlooking the ocean. And then, in a couple of months, we’ll celebrate more properly with a trip to Prague.

But for today, I’m going to remember the girl I used to be, the girl who stood there in white and pledged her heart forever to a boy. Seriously… look at our engagement picture up there. We were such babies! (Still a gorgeous picture, thanks Patti!)

We’ve done a lot of changing over the past decade, and a lot of growing up. I feel lucky every single day that we’ve changed in the same direction, that we continue to want the same things, to strive for the same goals, to dream complimentary dreams. It’s no small feat, I know.

And we’re going to need all our shared history, all our commitment, all our love, for the next ten years, and the next ten after that. Life never stops changing, stops moving, stops upending your best-laid plans. I couldn’t imagine, on my wedding day, what 2010 would look like, anymore than I can imagine 2020 today.

But we’ve taken it one day at a time, and discovered that’s a good way to live.

I always used to hear couples talk about how they loved each other more and more as the years went by. Standing there in front of all our friends and family who braved the snow (and thanks, again, all of you, for doing that, even if it meant crashing your car in the parking lot to do so *cough*Graeme*cough*), standing up there on that snowy Friday night, I thought I was full of love. But I’ve learned that there’s always room for more, and it’s true… I love Boy so much more now than I did when I put a ring on his finger. He’s become more than my husband. He’s my family.

And it’s not just feelings and hope anymore. We’ve worked on this thing. And that’s why, I think, it’s working.

Apparently anniversaries make you babble… I’m not sure any of this will make any sense to anyone but me. But I wanted to put something down in words, on this day. I wanted to say, “I love this man, and I don’t regret a thing.”

I think the girl who was me all those years ago would be overjoyed to see how well it’s all turning out.

-Lo, ready for ten more.

Excessive petals, excessive seed

mood: stuck | drinking: lemonade

dandelion

I’m borrowing a poem from Elizabeth Bradfield today, just for you…

Nonnative Invasive

Lupine, gentian, chocolate lily. We’ve been
naming, been exclaiming, been looking up
in our guidebooks the alpine flowers. But
look at these! Amy says, pointing
to bright dandelion at trail edge, heads

like airplane aisle lights. How pretty! Don’t you
want to pick bunches and bunches and bring them
home? A swell of roadside by my house
yellows with them now, excessive petals
turning to excessive seed. Curbside,

I’m glad they are not lawn. But they’ll invade
this meadow, push out with brash cheer
forget-me-not and wooly lousewort. I want
to reconcile them, but I can’t. I hiked up
to see anemones and saxifrage, to get away

from landscaping and what landscaping
weeds out. I think of how they arrived, seeds
embedded in boot-dirt, stuck to our socks and the fur
of our dogs. Praise their tenacity, says Amy.
But she’s just arguing a point. None of us

is glad they’ve hitched a ride up here.
None of us knows how to accept
the way love changes what it’s drawn to
—smudging self across what’s seen—
when what thrilled us first was difference.

-Lo, pondering the inevitability of smudges.

Beer Butt

beerbutt
Mood: Tasty
Drinking: Tea

My mother told me a long time ago that I either needed to marry a wealthy man or a chef.

I got lucky with Boy — not only does he love to cook, he’s possibly the most excellent cook I’ve ever known.

And last night? Last night he made the best chicken I’ve ever tasted. What is this exquisite dish called? Beer Butt Chicken.

Yup.

Boy shoved a can of beer up that tasty chicken’s, um, cavity, plopped that sucker on the grill and a little while later we dined on the tastiest bird ever.

I have no doubt that part of the impetus for trying out the new recipe was the intriguing title. I mean, who wouldn’t want to find out more about Beer Butt Chicken? Such a handsome fellow.

So basically, this post has no point except to gloat about my man’s cooking skills, and add a reason for someone to land on this site after googling something about beers up the butt.

All in a good day’s work…

-Lo, whose cooking specialty involves exotic ingredients such as cheese and macaroni noodles.

Lucky Number Seven

anniversary Mood: Relaxation Overdrive
Drinking: The most delicious tea

Seven years ago, there was a blizzard in Chicago. I remember it very clearly, because that was the day I put on a white dress and walked down an aisle. Gave my solemn vow and sealed it with a kiss.

Sometimes it seems impossible that seven years could have slipped past me so quickly. Then other days it feels like I’ve lived a few lifetimes since that day.

It was a great day. A lot of fun. The blizzard, not so much fun — some people stayed home instead of braving the storm. And some of those who did head out into the snow paid for it. One carload of people from my hometown ran over a curb that was hidden by a snowdrift and ripped a hole in their undercarriage.

And my friend G actually made it to the church (on time), but his car had a little accident on his way into the parking lot and got kind of screwed up. Our limo driver was one of those people who decided to stay inside, so after the reception, we got a ride to the hotel from our best man. And we were all so hungry, we stopped at the McDonald’s oasis over the freeway for some honeymoon french fries. Romantic!

When I was a kid, my dad always used to complain about how fast time passes. I never understood, because I often thought the days crept by too slowly. But now, now I know what he meant. Seven years. And the days keep flying by.

Let’s hope that most of them are as good as today has been.

-Lo, who wouldn’t mind, sometimes, if time slowed the hands of the clock just a little bit.

Flipside

Mood: Guilty
Drinking: Snapple

As promised, I’ve searched the clouds for silver lining and have come up with a list of things that make me happy. Things that make me swoon. Things that make me get out of bed in the morning. Things that make it all suck a little bit less.

The Other List:

* Let’s start with peanut butter
* Neighborhoodies
* Non-cheesy mosaics, especially those involving broken mirrors
* Jon Stewart
* Espadrilles
* Striped knee-highs
* Sour candy
* Buffy DVDs
* The Tyler girls
* Paper toilet seat covers
* Citi billboards
* Showtime, with special nod to Dead Like Me
* TiVo!
* Boxers (the dog version, not the hamfisted sport)
* Strawberries
* Silver glitter on eyelids
* “Raccoon eyes” done right (hello, Shirley!)
* Pale girls with long black hair
* The new Garbage CD, Bleed Like Me (in headphones now)
* The impending new NIN
* Bar Sinister in Hollywood
* the DIY category on ebay
* iPods
* Changing your haircolor, just because you can
* New lipstick
* Drop earrings
* Digital cameras
* Stained glass windows
* Making your own South Park character
* Short little dresses from Lip Service
* Sunglasses with attitude
* Solitude
* A plane ticket home
* Franka Potente
* Bettie Page air fresheners
* Voodoo dolls
* New Tim Burton movies starring Johnny Depp
* Friends in bands
* Cinepoetry
* A really good thesaurus
* The annual Bay to Breakers festivities
* Golden Gate Park
* Buffalo Exchange
* The Serious store on Melrose
* Beach bonfires
* Saying “fuck”. Sometimes it just feels so right.
* A reserved parking space (but only when it’s reserved for me)
* Used book stores
* Neil Gaiman
* Narnia
* My Betty Blue
* Trips to Italy
* Weird buttons
* Violets
* When she says “my darkling bunny”
* Unexpected flowers
* Brand new poems
* Boy
* Sistervoice
* The sight of the Pacific
* Morrissey
* Cheeseburgers & fries eaten in the car at the height of a road trip
* Quitting time

-Lo, who could, once again, go on and on. But the balance has been sufficiently restored and so, the end.