Imagine  a juggler (I'm talking a serious juggler here, not someone who can throw two tennis balls around, that doesn't really count. Posers). They have quite a few items in their hands: ping pong balls, apples, oranges, a flaming torch, some daggers, and other items varying in danger levels. There are so many things being tossed all at the same time and keeping these things up in the air at a consistent rate is getting particularly difficult for them.  They start to grow weary and begin to drop a couple of things, possibly getting injured in the process, but they keep going. Sometimes they wonder if they can keep it up and other times they wonder if they should throw it all away and go drink a rich glass of Cabernet, I certainly wouldn't be against it. And as they keep going, things are continually being dropped and more things start appearing in their hands that they didn't even realize that they were juggling. I really feel bad for this guy. Or gal. Whatever they are...

I've never been one to like needles I always look away But I can't anymore The fat red spurts fascinate Drip and splatter Into a plastic tube through a metal rod Have you ever watched your life flow out of you  Until it wasn't alive anymore Part of you yet no more living than the chair you sit on I could have watched her draw my blood For days

Did you miss Louisiana Words Live: The History of Pride? ! No worries! We have each performance for you coming to our extension site:  motsdelouisiane.com this July! Stay tuned Wednesdays & Thursdays for the rest of July. See memorial performances of Cara Ann Overgaard and Kristopher "Biscuit" Hebert, plus performances from Chris Hayes, Annette Redmond Walters, Ted A. Richard, & Louis Toliver Jr!

 

 

8/12 while I marathon train I play a game. I spy on country road bullet shells and pregnancy test and rotting cat and I run feeling so alive. It’s an American garbage mimesis of a fertility religion, death and life cycling on a turtle’s back. Why does shooting guns make men feel alive. Why do pregnancies make women want to die. The aztecs had the answer I guess. 9/10 I saw an alligator snapper size of a sacagawea dollar moving across the road- I continued for a moment but then turned back and picked him up by his sharp rippled edges and set him in the grass to return to his riparian zone. 9/17 saw the turtle again, this time smashed into the pavement 9/18 my schizophrenic ex says this is a metaphor for my fear of death- I tell him I’m not afraid to die. He knows he says I’m afraid of the ones I try to save. A month later he sends me a message that says help, I feel like I’m on fire. I offer to take him for ice cream.

                      I have always had this secret power. I draw out the poison, the sticky, dense, tar that blinds him. I remind him. I’m your brother. Nothing changes that.              He cultivates poison again, and again, I uncover his heart. I keep doing this.             He forgets. His tone shifts. He slips, says something about some misinterpreted or  contradictory verse. He speaks with someone else’s voice before he realizes. I’m the one listening.             He sees me, remembers, maybe subconsciously feels me working to strip away the odious gloom, uncovering his heart again and again. He sighs with relief but looks away from me. 

A white boyfriend meets his black girlfriend’s parents for the first time. Her parents instantly know she is happy because her marbled-grey eyes sparked again. They had not seen a sparkle in her eyes like that since she had been a very young girl after she got her first puppy. The puppy had since grown into a dog and had been healthy, living well past its expected years. In great health, the dog excitedly greeted the white boy, wagging his tell and trying so hard to jump up and lick his face. The black girl’s parents clearly knew from how the dog greeted the white boy that he surely would be the husband to complete their daughter’s world.