I wrote this poem about the corporation I was working for. At the time I thought I was exaggerating, but later found out my imagination which came out of boredom had more truth in it than not. In fact, shortly after I wrote this poem the building, which employed about 3,000 people, did not pass health inspection codes. Air ducts, which were supposed to be maintained annually hadn’t been cleaned in over 10 years. Employees were coming down with strange rashes and frequent illnesses. The term “sick building syndrome” was buzzing around at that time. I share this because I believe when we speak our truth we put the energy for transformation out into the world. Our thoughts, our voices, our words are that powerful. I performed this poem at the Slam Nationals and not only received a standing ovation, but was quoted on CNN and mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Point being, I do not discount the intelligence inside of boredom and depression. There is always an opportunity to be creative.

I work in a corporation
in a cubicle among a sea of cubicles,
like a barnacle I sit in the same spot everyday
among the other barnacles who are my friends.
We drink coffee to keep from falling asleep,
to keep from being hypnotized, lobotomized
by the white noise that dro-o-o-o-o-nes in our ears
all day long like thi-i-i-i-i-is.
Sometimes I try to harmonize with it,
but I always get pulled back to the mother tone.
I go to bed and dream in white noise. I can’t shut it off.
It’s like having a bunch of techno monks chanting in my head.
“Hummmm drummmm commmmme be like us,”
the tone says as it lulls unsuspecting souls to be sacrificed to Moloch.
Many have already left their skins.
You can see it in their gray faces
that blend in with the gray carpeting and walls.
They make offerings to the vending machine gods,
feeding the parasites that have taken over their bodies,
that keep the skin alive.
I breathe in the gray recirculated air
that’s mixed with engine exhaust from the loading dock on the floor beneath me.
I breathe and become one with the fumes
which makes my boss happy
as I tend to have a more corporately positive attitude
when I’m high on carbon monoxide.
I go to the bathroom to look in the mirror to see if I’m dead yet,
but I’m not, so I go back to work.
Baaaaaaah… Baaaaaaah.
A herd of smokers shuffles into the nicotine chamber
to marinate their lungs in Marlboro sauce.
They close the oven door and bake and shake from the morning withdrawal.
The smoke crawls out along the floor
and splits into hundreds of second hand snakes
that suck up the remaining oxygen and set my sinus cavities on fire!
On the way to the cafeteria, I pass the gray suits in the gray hallway.
They nod hello, but then their eyes return back to my tits.
They’re just little balding baby boys who weren’t breast fed long enough
and I’m still an ornament, a prostitute
in the suit world for benefits and a 401K.
Behind them I see myself twenty years from now,
dyed blonde with dark roots that didn’t have time to get to the beauty shop,
stuffed into a pair of control tops,
the top button of my skirt undone
because I don’t want to buy anything new
until I lose ten more pounds.
My pace hurried, my face buried underneath
mounds of rejuvenating make-up,
my life held together by a fake string of pearls
that just broke and lay spilled out all over the floor.
I get down on my hands and knees to help her
even though she says I don’t have to.
She doesn’t know it was the best part of my day.
She just gets up and walks anonymously away.

I envision a world where we can honor and appreciate each other’s beauty without it being violating or threatening to one another-where we feel more alive in the unabashed expression and witnessing of that beauty.

First of all you tell her to her face, so she can see yours.
Unlike the coward who yells anonymously,
“Nice tits!” out the car window
or the drunken pumped up pinhead
who makes “Hey baby!” gestures to her across the bar.
You tell her like a man who knows how to use his tongue to please a woman,
rather than a bully boy whose big bad words
reflect his three second threshold.
Live a lover who loves a woman’s mystery
more than his own need to get off.
Stirring the pools rather than stoking the volcanoes.
Taking your time to tell her,
drinking her in before speaking a word.
Approaching her as you would a tiger-striped moon fairy.
Taking care not to startle her,
making her think you are a thief,
but as a passing troubadour who comes with daisies!
This is the way you tell her—
with majesty and reverence for the exotic animal creature that she is.
From the bottom of your beautiful male cock
as well as from your heart.
‘Cause contrary to what you’ve been told, she wants both,
and longs for the centaur cast out by political correctness.
This is the way you tell her—
with humor and without armor,
if you really want her to hear you,
if you want to impress her
the way her cleavage presses up against
the buttons on her sweater.
‘Cause anything less will only bore her, annoy her,
like the flies she swats with her hand,
like the lines she’s heard a hundred times before—
when what she wants is something raw and real,
as tequila, salt and lemon juice on her lips—
when what she wants is a man who is brave enough
to meet her in that breathless space between the words—
who can look into her eyes long enough
for the two of you to swim out past the waves
to float on the night sea of possibilities
with only the black above and black beneath you—
in that soft, still erotic silence
where each one feels the most frightened, alone and in our skin.
This is the way you tell her—
like the first man on earth,
like a god-man-child who doesn’t know any better would!
And if you do it right, that woman will fall in love,
if only for a moment, with the fool in you,
and you will walk away all the richer just for having dared it.
‘Cause years later, you’ll have one more story to tell
and one less thing you wished you would’ve done.
And years later, when that woman is feeling old and unglamorous,
she will wake up laughing,
remembering the day that sweet, funny man told her
what lovely breasts she had.

After years of watching my patterns of self-sabotage and depression, I finally started laughing at myself.

Every winter I plan my suicide.
I first do something really fucked up to make me hate myself.
Then I begin my annual hibernation diet of Fritos and Cheez Wiz
so I can be smelly, fat and oily and hate myself even more.
I call my friends Robert up ‘cause he’s the only one I know
who’s always more fucked up than me.
He’s happy to hear from me.
We wallow together through the pawn shops,
discussing all the morbid possibilities.
Robert checks out the daggers.
I go right for the revolvers.
The guy behind the desk get turned on,
which makes me feel temporarily powerful and in control of my life again.
”How much?” I ask.
He gives me a price.
“You can’t commit suicide with that!” Robert slurs.
“It’s so fucking phallic!”
The guy pulls out another.
I put it to my head and ask my friend what he thinks.
“Better,” he says. “We need more beer.”
We leave the pawn shop.
I’ve never actually left with a gun.
I once remember an old boyfriend jokingly holding a loaded gun to my head though.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me. “My dad never leaves any bullets in it.”
But when I go to push his arm away the thing goes off,
shooting a bullet right through the curtains and the wall of the house.
I remember the two of us just sitting there on the bed laughing hysterically,
driving in silence to buy new drapes
and plaster to cover the hole in his parent’s bedroom.
Other than that little episode, I mostly just imagine shooting myself in the head,
lying in a pool of blood, my cerebral steak hanging out of my caved in skull.
I say to myself, “I could go to the bank on my lunch hour,
pick up a gun on my way home from work and be dead by dinner.
Blowing my brains out is my preferential choice of suicide
because it’s both violent and precise, like hate.
And as long as I hate myself I stay in control.
With razor blades and pills, you never know.
But with a gun you can be sure it’s pretty much a done deal.
I also like the idea of blowing my brains out
because it’s my mind that gives me the most trouble.
It says, “Get a job!” one minute
and “You’re selling your soul doing this shit!” the next.
It whispers, “Take off your clothes and throw them out the window!”
only to yell “Fool!” as I sit butt naked at the light.
Maybe that’s why we all love getting inebriated.
Maybe we’re trying to kill our brain cells on purpose
so we won’t be able to think so fucking much.
Maybe it’s part of the heart’s bigger plan to take over the head.
Maybe I’m not so depressed and confused after all.
I just need to stop taking my serious thoughts so seriously.

I love men (I have a bullheaded one living inside of me), but sometimes our ignorance and arrogance makes me want to throw lightning bolts.

Testosterone,
Sweet cologne,
Goddesses gift to her own.
I can’t resist your musky mist,
wanting more once I’ve been kissed.
Testosterone,
thorn in my throne,
who taints my estrogen ozone
with looting hands and hungry lips
sipping in between my hips.
Testosterone,
Don mignon,
who has no ovaries of his own,
who spends his whole life turning tricks
so he can have his pussy fix.
Testosterone,
King hormone
whose oats are always being sewn,
who can not bare to be alone
or feel in more than monotone.
Testosterone,
fear pheremone,
who turns the flowers into stone,
erecting penises everywhere
that block the sun
and scrape the air!
Testosterone,
little drone,
who thinks he can outsmart a crone.
I’d squash you if I had a pet
to get me off and keep me wet.
Testosterone,
My how you’ve grown
so fat on all the things you own.
I think you’ll make a juicy snack.
I’ll eat you up when I come back!
Testosterone,
whose head’s so blown-
He claims I come from his rib bone?!
Hah! I should’ve known.