 okay all right are y'all ready for this poetry electric tonight the mama live stream that's right we're getting ready to kick it powerful words powerful women all thanks to Ellen Stewart and her fabulous staff crew yes the mama rocking and rolling now hitting it with me and you all right in the house poetry electric tonight we're here powerful words powerful women glad you could all watch and be in on the action because we're all in it together these dynamic women tonight will be kicking it kicking some words for you to take with you as we fight the fight that's right I'm talking about Eve Packer Arden Wall Caroline Banks Stephanie Blanche Bahia Denusia Trevino Tamara Plotnik Ilka Scobie Helix Armageddon Hadri Hattree uh-huh they're gonna be bringing it to you some powerful words from some powerful women and we hope that you enjoy our live stream and keep kicking it with us here at La Mama as we try to keep you on board keeping the creative juices going because we are all in this together together powerful words powerful women poetry electric live stream all right are y'all ready for this okay can you hear me I can start now okay I'm a New York woman I do what I want do not tell me what I cannot and can do do not tell me to wear you know this is an old long black baggy pants when I'm gonna wear a short sheer orange bikini on subway bus train train trolley or any vehicle of choice that's in moving violation of my volition do not tell me what I cannot and can do and do not tell me not to bite my nails color my hair bite without helmet give taxi drivers a hard time piercing my mind cross against the light white else is it red flame the park when it's like swim twice in one day home yeah it eats so much fruit do not tell me what I cannot and can do and do not tell me not to talk to strangers we'll hurt me nose and old teeth network McLean which keep my legs crossed and mouth shut dip well you are orbiting Saturn do not tell me what I cannot and can do I pay my rent still can't it still phone two phone health club wish I could get there yoga sure need my own are after this urban guerrilla warfare battling the invisible enemy I light a fire under my own stone or use my phone that's this one for takeout tickatron ha ha one eight hundred do not tell me what I cannot and can do and do not especially in this time say you'll email if you won't call when you don't if you're late make routine plans without consulting say you love I love you baby and get miss place love and about 52 to 75 unless you're a senior move get me on the 12345678 FDN RJZ V strike the VM shuttle L unless they're doing construction still 24-7 this is New York if you love no up and only now am I gonna add this tag this is 323 20 so justice wants I will do whatever you tell me to do I will wash my hands wear my face mask if I have one keep a social distance this is for you Jupiter and Ozzie but stop telling me we us stop telling me to stop making stop telling all of us to stop making no I catch whimpers delicate canopy of furious nerves demands the juice of humble compliment gentler than my bed's pillow rituals of such pleasures patch whimpers dualistic people fissures the day with thoughts of sin on thin loin chapped ruby mouth experiences the same retouching praven skin and latex from their interest acting wounded mounting sloth of winter's whistle frail chalk white cock cold bed frail chalk fingers gently stroke manifest in several sorrows I cannot speak a shadow shakes the linens as he hums plain notes lays around from the in attention doubtful queasiness commencing natural signals lingering behind a comprehend which way to lean the frozen window influences the intention okay and this is a second poem imitation ruby flourishing sent less maintained by an industrious agrarian etymology has no bearing your writing will under all circumstances be impaired yours are the mellow cares to envision while starved quietude of now peacefulness lay over a pruned expression amid the muted red of barren plants stalemate authenticity the smell haunts our footpath digging transpires fullness materializes formally pink beast among the course main blood-filled streaked wet the flickering stream on the pack sided by withdrawn blossoms thank you hey everybody thanks for being here we were a family men forever threatened by us we women they fear our force the power to birth the newborns we bring life to the world while they bring war we are sick of guns that slaughtered by the score he's too bloody to see he's killing his brothers fathers sisters mothers we were a family we once respected nature but we've been hurting mother taking her by storm whipped the wind to flame the green the fires and flames all the way to the sea where the waters are drowning our humanity the locker room our homes not on fire what a motherfucking fucker he collects others children like coin think see save the day if self praise was school he'd have straight a's grab them by the dick I say on my mark Trump chill out it's just locker room talk admit it fuck you who stole my virginity in your dorm who left me naked terrified and torn fuck you who plans my body's invasion you bastard in my stupor had a fucking vacation it was rape my first poem the second one okay picking back up with my second poem the locker room homes not on fire it's melting and burning our planet has seams carbon dioxide is tearing while Trump tears the white from the brown the child from her mother classic Trump what a motherfucking fucker he collects others children like coins betraying Kurdish friends because his heads in his groin tweets 12,000 times a day tweets 12,000 times thinks he saved the day if self praise was school he'd have straight a's grab them by the dick I say on my mark Trump chill out it's just locker room talk admit it fuck you who stole my virginity in your dorm who left me naked terrified and torn fuck you who plans my body's invasion you basked in my stupor had a fucking vacation I felt something inside me that hadn't been there I woke from a dream and into a nightmare I'd never said yes the words didn't matter you spoke body language you had the power I got your message but it was already too late bitch you are weak and I am strong your body's not yours in my hands it belongs yeah I got your message but it was too late you took the worst advantage one could take admit it motherfucker it was rape it was rape it was rape a canvas a tattoo doesn't define me I define it this is my body but my family doesn't approve since Nazis inked us slaughtered six million Jews but I'm alive today due to my tribe's bravery free to be a canvas with art I want to see I've reclaimed the designs and thus their power to number us to suffocate us in death showers but they lost the war and this world is new tattoos are for me now not for you the river I never fit the mold and it gave me a fever I knew I wasn't them but I wasn't me either I suppressed my creativity quirks free spirit because that girl was a lot weird loud different yet in hindsight I'm a roaring river perfectly bent thank you seven eight be forgiven can we be held in the light of the disgusted truth behind stand on top of think is real and true and immemorable can we be remembered for the moments we do not participate for the times we stand in and for truth so that maybe just maybe it becomes safer to do you know safer to tell the truth safer to recall the moments that have arrived us here the moments of little integrity and an alliance to the overwhelming trance of fear false evidence of here and real those ones where we trade our humanity for security or the illusion there of how secure is this foundation when it is based in the terror of those perpetrated lies how secure is a place that rests on the brutalized my mask well I'm in a complicated love affair with her she keeps me safe saying the scene on scene now if I take her off will you feel me will you kill me up for you film this one you see you represent freedom and truth she sang awakened me breath yearning for life and being and letting go in order to be the evolution is here and it rests in the freedom of truth and we and in the journey of self and me it alarms me to be honest deepens me and embarrassing me I know it's the truth yet have not represented freedom nor truth for myself you see the double edge of my own duality my disconnection from myself and the amnesia of soul as well that's we know me I mean must be where the density of your disappointment lies for me lies from my adherence to fear and how it lives in my mistruth it consumes my being you see this fear this doubt this amnesia of me I just associate my me from myself and truth and freedom so although you see me I have become but a shadow a distant memory of me you see no longer synonymous with freedom and truth so thank you for being you a mirror in this epic story allow me to reconnect with freedom you've seen the distance between today yesterday and tomorrow has climbed upon itself and disappeared once again I remember you freedom tour this is you see part two you see perhaps I popped in just when you needed me just after the beam broke only to put out the flames to catch that one tear streaming down whole face for three to five minutes bring clean sister or just to remind you you can you see you can do anything being anyone do anything you see so take a deep breath stand tall pray bow out stomp around in your mind when you and your heart remembers the ugly you are strong intelligence a noble queen king the entire royal spectrum wrapped up in every royal bit that runs in between you that force behind creation upon creation you that frightened little one that needed mother wanted father who find neither able to supply all that extra that is required for true sense of security and this particular set of institutions you are afraid of being success for you know all too well it seemed to me a rejection apologize for yourself you see or explain yourself to anyone else the friends don't need it your enemies don't care the whole bunch of folks in between I dare to say you need to show up and explain anything to them either dare to run into yourself you see instead of from your self you see enjoy traveling through each beautifully coiled straw and braiding them together creation in the balance of you caress the looking glass that reveals all your ugly layers down to the core till it breaks through crying out I am I am your purpose on that on that you you see you you dodge and mirrors no shame no shade I do too that you you neglect and conversations because we all too scared to see what's really here answer questions meant for only you and share them but in the breath of your stride not careless words that bounce off walls and fall to a feet the feet of a world that here's only your movement action friction tension and then pass into you painted today worth your while and build a moment worth ours we are us so bless the circle continue embrace purpose in our time this ain't selfish is selfless though the honesty may make your skin crawl your flesh panic exposed again for the first time liberation is in your truth you see so take care and unpacking lie by selfish lie then breathe easy when you fall into peace you see not of the temporary kind most are accustomed to but that you cannot escape because you finally know that you see before the hurt of the world bruises and batters your fresh soul let it fall all let it fall all off trust yourself so much so that others others and even your own unfulfilled promises are constant no more and there's nothing more than the dirt that falls off of your shoulders do not apologize let love not be ruined because we are ruled by fear and doubt you see lest this child who's still breathing survives feeding the angst of abandonment feel yourself you see be see yourself my favorite night I was to leave my country Poland for good she placed around my neck the way medals are given at the Olympics and necklace made out of 10 rolls of toilet paper and said here you go child show those Americans we have our own paper to wipe our asses with she didn't know Americans were not aware that in 1981 we used Pravda a Soviet paper which means truth in Russian for such needs it was not an act of political subversion we did it because Pravda was softer and cheaper than our own Polish daily news I wasn't leaving my country family and everything that was dear to me for toilet paper I was a student at a university and one of our professors said to us cherish these moments they will be the best years of your life well that filled me with dread I wanted more from life than memories more than to be a music teacher in my hometown and I certainly wasn't ready to get married at 20 although me not having a boyfriend yet cost and in my family I came home one day and my parents invited a couple with their son to introduce me to my mom said go get dressed and come meet this nice young man I got dressed and I climbed up a cold shoot towards the tiny window to escape I wanted to escape this feeling of insignificance and being poor although my family never was I was listening to Gershwin's rap study in blue and that music filled me with wildness and the possibility of a much bigger adventurous life I wanted to learn how to speak English so well that nobody could tell me nothing this American English the sounds of which are rounder and thicker than my own the language that I grew up with this American English which while learning later would hurt my jaw from stretching it into so many unaccustomed to me directions Polish was beautiful but it was quiet full of nostalgia and history and it was dragging my soul down I wanted to live in the US because that was the most powerful country in the world and I wanted to feel powerful and it had to be New York City the coolest of them all this New York which I met for the first time on the pages of my geography class the caption underneath the tiny black and white photo of a skyscraper red New York City where the buildings go so high they seem to touch the sky and the traffic is so dense it's faster to walk than to take a taxi sometimes how is that even possible I could count on my fingers the numbers of cars in my hometown I wanted to be a New Yorker and know the city as intimately as any good cab driver does I wanted to jog in Central Park the way Jill Claibor jogged an unmarried woman I wanted to walk the streets the way Americans walk and in one shalant way self assured not worrying about their wrinkled clothes unmatched socks or messy hair I wanted to leave behind this beige elegance I still remember the day I got fired from my first American job it was Burger King apparently there was something wrong with my burger as I was taking off my uniform in the bathroom and crying uncontrollably the cleaning lady I don't remember what country she was from hugged me wiped away my tears and said don't worry honey you can get a better job at Dunkin Donuts and as I was about to leave she said better yet learn how to type typing is the future in America I got a job at a local factory to pay for the classes and the machine to practice on the classes were at the community college and it was too far for me to make it on time on the bus after work so I went to the first class and I asked does anybody live near me and could you give me a ride when this young woman with black straight shiny hair raised her hand and said I will and for the next few weeks every Tuesday and Thursday the Italian Anna picked me up in her pink tiny green color Renault there was a pink flush dog dangling from her rear view mirror one time as we were on the highway she suddenly rolled up the windows and without warning screamed so loud as if someone was ripping her skin off without anesthetics I have never been in the presence of such a sound afterwards she took a deep breath smiled and said nobody speaks English in my family I have to take care of everything it's very hard I could never do that I said to her and her response was well I'm not letting you out of this car until you do she passed our exit on the highway and I was trying to get courage by concentrating on the pink flush dog but every time Anna counted one two three go nothing came out of me jumping out of the Arizona bridge would have been much easier task to fulfill finding after one hour of going deep into Long Island I let out a scream 20 years of silence released onto thank you and run everybody at culture hub really appreciate what you're doing thank you la mama and electric for this opportunity poets everybody out there and dedicate this reading to my mom six shorties for you bells fill me bells bells silent bells tall like buttercups that shriek to nobody's ears clappers peek out like stigma frantic to be rung each a clit of a deed undone while vines fruitful with dunks catcobes moth no particulate pool and red lanterns festoon uncertain celebration hot air hallucinations to a single thread all fabrication on a crash course with the current of light and adrift on films of spectral melt alone wouldn't goddess you don't know me but stare at my hard brown belly as if it were my brain mocking you as i stand guard on your shelf from night's yawn to morning winks while a billion blinks pile up dust stalls over my wooden skin you might fear or revere my definitive demeanor my resolve the way space must curve and art around my impossible beauty let's stop please each day and hear the music i have told from my roots music it resounds in bold buttery waves over oceans and through guitar strings to the umbilical where life crawled from that mysterious mother to carry dear love woman as landscape to lie in a garden like a stealth fold of landscape this human pulsing flesh mountain range small mirror to magnanimous tree floss masses to know that elbow our momentary landing head for ladybugs while the fringy nerves of legs singe at the sun's indifferent grace even as umbilical falls bravely to reunite with earth grass and clover go giddy over the interloper whose old factory makes mincemeat of meaty peat and petals and obscene paints to parties silently who's screaming scarlet spirits yellow tongues indigo winked off the gray cap of clouds still a pond-hued-eyes humble at the infinity of green portrait of a mother on the eve of spring break through the pilot window i witnessed my last umbilical issue load her distilled yet spindly wonder into a hired car and stream away trailing behind a long buried yet noodling crevasse an invisible emptiness threading my core that she began spinning since her wound exit 15 summers back that holy filament hooked onto her suitcase wheels stretching my hollowness past prospects i stand behind these wafery walls of skin vacant of her glamour grace gall this empty arc of bones pressing against my own architecture prayers poems partners so as not to cave under the weight of values ill instilled quests unshared talk two tacit bonds unbound like demeter i forfeit color and berg with her departure though blossoms promise moons a day away and the charge is to view flamboyantly all the turn of my persepony i will spring break through a glass brightly industrial roses a city rotted from corn turned industry you think you know this world and its honeycombed inhabitants but what do your antennae miss scrambled weather prisms were spaced on clothes a dematured rainbow gathered on the world a general lack of gravity the presence of severe fragility if you don't mind crunching on fish gravel in your tank of reality last one violet eye of the night dream whisper with a velvet eye of night let all your ghosts be joyful let all your angels be fools in a town where the towers sway or dancing mills stars will explain it all let the cosmos rain you have no choice taxi taxi once upon a time checker cabs darted course bridges faster than a speeding express train 1969 not the moment for teeny boppers mini skirted stoned on a midnight local nervously riding home in the cab's darkness he was safe and cost-cited this was in another century before crosstown crawls and broadway blockage up until 1994 the cabby patiently waited until the female inserted her key in the door call it chivalry safety street security today few incessant waves hail the yellow fleet solely strangulated by greedy businessmen taxis fleets of new cars that we hail with our ever-present phones the driver will not cannot leave the motor running for a quick score two flights up the backseat will never overflow with bodega blooms bought on a sudden whim speaking of which does anyone ever have sex in an oven thank you lovely new york city cabbie who returned my bag crowned cash a pearl necklace a fist and thank you pervo cabbie who drove me to the old navy ward scared me to hell but then unexpectedly decided not to rape me but silently drove me home through empty brooklyn streets thank you drivers poets immigrants musicians an app oh yellow taxi killed off by greed and technology for decades your presence brightened city streets first they turned you green if you dared to leave Manhattan and now you are going price to impossible heights though none of this lucrative reaches the driver soon you will be a nostalgic footnote like gimbals egg creams village voice and subway tokens we are left with uber via lift acronyms for anonymity still we have the crumbling bumbling mta lurching through aging tunnels but eventually will get us there next an opera that i saw before we went into total uh insulation hosty fontute when worldly chaos overwhelms portion manipulates democracy's demise a plague hopscotch's cross continents lands in my lumbardian bald garden visit paper masks protect against corona thank you mozart for this divine melodic distraction operatic extravaganza of scheming lovers men as usual orchestrating plots testing fidelity equating one-night stands with more whole sin women doomed to be ingenue victims or saucy perpetrator save your fairy tales to the kids everlasting love can bend to transgression in 24 hours an election can be stolen a virus can transmute and spread a heart can break mend and cease to beat may no woman ever die of love cassie fontute and last corona time the full worm moon robins return to feast on emerging earthworms the paragraph moment when mooner transit is closest to earth our troubled planet where a pandemic simmers told to avoid crowds i skip art fairs still ride the subway to school classrooms awash and pumped sanitizer assiduously used by the brilliant children a stray cough or muffled sneeze buried in itinerant elbows resounding viral doom death setting virus sweeps from congested heart of an eastern city to the flat rich plains of pinora padonna suburban contagion circles my hometown today the sun rose an hour later daylight savings time ceaselessly springs us forward into corona time the crown no one covins thank you and stay safe sojourner truth in decibels i let the pull of life tow me out to the best of you all i'm at the door of my own house ran my fingertips across my lips to touch doubt i taste blood see the foyer clearly i see myself really reflecting off the mirror's quiet rooms the condo eerie shadow spanning like avalanches i feel the weight of past circumstances i'm that romance and it's not romantic i'm on a canvas with the past and the future hands brace the floor show my striations and sutures naked in my newness vacant and secluded scan limbs then deconstruct the rubrics i'm in a pool of red ink but only just enough to shift inertia to some movement stopping the entombment poor muskles moving fine arches forward feel the pain and all the bruising because i've been working on you i've been working on a friend well i've been working on why the cage bird sings i know why the cage bird sings even when its ravaged soul is in the middle of its own Arab spring tattered rings of pseudo-growth one tree stumps of hope i'm soaked in the sweat of my years the sweat of my ghost from fell on a post in this mind jim shabari rope wrapped around my throat from the tears formed in silence i shift my shoulder blades i'm feeling a roving rage bones stacked can crack like jenga blocks before they cave i'm sitting in an open grave it's subtle crack my neck to feel the prisons in my muscles i escape from outfits rise i won't escape the challenge of the blast waves demolish all my parts i'm now a salvager fix my posture postulate the meaning it's raiding stars i'll stop arrived and yet i'm leaving skin glistens wounds on my wrist i've got a gun on my tongue and a blade in my kiss because i've been working on i've been working on it i've been working on your friend cell rose because i've been working on it i've been working on it i've been working on a friend cell rose because i've been working on it i've been working on it i've been working on a friend cell rose because i've been working on it i've been working on it i've been working on a friend I am and I wrote that piece after battling my way back from severe illness. And one of the things that helped me get through that period of time in my life was an affirmation. And if you come to any of my performances, then you know this is something that I, this phrase is something that I sometimes do with audiences and it feels appropriate right now. So for all of you at home listening, viewing, I encourage you to say this phrase along with me at this point. And it's a simple phrase. It's actually I love you keep going. And you know, sometimes we can be our own biggest bully. Sometimes we can be really unkind to ourselves with what we're saying. And this phrase has gotten me through many quiet moments and still gets me through quiet moments today. So I'm going to say it three times. I encourage you wherever you are to say it too. I'm not saying it to me. It is a conversation you're having with yourself in this moment. And after we say it, then that will conclude my performance. I love you. Keep going. I love you. Keep going. I love you. Keep going. Thank you. Okay. Powerful words. Powerful women. Yeah. Thank you so much for being there tonight with us. That's right. Streaming live. Powerful words. Powerful women. La mama's poetry electric in the house. Keep that creativity coming. Keep it going. We're going to keep it going and keep bringing it to you. So look for us. We are all in this together. As I said, we are all in this together and La Mama is with you all the way. All together. Yeah.