I really need to pack the place (smile).

by tim’m t. west, Red Dirt Publishing (c) 2008

she will spit
cause
she is vaccine
convinced that her words
are cure enough

said so little generally
but she could SLAM
the syringes tainting her blood
were not her own
yet she would own
these inherited pains
the secrets, stigma, and shame
stewing in her throat
so she spits

228 doctor visits later
there is still no trace
to bring the story full-circle
dad dead before she was alive
mother dying when the anger
she held for the man
who stuck himself and stuck her
was no longer alive
to hate anymore
funny how hate betrays
those trying to heal from dying
some hold to it
desperately,
as if it were a cure

uncertain of her beginnings
this girl grew lips on stage
where her eyes otherwise
did the speaking
these stories would
choke her
if she kept them
trapped in her heart:
a pandora’s box

she became
an anthropologist of herself
pieced together
a round to the echo
forced things to fit
in this puzzle she was left to play with
thick with unknowns

still her words rouse crowds
cuz her passion alone
is her truth
even when it isn’t quite true
the perfect imperfection of memoir
staged, screamed
whatever way she needs it to
whatever way would make it
make sense
her word play her broad way ovation
for playing cards not dealt to her

and what is poetic
of it can’t heal others?
what is lyric
if it cannot raise the dead?
what is verse
if it can’t silence the bigot?
even if it can not cure her dis/ease
what is spit
if not evidence that she is living
through it

still
the 10s,
unlike the bubbling subtlety
beneath skin
keeps her high and with full grin
determined that this thing
so despised and feared
might kill her
but never her silence

she SLAMS with the resolve
of Shug Avery
slammin Color Purple church doors
her voice rising
to power pitch
the crowd hanging
onto their silence
infected
by her litany of survival

She
is vaccine
held hostage
by those who’d prefer to believe
words cannot heal
the world.
So she spits
til the words in the throat
become dry with hunger
for water
so she can

swallow all that pain

gargle it into genius

spit