Author: ddavis

A MASTER OF FATE . . . CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL

By D-Davis

i. (a mirror cracks)
their brilliance too loud—
my beauty dressed in soft
shapeless, round, thin skin
with too many thoughts.
a house of money language
silencing my second tongue
mistaking quiet for ignorance
weight for waste
mind for nothing worth mining.
tried to be a daughter
a little girl in pastel
but always a thunderstorm in lavender—
half-boy, half-dream
named 'two spirit' girl.

ii. (unseen echoes of the family table)
raised glasses to promotions
to “success” 
to what neighbors thought
but no one toasted the mind;
ideas—uninvited guests—drowned 
in gravy and selfish gossip.
retorts dismissed as overthinking
silence mistaken for sulking
writing called nothing.
the art of being invisible
the science of shrinking—
swallows insults whole
as the throat forgets to sing.

iii. (a single heartbeat of body and illness)
as cells staged their own rebellion
pain moved like a permanent tenant—
rent-free, loud, merciless
body—a house I never chose—
leaking its secrets through the skin
while doctors stared through me 
like I was smoke or a prop.
onstage girls pointed tongues
friends faded into pixels
reflection became a rumor
too painful to chase.

iv. (leaving to a drumbeat)
riding the rails at fifteen—
no note 
no apology
journals in a backpack
hungering, grieving
outgrown pain 
what could have been life.
in the back rows of buses,
cold stages of half-lit theaters
trembling hands of people—
like-minded 
too much and not enough.
We live in the spirit 
of unmistaken light—
not as mess
not lost
but flying—
above the sky.
 
v. (becoming a breath)
I am not a product of pity.
I am the architect of becoming.
my body breaks
the voice—endures
call me what you will:
girl, ghost, heretic—inured
I am all of them 
and none of them
to master fate
and captain my soul.

Raven and I

hand in hand remove our public masks, but the other Raven slips out of doc martins in scrap metal doorways; they are a fan of underbelly crowds, flowing applause on cement pathways spinning sounds that afford access to theatres of moneyed benefactors. I let Raven sport their dangerous mixes sounding off ambition, grinding dark goth scenarios, and write my script about the other side of growing up in suburban. Ours is a tense relationship, a ying and yang, each dancing across a stage; I, wanting rainbows to color my black and white life, while they slither out of Eden and sway from daredevil chandeliers.

Raven lives for late-night clubs under lipstick red lights, and the thrill of dangerous thoughts; adoring chic heeled laughter piercing the air like glass crashing. I on the other hand live for writing workshops and ballroom dances with a day’s happy ending cooking gourmet dinners for two. Once, I tried to escape and listen to Raven’s dark loud orbit drowning out my pulse.

For years I survived Raven’s anti Lilith grinding grunge of sharp fender strings churning femme possibilities that I was told could never be touched. Forgive her grand theatrics; she thinks herself an artist. I think it’s true she penned most of this, but I’m unsure— I sit in her shadow, just a line-break away from my spotlight daydreams hoping to fill fountain penned journals.

This other Raven dreams of limelight and hailstorms, with her face reflected and refracted in stage hall mirrors, while I pore over the ink of Letters to a Young Poet, Metamorphosis, or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Dynamic though they are, queen of an entrance, they’ve got that soft spot for corners in literati dive bars. Their broken dreams, like smudged mascara, leave marks like smoke on a blank night for empty walls. See what I mean?

Raven, never much for stillness, left behind quiet nights and happy ending bedtime stories in her high school daze. Admit their charisma, and you’ll have an ally forever. They’ll send you roses from their dressing room (possibly true), and though she never learned to play the drums to bang through a tune, her soundtrack spins like an all-night DJ behind their mask; and while she lives on stage, year-round, in the theater of self-renewal, I remain their playwright.

paper plane

I saw a paper airplane caught in the branches of a tree and thought of my mother, who taught me how to fold that kind of plane, with its sharp creases— as an act of care or frustration, depending on the day. Each fold was a lesson imbued with the weight of her unspoken hopes.
We fought when I was twelve after she battered me with disappointment and intolerance for who I had become.
Our distance was like the sky that paper airplane hoped to soar through.
A younger version of me, unruly and bitter, never listened to her scorched expectations, believing instead that my own path was the only one that mattered.
Yet before all of everything, she told me how much she loved me and would never think otherwise, her words a balm for a restless spirit.
I didn’t cry the morning she left, though the weight of silence enveloped me.
My memory under the tree was not a melancholy burn; it was a snapshot of laughter mingling with a tear. My memory, a forgotten moment, as so many things about us are forgotten.

Navigating

A girl . . standing . . . on the sidelines . . . watching a parade . . . of family . . . a celebration of sorts
Sunday evening . . . after church . . . weekly ritual of gathering . . . those that belong . . . as opposed to those who do not
Women . . . fixed . . . in-between . . . sharing . . . dreaming . . . and watching
Do they see the little girl standing on the sideline?
Can they hear her thoughts?
She sees them . . . notices cat rimmed glasses . . . the a-line skirt . . . uncomfortable curves shifting . . . in preoccupation . . . small dialogues . . . interchanging ideas of smallness . . . small talk . . . nothing important beyond that moment
They look past the girl . . . speak to someone else . . . feel for themselves . . . in selfish pursuit . . . feigning empathy for the world . . . the girl watches . . . realizing her otherness . . . standing . . . alone . . . unafraid . . . recognizing the materialism in trying to defy nature . . . navigating its eclipse . . . feeling confident
She watches life . . . then integrates into it . . . taking a step forward . . . her momentous moment . . . transitioning . . . a single synchronicity . . . in alignment forward . . . in time . . . moving toward a future . . . telling a story . . . her story . . . a waxing . . . or waning . . . a wanting . . . as the moment of a reckoning passes.

The Root of It 

Whispers speak of secrets
Mentioned ... not to be heard
But traveling down the ear
Through a secret thread meant to hurt,
A judgment in pointed words
Pushing their narcissus
with delusion at its root
Refusing to claim any guilt.

Their chin-wag venomous
Digs, push false confines, in  
Name of righteous art, as
Their toads kill ingenuity
With calculated turmoil
In nicknamed allyship,
denying their bigoted
Fear-based duplicitous gossip.

Lies they tell themselves lace
Targeted darts, stabbing
Deep to censure voices
Deemed as enemies of their truth.
Denial is easier
Then facing forgiveness,
So, they lift misaligned swords
Thrusting in righteous defenses.

Quietly, while my pain
Fought understanding, and
Aimed to be understood,
I saw their skewed injurious courts,
Guised as collaborators
loathing artist otherness
As roots they denied in themselves.

The continued hush-hush
Whisperings inure that pain
In opaque gloss veneers
That cannot be breeched, making me 
More resolved in transforming
the ossified rootless truths
into grace with enough-as
enough postures to raze the root of it.

Blotting a Blank White Page 

Dawn stirs a waking body, without REM, 
frustrated tossing, back and forth, 
in nascent reckoning, as light breaks preoccupation.

Animals move in sounds, made in branches and woods,
not far from the window, where ears lean in,
awakening beating and stirring vibrations, connecting heart.

Hands shield, then rub away shuttered thoughts.

Slippered morning feet shuffle forward,
creating carpet lines, as memory of a journey,
to kitchen where hands ignore foisen, fumbling a brew.

Hidden under dark cabinets, with shaded crevasses,
next to a windowed sink, diminishing sun-rays
form silhouettes of the countertop infusion.

Dripping waters smell of nutty grinds,
as brewing takes time, and hands wait
with a “hurry up” never "fast enough" waiting.

A warning signals the move to the next station.

Pouring. Seasoning. Drinking, while
the blue room screams for attention, begging
hands to the mahogany desk to companion obsessions.

Feigning to start something, hands on the leather blotter freeze 
against a frenetic mood, but pushes forward, against trust,
clicking inanimate plastic ideas, or dodging turbulence, forward.

With blind expression, angst spills on white page, 
letter after letter, a deep blue ink, absorbing, 
creating blue walls, a sealant closing an inner room.

A bird hits the window, hands stop,
a momentary solace, a recognition of conflict,
animate and inanimate clash.

The clicking resumes, and blotting continues.

Upside Down (a series): Phone

My kitchen phone became a part of my “housewife” adopted rhythm when I cooked.

My nostalgia always dreamed of me being functional in a traditional home. My kitchen wall phone with a long cord eight-foot cord allowed me to hold it with my chin while I cooked or walked around the kitchen doing my traditional boiling water for pasta or some time of cooking routine: Or cleaning the dishes to then put more dirty dishes in the sink in memorialization of our meal. This long phone cord accommodated me to fill my kitchen with conversations of distant friends, while I lived a suburban life; with my husband telling me when he would be home; with my kids saying they were eating at a friend’s house, or asking me if I could pick them up.

The phone was the communication system for the kitchen hub. Command central. My dominion.

When the phone rang, I happily answered it, but usually needed to turn down the sound on my small tv on the corner on my country French credenza that held pots and pans and dishes that only came out on special occasions. I devotedly watched my small BJ purchased TV while cooking, but made sure to keep the picture on so if I got bored on the phone I could read the news wire across the bottom of the image.

On a cold January Wednesday evening, my phone rang.

I answered it.

It was my doctor.

Nothing was the same after that phone call.

The Sunrise Over Phoenix

They arrived on the last plane into Phoenix, and in the dark of the early morning hours made their way to the car rental. In a building, far away from the main terminal, the monolithic car rental complex seemed towns away. The couple trekked along the main atrium and found their stall and began bargaining for a better car. The attendants didn’t understand their jet lag and took their impatience for some kind of personality disorder, rather than their adjustment from the New York time zone into the early morning Arizona time.

When all was said and done, the couple found their car, made themselves comfortable, and then panicked trying to figure out the computerized mechanisms. Used to old school care where a stick shift and a key were mainstays, the computerized vehicle completely left them at a loss of how to start this car. For what seemed like an eternity, they searched for something to press or pull, and eventually had to ask the attendant for help. When this young man gingerly showed them the start button, they both sighed and gave an embarrassing laugh, nodding and then apologizing for bothering him. It never dawned on them that this boy was meant to help them, and really wasn’t doing his job to help orient the customers on the features of the latest car models.

The car purred when they started it. A brand-new Mercedes GLA Cross-back that inspired grand ideas about themselves. They drove away feeling rich inside: lucky. The delusion of grandeur, and the hope of lasting opulence seemed possible in visiting another place. But as they pulled up to the little Pueblo home on Diamond Street, the soft edges of wear on the houses, and the closeness to the highway reminded them that their luxury lived in a distorted perception.

They pulled into the driveway and spied Lily sitting on the small wicker sofa next her cast iron side table, filled with various cactus and a sizable aloe plant at her feet. Leaned over and engrossed in her phone, Lily talked to its beating heart of images and texts in-between heavy drags of her cigarette. Lily has cancer.

“Oh no you don’t!” she scolded into the phone.

“I can’t believe that you would ask me such nonsense.” She spoke to the picture of a friend.

Looking up, she gazed into the morning darkness. Took a drag of her cigarette, which lit up her face, then scrolled some more, coming upon a picture she liked.

“Awww. Love it! Miss you tons….”

While taking the last drag of a cigarette before putting it out, Malcolm and Darby’s car rolled into view. Lily looked up when she became bathed in light.

Like a spotlight on an actress center stage, Lily’s drawn, gaunt face became real. With one hand, shading her squinting eyes, the other reached for another cigarette. Her familiar smile grinned and signaled her gratitude that her guests arrived.

As Malcolm put on the breaks, Darby jumped out of the car, and Lily lit the cigarette.

Darby noticed Lily’s glazed eyes and pasty skin which slowed her pace. Then she heard the medication so obviously in Lily’s speech.

“HELLO!!!”, Lily slurred with outstretched arms.

Darby carefully gave Lily her big hug, careful not to overwhelm Lily’s 85-pound frame. Darby, afraid for Lily’s fragile condition, held onto her. Their emotional reunion reminded them of their long-ago choice to be sisters in recovery.

Lily spoke first. “I’m so glad you made it safely!”

Then Darby. “You were worried?”

Then Lily. “No…yes…always worried. Something might – there might be something unexpected.”

As Malcolm took the bags into the house, Lily and Darby sat on the porch in reunion of one another. Lily took deep drags on her cigarette between the stories of what happened. Darby patiently listened.

Each wondered if this would be their final visit.

What is good?

Flammarions Holzstich, Wanderer am Weltenrand (au pèlerin), Mensch steckt Kopf in die Himmelssphäre; 1888.

We got caught in the rain coming back from the beach.

While walking up the path it began to downpour.

The water hit me like soft pellets – what seemed torrential from the blackened sky was actually warm and soothing as it hit my skin.

A strange dichotomy of between the threatening landscape of dark clouds, and yet the water made it all seem safe: like the bad on the outside was being washed away as the pellets dripped off my skin – my hardened skin – afraid to get smooth – to feel the safety in warmth or cold – using leather and doc martin boots to shield from any pain.

As I made my way up the path, I realized that there really isn’t anything that can really take what’s inside away from me unless I let them.

In that moment with the rain and the threatening skies and the lightening and distant thunder – nature was telling me that torrents will always be there – they will reel around my head and forever saturate and yet also nurture the ground in its swelling rains.

I am part of that ground to be saturated and nurtured by the waters cascading off my body.

I am nurtured – and I kept saying that word over and over in my head like in some way that word would make me into something I had not become before.

My own woman.

Standing strong on my two feet.

Unafraid.

In an Instant

Young Girl (YG)

(Frenetic)

(Screaming) THAT IS WHY I’M HERE!

You were going to help me be who I am suppose to be 

So why are you trying to now push me out of the very thing that will help me to feel that there are people in the world who love me because I can’t feel my feet on the ground and when you can’t do for yourself you look to others to do it for you 

So the outside world becomes a place of validation and you are that outside world my place of validation and in this weird mode of therapy that in some way is suppose to help me find myself is really all fucked beyond fucked

We’re in a world ready to blow ourselves up in deception and denial and the future does not look bright we can’t deflect the bad behavior we need to tear down the walls to stand up or fall for anything I need influence and I need love I need sleep need food clothes and care. I need you to influence me. To love me back. 

AND BE THE MOTHER I NEED YOU TO BE!

A thunder sound knocks the single light over YG to black out.