Midsummer

Very strange that we find ourselves already in mid-July. In less than a month I will be twenty-seven years old..!

I remember all the markers on this path – memories I feel even more strongly I need to release to the world, to honor them. To honor myself. To honor the beautiful people I have come across.

My Nana passed in December of ’11 – a chain reaction of transformation set off since then. I released my first book on what would’ve been her next birthday.. I am sitting on all the words that spilled from me in the months and months after – they will be the next chapter. “TRAVERSALS.” Soon..

I listened to voicemails of hers I hadn’t heard in more than a year, a day ago – completely cracked in half. Sometimes you forget how necessary it is to do that. Really crack. Really break.

And if you can – write from the pieces.

A friend of mine showed me a visceral poetry performance video yesterday and it set a fire in me. The ways we can show others what we feel, and have been through..

I feel blessed for the opportunities to be onstage again soon – to channel this energy. To remember what I’m here for. To hear from others where they too have been, and where they hope to go..

Speaking of – tomorrow I’m happy to be participating in the soft opening of one of Astoria’s brand new and MUCH needed indie bookstores, Enigma Bookstore! See below for details and please come out if you’re around. I am so proud to be a part of QUEENS LIT – we have all come so far in this past year..

I was also so pleasantly surprised to see my poetry sticker project picked up on Flavorpill’s Flavorwire.com! Street art and street poetry/performance is infinitely inspiring to me, and I feel so honored to be included on a list with people all over the world who put their expressions out there in such unique ways. The Compass Project will be back soon..

Looking forward to what the rest of the summer will bring. More sharing, more biking, more moving, more sun, salt, sweat, water, mountains, waves.. Words.

Always, always words.

Bowing to the power inside me, inside the universe, and in all of us that is greater than our sadness and fear –

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Reading at Enigma Bookstore’s soft opening/Kea’s spoken word – 7/19/13 [Facebook invite]

Reading for Boundless Tales at the 3rd Annual NYC Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island – 7/27/13 [Facebook invite]

Featured reader at the season opener of First Tuesdays: A Neighborhood Reading Series in Queens – 9/3/13 [Facebook page]

INSPIRATION:

High overhead, isn’t half of the night sky standing/ above the sorrow in us, the disquieted garden?/ Imagine that you no longer walked through your grief grown/ wild,/ no longer looked at the stars through the jagged leaves/ of the dark tree of pain, and the enlarging moonlight/ no longer exalted fate’s ruins so high/ that among them you felt like the last of some ancient race./ Nor would smiles any longer exist, the consuming smiles/ of those you lost over there – with so little violence,/ once they were past, did they purely enter your grief. – RILKE