307/365

a teacher in a political science
class i barely passed in san diego
years go said something
i’ve never forgotten:
politics is the study of power.
can’t remember how we defined
power in those days, pretty sure
i dropped that class when it
got too hard or when i got bored.

strength becomes an abstract concept
under the weight of exhaustion
when running into the walls
of these daily mazes. hard to
build coalitions spinning in a daze
of being misunderstood. god
damn it- if i can’t once match
intent and impact.

94/365

i want to write a poem
about-for-us,
but have unremembered
my part in the we.

who should i
include
in the collective nouns
these days?

there are many kinds of open:
and that is why they
never taught me about audre lorde
or that women are powerful and dangerous.

i should have been able to piece together the clues
by watching my mother
work that shitty job for years
so we could have health insurance,
or bare witness to the decades
she tolerated our existence.

there are those words again:
our, we, us

i wanted to write a poem
about-for-us,
but have unremembered
what i need to get started.