Andrea Gibson

it’s never polite to throw back the tear gas.

just like it’s never polite to bring enough life rafts…

they crowd the balconies where the wealthy shine their jewels.

but what if love, what if real love is fucking rude?

Thank You

I’ve been on tour since September.  This morning, after a weekend of magical shows in Colorado, I woke up in my own house with only one show on my schedule for the next few months.   How is it i miss the road already?  I don’t want to unpack my suitcase.  I want to keep buying toothpaste that’s “travel size”.  I got so many hugs from so many people this year!  I can’t believe i didn’t get the flu!  Thank you to everyone who came to a show.  Thank you for welcoming me into your communities.  I am so grateful.  

Grief vs. Joy, Rage vs. Hope

(For Emily Wonderboy Saavedra,

my tour manager/buddy/partner in poetry for the last two years,

in celebration of our final weekend of shows together.)

The fact that you are the most positive,

hopeful, joyful person in the entire world

makes the fact that we get along a goddamn miracle.

Two years into our friendship

I still ask you about being happy

in the same way my high school friends 

still ask me about being gay,

“So what do you do exactly?

I mean, how do you do”it”?

And by “it” I mean smile,

all the fucking time,

like your mouth is a glory garden

and your teeth are the tulips

you grew for the “Say Yes To Sunshine Festival.”

Were you born this way?

Or did your mother raise you to be a fairy?

A literal fairy, with the magic

and the dust that sparkles.

I was in the worst fucking mood

shipwrecking around the clashing waves of feminism

the day you called me, voice singing like a chickadee on a sunflower

to tell me you bought velvet shoes.

Who buys velvet shoes?

I have 16 handmade postman delivered

postcards on my refrigerator from you

and we live in the same town.

The only time I ever turn my frown upside down

is when I’m standing on my head in yoga class,

and I only go to yoga class

to infiltrate Om time with the question:

“I wonder if visualizing world peace

is just an excuse to sit on my ass?”

I swear to God if I see one more “Free Tibet” sticker on an SUV

my head is gonna explode into peace flag confetti.

But you aren’t even paying attention to the cars

with the bumper stickers that say,

“If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention!”

Instead you’re meandering around on your bicycle

in a snowstorm

praising the ice on the streets for being so shiny.

I don’t even think you have a heart beat.

I think you have a heart kiss.

If think if you listened to it with a stethoscope it would sound like:

kiss kiss…….kiss kiss…….kiss kiss………

I’m serious.

You make Mary Oliver look like Quentin Tarantino.

I’d give anything for film footage of you

in your suspenders and mohawk

handing out love letters to strangers.

Or you walking downtown with your 20 pound typewriter

to type love poems for the lonely.

Nobody ever believes me

when I try to describe your hand-puppet theater

or your ukulele singing

or the ferris-wheel spinning of your parking lot dance,

not to mention all the videos you post on YouTube

of you bending gender into a bowtie with a tutu.

I walk through the airport 

my conscience in a constant fistfight with my own use of jet fuel.

On the plane I go off about the wars fought

for the minerals that make our cell phones,

while you compliment the flight attendant

on her pretty teal scarf.  She blushes

like all the world’s blood spill has just left the battle

to bloom a rose garden in her face.

How do you talk so kindly to everyone?

Including the manager at the front desk of the hotel

when we found that 2^nd poisonous mousetrap beneath the bed?

How did you not scream when homophobes

keyed our rental car in Florida?

I burst a blood vessel in my eyeball that day.

As I’m writing this it still looks like Rudolf’s nose

while you’re somewhere elfin around in a velvet suit

probably carving wooden toys for children

I’m tearing up my throat trying to tell the world

how Santa mines his coal.

I have always believed in thunder,

in the loud truth that shakes the fruit from the trees

while you have always believed in blowing kisses to the seeds.

I’d say I’ll forever be inclined to argue

for the fire of sacred rage,

but you’ve taught me

there is probably little chance for revolution

if we are all doing things the same,

if we’re all reading the same books,

underlining the same words

in the same lines

on the same page.

Unless of course, we’re reading Mary Oliver,

who said, “Imagine grief as the out breath of beauty

or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.  Wage peace….

Learn the word thank you in three languages.”

Emily, thank you

from the top of my roaring lungs

to the tippy toes of your fairy feet.

I honestly believe in magic when I’m around you.

I believe in the heart kiss and in the heart beat

and in all the ways we stand up for love

that swinging chandelier in the shack-castle chest,

in all the ways we sing the word YES

into this dark dark dark infuriating

yet lovely world.

So much gratitude to CHRIS PUREKA for playing a surprise set at the benefit in Boulder, CO last night!!

whenever i get nervous i eat potatoes.  i’ve eaten potatoes pretty much every single day of my entire life.