asked and answered, a poem

one of my dedicated followers has been asking me to post some of my poetry.... this is a first draft, and not one of my best, but it is one of the poems that I've written that falls into the newly named genre of disability poetry.  It's always been really hard for me to go back and edit my poetry, for me poetry is my emotion, even if my poems lack feeling words.  In my head I always think that I'll never find that exact emotion over that exact stimuli again, so editing to me, in the past, has seemed superficial and created a disconnect from the original words and the edit.  I've learned that this isn't true, but I still have not gone back to edit this piece... maybe it'll happen as I type it here for you, but maybe  not.  I, just like all art, am a work in progress.  Before I started this blog, I had daily ideas for topics and what I wanted to say. Since I started this blog, I've gotten more into my writing -- spending hours a day working as a writer, either writing, researching or reading.  Since I have started a Twitter account for myself, my writer-self, I keep thinking that I want to start a blog that is just my writing... so many fears, though... how much easier it is for someone to steal my work, my words, my feelings?  I am hoping that I get to workshop with Thurston Moore (founder of Sonic Youth, y'all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder this summer -- I missed him last year, and I can't risk missing him forever at Naropa as I did Allen Ginsberg (a founder of the school and one of my first favorite poets), not finding out about this school until Mr. Ginsberg sadly passed away.  Anyway, I think I'm stalling because I really may think this poem is a piece of shit, and I'm not saying that to get compliments.... Please read my "editorial" after the poem regarding comments.  Without further procrastination, I present:
                       
FUSED


a brutal overload of screws and rods
in such beautiful colors
you'd never know
from far away
these pieces had shred marks,
until you see them up close
and recognize remnants
of skull and bone
   maybe even skin and other soft tissue
   or dried up fluids
   in hidden places the autoclave missed

they held a girl's head on
straight but crooked
for the last six fucking years --
these "pretty pieces"
of metal
caused sickening pain and
dreams of death,

and now
I hold those loose screws
in my hands,
new hardware resides in my neck
my skull,
and the commercial on TV says
it may cause trouble swallowing or nerve damage
but i had all that before,
after the first time they put Humpty Dumpty
back together again


***Ok,  so.... as far as comments on this piece:  First of all, it's a totally different piece than what I was typing from; this isn't the end, it's just where I had to stop right now to figure out where to go from here; if you'd like to leave a comment, workshop style (that is, critiquing my poem), please be constructive, and realize this is a work in progress; this piece is a total mess, but it is the only thing I have at the moment that relates to my blog (that I can find), also please be nice, I was completely whacked on morphine at the time I began this piece and I'm working on it....
I'll post a good one in a different post

Finding inspiration, in the obvious and not...

So far, I've talked about being a survivor of traumatic body and brain injury. Did you know the reason I started this blog is because I'm a writer dying for an outlet and an audience? More than that, it gives me a consistent topic to write about and a sort of direction I find hard to find the self-discipline to maintain on my own. But, really I'm a writer. And I officially know that I don't want to be known as a disabled writer, but a writer who happens to be disabled. I don't want to be force-genre'd simply because my first recognized writing happens to be about or involves in some way someone with a disability.
Right now, I'm in Boston and an AWP conference. I'm with 12,000+ people who also call themselves writers, artists, creators. It's been a major struggle for me, physically. It sucks.
I got here Tuesday afternoon. My aunt, a published novelist and successful freelancer, Patti Frazee, met me here. Wednesday we went out sightseeing -- I've NEVER been to New England before, and I've been dying to see Boston for 20 years. Last year, the AWP conference was in Chicago, and that was the first time Patti got to introduce me to her world. Last year, we didn't have time to see the city. This year, I came Tuesday thinking the conference started Wednesday, so I was so stoked when I realized it started Thursday and we had all day Wednesday to sightsee. Patti lived in Massachusetts after college, as well as NYC, plus she's visited here in the past, so she had some ideas to build our experience together here on the east coast. I think she enjoyed the fact that it was my first time here and that she was the one that got to show me around, and to be honest, Patti is someone who I have a certain bond with, she understands me a way that others don't, she's allowed me to fuck up and make mistakes without giving up on me, she's one of few people that I know had the highest hopes, and she even maybe had faith, that I would get my shit together, clean up, and start writing or at least doing something to try to meet my potential. Last year, Patti introduced me to a friend of hers at the conference, and she mentioned that I was a poet, "a good poet, like really good." Last year, she gave me the confidence to start calling myself a writer.
Tonight, I went to a reading by Jeanette Winterson and was blown away, inspired, speachless, crying, laughing, connecting, you got it.... I may have my first writer crush! She said so many amazing things, one of them being that she didn't become a writer, or learn to write, she just was one. That's me. I'm not published, other than in social media and that doesn't count! At the same time, I'm also unsubmitted, I've never tried to get published. All of my poetry is still in journals all over the place. She made me believe that it's my everything to write, I've been writing since I was 4 years old. I'm a writer, whether you've read or heard my work or not. I'm a writer, and no one can take that away from me.