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Tag Archives: angry woman

Armloads of Anger

30 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, healing, neighbor, sorting, Universe, wisdom

It is two AM and no one is helping you move another armful of what appears to be sweaters down to the U-Haul truck. Glare at me all you want, baby, but you reap what you sow.

Sea green doors, bright yellow walls, white highlights … pagodas in a narrow courtyard lit by soft orange light. People come and go here where I live, revolving doors, no surprise living in a military community while others stay for a long time. I observe everyone (and myself) from the balcony or pagoda or water’s edge when it’s not too hot and not too cold ooh baby it’s just right. I observe kindnesses with each other, our plants, our dogs, our stray cats, and the not-so-kind things like when you let the door slam behind you that shakes my apartment. I’ve seen the mixed bag that is humanity, mostly for good, and I try not to dwell on the nuisances.

Since the first day I saw you I knew you as an angry woman. I’m no bubble of joy, so noticing your anger wasn’t hard. I marked you down as Recognized, Noted, Proceed Accordingly. Still, I waved or nodded or tried to make contact with you, as we all did, but you refused basic neighborliness and concern in general. Eyes forward, stomping ingress and egress, always. Every time I saw you walking from the parking lot to your apartment with your (husband?) all I could hear was you berating him and swearing terribly at him while he just looked forward and took it all. He disappeared and there were rumors. All I know is that I don’t see him or the little french bulldogs anymore and your demeanor has not changed. There were many social gatherings here at the apartment and you did not partake but were always welcome. You remained aloof and angry every day of every year I’ve been in your orbit. Just seeing you has been stressful which is not your problem but mine.

This afternoon a U-Haul truck pulled up and I watched as they moved your furniture. I was surprised you let them move most of that in the bathtub-fulls of pouring rain and wind. Later I saw you and said, “Hi. Looks like you’re leaving us?” Question mark, trying to be nice. She fixed a laser-beam gaze on me and said, “YES. I AM,” as if I was the reason for her pain and need to leave. It was an unexpected reaction, it confounded me, and I’m writing it out here now: Hey girl, I’m not the reason for your pain and suffering. We gave you ample opportunity to relate but you kept your door closed. I’ve been watching you for hours move boxes and bags and armfuls of “stuff” and I wonder where did you put it all in these tiny apartments? I can feel your anger in every box you walk out to the truck — by yourself. Where are your family and friends to help you move? I did that when I was a teenager: “I’m going to pack all this MYSELF and I don’t need YOUR HELP and FUCK YOU VERY MUCH. I’m going to take armloads of all my stuff out to the truck all day and night without your help because I don’t need you!!” She saw me on the balcony and gave me that “Fuck you” look again, and I just can’t fathom why, we’ve only had three words between us. The landlord will need to repave the balcony from the venom she’s dripping behind.

I am typically grumpy and crabby but not always angry. At least I am approachable and I will laugh and smile with you. I recognize my demeanor and try to keep it tamped down so I can be socially acceptable in public while at home I fume and steam in the four corners of my room, alone. It works out pretty well. You, lady, are a steam train that cannot be stopped and no one wants to.

I should light a candle for your brokenness. I should let it be water off a seal’s back. I should ask the universe to show you a way to heal and ask it to help you let that shit go. It’s not hard, but all I got now is just, “Good luck wid dat, hating the world. That’s the stuff that gave me chest pains. Maybe someday you’ll figure out you reap what you sow.”

Isn’t All Poetry Confessional?

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, angry woman, confessional, labels, Mary Oliver, poem, Robert E. Howard, Sylvia Plath, woman


They had to call it something.  Everything has a label, has to have a label otherwise it cannot be understood?
Things cannot be as they are, they must be classified and microfisched for further review by busybodies who write the law.

I wanted an MFA tag, but that’s fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of)  
I refused to pay the price.
‘stead I carry pomegranates in my apron
I never share them because that would be truth-telling, that would be
the real deal.
Who wants to hear more sylvia plath confessionals
yet another unhappy woeman
writing names in the sand
counting down?

I would rather have been Mary Oliver in the end
some kind of smooth stone you keep in a mason jar
or a sassy fawn named for a childhood friend
the one who still carries the North star

or better,
a body carved with hieroglyphs of the sea
wrapped in a Robert E. Howard shroud, epically 

or simply

e e cummings
      free

Sleeping, Unconservatively

25 Thursday May 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, life, lightning, politics, rules, sleepless, woman

I peeled my sad, angry, frustrated clothes off and went to bed, though I still wore a layer of it on my face. It occupied some of my heart.  As I lay on my side and looked out the window I noted the orange sky.  That means weather. The kind that brings lightning. I can’t sleep when I know the lightning is coming, especially after that last storm that seemed to want to eat the Hampton roads. I was tempted to stay up all night so I could be prepared for the blast, no matter how long it would take for it to come, but I really wanted to sleep.  I chose to peel off my layers of anger, to turn over and breathe and meditate and pray and hope for relaxation to take over so I could sleep.  I chose to sleep, and I would deal with the storm, the adrenaline rush of fear that comes when a little girl sleeps in her bed and her parents crash the door… if and when it came.  Meanwhile, there’s nothing. i. can. do. about. it.  Any of it.

This morning I awoke, still wearing my angry face, sad to say.  I could feel it, stuck to me like a wet leaf but not so easily plucked off and cast aside.  Reading the news did not help.  Last night’s echoes still reverberate, that a politician assaulted a journalist who the hell knows why, and my fear that it’s only going to get worse.  More, I can’t stay quiet when I see a young woman who wants to graduate barred from the ceremony because she broke her “morality” pledge and got pregnant. I’m supposed to stay quiet when girls can’t wear braids in their hair or barred from a graduation ceremony because they’re pregnant.  Both schools have rules and mores, and both girls broke them.  The pregnant girl broke the contract she signed when she had sex outside of marriage and got pregnant. But the strength she showed in keeping her child and choosing to move forward with her life, to finish school and graduate shows a lot of backbone.  Or… maybe a lot of pressure from her parents and society?  Either way, she’s barred from graduation because she broke the morality rule, and all I can feel is sorrow for all of us.  I guess I should fall in line and feel solidarity for the rule, because if they allowed her to attend it would mean the school condones her behavior, and then cats and dogs living together.

I ruined my 5-star morality rating years ago, and I’m betting we all have some tarnish on our souls.  Here we stand punishing young people for an act as simple as wearing braids or as troubling as premarital sex which results in pregnancy.  I am an angry woman this morning because females should not be punished for wearing braids, or for carrying a child.  I am in no way a pro-life person, because, you know, I hate babies and life and I just want to sin and fuck and eat embryos with my grits.  But I am a pro-life person in that I can’t stand seeing injustice, even though they signed a contract.  The contracts and handbook rules that regulate dress code and morality are in place to keep young people in line, and boy do they need keeping in line, what with all the things they’re privy to on social media and lack of guidance from home.  I get it.  But the angry woman of me feels that black girls banned from wearing braids and pregnant girls cannot attend graduation that they earned crosses a line and really pisses me off.  I am sad for all of us as a society.

And don’t even get me started on the politician that body-slammed a journalist for asking a question.  I feel like we’re all just losing sight of things that should matter more than offensive t-shirts, weaves, and a young woman who chose life, which is ironically what conservatives want to preserve at all costs.

It’s almost noon, and I have to decide what my diet of the day will contain.  As I write, I am playing action movies in the background.  The angry woman of me needs to hear fire power and powerful soundtracks, a catharsis for me that elevates the idea of justice because I cannot be the iron hand to wield it.  I see justice and common sense diminishing in my country.  And there’s nothing.i.can.do.about.it.

Aw shit, what do I care.  If you sign a contract, you’re bound. You fuck up, you get punished. No graduation for you.  Just like a president, I guess….

Her Footsteps Are Aflame

13 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, death, hate, heartache, history

I wonder if even the power of death will take this anger away from me on that final day?

“The evil that men do lives on, the good interred with their bones,” badly paraphrased, I feel like there will be no room left in my marrow for anything at all. When they pop me in for cremation, they’d better stand back, my hateful afterburner will kick in, a final Fuck You to humanity.

I feel like there will be no good spirit to take along with me into the next place, where ever that may be, this anger is hard to contain.  So help me, there better be no men around. Or women. Right now I feel like I want my final rest to be just that: Final. Rest. No more playing around with planting wisdom trees and dancing with supposed eternal happiness, blowing on a breeze and making nice with the universe. Keep the journey, I’ve got a date with an eternal dirt nap.  !!

###

There are no women in heaven. They are at peace when their time ends, as all living do come to an end, but only the men rise and return to god’s kingdom.  Only our knees are strong enough to kneel forever before him, our voices tireless to praise him. Our breaths are his sighs, and he is pleased with us, for there are no tired doubts in the kingdom. The misguided sinners and unbelievers were washed away in that final stroke.  There is no hunger or thirst but for his light. No tears for there are no troubles, all sinful vessels were cast out, broken. Our only desire is to love him and receive his perfect love in return.  amen.   “history is written by the victors”

Blessing Stew

30 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, blessings, bones, marrow, sin, thoughts

Hot orange sunrise peels back my eyes. Sweat soaked skin meets cool air when I pull the covers away.

I lumber from my cave, and what is this? A pile of bones heaped on the floor.  They are mine. A fine, greasy mess I left for the maid.

I cracked open my bones and let all the good stuff out, those seven deadly sins flittered about, and I tried to catch them but they slipped from my fingers.   I wanted to marinate them and make this refuse a stew.  What better way to heal an Angry wound but to sup the marrow from which it came?

Come back here, you rascals, I exclaim, putting my seven deadly sins back in their box. Naughty things, useless things, helpless things that only want a little recognition, struggling to get out, but I silence them.

Yesterday I cracked open my bones and watched the sins fly out. Last night I slept with them all.  Today I will observe, perhaps interrogate and see which goes into my pot first. When I am ready, I shall call it Blessing Stew, because you can’t have blessing without sin.

Angry, You, And Me

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, evolving, International Woman's Day, mother, peace, woman

Mom used to say, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.” Not only did that feel right, but it made a lot of sense, more sense than a lot of that other bible stuff I heard when I was a kid. But that doesn’t shut me up, now, does it?

I went to bed really early last night because I couldn’t take anything anymore. I just had it up to here with everything I saw, read, or felt. I got naked and curled up under super soft sheets and blankets and waited for the rain to come. I coached my muscles to unclench from brow to shoulder to abdomen, calves and toes. I let it all go and waited for the rain to come as the weather channel promised.  And then the booming began.

My downstairs neighbor is an angry woman. There is no rhyme or reason for her angry. I’ve tried to figure out if it happens on weekdays or weekends, Mondays, Fridays, Wednesdays. There seems to be no rhythm to it, so I just have to go along with it. When she’s home she stands out in the courtyard and yells at her workers on the phone. Sometimes she bangs on the neighbor’s door to come over and drink, but he doesn’t live here anymore.  Meanwhile, I sit in my home, table by the window and door, reading or typing quietly in the dark when suddenly the whole front of my apartment BOOMS and vibrates because she’s home and slams the door, murdering her life.  I jump because I startle easy.  Sometimes I get annoyed and sometimes I ignore it.  On the advice of a friend I slam a pillow down on the floor to let my aggravation out, and it helps. Sometimes.

Last night I needed refuge, but all I could hear was her slamming and banging of things, and the actual stomping of her feet across the floor. You know that’s gotta be loud when *I* can hear it.  You know when you’re angry you thrust things down or away with a vengeance?  Every footstep smites your foe, every door slam is a guillotine death to your enemy?  Oh, I know that door slam. It’s what you do when you can’t kill with your bare hands and need to get away with it.  I’m glad she lives alone, no children or spouse or pets to abuse. She kills her pain in other ways. I only wish I didn’t have to bear it.  But then I chose not to bear it anymore, last night, and I let her anger go. I let her slamming and banging go because it has no place in bed with me.  The sky turned orange and I knew the rain was coming.

This morning we seemed to have awoken at the same time, early. I felt an extra sense of gratitude because the sky was gray and it was raining. I lit candles and got to work.  The wind was surprising, like a mini-hurricane, and it scared me a little, but the power didn’t go out. And then her front door slammed, twice, like she didn’t kill her life hard enough the first time.  I watched her go out to her car so I  said, barefoot from the balcony,  “Hey! Have a nice day!” in my most sarcastic way but she didn’t hear me. I am ready to get into it with her, and I won’t miss her when she’s gone, as I know she’s just here waiting for her apartment to be repaired from the hurricane so she can live on the top floor once again. I am angry, now and so is she.

If I was any kind of woman, mature, on this day, the International Day of the Woman, if I was any kind of decent, I would reach out and offer friendship.  I know what it’s like to be an angry woman. To feel like you’re a fake in the face of everything, wanting to kill and break everything, to feel the satisfaction of glasses shattering on the wall. Oh the satisfaction.  Murder is illegal but slamming doors and getting drunk and being cruel is just a side effect, deal with it.  But I can’t offer friendship to a person that I know is toxic, and she’s not ready to breathe.  I feel sorry for her as often as I feel frustrated with her intrusion on my peace.  But then… I let her intrude on my peace.

On this International Day of the Woman I examine many things.  This morning, it is how I deal with an angry woman who lives downstairs who sometimes makes me annoyed.  Mom said if I don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, and although I agree with her, I also feel I have to share how anger makes me feel. I wonder if it will make a difference.

BOLO for Conflict. Calling Wisdom In for Backup.

02 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

angry woman, Baltimore County, Choose, control, I see you, police brutality, teenager, Why I Marched

Had to get up. Had to walk away. It broke me apart and hurt in my mother bones. I became the Angry one again. The little girl of me spoke her victim words:  “Someone. Help. Please Make It Stop!”

So here it is. He’s an unarmed black 16-year-old trying to stop somebody else’s cat fight at school. The cops roll in. He sits on the curb away from commotion. SITS on the curb crying. And you come and assault him after he wouldn’t put his hands behind his back to be cuffed for trying to break up a fight.  You put your body on top of his frightened body and proceeded to hit him.  When that didn’t work, your partner dove in and hit him some more, now two of you have him pinned, bystanders filming, asking why are you [hitting an unarmed teen?] I was afraid of what was to come.  I remembered the other deaths I didn’t want to see, vowing to protect my fragile insides from a death I couldn’t prevent, some other crime that’s just so easy to click off the screen and avoid.  I was so afraid that boy or the bystanders were going to get shot, and all I could think was he’s somebody’s child, please make it stop, feeling sick, angry, and shaking.  It happened last Wednesday, heard about it today, and now I’m wondering what to do with this Anger.  Then the other words came, the ones that the lawful people say: “Well maybe he shouldn’t have gotten involved; shouldn’t have resisted arrest so it didn’t have to escalate; too bad he has emotional issues and didn’t understand, but the law is the law, I mean, they weren’t hitting him that hard after all; they have a job to do, and this is just more anti-cop propaganda; sweet baby Jesus deliver America from the carnage.”

So now I get to choose not to get in my car and drive up to the Baltimore County PD and ask the officer at the front desk if he had a really bad day last Wednesday and dump bales and bales and bales of my hateful words in the hallway, plaster them all over the walls for the assault committed on a teenager and get arrested so I could spit on them and ask “How’d you like me to hit YOUR kids?”  Now I get to choose not to call the desk or spam their Twitter with RAGE. How COULD YOU?  Now I get to see what kind of woman I am, right now, who feels that no tear, no candle, no word makes a difference. It’s all a waste of time. The teenager should have been a man and let them take him in peacefully and work it all out down at the station.  Why let it bother me? Shrug. Click.

I’m writing in the dark because I just can’t bring myself to light a candle for justice. For peace. For wisdom.  I can choose to stay in the dark where it’s safe to fume and cry, to grind my teeth…or stand up and find a better way.  Now I get to choose what kind of woman I want to be, to seek justice and peace with words along with action.  And sometimes it is so. damned. hard.

A little time has passed where I could collect myself, and I would like to end this progression of thoughts this way:  Anyone who has been the victim of a person who was violently out of control, as I have been, will understand why it is not okay that these officers allowed their emotions to escalate into losing control of themselves. They couldn’t control a terrified teenager, they got angry and hit him repeatedly, which is the act of someone out of control. Their actions are under review, and this evening I will meditate on what kind of positive force I can be for everyone.

Tempering the Angry Woman

30 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, faith, politics, social media

Taking some time this morning to examine what it means to be a woman who has an opinion and marched for many things, a/k/a hysterical snowflake.   Meanwhile my son is growing stronger by the day, I am so proud of him and the bonds he shares with his grandparents.  His grandma is in surgery today to get rid of some things that are keeping her from being a healthy, thriving woman, and my candle will burn for her all day.  This morning I changed my Facebook background to a sunset that looks like something Hollywood produced, but no, there it was, just a simple snap on my phone as I meandered on a sandbar.  How could I (we) have been given that holy moment? Who else saw it, and what did they feel?

This morning I am examining how much time I need to give to support the opposition, because I know this will not be a sprint but a marathon.  Social media really beat me down. I hit a wall, and I am only just recently getting my feet under me again.  Proof that balance is necessary in EVERYTHING.  Phone calls, post cards, and marching is easy, when you think about why an immigrant will risk it all to find hope in any other country but their own.  I think about people who refuse to vote or get involved in politics because it’s against their religious beliefs or plays no part in their moral compass.  I’m trying to work around the sadness and frustration that our taxes support their way of life without their kicking in a little something.

This morning I think about the dress I wore for my first holy communion. I looked like a little bride smiling next to Father Jim.  I went to the school my parents chose for me and did what I was told.  It was just what I was supposed to be doing, right?   I remember what I learned in science class, what the earth tells us about the ground we live on and the atmosphere that protects us. It wasn’t until I was older that I began to question the politics of religion, that faith and science struggle to co-exist.  Looking back, if my parents gave me a chance to choose being Catholic over being a woman, I doubt I would have chosen what they wanted.  No wonder we become brides and grooms of the church when we are young, before we can make an informed decision.

This morning I think about the deluge of news from media that gets caught between reporting facts and keeping their subscribers/viewers.  Headlines attract viewers which could attract interest in their advertisers. I invest a lot of energy while reading the news in keeping a centered view of things, and reading articles from left, right, and all the above.  It takes a lot of time, and I am beginning to feel like I need to clamp down on the amount of time I will give the news.

This morning I thought about the angry woman of me. I make room for the anger because it’s how I feel, but I try not to let it dictate how I will treat others and what the rest of my day will be.  The angry woman of me is sad because of the nightmares I had, waking me up crying out “NO!”  She sees women reposting Facebook memes, knowing how easy it is to cut and paste, but where are their own, original thoughts?  The angry woman of me watches Facebook friends complain about how awful their FB page has become, how wonderfully responsible they make themselves seem to be while they overlook the mess they made in their own lives.

This morning, the angry woman needs to take a hot shower and step back from social media for a while.  My phone calls are done for the day. Something good is out there, and I really, really need to get some of that inside of me. And then a friend posts a still from the original “Planet of the Apes,” and I think my day’s agenda has changed.  *sigh*

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