the workshop (berkeley, ca)
I am here to empower you
people of color,
dis-enabled physically challenged members,
community-based proactive, involvement-oriented mentorship
advocates,
ex-substance-abused brethren:
let us pray to a god as you envision him/her.
when i began this personal growth workshop,
after earning my sharing certificate from new whole healing college,
i was attempting to disappear my own guilty whiteness,
having suddenly experienced a re-birthing of
my role in the rainbow network,
but i couldn't get past a wall of long-repressed
attitudinal doctrines.
so when i started
running naked down telegraph avenue, wang dangle
--or excuse me--
"positive male loving attribute" swinging to and fro in a brisk
bay breeze,
i suddenly escaped the growth inhibitions that
had occasionally driven me to vote republican.
one morning i ran into a woman who had just joined
a clothing-optional collective, and her gigantic boobs
--or excuse me--
"hypermammiferous empowerments" bounced to and fro in a brisk
bay breeze,
and we cross-related our mutual belief in the
liberationist esthetics of amorous fufillment.
twelve steps later, we were beneficially sharing
a large cappucino in a worker-owned cafe,
and she invited me to her flat for an impromptu
interpersonal development workshop.
when we arrived, her roomate joined us in a
study of natural sensory responses, and our
cries of discovery and enlightenment
even drowned out a cassette recording of the desperate cries
of endangered fauna in an old-growth redwood forest,
such were their amplitude.
and that's how i started as a workshop facilitator.