The Return of The Prince

And now,
behold,
the return of the Prince
with the sword,
and the key,
and the steed,
and the robe of illusion.
I have walked beside you
into the mud and muck
waiting
oh, waiting for you to lift me
and let me ride beside you.
But that was a dream,
a fool’s dream,
a little girl’s dream
lost
on deaf ears.
You are not a knight,
but a worm
and I am not a Princess,
but the ground
you slithered through
night after night.
So here we are
in the forest,
you balding,
and older,
me,
paler in color,
the rose of my cheek
fading,
my lithe form
rounder,
and softer.
My eyes tired
with age.
Why did you ever come at all?
You said,
“let down your hair.”
And I did.
You said,
“give me your heart.”
And I did.
You said,
“Let me see you naked.”
And I did.

The Gingerbread Men

The gingerbread men come
one by one
tumbling madly
dream after dream
lipsticked and stone faced
into my bed.
Their short stocky arms
pull at my flannel,
rip buttons off
egos.
I see their wide mouths,
their red wide mouths,
sucking at my flesh,
pulling limb from limb,
biting my neck,
seeking revenge for Christmases past.
Now it is my turn
to feel what it feels like
to be eaten alive.
One bites my neck
and red icing oozes out.
Legs.
Toes.
Hands.
Arms.
Gone.
It is all gone.
And I am not dead
yet.
Out my window,
the moon
no longer a wife,
slips like a ghost
behind the branches,
too afraid to watch.
Come morning
there will be nothing,
not even a crumb.

Time To Be Free

It is time to get quiet now.
Time to get still.
I have been up for almost two hours,
picking up clothes,
putting away dishes,
and paying bills.
I have run from room to room
calling and faxing
and vacuuming.
I have eaten crackers to calm my stomach
and peppermint tea
to soothe what the antibiotics have destroyed.
I have checked email,
and cancelled appointments,
and fed the dog.
And I have done all of this with incredible ease
as if I were an octopus reaching my
tentacles into every room of the house,
and into every part of my existence.
It is easy to do things.
Things don’t matter.
And yet they must be done
in order to live in this world.
The problem is
I want to do more than things.
I want to walk in the woods
and smell the pines,
and hear the sound of leaves crunching
beneath my feet.
I want to lie on the grass
and dream of clouds
and let my mind wander
into plays and songs yet to be written.
I want to taste hot chocolate
And pecan pie
And leave my worry behind.
I want to be free.

Absolute Grey

Today is so grey
It feels like I am dreaming
and haven’t awoken yet.
Everywhere I look
there are cars
pulling in to parking spots.
Rushing.
Trying to get through with Christmas
in time for Christmas.
At my home,
my decorated tree
sits in the corner with no presents underneath it’s branches.
It looks like a Southern belle,
dressed in her finest ball gown,
lifting her skirt to show off her bare ankles.
It’s shocking.
And yet,
I don’t mind.
There is a stillness here.
A quiet.
My headphones rest in the paisley chair
across from me.
My tea cup
sits at my feet
still full of green tea.
It is all so still,
it is as if we had all been frozen
into a Christmas memory,
one that Rockwell would never paint.

Kodak Moment

Pretend
the photograph
is the future
and there is nothing
looking back at you.
No toilet overflowing.
No underwear on the floor.
Birds fly like elevators up five floors
smack into windows,
then careen backwards
into hospital casseroles
where they are served to unsuspecting patrons.
A moment.
Frozen in space.
Black chips on the table.
The way your lover looks at you
before the apple falls.
Hands holding dishes and spoons.
Pumpkins smashed on sidewalks.
What if there were nothing in the frame
but emptiness?
What then?

Patch and Trouble

Patch died last night.
Hit by a car.
When I got the call I ran down
and saw her standing in the grass by the road,
visibly shaken.
Trouble was near her.
They had known each other for over ten years,
run off together
for hours at a time.
Run through mud and leaves and limbs
and hills.
Terrorized squirrels and neighborhood cats
like a couple of Southern teenagers.
Every morning at 5 a.m. he would wake me,
run across the backyard to the house next door,
and stand there barking and crying till they let her out.
Then they would take off together and come home in the evening
by five o’clock.
It was like that for years.
Gone from morning till night,
even later in the summer
when the sun hung around.
All the kids in the neighborhood who saw them
said they were in love,
and that they were married.
In a way,
they were more married that most couples I know.
For Trouble, there was never anyone else
but Patch.
So when Patch died last night at the vets,
I wondered if Trouble knew.
I wondered if somehow when he saw her being picked up
and driven away in the back of the Subaru
he knew it would be the last time
he would ever see her again.

The Power of Pine

Christmas came to me
with broken dreams and branches.
A three dollar tree
made beautiful with ornaments from my past.

New Again

The truth is
I don’t want to write.
I have bored myself silly.
I am tired of my problems and your problems
and all the problems in the world.
I’m tired of hearing about the war in Iraq,
and the AIDS epidemic,
and another sex scandal
by some politician that everyone knew was gay anyway.
What does it matter anymore?
How many more lives will be lost today?
One hundred?
Two hundred?
Is it me or has everything become too rote?
There are no surprises.
Cell phones have taken away spontaneity.
Any new “news” in the world
reaches us within seconds of it happening.
The squirrel in my backyard
runs from fence post to fence post
and knows none of what I know,
yet seems far more content.
Somewhere,
all of it,
and I do mean all of it,
has gotten old.
Even the holidays.
Christmas
means hanging up the same old decorations,
getting out the same box of Christmas cards
and sending them to the same people
year after Yuletide year.
All of it has left me feeling empty.
I don’t feel Christmassy,
even though every mailbox, street lamp
and commercial is telling me to.
I have drunk Eggnog,
eaten peppermint candy,
and gone to the mall to see Santa,
but I feel nothing.
It is always the same.
I wish someone would invent something new.
Santa has a weird twin brother
who takes away gifts
or there’s an entirely new Saint we discover.
A hidden Saint.,
one who brings world peace
or ends poverty.
I don’t know.
None of the old things are working for me.
I am smothered in tinsel,
and fruitcake,
and cherry pie,
and pine needles.
My stockings are hung up with care,
but there’s nothing I want,
unless someone could give me a gift
to make me feel new again.

In The Pig and The Blue

In the woods
I have wandered,
in the pig
and the blue
and the small Queen
Ferry.
So much has happened.
I can never say.
Look,
gather the dust
around you.
Put your head out the window
and feel the sun on your lips.
Taste the sea.
I have crossed that bridge
in all modicums of daylight.
Each morning is different.
Coming home
I saw the pinkest sky
as if the world were on fire.

Speed Poem

How fast can you write a poem
And let it flow
And let it rock
And forget about the words
And the tones
And the sunsets falling over the hill on
those cold winter nights
Just let the words come
Like breath
Like the deep birth of moons
And scorpions
And forget about the hours
And the moments
And the little man in the corner
writing down names
and notes on your life.
Just write
Write fast and hard
Like the hawk swooping down
To catch the squirrel
Then standing motionless over his catch
Refusing to move
Even when the lights of an old Volvo
Are shined on him.
Even when people point
And whisper
And stare.
Be
The poem
The words
The shadows of light
On the green of the hill.
Forget
What it feels like to feel
To taste
To touch
Just be the vessel
And let whatever comes
Come.
How fast can you write a poem.
Faster than you thought
You could.

Blueberry Girls

To break the ice,
we buy her tamales
and I play ping-pong with him
before I leave him at the JCC
just like they left me at camp
when I was seven years old.
I always hated camp.
I hated the counselors,
and the kids,
and the food,
and the rules.
I hated the secret sign language the girls used
during “quiet time’
when they were supposed to be sleeping in their bunk beds.
I hated getting dressed when it was freezing outside.
And I hated how alone I felt
picking blueberries and wild mint
in the woods.
I rarely befriended anyone
except for the occasional
weird outcast boy-girl
who was equally miserable.
Together we would talk about the other kids
and all the things we hated about them.
But the truth is,
if either one of us had ever been accepted by the “in” kids
we would have dumped each other
faster than the fake mashed potatoes
we threw into the trash bin
night after endless night.

Chai Chai

When I look at them
I see death.
Her frail thin body
moving from side to side
like a broken puppet.
His sore ridden body
and lost eyes
searching for something he’ll never see again.
I watch him,
trying to find the words
he used to know so effortlessly.
His mind,
is like a record player,
stuck in the same groove
playing the same stories over and over:
63 million shares of Columbia pictures
that he sold too soon,
going to Las Vegas to win a million dollars at the dice table,
how he quit college to help his sick father,
working eighty hours a week in the grocery store
before I was ever born.
singing
the Polish chai chai song
every time I pour myself a cup of tea.
It is always the same.
Twenty-four hours a day.

Tomato

Last night
in the pot
I ran
into the hole
into the yellow.
The smoke house thoughts
attached beyond beauty
like a rock.
Can
you believe it.
Certainty is the lie.
Remember
the truth changes
like cheese
left out on the kitchen table.
One day I bleed silver
like a sardine,
the next
the dragon takes me.
All of this pain is an envelope
I should have licked closed.
It’s all the same.
My head.
Your mother.
My body.
When a man sits down
to save his tomato,
run.

What Remains

I am sitting in the small yellow room
looking out the window.
The broken fence leans against the good one.
The brick outdoor fireplace,
built eighty years ago
sits stoically in the ground.
I imagine all of the steaks and ribs
and chickens that have been cooked on it over the years.
It holds stories,
of backyard parties,
wakes,
Fourth of July’s,
affairs,
divorces,
and births.
I imagine the backyard full of black men and women
dressed in their Sunday best,
laughing and playing the blues.
White dresses blowing in the breeze,
Easter hats of pink and blue,
the squirrels darting about eating leftover
crumbs of corncakes and sweet potato pie.
I see an old man sitting on the back porch
playing his harmonica,
drinking Wild Turkey,
yellowed eyes and fingernails,
knowing what he has built
will remain
even after he is gone.

Wonton Soup

Today
at the Chinese restaurant,
I watched
my mother try to eat
Wonton soup.
I watched her hand tremble
and shake the clear broth
as if she were in an earthquake,
or on a boat being tossed about in a storm.
She looked like she was ninety,
not seventy two.

One Week

They feed him turkey,
and ribs,
and cheese,
even when I ask them not to.
They refuse to bathe,
or walk,
or look in the refrigerator for roast beef
and bread.
They would rather call
and complain
and tell me there is nothing to eat in the house.
Lentils and rice are no good.
Nor is kale,
or anything of the sea.
Only animals
with warm blood
seem to be on the menu.
My father is convinced protein
can only come from one source.
So dinner is a fight,
and lunch is a fight,
and breakfast is a fight.
I cannot be the good daughter.
I cannot cook for them,
and clean up after them,
and bring them two dollar bar-b-que sandwiches on Sunday.
I need them to live somewhere else,
like Tucson, or Mexico.
Somewhere warm where I can walk on the beach with them,
cut up papaya for them,
bring them flowers,
and then gripe about the job some other poor sap is doing with them.
I am tired of being told “how awful I am.”
I am tired of being compared to my sister.
I am tired
and they have only been here
one week.

A Reprieve

I am looking for a reprieve,
a respite,
Somewhere to escape the chaos
of them.
My life is trips to the JCC,
poker days,
senior fitness morning,
and aqua for arthritis.
I am trying to be the good daughter,
trying to cook their meals,
and do their laundry,
but they are an uphill battle
impossible to climb.
My father gripes when I ask him to help
with any cleaning at all.
My mother walks down the hall
barking at her own shadow
convinced she hasn’t taken her pills
when she has.
My mind is a maze of “what if’s?”
What if they could live independently with a maid
and someone coming by to give them medicines?
Would that be cheaper than assisted living?
Or is it completely out of reach?
And in another year?
My father is worsening,
unable to find my house when it is only three blocks away.
They are a terrifying proposition.
Everything I do is met with gripery.
So now I am at a coffee house
just trying to breathe,
just trying to feel
whatever it is I used to feel
before they arrived.

Without Within

There is so much less
to fight against when they are here.
My mind
is free of the treadmill
of worry and love.
Night after night
there is only
the two of them.
How much easier
it is
to have insanity with you
than inside you.

Into The Lion's Den

They are coming tomorrow,
coming like the tornado that hit North Carolina.
The only difference is those people had no warning.
I, on the other hand,
have had over a week’s notice,
but I still have no where to hide.
Tonight, I am so nervous
trying to prepare for the unexpected and the inevitable.
The griping of my father as he opens the refrigerator looking for meat.
The fussing over showers and changing shirts.
My mother
falling into tubs
and down hallways
wandering off in search of magic dragons.
Her incessant questions of my marital status.
Her lack of boundaries
in conversation
if I should take her out in public.
It feels like a crazy circus has come to town.
But there is no trapeze
and no Fat Lady,
just the tight rope
I must walk across
day after day
as I try not to fall
into the lion’s den
below.

The Incubus

comes on Tuesday
to dine with me on brie and bread.
Not even a letter from my ex-wife
could free me from my engagement.
I can feel doom
sailboating down upon me
when the doorbell rings.
The incubus reads to me from the New Yorker
while I sit at the piano
playing Brahms.
It is always the same discussion.
My bellybutton propagandized
like a clock that never stops.
I weigh in on
the library,
the cathedrals,
CBGB’s,
the poem the chicken couldn’t use.
We are most decent
sometimes
he and I,
locked in our green room
waiting
to begin.

What I Want

Is the rush of caffeine
in my bones
The sweet dark smoky flavor
down my throat.
The clear headed alertness that comes
when I give in
to the cup.
What I want,
is his cock
inside me.
The deep thrusting
of flesh into flesh.
The smell of sex
on my skin.
The wet
marks of passion on my bed.
The screams of orgasm.
The muted whispers that follow.
What I want
is to know
that I am more than my sadness,
more than my poems,
more than my pathetic childhood.
What I want
is to taste all of me,
to know all of me,
to revel in my me,
to let myself
free
to explore.
Everything.

The Sun Dog

The sun never came,
like I promised the dog,
and we both sat
in the house
waiting.
The long walk postponed
like so many before.
Hopes dashed
on leashes and biscuits.
Now
the light fades so early.
He is on his bed
stretched long
staring at me
with guilt inducing brown eyes.
Winter is here
and once more
I am left waiting
a liar.

Going To Berkeley

Was like going to the Disneyland of the Yuppies.
Blocks of restaurants
with Chinese, Thai, Indian and
Burmese food.
Children wearing a cacophony of colors,
mismatched so perfectly
by their mothers as to be hip.
Intellectuals dining on coconut rice
and discussing world peace with prophetic clarity.
The chai drinking caffeine addict
wearing corduroy and carrying a hemp tote
for his Macintosh.
Sandals and jeans.
Braids and mochas.
Women carrying yoga mats
and nibbling seaweed jerky.
The parade of Spanish nannies
walking up and down the streets
pushing little blonde haired tots in strollers.
Not a pro ‘W’ sign could be found.
Anywhere.
It almost made me miss Nashville.
It almost made me feel sorry for George W.
Almost.

Haunted Theatre

I am glad she is still alive.
She hadn’t written in days
and I had begun to imagine the worst.
Looking at the photo of them,
I imagined he had killed her,
stuffed her in to a box,
and driven off to Utah
or some other remote state.
I imagined her lifeless body,
her heavy lifeless body,
shoved into a trunk,
wrapped in burlap
and tossed into the Harpeth River
where it would float downstream
until a jet skier found her.
It is like that with me.
I always imagine the worse.
My brain is a constant stream of terrifying scenarios.
Last night,
when my boyfriend didn’t call
twenty minutes after yoga class ended,
I was sure he had been in a car wreck.
I was sure the next call would be from the police
telling me to come identify the body.
I imagined how he would look on the table,
his body bruised, one eye missing,
mouth frozen like a dead sea bass
trying to suck in one last breath of air.
I imagined what I would have to say to his mother.
That didn’t turn out so good either.
All these thoughts make me wonder if I am the illegitimate daughter of Stephen King.
But then I remember
my mother.
She was always sitting on that turquoise ottoman
in the den
reading headlines out loud to us.
This one was murdered.
That one was stabbed.
Another was poisoned.
A man was beheaded and found in his apartment four days later
after his cat’s constant meows alerted the neighbors.
It never stopped.
Night after night.
Looking back at it,
I think she enjoyed scaring me,
like she were some kind of weird female Vincent Price
and we were prisoners in her 5,000 square foot Haunted Theatre.
I wish she had read me the weather instead.

Halloween Promise

The jack-o-lanterns glow.
The children scream.
Costumes
of witches
and poodles
and pirates.
Fathers dressed like mothers.
Mothers snapping photos.
All
in the neighborhood where every body goes.
There were thousands of us.
Hundreds of bags of candy handed out.
As I stood there,
eating my Kit-Kat and a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup,
I decided
I will trick or treat
till I am ninety.

Happiness Is

Today I touched bottom,
or what I perceived as bottom.
Perhaps it’s not bottom at all.
Perhaps it’s only my imagination
telling me it’s bottom.
I tell myself I am unhappy.
But am I?
Perhaps I’m just telling myself that.
Maybe I’m incredibly happy
but don’t realize I’m happy.
Maybe I don’t know what happy is.
No,
that can’t be true.
Can it?
I know when I’m happy.
Don’t I?
Let’s see,
I’m happy when I’m writing.
I’m happy when I’m watching leaves fall in the backyard.
I’m happy when the hot water hits my back in the shower.
I’m happy walking through the park with my dog
and watching him chase squirrels.
I’m happy eating a giant brownie
(although I feel sick afterwards).
I’m happy going for drives in the country.
I’m happy singing my songs and eating pasta in Italy.
Yes,
I know when I’m happy.
And I’m unhappy.
Definitely.

Plank By Plank

They come
when you’re invisible,
pennies by the thousands,
the backseat rat,
the blinking eye,
listening.
The man is you,
my boy.
It’s all the same.
The cold darkness
that says
you are not from my country.
I want to go back
plank by plank
and discover the truth.
I want to go back to Lublin
and taste the strudel my father ate.
Another Jew
passing through.

Lost Life

I wonder what happened in their bedroom
that led to it.
Did he not touch her enough?
Did he touch her too much?
Did he fall asleep with the t.v. on
and snore until she thought she would have to get a shovel
and beat him silent?
Did she listen to one too many insults from him
about her mother?
Did he come into the kitchen
and criticize her for not heating up the pan
before she poured the oil in?
Did he leave the toilet seat up in the dark
for her to fall into?
Or was it his pile of clothes
ever growing in the corner,
that finally caused her to snap?
Was it that she wanted children
and he didn’t?
Or was it the way he belched without regard for her presence?
Maybe it was something much simpler than that.
Maybe she just stopped loving him,
just stopped wanting to see him come up the driveway,
just stopped thinking about him during the day
while she stood in the kitchen drinking her coffee.
The spark had dimmed.
Vanished.
Smoldered to nothing.
And years go by
bleeding.
One day
it’s not even a fish anymore.

The Fallen

Wait.
Did you see it?
It has fallen.
It is on the ground
waiting
for you to pick it up.
Don’t pretend you don’t see it
when you know you do.
It is there,
under the boots and shoes,
under the dirt and rain.
Waiting.
Holding on to its form
like a vase
holding flowers.
If you pick it up now,
you can still keep it,
still use it,
still pretend it never fell at all.

Thought of The Day

There are so many people
I don’t want
to have sex with
in this world.

Just Like That

This time I got him out.
Not because I was kind or pleading
or wanted to help him.
This time I went out there like I was going to kill
the little Mother Fucker
and he knew it.
He had been there all day and all night,
hopping on the window ledge
and on my books and on the rug in the garage.
Hopping and pooping.
Chirping and pooping.
Pooping and pooping.
When I went out there to catch him and set him free,
he fluttered and hopped out of my reach.
I worried about him.
What would he do for food?
For water?
I thought he might die in there
if he didn’t get out soon.
He was such a moron.
It’s no wonder they came up with the term “bird brain”.
This morning he was facing the right direction to get out,
but still wouldn’t go.
Now I was mad.
What more did he need?
All that chirping and pooping.
I screamed at him “Go”
but he wouldn’t.
It was as if he didn’t want to go.
Well, I had had enough.
I was not going to spend another day worrying
about him.
So I stormed out the back door and into the garage
like I was going to catch him and cook him for lunch.
And he left.
Just like that.

Dentyne Smile

There is something wrong with me.
I admit it.
I am not meant for this world.
Nothing about this world and me
seem to work together.
For example,
right now I am sitting on the couch
bleaching my teeth with Crest Whitestrips.
I have never used them before
and I doubt I will ever use them again.
The first two strips I ruined when I threw them into the trash and kept the plastic backing instead.
I tried to fit the plastic into my mouth
before I realized it wasn’t working.
Then I opened two more packets and put the two thin strips into my mouth.
They don’t press on easily
like they say they do on t.v.
They slide around in your mouth
creating a messy barrier of saliva and hydrogen peroxide foam.
They feel like they are going to fall off at any minute.
I can’t imagine putting them on like they say in the instructions and then
“Hopping into the shower”,
or “commuting to work”.
I can’t even open my mouth without drool running down my chin
much less use a turn signal.
Another thing I don’t like is that they don’t go all the way around.
Now the back half of my teeth will be yellower than the front half.
And I swear they are giving me a headache.
Probably all the saccharin I am swallowing.
Oh well, what' s a little cancer in order to have white teeth?
It’s weird,
I remember when people chewed Dentyne
and thought they were doing something to whiten their teeth.
Now everything is so much more intense.
I never even used to worry about how white my teeth were.
Then I started noticing everyone on t.v. and in magazines
had super white teeth.
Not just naturally white,
but glowingly bright white.
According to my dental hygienist,
your teeth are supposed to match the whites of your eyes.
Something no one had ever told me before
until teeth bleaching came into the dentist’s office
and became part of our lingo,
just like internet,
video dating,
fast food,
cell phones,
and Utube.
I don’t know about any one else,
but I liked it better before
when we chewed Dentyne and ate tic-tacs
and thought that was enough.

Annie's Song

I want to stop and say
tomorrow,
tomorrow,
as if tomorrow will be different.
But I have lost too many todays
waiting for tomorrow
and now I have run out.
Now I must say
today.
Today.
Today.

A House Is Not A Museum

It is too clean and quiet in the house now,
as if we had lost a child.
There is an emptiness.
A sadness.
A loneliness
stretching down the hall and into the bedrooms.
Everything is so in its place
it feels as if no one actually lives here.
I walk through the house like I am walking through a museum.
On the wall in the den hangs the “Otterson”,
a picture of a dark haired woman
looking too much like me to be a coincidence.
In the dining room the Cezanne pen and ink
looks back at me accusingly as I straighten the frame.
The drum set,
silent as ever,
waits in the living room,
sticks perfectly placed.
The bathroom tile sparkles
and the toilets look more like 1950’s art deco pieces
than functioning fixtures.
The white towels, newly washed and folded,
smell of lavender,
and look so perfect that I am scared
to ever use them again.
Outside,
in the garden,
freshly planted pansies stand a little too erect to be natural,
making one wonder if they might melt in the sun.
It is all so perfect I keep waiting for some middle-aged curator
to come and throw me out,
and tell me that the house is closed
and to come back tomorrow
after nine.

Let Them Come

Now is not the time to lie down and die,
to cling to the pillow of doubt
and rest my head upon its cover.
No,
now is the time to stand strong,
to stand up to those
who would
leave me to wander through the forest of fear
on my own.
Well, I say
let them come with their accusations.
Let them come with their demands.
Let them breathe their fiery lies upon my neck.
I will not back down.
I will not cower
and cover myself in the dark.
They who think they have me,
have me not!
I am stronger than I pretend.
My meekness is but a shield to protect the warrior’s heart
that beats beneath my skin.
I will never give up the fight.
So let them come.
Let them come.
And when morning’s first light arrives and the dust has settled,
the battlefield will be littered with the bodies of their men
while I will remain unscathed.
I will stand victoriously on the hill,
verdict in my hand,
shouting,
“Be gone
liars and thieves,
for you have met your match.
You have met the truth
and the truth can never be stopped
no matter how soft the voice who utters it. “

The Lost Acorn

I see them
with their heads down
and their tails up
gathering nuts for the winter.
They are always working,
always moving,
hopping with purpose
from one branch to another.
There is no time to stop
and sit,
and worry.
No time to reflect
the lost acorn,
or stolen twig.
Each day is another day
of preparation for
what
is to come.
Each day
is another chance
to survive.

Human Bondage

I want to be free of my own Human Bondage,
the bondage of self and of mind and of body.
The pain in my leg and back and neck.
The dark worry that clouds my brain and fills my dreams with demons
and watercolor mansions that melt on the page.
I feel the hunger for meaning in a meaningless world.
Hours filled with errands and bills and thoughts of tomorrow.
The endless treadmill that has become life,
the one that runs and runs and runs while I struggle to keep ahead.
It used to be enough just to be,
or so I thought,
to sit beneath the trees and watch the leaves fall,
to hear the birds chirp their warning,
to feel the sun bake my toes brown.
Now I am in the middle of life,
my childhood vanished before me.
The fear of wrinkles and old age are ever closer.
I see the aged differently now.
I see them sitting and waiting for death,
in hallways and in wheelchairs,
the light from their eyes growing dimmer.
I see them breathing.
But for what?
Even they do not know.
I see it all slipping away
like the monkey bars I reached for
when I was five.
I want to believe that there is a reason,
that all of this matters,
but each day I grow less sure.

Confessions

I don’t know if anyone is honest in this world.
I think of
the gunman
on the run
robbing liquor stores
to feed his habit.
Or the young New York businessman
promoting the merits of his company
when he knows it is destined to fail.
Then there’s the insurance company vowing to make an offer
when they have no intention to do so
and are only waiting for the statute of limitations to run out.
Or the lawyer,
offering to “negotiate” for free as a favor.
Or the doctor,
stealing from her parents’ bank accounts,
and calling it a loan.
What about the songwriter,
writing songs about coffee and cigarettes
when she’s never smoked
or ever tasted coffee.
All are dishonest.
To differentiate and say one is worse than the other
would only be justification.
Dishonesty is dishonesty right?
But who has the right to point a finger at another?
Who can say they’re honest?
Who can say they’ve never eaten out of the bin
at the health food store?
Or said yes
to a lover when they wanted to say no?
Who can say they are always true to themselves,
in every circumstance,
no matter what they might lose?
For me,
it isn’t the twenty five cent coupon I “illegally” used today,
or the fact that I bought organic onions and said they were conventional,
it’s the dirty feeling I get in my soul
after I’ve done it.
It’s knowing I can’t trust myself.

Ambulance Chasers

I am starting to learn the difference
between the good lawyers and the bad lawyers.
The bad lawyers tell you what you want to hear.
They promise you huge sums of money.
They coddle you and tell you that the insurance company doesn’t give a damn about you
and that they won’t offer you a dime.
(unless of course, you hire them).
They scare you, but they never tell you anything about themselves
or what they’ve accomplished in the courtroom.
They offer to hop a plane,
drive you to their office,
take you to lunch,
anything short of putting you in an ambulance
and carrying you to them
so you can sign the dotted line
and they can get to work
(collecting your money for themselves).
Listening to them is like listening to George W. Bush.
Everything is good vs. evil.
Danger!
Fear!
Look out!
Code Orange!
No one knows what it’s supposed to mean
or what you’re supposed to be afraid of.
Just don’t carry water,
or wear lip gloss,
or have more than three ounces of anything liquid
in your suitcase
and you’ll be fine.
The good lawyers, on the other hand,
tell you the merits of your case.
They tell you the pros and the cons.
They let you know how the other guy is going to look at it
when you step into the courtroom.
They don’t promise you the moon.
They talk in realistic figures,
albeit less than you want to hear,
but believable.
They tell you things like,
“I’m not going to sugar coat this.”
And they ask pointed questions of you,
the kind of questions you’d be asked on the stand by your opponent.
“When did you first notice the pain?”
“How is it possible that it went away but now it’s back?”
“Couldn’t this just be degenerative disc disease?
Questions that make sense.
Questions that require a certain degree of thought.
Questions that George W. Bush would never ask.
I am so glad that in listening to our president for the last six years
I haven’t lost my ability to be able to detect the difference
between “good” vs. “evil”.
I haven’t gotten lost in a code orange colored haze
so deep that I can’t see the truth from the lies.
And for that I say,
"Thank you George W.
Thank you."

Barbie Doll

I am in pain,
day after day,
my leg screwed in to the hip joint
all wrong,
like a Barbie doll
some little girl decided to torture.
There is pain
in my low back,
like someone struck a match
and left me to burn
till there was nothing left but ash.
I think of the invalids,
the ones in hospital beds,
the ones using walkers to make their way,
the ones in wheelchairs
the ones holding canes.
I see their faces
contorted with each step
as mine has become
and I pray that I won’t end up that way.
I pray mine is only temporary,
but I don’t know.
I really don’t.
Last night
I sat on the futon
and thought about killing myself
I thought,
“If I have to be in pain like this for the rest of my life,
I would rather die”.
And yet,
it is this pain that has brought me back to myself.
It is this pain that keeps me in my body,
in a way that no therapist ever could.
It is this pain that keeps me thinking about no one else
but me.

Walking in Birmingham

I think about the blacks
walking for months in Birmingham.
Their tireless efforts,
mile after mile,
the eyes of whites on them,
the jeers,
the stares.
I think about their steadfastness,
their resilience,
their desire
to know equality,
to sit at the front of the bus
and see
what was coming.
It would have been so easy
to give up,
to lie down,
to let another year go by
and accept
the unacceptable.
But they held together,
and they believed
their day would come
and it did.
I think about them now
when I want to give up,
when I believe the road ahead
is too long
and that I won’t get there.
I think about the good shoes on my feet,
and my warm bed,
and how lucky I am
to not have to fight
the color of my skin.

In Search of The Page

I can do nothing but close the door
and leave it all behind me
in search of the page.
This afternoon
I stood in the Atlantic
and let the ocean roll across my feet.
Broken Sand dollars
not worth the coral they were made from
lay on the sand
baking in the sun.
The Pina Colada
melting
in my bottle
and down my throat,
the lizard on the leaf
hiding
from the day.
These are the images,
the moments,
I hold.
My own moments,
that no one else
has
or will ever know that
I’m having.

Out of The Rabbit Hole

Perhaps it is the amino acids I started taking,
or the crisp fall mornings,
or the butterflies gathering outside my window,
or the leaves turning bright yellow and orange.
Perhaps it is the walk I took in the woods,
or my eating salmon weekly,
or the smile the valet gave me when I walked passed him
at the Kroger supermarket.
I don’t know.
But whatever it is,
I feel better today,
as if a veil were being lifted,
as if I were Alice in Wonderland,
and I were slowly,
slowly
finding my way
out
of the rabbit hole.

Black Butterfly

The black butterfly
came to me
and landed on my white t-shirt.
He fluttered near my ear
like a lover
tickling me.
He circled round me
teasing me
with his exotic beauty.
But
when I gave in,
to reach out and touch him,
he was gone.

Nature's Bounty

I am struggling against the tide.
Struggling against the ebb and flow
of age
and dollars and aches.
The morning stiffness
that claims my low back and limbs,
the fogginess of mind
that covers me daily.
Outside the leaves are coming down.
The long brown leaves
skinny as adolescent girls
cover the black mulch.
Nature knows when to come,
when to let go her bounty
and renew.
Not me.
I hold on till the end,
till
I have no choice
but to let go
in order
to become
who I am.

Forgotten Kindness

I should have known last night
when she called me at nine o’clock
and told me that she wanted to come see the house this morning
that she was a flake.
Instead I got up at eight and spent the next two and a half hours
vacuuming, mopping, scrubbing,
washing, polishing,
and Windexing everything.
I even drove to the grocery store and bought a four dollar bunch of white daisies
for the kitchen table.
Then she had the nerve to call my machine
at ten twenty and tell me that her buyers had decided on another house
and that they weren’t coming for their ten forty-five appointment.
I couldn’t believe it.
I had been stood up.
I felt rejected.
Horribly rejected.
They hadn’t even bothered to come see my house
after I worked on it for over two hours.
I wanted to call her back
and tell her off.
I wanted to tell her the least she could do
would be to come and see the house
even if they didn’t want to buy it.
I wanted to call her bosses
and tell them she was a phony bitch.
But instead I stood there and looked at my perfectly clean house
and tried to justify how I had spent my morning.
“the tub needed scrubbing anyway.” I whispered, like a forlorn child.
But tonight I am still hurt.
What kind of person does that?
Calls someone up,
puts them out,
and then doesn’t come twenty minutes before they are due?
I am not so cynical as to believe
that business is business.
There still must be kindness and manners in this world
even if we have all forgotten.

Tom the grocer

Gives me Honey Crisp apples,
dark chocolate,
organic coffee,
and slices of red plums.
He says he wants a lover,
but what he really wants is me.

Anything But Roses

It was like a reality t.v. show
The twenty-something couple sitting at the table behind us,
talking about their future.
“I don’t want to have kids any later than thirty-six.
But first I want to travel and just be with you.
I’m not ready for motherhood.”
I almost chocked on my Lard Nar.
I threatened to stab myself in the eyeballs with my chopsticks
if I had to listen to any more of her dribble.
It was nauseating.
She had it all perfectly worked out.
Where they would be,
how they would live,
how many kids.
We could barely decide if we wanted tofu in our Lard Nar
or not,
much less decide on what we were doing for the rest of our lives.
I turned back to look at her.
She had one of those Ivory soap faces,
perfectly white
with mousey blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Her lover
was nothing more than a lap dog
agreeing to her every thought.
He was like a mirror
refusing to reflect anything but roses.
When they got outside the restaurant
he grabbed her and they kissed for over a minute.
It was one of those long slow motion kisses,
full of arching backs and bodies.
Her hair blowing in the breeze.
Mouths open and moving.
I watched as two men sitting at a nearby table stopped eating
to watch them kiss.
They couldn’t believe it either.
Neither could the couple next to them.
We all just shook our heads and
then started laughing.
It went on for so long it was absurd.
I wanted to tell the other patrons,
“that’s nothing, if you want something really ridiculous,
just listen to them talk about their plans for the future."
Then they stopped kissing and he took her by the hand and they sauntered off.
Ten to one,
five years from now they won’t even remember
each other’s names.

Diapers and Gin

Who cares
that you’ve got nothing to wear?
“Not I,”
said the little red hen
who clucked and prattled on in the sun
in search of seed for her bread.
Go tell your problems
to someone who cares.
You who nurse
and bathe and wash
and pretend that motherhood and marriage
is everything.
Now that your nipples bleed
and your hands are cracked from washing bottoms
and bottles,
how does your garden grow?
You
who said they would make
you the woman you’ve never been,
look what you’ve become.
Bedraggled,
befuddled,
a lifeless corpse walking down grocery store aisles
in search of diapers and gin.
Your body
sagging
and drained.
Your eyes
dark circles of endless nights
and tears.
Where is your smile now?
You who proclaimed motherhood your salvation,
is it still all that you thought it would be?

The Proper Doll

After I said what I wanted
I froze.
The words,
once out of my lips,
hung
like icicles
off the roof.
How dare I ask for what I want?
How dare I make a sound?
When I orgasm,
when I cry,
when I hit my hand with a hammer
and break skin.
I should lie still
and be good,
and take it all in.
Yes, daddy,
take all of it in.
Isn’t that what you taught me?
To never say a word.
To never make a sound.
To be the proper doll
lonely and neat,
waiting in closets
for you
to come.

Open To September

I am tired of riding this dead horse,
across the plains,
across the valleys,
across the rivers that sing.
You say I don’t have to.
You say put down your sword
and pick up your flute.
How easy it is for you.
There,
in your leather chair
with the wrinkled cushion,
bottle of port at your side.
I watch the smoke curl round you
like a belly dancer’s veil.
But I digress.
It’s Monday and the towels need washing
and the floor needs mopping.
Yes.
I had forgotten the diary on the kitchen table
left open
to September
catching autumn leaves
and secrets
while I sat here on my
purple futon
smiling.

Running Water

I gave the dog a bath
but neither of us feel any better.
Not the dog,
lying in the sun
glaring at me
for what I had done,
or me,
wet,
from the dog's shaking.
I thought if I gave the dog a bath
it would be one thing
I could make better,
one thing I could control.
Besides
it was 90 degrees today,
the last hot day of summer,
before fall comes
and there aren’t any more warm days
to wash the dog.
I stood there with the water
running,
wetting and scrubbing the dog,
trying to get the dirt out,
trying to make something shiny
that had become dull.
But when I turned off the hose,
everything was exactly the same,
except my shoes
were wet.

Why I Write

There is a better way to do it
than the way they did it
with all the yelling and screaming
and insanity.
It didn’t have to be like that.
Eruptions and explosions,
the calm,
the Ben-gay,
the Valium
passed out to hands like communion.
I think of them now,
locked in that house
of dog hair and filth,
the t.v. blaring,
Gigi,
the daily struggle for control
over trash duties,
toilet seats,
and dishes,
the chaos of dysfunction
screaming
for attention,
lost on three sets of ears
who can not hear their own voices
much less anyone else’s.
No wonder I sat in the backseat and stared out the window
silent.
No wonder I write.
There was never room
for one more voice.
There still isn't.

Save Me Jesus

When she calls me she speaks of Jesus
and asks me if I’ve read the Bible
and if I’m a Christian yet.
She tells me she is dying,
in her “heart of hearts”
and I believe her.
I believe some part of her knows.
Like the day I knew I should have gone right
instead of left,
smacked by a white Ford truck,
driven by a man from the hills
who didn’t know the color of the light
or what day it was.
Blood dripping from my cracked nose.
A moment’s choice changed forever.
Somewhere I knew.
Just as she knows,
she is dying.
Slowly
losing her mind,
aware enough to know she is losing it,
aware enough to ask.
I try to calm her,
to tell her she’s o.k.
but I am lying.
Isn’t that what good Christians do?

Last Call

I am a fool.
An idiot.
A sucker for the ring,
the light of the dial.
My mother calls and tells me
she’s dying.
And I,
the fool that I am,
run from room to room
like some cockroach trying to escape
the shoe.
Each time she calls,
I am her puppet
dancing to her tears.
Each time she calls,
I am scared
it could be
her last.

Born Beautiful

I am putting together the past,
one photo at a time.
My mother in her red flannel dress and black Mary Janes,
pearls around her neck,
her hair rolled under,
face scrubbed fresh
beneath the Christmas tree.
Her sisters gathered round her,
dim examples by comparison.
In each photo,
my mother is the star,
the shining light,
the one a stranger would ask about
if looking.
Her dark hair,
their mousey blonde.
Her perfect shape,
their dowdy forms.
How jealous they must have been of her.
United by ugliness,
they were a two-headed monster
determined to trip her,
determined to make her fall.
Stealing allowances,
jealous of boyfriends,
waiting under couches
to see her stolen kisses.
I have no sympathy for them.
If they wanted to be mad at someone
blame the Gods,
or DNA,
but not my mother.
It was not her fault
the fates smiled down on her
and not them.
Why should she suffer for being beautiful?
It is the same with my sister and I.
She hates me now
and probably always has.

The Great Divide

While the rich are having their five dollar coffees at Starbucks,
a car full of “lost boys” are sitting in the heat,
with their car engine running filling out an application
to work at a nearby grocery store.
They smile at me as I go in to complain about the two gray avocados I bought on Tuesday.
That about sums it up,
this dichotomy in the world.
While Bush is “on vacation” with his dad in the Hamptons,
a woman in New Orleans is still waiting for a home,
still waiting for someone to come and say, “I’m sorry.”
While most Americans are planning their weekends, and their barbeques,
and their back-to-school shopping sprees,
a woman in the Sudan is lying on the ground
left to die
after being raped by four soldiers.
While four businessmen eat a five hundred dollar lunch at The Palm,
another forty line up outside the mission
hoping for a warm meal and a bed.
I ask myself what’s wrong with this picture?
I ask myself what should I be doing?
What can I do?
I dream of standing on a corner with a poster saying Impeach Bush,
but all I would get for my time is either arrested, egged, or given a few honks
of agreement.
The tide would still keep coming.
There would still be Cheney.
I think about going to volunteer.
Join the Peace Corps.
Go down to New Orleans and build houses
but I don’t know how to build anything.
I think about what John Lennon might have said,
if he were still alive to see the world now.
I hear him in his English accent,
“It’s the government. They’re the ones telling lies. ”
Our world is collapsing before our very eyes
and we’re too spaced out on Double Mocha Lattes
to even know it.
Hell, you’ve got to be in denial
just to get out of bed in the morning.
If you thought about the reality of what’s happening
in this world,
we’d all be on Prozac.
(Oh, yeah, most of us are.)
We’re being screened at airports like felons,
while ninety percent of the cargo going on to the plane
isn’t even being x-rayed.
We’re being told we’re fighting terrorists,
when all we’re doing is killing innocent children
and creating a world in which America is more hated
than ever before.
We’re allowing our rivers and oceans to be polluted by Bush
and his oil cronies
and told it’s in our best interest
while they keep stuffing their pockets.
The FDA is in cahoots with the pharmaceutical companies.
People are popping pills and eating in their sleep.
Suicides are up.
Global warming is real,
and Iraq is in the middle of a civil war.
Meanwhile the biggest headlines in this country
are about who killed JonBenet Ramsey,
what does Tom Cruise’s baby look like,
and whether or not Oprah is having an affair with Gayle.
“Reality” t.v. is huge,
which I finally understand,
because real reality is unthinkable,
unimaginable,
impossible to contemplate.
So why not watch George Hamilton ice skate?
Better to have a latte,
and see what Pottery Barn has on sale
this week.
One day,
even the birds will refuse to land.

Yes

I am here
once again.
The eagle flies across
my window
frozen
wings outstretched.
He wants to get to work
and so do I.
Work.
What does that mean?
For so long now I thought work meant forcing,
demanding,
pushing,
the whipping of flesh.
In yoga, I push too hard.
Legs spread,
I reach forward
and feel my groin rip,
hips pop,
shoulders crack,
as if I were ripping in two.
I am in pain.
My face contorts like it were made of play-doh.
lips to one side,
eyes squinted shut.
I look around the room
to see if anyone else
looks the way I do.
The woman to my right
has her chest on the floor
and nothing but calm on her face.
Oh, yeah,
we aren't supposed to look
at anyone else.
No comparisons.
Our attention is to be on ourselves
and our breath.
Where is my breath?
I search for it,
forgetting it is always there.
I force myself to breathe slower.
In, out, in, out.
To let myself be.
To let myself feel
the wood floor beneath me.
I always think it has to be so hard.
Life.
Work.
Love.
I forget I don't have to push.
I can sit with my legs spread
and let it come to me.

Dude

It happened again.
This time it was a twenty-something guy
with a ponytail who gives colonics in Bellevue.
He stopped me on my way out of the grocery store
and asked if he could talk to me for a minute.
He had a notepad he was writing on
on the table in front of him
so I thought maybe he was doing a survey.
He shook my hand and said his name was "Thor"
or "Heat" or something like that.
He asked my name and I told him.
He said he noticed my energy in the store.
I wasn't sure if he noticed good energy or bad energy.
He didn't tell me.
He asked me what I had in my bag for him.
I told him "umeboshi plum vinegar".
He said, "cool".
I told him I eat macrobiotically.
He asked me if that was my "thing",
my "gift to the world."
I said, "no, I just like to eat that way."
He sat there looking at me with one eye going
one direction and the other going the other direction.
He was freaking me out.
Three tables down another guy was eating his dinner
watching us
like he were watching a bad reality t.v. show.
After a long pause he asked,
"Do you have a do?"
"A do?" I asked.
"No, a dude."
"A dude?"
Yes, I said, I do.
Then I laughed.
He asked me what was so funny
and I told him this was the second time today
a guy in this grocery store had come on to me.
He seemed stunned he wasn't the first.
I said goodbye and walked away.
There must be something in the air.
Either that
or I'm in heat.

Men Like You

The man who stood in line in front of me at the grocery store
hit on me.
Hit on me like it was 2 a.m.
and we were in a dark bar
and I was buying a vodka tonic.
Hit on me,
like I was at some weird singles party
that involved wife swapping and satin sheets.
It was weird.
Really weird.
First he asked me my name.
Then once I gave him my first name,
he wanted to know my last name.
Thankfully,
I didn’t give it to him.
Then he asked me what I did for a living.
When I said “writer,”
his eyes lit up
like I had just announced I wasn’t wearing
any panties and I knew of this great motel
around the corner
that offered a discount on rooms used just for the afternoon.
He asked me where I was from
and if I liked Nashville.
When I told him Houston, and I didn’t,
he asked me my top five reasons why not.
I said:
1. The drivers.
2. The food.
3. The conservative mentality.
4. The smoke.
5. The weather.
I should have said,
“Men like you”.
Then he asked me if I wanted to come join him while he ate his lunch.
I just shook my head “no”.
He went and sat down
and a few seconds later he came back and handed me his business card.
“If I ever need any painting or re-decorating.”
Right.
Next time I check out I’m going to make sure I’m standing in line
behind a woman.

The Truth

The truth is I feel alone,
lonely,
and very much forgotten.
Inside
my stomach feels
empty
yet full of
giant rocks
of sorrow.
I feel unhappy
like I have been standing on the street corner
with a cup in my hands and no one has stopped to put anything in.
I keep approaching the same people
asking them to fill it for me
like the little boy in Oliver,
“please sir, may I have some more.”
And when they leave I still feel empty.
I miss my mother,
and my father,
and talking with them
and having them understand what I am saying.
I miss my friends in Los Angeles,
and walking on the beach,
and being able to stand outside without being bitten by mosquitoes.
I miss feeling loved by a man
and having the first words that come out of his mouth
in the morning be,
“I love you.”
I miss feeling safe in this world,
(Well, I’ve never had that)
but I miss feeling like this world will be o.k.
because I don’t feel that now.
I miss feeling hopeful
like anything can happen.
I miss
my dreams
and knowing I can make them come true.
I miss me.

L.A. And Apple Pie

The South makes you slow,
like sausage gravy on a biscuit
too lazy to drip off the bread
and find the plate.
Slow,
like grits and bacon fat
turning solid in a metal can.
Your mind stops and simple tasks
like bringing in the groceries
become too difficult to manage.
It’s all that heat
day after day
baking your brain like apple pie.
It leaves you muddy and foggy.
Words come out slower
and sentences, once formed,
come out in drawls
slurred together as if the tongue
were dipped in molasses
and can’t find it’s way to the roof of the mouth.
I understand it,
but I don’t like it.
I miss the fast lane,
driving down the 10 to the 405,
rollerbladers shooting past me
on the Venice boardwalk,
girls in bikinis
that are actually skinny enough to be wearing them,
cell phones being used to cut the next big deal,
not order take-out from Hooters,
restaurants with a snooty attitude that’s deserved,
and cars that know how to turn left on a green light.

Watching The Dolphins Jump

I am leaving two weeks from today
on a jet plane to California,
my second home.
It isn’t the air that brings me there
or the lapping of the waves on the sand
walking
Santa Monica
watching the dolphins jump
the tide,
but my mother and father,
the wrinkled skin
of Alzheimer’s
and dementia
calling and hanging up
again and again.
This life is moving too fast
and I am being pulled in every direction
faster than I can
grow
arms and legs.
So I try to walk the balance beam.
Muttering
a language
no one understands,
searching through the sand
with broken lenses,
trying to see
what I have lost.

Fuck AT&T

and NES (Nashville Electric),
and all those big ass corporations
that charge $13 for a one-minute phone call.
Or those Drug companies charging $2,000 for a drug that cost them
$50 to manufacture.
Old people have to choose between having a caretaker or being blind.
That’s not right.
It’s just not right.
Those guys sit up in their skyscrapers,
going to their $500 lunches,
flying their private planes
all over the world,
with their fat bonuses,
while poor people are just trying to get by,
just trying to put food on their table
and live on $7 an hour.
It’s not right.
It’s not the black guy robbing the 7-11 we need to worry about
in this country.
It’s these rich (mainly white) motherfuckers.
When the hell are we going to learn we are prosecuting the wrong people?
My father taught me the guy who steals a loaf of bread to feed his family
isn’t half as bad as the guy in the Armani suit embezzling
millions.
And he was right.
I’m sick of it.
Sick of the wealthiest 1% getting all the breaks in this country.
Sick of the Republicans.
Sick of the lies.
Sick of people thinking they have the right to do whatever they want
just because they can.
Man, no wonder people take drugs.
It’s too painful to see.
Too fucking painful to deal with how things really are.
How can anyone begin to believe there is any justice in this world?
Or to teach their children not to steal
when Wild Oats is charging
$12 a pound for pecans?
Oh yeah,
I forgot,
that’s legal.

The Purple Man of Music

Who let them in,
these men with knives
who came and cut down the wild
who came and ripped down the free flowing green
while I was in Memphis
burying the dead?
The black,
the purple
man of music
who’s every breath was untamed
and uncertain,
who saw music
in the air
and sang words from God.
Who came?
How did they get in,
these men,
these simpletons,
who could not see the beauty
before their eyes?
They hacked and sawed,
and spat,
and left,
like men on a battlefield
leaving the bloody carnage behind.
Who let them in?
Not I.
I gather the limbs in my hands
and hold them to my chest,
breathe in the smell of dying honeysuckle
rotting in the sun
and cry.
Don’t they know what they have done?
That which is wild should always
remain
wild.

Nightfall (for Arthur)

I feel like I’m in a cage,
a long 1800 square foot cage.
A 1950’s ranch cage
with pink tile bathrooms
and all the shades pulled down
like I were some kind of Howard Hughes recluse.
I feel like I'm in solitary confinement,
only the food is better
and I’ve got a good mattress.
I’d try to get out,
but every time I open the door
I get knocked back by this heat that
feels like I’ve just opened the gates to Hell.
Even the dog won’t go out to pee.
He’s holding it till nightfall
he says.
So here we are,
he and I,
in this birth canal of a house,
waiting.
The dog doesn’t seem to mind.
He’s content to lie down in the front window
by the air conditioning vent
and sleep his life away until
dinner.
But me,
I feel stagnant.
I want to run.
I want to move.
I want to feel like I’m getting somewhere
in my life.
Everywhere I turn
people are dying.
And it scares me.
I don’t want to end up dead
before I ever become who I was meant to be.

Orange Street Afternoons

Jack wouldn’t approve
of my stealing
from Anne, or Sharon,
or Mary.
He would say, “start where you are.”
“Be in the moment and let the moment
take you somewhere swing set.”
Yes,
that’s what he would say.
As if swing set fit logically into that sentence.
Why it fits no more logically
than tomato lips walking barefoot
parakeet glue.
But Jack was always like that.
He’d throw in cows and sheep
mermaid
when the mood waterfall.
Sitting on his sofa
in his sweatshirt Cheetos
barking
Castro
at his students.
I miss those afternoons
on Orange Street.
Fall days of yellow
meter maid
leafs,
parking down side streets,
listening for hours to poetry
read in circles
while I bourbon eye
the room.

Deja Vu

All weekend we cleaned house.
I started in the bathroom
cleaning out drawers.
I found Benadryl from 2002,
expired Wal-tussin,
a filthy ice bag,
and condoms that were no longer safe.
I threw out hundreds of beauty samples I had gotten from Wild Oats and DHC
along with baby oil, petroleum products,
and shampoo with SLS.
I got rid of the Burt’s Bees Body Lotion
and the fancy lavender seaweed body splash
I got as a wedding souvenir five years ago.
I pretty much got rid of everything I couldn’t bear to get rid of
the last time we cleaned out the bathroom
(Which, judging from the dates on the pill bottles,
was about three years ago.)
This time getting rid of things was much easier.
Maybe it’s because I just cleared out my mother’s house
and the similarities between our bathroom drawers
was frightening.
She had drawers stuffed with old lipsticks.
So did I.
She had free gifts from Clinique.
So did I.
She had expired drugs and Valium.
So did I.
I couldn’t help but wonder if this way of living is learned
or if it is inherited
like brown eyes or fat ankles.
Either way,
I don’t want to be my mother.
And I'm happy to dump out every drawer
in my house
just to prove that I'm not.

When The Rain Came

I felt the grass go “ah".
I watched the leaves unfurl
like homeless men
stretching out their hands
for something warm to eat.
But It didn’t last long.
The drops came and went
barely giving the ground a taste
of wetness.
How often that is the case.
the threat of trouble is so much greater
than what actually comes.

The Asshole Who Cuts My Grass

quit today.
All because I told him
I didn’t want the grass cut.
It didn’t need cutting.
It’s almost dead.
It hasn’t rained here in days.
There are big brown patches
on the hill
and in the front.
Everywhere you look
people are watering their lawns,
not cutting them.
I haven’t heard the sound of a lawn mower
or a leaf blower
in days.
You’d think if he gave a damn at all
he would know that.
But all he cares about is the money.
So when I told him,
"I think we should wait until next week",
he told me,
“Maybe I should get another landscaper.”
Not “o.k.
it has been dry lately”
Or, “no problem”.
Just, “Maybe I should get another landscaper.”
“Landscaper?”
Who does he think he is?
Picasso?
All he's ever done is cut the grass and use a Weed Eater.
He’s never even pulled a weed out of the flower beds.
Landscaper?
Please.
I never liked him anyway.
He’s always been rude to me,
changing prices at whim,
charging extra for trimming bushes
and complaining about picking up dead limbs.
Who needs him?
Not me.
The only thing I did wrong
was keep him around
as long as I did.

Good Behavior

Two o’clock
and I’m sitting down to write
for the first time.
I don’t know where the morning went
I swear it was ten thirty a few minutes ago
and I was seventeen
leaving for college,
my wardrobe strung across the back of my Buick
on a pole
leaving my parent’s house
forever.
I didn’t realize till just now
that it was forever,
but it was.
Once I left for L.A.
I never came back.
Home was a dorm room,
then an apartment at the beach,
then a house in Nashville.
I never moved back into my own room
with the black out curtains and the Century furniture
and the fighting down the hall that never stopped.
I never even thought about going back
like the other kids who moved into their parent’s basement
and then hung out there for a couple of years till they got good jobs
and got married.
For me,
once I was gone,
I was gone for good.
I had done my time.
I even got out a year early
for good behavior.

One Robe One Bowl

There are too many choices in this world.
Now with the internet
information is as easy as saying,
“let me go online.”
Ideas pop into my head
and instantly I run to my computer
and “google” them.
Want to know what someone paid for their house?
Go to the Patriot Properties site and type in their last name.
Want to know where a yoga studio is in Nashville?
Type in yoga – Nashville and let yourself go crazy.
Want to find an ex-lover?
Type in their name and you’ll find out more information than you want to know.
I don’t like it.
I have too many thoughts in my head already.
I don’t need anymore to satisfy.
Now I can spend hours eavesdropping on a million different lives
other than my own by going to Myspace.com.
Ninety-nine percent of the time
I come to the same conclusion:
I don’t care about any of them.
It’s sensory overload.
Booking and re-booking airfares.
Ding!
Writing attorneys and hearing back on email.
Communicating with perfect strangers
back and forth,
like it were all perfectly normal.
No one knows what anyone sounds like
or looks like.
No one even cares.
I could be a three hundred pound elephant,
unless you “googled” me and found photos
to learn otherwise.
It’s too distracting.
We all know too much,
and it’s too much of the wrong stuff.
I liked it better when you had to actually
go
to the library to look something up.
You’d plan your day around it.
Maybe go get a cup of tea and a cookie
and stop to browse.
Now everything is too available
and too instant.
I think all these choices are making life harder.
I can have Sushi, Italian, Greek, Korean,
Indian or Chinese for lunch.
Or I can cook at home
which brings up an entirely new set of choices.
I don’t like it.
It makes me crazy.
I’d rather live like the monks.
One robe,
one bowl,
and I eat whatever is put in front of me.

The 'P' Word

I understand how poetry got its bad name.
After reading some of those literary journals
I was going to send my writing to,
I understand how the ‘p’ word could evoke
the sound of gagging, or even the throwing of oneself down on to the floor
like a rabid dog.
I read a poem entitled “Trees.”
After reading the poem,
I don’t have a clue what the author was talking about.
“Fractured stumps and bowels and boughs and limbs
and fallen crowns”.
It’s a tree God dammit!
How hard is it to talk about a tree?
But it wasn’t just that poem,
it was all the poems in the journal.
It was like having a seven-course meal
where every course was the cheese plate.
Yes, it’s rich
and smooth and creamy,
but it’s CHEESE.
How much cheese can one person eat
and still button their pants?
If this is what fine art is supposed to be,
then give me a Crayola.
When I read something
I want to feel it.
Not lean back and digest it like Port wine,
commenting on it with analytical detachment:
“A bit more color here.”
“To verbose there.”
“But look at the use of symbolism.”
Please.
These poems leave me cold,
cold as the frigid wind
that blew south across the whiskers of my
dog,
while he
lay
curled up
debating the angels
of architecture.

NIN

She took my sewing machine.
The 1940’s yellow Kenmore
with the drop-in table.
The one I bought from Habitat for $40
and vowed I would use.
The one that sat in my bedroom
and then sat by the den sofa for 9 months collecting dust.
She thought it was cool
and well worth the $25 I was asking.
She was one of those hip East Nashville girls
with a NIN sticker and an Apple logo on the back of her truck.
She wore a spaghetti strap top and had a bob haircut
and was taking sewing classes in Berry Hill.
She was the kind of girl I wish I had been,
driving around in her vintage SUV
not sure what she’s going to do next with her life.
Unafraid.
In her twenties.
I can see her now
in her terra cotta cottage
sewing cool dresses and patching jeans,
making trendy hats she sells for $75
all on my little machine.
The moment she took it I wanted it.
It’s always like that.
I’ve never wanted anything
until it was gone.

Covering The White

I am no hero in this play
pulling weeds and branches from the dirt
covering ivy with newspaper
and mulch.
My Latino helper, Douglas,
reads the papers I lay down.
He says they have a lot of sex ads.
He asks me where I got them.
I nod and smile
and pretend I don’t notice him
staring at my legs and rear.
Even the dog has gone inside now.
It’s too hot for him.
We stand there in the yard,
him wheeling out the black
covering up the years.
Me, tugging on my shorts
trying to cover
the white.

Wednesday

Two mornings ago
I woke up to another one of those calf cramps.
The kind that I can feel coming on,
but can never seem to stop.
I leapt to the floor
And fought to get my foot down
and flexed,
before the cramp
left my leg in a twisted knot.
I stood there
flexing and wincing,
doubled over in pain.
The pain was so intense,
and so strong,
it was like a wave
knocking me over.
I remember saying, “Oh God”
and then falling face down on to the bed.
It was a horrible rush of feeling,
like right before you vomit
and you can’t stop it.
I was on the bed,
passed out,
Mark shaking me,
saying my name,
asking me if I was o.k.
But I didn’t answer.
It was a good minute
before I could speak.
Words wouldn’t come out of my mouth.
I just lay there
like I had been flattened,
like I had had a stroke.
When I did open my eyes
I felt as if I were under water.
Everything was hazy
and dreamlike.
Then I felt nauseous
and a cold sweat broke out
over my entire body.
I was drenched.
I asked for water
but couldn’t sit up
to drink it.
I took a few sips and then
I fell back asleep
and when I woke up,
it was almost eleven.
The rest of the day
I hobbled from room to room
lost,
still unsure of what happened.
My sister, the doctor,
had lots of theories.
I needed to get my electrolytes checked
and see a cardiologist,
because I might have a heart arrhythmia.
Or even something worse.
None of her choices made me feel any better.
I prefer to think that I just overdid it in yoga class.
Next week I’ll take level 2 instead of level 3.

Summer In Nashville

It is too hot
to sit in the sun
in Nashville
in the summer.
The dog and I both know
to lie down now
would mean death.
He wants in
after thirty minutes.
That’s twenty nine minutes more
than I can stand.

King Of The Hill

He says he’ll call
but he never does.
He says he was my father’s friend
but that was back when my father still could play tennis
and he had his dink shot.
They would sit and talk
in the plastic chairs
in the sun
by King of the Hill –
The Tennis court people challenged each other on,
where the winner became “king”
till the next challenger obliterated him.
My father used to say he wanted to be buried
under
King of The Hill.
And why not?
He played on it every day.
He owned King of the Hill
and everyone at the club knew it.
The funny little old Jewish man
in his rusty white tennis hat
and torn shorts.
The one Democrat in the club.
The one who always laughed
who ribbed the other stuck-up members.
The one who knew how to play chess.
The one who never took life so seriously.
While others sweated and fired off canon shots
into the net,
my father flipped his little yellow balls on to his opponent’s side
like he was lobbing dollops of whip cream on to a sundae.
He believed one should always do the least amount possible
on and off the court.
“Why put out all that effort?” he would ask,
like a modern day Pooh Bear.
Then he would go in to the clubhouse,
have a cup of coffee
and eat the beef barley soup.
Now,
no one calls him.
He doesn’t play tennis.
And King of The Hill
was bulldozed over
to make way for the new swimming pool.

What Makes Me Happy

I do not know if there is more
to life
than to live the life of a “tortured artist”
banging my head against walls and doors.
My friend abandoned his “artistic” life
and instead settled for matrimony,
paternity,
and commercial success.
He is happy now
walking the Santa Monica mountains,
pushing a stroller,
and scuba diving off Catalina
on weekends.
I am here night after night
struggling against my own demons
that I can not let go.
I toss and turn in my cotton dye free sheets
and dream about my mother,
my Volvo,
my screenplays,
and my music.
They are always dreams of anxiety,
dreams without completion.
Nightmares.
Just now
I left my poem,
to wander the room
like a prisoner in solitary confinement
with no where to go.
I have forgotten
peanut shells
and French Dips
and Baseball.
I have forgotten
how to laugh.
And I have no idea
what makes me happy.

My Mother The Dog

She wants to be a dog.
She wants to bark at other dogs
and pee on inappropriate things
like beds and rugs.
She speaks of Jesus Christ
and Roman Catholics
and asks me if I am married
and how old I am now,
and if my sister will ever find anyone to love.
She doesn’t know her age anymore,
or why she is in the hospital.
She tells me “I am ruining everything”
when I call
and speaks to me in whispers
and tells me to run.
When I ask her run from what?
She says,
just run.
She worries about the two green lights on the wall.
“If they go out, I’ll die, ”she says.
We talk about them for over an hour.
I keep trying to reassure her they mean nothing
like a parent trying to convince a child
there is no monster under the bed,
but nothing I say does any good.
Even when she tells me she’s o.k. about the dots,
I know she is lying.
I keep hoping that I’ll call one morning
and she will be back,
back the way she was.
Nasty
and abusive
and telling me my boyfriend is no good.
But each morning when I call
she’s the same.
Staring at those two green lights
waiting for them to go out.

Hot and Wet

Tomorrow I leave for New York.
The weather channel is predicting temperatures in the 80’s
and lows in the 70’s with scattered thunderstorms
the entire week I am there.
A couple of days ago the forecast was
supposed to be in the 70’s for the highs
and the 60’s for the lows.
Still, it's better than Nashville.
Today I drove my old 240 in 93 degree weather
with my heater on.
It seems my car wants to run hot for some strange
(albeit expensive) reason
and the only thing that seems to help bring the gauge down
is to turn the heat on.
While other people are driving around in SUV’s
with the a/c blaring out arctic winds,
I am driving an eighteen-year-old sauna on wheels.
Anyone who saw me would wonder why
I would put myself through such torture,
but it was either that or have the car go into the red.
My mechanic taught me
it’s o.k. if the car runs hot, just don’t let it go into the red.
On my way home I stopped to get a hot coffee,
which I promptly spilled.
Now the only thing red is my hand.
I put it and my coffee on ice,
and dreamed of the little green Mini
I test drove last night.
It had air conditioning.
Sure,
it cost seventeen thousand dollars more than my car,
but it had air conditioning.
I wonder if the owner would do an even exchange.
Yes, I have been out in the heat way too long.

Airplanes and Biscuits

It is time for me to stop meddling in other people's business.
Time for me to stop chasing after airplanes
and biscuits.
I've got my own planes to fly
to the stars.
For too long now,
I thought yours were better,
that where you were going was more exciting
than where I was going.
Now I know better.
I was wrong.
We both were.
Standing on that beach in La Jolla
plotting dreams
that would never come true.
The sand beneath my feet
slipping away
as I held on to you.
What was I holding?
That house on the hill is gone,
slipped into the ocean,
long ago,
driftwood.
Yes,
it is all gone,
except for the stars.
You didn't take those with you.

In Monopoly

I was always the shoe.
Not the hat,
or the boat,
or the iron,
or the dog,
or the thimble,
or the race car,
or the cannon,
but the shoe
I don’t know why,
but I was.

Once

I don’t like you anymore.
I once did
when I was little
crawling around in your shadow.
You towering above me
helping me up,
but only so far.
We were best friends,
once,
when I thought as you did,
when I liked what you liked.
But once I had my own thoughts,
once I cut the cord,
you stopped liking me.
You wanted a shadow
for the rest of your life,
a mirror reflecting only you.
You wanted me to be invisible.
When I refused,
I became disposable.
Once we were sisters.
Once.

The Red Balloon

I must be sealed up
tight
like a jar of peanuts
if I am to do my art.
Otherwise,
I am always running
like ink across the page,
falling off of edges,
getting stuck in corners,
drying up before I’ve…
It is so easy
to watch the day float away like a red balloon
until it is but a speck,
untill it is gone.
Years later,
standing on the street corner,
you squint up at the sky,
but don’t remember
the red balloon
or even that you ever had one.

Fourteen

A letter.
A word.
A symbol
of time.
Yes,
you can hold it.
The back end of a spoon,
the sharp edge of a knife,
cutting,
always cutting,
like so many horseless nights.
It isn’t fair
I tell you.
This back and forth dance
of death.
Waltzing
without knowing the steps.
You leading me.
Me leading you.
Up library steps.
A book in your hand
a pen in mine.
Writing down history
while we make our own.
Funny
this isn’t how I thought
a pear should be eaten.

Wade Hampton

In my mind
I think I’ll feel better when I get there.
I’ll know what I have to deal with.
I’ll be able to see it,
to touch it,
to fold it.
But how can anyone pack up 35 years
in two weeks?
My sister acts like we can take everything
throw it in the back of a van
and drive two thousand miles to California
with my mother hanging out the back of the trunk
like an old blanket.
Me,
I’m not so sure.
I keep telling myself that somehow it will all get done,
that God is with me.
But the truth is
I am scared to death.
I don’t have a clue how I’m going to pack up
four bedrooms,
four bathrooms,
a den,
a living room,
a breakfast room,
a dining room,
a two car garage,
chandeliers,
and a wrought iron fence.
Plus drive 800 miles to get there
and arrive functional at all.
I am so nervous
I want to get in my car and go right now
like some cartoon superhero.
I’ll open the front door and the trumpets will sound
and I’ll run around the house in a mad flurry.
But I am scared that an hour later
I’ll be sitting in the closet crying.
I am scared
that when night comes I will be eaten alive
by the ghosts in my head.
I am scared
that I will throw out what someone else wanted,
or that I won’t throw out enough.
I’m scared
that when my sister and I try to divide up
my mother’s china cabinet
it will come to blows,
and that I’ll lose.
But most of all,
I am scared
that by helping them move,
I am killing them.

Choices For Living

Stand up straight.
Eat your veggies.
Play bingo in our dining room.
Lawn bowling.
May use cane or walker.
Weekly transportation.
Three meals a day.
Mildly confused accepted.

Rationing Diana

Last night
I gave up,
as my head was about to explode
with thoughts of you.
Last night
I finally learned it is impossible
to make anyone do anything.
Any breath uttered in another’s direction,
any word spoken,
sighed,
whispered,
smiled,
or wanted,
is nothing more than a pinprick in my skin,
where energy,
like oil,
will seep out,
run down my legs,
pool below me
and be swallowed up by the ground.

I thought I could make you love me.
Make you want me.
Make you want to want me.
But I was wrong.
The funny thing is,
I have been given that exact same lesson
for over twenty years
but never understood it until now.
I sat on front porches
of ex-boyfriends
and fed cheeseburgers to dogs,
and cried
over white BMW’s,
and root canals,
and late bills,
and taxes,
and tickets,
that weren’t even mine,
all the while
ignoring me.
I was so lost
I didn’t know who I was anymore.
I didn't know what my problems were
because I was so busy with everyone elses.
But now I do.
So go.
All of you.
Fucking go,
and take your cheeseburgers
with you.

If It's Wednesday I Must Be Lying

If I go there I’ll have bread,
or some other crap I shouldn’t eat.
No,
it’s out ,
it’s definitely out.
Like driving to Pensacola.
I wanted so much to go there.
I wanted to walk on the sand,
and hear the waves,
and watch the seagulls
fly.
But it’s Wednesday.
Soon I’ll be leaving for Houston,
and Galveston’s just an hour away,
so it seems redundant to drive 8 hours to a beach now
when I’m going to be near a beach in less than a week.
Still,
I wanted to go.
I promised myself I would go.
But instead
I’m here
in Nashville,
pulling up Hotwire,
and looking at hotels I’ll never stay at.
I don’t know how this keeps happening.
I keep promising myself one thing,
but then keep turning around and doing something else.
I promised not to take any cocoa covered almonds
out of the bin at Wild Oats,
but yesterday I took four.
And I didn’t regret it.
I keep saying I’m going to sit down and write
and make that my priority,
but I always end up doing something else first,
like the laundry,
or filling a stack of papers that has coupons in it from March.
I tell myself I don’t want to be part of my family’s insanity,
but then I call them every day.
I guess I get some kind of twisted rush
knowing I’m the “sane” one in the group.
I pride myself on being honest,
but the truth is
I lie to myself constantly.

Gone Baby Gone

The tulips are gone.
White, red, and yellow blooms
are no more.
Someone came and snipped them off,
took them home for themselves,
didn’t care who they were stealing from.
It’s like that now.
Beauty is coveted.
This morning it is cold and grey.
Down the street I hear the children playing,
screaming as they run
from swing to swing.
This morning I am scared.
The antibiotics have made me feel tired,
worn out and weak.
I see how easy it is to disappear.
One minute you’re running on a playground
happy to be out of diapers,
the next,
you’re back in diapers,
sitting on a rocker,
trying to remember your name.
I guess that’s why people have mid-life crises.
They buy a fast car because they can’t run fast anymore
and they want to feel like they are still moving.
They want to feel like they have escaped death.
They dye their hair or get a young girlfriend
and pretend that some of her youth will rub off on them.
They are scared that everything
they’ve done in the last forty years has added up to nothing.
They are scared that they’ve followed the wrong path,
married the wrong person,
studied law
when they should have studied medicine,
gone left
when they should have gone right,
bought
when they should have sold.
They see their parents decaying before them
like overripe fruit,
getting soft and wrinkled and losing their potency.
They fear that that is their future too.
So they buy that Porsche,
and rev it hard,
and tell themselves
they are o.k.
But they aren’t.
None of us are.

Mother

I can not blame you anymore.
The time for that has long passed.
I can not be angry at you
for all that you didn’t give me
or for all that you did.
You wouldn’t understand.
Nor did you understand twenty years ago
when I tried to tell you.
The sting of your hand across my face
still burns.
I have been alone
in my life raft of one,
holding pain like a life preserver against my chest
thinking that would save me from the waves.

The Envelope

When all the king’s horses and all the king’s men
tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,
it didn’t work.
He was still just a broken egg.
There was nothing anyone could do.
I understand.
I have tried to do the same thing in my life.
Glue back the pieces,
make whole all the people
who were never whole to begin with.
I ran around with a dustpan and broom,
trying to catch their falling pieces,
hoping I could save them in an envelope
and one day
put them back.
But that’s impossible.
I don’t know what goes where.
After all, I’m only human.
Besides, I am tired of being
“The Envelope”.
It doesn’t work.
I must let their pieces fall
where they may,
and hope that I too haven’t become
cracked.

Somewhere

Somewhere.
We
got lost.
In between the yelling,
and the screaming,
and the phone calls,
and the hallways.
Somewhere
what we once had
vanished,
evaporated
like steam coming off a pot of pasta.
Your laugh,
(you used to laugh in your sleep),
made me laugh.
I remember you
standing in the kitchen,
making me eggs
with your Italian accent,
entertaining the dog.
Being
everything I ever wanted.
We were so alive then.
Running
to Memphis
for grilled cheese sandwiches
and midnight dancing in juke joints.
We prayed with Al in the morning
then spent the afternoon fucking in some cheap Motel.
You couldn’t get enough
of my body,
my breasts,
my tongue.
Your hands ran up and down me
like a blind man searching for a key.
I purred and arched like a cat
beneath you.
Afterwards we lay in arms
breathing in each other’s air
with such ferocity
that only one breath
could exist
between us.

Arthur

He is dying
in that hospital bed
with tubes and needles stuck in him.
There in white,
black and hazy,
an eclipsed sun,
curled up like a ‘c’.
Nurses and fans
gathered round
each wanting something from him.
I see him
softly humming purple orchestras
in his head.
The notes trapped beneath
his skin,
like the cancer.
I see him
hallucinating from the meds
drifting in and out of
the day
coming in colors
like the tide.
The bloody water
bringing in new life
and taking out the old.

I Fear I Am Insane

All the way home from Novato
on the 101
thoughts of insanity ran through my head.
My mother's face
staring at me
from the other side
of the driver's window
asking me if I loved her
with vacant motionless eyes.
Her walk,
a shuffle.
Frail.
And thin for her.
Flitting from one subject to the next
like a grey-winged hummingbird in a bamboo forest.
She asked me to fix her watch,
even though it keeps perfect time.
She fears the IRS will put her in jail
even though she owes them nothing.
This morning she asked me where her watch was
and told me she was lost without it.
"Lost".
How can she be lost without it?
She isn't going anywhere.
What difference does time make to her now?
Yes,
I fear I am insane.

One More Chocolate

There is always one more bill,
one more pot,
one more dish,
one more phone call from Novato,
one more baby,
coming.
I feel like I am in an episode of “I Love Lucy,”
the one where Lucy and Ethel go to work in that chocolate factory.
The conveyor belt is sending down chocolates
and I am stuffing them into my blouse,
and mouth,
and pants,
and hat,
as fast as I can,
but I still can’t get ahead.
There is always another one coming.
I see a dark filled one -
This one is the I.R.S.
I see another one with a pink flower on top -
This one is a dirty oatmeal pot.
I see a milk chocolate one with a gooey center -
This one is a broken pair of headphones
that have needed repairing for over a year.
I see a statement from the Social Security office
letting me know I’m not eligible for any benefits.
I see MySpace and Email
and things I wish no one had ever invented.
And the phone keeps ringing.
And ringing.
And ringing.
And now they are putting her away.
Now the IRS is coming.
Now I don’t even have time to get married,
or have a fuckin’ piece of Manna Bread,
or take my dog to the park.
I feel sick from all that I have eaten.
All the sticky goo I have swallowed
is in my throat and lungs
and I am trying to breathe,
to scream,
but there is no sound,
just the conveyor belt
sending out more little chocolates
for me.

Sunday Daydream

I am watching my thoughts
bounce
like
popcorn
from one subject
to another.
Outside the birds chirp and cackle
and call and I find
I am
floating down a river
in Africa.
My tour guide,
a white haired man
in his seventies,
lost his sight eight years ago.
He paddles the river by feel.
His hands are as gnarled as the walking stick
he carries on shore.
His skin is wrinkled from the sun
and his legs are thin as bamboo.
We float down the river.
I am covered in coconut oil and bug spray.
Every so often,
I dip my hand into the chocolate colored water.
It feels cool against my sunburned skin.
Crocodiles slither in to the river
as they hear us approach.
My guide
smiles and sings to himself
as if to let me know all is well.
We will not be their dinner.
And so we float,
deep,
deep
into the jungle
where the insects are as big as parrots.
Here there are no cell phones,
or telephones,
or computers,
only the sound
of the wild
lulling me to sleep.