Last Words

I am finally starting to believe
no one is coming.
I sit here on my velvet futon
unable to blink the eye cream
out of my eyes.
Crying.
This pen is almost out of ink.

The Feet Of A Goddess

My Feet
look like cracked stone.
Heels riddled with lines
like the feet of some ancient Greek goddess
standing at the Parthenon.
I have tried lotions
and butters and creams on them.
I have walked on beaches and ground them into the sand
and gotten them smooth
only to reach down a week later
to find them back to their original condition.
My poor feet.
They have walked through Europe,
seen the Statue of Liberty,
and hunted for sand dollars off the coast of Sanibel Island.
They have danced ballet,
and tap,
and waltzed with sweaty-handed eighth grade boys.
They have accidentally stepped on glass,
been stabbed by pencils,
and have even survived run away sewing needles.
My poor feet.
They have always stayed right beneath me
taking me where I wanted to go,
even when I forgot they were there,
even when I was wearing platform shoes.

A Black Testament To The Day

Fade In.
Spring.
Here I sit picnic
waiting for the red bird
to come.
I remember picking blackberries
in Texas with my mother and sister.
Hot
we stumbled rattlesnake into the thorns
our fingers stained lilac juice berry.
The sweat on our backs negro
cicadas screaming symphonies.
Four hours later,
burned as tar,
we
would carry our buckets home
and spread our jewels
on the kitchen countertops.
A black testament to the day.

The Butterfly

It is only of this
that I am sure:
If you stop chasing,
the butterfly will come
and sit upon your hand.
I swear.

The Truth

I know why I am so unhappy.
I am not living the life I am supposed to be living.
Each time I call
or get lost in the chaos of another
I am saying goodbye to my dream.

I can sit here and cry and say I don’t know why
I am so unhappy
but I know.
I am supposed to be writing.
Everyday.
Writing and breathing in my truth.
Not worrying about paint colors and laundry detergents.

My mother tells me my last album didn’t sell well.
She’s right.
Even in her psychotic state she knows more than I do.
I am unhappy.
I wonder how many other people are living a life
they don’t want to be living.

Brown Rice And Bukowski

It’s noon
and I have thrown away three poems.
I sat here and read them
and re-read them
and then I threw them away.
I have vacuumed the floors,
eaten brown rice,
and talked with my mother.
Yes,
she is still crazy.
I have even read Bukowski.
I wish he were here.
If he were,
he would sit beside me and tell me
not to be so literary.
He would put his hand on my thigh
and tell me about some fine wine he drank years ago
and how I should let go
and fuck more often.
He would tell me
I should sit in the sun
and let my white skin brown
and not bathe
and not wash my sheets until they were as brown as my skin.
He would put his arms around me
and whisper words in my ear,
like ‘circus’
and ‘horses’
and ‘dollar rooms’.
Later he would pull down his pants
and masturbate in the corner
and then
tell me he’s hungry.
He would eat a bologna sandwich
and sit on the porch
and play ball with my dog.
He would tell me I’m thinking way too hard
and that the poems I threw away this morning
were much better
than this one.

Waiting For The Dog

Waiting for the dog
to eat it
I keep stepping around.
Avoiding.
The bee.
I think it’s a bee.
Or something.
Yes.
That’s what it is.
Avoidance.
Just circling the globe.
Out of me.
I forget to write it down.
Melodies drift in and out.
Pieces of crap
that took me four days to do.
The bank.
The post office.
My taxes.
Eat me raw.
I’m scared of what I’ll find.
Mangoes and raisins.
So I avoid.
I think I’m getting some stomach flu.
because I feel nauseous.
I have avoided writing
all day.

Blue Turns To Grey

I’m not dying.
I didn’t think I was,
but it feels good to have it confirmed.
For the last four weeks I have had a very large bruise
over most of my left calf.
The weird part is I don’t remember hitting
my leg.
It just appeared,
and got very dark
and black.
I didn’t think much of it,
but then everyone who saw it started saying things like,
“Oh wow. That looks bad.”
Or “You should get that checked.”
My massage therapist said it.
My ballet teachers said it,
And then a friend of mine I had dinner with said it.
So this morning,
after trying to finish my taxes but still getting nowhere,
I took myself to the Doc in the Box.
The Dr. came in, looked at my leg for thirty seconds
and then told me I had to go get a venous scan.
STAT.
Thoughts of blood clot and imminent death
raced through my mind.
Even he said it was too dangerous to play around with.
And “No”, he said, “I couldn’t go to yoga.”
An hour and a half later I had blue gel on my entire leg
a green gown on,
and a nice tech named Jill running an ultrasound device up and down my body.
I listened to the sound of my blood pumping through my leg.
Whoosh.
Sometimes she would squeeze my calf
and then we would watch the increased flow of blood
peak and fall.
I kept waiting for her to pass over a spot on my leg
where the pumping would stop
and there would be nothing but silence
and her face would turn grey.
But that never happened.
She said I was fine.
There was no clot.
Only a mysterious bruise,
no one could explain.

Smell It Like It Is

In the cleaning aisle
at the grocery store
there are so many air fresheners now
it’s absurd.
They have plug-ins.
Heated oils.
Candles.
Plastic containers you pull the lids off of
and mini fans.
They come in scents like Vanilla Bean,
Strawberry Swirl,
Passion Fruit, Mango.
Tropical Forest,
and Lemon.
They have sprays that smell like nothing,
but supposedly remove odors.
For $3.79 you can buy a spray that smells like nothing,
just air.
Since when did air become so expensive?
When did we as a nation become so afraid of smells?
I personally, am getting sick of walking into restaurant bathrooms
and being greeted by the smell
of Loco Latte or Guava Gusto
and wondering where the smell is coming from.
Why can’t the bathroom just be clean?
Why does there have to be a scent covering up something
that shouldn’t be there in the first place?
It seems to me there is enough covering up going on in this world already.
We have politicians covering up their “activities”.
Husbands lying to wives.
Wives lying to husbands.
Grease Monkeys lying about necessary brake jobs.
The army lying for their “superiors”.
The C.I.A. lying about just about everything.
And the President...
well, don’t get me started.
We have so much covering up going on
even Lassie couldn’t find the scent.
When I walk into a bathroom
I want to smell what’s really there.
I don’t want to be lulled into a false sense
of scent.
Just give it to me straight.
Shit and all.

Ignoring The War

They’re seeing it at 1:30 today.
God I hope they like it.
I want to be done with it.
I want someone else to buy it
and own it and have it
and fix it up to “their specifications.”
whatever those may be.
I’m sick of thinking about it.
I just want it over with.
Like that pile of papers on my spare bed
that never seems to get sorted.
I want it to be someone else’s problem.
The pool and the yard and the leaky faucet.
I want to cut it off like a dead limb
and hope I won’t feel it after it’s gone.
I want to box up the Caesar Palace ash trays,
and the Avon lip balm ,
and the crystal Kennedy bowl
and sit on the blue carpet and try to remember
happy times,
if there were any.
I want my mother to walk up and down the halls
and turn off the lights,
and tell me for the three thousandth time
how she wanted to build this house
but my father never did.
And how she was right
and how he was lucky he made money in the ‘70’s
in the Houston real estate market.
I want to sit in the closet
with my dolls
like I did when I was six
and play pretend,
and try to ignore the war
outside my door.
I want to lock the front door for the very last time
and never drive down
that street
again.

The Great Escape

If Trouble saw you now,
there on the step,
fluffing your fur
with that nut in your mouth,
you wouldn’t be
there on the step,
fluffing your fur,
with that nut in your mouth.
You would be in Trouble now.
Dangling in his mouth,
your head
to one side,
limp
as a child of war.
Your hands would wave in the air
as you swung you from side to side
and your nut,
your prized possession,
would be lying
on the ground
still whole,
waiting
for another to come.

Past Due

I have gotten to the point
where I have started to wonder
if they ever knew what they were doing at all.
It is a miracle to me that we had food to eat
and a roof over our heads.
There are unpaid bills,
and taxes past due from 1985,
and moldy cherry pies in the refrigerator.
There are pieces of property turning up
like orphaned children.
Ghetto children.
So unwanted
I don’t know if it is worth the money
to try to save them.
He owes $8,000 in back taxes on a property
appraised at $7,000.
He could have been sitting on oil
all this time.
Instead,
we are nursing
the dead.
The ketchup stained carpet
in the back of his Ford
was our fault,
but the truth is,
this Scorpio,
this white-haired man
with the secret life
and sweaty tennis clothes,
made his own car
stink.

Ripping Band-aids off of Flamingos

Fuck it.
Sometimes you’ve just got to jump in the water and start swimming
you know.
Make the big jump.
Go in head first and worry about the rocks
later.
If you hit ‘em,
you hit ‘em.
This sticking one toe in at a time is for the birds.
The flamingos.
It’s painful.
Like ripping a band-aid off one hair at a time.
Just yank.
It’s not near as bad in one swoop I promise.
Life isn’t for the timid or the meek.
Fuck them.
They’ll still be standing out in the rain when the sun sets.
Just go.
Go now because tomorrow never waits.
You know?
O.k. I could stand here and hem and haw
about how I wish that things were different,
but that wouldn’t bring back my twenties
or the cute boy with the v neck t-shirt
who told me yogurt wasn’t ‘real food’.
Life is short.
Now is all we have
you know?
So do it.
Just do it.
Climb that mountain.
Write that novel.
Buy that cookie.
And if it sucks,
it sucks.
What are you waiting for?
Get out there.
Or someday you’ll be sitting in a room
with drool rolling down the side of your mouth
wondering where your teeth are.

God Is In the Ryman

I’m coming back.
Like the little tulip shooting out of the ground
at the first hint of warmth,
it’s tiny bud emerging with green,
I’m coming back.
I’m starting to believe
that it can happen,
that my dreams can become as real as anyone’s.
I had forgotten that.
But last night at the Ryman I saw
Belle and Sebastian
and I had a “religious” experience.
I heard the choir sing
and I let their music fill me up
in places I had forgotten I had.
I stood up and danced and threw my head around
until I felt sick.
I let the rush of the music
and the purple lights and the jangle
strum
jangle
beat inside me
like a happy lover.
And I thought,
yes,
this is what it could be.
This is what it feels like
to be
free.
To be
alive.
To taste the sweetness
of oneself.

For Good

Morning.
At least I think it is.
There is so much slipping away.
I sit in the corner like a child
clutching leaves
as the wind blows,
trying to hold on to what is mine.
It is a good fight
but I feel like I am losing.
The daily phone calls
of insanity
are starting to seep into my consciousness.
They are both gone
my parents.
I am an orphan now.
Not that I always wasn’t.
But now I know there is no one for me to call.
Growing up I didn’t realize that.
I turned to them,
the rabbit and the bear
and thought they could help me.
I sat on laps
and drank in stories
of lemon trees filled with candy rooms
and Freddie the Frog
and Timmy the Turtle.
who ran the grocery store.
I thought the joke about the Baptists
and their dozen eggs was so funny
and I laughed in hysterics at the monks and their argument.
Oh where is it now?
My father,
with the racquet in his hand
always ready to make his “dink” shot.
My mother,
sambaing to the Bossa Nova
of Sergio Mendez..
Me,
dancing in the den
pretending I would be
famous.
Where has it all gone?
My hands are dry and wrinkled
and the days are nothing but shopping carts
and bills.
I want to go back
and start over.
I want to go back
and find a way out.
I want to go back
and pretend
before it is too late
before I am put away
for good.

Already Gone

I don’t have any answers any more.
I thought I did
but I don’t.
I look at old people
and wonder how much longer they have to live.
The black woman standing at the bus stop in her purple coat,
her nylons down around her ankles,
her skin wrinkled as the elephants at the zoo.
She squints into the sun to see the bus
coming.
She looks forgotten
standing there
waiting,
clutching her black purse.
as if she were already gone.

Free For the Taking

He’s coming for wood.
Free wood.
From an oak and an elm
that were cut down in my backyard
five years ago.
He wouldn’t be here if I were asking for money.
But when I said it was free…
He’s coming with his truck and he’ll haul it away.
He’ll have his wood for the winter
and I’ll have my bare blacktop back.