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.