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.