Hide

When the curtain rises
hide.
Hide under tables and chairs
and in boxes and bags.
Hide
in the closet under long dresses and coats.
Hide
under beds and inside kitchen cabinets.
Stop and listen to the feet
looking for you.
Listen to their shuffle.
Giggle silently.
Remember
the part of yourself
that hid just for fun.
Hide
in
plain
sight.

The Last Christmas

Christmas came and went,
and with it
my hopes for having the kind of Christmas I’ve always wanted.
I picked my father up on Christmas Eve
from the Jewish Community Center.
His weekly poker game didn’t happen
so he had been sitting in the lobby for three hours.
I guess some of the men must have gentiles for wives
or else they like a good cup of eggnog
as much as the next WASP.
When he got in the car,
he acted like some kind of geriatric Scrooge,
telling me about his headache
and asking me where I had been
and why hadn’t I gotten him the second he called.
I had been dealing with a whole different crisis.
Seems he was overdrawn at the bank because the check my sister sent bounced
because he had been using his ATM card and we didn’t know he was using it.
So now, he’s yelling at me,
and I’m running around to closed banks
trying to get home before my mother sets the Christmas tree on fire
or decides to jump off the roof like the Flying Nun.
By the time we walk in the door he is in full
screaming mode
telling me he wants to go back to his apartment and
“to Hell with Christmas.”
Great.
I’ve been planning this thing for days,
running around to stores to buy Russian chocolates
and flowers and fresh pasta with Bolognese sauce
just so he won’t gripe there’s no meat at the table.
Meanwhile, my mother is trying to calm him down
stuttering out a few words about Christmas
and peace and my dead dog.
I shove a pizza in the oven hoping the smell
will bribe him in to staying.
I manage to get him to sit down and eat.
He gripes that the pizza is too spicy and
that I am a terrible person and an awful daughter.
Then my mother and I try to sing Christmas Carols
while my boyfriend plays the piano.
We make it halfway through Silent Night
before my father starts yelling in the background that we are giving him a headache
and he wants to go home.
Twenty minutes later
we are in the car taking both of them back to their apartment.
Christmas Eve lasted all of two hours.
I hadn’t even unwrapped the firewood to start a fire.
The stores had barely closed
and there were still cars in the parking lot.
On the way home
I thought about all the other Christmas’ he had ruined for me.
Maybe it’s because he’s Jewish/atheist
or because he believes religion is the root of all evil.
I don’t know and I don’t care.
For one night I wish he’d just shut up.
I mean it’s not like I’m hanging crosses on the wall
or have a manger scene set-up in my living room.
All we’re doing is drinking eggnog and eating cookies
and singing.
All we’re trying to do is make memories.
New memories.
The next day I made Christmas dinner,
and brought my mother over to eat with us.
I brought my dad a To Go Plate.

Grasping At Breakfast

What comes out isn’t pretty.
It’s all hands and
fingers and toes
grasping at breakfast
and love.
I wish I had a laugh for this condition.
But I don’t.
Left to my own lips I am violent
and thirsty.
I imagine figs ablaze
and the deep red of morning
coming to take me away.
A beautiful woman once,
with teeth like a pearl
smiling
at strangers and spoons,
I never worried when bills came
or my seeds washed away with the rain.
I only smiled and smiled
like some idiot
sitting on a float in the Macy’s Day Parade.
Now I am all nubs.
Fingernails chewed down to the stubs.
Hair flat as a postcard.
Eyes filled with worry.
I am losing my battle with life.
There is too much I can’t control.
My soul is dying
like a starfish left out in the sun
unable to reach the tide.
I am screaming.
Can’t you hear?
That sorrowful November,
and December,
and July,
the days ran from my veins
like hot cocoa.
The dog inside me
whining for food.
And yet
I know not what
I hunger for.

Sugar

Sugar is the Anti-Christ.
I am positive.
It is over the counter heroine.
The drug that needs no prescription
or FDA approval.
It is the enemy lurking on tables and shelves,
in cookies and cakes,
in pies and in tins.
It is the white gown begging for one last dance.
The jailed doughnut destined to break out.
The chocolate soufflé that never sinks.
It is the hunger that keeps growing
no matter how much you feed it.
Sugar is lollipops and taffy,
the frosting that can never be licked clean
from the stainless steel mixing bowl.
It is the birthday cake you never threw out.
It is an uncomplicated hymn
you can never sing just once.

Nellie

I did not come for you,
though I wanted to.
I saw your little face
begging and sorrowful,
head cocked to one side
wondering why you were in a cage,
so young.
I did not come for you
through the rain and the cars
and the shoppers.
I was too tired,
too old,
too worn down
from my life in a cage.
Now,
breakfast and love
and the desert sun
are all bones in my closet.
You’ll move off
to some grass chair
planting words
and rhymes
in New York City,
while I will stay
in the study
ripe as a peach
rotting in the windowpane.

Throwing Mud Balls

Look at that pot
that hole,
the one you have fallen into
year after year.
Can you not see it?
It is the same one
in the exact same spot,
and yet
you keep falling in
again and again.
Have you not eyes?
You say you can see
but there you are again
in the mud and the muck.
You say you have arms
but you do not use them to pull yourself out.
You say you have legs
but you do not move them.
You only stand there,
waist deep,
with that look upon your face,
the same one you had when you were five
and Emily Schuttee threw a mud ball
that hit you in the mouth.
Forty years later
the world is throwing mud balls at you
and you stand there with your mouth open wide
catching each and every one of them.

Last Night

Last night,
slamming the door,
I told you what lovers say.
December would come in a dream
sleeping till dawn
and the crows
would have their cocktails
alone.
You had no reply,
but sipped your ice
like blood
and waited for my tears.

Happy

In winter
I send myself
to the end of the week,
to the milkweed morning of mistletoe
where everything is new
as a dream.
There,
kneeling with my grandmother,
I ring the bell
and sing into the basin of silver
all my questions:
Will I marry?
How old will I be when I die?
Will I ever love?
She smiles at my naiveté
whispering
secrets she has never spoken
in my ear.
I will be happy she says.
Happy?
For too long now,
when asked if I could see the stars in the sky,
all I could utter was,
“I see black and mud.”
Happy?
Perhaps she has the wrong girl.
I am the bruised daisy
crawling toward God.
The cracked bread in the corner
crying misshapen tears.
The wingless rabbit cowering each night
by a bowl of soured milk.
I am second thoughts and doubts
and powdered sorrow left on the bathroom floor.
I look into her eyes
and again she says, “you will be happy.”
And for a moment,
I believe her
as if the sun were a bone I could bite into and hold.

Once A Keyhole

Once
a keyhole
came
and crawled through my mind.
I spoke daytimes
and put traces of dreams in my bed.
It is like that in families.
The jewel learns the nipple
like a body of bones.
You come to me
almost a prison,
and wear truth like silk,
a castle of lies and fingers
and say everything
I want to boat is no more.
My dog,
my cut,
my tulips.
Nothing will stop my mouth
but an architect rushing like a blood clot
to my brain.
Today my body is useless,
a delicate box of Kleenex
waiting to be torn and ripped.
This is my history,
my dance,
my fire.
I am the square bulb rising.
The fat metaphor.
The actress in the corner
eating my eight lovers
two by two.
Where could I go
where I would not be
forced
to swim
naked as a fish
in my own pool of circumstance?

White Curtains

The curtains here
are white
and hang like dead birds.
I have thought of mornings without them,
the naked glass reflecting blue and purple
into my eyes.
The scene inside left open to my neighbors,
disorderly conduct,
threads unkempt,
and the smell of rotten apples
on water stained windowsills.
My life is a picture book of perfect,
each night
a sweet pudding of lovemaking,
the rip of flesh and the floating bed.
You on your knees,
my body open,
ripe as a plum
ready to receive you.
I think perhaps we are selfish,
leaving so many
with nothing but muslin to look upon.

My Love

My love is not a guest
from the Five and Dive
that twinkles like a flashy star.
But a sweet summer,
a half moon
sprouting rare rows of lovely ribbons
for you to come upon.
I bleed blue
and dance across the ice
all eggs and jam.
My love is in London,
and Paris,
and Madison.
My love is the poem I couldn’t write.
The book left unread.
Eleven years of seasons.
It is sleeping till dawn,
and the bird’s shadow,
the creamy white paper of dawn.
My love is whispered like money,
a forest of skin for you to taste,
and hold,
and mark
till we both lie down
and die.

Naked

In the dream
I want to stay
Naked,
a subway for you to ride on.
My long brown hair
the rope
you climb
to my lips.
In the dream
you are my winter,
the pure white bed of sleep
hungry
for my virtue.
In the dream
the milkman’s shoes
would regard the animal within us
with envy.

Furry Boots

All week it rained.
I wanted to go shopping
and buy myself a pair of furry boots
but the rain kept me in.
Who wants to shop in the rain?
Not me.
I wanted to buy some warm tights
that I could wear with short dresses
but I didn’t buy anything.
Instead,
I sat inside and watched the leaves fall off the trees.
I sat inside
and looked at my old clothes and old shoes
and wondered when the rain would end.
I thought about going out
but it seemed like too much trouble.
Who wants to get wet when you can stay inside and have hot tea?
Shopping always leaves me depressed anyway.
Either the shoes don’t fit,
or I think I’m too fat,
or I refuse to buy something because it’s Made in China.
It’s getting harder and harder to buy anything that isn’t Made in China.
So I didn’t buy anything.
I had tea,
and read poems,
and walked around the house in my socks
and dreamed of furry boots.

Oh C.C.

I miss my dog.
I miss the way I was when I was with him.
I miss saying, “Oh, C.C.”
when I saw a squirrel in the backyard
in a voice that I knew
would make him come screaming down the hall
frantic to get out the back door.
I miss being silly with him
and chasing him around corners
and throwing tennis balls down the hall for him until we were both exhausted.
I miss taking time to play.
I don’t know how to play without him.
All I know how to do is work
and berate myself for not writing.
I have no one to play with now.
I want to go on long walks but he isn’t there to walk with me
and I have forgotten how to walk alone.
I want to come home and hug him and tell him about the asshole in the parking lot
but he isn’t there when I walk in.
I want to curl up with him on his bed and listen to him breathe while he sucks his bed
but the floor is bare.
I want to cut up radishes and watch him stand right under me
hoping that I will drop one.
Now when I drop a radish it lays on the floor until I pick it up and throw it in the trash.
I want to pop a big bowl of popcorn and toss him kernels and marvel at how he catches each one.
I haven’t made popcorn since he died.

When You Are Young

When you are young
you think you have all the time in the world.
There is always tomorrow,
one more t.v. show to watch,
one more errand,
one more dream,
one more dip in the pool.
There is time
to let parents and teachers and boyfriends upset you.
There is time for tears
and anger
and hopes fading.
It doesn’t matter if tonight is spent in front of the t.v.
mulling over why he didn’t call.
There is still plenty of time.
And if a song doesn’t come today,
it will come tomorrow
so you stop trying as hard as you would have if you thought
there wouldn’t be a tomorrow.
When you are young
minutes move like hours
and you have time to stop and smell the daisies
and marvel at your breasts as they make their first appearance like
shy debutantes.
When you are young your heart is as open as a butterfly’s wings
and you do not know the sting of betrayal.
But when you get older something happens.
You start to see how you have spent your years
and you start to worry that the hours and days are moving too fast.
You see your life projected on the wall like a strange mosaic tile,
cracked and fragmented and uneventful
and you wonder how you can stop doing what it is you’ve been doing
and start doing something different.
You grow tired of grilled cheese sandwiches and the same Christmas songs
and running to the mall to buy something that really won’t make you happy
for more than a few weeks.
Oreos and ice cream make you sick and you realize sugar is
a poison you’ve swallowed all you life.
You start looking at babies and old people
and realizing you are neither
but somewhere in the middle.
You start wondering what we are all doing
here
on this planet
always moving,
moving.
You start seeing the illusion of the world you are living in
as if it were a cardboard cut-out,
a good wind could blow over.
And you realize how empty it all is -
The pursuit of money, cars
and homes.
And you start asking yourself
how this whole lie began
and how you can get out of it
and find what you are supposed to be doing and thinking
and wanting
before it is too late
and you are too old
to care.

Good Company

There is nothing to do
but sit and write.
No one needs me today.
There is no crisis that I must run to.
No medical emergency that needs my attention.
No fight that has escalated to hitting and screams.
No phone ringing with accusations.
There is only silence.
It is a silence I am unaccustomed to.
It is a silence that leaves me wanting to run
and find a crisis
to fix.
I find myself reaching for phones and dishes
and trips out in to the cold that don’t really need to be made.
I find myself wanting to interject myself into the fray,
to pick up another’s worry,
to stir something up,
when all I need to do is sit
quietly
and watch the leaves fall.
I have been given the gifts of time and quiet and peace.
I pray I use them well.

A Writer's Dilemma

I didn’t take the flight with you.
I didn’t sit beside you and eat our leftover Thanksgiving dinner,
the one with the macro yams and bok choy and wild rice
that never really turned wild.
I didn’t sit beside you and laugh about the man in front of us
with the pointy head,
or at the one across the aisle that couldn’t keep from jiggling his leg for more than a few seconds
at a time.
I didn’t ride with you down Michigan Avenue and marvel at the snow as it came falling
on the empty streets
ready for the Day after Thanksgiving shoppers.
I didn’t hold your hand in our red Cobalt rental car and feel yours in mine
and smile at how many years I have loved you.
I didn’t take the ride out to Deerfield
to eat the way we never eat now,
sugar, sugar and more sugar.
I didn’t come and see your family
and quietly kick you under the table over something someone said
that I found absolutely unbelievable.
I didn’t sit around and make small talk and wish that I were home at my desk writing.
I spent the day alone
in the grey
wishing that the deer in the backyard would come back again.
I spent the day watching others run around trying to get ready.
I spent the day in silence
trying to remember who I am.
I spent the day wishing
I could be
in two places
at once.

Let Down Your Eyes

What is this plant,
this deep seeded bumble bee that lies before me?
Surely it can not be the moon?
I have traced the moon with my finger
and wandered in the light
only to lick the icing off the spoon
again and again.
You say you want wonder –
look out your window.
There are a million lights just waiting for your eyes.
Over and over the drag of winter has left you down
bundled and huddled
like some old man waiting for his bus.
When spring comes you will miss the tulips.
It is like that with some.
They want fireworks
when there are shooting stars all around them.

Scared

I don’t know who to believe in this whole thing.
The investment banker,
the insurance salesman,
or the senior caretaker who has “never stolen in her life.”
It all feels too much for me,
like trying to remember how many pills my mother takes each morning
or that I have to carry valium in my purse at all times for my father,
or that I live every day now without seeing Trouble’s face.
Everyone I speak to has a different angle,
agenda,
desire,
and it all comes down to money.
I feel like a very small animal in a room full of wolves.
My sister would trust anyone,
and gladly give out any information,
but I am not like that.
I am suspicious when someone starts asking me about income
and address,
and wants to know how much money there is.
I am scared of the market
and the way things rise and fall without reason.
It is as if we are all being manipulated.
One minute our country is in a depression,
and the next minute our President is on t.v. speaking about our resilience
and how strong we are.
Nothing makes sense and I feel like there is no where to turn.
There is a hand waiting to grab me,
to feel me up,
to take me.
I am scared.

Uncle Horatio

The red snapper tasted like a tire last night.
It lay on the plate
hard and rubbery
and inedible.
No amount of olive oil or lemon or herb
could turn it into something it wasn’t
and had never been.
I took it back to the grocery store this morning.
I slid its body
across the counter
to the Spanish manager
with the wooden bracelets.
She looked at it
like it were a dead relative
she once knew.
An uncle,
named Horatio.
Poor Horatio,
never even made it out of Cuba
or out of my oven.
Now, he’s dead
and there’s no one to give him a decent burial.
“I tried my best, “ I told her.
She nodded and understood
then she threw Uncle Horatio in the trash.
I thought of him sitting there rotting
while I walked up and down the grocery aisles.
She threw coffee grinds on top of him to kill the smell
and dreamed of Cuba and all the other uncles
she would never know.

The White Rabbit

I have lost myself.
Like a rabbit in the woods,
my head has been snapped and turned by the sound
of others.
I have become lost and can’t find my way home.
It is easy to do,
when you follow another’s trail
and leave your own behind.
I went walking and laughing and found myself
alone.
You on your path,
me,
left behind
wondering
where I am now.
I followed the breath of you,
your kiss,
your touch,
your voice,
and when the words were not what I wanted to hear
I didn’t know I could listen to my own.
I thought you would lead me out
with your eyes.
So I shut mine
until I lost my own sight.
Now I am in the dark
wondering how it got to be so dark,
wondering how I got to be where I am.
I do not know what I think,
or how I feel,
or where the ground is beneath my feet.
I only know there is not a me.
I am scared to walk,
to move,
to breathe,
to find my way back,
to wherever back is.
For too long now,
whenever you were quiet,
I felt the need to sound,
to help,
to waken.
I thought there was something wrong with me
when you stopped telling me I was beautiful.
I believed your silence.
Now I know
I have been listening to the wrong voices
and searching for a way out
of the rabbit’s maze
by following the White Rabbit.

Falling Down

It’s all going down.
This country.
Our dollar.
Our position as being a country that actually stands for something.
The market is falling.
Oil is rising.
And gold is reaching all time new highs.
I wonder what will happen soon.
When will we finally wake up to the danger we are in?
It is as if we have lost all sense of ourselves.
All sense of what is right and wrong.
We have stopped feeling,
Stopped wondering,
Stopped remembering why we are here.
There is only the mad dash to take more and make more
and outdo and undo.
The elephants are dying,
cut down for their tusks
so the rich can wear them around their necks as trinkets.
They lie in fields rotting,
their stench deafening.
But we don’t look.
All we see is the lady eating
shark fin soup wearing the fine necklace.
I wonder when it will end?
How many more people will die
before we stop and look at each other
and asks ourselves what the Hell we are doing.

Rabbits From Nowhere

It is almost like a game,
calling Bob.
My father wants to put an ad out
in the paper with the hope he will call him back,
but he won’t call.
He doesn’t even remember who he is.
I want to tell him to let it go,
but he can’t.
His repertoire is getting smaller and smaller,
like an ailing magician down to his last few tricks.
Gone are the days of sawing assistants in half
and pulling rabbits out of hats.
Now,
there are only a few card tricks left and the occasional quarter
magically appearing from behind someone’s ear.
I want to shake him out of this space,
to show him the libraries
he has left behind.
I want to walk him to the new grocery
down the street
with the wood burning pizza oven and the freshly made sushi
and say, “Eat, eat. Look at what you’ve been missing.”
But I can’t even get him out of his bed
or into a clean shirt.
I want to get him to pick up a racquet
and hit tennis balls with me
but all he wants to do is watch t.v.
I want to tell him I love him
but he is too busy calling me a thief.
It is as if he has stepped behind the magic curtain
and disappeared forever.

Silent Language

It is quiet
or at least there seems to be
no sound
of the spider making his way
to my thigh.
The morning light spreads across the trees
and I am here in the woods
comforted by heat and fabric.
Listen,
can you hear the leaves speaking?
They shake and dance like epileptic hands,
but what do they say?
No one can understand them,
not even the birds.

Spider Dance

I do not know what to do
to stop the fall
of numbers.
It is like trying to keep the leaves on the trees.
I do not have enough hands.
I could glue,
and erase,
and blow,
and run,
but another would come.
In the garden, the spider walks past me
carrying a dead insect.
He does not worry about things he can’t control
in this world.
He is busy preparing
his dinner feast.
I watch him cross the red brick patio,
each step a delicate dance,
part warrior,
part Fred Astaire.
He is so busy,
he never even sees the shoe coming towards
his tiny head.

Warner Woods

I walked in the woods today without you
and saw your black shadow
everywhere I went.
I heard you run
after the squirrels
and felt you brush past my leg
as I rounded narrow corners.
I sat on your favorite bench,
the one you marked each time we came,
and I smiled at the other dogs who passed by with their owners.
I walked up the steep hill,
the one you led me up
when you were young,
the one you trailed behind me on
in later years,
and I wrapped my arms across my stomach
trying to hold you in.
It has been six months since you’ve been gone
and I miss you more each day.
The leaves are yellow now
just the way you liked them.

10mg

He is on the warpath again,
in his valium haze
demanding
money and pills
and quiet.
He is sitting in that blue recliner
with his hands on his chest
like he were a king
holding court,
fighting
and spewing
and expecting everyone to bow down before him.
I wish I could make him behave,
this man I call my father.
For years he forced his way
down my throat
expecting me to believe
and swallow his every word.
Now I look at him
and see a pathetic ruler,
an ineffectual child
trying to get his way
when he has no idea which way
he is going.

Fish And Ginger Tea

The wind chimes are blowing
and I am all alone.
I wish my mother were here
but I am alone
on my big white bed
with the window open
and the wind chimes blowing.
And I don’t know what to do.
I want to call her
but I can’t.
She isn’t there.
She is lost
in her world.
She is a child
drinking ginger tea
and making fish.
And I want to say,
“Mommy, mommy can you hear me?”
But I know she can’t.
Her smile is crooked as a broken bottle
and her eyes are flat and lifeless.
She is the small doll
I carried in my arms when I was little,
the one whose head bobbed from side to side.
She is barely here
and I am all alone.

My Life

This morning I woke up in a Zytrec haze,
hung over from a night of congestion
and tossing and turning.
It was dark out,
grey
and raining.
When I woke,
Mark was gone
and I stretched across the entire bed.
In the morning,
I forget who I am,
where I am.
It’s almost like each morning I have to re-remind myself,
yes,
I am Diana.
Yes,
my dog is dead.
Yes,
I wish things were better.
It is like that now.
Each morning,
waking in to the anxiety
of my life.

Breathing

is getting harder and harder
it seems.
Time
to sit and find
the space
between the lines
and worries.
Everyone around me is stressed out.
I can’t tell whose stress I am feeling.
I feel my own heart racing
with black tea
and thoughts.
I have juggled so many balls
I look like a professional.
Appointments scheduled.
Money transferred.
Vehicles repaired.
All with lightning speed.
I am like that octopus
In the commercial
with eight tentacles going in every direction
but in.
I miss going in.
I miss sitting with myself and hearing the birds
and watching the squirrels run.
Now there is only breathe in breathe out
and run.

The Zoo Keeper

The zoo keeper
with her mighty arms
and white teeth
swings down and scoops them up
like ripe bananas.
She is there to watch their step,
to steer them clear
of poop
and crumbs.
She brings them meals on trays
of vegetables and meat
and watches them devour her work.
She helps them wash
the years of skin down the drain.
She makes their bed,
the one that he lies in for hours at a time,
the one that she never sleeps in.
She gives them tea
and pills
and checks pulses and sugars.
She wears a red thong
and smells of the jungle.

A Prayer

Surely spring
will allow
a girl to stand by
and cook wrinkles in a pot.
Just once.

Daddy Sweet Daddy

I do not know when he became
the drug addict that he is,
lying in bed with his white tennis shoes still on,
breathing in smoke
and listening to the air conditioner hum.
He wanders down halls now
sometimes singing,
sometimes screaming.
His deep voice
always telling me
“I’m a thief and a control freak.”
I do not know who he is anymore
or what he is.
All I know
is he is not my father.
I wonder how different my life
would have been
If we had gotten him off the Valium
thirty years ago.
Would I be attracted to different men?
Would I be able to sleep at night
and turn off the tape recorder of fear.
He scares me.
He’s always scared me.
He is why I had nightmares
and felt my stomach flip every time
a man left me.
He is why I disappear
at the sight of a cock.
He hurt me.
He might as well have held my hand to the stove
and burned me
till there was nothing left.

An Uncomplicated Hymn

This morning,
when the sky turned grey
and the rain came,
I ran.
Pearl Harbor leaves scars
and those forced to eat mice
and corn
will not come
if I wash the dead.
My fingers
are an uncomplicated hymn
sung in quarter notes
and triplets.
Did I mention I knew you once?
We were young girls
with dreams
that rose like elevators
to the sky.
I did not know that in the end
I would outgrow my own shoes.

Here

They are all here.
The squirrels and the blue-jays,
the cardinals and the robins.
They are all here,
doing what they do this time of year.
I watch them run from tree to tree
so at peace.
You would have never allowed them
such freedom,
such security.
You kept them on their toes.
Let them know who was boss.
You made the backyard a
kill or be killed adventure
everyday.
Now there is only tranquility.
They are all here,
but you are gone.

Bottom Dwelling Buzzard

I am through with words
and talking and reasoning
and crying.
There is only time for action now.
The scalpel
to the throat.
The quick cut
and release
of metal on skin.
For too long now,
I have sat wringing my hands
while the brute,
the bull,
the bully
came and took what is not hers to take.
How dare she!
My sister,
the ogre,
the bottom dweller,
the scavenger,
the buzzard
circling,
picking the dead to the bone.
She, who has taken and taken,
wants more.
She who has never learned to stand on her own two feet
now kneels over my parents sucking them dry,
Sister?
You are not my sister?
My blood and yours could never be the same.

Black Shadow

It is not any easier now
than it was five months ago.
In fact, it’s harder now.
The permanency of it
is more real.
The forever absence of him.
Walking down my hall.
Sneaking into my bed.
Running after ball and squirrel and car.
His eyes
always so perfectly brown
staring me down
demanding a walk,
demanding a meal,
humping his bed
twice a day.
His face on my sheets
staring up at me
every morning by seven a.m.
insistent that I get up
and feel the sun.
His love of life.
the laughter he brought into mine.
The park
and the trees
and the street where I live
are full of him.
Everywhere I look
he is there
but there is nothing to hold on to.
My sadness deeper now
than ever before.
The loss of him
a black shadow that never leaves my side.

Negative Jeans

Negativity is inherited
like freckles and red hair.
Furrowed brows
and stretch marks,
smiles that never turn up
and the belief that life
is only shadow.
The voices in my head,
the ones that tell me it’s too late,
the ones that keep me
tied down
like the victim of some horrible rape,
where did they come from?
From my mother’s breast milk
or my father’s seman?
Was I destined to inherit their pessimism
like I inherited his wavy hair and her thin legs?
Now I am at the park
trying to listen to the birds and the small river
that runs beside the park benches,
but all I can hear is the fly trapped in my car
buzzing and buzzing.
I can’t get the fucker out,
no matter how hard I try.

World of Weasels

The world is full of weasels.
Weasels that tell you they are going to do something
but never will.
Like Ty,
the tennis guy at the Brentwood Y.
He said he’d post a note for tennis partners
for my dad,
but
then didn’t even write down the phone number I gave him.
I hate guys like that.
Arrogant,
pricks
who think they don’t have to give anything to anyone.
I’d like to take all the weasels and the liars of this world
put them in a giant garbage bag,
and throw them out to sea
for the sharks to eat.
Then,
when someone told you they were going to do something,
you wouldn't have to worry.

The Lions

They are here,
the two of them,
limping along into twilight
like wounded lions,
each one scared
to look the other in the eye
for fear of what they might see.

The Right Choice

He showed up this morning
looking like a crack addict.
Eyes wild.
Hair unkempt.
Unable to look at me
when he told his story
of the “family emergency”
that kept him from coming to work this weekend.
Now,
he arrives an hour and a half late
and wants me to give him three hundred dollars
before he even starts
so he can go buy tools from a pawn shop.
His were stolen from him this weekend.
I want to help the guy,
but I’m not stupid.
He says he can run get his computer and I can keep it as collateral.
The whole thing reminds me of the panhandlers I see on the street
in downtown Nashville.
They tell me stories of coming back from the war,
and broken down cars, and pregnant wives they need to get to the hospital.
I turn them down over thirty-five cents.
I don’t think I’m going to be handing out three hundred dollars
to someone I don’t know
who hasn’t shown up on time once.
I tell him I don’t think it’s going to work out.
He leaves.
I think I made the right choice.

Dragon's Breath


Do yourself a favor
and stop listening to all the voices
that tell you no.
What the hell do they know?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
You are here
and with just your breath
you can blow the dragons down.
Breathe in,
blow out
and be
all that you
are meant to be.

Ping Pong Player

The mailman is here.
The moment I see him pull up
to my mailbox
I get out of my chair
and run down the hill to see what he left me.
It doesn’t matter if I am in the middle of a song, poem,
thought, etc.
I am ready to leave it all behind and go flying
like some crazed poodle that heard the doorbell ring
and is compelled to respond.
I don’t even think to ask myself if I want to go get the mail right now,
or if it is convenient for me to get the mail,
I just go get the mail.
It’s like that with me.
Something happens,
I react.
The phone rings,
I answer it.
I rarely screen calls.
A bill arrives,
I pay it that second.
My mother calls,
I spend hours in a pea soup of her own making.
I never let things pile up,
like laundry,
or dishes,
or feelings.
I am constantly trying to undo what’s been done.
Action.
Reaction.
Action.
Reaction.
No wonder I’m such a good ping-pong player.
I’ve been playing ping-pong all my life.
Now,
I must learn to sit
while balls are coming at me
and do nothing.

Empty Buckets

This morning I jumped back in to the frenzy
of numbers.
I cast my line into the sea
and waited for the big one to bite.
There I sat
with my little fishing pole
hoping my prized tuna would see my sparkling decoy.
Hour after hour
I waited and watched
tossed about on the deck
till I was green as the water below.
Nothing came of it
except nausea
and the empty feeling that I was chasing
something that should never be caught.
I prefer to fish
just for the art of fishing,
to walk away with the heat of the sun on my back
and the sound of the deck creaking below me.
I prefer not to bring anything home except
the memory
of salt air.

The Good Fight

There is not time to fight the good fight
for anyone else’s life
but your own.
In a moment
it can all pass
like a lightning bolt shooting across
the sky.
And then,
it is done.
Harmon
suffered a massive stroke this morning
and is being taken off life support.
On Sunday night
he was so alive
sitting at the dinner table
discussing life and death with the grace
he always possessed.
He didn’t know that two days later
he would be lying in a hospital bed
breathing his last breaths.
Each day I must begin asking myself
if I am spending my minutes on what matters.
Watching the market fall and rise
or my lover
run through mazes
are distractions.
It is far better to sit in the grass and watch the butterfly
drink from the daylilies
than worry.
All of this other stuff,
these other things,
are nothing to hold onto.
They are as pale and thin as dragonfly wings
blowing in the breeze.

The Apartment

It is a small room,
with two windows facing downtown.
A motel-like unit will keep them cool in the summer
and warm in the winter
and they will have meals in the cafeteria
sometimes twice a day.
Meat and three with cornbread
and a slice of chocolate pie.
It is a bit depressing,
considering they came from swimming pools
and country clubs,
but it will be their home for the next few months,
all four hundred and fifty feet of it.
I can already hear the fights over the t.v.
and the bathroom,
and the kitchen.
It will be a miracle if they survive
a week
without killing each other.

Mental Warfare

You start wondering
if you were in denial
all the time
about the Alzheimer’s,
and the gambling,
and the fighting.
Were you too busy
at college
studying zen,
biology,
your professors,
to even notice
the decline,
fall,
lapse
into the other world?
Now he calls
six, seven, eight times
a day
repeating
the same stories,
the same numbers,
the same resentments.
They were the same stories,
numbers and resentments
you grew up listening to
when you were three,
ten, twelve, twenty-two
thirty-six,
but now they come faster and harder
over and over
like gunfire in a war.
Over and over
dodging bullets
getting hit in the back, legs and arms,
cowering down
under the covers
pulled up
over your head
and you start to wonder
when did it happen?
How were you blind to it for so long?
And are you next?
But mainly you wonder
has it all been a lie?
Has it all been a lie
you didn’t see through
until now?
Who he was?
Who you were?
What you thought you had?
And now,
where do you go to escape
when there is no escape?
Or not even a now?

Poisoned Dogs

In Tai Chi
my feet aren’t supposed
to turn out rabbit
like an old aunt
banging into tangerines.
No,
my instructor tells me to keep them pointed straight
like a cobweb
collapsing and blooming.
Pale arms
candle my walk
as my head stays motionless.
It is easy for him to say.
He didn’t study ballet for years
where out is the royal jelly of the princess.
He tells me I have bad form
from point after point.
He tells me of famous dancers who stopped
twirling by forty
when their knees collapsed liked poisoned dogs.
He tells me I have weak ankles.
I leave the room
sullen as a pancake
left out on the counter overnight.
I thought I was taking Tai Chi
to relax,
not to lift the veil of my past
with a Chinaman’s knife.

Lullabye Nation

In the race for mayor,
our level of stupidity
has sunk to a new low.
A newspaper just put out an article
entitled, “get to know your Mayoral Candidates,”
and then proceeded to ask them point blank questions
such as “Where they eat breakfast, lunch and dinner?”
and who their favorite musical artist is.
The answers for eateries ranged from Noshville (a deli in Nashville)
to McDonald’s,
and for artists the answers were
Ryan Adams and Aerosmith.
There wasn’t a single question about
party affiliation,
personal finances,
positions in regard to pollution, transportation, crime
and education,
nor were there any questions about their plans for the city,
just, “where do you eat?”
Who cares!
I don’t understand what’s happening to us as a people
or as a country.
We are picking our leaders based on whether or not
they eat at McDonalds or dye their hair.
It feels like elections for class president in Junior High.
How cute is he or she?
What kind of clothes do they were?
How much money does their father make?
Do they have zits or not?
Are they on the football team?
We are quickly becoming a nation of pacified morons
who care more about game shows and “reality” t.v.
than we do about what is happening to our country.
The worst part is our press and our current leaders
are happy to keep lulling us to sleep.

Moving The Dead

Good things are coming.
The dead tree that has stood by my front door
is finally being cut down
after many many phone battles with the electric company.
Jupiter,
my adopted dog,
got a home with a family and another dog for a playmate
and, I’d like to believe, a much better life than the one I could give him now.
I’m selling my house to a couple I like,
who doesn’t have a realtor.
My parents are getting an apartment in town
and I’m getting donations no one thought I could get
for Nashville Humane and Metro Animal Control.
I feel a shift.
I wasn’t expecting the tree to come down.
Last I was told,
they said they weren’t going to do it.
Then these two men showed up this morning
with their chipper and chainsaws and started taking it down.
I take it as a sign
that anything is possible.
Just when you’ve given up all hope,
you can open your front door
and everything dead
can be taken away.

No Rain

No rain.
No rain.
The cicadas are screaming in the trees.
No rain.
The Skip Laurels and Holly bushes are praying for relief.
No rain.
The grass is browning from exhaustion.
No rain.
For weeks
there has been
no rain.
What once was green and lush and deep
is now wilting.
Even the weeds have barely managed to raise their heads
above the grass.
It is as if God moved us to Tucson
without telling us.

All Shook Up

It isn’t the tie rods,
or the ball joints,
or the alignment,
or the struts.
It isn’t the set of tires,
or the glove box,
or the windshield.
I’ve changed and eliminated just about everything it could possibly be
and it still shakes.
It rattles around like Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang
without the fun of the flying machine.
I keep getting sent from mechanic to mechanic
and no one can solve it.
I feel like the patient with the mystery pain
in her back,
the one that doesn’t show up on x-ray or MRI.
It’s like my car has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
No one can solve what’s wrong.
Meanwhile I keep driving
back and forth
over road and hill
juggling all the way.
I keep thinking if I try just this one last thing
it will solve it.
But it never does.
Last night,
I watched a Texas minister on t.v.
telling me to “wait expectantly;.”
God has heard my desires.
I bet he never drove a twenty-year old Volvo.
He’s driving around in some brand new Mercedes convertible
with his blonde wife next to him
laughing as the sun bounces off her diamond ring
right into her eyes.

Mother Of The Insane

You with your two eyes
what do you see?
Do you see the apple honey branches
waiting for you to climb?
Do you see the green clowns
that slaughtered the goat on their way to the circus?
Cinderella and the Prince
lived happily ever after
but what about you?
Do you fit into the envelope?
Are you the recipient of the ball?
Or are you the mother of the insane?

Less Than Human

I can’t stop thinking about them.
Their warm eyes
that ask for so little
and give so much.
I can’t stop wanting homes for all of them.
Leroy,
Ebony,
Zoey,
Ava
and
Licorice.
It seems so unfair that we should be free
in this world
while they are in cages.
What have they done to be locked up?
They have not polluted the world
with their foolishness.
Nor have they started wars,
or insulted their neighbors,
or insisted their political and religious views
were the only ones.
They have not asked for the diamond ring,
or the gas guzzling Mercedes,
or the second home in the country
and then fretted like a spoiled child when they couldn’t get it.
They only ask to love and be loved.
They only ask for food and water and a safe place to rest,
not accessories.
Why should that be so hard to give them?
In the shelter
they are pressed against the bars of their cages,
curled in to little balls,
forlorn.
Some have given up their dream.
Others bark frenetically
begging to be noticed,
begging to be given a chance,
begging for their life.
It’s so unfair.
We’re the ones who should be begging for their love
and companionship.
We’re the ones who should be asking for their forgiveness
for all the times
we were
less than human.

To The Moon

You are off somewhere new,
to your new home,
and your new life.
You, who were once alone and had no one,
now have the American dream:
Two kids, a wife, a husband,
a dog,
a fenced yard and a three thousand square foot house.
You, who once wondered where your next meal
was coming from, will now get “all natural” food.
You, who had no one to love you,
now will be loved by all.
You will learn new games,
go fishing,
have your tail pulled,
go to bar-b-q’s where you’ll probably listen to too much right-winged politics,
watch over the young,
and sleep in your own bed at night
under the stars.
You will have the life
(except for the politics)
that I always dreamed of for you.
You will know peace and security.
And me,
I will be o.k.
without you.
I will think of you
and wonder where you are and what you are doing
and I will remember the sweetness you gave me.

The Hen

I can not keep coming
to you in the cage
and not bringing you home.
I can not keep saying,
“Be patient, be patient.”
and think that that will keep you from crying.
What can I do?
My hands are tied
and I can not wring them again.
Each day
I watch
you slip further
and further away
like some red floating ribbon
drifting from sight
curling and twisting in pain.
You,
who have always been my friend,
are still waiting for me
to be yours.
But when I ask what you need
you only cry.
My ears are heavy as tombstones,
numb to the years
and still I have no answers.
I want to be your friend.
I want to take you out of your cage
and give you the home you deserve.
I want to make the memories
of so much neglect
disappear
forever.
I want to be the hen,
pecking and scratching
the dirt
till it is soft and warm for you
to lie in.

Cooking With Chocolate

Sometimes
the sadness is too great
and I have no choice but to put my guitar down
on the bed
and rest.
I don’t know what to do with it.
I have tried
crying it out,
But it returns.
I have tried pretending
it is not there
and busying myself with causes
and distractions,
But it returns.
I have tried minimizing it
and telling myself
how much better off I am
than ninety six percent of the population,
But it returns.
I have tried long walks in the woods
and sitting on picnic benches alone.
I have tried living alone
and living with someone else.
I have tried not talking to my parents
and sleeping with stuffed animals.
I have tried pills,
and Vodka,
and puffs of grass,
and keeping a journal,
But it returns.
I have tried orgasms,
and mopping floors,
and cooking with chocolate,
But it returns.
I have tried therapy
and read way too many self-help books
But it returns.
I fear I shall never be free of it.
I have cried so much
I don’t even know what I am crying for
anymore.

The Egoed Saint

It breaks my heart seeing him
behind bars
or at least I tell myself it does.
Two weeks ago,
I would have been grateful for that sight
knowing that he hadn’t been put down
for some oddball reason
like crooked toenails or something.
I would have been grateful that he was alive
and I hadn’t helped send him to his death.
But now,
now that he has made it this far,
I want more for him.
I want the 100 acre farm with sheep
and cows
and a kindly Mrs.
who will ring the dinner bell
and he’ll come running to the back porch
for a steaming plate of steak.
I imagine his black legs flying,
hips slinging from side to side
like jello in a washtub.
His brown eyes
alive and happy,
herding one four-legged creature
after another into place.
I want all of that for him,
because I love him
and because
I want to feel good about myself.
I want to be the good angel,
the hero of the play,
the one that can point to herself and say,
“see, I did something. I saved an animal from the needle
and found him a little piece of Heaven.”
“Look what I did. Aren’t I wonderful?”
But the truth is
I don’t want to feel bad
about giving him up.
I don’t want to admit
that I’m not ready to love another animal that hard and deep again
and then break so badly when he dies.
I want to love at a distance now
keeping my head cocked to one side
and my heart zipped tight.

Solitary Sun

It doesn’t have to be so hard,
the baby unborn,
the dog not kept,
the marriage never entered in to.
It can be as simple as saying, “no”,
and walking away,
as simple as closing your eyes and letting go.
This morning the sun is out,
the birds are chirping
and I am alone.
People,
animals,
and things do not fill me up.
I am here
no matter who goes away,
and the sun will shine for me
just as much as it does for you.

Cage Free

We are all in cages,
big cages.
Cages we create with our minds
and with our hands.
Cages built by hate and greed
and jealousy and fear.
Cages that keep us from being
all that we can be.
Some cages are built of wood.
Some of brick.
Some of metal.
Some cage cats and dogs,
others cage people.
My cage is a 1957 ranch house
with wood paneling
and pink ceramic tile in the bathroom.
A silent,
lifeless,
airless
cage.
A cage bought for me as a present.
A cage I have been unable to let myself out of.
For years I have tried to escape
the long birthing canal of a hall
that stretches from den to back bedroom
with its flat champagne walls.
But each attempt
has only produced miscarriages.
I keep getting stuck,
mid hall
and die on the wood floor in a bloody puddle.
I think of firing myself down
the hall
as if I were a canon ball.
Surely the momentum would get me out the door
and I would be free of this cage
once and for all.
But I have no canon,
only my two hands
to unlock the door.
And so I turn and turn and turn
as if my hands were covered in grease
and the house were on fire.
It is a frantic turning
that leaves me crying
the way a child would cry
who has been left in his room for too long.
Exhausted.
Asleep in tears.
And when it gets to be too much,
I sit and look at what I’ve created
and then I know
I must stop fighting
and just
be.
The only way out,
is
in.

Jupiter Rising

I keep thinking about the impermanence of things.
People.
Animals.
Relationships.
He is gone
and now I am alone again.
I thought that’s what I wanted,
but I am lonely
and now he is lonely too
there
in his little cage
with the others barking beside him.
I think about all the people that have come into my life.
The ones I have passed on the street,
the ones who have passed by me.
The ones I will never know,
the ones I know too well.
The ones I have held on to,
the ones I have let slip away.
It is easy to let things slip away,
to wake up and realize fifteen years have gone by
and you are nowhere.
I gave him away so easily,
just signed the paper and he was gone.
It was as if he never existed.
Trouble is in the ground
as if he never existed
to anyone except me.
All this disappearing and reappearing
feels like the worst magic trick in the world.
Poof,
a cloud of smoke,
and what once was
is gone.
It is that easy.

I am what I am

I am giving him away.
I am telling myself that it is what’s best for him,
but truly,
it is what’s best for me.
Yes,
he needs a playmate,
some short-haired four legged friend
he can run and jump and swim
and wrestle with.
He needs a buddy,
a friend,
an instigator.
That is what he needs.
But what I need is freedom.
The freedom to pick up my hat
and run out the door
and not worry about who or what I am leaving behind.
Yes,
it is lonely
without him.
But I do not feel it is right
to make him fill my loneliness.
That is not a reason for keeping someone.
I am trying to be brave,
I am trying to learn that short term pain
is better than long term martyrdom.
I am trying to be selfish
and honor myself.
I want to lie in the grass and roll on my back like he does.
I want to feel free
and not have to feel guilty
that I want what I want.

Stepping in Poop at the Dog Park

Nothing but bad news today.
Bad news in the market.
Bad news under the house.
Bad news from the doctor.
Bad news from my back.
I am trying not to let all this bad news get me down.
Tomorrow is my birthday
and I am trying to tell myself
that things are o.k.
I go through the list of everything I should be grateful for:
I’ve got a roof over my head,
a car to drive,
I’m not working in white slavery,
and I’ve got food to eat.
But I’m still really really depressed.
It just feels like for too long now
there has been one thing after another.
It’s like stepping in poop at the dog park.
The thick warm goo wedges in between the ridges of my shoes
and no matter how hard I try,
I just can’t seem to get it out.
I’m starting to feel like a trapped animal,
one that has banged himself against the cage so many times
trying to get free he’s now curled up in a ball
lying silent against the rails.
Defeated.
Every day I ask God
what he wants for me,
but I hear nothing.
I hear nothing.
I am paddling my boat alone
crashing in to rock after rock,
turning in circles
when I know that somewhere out there
there has to be a clear path.
I just can’t find it.

Yoga Body Yoga Mind

This morning
I tried to lift a cup
to my lips
to take my vitamins.
My arm trembled
as if I were lifting
four hundred pounds,
not three little pills.
My yoga arm biceps
bulged
like swollen eyes
on a prize fighter.
And I felt muscles
I never knew I had.
This is what it feels like
to get in shape,
to change a body
from soft to steel.
My mind
is calmer too,
a still pond
flies can light upon and leave
without resistance.

My Body

has become
the other.
The one I thought
I would never
have.

Ginger and Germs

Now we are dating.
He driving the car around to the front
to meet me.
Me standing on the black driveway
in my short denim skirt
hoping in the car
like I did when I was seventeen
anxious to go make out with some boy.
We do this weird escape ritual
to keep the dog from knowing we both have left the house.
It is hide and seek,
fun and games,
a life of pretend
just so we can try and not upset
the dog.
So far the dog hasn’t caught on.
It’s kind of fun too
like outwitting some dear deaf elderly parent
or having an affair.
We dine on sushi
and look into each other’s eyes,
and debate our happiness
or lack thereof
and how we both got to be so fucked up.
We look at the waitress,
who barely speaks to us
and wonder if she hates us.
We think everybody hates us
because we share meals,
order as little as possible,
and complain about everything.
But today
we dip our vegetable rolls into the same
saucer,
sharing ginger and germs
and hold hands.
I have known him for almost eleven years
but in the car
I look at him and kiss him
as if I were kissing him for the first time.

Push Pull

He is fighting for a spot in my heart,
in between the scar tissue
of loss and betrayal.
He is hoping I will open up
like a rose
and allow him
to stay where the others
once did.
I feel the struggle inside myself.
The pull to close off,
shut down,
and heal.
The desire to be free,
to walk off with nothing or no one,
to have only myself
to come home to
in the dark.

Finding My Voice

It is so hard to do the right thing.
It is so hard to get quiet enough
to hear which voice is speaking.
For me,
I can not tell them apart anymore.
Fear’s voice is so strong
and urgent
that it is hard for me to refuse it.
But I must refuse it.
It has led me astray.
Fear tells me to hold on,
to cling,
to grasp,
to try to control what is happening.
It is the terrified child in the corner
certain it will die
if it lets go of the pole.
It is the face of tears
and redness,
and curly hair askew.
It is the voice that keeps others away from me.
And the voice I use to judge with and hide with
and protect myself with.
It is the voice that keeps me closed off and shut down.
And yet,
it is all I know.
I am trying to learn to find the other voice in me.
The one that says,
“slow down,”
“it’s o.k.”
“you’re still here.”
That voice remembers there is still time
to breathe.
That voice remembers
that every choice is not a mistake,
that I am loveable
and good and kind
and worthy.
That is the voice I am hoping to find
sitting here
alone
in the den
staring out the window.

The Responsible One

I can not run fast enough
from it all,
the floor and the bathroom
and the rotting wood,
the cracks spreading across the mortar
like rumors.
It was all here when I moved in,
a problem passed down to me
that nobody saw
or that nobody wanted to see.
Silent
and terminal
like cancer
passed down from one generation to the next.
Everybody turned their heads and walked away.
Everybody shut their eyes
and pretended nothing was there.
But now
I am
waiting for it all to fall down
like Humpty Dumpty
sitting on my rotten wall.
I am mad
for being lied to.
I am mad for not following my instincts.
I am mad for being pushed
and refusing to say “wait”.
I am mad for smiling
when what I really wanted to do was get out my knife
and cut out the liars’ tongues.
I am mad that I
am once again,
the responsible one.

Sniffing Ghosts

He is outside sniffing
where Trouble was
trying to make sense
of a ghost he can not see.
Yesterday, he pulled out one of Trouble’s old toys,
“doughnut,”
and without thinking,
I picked it up and threw it to him across the grass.
I haven’t touched it since Trouble died.
It, like “Jewish toy”, his beds,
his collar and all his other things
have become almost shrine-like.
They are “hot objects”,
objects that I haven’t been able to look at or touch
since April,
objects that only made me cry
when I looked at them.
But now,
throwing the toy across the hill
it took on a new life,
it had a different meaning,
less meaning.
Suddenly,
it was just a toy,
and someone else
other than the dead
was enjoying it.
And I thought,
yes,
this is how it should be,
life should be passed on
to another.

Definitely Trouble

When I am away
he acts like a nut,
terrorizing the garage
and the gate.
He is determined to get out
or get back,
or find his old owners.
I don’t know what it is,
maybe he’s looking for me.
Yesterday,
he followed me into the bathroom
and lay at my feet
and I asked him,
“Where have you been all your life?”
A question
I could easily have asked myself.
Now he is here
and while he definitely
takes my mind off of Trouble,
the problems are starting to add up.
We can’t fix the fence often enough
and his new tactic of terrorizing unguarded rooms
is starting to be problematic.
He is smart and sweet and gentle.
And when I am here
he is the perfect writing dog,
content to lie at my feet and sleep
beneath the fan.
But when I am gone,
something happens.
He has this split personality thing.
I have visions of him in my head
gnawing the metal fence
like a fugitive
with a makeshift saw.
He pulls everything off the shelves in the garage
he can get his paws on.
I found a white t-shirt in the yard,
a baseball cap,
one of Trouble’s yellow play toys,
a pair of gardening shears,
and a mop pail.
I only wish I had the whole thing on film.
He is either bored or scared or insane
or all three,
and I have nothing to offer him
in the way of sheep
or four-legged friends
to keep him busy.
I feel like a failed mother,
although I know that is ridiculous.
Whatever problems he has he had long before
I found him.
But still,
I feel bad.
I didn’t get him just to give him away.
Now it looks like he’s headed somewhere else.
I think he’s been down this road before.

Brown Stone

Last night I found a tick
in my pubic hair.
The dark brown stone
feeding
silently upon my flesh
had been there since Sunday
when I squatted and peed
in Kingston Springs.
At the time, I joked
that I would probably get a tick
on me
and I did.
Now it’s hard body
was pressed into my soft body.
It lived off my blood.
My every move
was shared by it.
It never let me know
it was there.
It is like that with leeches.
They drain the blood from you
until it is too late
for you to do anything about it.

The Taking

I can not keep him from running away.
Yes,
there are chains and cages
and locks and ropes.
But if the animal wants to go Daddy
he will.
It is like that.
Nothing can be contained
that doesn’t want to be.
The cherry taste of open roads,
my camera clicking
black and white.
The first step of the hunt.
Each morning I am one step closer
towards what is mine.
If only I would begin.

My Decorator

Last night
I came home
to find the den “redecorated”.
The plastic blind over the door had been yanked down
and half of it eaten.
Both the shades were hanging limply on the two other windows.
The rug was piled up into a ball in the corner of the room.
My papers and bills were strewn about the floor.
My favorite children’s book, “The Little Engine That Could”,
was ripped and the spine stripped.
Both cushions were off the chairs
and a pair of shoes and a rawhide bone were now resting in their place.
It was as if an insane person had come in,
ransacked the place,
and then left.
But this wasn’t the work of a person,
This was the work of a two-year-old lab/border collie I adopted.
He had been so submissive
and gentle for the last two weeks
that I didn’t see this coming.
I wanted to yell at him,
but I didn’t.
What good would it do?
He wouldn’t know what I was yelling about now
and it would probably just frighten him.
So I just stood there thinking “bad dog.”
I gave him a few dirty looks
and spent most of the night ignoring him.
But this morning when I woke up,
I thought
his work was rather ingenious,
almost Picasso like,
the way the shoes and bone were arranged
and the papers scattered.
It showed a great deal of attention to detail.
It got me wondering,
what could he do
with a set of finger paints?

Catching Crabs

Friday
and the maple tree
is in full bloom.
What once had died is back.
What once was brown is green.
The orange daylilies are open and singing
their song of summer.
Everything is still.
The dogs lie in the sun
quiet as statues.
Children sleep in white linen
and dream of snow cones and hot dogs
and hours of fun in lakes and pools.
Summer is here
and with it comes freedom.
The freedom to sit and dangle your toes off the edge of a dock
tickling the water below.
The freedom to catch crabs with rotten chicken necks.
The freedom to lie on your back
and smell the honeysuckle
waft through the air like a fine perfume.
It is a time to remember
what it feels like to be a kid,
when the biggest worry you had
was how many days were left
until school started again.

Diapers and Lighter Fluid

Who’s the drummer?
Everybody asks when they come into my house.
“I am”, I meekly answer.
But the truth is, I’m not.
I haven’t drummed in years.
Oh, I bang on them
every month or so.
But I haven’t been a drummer since I was sixteen.
“Who’s the musician”?
“I am.”
But I haven’t put out an album in two years
and when I do sit down to write songs
it is after I have finished doing all the other stuff
I have to do.
The truth is I don’t feel like a songwriter anymore.
I don’t feel like much of anything.
I am sitting in this house decaying
like the floor joists beneath me
getting moldy and creaking louder with each step.
I am tired of what my life is now.
The same phone calls.
The same fights.
The same mornings
that end with the same nights.
I am tired of pursuing a dream,
and wonder what I have been doing
all these years.
I thought I had gotten somewhere.
But now I feel like I’ve been in one of those lap pools
paddling and paddling
but really going no where.
I turn up the street to my house
like I have been doing for the past ten years
and wonder why I am still here.
It is dead here,
a suburbia of gossips
that aren’t interested in changing the world,
just diapers and lighter fluid.
Trouble is buried deep in the ground
and every reason I had for being here is gone.
I wish I had left when he did.

New Love

I guess I need him.
I thought I didn’t.
I thought there was only one for me.
The difficult one,
the one who barked and demanded
and ran my life.
The one who gave me headaches
every time he got in the car.
The one who humped his bed
after every meal.
The one who kept me as his own.
The one who raised me to take care of him.
The one who acted like it was his house
and I was lucky to get to live in it with him.
That is what I was used to,
the nervous one.
The one who woke me with a start
and kept me going all day.
The one who guilted me
into long walks and overindulgences.
The one who would never take nice
no matter how many times I asked.
I loved that one.
But now I am falling in love with
a different one.
One who is quiet and calm
and asks for so little
it makes me worry.
He is content to lie at my feet
and eat what is given.
He is soulful and at peace.
He is a teddy bear
I can’t stop holding.
Yes,
I am falling in love.

A Poet's Confession

I am starting to question
the questioning of my neurosis.
This attempt at trying to understand oneself
is like trying to pull apart a rose to see
what makes it beautiful.
Once you get to the center there is nothing there
and it doesn’t even look like a rose anymore.
It is this preoccupation with self,
this need to unravel,
this mining of oneself,
that is creating the neurosis
in the first place.
I have forgotten what it feels like
to just be.
To sit and laugh and feel the sun.
To step out into the world
and feel another as they brush past.
I have locked myself away
into a Hell of my own making,
banging against the prison of my mind
like a lunatic
when what I needed was to never to go in there
in the first place.

Southern Goodness

I am trying not to react
to the stupidity of others,
the kind that left my dog dead
and leaves me waiting
forty-five minutes for a ten o’clock appointment.
It is so hard to be kind,
to stop and remember
the goodness of people.
Here
in the South,
the slow speech labors
and hangs
like a black python
in the trees
waiting to fall.
It is either
the pronunciation
or the slowness
that leaves me wondering
if the brain is working
at all.
I have seen men treat their dogs
like punching bags.
Mothers treat their children
like rags.
“Christians”
who haven’t a clue as to what spirituality is,
shove Bible verses and righteousness
down the throats of others
in the name of God.
I have seen ignorance
about gays,
and blacks,
and Jews,
and thought
as thick as grits and gravy.
I have felt myself curl inward
and away
and questioned how so many lives
can be about nothing more
than Doritos and beer.

Left For A Spade

The ten of swords
came to sit
upon my wooden table.
With broken eyes
he swallowed up my stew.
I asked his name
but he refused.
He turned away and spoke
in rhyme.
He did not wonder who I was.
Or why I dined with him.
He only thought of the time
when tens once carried swords.
Now they carry nothing but shoestrings.
We dined that night on shrimps and quail
and raised our glasses to the sky.
We did not worry who would come
or if the crow would fly.
The ten of swords
believed in love
and all that it would bring.
He had a lady once, he said,
but she left him for a spade.

Greek Tragedy

Today the food at the Greek restaurant
was awful.
The pancakes were cold.
The grits were as thick as mashed potatoes.
The toast was hard and the coffee was bitter.
When the waitress asked how everything was
I quickly said, “good.”
It was probably the second biggest lie I’ve ever told.
She didn’t really care
and I didn’t want to tell her the truth for fear of having a replay
of the exact same scene we had there 6 months ago.
That complaint about cold eggs led to a forty-dollar gift card
that took us nearly four months to use up.
The food here used to be good.
But that was before the owner/chef and his owner/wife
had a messy divorce.
Now the wife has re-married to a cook that used to work here
and the owner/chef has taken off and opened up a new restaurant
with one of his cute ex-waitresses.
The result: everything has gone downhill.
The new chef’s not nearly as handsome as the old one
and he can’t cook as well either.
He’s about two feet shorter and fifty pounds heavier
and he always looks like he’s got a layer of grease
on his face.
Meanwhile, the wife still looks as angry and unhappy as she used to look
when she was married to her last husband.
It’s like a weird Greek tragedy
only no one is cutting their eyes out
or having sex with their mothers.

Waiting For The Rain

It is time for me
to move on,
to leave the battlefield
and put my eyes on new targets.
All this fighting has been too much
for me.
Now
the trees accepted the loss
and wait with open branches for the rain
and so it is with me.
I can not be the crazy woman
beating my brain
senseless
with thoughts of regret
while moment after sweet moment
escapes me.
I can not run and hide
and gnaw myself ragged
trying to keep up with the sharks.
Better to let them go by
while I wait
limp
like seaweed
swaying in the tide,
struggling against nothing.

Jupiter

He
is here,
this new black dog
I know nothing about.
I brought him into my house
and out of the cage he lived in for the last thirty days.
He was scheduled to die this week.
He is soft
and sweet
and wags his tail at every word I say to him.
I am trying to come up with a name for him.
So far he’s been called “Springsteen”,
“Lorcas”, for Federico Loracs,
“Oscar”, “Bebop” and “Jupiter”.
I think I’m going with “Jupiter”.
He is a mystery to me.
He doesn’t beg for food,
comes when called,
doesn’t know the word “walk”,
seems to have never played with a ball
in his life
and is confused on a leash.
At one moment he seems out of breath
and the next he is happy to run the sixty yard dash
across a field at warp speed.
Just when I am sure he was a farm dog,
he doesn’t want to stay outside and prefers the cool of the a/c
and watching t.v.
All of this has left me wondering about his past life
and past owners,
questions I’m sure I will never have answered.
But none of that really matters.
All I know is
I am happy I adopted him.
He needed a home
and I needed someone to help me forget how much pain I was in.
It could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Animal Colony

Penny and Springsteen
are locked inside cages
waiting for someone to come.
They at least have faces
while so many others don’t.
Tens of thousands
waiting for the needle.
I want to help them all,
bring them all home and let them live
in my backyard.
Watch them run
from tree to tree
in one big animal colony,
my own personal zoo.
They are so helpless
and scared.
They have no one,
no voice.
And the thought of them
being put down one after the other
is too much to even think about.
It is so much easier to
pretend the horrors of the world
don’t exist.

The Last Time

Some days the loss
is worse than others.
Some days I can go about my day
and be concerned with faulty windshield wipers
and oil leaks.
Some days I can sit in the red chair
and roll around the room lost in the squeak
of my wheels.
But today wasn’t one of those days.
Sitting on the bench underneath the tree
surrounded by fourth graders
I wanted to sing blue.
I wanted to tell them how much I missed him
and how amazing he was.
My dog.
I wanted them to take my head in their laps
and put their arms around my shoulder
and be the friends I never had.
I wanted to play charades with them
and swing on the swings
and talk about which boys liked which girls.
I wanted to go out for an ice cream with them and lick all the white
down to nothing.
I wanted to go back in time
and remember how good it felt
to laugh out loud
and not worry
if it would be the last time.

Four-legged Human

They are so perfect,
these four-legged creatures
that never ask for more
than to be walked and fed
and played with and loved.
They never judge us
or tell us what we could have done,
or kick us when we are down.
They never say hurtful words
or hold grudges,
or tell us we’re not making enough money.
They are happiest
playing with a stick or a ball
or chasing a squirrel.
They are happiest
sticking their head out the window
of the car and feeling the breeze blow.
They do not worry about tomorrow,
or about having enough,
or about their destiny.
They do not have a novel to write
or ladder to climb.
They are content to lie on the blacktop
and feel the sun on their back.
They do not look in the mirror
and count the new lines around their eyes
and fret over grey hairs.
They do not compare themselves to others,
or wish they were from a better lineage.
They do not spend hours crying over their mistakes
or wondering “what if”.
They do not start wars that should never have been started
or pollute the air with their factories,
or pretend to be something other than what they are.
They are far more human
than we will ever be.

Vanishing Act

It is like someone came
and took you away.
Just picked you up in a car
and you were gone.
One minute
here
taking up space
breathing the air.
The next,
nothing.
No mark of you
but the flowerbeds
you had dug
slowing filling and changing with the rain.

Little Shop of Horrors

When I think about them
I think about the insanity
that they are.
Both on that couch
like two ships
wrecked
on shore.
Both incapable of moving out of the way of the wave.
Day in
day out
the same day.
It is like a Sartre play
with no exit.
The Pinter pause
taken to the extreme
lasting hours, weeks, even months.
The same fight.
The same food.
The same endless drama.
No wonder I wanted to be an actress.
I was raised on a stage.

Raw Lou

I think about you,
Lou.
You
who dreamed,
you who
struck New York with your chords
and dirty drums.
You who slipped inside me
and froze my tears.
I kneaded the bread of your lips
in my ear,
the milky dreams of your song.
The hungry perversity of raw genius
plaguing my dreams.
You could melt the darkness
with your voice.
The irreverent beat
refusing to appease the middle class.
No apologies.
The masses missed
what I knew.
But you
continued
pressing the cave of bees,
poking the windows with your fists,
plugging my socket.
The cacophony of voices,
Jesus,
The man,
the carpet roses
refusing to die,
laughing like a fish
on the dresser.
You who controlled
your destiny
with your hands in your pockets,
you never worried
what they said.
You’ll go mad
before you let them silence
your Sunday.

Three Weeks Gone

At the beach
I thought I saw you
playing in the waves.
I squinted into the sun
and I saw your black body
running after seagulls.
When I lied down on my towel
I felt you sitting next to me,
wet and sandy,
and I imagined you looking out at the ocean
and listening to the waves
marveling at God’s creation.
Now that I am home
I see you on the hill,
eating grass,
digging up my flowerbeds
and darting from tree to tree.
I feel you in the den
and when I step on the spot where your bed used to be
I swear the floor is still warm.
At night when I pull up into the drive,
I still expect to see you,
but there is nothing
but silence,
horrible silence.
I find myself doing all the things I did when you were here.
I still shut the gate so you won’t get out
even though you're three weeks gone.

The Return Of The Rabbits

I see you
in the shadows.
You,
who stole my heart.
You,
who tripped me with your baby teeth
and small black body.
I see you
in the grass
running with the squirrels.
They are here now
eating in peace,
covering the hill like frost.
They are here
delighting in the safety they have found
now that you are gone.
Soon the rabbits will return
and the grass that covers your grave
will grow long and tall.
Everything will be as it was.
Everything,
except you and me.

Imagine

I imagine him running in a corn field,
endless
and yellow
on the hunt of some poor animal he has sniffed out.
I imagine him
hitching a ride to Mexico
wearing a sombrero
and eating tacos by the dozen
with Patch.
I imagine him running free
down the beach
kicking up the sand
and chasing the seagulls so hard
not one of them will dare to leave the safety of the sky.
I imagine him
sleeping
on the blacktop
like he used to
the wind blowing his black hair.
I imagine him telling me,
“Come on, mom,
stop crying, let’s go play.”
and me getting up with his leash
to take him to the park
or on a walk.
I imagine I hear his bark in the morning
and his tongue on my face
waking me.
I imagine he is with me
every moment of every day
I imagine so hard,
I swear he is still here.

For Trouble

It is so quiet here
without him.
It is as if the world has stopped
but I know it hasn’t.
There is no more early morning “shake”
of his dog collar.
No coming in at 6:15 to wake me with his nudge and his paws
like Peter Pan’s nursemaid.
No bark demanding his breakfast,
or sad brown eyes begging me to go on a walk.
There is no “big yellow ball” being thrust at me
while I am trying to write,
or nudge of his head knocking my hand off my guitar.
No hair on the floor.
No response when I say the words, “walk” or “park” or “bath”.
There is nothing here to let me know he is here.
I think of all the times I was too busy writing to play with him,
And he would entertain himself on the hill with a stick he had found.
I think about all the trips I took where I left him at home with a teenaged dog sitter.
I think about how much he licked me when I cried
and all the times I told him I loved him.
I think about his spirit,
throwing himself against trees and fences trying to catch a squirrel.
I think about his focus
and his concentration
and his funny ballet like walk as he would approach a squirrel.
I think about the backward look he would shoot me when I would try to “help” him hunt,
the look that said, “Mom, back off, this is my territory.”
I think about all the times he never gave up
when I would have given up long ago.
I think about the times he rolled in manure
and I had to give him a bath,
which he hated more than anything.
I think about the bath I gave him last week,
never thinking it would be his last.
I think about him up on that hill
buried three feet below in the cold
and I hope he is o.k.
I hope he is somewhere else,
catching all the squirrels he could ever want
and playing with Patch.
I hope that somehow I am with him
and that he isn’t afraid.
And I hope he will always be with me
no matter where I go.
He was my best friend.
And I love him
more than anything in the world.

The last Cowboy

stands at the wall
and says, “Shoot me. Shoot me.”
The last cowboy
keeps his gun in his holster,
bullets rusty,
trigger permanently frozen in place.
The last cowboy
says he has seen one too many sunsets,
chased one too many Indians,
kissed one too many women.
The last cowboy
is tired of traveling
to places like Mcgill and Tonopah.
His back aches from hours on his horse
and his eyes are full of dust and sun.
The last cowboy
wants to put his feet up
on something other than a barroom table.
The last cowboy
wants a good mattress,
not a night under the stars.
The last cowboy
knows his whiskey too well
and doesn’t want to wait
to see
what the world will become.

SpiderMum

The yellow Spider mums in my Polish vase
are worth much more than the four dollars I spent on them
ten days ago.
I changed their water,
and trimmed their stems,
and now they are as fresh as the day I brought them home.
They have been revived,
brought back from the dead.
I never expected they would last this long.
I thought I would have to throw them out last weekend
like I did the white mums I bought at the same time.
They were covered in mold
stereo
and put in the trash bin
with tuna cans and carrot tops.
But these Spiders are survivors.
I see them parrot in the sun,
their round heads bobbing in the wind
Southern Belle style.
They are not going fruitcake anywhere.
They are here for at least another weekend
maybe even two.
And when I go to the store to buy flowers again
I will think Spider.

Close Call Yet Again

Last night
I was almost killed.
A kid,
barely fifteen or sixteen,
driving a Land Rover,
lost complete control of his car
and careened into my lane
forcing me into oncoming traffic.
For a few seconds I was sure that this was it.
I saw my life flash before me.
I saw the ambulance come
and I heard my bones breaking upon impact.
I honked my horn at the car coming towards me
and swerved back into my lane
missing the head on collision.
The kid,
drove ahead,
and waved at me as if to say, “sorry”.
“Sorry.”
like he had just spilled a Pepsi on my new dress,
or forgotten to say excuse me when he burped,
not almost killed me.
I pulled up to the light trembling.
I wanted to get out of my car,
grab him and say, “you idiot,
do you know what you just did?”
But instead, I just sat at the light trembling
and scribbled down his license on a receipt I had from
Star Physical therapy.
I tried to calm myself.
I was o.k.
I was just freaked out.
It all happened so fast.
No warning.
Two more seconds one way or the other
and I would have been dead
and that would have been that.
No going to New York to live bohemian
for a couple months,
no relocating to Portland or Seattle for the good air,
no fourth album,
or poem of the day,
no more ballet
or walks in the park with the dog.
No more trips to the beach
or drives to Chicago for Calamari.
No more wishing I had done things differently.
My life would have just been over.
April 2, 2007 at 5:15p.m.

Dead Elephant

He says I only need a handyman
and a couple of Mexicans with a Clorox bottle.
He says I should never quote him
or use his name
and that he’s speaking “off the record” to me.
So many people have been trying to rip me off.
Thirty thousand for this.
Nine thousand for that.
I have been pushed back and forth like a dead elephant
floating in the river.
It is refreshing to finally have a person come
who is a person,
who still knows what it means to tell the truth.
He told me not to worry
and to wait till I have a real problem.
My father tells me the same thing.
He says, “You have no real problems. You don’t know what real problems are.”
I guess he’s right.
So today I am going back to writing and listening to the birds
and being grateful for my small “problems”
while they still are small.

Nothing Needs Fixing

Nothing needs fixing
right now.
Not the floor,
or the roof,
or the dishwasher,
or my heart.
Nothing needs fixing
this moment.
It is amazing how much time
I spend
trying to fix things.
My mother.
My father.
My sister.
My boyfriend.
My finances.
I could spend entire days
trying to make things better.
but the dog will still be dirty tomorrow.

Somewhere I Stopped Laughing

When I think of all the choices I have made in my life
I feel sick.
Here I am
and where I have got
is not where I want to be.
Did I go out for lunch
one too many times?
Or worry about whether one of my boyfriends
would call
or whether he needed a root canal
when I should have been worrying about my own teeth?
Just how much time have I spent bemoaning a review
or fretting over someone
who was rude to me?
How many nights have I gone to bed early
feeling like it is too late for me
promising myself I would work harder the next night
and when the next night came
I was in bed again?
All of these days, weeks, months
have added up to years
and here I am,
where I do not want to be.
I pray to God
to help me find a way out.
I thought I was doing o.k.
Doing the right thing.
I thought my life was going along fine.
But somewhere
I stopped being the youngest in my class.
Somewhere
I graduated from college years ago
And stopped using the three years of training
that I called my M.F.A.
Somewhere I stopped believing that my dreams
would be a reality.
Somewhere I stopped laughing.
I feel like I am standing in a crowd of hundreds of people
all rushing in different directions.
They are all “going somewhere”
while I stand there
trying to speak,
trying to ask for directions,
the paper in my hand,
the one that tells me what I need to know
and who I am supposed to be
in this life
falls to the floor.
And I can not get it back.

Men With Tools

There are men
across the street from me.
Men with tools,
hammers, saws and drills.
Men who sweat
and urinate in plastic outhouses.
Men who eat fast food lunches at eleven
and go home by four.
Men who can fix things.
They are the kind of men I need for about an hour
and then never again.
I watch them
day after day
going in and out of that new million dollar house
with their tool belts strapped around their waists.
I watch them like a dog in a butcher shop
salivating
over what I can’t have.
They are so close,
so touchable,
and yet
so out of reach.
It isn’t fair.
I only need one.
Just one
with his big drill,
to fix my backdoor,
and put on that new mailbox,
the shiny black one I bought at Home Depot
the realtor says I so desperately need.
It wouldn’t take long.
Why a man like one of those could do the whole job
in probably fifteen minutes,
thirty at the most.
They’d hardly miss him at the big house.
And then, I swear,
I’d put him right back
Just like a kleptomaniac
who stole a sweater and had a change of heart.
It wouldn’t hurt anyone,
wouldn’t cost anyone anything.
After all,
he’s getting paid by the hour.
What difference does it make if he’s working
over here or over there?
He’d be doing a good deed.
He’d be doing such a good deed.
Why it’s almost wrong of me
not to ask.
Who am I to keep that man from having the opportunity
to feel good about himself?

Perhaps it’s the mailbox

why my home won’t sell.
The realtor across the street seems to think so.
He says it’s the first thing people notice
and if the mailbox doesn’t look good
people assume the house isn’t good.
Maybe he’s right.
After all,
my mailbox is plastic and tied on to the metal post with a strap
which covers up half the stick on numbers.
Maybe that’s giving people the idea that the entire house
is falling apart.
Makes sense to me.
Faulty mailbox equals leaky roof,
cracked driveway,
and overall dilapidated house.
Right.
If I believed that I would have a mailbox built out of marble
at the foot of my driveway
with numbers made out of fourteen karat gold.
Come on.
Is that what they are teaching in real estate school?
“If the mailbox is lame, go to a different house.”
The truth is,
a couple of years ago
a car full of kids drove by and knocked my mailbox down with a baseball bat
as part of their high school graduation celebration.
It’s a Southern tradition,
like eating grits with eggs
and throwing puppies out of moving trucks.
So rather than buy a new one,
which would probably get knocked over again
next May,
I had my roofer try to fix it.
When he couldn’t reattach it,
he took a bungie cord and tied it around the mailbox.
It’s held on for three years now.
I’d kind of forgotten about it
until the realtor pointed out its’ uncomeliness.
But still, even with a questionable mailbox,
I find it hard to believe that's what's keeping my home from selling.
Nevertheless,
this week I am putting up a new mailbox,
a ten dollar shiny black metal one from Home Depot.
That should get the offers rolling in.