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.