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.