Voices

Crazy.
Yes.
That voice inside my head.
The one proclaiming so much doom and gloom.
The one that leaves me spinning
and taking me down a road I really don’t want to go down.
Yes,
that one.
You know.
The one that tells you about how awful everyone is
and how you’ll never have this or that,
and how everyone’s life is better than yours.
Yes,
that one.
The one that makes you compare yourself to someone else
and you never end up winning the contest.
The one that makes you scared to try something new.
The one that makes you focus on the past and forget the future.
The one that says it won’t happen.
Ever.
Yes,
that one.
I’ve been listening to that one for too long.
I’ve let it drag me around in the mud,
in the gutters,
in the crawlspace where the cave crickets live
and the water is thick with mold.
I’ve been listening to that voice for so long
I forgot to listen to the other voices in my head.
Good voices.
Fun voices.
Nice voices.
Voices that tell me to lighten up and be merry.
Voices that remind me of how much I have
and how grateful I should be.
Voices that let me give love
and let me feel love from those around me.
Voices
that help me remember who I really am.
Yes,
those voices.

Broken

Perhaps he didn’t worship her properly
as she lay there in bed
with her bones broken
and her body bruised.
After all,
she was a rock star,
she had a right to be fussed over.
He was just an average filmmaker with an accent.
He hadn’t shaken anyone’s world,
ever,
except hers.
Now it’s over.
All her dirty little secrets are out on the table for the world to pick over
like shoppers at a yard sale.
An affair here.
A miscarriage there.
A broken promise.
Just sift through and you’ll find what you are looking for.
I wonder if she’ll ever do it again,
say, “I do”
to another man.
It hasn’t worked out very well for her
so far.
Has it?

Patriotism Is A Warm Puppy

Have you seen the new ads on t.v.?
The ones recruiting for the military?
You know the ones,
some poor kid is sitting on a couch in a uniform
while his parents talk about how proud they are of him
and what a better person he is now that he’s enlisted.
Or the one with the black family,
where the mom is combing one kid’s hair and the older son
is questioning her about why she questioned his decision to join the army
and she says, “that’s my job.”
Then they both smile.
It’s sick.
Patriotism is being sold like a warm puppy
or a Hallmark card.
No one is showing the bodies being blown-up and saying,
“Come join the Marines.”
Or the post-war aftermath of innocent people being decimated
and a quote coming up on the screen afterwards that says,
“Army, not just a job, an adventure.”
The worst part about the ads is
the way they are being marketed to the poorest, least educated part of our country.
It feels like the way cereal manufacturers market to kids on Saturday morning.
They know their audience and what buttons to push.
They know how to package it,
what words to use,
what color to make the box,
and how to make it just innocent enough
that the parents will say yes to it.
It’s all warm,
and real,
and sappy,
but if you read the ingredients,
it’s poison.
Same with these beauties.
None of the ads ever show a wealthy family with some rich kid
in the backseat of his parent’s Lexus
trying to decide between Harvard and Ft. Campbell.
Or a kid in a high paying white collar job choosing between Wall Street and the streets of Iraq.
Or some politician’s son choosing between
following in dad’s Gucci footsteps or eating dirt for the next year.
No, these recruiters are way too smart for that.
They pick the vulnerable ones in our society,
the ones who feel like it’s their ticket out to a better future
when it’s really their ticket to the morgue.
Don’t their families love them too?
Isn’t their blood worth as much as the blood of wealthy white Americans?
When did our Armed Forces become the poor-man’s green ghetto?
Fight on the streets for your gang or fight on the streets for Uncle Sam?
Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?
Oh, sorry, I’m mean, don’t it,?

Out My Window

I am alone now
just the brown leaves blowing
across the brick patio.
Last night I slept sixteen hours,
my stomach full of Ethiopian food.
I dreamed of sex
and old abandoned homes
with decaying garages
and pools with Spanish tile
left full of filthy water.
I walked on vacant lots
and told myself the value of my home.
I listened to the crickets
and the robins
and walked the wrong way on black paved roads.
I sat on the grass and watched the ants
and felt the wind blow on my back.
When I awoke
I felt better than I have in days,
the grayness that I dreamed
was here
out my window
and the wind was starting to blow.

Scared to Touch Ground

The problem is me.
I am the strange play.
The possession.
The steel wool in bed.
The five-year-old who speaks rocks
and scars.
Each day I send myself
to July
to force open the picnic
and write postcards
to your lawn.
I slept last night
for the first time in weeks
and didn’t stop to dream of you.
I was flying a plane
that I couldn’t land,
scared to touch the ground.
But that was yesterday
when the rain came on hard
like a bull.
Today the air is soft and grey
cashmere,
feminine
as a Chinese flower
waiting to be picked.
How could I sit and swoon over you
like fresh bread
and let myself shrink
in so much dampness?
Now is not the time to ponder
or pant.
I must knock down the night.
Everything is possible
with a woman.
So do not be surprised
to see my dolls
nailed up,
because a woman
is untamable
even in death.

When The Wind Blows

Where do you go when the wind blows?
Do you curl up in a ball
and hunker down low
and wait for the fury to stop?
Do you stand up tall
and walk against the force
step after treacherous step
praying it will end
before you fall?
Do you find shelter
in nearby twigs and branches
and build a fort to live in
all the time watching from safe inside your hut
what is stirred up just outside your window?
Do you struggle against that which is inevitable
cursing the debris that falls in your eyes?
Or do you do nothing
but sit and let it blow by you
making yourself one with it all
until it passes?
Where do you go when the wind blows?

Naked Christmas

In the dream
I am naked
trying on hose
for two men,
one my lover,
the other his friend.
Black hose pulled
over red.
A short wool skirt
and high heels with straps wrapped around my ankles
like Grecian goddess shoes.
In the dream it doesn’t matter
that my lover’s friend is seeing my breasts.
I am not in the least bit self-conscious.
I am just dressing and undressing,
as if I were brushing my teeth,
and nothing more.
I am getting ready for something.
Some function
my mother will be at.
My hair is dark and long
and hangs about my waist
like poured chocolate.
My skin is so white,
so pale
I look like bread fresh out of the package,
untouched and malleable.
The two flit about the room
picking out blouses and skirts,
holding them up to me
imagining how I might look in each.
I am their doll,
their dress-up doll,
the one they never had when they were growing up
busy
playing with guns.
They stand and admire me,
their creation,
and nod in agreement.
Then the friend,
reaches in and touches my face.
His hand is cold on my skin.
He places a red ribbon in my hair
and drapes a pearl necklace around me,
adorning me
like a Christmas tree.

Death By Family

Going to see our families
is like picking out methods to die.
Death by suffocation.
Death by poisonous words.
Death by lethal injection of guilt.
It is always the same.
The deafening silence at his house.
The endless screaming at mine.
The innuendos
vs. the direct assaults.
Dodging silent bullets is much harder for me than it is for him
because I am used to live ammunition.
The sound of grenades going off every few seconds
is well,
almost comforting.
I know how to respond to such warfare.
I know how to duck, roll and take cover.
I can see it coming.
His family’s tactics are much more subversive.
The glance,
the weary “alright”
which never is
echoed from maternal lips.
The unknowing stares.
The backroom questions.
Everything under the table,
always under the table.
For me,
the dagger on the table,
picked up and thrown
across the room
is best.
Once it has sailed by,
all is well.
There is no more simmering.
Just the explosion
and the release,
then the egg nog and cookies.
His familiy’s war,
on the other hand,
never ends.
It just festers
year after year
shapeshifting into migraines
and silent resentment.

Poison Moon

A loss has taken place.
A bag of green.
A soft doorknob,
guilty as judge and jury.
Soon the light bulb will not shine
and what the fates have dealt will be so.
My little calf.
My poison moon.
The symphony holds the sun in its hands.
And when the bed proclaims tomorrow
I will drink from your cup.
I will find my way down
to your bed
and lay myself upon your pillow.
I will eat up the soft part of your neck and
pulse the blue from your sheets.
I will make myself a holy war for you to feast upon.
A chocolate heart
beating dark.
A pool of sweet
so tender
you will have no choice
but to drink.

The Twelve Days of Mucous

I have been sick in bed for twelve days.
But unlike the Twelve days of Christmas,
I didn’t get a Partridge in a pear tree,
or seven swans a swimming,
or five golden rings,
or even one lousy drummer drumming.
All I got was hot tea,
Mucinex,
throat lozenges,
anti-biotics,
miso soup,
and a trip to the doctor.
If you had told me twelve days ago
when the first tinge of this sore throat appeared,
that I would still be sick twelve days later,
I would have said “you’re nuts.”
Bur here I am
fighting off bronchitis now
and an onslaught of mucous
that is as never ending as those crappy Christmas carols they pipe in at the mall.
Each day I wake up
expecting to be well,
and each day I feel no better
than the day before.
I have been stuck inside this house for twelve days
except for two trips to the gym
to sit in the steam room
to open up my lungs,
and one trip
to the doctor,
which was a complete waste of time.
I wish those two turtle doves would show up soon.

The Sisterhood

This morning I finally succumbed to antibiotics.
I tried the last eight days to defeat the virus
that had overtaken my body with
good food,
rest,
and my own bed,
but my cough only got worse from all of my good intentions.
Last night the familiar rattle of bronchitis set in
and I found myself up coughing most of the night.
Today I am wheezing.
That’s enough for me to pick up the phone and start in with the heavy ammo:
Inhalers and Z packs.
It all started when I got pneumonia in my twenties.
Ever since then my Achilles heel is my lungs.
Now, whenever I get sick things head south real fast.
Usually, I end up with a bottle of antibiotics and an inhaler by my bed.
It’s an inherited defect.
Everyone in my family has weak lungs.
My mother’s had pneumonia about five times.
Her mother died of lung cancer and never smoked.
My aunt died of lung cancer.
My mother’s aunt died of lung cancer
and everyone in the group’s had pneumonia.
It’s like belonging to a strange sisterhood
where membership means a lifetime of difficult breathing.
I wish I were a member of something else.

The Yellow Bus

The yellow bus is capable
of everything
Summer.
I walk on a willow
swaying walnuts
and branches,
a woman on her back
split into bitterness.
Late my singing,
the back door opens,
and I am seized with greenery.
How petty!
First and foremost
you must ask,
why
have I eaten the icebox
and everything in it?
The plums were for breakfast.
Now I have nothing
but the smell of cleanliness.
It is a kind of borrowed pleasure
easily forgotten
with the setting of the sun.
And when tomorrow comes
I will be hungry again.
What then?
What will I eat?
The apples and cans and bottles of beer,
are no more.
The cardboard they came in
has been decimated.
The black shadows come between me
ribbed and slender,
waking me in the morning,
and still
all I have is crimson.

An Early Winter

This Fall,
Winter has come early.
Temperatures are already in the twenties at night
and the forties during the day.
The leaves,
what few strugglers are left,
hold on to their branches
like newly docked sailors
clutching prized Geisha’s.
The squirrels, a rare sight these days,
seem weary to relinquish their coveted tree holes,
and have already closed up shop.
Only a lone buck
makes his way into my backyard
to nibble on greenery
before disappearing into the forest.
Inside,
I am curled up too,
dreaming of a fire in my fireplace
and a cup of hot cocoa.
The thought of going out
even with the protection of
long underwear,
a hat,
gloves,
a coat,
and a scarf,
leaves me shivering.
Florida is looking better and better.

Short Poem

What's the difference
in the end?

I Me Mine

I have been reaching for other people’s words.
Frank’s
and Anne’s
and Mary’s.
They make their way on to the page
so easily
I forget they are not mine.
When I was sixteen and dancing for three hours a day,
words used to come to me all the time
like a flood,
a damn,
busted wide open.
They would spill out on to my page,
or napkin,
or whatever I had near me.
I would hear them in my head
when I walked down the school hallways
and later when I rode home in the back of my father’s Ford.
They were always with me,
my constant companions.
Now,
when I listen I hear nothing,
just the spin of my mind
revving over and over
like a car unable to get in to the right gear.
There are too many problems now
for me to listen to.
My mother,
father,
sister,
lover,
house,
dog.
I can’t hear myself think.
Or rather
I can’t stop myself from thinking
so I can just listen
to my words.
I remember the joy
of locking myself away
with pen and paper
and not coming out
till what was inside of me
found life on the page.
It was like an orgasm.
A relief.
A cleansing better than I could ever give myself
in the tub.
That relief kept me sane.
In touch with the present moment and myself.
It kept me grounded more than God
or my parents,
or any boyfriend ever could.
My words
were my salvation,
my oxygen,
my secret way out
by going in.
Lately I have been scared
to trust them
and they
in turn,
have vanished.
I do not blame them,
for abandoning me,
I abandoned them first.

Without The Rain

Without the rain,
the soft pitter of drops,
I would not exist.
It is like that now.
The sound I crave
is the least intrusive.
I have tried to get used to the idea
of wailing,
screams, and shrieks.
But year after year,
it is always the same,
the sound I long for
is whispered,
gentle
as a lover kissing my ear.
A softness
I can sink down into
and inhale
like pink clouds
on their way to sunset.

Ride

What are we doing?
What are we doing with our days?
Throwing ourselves into the traps of others.
Alcoholics and dead end relationships.
Spending hour after hour contemplating another.
Perfectly talented people accomplishing nothing with their lives.
Rather than explore themselves,
they are busy following their neurosis
into the gutters of stupidity.
Then they wonder how they got there.
I know,
I have been there too.
Hour after endless hour,
lost,
unable to feel myself,
unable to know which way is up.
What a sad sad existence.
The talented not satisfied
merely to create
art.
No,
that would be too easy.
What challenge is there in that?
We have to fuck it up.
We have to go down the hole of Hell
and serve the God of darkness.
Then only then,
do we feel we are alive.
It takes a brave soul to say,
“enough”, and reach for a different hand to hold.
My mind spins round like a carousel
and my hand reaches out for the colorful streamers
of family,
love,
and fear.
But I must not touch them.
I must hold on to the reigns
till the spinning stops.
I must stay on to my ride
and let the animal inside guide me.
I must be content with the steady up and down
knowing that when it finally stops
I will have gotten to where I am supposed to be.

Mayonnaise

Last night she called me in a panic
frantic to get to her class,
and unable to figure out how to get there.
She accused me of taking all her money
and seemed to have no idea how to call Access a Cab
or the other three transportation services I arranged for them.
She said it was my fault
and now she was going to miss her class.
It’s always my fault.
It was my fault that I loved my father more
than her growing up.
It was my fault I tried to bring order in to chaos
and honesty into a house of lies.
It was my fault
I was born half-Jewish
and reminded her of my father.
I had his eyes
and eyebrows and nose.
I had his sense of humor,
a humor she never understood.
I loved watching football with him,
and playing ping-pong at half-time,
and eating Oreo cookies together.
We both found humor in the tragic
whereas my mother would just find
the tragic.
Everything to her was a crisis.
A drama.
A three-act play
that had to be resolved in one act.
I guess I could sum it up like this:
My father and I loved corn beef and bagels
with mustard.
My sister and my mother were
mayonnaise all the way.

Yes, We Can

I can’t help but smile
now that it’s over
and he has been elected.
He,
the unlikely candidate.
He,
the rock star.
He,
the man who says, “yes, we can.”
I feel giddy inside when I think of him,
like a young girl at a Davy Jones concert.
He has given me back my faith
and my optimism.
I look at him
and think to myself,
“If he can, so can I.”
I think about him when I am at the gym
and struggling to do one more round.
He wouldn’t give up.
I think about him
when I doubt my future
and my finances and if I will ever escape
Nashville.
Yes, we can.
I think about him
when I want to throw in the towel
and say it is too hard
and I am too old
and I don’t have it anymore.
Yes, we can.
I think about his obstacles,
being black in a white world,
losing his parents,
having the weight of slavery upon his back,
and a world of prejudiced people to win over.
Yes, we can.
I think about his grace.
His humility.
His ability to put his mind on what he wants
when he wants.
Yes, we can.
I think about his eloquence.
His drive.
His determination.
His ambition.
Yes, we can.
I think about where he has set the bar for himself in his life
And where I want to set it for mine.
Yes, we can.
Yes, we can.
Yes, we can.
Thank you President Obama.
Thank you.

Eating Meatloaf with a Spoon

Waking up
squirrel
not just
black
or paper files
but amp loud
eagle.
The way lamp face stares
at you
when you’re hungry
and alone
in a new world.
How could it be
crying
furniture
in three corpses?
The old lady in the cafeteria
eating meat loaf with a spoon.
The dog lapping at the pail
cold
as a museum.
You think I want to end up like that?
I am delicate.
I am the Victorian
house
of rare antiques.
No mouth.
No birds.
No summer.
I remember Santa Monica,
Polly’s pies
and walks on the beach.
That was before my dog
and Tennessee.
That was before I learned to
hide my heart.
Yes,
once upon a time
I was.

Damn Leaves

I’m tired of all this fighting.
Drain women acting like Sarah Palin.
People accusing foul
mold
and water.
The stench of buyers and realtors.
Perfume.
Failing French systems
and the leaves,
all the damn leaves.
There is nothing here I want to cling to.
Nothing I want to call my own.
October came and left without a poem.
Just psoriasis.
Now it is November
and I have met more Southern men
than I ever cared to.
What’s another $5,000
if it means my freedom?
A whore is a whore
right?
One just spreads her legs
and the other drops her price.
I think about that
when I am propositioned in this market.
We have been taught to believe
the next man,
woman,
lover,
baby,
dinner,
will be better than the last.
So we pack and move
and fly
and run
and think
the answer is somewhere else.
Sure,
I want to leave as much as the next person,
I just want to be sure
I’m taking my integrity with me.

Tangled Up In Sheets

It is like that now.
You,
on your side of the bed,
curled up,
Sprawled out,
Like a ‘y’.
Me,
fighting myself
night after night
until exhaustion wins.
The ballot cast.
The small ‘x’ placed
before the name
of our savior.
We walk hand in hand
by the pumpkins
kissing fall along the way.
How did we get here?
You say
it was luck.
I am not so sure.
Tomorrow it will rain
and the small drops will fall
on the yellow mums.
Be still
and listen to the night.

Insomnia

Nighttime has become a ritual
of agony.
Me,
lying in my bed,
legs dancing uncontrollably,
sliding from corner to corner,
up in the air,
twisting,
back and forth,
as if I were doing the Cha-Cha.
Hour after hour,
ticking by,
trips to the bathroom,
and kitchen.
Drinking and peeing.
staring at the moon,
and the light on my windshield.
It is the same,
night after night.
In bed by 10p.m.
exhausted,
only to wake
after thirty minutes
and find myself unable to sleep.
Three days passed
and I am more tired than ever
and still,
no sleep,
just dancing.
I think of Hans Christian Anderson’s
tale of the girl who wore the red shoes.
She couldn’t stop dancing
till they cut off her feet.

Days of October

Sunday,
when the bells ring,
I will think of you.
Memories of the dead,
rising up
like pearls
released from their shells.
As I sit there,
in the silence of the sanctuary,
I will drift back
to the days of October,
my brown leggings
and flannel shirt,
your blue eyes,
our chance meeting,
on a milk crate.
We still touch
and kiss
and light-up like Jack-o-lanterns
at the sight of one another.
We have survived loss -
grandparents
and dogs,
and dreams.
We have seen buildings collapse
and countries at war.
We have walked upon beaches in Italy
and shared meals fit for Gods.
We have known the passion of carnal love
and settled in to the comfort of certainty.
We have danced our dull hearts new
never forgetting
the rhythm of night
or one another.

bucket of bananas

I am leaping all over the page today
like a Mexican Jumping Bean stuck in a can.
I have been from one subject to the other,
one phone call to another.
I can’t seem to get centered.
Maybe because I didn’t sleep last night,
or maybe because I skipped meditation this morning.
Big mistake.
Tom Verlaine is staring at me
giving me that disapproving look he always gives me
when I can’t finish a song
and when I’ve let too many extraneous things get in my way.
Sorry, Tom.
I’d like to say it won’t happen again,
But I can’t.
I’m starting to see what I do.
Stating to see what actions and thoughts are leading me away
from where I say
I want to go.
I always thought my actions and words matched.
No.
My thoughts and actions match
and unfortunately my thoughts can’t be trusted.
My thoughts are like untrained monkeys
always pulling at me to come this way
or go that way.
No wonder I am confused.
It is time to tame the monkey mind
and stop listening.
Yes,
I must go buy a bucket of bananas
immediately.

Loneliness So Deep


I am in a loneliness so deep
even the blue of the sky
cannot cheer me.
It is like that now.
The whitefish sandwich dredged in cornmeal
and hot sauce.
The smell of new books in vendors’ hands.
The rush of people,
the thinkers of the South
on their way to lecture.
All of it feels empty this Saturday.
I stroll the halls of the library,
climb marble stairs one by one,
soothe my hunger in chocolate
and coffee
and Dickinson.
Nothing helps.
I feel upside down
and alone
removed from him,
removed from his smile.
I am hooked like a heroin
addict
unable to think of anything else,
unable to quiet my mind.
When did it happen?
When did I become so lost?
I am scared
of who I see looking back at me in the mirror?
Where did I go?
I must step back and watch myself.
See what I do
to comfort myself.
What I reach for.
It is only by going through
that I will get to the other side
I know that.
I know that.
And yet,
I do not want to go.
I want to stay.
I want to stay in my cocoon
forever.

Florida

I tell myself you are in Florida
on an island with no phone.
I tell myself you are lying in the sun
soaking up warmth.
I tell myself these things to keep from crying.
I do not like forced separation.
I am scared.
Scared of everything.
Scared to feel my own skin.
I am watching my breath and thoughts tailspin into a panic.
Over what?
A phone call?
You are here.
You are fifteen minutes away.
But it might as well be four thousand miles
because I can not feel you.
I can not see you.
I am searching with blind hands
over books and chairs
and jeans
for your body,
your voice,
when I can not
find my own.

My Head

In this circle
there is no way out.
Just the tide pool
endlessly rounding,
never opening up.
Each road a dead end.
Each path a lie.
When the wind blows past
I scream, “take me.”
But it just goes on by.
I plot my escape
like a man on death row.
Which guard is the weakest?
Where is the key?
Which fence has the least barbed wire?
The morning is always the same.
The anxiety greets me first,
then the fear.
I run around like a chicken without my head,
searching,
searching
for what became of it.
It is not in my lover’s hands,
or my friends,
or my families.
Perhaps it has rolled under the dining room table.
Yes,
I’ll go look for it there.
My green eyes stare out at me
and a small voice says,
“kneel down.”
But I am scared to look.
I am scared to see myself.
What if I turn to stone
and am more paralyzed than I am now?
What if what I see is so ugly
that I never recover?
But I must look.
I lift up the dining room tablecloth
and there under the wooden legs
is my head.
To my surprise,
it is not so frightening.
It’s rather small and vulnerable.
“Come in.” it says.
I sit under the table and lower the cloth.
“Where have you been?”my head says,
“I’ve missed you.”
“I don’t know.” I say.
And I really don’t.
We sit like that for hours,
my head and I,
giggling
like a couple of schoolgirls.
Then I get up to leave.
“Come back again,” my head says.
I will.

Full Of The Dead

I want it gone.
Sold.
Cut out like a tumor
I never have to look at again.
I want to be on my way
with the sun in my face
to my new life.
I want to be there already.
New York.
Portland.
Seattle.
Anywhere but here.
I want to wake up
with my future in my hands
and see myself sitting
in some Brooklyn pizzeria,
or Portland coffee house ,
hooking up with a new band,
and writing poems about tacos and immigrants.
I want my courage,
body,
blood,
to find its way
home,
the way little streams
find bigger streams
and end up in rivers
joining the rush
of something bigger than themselves.
I have been stagnant
in Nashville,
like water in a bird bath,
full of the dead,
slowly drying up
into nothingness.

Cup Of Joe

I’ll settle for a cup of coffee
in my hand.
Rats on Hollywood Boulevard,
a seat at the circus,
and fat under my shirt.
I am not aiming high.
How can I?
I am only trying to keep myself alive.
Nothing matters when you’re poor
and pale,
but pennies.
And who can count that high anyway?
Not me.
A little bread,
a chunk of butter.
What more does one need?
The best days are your last.
The ones caught burning in water.
The ones on postcards
of all those places
you never went to.

Outside

It is quiet.
In the background
the clock ticks
on the kitchen wall
and the refrigerator hums
with life.
Outside is a different story.
The trees are as still as paintings.
Leaves and limbs frozen.
There isn’t a squirrel,
or a bird,
or even a red wasp.
No Fall butterfly
or young fawn grazing.
Just the endless green.
It is as if someone
stopped the world
and forgot to tell me.

What's In The Wind

I think about the crash of the markets in 1929
and the Great Depression.
I think about people jumping out of windows.
Men so desperate they cannot even bear to
wake up and see the sun
one more morning.
Families wiped out in a single day.
Men and women standing in bread lines
with no hope.
Children working in factories.
Long hours
toiling in filth
trying to keep heads above water
and eyes on God.
I think about all of this
and I am scared.
I am scared about what is happening to my country.
There is so much talk now,
but no one seems to have the answer.
$700 billion dollars thrown at a problem
like Pollock throwing paint,
waiting to see where it will land,
waiting to see if it will be a masterpiece
or shit.
I want to run and hide,
run and sit deep in the woods
and listen to the birds chirp
and never come out.
Outside my window,
the new wind chime
my lover gave me clangs
oblivious
to what’s in the wind.

Sell Sell Sell

Just when I think she is sane,
she surprises me and says something like,
“Mark is the devil.”
or, “Read the Bible.”
or “Only a very few Jews will get in to Heaven.”
This is the woman I took stock advice from last week.
This is the woman who told me to “sell.”
This is the woman I based my entire portfolio on.
I must have been crazy.
All my life
she has been in my head
like a dying bird,
flapping and screaming,
leaving me so exhausted I can’t see straight.
Now
I turn to her for advice?
What was I thinking?
Didn’t I know she was still
out of her mind?
Didn’t I know she has always been
out of her mind?
Why can’t I just accept that I am
on my own now?
That I have always been
on my own.
Outside my window
some truck keeps revving
its engine
over and over again
but never leaving.
Why doesn’t it just stop,
call for help,
and get towed?
Can’t it see it’s not getting anywhere?
I should wash my feet and nails.
Final as a plum tree.

Lipstick and Pit Bulls

The world is crumbling
before our very eyes
and we are too blind to see it.
Markets are crashing.
Liberties are being stripped away.
The global economy as we know it is collapsing
and we are being fed
lipstick and pit bulls.
I have had it with beehive hairdos and flag pins and
senile war heroes.
I am tied of babies and moral majorities
and patriotic crap.
I don’t want to hear another foul cry of sexism
from the party who hasn’t ever given a damn about women.
Keep your hands off my uterus.
Don’t come crying that you are the party of change
when you’ve voted with Moron for the last eight years.
Don’t come knocking on my door with your blow-up Barbie doll
telling me she’s a substitute for a Senator with a brain.
You teach abstinence.
That worked out real well for you,
didn’t it?
You say, “drill, baby drill.”
I say, you’re stupid and irresponsible
and you better think twice
because the amount of destruction you will cause to the environment
will far outweigh any benefit your drilling could do.
You say
fight.
I say enough.
Now is not the time for heavy-handed rhetoric
and muscle flexing.
We need someone with a brain.
We need a thinker.
We need someone who will take the time to listen to both sides.
Haven’t we had enough thoughtless, moronic leadership?
Haven’t we had enough lies and deception?
Aren’t we tired of being known to the rest of the world as
the gun-totting, murderous U.S.A?
When are we going to learn we don’t own the planet
and we aren’t the center of it?
I hope soon.

Fast Asleep

Another one bites the dust.
It’s like that now.
Couple after couple
falling down,
falling in to the abyss.
The depressed.
The Jew.
The Catholic.
The tailor and the Italian.
The drunk.
The squadron of bachelors
raped by wedded bliss.
They creep up
and reach their pitiful hands into the jeweled box.
They lick the fringe of pink,
taste the flower inside,
and succumb
to, “what’s for breakfast?”
Years
of mailboxes
and kids
and 4th of July’s later,
they are scratching their heads
and balls
and wandering up and down hallways
like lost pigs.
The dream.
The gate.
The colors,
all grey now.
Their sexless jails
leave them no where to go.
The bachelor’s dust
that once made them glisten so
is no more.
Where did it go?
Where did we all go?
Love affairs
sleep
hardly at all.

Steady On

Everything is collapsing.
The housing market.
The stock market.
Everything.
I keep telling myself not to worry,
that it all could be worse.
That I could be living in a hut
eating fried mud,
and running for my life.
Or be homeless from one of the past hurricanes.
I have food
and a roof over my head
and a car.
This morning I ate a peanut butter
and jelly sandwich
and mopped my floors
and scrubbed my tub.
I sat down in my chair and stared at the tiny maple tree
outside my door.
Nature doesn’t know
that the American economy
(and most of the rest of the world’s)
is in the toilet.
Nature doesn’t care.
The trees are still the same.
The squirrels are still busy preparing for winter.
There is a peace and constancy
to what is outside
that is very comforting to remember.
Winter, Spring, Fall, and Summer
all will come and go again.
And the trees and flowers will respond in kind.
I will try to remember this
and be like my little maple,
steady and calm
unafraid to face
what will come
trusting that even when things look their most bare,
all is not lost.

Distant Beauty

Last night
we were part of the problem.
We drove to a gas station to fill up
before the gas hikes from Ike got any worse.
On the way out of my drive
I saw a baby bunny, the size of my palm,
hop into the flower bed.
Then as I drove down the drive,
I saw the mother and baby deer
that have been coming to my yard for the past few weeks,
bedded down in the tall grass.
I don’t know why,
but for some reason
they seem to return here.
It feels as if they think they live here.
They graze on grass and leaves in the afternoon
in the back yard
and then sleep in the front yard at night.
It always just the two of them,
no other deer ever come.
It is such an amazing gift to have them here and watch them.
They are so beautiful,
and graceful,
and peaceful creatures.
I’d like to name them
and get to know them.
I’d like to touch them
and keep them in my backyard as pets.
But that would be wrong.
So I have to enjoy them when they come,
never knowing when or if
I will ever
see them again.

Money

What is all this talk about money?
Money corrupts the soul.
Money is the source of too much fighting.
Money is the diamond lost,
the red-haired toddler in the family portrait,
the one you want to avoid.
Money is a disease,
a possessed woman
thin and triangular
pulling you from room to room
by your balls.
Money is the blemished son,
the cracked daughter,
the veiled bride
ugly on her wedding night.
Money walks in cities
like a whore
taking all that it can get
and promising more.
I know of what I speak.
I once desired the tender green too.
I listened with glee to the sound of silver
in my pockets,
found delight in picking up the stray nickel.
Marveled at my luck when my stocks went up.
Now I know the truth.
Money is the divider.
It separates the haves from have nots.
The winners from losers.
The prisoner from the free man.
Money is the chain that keeps us bound
to mediocrity
forever.

The Body

I can not be the body now.
The question at the mouth.
The gravy well.
Eating soil
and chewing my heart
like a country without sleep.
I tried
eighteen
and the muzzle of oxygen and vomit.
I tried to control
the comings and goings
of rivers
(as if I could)
and have been left empty and older.
There are no more questions to answer
just the mud
on the carpet to clean.
There is always more mud to clean.
I wanted a birthday.
I wanted a cake.
I wanted a day without tears
and starts to wish upon.
I wanted to believe the kisses
and the pink hand upon my leg.
I wanted to believe it all would come true -
letters and words
and ornaments made out of silver and gold.
I wanted my garden.
Yet all along
the shoebox lay open
and the moon refused to shine.
The blackness a constant companion
for me to lick
like a scarf.
I wanted joy,
a hymn to take hold of,
a cloud to sail upon.
I wanted the eyes of a blue fish
swimming in the ocean,
sailing off into madness.
I wanted something that was only mine
and no one else’s.

Wednesday, Yes

Wednesday
Yes
Tomorrow
Is
I will be
Older
And then there will be
Thursday.
Can you Imagine?
Where do we go
to get out
of the
rabbit
hole?
Two college graduates.
Two girls with masters and M.D.’s
How could it be
that our lives
have turned out
so.
You, in foreclosure.
Me, without any prospects.
We turned left
when we should have turned
right.
Woke up
one hour
too late
for too many years.
Ate the large bag of potato chips
instead of the fruit salad.
Is it so?
Is it so?
I want to forget.
Houston,
the closet,
the mud flying
in my mouth.
I want to sink down
into quiet
like a hot bath
and drop everything
that has ever hurt me
Watch it
run
down
the drain.
I want to know
how much of it is
truth
and how much
just
a
broken
groove
I let my mind spin
in
over and over
I want to be free
as the butterfly
outside my window.
Stopping at pink
and red
and yellow.
I want to stop wondering
What if?
What if?
What if?
And just fly.

Close Enough To Touch

Two deer,
a mother and her fawn,
came to my backyard this morning.
I had been missing them,
wondering where they were
and if they would return,
when suddenly,
they were back.
It had rained all night
and the yard was alive with new growth.
Overnight,
Trees seemed to have sprouted branches and leaves.
Squirrels and rabbits ran and hopped in every direction.
It looked like some kind of “after party”
from the set of Wild Kingdom.
Even the birds dropped in to say hello.
I watched the mother deer stand protectively by her offspring,
with ears as wide as saucers.
They looked up at me,
the baby an exact clone of the mother,
except smaller and much crazier.
She ran from tree to tree
in wild bursts of uncontrollable energy,
like Trouble used to as a puppy.
She bent her head down
and tried to jostle with her mother.
Occasionally her mother played back with her,
but mainly she just stood watch.
I ran and got my camera and started taking pictures of them.
I called the fawn to me
and remarkably,
she came.
I couldn’t believe it.
I felt like some kind of Dr. Doolittle
talking to the animals.
She was about fifty feet away from me now,
looking at me,
wondering what kind of creature I was.
Her mother followed behind her,
much more wary.
Both stood there staring at me,
while I stared at them.
I wanted to touch them.
I wanted to let them know that they could trust me,
that I wouldn’t hurt them
like other humans,
that I wasn’t some idiot with a gun,
just a depressed writer with a camera.
But when I reached out to them
they ran up the hill and disappeared.
I tried not to be unhappy,
but rather remember,
for a moment,
I was almost
close enough
to touch.

Love Loaf

How do you keep love fresh?
Do you wrap it tight in cellophane
like a loaf of bread and stick it in the freezer
to keep it safe?
No, to do that would leave it hard
and dried out.
Do you place it on the counter to mold and decay in the sun?
Or do you put it in a Tupperware container where no air
can touch it and it slowly loses all its life?
Do you crumble it in your hands and scatter it on the blacktop
for all the birds to eat
and fly away with?
Do you pick at it,
taking only the parts you like and leaving what doesn’t suit your illusions behind?
No,
the best way to keep love fresh is to slice it
one glorious slice at a time
and then give it away
one glorious slice at a time.
It won’t have time to get old.
And the lives it touches will be filled with such overwhelming
sweetness
they’ll have no choice but to pass it on.

Windows and Telephone Lines

When she came
in her long brown dress
I thought, “yes.”
Gold dripped from her ears
and feet
as if she were some winged Mercury
who had just stepped inside my house.
She was pleasant enough,
but revealed nothing,
She kept her thoughts close to her vest
like a skilled poker player.
If she were in Vegas, I wouldn’t know if she were holding
Queens or Threes.
I wouldn’t know if she had a straight flush or a hand that should be flushed
down the toilet.
I watched her walk up and down the halls,
eager to tell her about neighbors or schools or my favorite things,
like some kind of crazed Julie Andrews,
but instead I didn’t say a word.
When she returned to where we were standing,
the only questions she asked were about windows and telephone lines.
Cryptic.
Uneventful.
Then she got into the black car of the white-haired man and disappeared,
leaving me with no more knowledge
than I had before she arrived.

Better Than Normal

It’s four o’clock
and I want coffee.
I want to jack myself up
like an old car getting it’s tire changed.
I want to feel the rush of speed
coursing through my veins.
I want to get off.
I want the cream on my lips
and the mocha in my mouth.
I want the sensation of hot and cold
and sweet swirling around inside of me
like Fred Astaire.
I want to feel better
than normal.
I want to feel caffeinated.
And I want to feel it now.
But it’s too late.
I can’t touch the stuff
past noon
or I can’t sleep at night.
I am four hours too late.
I am into the dead zone now,
the time when I have to force my eyes to stay awake
on their own
without the aid of anything
stimulating.
No chocolate.
No green tea.
No coffee.
Just water and club soda
for me.
I’m sensitive.
Fuck sensitive.
I want some coffee.

Lady Bug Morning

This morning I found a ladybug on my kitchen counter.
She was
on her back
like an overturned canoe.
At first I mistook her for a cereal crumb
and nearly squashed her with my sponge
but at the last moment
I saw legs.
Cereal crumbs don’t have legs.
And they don’t move.
I flipped her over,
right side up,
and looked at her little round spots.
I watched her slowly walk across the blue counter
as if she were walking across an ocean.
Yes,
she was back on her journey,
as if she had never been upside down
at all.

How To Piss Off A Life

1. Live in the past.
2. Spend all your time worrying about things you can't control.
3. Be jealous of everyone who's more successful than you.
4. Find fault with everyone else.
5. Abandon your goals.
6. Fall in love.
7. Lose your sense of humor.
8. Compare yourself to everyone else on the planet.
9. Refuse to try anything new.
10. Repeat steps 1-9.

Eyes of A Poet

Stop!
Listen to yourself
going on and on
like some kind of fruitcake,
some kind of kook.
Do you think you have time for that?
Do you think you have time to waste another second
with your mental masturbations?
You don’t I tell you.
Your navel isn’t all that interesting.
It’s round and it collects crap in it just like mine.
So stop staring at it.
There’s a world out there that needs saving
and who’s going to do it if you don’t?
Who?
There are people dying in Africa
and dogs being put down in shelters.
There are dolphins being slaughtered in Japan
and poor people being taken advantage of by big business.
There are corporations running our government
and leaders so ingratiated
to them they are incapable of holding them accountable.
We
have become a nation of pill poppers
too drugged out to do anything,
much less remember anything.
We are pumped so full of caffeine
and fast food
we have become hostile and repressed and exhausted
and wired all at the same time.
We spend more than we make.
We have forgotten how to love
or why the bird flies.
We have been lulled to sleep
by mindless television shows about other people’s lives
while our freedoms are being systematically eradicated.
We
never talk about the real issues
but rather,
are constantly diverted into corrals of minutia by the media
like ignorant cattle.
We are scared of making a mistake.
Scared of stepping outside the box.
Scared to forget about ourselves
and remember what matters most.

Up and Down

I’m falling asleep
sitting on the couch,
even though I don’t want to.
My head is drifting to one side
like a ragdoll.
I can’t help it.
I couldn’t sleep last night.
I tried to,
but I had too much tea during the day,
which did nothing to keep me awake
when I actually wanted it to,
but did plenty to keep me awake
when I wanted to sleep.
As a result,
I barely slept
last night.
Today,
all I want to do is sleep.
I tried to take a nap,
but the moment I lied down
I woke up.
So I got up.
And now that I am up,
all I want to do is lie down.

Vacationless

It wasn’t much of a vacation.
Sleeping on sinking red velvet couches.
Waking up in pain every forty minutes,
our backs screaming in protest.
Too tired to explore the day.
Walking from location to location
in a caffeinated haze.
Thoughts of canoeing,
or hiking,
or even driving to a nearby lake,
way too strenuous to contemplate.
I’d like to blame it on the couches,
but it wasn’t any better when we had a hotel room.
The Courtyard we stayed at
was attacked on Friday night by a swarm
of family reunions and weddings.
What was one a nice hotel on Thursday,
had been transformed into something resembling a Frat house
by Friday evening.
Voices laughing in rooms all hours.
Photos being snapped
trying to freeze the moment,
as if mad futuristic paleontologists
had been set loose in the hotel lobby.
A fire pit raging out of control outside my window
while voices peaked and fell
hour after horrible hour.
Each morning I woke more exhausted
than the next.
It got so bad
I started to believe I had PTSD.
I began anticipating the next
door slam,
shoe drop,
scream,
laugh,
or digital photo flash.
By Sunday morning I had large dark circles under my eyes.
It wasn’t pretty.
I must have looked really bad
because the hotel didn’t even charge us for two of the three nights.
What could they say?
What could any of us say?
We drove the 500 miles back home
in silence,
both too exhausted to speak,
both wondering where our vacation went,
both happy to be back in a real bed
where no one would be
slamming,
dropping,
screaming,
laughing,
or
flashing.

Fortune Cookie

I feel like a hot fortune cookie,
crumpled in,
stuffed with a message
I can not see.
I know it is there.
I just have to look inside to read it.
It says,
“Tomorrow brings more of the same,
better get used to the rain.”
Yes.
A dire prediction at first glance,
but when I think about it,
it is really quite funny.
I must learn to carry my sunny yellow umbrella
no matter what is thrown my way.
There will always be more of the same.
The trick is to let it slide off,
like rain water,
and keep on walking.

Ugly Little Toad

I haven’t missed speaking with her this week.
The lies that come out of her mouth,
ugly little toads,
warped
and naked
staring at me with a murder’s look,
are almost too much for me
to endure.
It is a horror
to realize
that what trust there once was
has vanished.
We were so close as children.
Hiding in the closet,
sharing secrets and dolls.
A united front
against the enemy,
our parents.
We made the rules and broke them.
A Lord of The Flies
of sorts,
set in Texas,
with T.V. dinners and take-out.
The governing body,
our parents,
never had a chance
against us.
They lived in the land of oblivion and denial,
lost in a haze of depression
and valium
and the occasional Sergio Mendez album.
Now we fight over them,
like a pig,
captured in the wild.
Each one struggling to hold on to a leg,
Each one determined they know
the best way
to cook it.

I'm O.K.

When I am in her room,
I am safe.
The days of panic,
the mornings of fear,
seem distant
standing on that purple mat watching her eyes
stare back at me.
She is the voice I have been missing,
the soft cool sound inside my head,
the one that tells me everything is alright.
When she is beside me
I can slow down,
I can be.
I can stop to feel my toes and take time to plant my feet.
I can be with my breath knowing she won’t leave
and neither will I.
I never knew calm before her.
I never knew safe.
I never knew let go.
I always thought I had to run like a cockroach,
scurrying from room to room.
70miles per hour.
100 miles per hour.
Never being still long enough to feel.
I wore myself ragged over every crisis big and small.
All because no one ever said,
“you’re o.k. You’re o.k.”

Feeling My Way Across Madness


It isn’t about what’s normal.
Or what isn’t normal.
It’s only about what I need.
And what I need is
time alone.
I’ve always been that way –
escaping into my internal world
while the rest of humanity escapes
outward.
My world is soft.
A world of pen and paper,
butterflies and flowers.
A world of observation
that I could disappear into
like a drop of water soaking into linen.
A gentle mist of rain
falling on to rose petals
in the garden.
It is my world.
My safe world,
that no one can enter into.
It has always been so.
When I abandon my world,
I am like a blind girl attempting to cross
a busy downtown intersection,
feeling my way across madness.
Each step,
unsure,
desperately
grabbing
onto the wrong people
and things,
unable to know which way I am going.
When I make it across,
if I make it across,
I do not know where I am anymore
and I am unable to get back
to where I started.
I can not recognize any of the signposts.
The sounds of the street
are like war bombs
going off in my ears
The voices are muffled and frightening,
and the hands reaching for me,
pulling at me,
are rough and insensitive.
I feel helpless to stop it.
I want to scream,
but no sound comes out of my mouth.
I want to run
but my legs are paralyzed.
It is as if I am being eaten alive
and there is nothing I can do about it.

Taking The Sun

I get scared about what’s going to happen to me.
I get scared about money
and if I will have enough
and that I have too much.
I worry that I don’t spend my days the way God wants me to.
I worry
that I worry too much.
I think about my life and I panic
over all the things I haven’t accomplished yet.
I’m not married and I don’t have children.
But then again,
neither does Oprah
and she seems to be doing alright.
But it’s not just that,
it’s more that feeling that somewhere in the last few decades I lost my way.
The ship I was supposed to be sailing left without me
and now I feel like I am in the ocean treading water,
just trying to keep my head from going under.
I am watching the ship sail off into the sunset without me
and I am helpless to try and stop it.
No matter how loud I scream
STOP
it just keeps going,
taking the sun along for the ride.
It is getting dark.
I pray that I won’t get eaten by a shark.
I feel the cold dark water all around me,
numbing my hands and feet,
chilling my stomach to the core.
It is an awful feeling.
It is the feeling of death.
I want to get back in the boat.
I want to get back on course.
But I am alone.
I am completely alone.

The Good Daughter's Work

All morning I have been the good daughter.
I tackled dental bills and hospital bills,
fought with warranties and corporations.
changed the oil on my Volvo,
and turned away from the box of hot doughnuts
sitting in the customer waiting room.
I pumped on the bike at the ‘Y’
drove to the health food store
for brown rice and green tea,
said no to lunch with my lover,
negotiated tree trimming with a large burly man
the neighbors had working next door,
found a driveway repairman
to fix my cracks,
and called the painter to see when he was coming.
I did all of this while preparing lunch,
checking my email,
and watching the market to see how much money I’ve lost today.
Now that all of that is “done”,
I don’t feel any better.
I still have the blank page before me.
Staring at me.
I keep thinking that if I could just move to Portland,
or New York,
or Madison,
everything would be different.
But I would still have bills to pay,
and rude drivers,
and parents to worry about it,
and the blank page before me.
And no one can fill it
but me.

A House of Madness

I am
building a house
with the shades down.
A madness
with nails
and balloons.
A dark empty
wrong
of whisper
and arms
scrawled with paint
pink
as a pig,
pink as a sunset.
I am building a house
caved like a wound.
A short,
poor shopping bag
of a house
with wallpaper
and bricks.
A decaying mass
flying from room to room
in search of
a window
like a swarm of bees.
Yeah, sure
sometimes you will knock
and I will not answer.
That is to be expected.
I might be reading Faust
or unable to cinch up my robe.
Or maybe I just don’t want to be disturbed.
Either way,
you’ll never know.

Martinis and Dead Engines

It is Hell outside today.
The animal inside me
yawns
wide open
like a wound.
I am
the alphabet,
letters jumbled
refusing to form words,
refusing to cooperate.
It is as if I have finally gone on strike
in protest
against the heat.
How could I melt the darkness
or put out the fire with my pen,
when there are monsters inside
roaming the streets of my soul?
You say
my mouth is a crater of hate.
My head is a maze
I cannot escape.
My skin,
is a naked beggar
thirsting for a drink.
If I were cut into a thousand pieces
and glued back together
I would never be united,
not in this sun.
I would surely melt
like a soft avocado.
I would dissolve like the old witch
and sizzle in to the ground
leaving nothing behind,
not even my shoes.
There is a name for this heat,
this poison,
that leaves me wanting to take a bath
in jello.
It is beyond oppressive.
It is beyond cruel.
It is the heat of slavery
and slamming doors.
It is the heat of lovers
and sun dogs.
It is the heat of dead engines
and martinis.
There is nothing to do
but be naked.
Nowhere to go
but inside.

My Sickness

When I get there,
nothing will have changed.
My father will be on the couch
with the t.v. blaring and
my mother will be half out of her mind
talking about Jesus.
She’ll ask me why I’m not married,
and fret over who she should give her engagement ring to,
my sister or me.
I will be greeted by wagging tails,
dog hair,
and the stench of dry dog food left in plastic dishes for days.
I will wonder how they live like they do
and then I will quietly thank God
that somehow
I managed to escape this part of my upbringing.
I will come to them
with my heart full and hopeful
and within a few seconds it will be dashed
by reality.
My father is just as happy
watching old movies on t.v. as he is seeing me
and my mother is always one second away from saying something nasty to me.
It wouldn’t matter to them if I came for an hour or two weeks.
So why do I go?
Yes,
that is my sickness.

New Summer Video

I just learned Final Cut!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvGM3MUmCC4

Hope you enjoy on a Summer day!

SuperWoman

I don’t know when I learned to fear my own greatness
but I do.
Somewhere along the way I learned to keep my head down low
and my voice silent,
and to disappear into the cracks as much as possible.
I learned that if they can’t see you,
You can’t get hurt.
But that’s a lie.
I get hurt everyday
and I’m sick of it.
Hell,
I’m the one who fixed the flapper in the toilet yesterday.
Just slid it right on
like I’d been doing it all my life.
One quick tutorial from the guy at Home Depot
and I was a regular seventy-five dollar-an-hour
minus-the-butt-crack plumber.
It was easy,
just like he said it would be.
But for two days I was forced to use the toilet in the back bedroom.
For two days I debated calling a plumber.
For two days I was lost.
After I fixed it I wondered what the big fuss was all about.
And it got me thinking,
if I can do that, I can do other things.
In fact, I can do most anything
I decide to do.
After all,
I’m the one who walked in Warner Bros.
and got put on staff out of a couple thousand people.
I’m the one who had my first album on NPR.
I’m the one who had a ninety-nine percent voter turnout in the precincts I managed in Clinton’s campaign of ’92.
It’s time to start that novel.
It’s time to make that film.
It’s time to finish that album
and publish my poetry,
and take that trip to Africa.
It’s time to remember just how amazing I am.

Nothing Means Anything

I guess I am a cynic.
Yes,
that’s what I am.
No matter how hard I try to stay positive
I always revert.
It is my natural state,
like hibernation for a bear
or lying for a politician.
Oh yes,
occasionally I put on a good face
and smile
and ogle a chubby baby and coo
like every other moron,
but
the truth is
I don’t get it.
Cooing at a baby doesn’t change anything in this world.
We walk around in some sort of sugar-induced daze.
Our T.V.’s pump us full of mindless crap
faster than any drug pusher ever could
and yet we don’t fear them or keep our children away from them.
Instead, we set them down in front of us and teach them what we have learned:
to feel thrill and excitement from watching other people
fail,
succeed,
win,
lose,
fuck,
kill,
and give birth.
We think that by doing this
we are somehow doing it with them.
“Did you see that guy climb that mountain yesterday.”
“Yes, so what?”
“Man, it was just like being there.”
No, it wasn’t.
Being there is just like being there.
Being there is freezing and numb hands
and starving and being terrified
and praying that you get to the top
before your rope breaks
and you plummet thousands of feet to your death.
Not being there is sitting on your ass in a warm room
drinking a beer and eating corndogs
with the remote in your hand.
Big difference.
The problem is we don’t understand that anymore.
Reality and fiction have blurred into one.
Angelina’s sex life with Brad gets as much airtime as a disaster in Kansas.
We cry just as much over the model who was rejected on a “reality” t.v. show
as we do over the children starving in Ethiopia.
We are more focused on erections and Viagra
than what’s happening to our civil liberties.
The result:
we are slowly becoming more and more numb to it all.
Everything is given the same weight.
So ultimately nothing means anything.
Yes, I am a cynic.
Thank God.

Hope

We have the poem.
The loveless soul.
The peach flower,
heavy shoulders,
and eyes.
We have the sea,
and the day,
and the rhyme.
It is not my face
shining
dead moon
or the eighty-five
crisis
I have survived
that leads me to shout,
“Now is the time.”
It is the one in the mirror looking back at me,
the one that greets me on my birthday.
The one that asks, “Where did the time go?”
For too long now,
I have waxed poetic
trying to stir up spirits
and corpses
when really there were only
dead rabbits
left behind.
Now, I must forget those
and move forward with all the ferocity of a young
sweetheart
in search of his love.
Now I must run,
throw off sparks,
and unhappiness,
(so much of it created in my mind),
and let
hope
be my flower.
There is still time
to live.

Enough

I am becoming
more and more alone
picnic.
The sounds I used to hear,
my mother’s voice,
my father’s laugh
are fading.
We drive Memorial down the road
listening to the radio.
The Beatles sing
“Help”and all that blue oyster
is out the window.
I am in the backseat mirror
watching the sun set.
I do not know how it got to be like this.
They are so far away
and I am here with nothing
but silence.
I want to go back to Texas.
To run inside my old house one more time.
To dip my feet in the orgasm swimming pool.
I want to go to the club
and never worry about how much anything costs,
and eat boiled shrimp by the plate.
I want to hit tennis with Jim
and flirt with Randy
and wander down the aisles of Neiman’s
buying six hundred dollar boots
I’ll wear once and then blister put away.
But all of that is gone.
Now we are broken,
limping along
like a three-headed duck
with no direction.
Enough.
It is time for a change.
It is time to greet the day
with a strawberry smile
and wash off what was
once and for all.

What Has To Be Done

What has to be done
usually doesn’t.
What should be done
really shouldn’t.
What has to be done
usually isn’t nearly as important
as what needs to be done.
And what needs to be done
should have been done
a long time before it needed to be done.
What has to be done
usually depletes my soul.
What has to be done
is mundane
and more about my wallet
than my words.
What has to be done
usually involves a machine,
or an appliance,
or a trip to some place
where I’ll spend money;
A grocery store,
or a department store,
or a gas station.
What should be done
implies guilt.
Such as a trip to one’s parent’s house.
Or something like that.
But what I want to do
rarely involves money.
Usually what I want involves sitting and writing
which is always free,
and always pays the biggest dividends
to my soul.

An Ounce of Prevention

The yellow daisies
on the kitchen table.
The white Spider Mums
in the master bedroom.
The golden sunflowers standing tall
in my office.
And the little lilac flowers in the black vase
in my room.
I tossed them all into the trash
and watched them make instant potpourri.
They were still good.
They still had life in them.
They still smelled fresh and pure.
But I am leaving tomorrow
and by the time I return
they will be lifeless,
folded over like fainting Southern Belles
left out in the sun for too long.
Their stems will be moldy.
Their petals droopy.
What beauty they once possessed will be gone.
Only the smell of death,
sick and cloying,
will be left to permeate my house.
I do not want to come home to death.

Cold Call

Whatever it is he’s selling
I don’t want.
I don’t like the tone of his voice.
It’s creepy.
All smoke and whiskey.
He sounds like he belongs in an AA meeting.
Jaded as they come.
I can see him now
in his leather recliner
leaning back on his black office phone
staring out at the window
Watching women walk by.
I bet he’s got yellow fingernails
and coffee stained teeth.
I bet he doesn’t sleep at night
and pops Tums like M&M’s.
I bet he drives a Buick
or some other gas guzzling American car.
I bet he thinks he knows the reason why
about everything.
I bet he thinks he knows “my type.”
It would never work.
I’d be down his throat faster than a spitting Cobra
at a circus.
Too much piss and vinegar.
He is all old school.
The clothes hanging on the line to dry.
Me,
I’m a SmartCar.
I want to get where I’m going
without spending thirty-five gallons
and get there in style.
If he calls back,
I won’t answer.
He’ll get the message.
He’ll know why.

Solitude Sunday


It is 1:22 and I am alone.
Ah!
There is something so decent
about solitude
(when you want it).
I’ll settle for six hours
on a rainy afternoon
any day without locks
and violets.
Just a long hot bath
inside myself.
Sixty acres of undisturbed ground
waiting to be explored,
made love to.
Suddenly I understand
the green grass
and the dead birds.
I understand old men in caves
and the Hollywood sign.
I think about the Mexican woman on the corner
with the shopping bag between her legs
waiting for her bus
and I wonder what solitude means to her.
Yes, this is the way I like it.
My pen.
My paper.
And me.

Sunshine And Breasts

Dirty fingernails.
Toes that do not care.
Hands walking where the body has forgotten.
I am mostly fog.
Headless.
An open window
holding apples
and onions.
A ball floating
without a nose.
Can you see me?
I arrive on time
like a lunatic
with the taste of roses
in my drawers.
I think of books.
Pages and pages of them.
Poems painted on a bench.
My French lover.
Young breasts and sunshine.
The fan by the radio
blowing
songs.
How beautiful life can be.

Silent War

Perhaps I should have said no
and made you come home that day.
But you wanted to see the sunset
and I was running late.
If I had only stopped
you might still be here.
But that is another story.
Now when I look at sunsets
I see you.
Your face.
Your eyes.
Your arms twisted in the orange and red
bleeding through the clouds
like a banner
unfurling
declaring
war
on my heart.
Where is the peace in death?
Tell me.
Is it only for the departed?
You are somewhere far away
while I am here
left alone to untangle this mess,
wondering
how I will survive
yet another day
without you.

The Eyes of Dogs

I don’t want to see her.
Or her friend.
Or anyone.
I am tired of calls and lockboxes
and accepting less than I should.
I am not grass.
I am not seed.
I am not shit.
The water that laps at my door
is unquestioning.
Drink.
Yes.
Drink.
There is so much emptiness in all of this.
This life.
I see faces crying in China
and hands asking why.
I see the eyes of dogs
begging me for salvation
but I have none.
I haven’t smiled in months.
I haven’t found the joy
in the first day of Spring.
I have wandered on the hill in search of him.
Always coming down alone.
At dinner I sat and rattled on about nothing
trying to fill the silence.
Now I am embarrassed.
I want to run in the field
alone
and call his name.
I want to walk with him and no one else.
I tell myself it will be different in Portland.
I can start again
and forget,
but I don’t think
my asking price is low enough
for someone to accept a pink bathroom
and take the last forty years
with them.

Bad Bed Partners

It’s over
as quick as it began.
A bad summer fling.
A mistaken passing in the night.
It never should have happened.
Never.
We were naive.
We picked her because she seemed cool.
We thought she was a go-getter.
She was.
The only problem was she was busy getting everyone else’s things.
She didn’t have time to go get us anything.
She made lots of promises.
But none of them seemed to materialize.
And then when things weren’t working out,
she didn’t even have time to sit down and talk with us
about it.
She was too busy,
selling.
Yes,
she was selling
everything but our house.

The Wrong House

It’s getting dark
and I am here in the den
writing.
This morning has been a mix
of threatening phone calls
and fainting men.
Too much fury before my eyes.
Too much anger.
I am the frog on the biology table,
cut in half,
intestines explored
with blunt instruments.
Eyes pulled out of sockets.
Limbs held back
flat
against the board,
against their will.
How many times have I been cut opened?
The stench of death around me?
When the morning fell I was there.
And though I tried to help
I was just a stranger
in it all.
It didn’t matter if I were guilty or innocent.
The giver of breath
and fire.
I was in the wrong house.

On The Outside

Yesterday
I called them
to tell my father
that the basketball playoffs were on.
Detroit vs. Boston.
My mother answered the phone in a huff.
“Well I’m glad you’re having a good night,” she said sarcastically.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
She was upset because my father wouldn’t help her open a can of soup.
When I asked to speak with him,
so that I could talk him into helping her,
she said, “here’s your precious daughter.”
As if by precious she meant fucking.
I have always been his “precious” daughter.
Why, I don’t know.
Maybe no one else wanted the job
and I took the only vacant role in the house.
My sister was smart and had taken my mother’s side long ago.
My pick was never around.
My father would leave and spend months at his downtown apartment
sentencing me to an odd in-house imprisonment,
banished from my sister and mother,
but still forced to live under the same roof with them.
In every decision I was always the odd girl out.
It didn’t make for a very good life then or now.
A few moments later, my sister came storming in through the front door of her house,
like a tornado let loose in a small Kansas town.
She was screaming at my parents and at the dog,
who tried to make a run for it out the open door.
Who can blame him? I thought.
Why didn’t they eat? she asked.
Why wasn’t the trash taken out?
Who let the dog out?
These were questions that neither of them could answer now
and probably would have had a difficult time answering even twenty years ago.
I listened to all of it over the phone like I were eavesdropping on some very dysfunctional reality t.v. show.
Finally my father said he had to go,
like a wounded animal
who had just been given the command to “kennel up.”
Now he is the in-house prisoner
and I am on the outside.
The only problem is
I don’t feel any freer.

This Place

I have found yet one more reason to dislike this place.
Stupidity.
I’m not kidding.
There are some of the stupidest people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting
here.
Really.
Not only are they stupid,
but they lie.
They lie about the mistakes they have made
and then they think no one will know they’ve made them.
Like the moron who hit me,
he didn’t know what color his light was
but he still flew through the intersection
(driving someone else’s truck without insurance).
Or what about the imbecile office assistant who messed my boyfriend up
because she wrote on his chart he had diabetes when he didn’t?
Now she refuses to do anything about it and he can’t get insurance.
Stupid.
Stupid people.
There seem to be more of them here than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.
Yesterday I test-drove a Subaru
and the girl taking us on the test drive didn’t know how many miles to the gallon the car got.
Nor did she know what the overdrive button did.
She didn’t even know what changes had been made to the new model.
Unbelievable.
Why is she working for this company?
Better question…why did they hire her?
It’s mind-boggling.
It happens in place after place here.
Restaurant after restaurant.
Nobody knows anything.
They all just walk around in a daze
happy and content,
stuffing their faces with Fritos and fried chicken
and buying twelve packs of Coke.
I want to slap one of them and say wake up
and tell them can’t they see what’s going on?
Don’t they know?
But they’d just lie and say they do,
when they don’t.
And nothing would change.
Nothing.
It’s Hell living among the stupid.

Trees

Trees.
Come closer.
I am listening to the sparrow sing.
December
can not bring me back.
I have thoughts beyond beauty.
The name of the Lord.
The dead city.
I am like them.
I have tried to befriend the past
but I can not.
It is still too present.
I push everything off my bed,
the eggs,
and salad,
and fish,
even the babies
pink and benign.
August is hot
and my head is the same.
One day I will marry the sun.
It is like that now.

The Lizard in The Sun

lies on the back patio
motionless.
Ants crawl past and over him
as if he were some boulder
dropped in their path.
They don’t seem to mind very much.
They don’t stop and worry and wonder
about which path to take,
and if they are taking the right path,
they just keep moving.
It is a good lesson to learn.
I have let myself trip
over too many lizards
never to get up again.

Monday Afternoon

I open a drawer
to butterflies,
insane
bagfuls of kisses,
unable to answer the knife,
the Saturday afternoon
burning the jar
Black.
The baby clock
rings at me
as if I were a man
in a four dollar room
looking for socks.
I am
a peach,
decent
as gold.
A Cadillac
of feelings.
My mouth is better than
spoon,
better than music.
I am a bed
gone
wrinkled
never to be let in.
I laugh
at the fearful,
the hobbled sleep of illness,
and the conversation
of dead birds.
If only
the waitress would bring me
my bill,
my life would be
complete.

Out of The Rabbit Hole

Sixteen years ago I ran away and hid.
I jumped so deep into the rabbit hole I forgot where and who I was.
I threw myself away and believed my circumstances.
Now I want to befriend those who hurt me,
because the poison I have been swallowing is only poisoning me.
I thought if I ran far enough away I could escape.
I rejected the parts of myself that had been rejected
and made myself half of who I was.
I let myself be small
and invisible
so I couldn’t be seen.
Now there is no time to hide.
There is only time to forgive
and become.
I've lived in the rabbit hole
long enough.

Red Dresses

This morning I had too many blueberries in my cereal
and now I am regretting them.
They feel like tiny spores embedded in my stomach lining
exploding at will.
Every few minutes,
KA-BOOM!
and I am sent
running.
I’ve been running for years.
Down hallways as a little girl
and later from bed to bed.
From Houston to Los Angeles,
and then from Los Angeles
to Nashville.
Each time staying too long.
Each time saying never again.
Nashville was a bigger mistake than L.A.
I got too restful here.
Lost track of time.
Forgot who I was.
In L.A. I was part of a crowd.
Writers.
Some writing crap, albeit,
but still writers.
I had the cache of U.S.C. behind me
and I could wear mini-skirts and not be looked at strangely.
Now I am in no man’s land,
a world where guns and cigarettes are touted as good things
and the average I.Q. seems to be double digits at best.
I miss my red dresses.

Originality

Each day
I tell myself
that I am getting out.
But each day
I am still here.
I tell myself that if I put in the right granite,
or stainless,
or curtains,
the right person will come.
But each day that passes I start to wonder
if they’ll come at all.
I am not like everyone else.
I don’t mind pink tile,
or white appliances,
or even fifty-year-old windows.
I like the original best.
I am tired of everything having to be new,
new and crappy.
I like what was laid down originally.
Our society is too quick to want nothing of the past.
It is a wonder we have museums.
You would think Picasso would be out of date.
Rembrant passé.
“Oh, I’ve seen him already.” I can hear some stupid suburbanite moaning.
You would think we have to put new artwork in our museums daily,
fill our galleries with Hallmark cards and cereal boxes,
just to satisfy these imbeciles.
“Yes, it’s a entirely new collection, “they would giggle as they run to their neighbors
to spread the news.
Good grief.

Mother

I am still trying to escape them.
They are the sore in my pocket.
The deep seat of fear
that keeps me rabid.
Each morning,
the call of her voice
in my ear,
the one that keeps me paralyzed.
Each night,
her self-assured domination,
the elephant in my dreams
trampling me
over and over.
I have fought to keep them away
like malaria,
like typhoid.
I have fought to break free as best I could,
but Houdini’s chains were never as tight.
I have drowned myself in words,
and songs,
and books,
hundreds and hundreds of books,
trying to escape into the page
Mother.
But I can not.
Still she comes
with her calls and her looks
and her threats.
And there is nothing for me.
Nothing.
I have been the shell in this game for too long.
Empty underneath.
My pea went missing long ago.
I have tried to contain myself.
Tried to curl up embryo-like
and escape the blows.
But I am tired.
I am losing the fight.
I have been pecked clean of flesh.
A lost beauty
hanging in the closet
with nowhere to run.

Hitting The Keys

He says I am obsessing
about the house.
And he’s right,
I am.
Each day I look on Craigslist,
and on Realtracs,
and in the newspaper,
at other homes for sale.
I look at what they are asking for them
and what they are selling for.
Then I compare mine to them.
“This one isn’t near as nice as mine,
it’s close to the freeway.”
“It doesn’t have a new roof.
You can hear highway 70 from that one. “
And on and on.
Yesterday, I noticed they just lowered the price of one around the corner
another fifteen thousand dollars.
That one has granite countertops and new stainless appliances.
Mine doesn’t.
I know it is wasted energy and wasted thought to keep doing what I am doing.
Each day I vow I am not going to go online and look
and each day I find myself hitting the keys.
I guess I’m scared.
I’m scared to just let go and trust.
I’m scared to let anyone else handle anything.
I’m scared that I will never get out of here.
It’s been over a year since Trouble died
and I’m still here.
I’m still looking out at the hill
that he loved
and wishing
I could move.
I don’t know if moving is the answer or not,
but it couldn’t hurt.
It would give me a fresh start.
Moving would feel symbolic,
like I was making progress
and heading in the right direction.
I could forget the accidents,
and his death,
and all the bad memories,
and just start over.

Passing By

There was no time to react
it all happened so fast.
One moment there were the normal sounds of the day
and the next,
screams.
I watched a hawk grab a baby from its nest
and fly away with it like a crazed pilot.
The baby’s parents followed with such ferocity
it was clear they had forgotten their attacker was three times bigger than they were.
The screams from the trees were worse than any human fight
I had ever heard.
Words and threats hurled back in forth,
rustling of leaves,
fighting and screaming.
From the sounds of it the hawk was in for more than he had bargained for.
One minute the parents were busy
hunting for food for their baby,
and taking turns with their vigil,
and the next,
they were in a fight for their child’s existence.
It was incredible how quickly things change.
Ten minutes later,
the screams just ended.
The silence was more terrifying than the shrieks
because I don’t know the ending.
Either the parents got their baby back
or the hawk got lunch.
I fear it was the later.
I wonder
what they will do now.
What will they fill their hours with?
Will they return to their empty nest
and hover above it?
Will they weep and wail
and blame each other like we would?
Or will they separate,
find another partner and start again?
There is no grief counselor for them to go to.
No source of wisdom.
There is only the day
and the hours and the seconds
passing by.

Counting Soldiers

I am counting soldiers
one by one.
In the field
and in the home.
They are piling up
outside my door
like old newspapers
I have forgotten to throw out.
Their blood and bones
are mine.
Their wounds are etched in my skin
like ugly tattoos
I can not erase.
Their graves are my graves.
In the morning when I step into my bath
it is their blood I bathe in
warm and salty.
It is their eyes I see in the mirror
when I look at myself.
It is their voices I hear
wailing outside my window
when I try to sleep at night.
It is their shoes I walk in
as I make my way down the hall
to piss.

Rapunzel's Ranch

Let down your hair,
Rapunzel.
Let down your hair,
Rapunzel,
and join us.
That’s what they’d say to her.
But she couldn’t join them.
Poor Rapunzel
was stuck in her fucking castle,
the one her mother bought for her.
The one her mother thought would be romantic.
All alone on the hill night after fucking night
with no way down.
Just her pen and her sword
and her needle
and the sound of nightingales
to keep her company.
Poor Rapunzel,
why didn’t some fucker bring her a ladder?
Couldn’t they see how lonely she was?
Why did they tell her to come down
knowing she had no way down
except to fall out of the window
and on to her pretty yellow head?
Miserable jerks.
Poor Rapunzel.
She sat there night after night
waiting and hoping she could find a way out of her
1950’s Ranch house,
the one with the outdated appliances and pink tile bathroom.
But no one would come.
No one would even look.
Why?
Because everyone wanted granite and stainless steel.
Sure her home
was safe.
And quiet.
But who wants that?
Not the guy with the Porsche
who pulled into the driveway briefly
then sped away
to the East
where all the new restaurants were springing up like toads.
If only Rapunzel had listened to herself and bought the little 1920’s cottage on Carden
instead of listening to her mother,
she would be rich now.
“That one had a sidewalk in front of it and new appliances,” she thought.
“I could have just walked out my front door
instead of waiting for someone to come and find me.”
Yes, Rapunzel,
you could have.

23 Acres

He tells me not to worry
over thirty or forty thousand
one way or the other.
“It’s just money,” he says.
If I want to move
I should move.
“What difference does it make?” he says.
And he’s right.
I know he’s right.
This is a man who was cutting deals for millions
while I was running around in diapers.
A man who had sixteen different partners.
A man who never worried about a dime.
He was bold
on paper.
I know.
A few weeks ago I flew to Houston to go through a storage unit
I didn’t know we had.
Inside I found my father’s file cabinets.
His entire business life
was in those two black file cabinets.
Every deal he ever made.
Every piece of property he ever owned.
Brazosport,
the Village shopping Center,
La Porte,
Pasadena,
and the 23 acres Charter bank took from him.
There was his letter to his partners in Bluebonnet productions
railing against them for their deceit,
his discharge papers from the army,
and his citizenship documents.
There were photos of his mother and father from the twenties
and postcards I wrote to him
from camp.
There was even a letter he submitted to the L.A. Times for publication about justice
and how justice is only for the rich.
Unfortunately, The Times rejected it.
Everything I never knew about my father was in those papers.
Papers that I was now dumping in trash bins all over Houston
while security guards weren’t looking.
I wanted to save them,
to box them up and bring them back on the plane,
to make sense of his life,
like I was Columbo putting together a puzzle
that would help me understand who he was.
But there were too many files
and no one to talk with about them now.
My father’s partners are dead
and my father doesn’t remember much.
I called him from the hotel
just to make sure he didn’t want any of his business records,
and to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten about some piece of property he still might own.
He said it was all gone,
all of it.
All those millions gone.
A life’s work just numbers on aging paper.
I asked him about his letter to his partners in Bluebonnet.
I asked him what happened and what they did to him
that left him feeling betrayed.
All he would say is, ‘the past is the past. What does it matter now?”
Yes,
what does it matter?

Maid Boyfriend Restaurant

You can never go back.
Not to maids or boyfriends
or restaurants.
It’s never the same
as the first time.
Somehow the floors never shine as brightly.
The conversation isn’t as sweet.
Touching doesn’t give you the same tingle.
And that perfectly cooked grouper,
isn’t.
It’s like that.
The shine wears off.
You notice the dust balls in the corner,
and the dental floss left in the trash can,
and the underwear hanging on the bathroom door.
And what you thought was the perfect
Maid
Boyfriend
Restaurant
turns out to be a disappointment.
So you look for another
and another
each time falling in love
with the sourdough,
if only for an instant.
Each time falling out of love
only to be left hungry for the next
Maid
Boyfriend
Restaurant.
I’ve stopped eating out.

Bad Isn't Good Anymore

It’s getting less fun
to be bad.
I can’t drink anymore.
Half a glass of anything
leaves me drunk.
And what’s more,
I don’t even enjoy the sensation.
Last week,
I had a couple of sips of a Mojito in New Orleans.
I could barely walk a straight line to the bathroom.
The room was spinning,
my face was flush, and I felt like I might end up face first in my plate of black beans and rice.
It wasn’t pretty.
I didn’t feel relaxed and I can’t say I’m glad I did it.
Same goes for sugar.
It’s starting to lose its thrill for me.
Doughnuts and cookies and cake
used to hold me spellbound.
I can still see those giant deli coconut cakes
spinning round and round in Alfred’s glass deli case,
a giant piece cut out
and all that golden yellow cake and white cream
staring back at me.
Getting a slice used to be more enticing than a trip to Disneyland.
Now, the thought of cake makes me sick.
I can feel my head start to spin and my eye sockets start to dry up and I feel fuzzy.
More and more
there is less and less that interests me
in the “what I’m supposed to enjoy” part of this world.
I don’t know how other people do it.
How do they eat and drink and smoke and live
and fill their minds with endless distractions?
There must be a place for someone like me.
There must be.

Going In

The hardest thing is the beginning.
Settling in to that deep part of yourself
that longs to be touched,
that has to be touched
in order to survive.
I can’t walk around like most people
running
from thing to thing,
appointment to appointment,
scattered like grass seed,
trying not to blow away with the first strong wind.
I need roots
and the dark dark earth to plant my feet in.
It has always been like that for me.
Going in
is what gives me life.
Going in
is what keeps me whole.
Without it,
I am lost,
a refugee on a raft
baking in the sun,
my back red and blistered.
Some would say I am exaggerating,
but it’s true.
I need to go in
the way people need three meals a day.
I need to go in
the way a diabetic needs insulin.
I need to go in.
For life.

Yellow

Somewhere in all this yellow
there is a writer.
Somewhere in the walls
and wood and tiffany lamp
there is the heart of a pen.
I’ve seen it
lost
in the bamboo blinds.
I’ve seen glimpses of it
behind the white sliding closet doors
and under the chocolate futon.
It is in the sheet music on the music stand,
the page turned to the Beatles’ “Good Morning”.
I’ve seen it
in desk drawers
and in dark corners
underneath the calculator
and the calendar.
I’ve seen it under paper napkins at restaurants
and on park benches and subway stops.
It is there
always beating
always waiting for me.
It is there
in the car with the windows rolled down
and at the grocery store contemplating cabbage over carrots.
It is in New Orleans
in the French Quarter
silently taking notes of the Cajun and Creole
and on the powdered sugar dusted on beignets.
It is in the air
dank
and musty
and on the wings of the cicada
soon to invade.
It is in the vase of sunflowers by my desk
and in the Ninth Ward,
empty and deserted.
It is in the gallop of Eight Belles
and in the silence of her fall.