Stinky

Yes,
that’s the name
I gave you.
Not Max or Oscar,
or Fred,
or Jack.
Stinky.
Maybe it was your coffee breath,
or the gas you expelled in my bed,
or the poopages you left right on the brick patio
when you had over an acre of grass to choose from.
Maybe it’s the pee puddle you left by your crate
or the pieces of kibble scattered on my den floor,
or the poop you tracked in on your paws.
Whatever the reason,
you are Stinky to me
and you always will be.
You don’t know anything yet.
You don’t know who to trust,
or who to let love you,
or why the sky is blue,
or where you fit in the pack.
You don’t know me
and I don’t know you.
You don’t know how to bark
or why you sleep in the den
or where your real mother is.
You don’t know where you’re next meal is coming from
or why the grass squirrels run when they see you coming.
You don’t know how to roll over on command or
why your red ball rolls down the hill.
And you certainly don’t know why the birds fly.
Everything is an adventure,
like the cardboard box in the hallway,
and the computer cable and the stereo wires,
and my green Crocs and my pink socks.
Everything is one giant amusement park.
I hope you stay Stinky forever.

Free Bird

No way out.
There is no way out.
There is no way out.
I have tried.
I have tried.
Last night I dreamed I was a bird
with my wings caught in a net.
I was crumpled and strangled and slowly dying
and I couldn’t get free.
I couldn’t get free.
My old friend Pam was in my dream.
She was a shaman now.
A poetess.
She had escaped her chains
and was wise.
She wore robes and draped herself in silver
and smelled of exotic oils.
She tried to tell me what to do.
She tried to help me to escape.
But I couldn’t get free.
No matter what I did,
I couldn’t get free.

Breathing

The first breath is the hardest.
The one that comes in
and slows the others down,
the one that says it is o.k. to take in,
to fill up,
to allow.
Without the first breath
there is nothing.
It is as if someone stopped the ocean’s rise and fall.
This morning the rain came
and blew winter through my front door.
I did not stop to gather the fallen branches
or stand to gaze at the clouds.
I unwrapped my hair and let it slide down my back
then pulled a knitted hat over my head.
I tried not to lick my lips
or leave myself vulnerable to the cold.
I breathed shallow breaths
as if the air were toxic
and taking it in would kill me.
It is hard not to remember
what can hurt you.
It becomes as involuntary as breathing.

Oh Oscar

Last night I watched the dribble.
The parade of chiffon and lace.
The golden tears of sincerity languished on listeners
too numb to care.
There were the famous and the longing to be famous.
The talented and the mediocre.
The broken and the botoxed.
They were all there,
polished and painted and perfected.
When I was little I wanted to be a part of all of that.
I thought it was glamorous.
The red carpet.
The photographers with their flashing light bulbs.
The limousines and champagne.
The fans screaming my name.
For years I dreamed of my acceptance speech.
What I would say,
and who I would destroy
in those brief thirty seconds.
Watching it last night,
it all felt empty,
like stealing broken cookies,
or downing Starbucks’ samples.
Sure, they’re sweet for a few moments,
but afterwards,
they leave me feeling sick.

Red

Everything is banging:
The mini-blinds in the den.
The black out shades in my bedroom.
The cords and boards and vents and pipes.
There is blowing in the hallway
and in the bathroom.
The heater is ticking like a bomb.
All that red,
glowing,
wanting to explode,
like me.

Wild Plums

Stillness is a song,
an idiot mind,
an egret in Florida standing at sunrise.
I find all the rest,
the rumba of war,
the plea of the sparrow,
the jagged milkweed,
just that,
a silent and snowy line
for me to cross.
Where is my mountain?
That which keeps me grounded
in imperfection and ghosts?
Has it run away like some lost dog
never to return?
I bury myself in the promise of poetry,
clinging to it like some gambler
holding out for one more roll,
one more ace.
When it doesn’t come
will I have nothing but despair to line my pockets?
For now,
I gather the wild plums
of tomorrow
with childlike abandon
certain
I can stave off
mediocrity
another day.

Highly Recommended

She’s listening to clairvoyants now,
and having EFT sessions,
and paying pet psychics to come over and communicate with her dead dog.
She’s going to tarot card readings,
and having herbal allergy testing done,
and going to acupuncturists,
even though she barely has one hundred dollars in her two accounts.
When I hang up the phone after speaking with her,
I feel scared.
She is so certain,
all because some “highly recommended” clairvoyant said so.
She told her she’ll get her job,
and her license, and sell her house in five months,
if she fixes it up some,
and gets a realtor.
Doesn’t sound very psychic to me.
The weird part is,
she believes every word they tell her.
She doesn’t doubt any of them.
The shaman.
The psychic.
Or the herbalist.
She pays them money and they tell her what she wants to hear.
Maybe I am the one being too cynical.
I seem to have lost my faith in most things.
My future feels as dead as the fish I kissed this morning.
Still, I don’t believe the answer to everything is to pay someone.
If I want to communicate with my dog,
I go up on the hill and sit by his grave and listen.
I don’t need to pay someone seventy-five dollars to tell me what he’s thinking.
I know.

Fly

We are dragging our feet through the snow,
across the ice
and black
parking lot
of winter.
The dog,
you and me,
the bread we ate
still warm in our bellies,
curled up in a ball on the purple rug
waiting for winter to pass
like a tummy ache.
Tomorrow we will wear sweaters and sit outside in the sun
and wonder how we were ever felt cold at all.
It is like that.
Our days
pass before us like seagulls on their way to the beach.
One moment we are in love,
the next alone.
In summer
we long for cool.
In winter, the reverse.
We are always wanting.
I do not think the birds think about such things.
They simply fly.

Finding Max

Finding a home for Max
while the blood still flows.
Last night
stained sheets
heart shaped
blood.
Cramping and bleeding
and dreams of what might have been.
I dreamed of new parents for Max
and how empty my den would be without him.
I told my therapist I didn’t want to keep him,
but I don’t think that’s true.
I told her I wanted to write
and be alone
but I don’t think that’s true.
For too long I have thought that the only way to have my life
was to be alone,
to keep everything away.
Love.
Children.
Even a wandering dog.
I told myself that I cannot have
if I want to be.
Great artists live in isolation
with commitments to no one
right?
They observe the world but don’t take part in it.
They are forever on the sidelines watching
with saucer-like eyes.
Everything is fodder for their next story.
The waiting room of girls,
stupid and uneducated.
The Southern kitchen of pies.
The pale walls of rest homes.
The neglected animals waiting to die.
The neighborhood scandal.
The missing dentures left on the elevator floor.
The yellow rose put out in the foyer to honor the dead.
Everything is something.
I think about Trouble
up on the hill,
the grass growing thicker over him day after day.
I think about how many months it has been
and how much it still hurts.
I think about my life,
all that I want for it,
all that it is not.
The new puppy before me.
The man I love.
My heart,
ready to burst with all that I see,
all that I have kept inside.
Perhaps I will keep him after all.

Courage

It is a lonely life,
a sad life,
a life where all our choices add up to all that we are
and all that we are not.
The choice to have a child or not
leads to a life alone
or a life of future generations.
I never thought much about it,
but now that I am running out of time,
I realize I’ve made my choice.
This is the end of the line.
There will be no more of whatever I am,
and that’s o.k.
It’s sad,
but it’s o.k.
I don’t want to repeat the past.
I don’t want to make a child a victim of my neurosis.
I look at my parents and think,
as I’ve always thought,
that they never should have had children.
What right did they have to bring my sister and myself
into their insanity?
I was fine where I was.
I was happy before I came.
Did they have so little care for me
that they couldn’t stop what they were doing for even a few moments
to worry whether or not they were hurting me?
The fighting and screaming?
The hitting and slamming of doors?
The leaving and returning over and over again?
Now, I am frightened.
I live on the edge,
always waiting for the next shoe to drop.
I didn’t deserve to grow up in a house like that
and I don’t deserve to feel that way now.
I don’t want to pass on my pain,
like passing on green eyes and brown hair,
or long legs and big teeth.
It is my job to protect the unborn,
to save them from the same misery I had,
to save myself from those that hurt me now.
If I can stop the cycle of abuse
then maybe,
I’ve done more than give life,
I’ve saved life,
and that’s just as courageous.

Noise

It is hard not to react to it all.
His screaming.
His depression.
Her dementia.
Her thievery.
Being bit.
Being late.
Being worried all the time about life.
Today I walked on the hill with the dog I haven’t named
and tried to forget all that is.
I focused on the short brown grass and the green struggling to bloom beneath it.
I looked at the green buds rising through the mud.
I felt the branches of my bare maple
and dreamed of soft leaves coming.
I forgot about the noises in my head
and listened to the wind.
It has been too long since I just walked in the woods to walk.
Too long since I sat by myself by the river and listened to no one and nothing
but its babble.
Life is beautiful.
It is here waiting for me to stop and look at it.
The rest is just
noise.

Leap of Faith

It is a leap of faith
to become a parent.
It is a leap I lack,
an inability to jump.
A fear of the unknown and what God holds in his candy box for me.
I envision a child capable of the most heinous crimes,
a child who would regard me with horror,
a child who would make my every moment a nightmare.
In short,
I envision the Bad Seed.
I think about what this child would do to my relationship with my partner.
I think about how many sleepless nights we would have.
No more sitting next to each other to cuddle,
but rather the thing always between us,
pressing his or her way against us,
watching us to see what we do.
A test.
One night after another.
Every day a new adventure.
I think about the hitting and biting and screaming and crying.
Then I think about the three of us lying together in the tall grass looking up at the stars
and counting them all.
I think about birthday parties and Christmases
and mile markers
like first steps
and first dates.
I think about my patience
and wonder if I would have enough.
I think about my fear
and pray I would not pass it on.
I think about my childhood
and wonder why my parents ever had me.

Coming Down

It’s pouring.
Big sheets of rain are coming down.
Today, he is in his cage
and I am across from him in my chair.
He is trying to get food out of his Kong.
I am trying to get words out of my head.
He is bored.
I have a headache and wish that I could tell the future.
He is in the moment,
stretched out on his back,
legs spread,
body open to the world
with no thought of tomorrow.
I am one giant thought
oiled and brooding,
watching
the sky get darker.