Blackened Notes


Yes,
I am stupid.
I keep putting myself
into the fury of her anger
over and over again.
When will I stop and say,
no more?
When will I refuse to jump in
to the fray
and turn and walk away?
Once I sang operas,
lonely arpeggios
that ran up and down the scale
in search of tears.
I saw colors.
The blackened notes.
The thick thrill of voices.
I stood there,
motionless,
looking calm before my audience.
Disconnected from my voice,
and song,
A smiling pretty.
A sugar machine,
cranking out beauty
by the second,
while what raged inside me,
the fury,
the steel burning of years,
would not surface
for decades.
Now,
when the kitten finds the mouse,
she eats him.

The Bastard of St. Henry

The bells of St. Henry are ringing.
I hear them echo in the hills,
across the yard,
and into my window.
I am not Catholic
but I still like hearing them.
They sound celebratory
and remind me to remember the glory of life
when I have forgotten.
I imagine rich fancy weddings
and births,
and funerals of great men and women.
I see black limos,
and white dresses,
Priests dressed in their finest cloth,
and children running on the church lawn.
I have only been there once,
when my friend Sue’s husband died.
What a bastard he was.

Whatever Is Is

My mother used to always say,
whatever is is
and whatever isn’t isn’t.
I used to hate that expression because it did nothing to alleviate my fear.
But today I am trying to live by that very expression.
I am trying to live in the present,
in the black and white
and not let my head spin off into what if’s ,
what might be’s,
and what could have been’s.
It all becomes too complicated.
Too hazy.
Too grey.
Too terrible.
After my appointment with the dermatologist,
I turned to my sister,
the family doctor, for comfort and a second opinion.
She told me I was being a worry wart.
She said she doesn’t ever worry.
Well, maybe if someone told her she had Cancer
she might get worried,
but that’s about it.
I hung up the phone and realized she was right.
Gruff, as usual,
but right.
I am a worry wart.
And I spend way too many hours contemplating
and thinking
and re-thinking,
and Googling.
And the truth is it gets me nowhere.
All I can do,
is do the best I can do
and let God,
or nature,
or the magic tree fairies,
take care of the rest.
If I run out of money,
I’ll get another job.
If I have something wrong with me
I’ll get it taken care of.
If the house doesn’t sell, I’ll rent it.
If my lover leaves me,
I’ll survive.
The truth is,
the only thing I have to handle is this moment.
And today,
right now,
the sun is shining.

Peaches

No Work Today.
Or the day before,
or the day before that.
The old man just shook his head
as he stared at the sign
and kept walking.
Hands in his pockets.
He felt inside his old faded pants
for a few coins,
pulled them out
and stared at them in his deep wrinkled hands.
Then he shuffled down the street
in search of some pie
and a cup of coffee.
Something to wash down
the years.
A bit of sweetness in a day off
to a bad start.
He didn’t think about tomorrow
as he ate the peaches,
or about the fact that he had a little more than a dollar left.
He just let the buttery crust slide down his throat
and felt the cream on his tongue.
Nothing was going to ruin this day.
There was plenty of time to begin worrying again
tomorrow.

Long Gone

How stupid I was
to have lamented your leaving
even for a second.
The truth is,
I never loved you.
In the shower,
when you touched me,
I only pretended to moan
because I knew it was what you wanted to hear.
And in bed,
it was the same.
I gave you what you wanted,
when you wanted.
Your reward for pages written
was my mouth,
my thighs,
my cunt.
But you weren’t really touching me.
I
was long gone.
I
was
somewhere circling the room,
a headless body
floating,
too scared to look,
too scared to feel.
You see,
I left you first.

Bones Against Bones

Stop
and sway with me.
Old age waits
like a runaway horse
headed for the barn.
I need you
and the glory of a Sunday
on the beach
one more time.
Yesterday,
the deer was on the hill
eating leaves and branches.
She stood over C.C.’s grave
and whispered in his ear.
Bones against bones.
I swear I heard him answer.

Beautiful Dreamers

Three yellow sunflowers
lean their heads forward from the vase
as if listening in on a conversation.
They have stood there
since last Friday,
ankle deep in water,
hoping to charm someone with their beauty.
So far,
no one’s come.
Still they wait and they hope
for the mysterious
man,
woman,
or child,
who will walk up to them
and tell them
they are beautiful.
Only then
will they curl up
and die.

Quiet Rain

I do not want to call.
I do not want to hear
the latest:
gossip,
tragedy,
indiscretion,
psychic illumination.
I am tired of it all.
Tonight,
I
want
quiet.
I want to sit on my bench
and watch the clouds roll in
and wait for the
rain
to
come.

Christian Acts

I don’t know where I’m starting
or where I might end.
My legs are up on my desk
aching
from yoga and running
and walking around the track.
Today, I sampled myself sick
with Easter cupcakes,
English cheese and pizza
at the record store.
Now the healthy glow I had,
from my morning of exercise,
has faded into a yeasty brain fog.
My eyes have sunken and my skin,
just like Cinderella’s coach at the stroke of midnight,
has returned to its former state.
I don’t know where I’m going,
dust following the words
down the page
while the snow falls.
Tomorrow is Easter
and I still am not a Christian,
much to my mother’s sadness.
But I am a good person.
I celebrate love and peace
and kindness,
and I got a Honey Baked Ham
delivered to her for Sunday.
That must count for something.

Barking Dog

We have all spent years
trying to control him
with ropes,
and calls,
and tears.
It has gotten us nowhere.
He is still as stubborn and impossible
as ever.
A white-headed nut
deafer than deaf
refusing to get a hearing aid.
A man without a gallbladder,
eating salami and hot dogs.
A barking dog,
who doesn’t know
what he’s barking at anymore.

Positive Attitude

It wasn’t a cavity after all.
But I had already prepared myself
for him to tell me that it was.
Besides, what else could be making my tooth sensitive to hot and cold?
Every time I drank hot tea I felt like
I was getting electrocuted.
Isn’t that what they always ask at the dentist?
“Is it sensitive to hot and cold? Then it’s probably a cavity.”
I’ve heard that for years,
just like, “if he doesn’t call you back, he’s not interested.”
So after a couple of weeks of cringing upon contact,
my mind started imagining the worst.
Not only did I have a cavity, I had a cavity that was on the verge of needing a root canal.
I kept opening my mouth and staring at my back teeth in the mirror,
but I never saw anything, except for some kale and a piece of radish.
I poked a fork in my back molar,
trying to find a deep crevice,
but found nothing.
For weeks I looked and poked and imagined
the worst.
Finally, I called the dentist,
and prepared for the inevitable Novocain shot.
Should I take valium before I go?
No, what if I felt sick from it?
No sense in pre-medicating before I knew for sure.
Better just go in and be brave, I thought.
My regular dentist was out of town, as usual,
(probably skiing in Aspen or something),
so I saw one of the other partners.
I told him that my tooth had been bothering me off and on since last year when I bit into a piece of very cold seaweed in this Chinese restaurant in Seattle.
He looked at me strangely.
I expected him to ask me why I waited so long to come in.
Instead, he looked at me and said,
“Why would you want to eat seaweed?”
This coming from someone who is obviously a huge carnivore,
and one Whopper away from bi-pass surgery.
He blew air on my tooth, poked around, and then had me grind my molars on this carbon-like strip.
“Bingo”, he said, “you’ve got a bruised tooth.”
I didn’t know that a tooth could get a bruise, but if it meant I didn’t have a cavity,
I was happy to hear about it.
Seems I’ve been banging my teeth in my sleep he said.
He pulled out his drill and filed my top molar down a bit.
Then he had his assistant slather my teeth
with some de-sensitizing liquid that tasted like
(what I can only imagine)
paint thinner would taste like.
Sixty dollars later, I was cured.
I was cured.
No fillings.
No shot.
And no need to think the worst.

Valley Of Truth

All the pink and purple
gathering in the dark.
My stomach, a twisted rag
wanting release.
My eyes, two worn sockets,
dark and devoid of color.
The back of my head aches,
as if it had been hit by a baseball bat.
Where did all this grey come from?
The sky a thick blanket covering me,
drowning me over and over again.
I reach out for you,
because I am scared to reach out
for myself.
There is no consolation in your arms,
or voice
but still I call.
When will I learn there is only me?
Robins chase small black-headed birds away from the fence
while male cardinals jump upon their helpless mates
insuring offspring.
Where is the answer in emptiness?
Is it below the valley of truth?
This is my shadow,
my vision,
my world.
To walk alone
and not listen to any voice
but my own.

Everything And Nothing

I am floating,
ungrounded.
A girl made of linen.
Trying to hold onto books,
and weights,
and words.
Anything sweet and small
that will help me remain
connected to this earth.
The ant crawling on my nightstand.
The tissue clenched up tight
like a snowball.
The virtue of windows and wasps.
White legs
and feet.
The smell of wood,
and shoes,
and bathrobes hanging on metal knobs.
The sunlight at my back door.
Everything and nothing.

Saturday Afternoon

Saturday afternoon.
She is crying.
She says she wants to leave
Denver
and move down South.
She says she loves her daughter
but doesn’t know what to do.
She doesn’t like the cold.
Her skin can’t take it.
She says she hates where she is.
She feels like she is in prison.
There,
on the 6th floor,
in her two-bedroom apartment,
with the doors closed,
watching the snow come down,
while my father watches T.V. all day.
She sounds so pathetic,
and alone,
crying and praying for me.
I try to come up with ideas to help her:
Work on her art.
Walk-up and down the halls.
Practice one of her workbooks.
Go visit one of the women who lives in her building.
But she doesn’t feel like doing any of those things.
She says she doesn’t think she’s going to live much longer.
And I don’t know what to do.
I understand how she feels,
locked away,
unable to get free,
unable to flourish,
or find her way to where she is supposed to be.
I want to help her,
but the truth is
I don’t know how to help either one of us.
She never taught me the way out.
She never gave me the map,
the rules,
the book.
Now,
I feel as blind and helpless as she does,
I’m just thirty years behind.

Trouble The Wind

The last few days
have been nothing
but storms.
One threat after another.
They haven’t added up to much of anything
until today.
They said a tornado touched down at the airport
and for the last three hours there has been constant thunder
and lightning.
Centennial park is under water
And there is so much water coming down my driveway
Right now it looks like a Slip and Slide.
I’ve been on edge all day.
Last night, my power went out
and I lay awake in total darkness
sure that someone had cut the lines and was planning on killing me.
Thankfully, I finally fell asleep, and when the power came back on around 7:30 in the morning,
I realized I was still alive.
Now, the lights are off again,
just as the sky and my thoughts,
have turned incredibly dark.
I keep watching the news hoping the worst is over
and that whatever this thing is/was
has made its way to some other place
or worn itself out.
I used to just laugh at storms.
Trouble used to sit on the hill in the center of them
and watch the wind blow and the lightning come.
He never flinched,
until it started raining.
Then he’d come down
and get in bed with me
and we’d listen to the lightening together.
Now that he’s gone,
I feel afraid
when the wind blows.

Artificial Butter

The truth is
I hate MySpace
and Facebook and all those so called “friend” sights.
I am sick of trying to connect with people I don’t know
and don’t care about
all because that is what everybody else is doing right now
to feel connected,
to feel like they belong.
But I don’t think anyone feels like they really belong.
At least I don’t.
Having a virtual friend on a monitor
isn’t the same thing as going to the Dairy Dip with someone and
sharing a sundae,
or going to the movies and laughing while taking turns
at the big
tub of popcorn
with the real artificial butter on it.
Intimacy has been replaced by seconds
and pictures and abbreviations.
Short-hand emotions.
The art of the conversation is dying.
I don’t think anyone knows how to look anyone in the eye anymore,
unless it’s through a computer lens.