Fall Amnesia

O.k.
so maybe this isn’t the first time
I’ve written a poem
about Fall.
Maybe it’s the fifteenth time,
or the thirtieth.
Maybe it’s number ninety-nine.
I don’t know.
I can’t help it.
Fall comes once a year,
and I’m a writer.
And every year there are yellow leaves,
and red leaves,
and brown leaves,
and leaves on the ground,
and leaves at my backdoor,
and leaves in my hair,
and leaves in my car,
and it’s always the same leaves,
well, it seems like it’s the same leaves,
and there’s always leaves to rake,
and bag,
and carry,
and they keep coming and coming.
And each year,
I sit with my journal in my lap,
and stare out the window
and take it all in.
That’s what writers do.
I notice the way a leaf curves,
or bends,
or points.
I notice the variation in color.
The subtle shades of red,
and orange,
and violet.
I listen for sound.
The rustle.
The crunch underneath my feet.
The squirrel digging for nuts.
The deer.
The hoot of the owl.
I look and listen and try to find
the poem in it all.
And as I sit there
listening and looking,
I realize I am getting hungry
for cool nights,
and pumpkin,
and apples,
and cinnamon,
and hot chocolate.
And
I wonder how it is possible,
that
even though Fall comes every year,
it is all still new to me,
as if I had never experienced
any of this
before.

Balloon Boy

It is easy to become obsessed
with the latest Balloon Boy drama.
To sail away with whatever crisis is at hand-
Family, boyfriend, hair, stock market,
job, agent, career, neck or mole.
But just like the balloon sailing up in the sky,
these so called crises, are empty when ripped open.
There is nothing inside of them but hot air.
Nothing to have wasted days or hours of worry upon.
What matters is the work.
The doing.
The sitting with and meditating upon.
The being still even when all else is going crazy.
It is too easy to get caught up in the next drama,
to watch the years get swept away
by some silver UFO that turns out to be nothing but a balloon.
Oh, yes, the years and hours lost are real,
but their captor is not.
Therein lies the lesson of the Balloon Boy -
Tell the truth.
Do honest work.
Don’t get caught up in the drama of others.
Don’t believe everything you see.
And most of all,
Reality T.V. – isn’t.

Suji

The writing comes from unwriting.
From sitting with the blank
and letting the truth creep out
one painful word at a time.
I think about living in L.A.
Fighting the cars,
and the sun,
and the blondes.
Giving in to the Valley girls
and the starlets on Hollywood Boulevard.
I think about palm trees,
and eighty-degree Chirstmases,
and how hard my body would have to be
just so I could walk down the street
without feeling inferior.
I think about Third Street,
and the Promenade,
and Ted Hawkins,
and the waiter at the Indian restaurant
who had a crush on me
and used to watch me write lyrics
and poems
while I ate Saag Paneer.
I think about the cliff
and sitting on the edge
watching the traffic
and the seagulls below.
I think about the rain
and how it never came,
and the homeless man
who lived in my laundry room
and ate out of the dumpster,
and the way the laundry room
always smelled like urine.
I think about USC,
and your old Honda,
and late nights fucking
in my bed.
I think about going back to L.A.,
and talking to agents again,
and
kissing asses,
and trying to act like I did when I was twenty.
That was before I knew
just how much
I hate the sun.

Puh-lease

Today they came and offered him
a hundred dollars.
“A hundred dollars for inconvenience,” they said.
Hell, it wasn’t inconvenience he suffered
when that woman plowed into him from behind.
Inconvenience is when you have to wait in line at a grocery store,
or when someone brings you the wrong meal,
or loses your dry cleaning.
That’s inconvenience.
This was more than inconvenience.
This was pain and suffering
and they knew it,
the little liars.
They come out to our house in their white Jeep with their clipboards,
acting like they know what’s what
when all they really know is what some fool in an office told them to say.
See, I’ve been down this road before.
I know the score.
I know the game.
They want to get away with paying as little as possible.
That’s how they can keep paying for all their fancy ads,
and the Jeeps that have their names on it.
Well, let me just say right here and now,
they’ve come to the wrong house.
A hundred dollars?
Puh-lease.

Worry Wart

I am a worry wart.
I worry about everything.
I worry that my house won’t sell.
I worry that my house will sell.
I worry about what will become of my parents.
I worry that my sister will spend all of their money and I’ll have to support them.
I worry about the stock market.
I worry that my father has cancer.
I worry about the gray hair I’m getting.
I worry that I will never get rid of the numbness in my arm.
I worry about my career and if I will ever make money.
I worry about getting married.
I worry about not getting married.
I worry about not having children.
I worry that if I have children, I’ll hate it.
I worry about where to move.
I worry that if I pick Portland we’ll be too close to relatives.
I worry that if we pick New York I won’t like the winters.
I worry that I’m not as talented as I thought I was.
I worry that I’ll never get to where I am supposed to go.
I worry that by worrying I am ruining my life.
I worry that I can’t stop worrying.

Sharks Kill

The sky is so grey today
it is as if it were full of soot
from some nearby coal company.
There is not an animal to be found.
They are all up in the trees
watching the sharks kill Beethoven.
Hey, get down from there!
You little whores.
Don’t you know the horses are dreaming
of horses?
I gave the water a drink
and waited for India to come out
from under the bed.
Tomorrow I will chase the ribbons
in my wallpaper.

White Writing

The truth is,
I hate writing
on a computer.
I hate the sound of the keys clicking
beneath my fingers
and the feel of cold
metal
on my wrists
like handcuffs.
I like the flow,
the softness,
of
paper.
The curl-myself-up in a chair kind of writing
that can only be done with a journal.
Sitting in front of a keyboard isn’t writing,
it’s being a secretary,
and I have no desire to be one of those.
I don’t want my page to glare at me,
or have a cursor blink at me
demanding direction,
or a swift ending.
I want the quiet of pen on paper,
the glide,
the flow,
the stream
of curled letters
leaning and falling
as they find their way into a world
of my creation.
I want to hear the sound of frustration,
paper being waded up,
crinkled,
a pen scratching out changes,
not a cursor running backwards eliminating
any trace of what could have been.
I want to leave an ugly mess behind me
for everyone to see.
I want the world to know
just what it took
to get me to
the end.

The Red Queen's Bidding

They’re out there.
The bastards.
Crawling on the holly.
Flying in and out of my gutters.
Winged henchmen
willing to do the red queen’s bidding.
I watch them from my kitchen window,
while I sit safe inside
eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
One by one they come,
until there are
five, ten, fifteen
red bodied devils,
all lined up on my white gutters,
each one taking flight in some weird insectian order
like World War II pilots going off to war.
I want to scream at them.
I want to tell them to leave my gutters alone.
I’d shoot them from my window if I could,
but the screens are in the way.
They seem to know they are well protected
tucked in the gutter.
We both know it.
They won’t be happy
until I climb up on the roof in the middle of the night
with my flashlight
and attack them while they sleep,
face to face.
They want my blood.
Tomorrow morning we’ll see
who comes back alive.