Bingo

She says she wants a house of her own.
A place with a yard and trees,
like she used to have in Houston.
When she says this,
I don’t know what to say.
She used to have a five thousand square foot home
made out of Miami Brick.
Now she has two rooms.
She is in
“assisted living”.
Meals are prepared and caretakers enter their room at will.
Showers are given and medicine is doled out like bitter candy.
I do not have the money to give her a home,
nor do I know how
to find a caretaker that wouldn’t steal from them,
or leave them to starve.
So I sit here and I feel guilty,
and then just when I’m starting to feel really bad,
I hear a little voice in my head say,
“wait a minute, she’s the one who did this to herself”.
She could have changed her habits years ago.
She could have started exercising instead of sitting on the couch.
She could have eaten a few carrots and some salads instead of boxes of chocolates
and pints of ice cream.
She could have changed
and none of this would have happened.
The strokes.
The diabetes.
The heart failure.
She could have just been a woman in her seventies now.
Still driving and enjoying life,
taking trips to Mexico
and Hawaii,
letting the sun melt her back while dipping her feet in the waves.
She could have been watching the sunset
from some veranda
dining on lobster and crab.
Instead,
she wears oxygen now,
pees in her pants,
and struggles to remember what time is Bingo.

Double Rainbows


She got out.
Pulled up and left
like a turnip yanked from the ground.
Headed west for the mountains
and snow
and double rainbows.
Carved her name into the hills
with her nails
and said, “enough.”
I envy her,
there with her dogs and her peace
and her solitude.
Alone with her thoughts and her body,
And her bed.
I envy how she took
just his money
and nothing more from him.
She had suffered long enough.
Now she is free
or so at least she seems.

Blind Judgment

Blind,
I thought,
but now I see.
I see everything.
My cord,
curled up and connected.
The silence,
outside.
The way the wind chime bangs against the door.
I see red.
Cranberries
and radishes,
and dark cherry pie.
I see my doctor,
the one with the turtlenecks and European loafers,
the one I had a crush on,
the one I thought I knew,
now I’ve learned
he’s gay.
How blind I was.
I thought I could tell who was what.
Gay.
Straight.
Rich.
Poor.
Stupid.
Schooled.
But perhaps I haven’t been able to see at all.
I was so cocky.
So sure
I knew right from wrong.
But do I?
Does anyone?
There is so much rush to judgment
in this world.
This person lied,
so that means they are and will always be a liar.
That person stole,
so that means they are and will always be a thief.
This person threw a tantrum
so that means they are and will always be unstable,
and unworthy, and a child.
Where is the understanding in this world?
What do we know?
What do any of us know?
We all think we know so damn much
about everything.
What another person should do.
How another person should feel.
But what gives us the right to decide for others
much less even ourselves?
What if we have been basing our decisions on incorrect assumptions
and everything we thought about others and ourselves was wrong?
What would we do then?
Could we undo the switch?
Unplug the needle?
Bring back the dead?
Take back the word?
The deed?
The finger?
The column written?
It’s easy to make decisions.
Too easy.

The Jumping Point


I am trying not to let myself fall into fear,
the deep hole that is beside me
always waiting for me.
An open sore of sorts,
Oozing,
always there,
waiting.
I stop
and look at it.
Usually I have already jumped in
and am up to my waist in shit.
Floating empty bottles,
Half-eaten cans of dog food,
insects and refuse.
Yes,
that is what I swim in.
Not the clear beautiful waters of the Caribbean.
Today,
when they poked me five times,
trying to find blood,
I was already in it up to my neck.
And when the doctor told me
he was concerned,
about what he was seeing,
on what should have been a routine exam,
I jumped in head first.
Now, I am sitting in my room,
listening to the dishwasher
and trying to breathe.
I must clear whatever it is
from my lungs and nose
that I have inhaled.
It won’t be easy.
It never is
once I have
jumped.

Where the Lilies Bloom

It is simple
if you think about it,
never build a home in the ghetto
and tell yourself conditions will improve around you.
A ghetto is a ghetto
and no amount of mulch or dogwood trees can change it.
There will still be rats
and roaches and people yelling at one another on the streets.
There will still be broken bottles
and crazy drunks
and prostitutes ready to beat you up.
There will still be music blaring out of shacks
and low-rider cars thumping bass
and police with sirens patrolling all hours
trying to control the impossible.
There will still be cats up trees and pit bulls ready to eat them
when they fall.
There will still be cars broken into,
and windows smashed,
and Halloween without trick or treaters.
And there will still be kids with brown eyes staring at you,
wondering why you are in their hood
when you should be somewhere else,
somewhere cleaner,
and whiter,
somewhere
where the lilies bloom year round,
and everyone smiles
for no other reason
than to show off their perfectly straight teeth.

Even When They're Dead

All that is left is the stinger.
The rusty needle there on the floor,
waiting
to pierce flesh.
I walked by it last night
with my bare feet.
It could have gotten me then.
I thought I was safe.
I thought it had been put away.
Taken out.
Sucked up.
I thought my house was clean.
But this morning,
I saw it in the sunlight,
so red,
it glowed.
And I remembered what my mother always taught me,
they can still get you,
even when they’re dead.

Eternity

I am sitting in the blue chair.
The one we’ve had for fifty years.
The one I grew up in and crawled in
and played in, and ate in.
The one my picture was taken in.
I had just gotten a hair cut.
I had ridiculously short bangs
and a red face.
My eyes were watery
and I had on a red corduroy
jumpsuit
and white lace up Stride Rite shoes
to help my wobbly walk.
I looked like a scared animal,
like I had just come from the vet.
The pain was fresh in my face.
My lips red and inflamed.
Hair askew.
Eyes big as saucers.
I knew I had just been violated in some fashion,
I just wasn’t sure how.
Sitting in that chair now,
I can still feel my child-self
and wonder why my mother chose
to capture me like that for eternity.

Ignoring The Sun


I thought I knew
blue.
I thought the sun
was mine to ignore
and the rain mine
to languish in for years.
I thought the boy on the bridge wouldn’t jump
and the man in the cage
would find his way out.
I thought love was a tricycle that I could pedal with wobbly legs.
I thought all of this and more.
And I always thought I was right.
Now, I too, know better.
I cook my sweet potatoes in the pressure cooker
and blanch my greens for barely a few minutes in a half cup of water.
I wear sandals in the shower at the gym
and never shake hands with a sick person.
I take pleasure in wild rabbits
and walks with dogs,
and outwitting the housefly on my office window.
I am grateful for the mornings,
and that my parents are still alive to talk to,
and that I stopped
in time.

Strange Days

People are getting ruder and ruder.
Yes,
you heard me.
Yesterday, I was driving home from Chicago,
and three different times some asshole had to get right up on the back of me
and ride me like I was a cheap hooker.
One of them was a guy in a giant black Ford truck pulling a trailer.
The guy drove like he was nuts.
When I refused to get over, because there was no where to go,
except behind a slow moving semi carrying pigs,
he got even closer.
It was really scary.
I mean any closer,
and he’d be in my backseat listening to my Sirius underground garage radio station.
So, that’s when I slammed on my brakes.
The asshole didn’t like that one bit.
A few minutes later, he pulls out a badge and flashes at me.
I, mean, what the Hell?
He’s some cop on an undercover mission?
What is he, in pursuit of
some criminal while pulling a trailer at the same time?
I don’t buy it.
I don’t even know if the badge was real.
For all I know, the guy’s a security guard at JC Penny,
or a truancy officer at an elementary school,
or a food inspector.
But if he’s going to be flashing badges, I’m getting over.
Jerk might pull out a gun and open fire or something.
He flew by me and then proceeded to tailgate every other poor driver in his path.
What an asshole!
Then there were the two guys in the silver Honda Pilot.
They rode me too.
Every time I got over for them,
they wouldn’t pass.
Rode the Hell out of me,
then not pass.
Over and over.
What is wrong with people?
We drove next to each other for miles.
Neither had a clue that I was completely annoyed by them.
Weird.
The third one was this girl in a beat-up Kia.
She was on the phone,
of course,.
They’re always on the phone.
Weird tattoos.
Smoking.
One minute driving ninety.
The next fifty.
No consistency.
She rode me too.
Gesturing at me with weird fingers in the air.
I just shook my head.
I finally got off at a rest stop,
peed,
and drank some rusty water out of the fountain.
At least the attendant there was nice.
Of course, she wasn’t driving a car.

Zelma

Dear Zelma,
on the kitchen floor.
Are you sick?
Did you know that today is Tuesday
and the yardmen are coming with their blowers
and rakes?
Oh, Zelma,
I am leaving for Chicago soon,
off to eat linguine and clams
and scones from Sophia’s.
Remember them?
She baked the lavender right in with the berries?
I can still hear the rain.
How hard it came down
on the sidewalks that August day.
Sophia standing there with her broom,
shoveling water out of her bakery.
We rolled our pants legs up and walked down the sidewalk
barefoot
like a couple of kids,
laughing,
letting our shirts get drenched.
Your hair was long then
and fell down your back in perfect waves.
I marveled at your beauty,
but never told you.
We shared a Coke on a park bench
and watched the water lap at the shore.
Oh, Zelma,
December is coming,
then Christmas,
and you know what that means,
all the crap that comes with it.
I want a camera this year,
one with a long lens so I can take pictures of everything.
Mother always said I was like that,
didn’t want to miss a thing.
Oh, Zelma,
please get up.
Tomorrow we'll have pie.

Don't Go There

If I don’t begin now,
it won’t happen.
The phone will ring,
or I’ll wander on to the internet,
or a bill will arrive that will leave me spinning for hours.
It’s already happening.
I just heard the “ding” of an email.
Now, my mind is starting to wander,
like a chocoholic at a Brownie Festival.
I start the mental negotiations:
“I’ll just check this one little email.”
Or, “it’s probably trash. It’ll only take a second to delete it.”
Then before you know it,
I’m on Facebook,
comparing my life to everyone else’s,
and I’m checking the market,
and I’m calling my mother,
and I’m calling my boyfriend,
and I’m doing the laundry,
and I’m running an errand,
and then it’s five o’clock,
and I’m making dinner,
and I’m watching the Evening News,
and then it’s ten o’clock,
and I’m tired and nothing,
absolutely,
no writing got done for the day.
And then I turn off the computer,
and I feel disgusted,
and I tell myself
tomorrow will be different,
and when it isn’t different I am even more depressed.
And so it goes.
So this morning,
I’m not checking,
I’m not calling,
I’m not looking,
I’m not washing.
I’m just sitting at my desk with myself
and watching where I go.

Dragon Girl

The dragon in me
is always ready,
to share my sheets.
He is the beast of my thoughts,
envious
of others I entertain.
Ready to scream and splinter my flesh,
a messenger full of pistachios and blood.
He brightens my pulse
and breathes upon my neck with his hot hot breath
till my body sweats
cold.
If I could tame this dragon
I would be
bored.
If I could tame this dragon
I would be,
somebody else.
So I say to him,
“come, dragon.”
Come lie upon my bed
and sing your wretched song.
Sing it loud.
Sing it so the neighbors hear.
I am yours to take.
A naughty schoolgirl
waiting to be spanked.
Oh, dragon, of mine,
come and watch the rain with me,
the beautiful rain.
I will pour you cocoa
and we will eat scones filled with Devonshire cream
and honey.
And I will not complain
that you are too rough.
I will listen to your fierceness,
and guard it,
loving it forever.
I will take you out into the garden
and watch you crush lilacs in your claws
and I will watch the petals fall to the ground,
like purple rain.
And I will never forget you,
even when I am too old
to hear
you roar.

Dead Birds and Garlic

This is important,
like working hard
or beans with garlic.
I know,
you think you’ve heard it before.
Cheap nest
and dead birds,
and wallpaper with little roses on it
no one wants to pull down.
But this is different.
This is Hollywood.
You know,
Tinseltown.
The Biz.
This is where it all happens.
The sand and the glamour.
Silicone valleys and breasts.
Old women with shopping carts living in Santa Monica,
riddled by the sun,
still clutching their eight by ten glossies in their hands
while reciting lines to imaginary casting directors.
I know,
one of them lived in my laundry room.
She used to pee in the sink.
I’d come in and find her sitting in an old metal chair
with her face painted up like an insane clown.
Black clothes and ripped stockings on her feet,
wreaking of urine.
She’d tell me she was here for the reading.
“What reading?”, I’d say
“Gone with the Wind,” she’d gurgle.
“Oh," I’d say, “they’re casting for that next door.”

The Broken

Perhaps,
after all this time,
the problem is me.
I am the one who needs the slap.
The mailbox.
The empty dream again and again,
only to remind myself that pain is real.
I sometimes forget.
But how many times can a person bang their head against the wall
and still not believe it hurts?
Five years?
Ten?
Invisibility is a worm
crawling in the grass
waiting to be caught.
The chicken enjoys the hunt.
The worm,
not so much.
I have been looking at the same wine bottle for years,
too busy to see the cracks in it.
Now, I see them all.
I have been burning myself alive
with lies.
Mine.
Yours.
The New York Times.
Each day I tell myself
believe,
believe.
But believe in what?
In sadness?
In breakfast shells?
In cocoa powder on butcher block tables
waiting to be swept away?
In forests and gulfs and turtles
covered in waste?
In love?
You tell me
how much happiness can be found on t.v.
and under fingernails?
I have tried.
I have tried,
to be
and being is not enough.
Being leaves you stomped upon
by the ugly,
the
hungry, white-toothed animals,
clawing and scraping and snarling their way through this world.
There is no room in this world for the broken.

Dreamgirls

I sit on the back porch
and let the sun in my hair
and dream of Monday.
The burden of dark worry
calling me home.
So much of what I want is the hundred-year sleep.
The voyage of tongues.
The reassurance of love.
I have seen God,
in the bathroom of the Shubert Theatre,
during the intermission of Dreamgirls.
He came to me as a light
while I was peeing.
He told me how beautiful life could be
and I believed him,
for a while.

The Little Fucks

I sit at my desk and wait for the words,
the elusive creatures that appear for no reason
then vanish just as quickly
as they came.
Where do they go?
The little fucks.
It is a strange story
every writer knows.
One minute you are with God,
suspended.
The next, in a lifeboat
praying.
The sting of ocean on your face.
The nausea rising in your stomach.
The dance of uncertainty
your only companion.
Floating.
Always floating
with no land in sight.
The sun beating you into submission.
Paddles just out of reach,
taunting you like cake.
You lie down,
as if discovering wine
in the bottom of the boat,
and drink.

Blue Gin

It is early afternoon
on the neck of the dog’s grass
and I am a snapshot waiting to be rump.
Using up the shirt
and the silences of love.
How did I ever catch you,
thief that you are,
running down rooms
with lust and mercy
like a breeze in a cotton shirt?
You took me
in the hall
and lay me down like a flute
you could play for hours.
It was so easy, then.
The notes spreading from my legs
like blue gin.
Everywhere and nowhere.
The hurried grasp of breasts and bellies.
The dark dancer that I am
ready to rest in nails.
I leaned forward and took in your disorder,
bending and moving without reason
shifting away from my self
into old rooms and fields
I had long forgotten.
Now, I am frozen,
a little cot wrung over upon itself,
waiting for the next storm.
My mother frowns at me.
A shrunken hymn she cannot sing.
Where did I go?
Into the dog’s paw?
Or winter’s hard shrill.
I do not know.
For now, I am a buttercup.
Pink and yellow,
a nightie of kisses
dressed up like a broken doll
waiting for you to bed.

The Wise One

How they listen,
eyes turned,
heads cocked,
lips pursed,
to the man with the book and curled ears.
Here,
in the cloud-filled sky
on the coal dust covered hill,
they stand,
motionless,
while the rose curls,
and the cup vomits its contents
to the earth.
The wise one,
the leader,
stands on a trash can
extolling the virtues of sin.
The warped clown,
the doe-eyed death child,
the huddled mass
waits and hopes,
as if he could save them from their
shoebox.
But it’s a fool’s game,
murmured to candles,
dripping their days
on the rug.
Soon the rain will come
and the fish will starve,
and the peasants will vanish like bread.

Ambitious Bird

It is all a dream,
never spoken in my ear,
crumpled like a tissue
under foot
each night.
The same faces,
brooding and strange.
The back and forth lull of a record player.
The needle endlessly retracing its’ steps.
So many stars.
ready to send me love
if I could just accept.
Yes,
my silence lies on the bathroom floor,
a broken bottle waiting for me to walk upon.
But for now,
there is nothing but the lamb chops,
one glorious hunk after another,
an elaborate celebration for this ambitious bird.
My savings have been spent.
Tomorrow.
I must find a new house
to haunt.

The Real World

Sitting in the gardens,
watching the pumpkins grow.
There were people who smiled at me
and there was nothing to worry about
underneath the blue sky.
Everything was done.
The laundry.
Meals.
Baths.
There were activities taught by friendly people.
Spanish class.
Arts and crafts.
Even chair dancing.
There was a house dog
who rarely moved except when someone offered him treats.
And there was a glass display of multi-colored finches who lived in small nests,
that could entertain the residents for hours.
In the dining room,
there was Brigida,
a wonderful women who called everyone by their first name
and prepared a fresh fruit salad every morning for breakfast.
In the halls were seniors full of stories of the past,
some of them nearly a hundred years old,
who I swear were more alive than people half their age.
There were caretakers who really cared,
and an executive director who was as down home as grits and gravy.
It was such a kind world that it made
stepping out into the “real world” a rude awakening.
Outside the gardens,
were drivers honking their horns,
people fighting over parking spaces,
children screaming and throwing tantrums,
meals served by waiters who could care less,
lattes and burgers,
bills and credit cards,
careers to revive,
oil spills,
lobbyists,
homes to paint and clean-up,
papers to be sorted through,
cars to repair,
and endless internet obligations.
It felt like entering a war zone.
If this is the “real world,”
I’ll take assisted living.

No Ants In My Volvo

It’s hot.
So hot you feel like the pavement is baking
your skin.
Ankles, feet, toes, legs,
all melting away
as the sun keeps shining down.
It’s been like this for weeks here,
relentless.
When I was in Denver it was hot there too.
Now, two days after I’ve left, it’s sixty-five and grey.
And now that I’m not sitting on a plane bound for Oakland,
I wish I were.
I’m like that.
Always wishing I were somewhere else.
No, that’s not true.
Alright, well sometimes it is,
but not today.
I don’t wish I were on another plane right now.
The truth is, I’m tired.
Lately I’ve been feeling like a stewardess,
only coming home long enough to check my mail,
pay my bills,
and fly to the next city.
I’d rather be here in my own bed,
eating my own food,
sitting at my desk
writing.
Of course, if it were twenty degrees cooler I wouldn’t turn that down either.
But you can’t have it all.
So, I’m just going to celebrate what I have now.
A fan blowing on my legs.
A computer that always starts.
My parents in a place where they are cared for.
Enough food for me to eat.
A roof over my head.
And most importantly,
no ants in my Volvo.

Permanent Move

I want to move.
I’ve said it before,
but I am ready now,
really ready.
And I’m ready to do all the things necessary
in order to make that happen.
I have called the painter and the floor refinisher,
and I am going to find a good gardener.
Steve has come and put up the pot lid rack and the utility rack
and hung the drapes.
I have touched up the Cornsilk paint in the kitchen,
and the Drowsy Lavender in the
bedroom.
And now we have started the grueling process
of packing away most of our things.
I am doing all of this after coming back from seventeen days in Denver,
where it was so dry
my lips cracked,
my legs got sores on them,
and my right heel split open.
Don’t get me wrong,
I don’t like Denver either.
It is way too Cowboy and white for me,
but I did enjoy the beauty.
The sunsets.
The rivers.
The mountains.
There was a majesty to the place that is sorely missing for me here.
Nashville has never been home to me.
It was for a while,
when I needed to lick my wounds from L.A.,
but they have scarred over
and I am ready to swim in a bigger pond,
with more colorful fish.
I have grown tired of the hot summers,
and the stale air, and the accents,
all twang without substance.
I want to be in a real city,
where I can find restaurants that make sense,
and walk in parks and meet people who are
well….alive.
So this week,
instead of flying to California for a temporary fix from this ninety-seven-degree Hell,
I will stay here and put things in order,
so the next trip I make,
will be a permanent one.

Shorn Into Sheepdom

I liked it better before.
Before she took her scissors to me and “cut into the curl.”
I liked the way my hair hung down around my face
like a hippie’s from the Sixties.
I felt better that way.
Safer,
cloistered,
by the dark brown curtain
no one had opened in years.
Now I look just like everyone else.
Happy.
Bouncy.
A poster child for mousse and gel.
A walking wave of hair.
Mindless as the other people
who come in and out of that salon
day after day.
It’s my own fault.
I should have stopped when I was ahead.
But I didn’t.
My birthday is coming so I decided to splurge.
I wanted to make myself feel special.
The truth is, I was already special.
Now, I am someone else’s definition of that word.
I keep looking in the mirror,
trying to find myself,
but I’m not there.
This person in front of me
isn’t me,
nor do I want her to be.

First and Last

It isn’t the first time
I have swallowed biscuits and gravy
when I wanted cash.
The cool taste of nickels on my tongue.
The dark copper pennies
swirling round in my mouth like butterscotch.
I have eaten so much more
than candy.
Now, when I sit and watch the robin,
I wonder
how long
till he comes to my door
with his worm in his beak.
How long?

Black Oil

The oil,
the thick black goo of man
is everywhere.
Littering the sand,
turning white to black
and green to brown.
Pooling in the most remote of marshes.
Hiding in reeds and grasses.
The pelicans’ beaks drip with it.
They flutter in the thick black and drown
as if someone had coated them with melted chocolate.
They are innocents,
incapable of understanding how their world has changed,
forever.
They are incapable of flying somewhere else and
can not mentally understand the danger in front of them
when they land upon the water.
How sick I feel when I see them on T.V. night after night.
How terribly sick
it all is,
with no end in sight.
Just that vomiting thing
miles below the surface
never taking a break,
or slowing down,
and man’s futile attempts to stop what they created.
When will we learn?
We who crave oil
have created our own monster.
I think of Pensacola and the perfect white sand beaches I walked upon
last winter.
How pristine they were,
like the finest sugar.
I fear I will never be able to see them that white again.
But forget me, I can get in a car and drive away.
I can fly to somewhere that isn’t ruined.
What about the creatures beneath the sea?
Where do they go now that we have ruined the only home they have?
They can’t suddenly grow feet and walk upon the shore carrying signs of protest,
although I’m sure they’d like to.
There is nothing they can do
but slowly die beneath the surface
and wash ashore,
like trash.

The Crab and Me

On Sunday,
I walked on water.
It was low tide
and I went out as far as I could,
until the waves lapped at my knees.
I watched a crab
circle me,
pincers up,
ready to fight.
He was so determined,
the poor little creature.
He wasn’t at all intimidated by my size.
If I had been him,
I would have swam away as fast as I could have.
To my left,
a jellyfish floated nearby
oblivious to the crab’s impending challenge.
I watched them both,
marveling at how much life was all around me.
And for a moment,
I was a child again,
with not a care,
and all there was,
was the ocean,
the sun,
the crab,
and me.

Driftwood

Father,
with a life jacket on,
the waves ride upon us.
Mother is lost to the sea.
She sits staring out at the horizon
muttering scissors and wings
to the dolphins.
How strange to see the dead so very close.
Once we three swam in unison,
a six-legged-octopus, skimming along
the ocean floor,
breathing out and in
with the tide.
Now we are hobbled,
drowning in our own mouth,
smelling of broken kisses
and twisted coral.
A bleeding tangle,
breaking,
like driftwood gone by.

Pecan Pie and Dirty Clothes

They are in bed already.
He, asleep in his dirty clothes.
She, nodding off to some tired game show
she has watched for years.
Both in twilight.
Both fading faster than Sunday’s pecan pie.
Out of reach.
Out of reach.
How can I?
No, I can not.
I can only watch.
I have struggled for too long
trying to make it better.
Trying to make them
something
they are not,
nor ever were.
Still, I keep trying,
banging my head against the proverbial wall,
trying to wake them,
when all they want to do is sleep.
“Sleep is death,” I say.
But they can not hear me.
They are both deaf.

The New Neighbors

Two doors down they are moving in.
They showed up yesterday with their lawn mowers,
and their hedge clippers,
and their dreadlocks,
and their beat-up white Buick with the New York tags.
Today, a giant moving truck appeared on the street
full of all of their stuff.
For months the house had sat vacant.
The hedges grown up so high
you couldn’t even see the front of the house anymore.
Overgrown vines everywhere.
It had gotten so bad,
the neighbors were starting to snoop around.
So were the investors,
in their shiny cars,
hoping to grab a foreclosure.
Now, they’ll have to go elsewhere,
because this house is going to be occupied from a woman from Staten Island
and her kids.
Seems it was her granddaddy’s house and
now it’s going to be hers
and she just found out about it.
Personally,
I’m glad she’s going to get to keep it.
I only hope it stays as quiet over there as it did when it
was empty.

The Dragon Lady

There are dragons in the sky.
There
in the puffy clouds,
behind the windows of mangoes and beans.
Seeded and ready.
December dragons
flying in snow
hoisted above skyscrapers like heavy towels
rising up into the darkness of winter.
Funny dragons with tongues rich in aspirations.
Dragons of wine and loneliness.
Dragons of wool and red
stealing glasses and oxygen from
old ladies below.
If I were a dragon
I’d be yellow.
A banana of sorts,
ready to peel away
my metal sweater
and expose my pink nipples
to the world.
I would let the sun remember me.
Touch me.
Fry me,
until my skin were as tough as it had been when my scales
were intact.
I would breathe fire into the sky
and light up the night,
light up the jails,
light up the sea,
light up the poor and the forgotten
for all to remember.
Then,
I would breathe myself a sunset to lie upon
and wait for the earth to
begin
again.

The Mediocre

I am tired of incompetence.
Little nitwits who have nothing better to do than
to play games.
The biters,
the locked door inhabitants who scream foul
when they are the ones fouling others.
The crumb catchers who walk through this life
with bad hair and weak noses
ready to spoil the dreams of others.
Who do they think they are?
These reptiles wiggling with mediocrity,
carrying their pitchforks of hate,
forever tied to their nine to five jobs
like sea urchins sucking on the bottom of a ship’s hull.
What do they know about stars and worlds beyond their Buick’s and Pintos?
What beauty do they bring to this world?
They are content to shuffle through their lives with vision as narrow as a snail’s,
dragging their trail of slime behind them
everywhere they go,
so everyone can see where they’ve been.
I say,
put them in a bag,
put them all in a bag and shake them out.
No one could tell the difference between them.
They’d all be a pathetic shade of beige.
Beige.
No scent to them at all.
As indistinguishable from one another as sawdust.
Yes,
perhaps the most reprehensible in this world
are the mediocre.
I say,
no more shall I try to walk among them.
No more shall I try to fit in.
I am not one of them.
I could never be.
I know what it feels like to touch greatness,
to write
words so eloquent that I can barely breathe.
I know what it feels like
to hold something larger
in my hand
than a timesheet.

Dark Haired Rose

How long can I be the mole?
The dark-haired-drone
hiding in the rose bush
recanting my horror.
O mother,
who forsake me,
where were your arms?
Where was your touch
when I fell
and needed the earth?
Were you far away
in some concert hall
playing your violin,
and singing your tune of despair
in another’s bed?
Or were you frolicking in Paris
eating beef bourguignon
and fries?
What does it matter now?
Too many years have gone by.
The cat has caught it’s prey
and now must only wait for it to die.
As for me, I have died too many deaths already.
I must pull myself off the kitchen floor
and dance a new dance.
One of sky,
and stars,
and sun,
where the wax is fresh and the tiles are clean
and I can rock and slide all night long.

Escape From Lowry

She is convinced she is being poisoned.
“It is in the coffee and tea, “ she says.
“They give it to us to keep us sedated,” she says,
“but it won’t work on me, I’m getting out of here.”
I keep trying to convince her that she is not in jail.
She is in assisted living and she is free to come and go
as she pleases.
But she doesn’t believe me.
She is still planning her escape.
She has it all figured out.
She is going to sneak
out of her room,
walk down the hall,
take the elevator to the first floor,
walk past the front desk,
and
then go out on to the street,
where there are shops
and restaurants
and people
who can still
drive.

Green Hills

I did not go with him today,
to meet the weird man in the country.
The weird man didn’t want me to come.
Instead, I braved the Sunday crowds at Whole Foods
and flirted with the produce man
complaining to him there was nothing to eat,
which we both know,
there never is.
The strawberries looked lousy,
as did the kale and the apples,
and the organic oranges,
and why isn’t there ever anything in season in April?
It’s April!
Not January.
I walked up and down the aisles
annoyed by the throngs of other people
and their inability to navigate through the store.
Everyone either moved too slow,
or not at all,
or laughed too loud,
or had their snotty kids with them blocking the aisles
crying over cookies or pie,
dripping their viruses on everything they touched
with their mealy little hands.
I sampled some ridiculously overpriced,
melting gelato.
What I was supposed to get from it,
I don’t know.
But the sample sure as Hell didn’t make me want to buy any of it.
Neither did the woman’s sales pitch.
As I checked out,
I couldn’t believe I had driven all the way over to the Westside for this.
I could have gone to East Nashville
driven over the Jefferson Street Bridge,
and gone to our local health food store.
At least there I would have only been subjected to hipsters
and ineptness.
But, for some reason,
I thought it would be fun to go to Green Hills.
I was wrong.
I imagined myself sitting outside at one of those shiny silver tables,
reading my book and eating honeydew melon.
But the sky was grey and the clouds were already rolling in
and the wind was way too harsh to read a book in
without a struggle.
So I took my bag of organic beans and rice and salad,
and drove back to the ghetto,
and read my book in my 8x10 office
listening to the stackable dryer spin,
wishing I had never left home at all.

Just A Room

I never wanted children.
Just a room in a house,
quiet,
tucked away,
with a view of the ocean.
A room of my own
where I could let my words come and play with me
like lost puppies.
They would lick my face,
and nibble on my toes,
and remind me of the sweetness of my mind.
I would roll around on the floor with them for hours,
trying an adjective here,
a noun there,
watching stories shift from right to left
and back again.
Trees appearing.
Roads and fog
and the smells of lovers,
past and future.
The birds in chains.
The horizon bleeding in the distance.
Harlots and Jesus
and roosters crying all day.
And people wandering through their lives
with no plan at all,
forever young.

Cherry Coke Girl

Once upon a time
I was
beautiful,
white,
brown,
A fighter in a fight for something
bigger than taxes
and hatred.
A resistance girl
on a stool
smiling when I wanted to spit.
Drinking my Cherry Coke with a straw
and eating my grilled cheese
with one eye on the door.
I came to this world free,
and was enslaved by stupidity.
Me, the rare antique.
The bronze statue.
The paper fly
easily crushed by a glass bottle
or newspaper.
Where Do I Begin?
Can I slide down into my chair,
and drink in Summer
and green slushes?
Let my toes dangle in the water
and watch the dragonflies
in June?
Let my body float
face up
down the river
and
hope someone will throw me a line?
Give me a room?
Give me
a hiding place from evil?
A world of my own?
Last night I dreamed about you.
You and your money and your wife.
Your kitchen with its gleaming metal shelves
and designer colored walls.
Your little house
with the perfect mowed lawn
and the pink flamingos in the yard.
You,
and your perfect white world.

Slipping Away

What lies in the corners?
In the sleepy green memories of your mind?
The waking?
The moving?
The falling of earth and sky?
The endless sound of possibilities?
The coming and going of years,
like lonely children
no one wants to hold.
I know about solitude.
I walk alone,
down the path of nothingness.
Into the dark I call
home.
Did I make a mistake?
Did I turn left when I should have turned right?
Did I wander too far down my quest of loneliness
and prove myself right?
Where is my husband?
My child?
My somber morning?
Is it there in the rosebushes?
Beneath the elm?
Under the tomato plant I planted last Tuesday?
Is it around the corner?
Or just South of yesterday?
Time is ticking.
Time is ticking too fast.
No matter what I do.
I can’t get back.
I wonder if anyone can.
Tomorrow I will wake up one day older
and the feeling will be the same.
I am not in my life.
I am only passing through it.
I can not touch it.
Or change it.
Or move it
in the direction that I want.
It is all
slipping
away
without me.

Come Down

And what of tomorrow?
Should I let it slide
away into the grass
like the snake that it is?
Or should I reach down
into the folds of myself
and try to catch it?
I am thinking again.
A bad habit I picked up along the way
somewhere between walking and masturbation.
The rain is coming.
I can feel it in the wind.
All that dampness.
Waiting to explode.
Wanting to come
down
on me.

Melting The Years

It is better this way.
He,
on his side of the room.
Me,
tucked away in the back
away from the wasps,
away from the pollen
and the wind,
and the little children screaming on the playground
while their teachers bake in the sun.
We fall into holes too easily,
he and I.
Step in the trench and let one foot fall
and then before we know it,
we are dragging
mud and leaves
into our house.
The filth of the outside on our floors and in our beds.
The thoughts in our head
growing louder and louder,
keeping us down
until
they dictate our every move,
The lilies and the roses,
the buds of Spring,
wasted on us.
How easy it is to languish in our darkness.
Only to wake up older and dumber than before.
The hit in the head I took
has left me dazed.
Slow to react to the spider on the wall,
dying from insect spray.
We kiss
and when our lips touch there is nothing
to melt away the years.

Eggs On Toast

In the shadow of it all
sits me.
There,
curled up and wrapped
cupped beneath my building.
A broken order
coming in slow.
Eggs on toast.
The bottle guitar sliding down the road.
My belly aches and I am bent over in black
face.
The youngest of two
finding my way
across books and letters
a useless card on my desk
promising nothing now.
Outside, the voices cackle and fall
rough as wool,
drunk to all,
incapable of understanding
Spring
and its beauty.
The robin calls
a pink
scream
beneath a cherry moon.

Junkie

All that frosting sitting there in my eyes,
that sweet sticky stuff.
Cream cheese glaze with sweet potato.
The “healthy” choice.
I bought it.
Took it home in my little white paper bag
Like some kind of
junkie.
Bit into it,
face first.
Nose diving in to cream.
Inhaling the fumes.
Eyes rolling back in my head.
Sugar pulsing through my veins
leaving me
altered
and very stupid.
My vision blurred.
My head spinning.
A regular drug trip.
And they say this stuff is legal.
That’s a joke.
There’s no stronger drug out there than the white powder.
I know it
and so does every other five-year-old out there.
He sells them out of his house.
He and his six kids
and his wife.
He makes them in his living room.
Day after day.
Fourteen hundred an hour.
He is the Willy Wonka of death.
The master maker of diabetes.
The orchestrator of tight pants and bulging bellies.
And the people keep coming and coming.
Each one buying six at a time.
Carrying their little bags and their plastic trays.
The door swinging back and forth.
The addictions growing.
Lemonade.
Cookies and Cream.
Red Velvet.
Wedding Cake.
Chocolate.
Peanut Butter.
The poor helpless creatures can’t stop themselves.
And it is all legal,
this slow killing.
One hundred percent legal.
I vow I won’t be one of them.
I vow I’m not going back.
But I’ve made that vow that before.

The Strudel Makers

They are disappearing.
The old men who sit at counters and order nickel coffee
and tell their war stories of bravery against Nazis.
The women who drive Cadillacs and smell of perfume
and carry wooden canes.
The ones who ran hair salons out of their basements
and bought properties for just the taxes owed.
The ones who knew how to scrimp and save
and make the best peach cobbler ever created.
The ones who aren’t scared of these young thugs you see on the corners.
They’ll tell them to “straighten up and pull up their pants.”
Tell them they’re “acting the fool.”
I’ve heard them say so too.
I’ve heard them say things I would be scared to say,
these grandmothers will lavender hair
wearing the finest feather hats.
They sit in church and know what’s what.
They’ll grab a stick and whip you good.
They come from hearty stock.
Not like now.
Now, we are made of paper
and tin foil,
fast food,
disposable living,
blowing in the wind.
A watery stock susceptible to every disease,
virus,
and pill on the market.
They got by on liniments and creams,
Tonics passed down from mother to mother.
They never needed the assault of drugs we seem to need just to survive a day.
The strudel makers.
The ones with the touch.
The ones who could make chicken soup that was real
not out of a can.
The ones who learned from their mothers
and their mothers beforehand.
They are disappearing.
The original pasta makers,
and bread makers,
and pickle makers.
The ones who put quality ahead of price
and valued their name more than anything else.
Soon they will be gone.
And we will be left with a generation whose
only accomplishment is that they know how to “tweet.”

Back Again

I am back from SXSW.
Back from the throngs of party-goers
and hoards of headbangers and thirst quenchers.
Back from the never ending traffic and the ever elusive parking spaces.
I am back from the shabby hotel rooms and chipped desks
and bathrooms with exposed wiring.
I am back from sugar-laden breakfast and front desk clerks
who are either too tired or too indifferent to care.
I am back from plates of rice and beans and lard and chips.
I am back from noisy restaurants and rockers who all look like they went
to the same place for their haircuts and their clothes.
I am back from red lights
and girls too drunk to stand without the support
of their “boyfriends.”
I am back from vomiting in the streets and slutty looking women
slapping men who grab them.
I am back from sobbing and screaming and laughing.
And yes,
I am back from seeing and performing some great music.
But I can honestly say
I do not want to go
back
again.

The Parent Trap

At night
my mind spins out of control,
running the numbers
like a bookie.
If I had just bought a thousand shares
of Baidu
we’d have five hundred thousand dollars now.
If I bought five hundred shares we’d have two fifty.
And on and on.
Different combinations.
Different outcomes.
If ‘x’ then ‘y’.
If ‘p’ then ‘z’.
In all of the scenarios we are much wealthier than we are now.
I tell myself if I had done this,
everything would be fine now.
We’d have enough money
for them to stay in one of those
really nice assisted living places.
The kind with the fireplaces,
and real dining rooms,
and libraries full of hard cover books,
not cheap paperback romances
thumbed through a thousand times,
smelling of perfume and ham.
They’d be groomed and waited on like prized poodles,
by people who would really care about them,
or at least be really good at acting like they care.
Now, with the funds we have,
I feel like we are bargain bin shopping,
searching the aisles of Wal-Mart for price cuts
and rollbacks.
Hoping we can give them brie
on a Kraft-singles-budget.
It is all so awful.
I know I should be happy
that they can even afford to even go to one of these places,
but I’m not.
It doesn’t feel like it’s good enough.
I guess the bigger question is
why I have taken all of this on in the first place?
In the last few months, I have decided I must transform myself into Warren Buffett,
doubling and quadrupling what they have,
watching it grow on paper,
and then racing in at the last minute with cash in hand to save the day.
Why I think I must do all of this I don’t know.
I didn’t cause their problems and I can’t cure them,
but I still want to.
I want to
swoop in
and change the numbers.
Change the facts.
Change the last thirty years into something healthy and good.
Rewrite history and their choices with my pen.
Fix it all.
Her diabetes.
His Alzheimer’s.
Their lack of preparation for their “golden years.”
Make everything perfect.
I know I can do it.
Now, If I could just find my damn cape.

Naked As A Fish

I was an island.
A dumb howl
sinking in waves and shells.
A lapped-sore body
smelling of tongues and teeth
and tails.
A lonely
vomit of lava
slow to cool,
quick to anger.
Yes,
I could remember love
and the way the sun
would freckle my back
as I stood on the ferry.
The marks are still there.
Can you see them,
right below my bra straps?
The trips to Boliver,
in search of crabs
and wings.
The men and their eyes
glaring at me
on the roof deck.
It didn’t matter that August
was long and worried,
a dress bent brown,
like a rotten flag
hanging for all to see.
I was their lighthouse,
flickering for the hungry masses,
spreading myself open,
naked as a fish.

Lessons In Swimming And Taxes

On Thursday,
I am going to go meet with a professional
to get help with my taxes.
I’ve never gotten help from anyone before.
For the last fifteen years,
I’ve done my taxes myself.
I’ve done Schedule D,
and Schedule C,
and Long Term Loss Carryover.
Schedule A
and Schedule B
and the dreaded 1040.
I’ve accounted for every receipt and expenditure.
And after doing them for so long now,
I can honestly say
I feel pretty confident about my knowledge.
Still,
given that this year is slightly different from the others,
I think now might be a good time
for a professional check-up,
a fine tuning,
just to make sure
I’m as good as I think I am.
It wasn’t always like this.
I didn’t use to do my taxes.
My mother did them for my sister and me for years.
Then one day,
out of the blue,
she walked in with all the tax forms, threw them at me, and said,
“Here, you can do them now. I’ve had it.”
No explanation.
No sitting down with me and telling me that she thought it was important that I learn to do these things myself,
no guidance as to what to do or how to do it,
just an avalanche of forms coming at me.
Just like that,
she had thrown me into the deep and asked me to start paddling.
I did the same thing to my dog, Trouble, once – threw him into the deep.
A lake.
He’d never swam.
For some reason he thought he didn’t know how.
We were out on this paddleboat in Michigan and we decided it was time he learned
what he already knew.
We picked him up and tossed him in the lake.
The moment he hit water,
he started paddling in a panic.
He was terrified.
He wanted out.
He tried to get back up on the boat,
But couldn’t.
Paws flying.
Crazed look in his eye.
I jumped into the water next to him,
to calm him down,
and his long black nails ripped into my thigh.
“That’s just punishment,” I thought, as I felt my warm blood seep into the water.
When we finally got to shore,
he shook the water off his coat
and just looked at me
as if to say, “How could you have done that to me?”
I felt awful.
I knew immediately what I had done was wrong.
At the time, I didn’t know then where my cruelty had come from.
But I do now.
It was taught.

Still Home

Just when I thought it was getting quiet.
Just when I thought I might finally have peace
of mind,
it’s happening again.
A white paper arrives in my mail box
with the words “notice to vacate”
and once again,
I am back in January,
my mother running naked through the house,
my father at the Kroger.
Police
and sirens,
and doctors,
and needles,
and neighbors,
nosy neighbors,
and ‘For Sale’ signs,
and greedy funeral-home-made-up-looking-realtors,
and money moving,
and disappearing,
and bulldozers,
and dirt being raised,
and my childhood home falling,
and all the unrest,
coming and coming,
and no stillness,
no stillness
now for three years.
Trips to emergency rooms,
hospital stays,
screaming,
and pills,
so many pills.
Doctor visits,
and trips to the dentists,
and surgeries,
and rehab,
so much,
so much,
that I have almost given up
the thought
of ever having stillness again,
of ever feeling calm,
of ever finding
home.

Black Tea

Oh God!
I’m tired.
I’m so tired I just dribbled tea
on my pants.
Thank God, they’re black.
I’m so tired I could barely get through yoga.
Damn downward dog.
Last night I had a headache,
So I took an Excedrin.
And I said to myself, “if you take this now, this late in the day,
you know you won’t sleep.”
But I still took it, and sure enough,
five hours later I’m in bed tossing and turning and wishing I hadn’t done it.
My mind is going about a hundred miles an hour,
And my legs aren’t far behind.
I stare at the chandelier.
It’s so fucking still.
So silent.
I wish I were.
God, not sleeping sucks!
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
It’s like taking acid,
you just have to let it run its’ course.
But the thoughts keep going and going.
I turn on the light.
My feet are freezing.
I put on my wool socks.
Now, my feet are itching.
I scan the room.
My clothes are piled up in the corner.
The pilates machine is against the wall.
The humidifier is spitting out water.
Hiss, hiss, hiss.
The air purifier is doing whatever the Hell it does.
And I just lie there.
The lights flick on from the house across the street.
“What the Hell are they doing up?”, I wonder.
Can’t anybody sleep?
Yes, it’s 1:52 a.m.
And I have yoga in seven hours and eight minutes.
I tell myself I won’t go.
I tell myself I’ll sleep in late.
Damn downward dog.
But when morning comes,
I drag myself to class and tell myself it will help.
I grab a rice cake with almond butter,
throw on my coat and run out the door.
Now, I’m tied and sore.
I drink black tea.
I won’t sleep tonight.

Sweet Silence

They are dropping like flies.
One after the other.
Each one with an excuse:
A lack of time.
a commitment to a business,
a basketball game,
an inability to do the work.
I understand.
It’s scary.
To sit down and be with oneself,
to look inside and stay,
to write from the deep corners
where cobwebs and filth have remained
motionless for years.
Some just don’t want to go there.
That’s fine for them,
I suppose.
But I do.
I want
to purge,
to explore,
to exhume the dead
and see what they have to say.
I want
to wipe clean
my insides
till they are shiny and bright
as newly minted nickels.
I want to know what drives me,
the good and the bad.
I want to take it out and hold it in my hands
to the light of day,
and watch it bend and twist
and ooze.
Only then
will I be able to sit and watch the squirrels play
and not worry about what I should be doing instead.
Dip my hand in the lake and let the water drip
from my fingers,
and not wish for more.
Taste the honey on my tongue
as it falls from my spoon
and bask in its sweetness.

A Tireless Optimist

It is so hard to get them form point A to point B.
An appointment with Access Ride
can end up being a three hour excursion.
Getting them to move is hard enough already,
but when you get public transportation involved,
forget it.
It’s almost as if the universe wants them to slow down,
to slip into the cracks of their sofas
and chairs and just go to sleep,
never to be seen again.
“We don’t do that,” says the woman on the phone.
“Yes, I understand,” I say, but “could you make an exception?”
No.
There is no exception.
There is only an endless list of people who seem to want to make my life more difficult
And drive my parents to their graves sooner.
No followed by No followed by No.
I try to be he voice of sanity in all of this,
the one who says, “it can be done.”
Somehow.
But I keep getting kicked in the face,
told there is nothing,
no one,
only red tape and endless hoops for me to jump through.
No supervision for a man with Alzheimer’s
and a woman
with dementia.
They could be dropped off and left to wander,
or left sitting and waiting for a bus that never comes.
Still, I am on the sidelines cheering
with my pom poms,
refusing to walk away.
A tireless optimist
for everyone
but myself.

Watching

Tonight,
gazing at the stars,
the cold breeze in my face,
singing a hollow song
of fear,
I scream
for someone to hear
what I have always known –
Something is wrong.
It is there,
at the back door,
men with knives
and black masks,
coming in to cut your throats.
You tell me there is nothing there.
You tell me to eat my jelly sandwich
without the peanut butter
and be quiet.
You tell me to look away.
There are no men.
I am being silly.
I am causing trouble.
Why can’t I just sit and relax and watch t.v.
like the rest of you?
Yes.
That would be nice.
But
when the men come and slash your throats,
they will make me watch.
I will hear your cries.
And see your blood run
red.
And you will be gone.
But I will be left behind
to watch.
I am still watching.

N The Hood

I am in the ghetto now,
looking out the window at the Hackberry trees
instead of my dogwoods.
Here, the occasional cardinal or squirrel that drifts into our yard
is a blessing,
an abnormality,
an odd-man out in a concrete world.
But I am not complaining.
I am happy to be out of West Meade
and the cloying neighborhood children
with their overpriced scooters and water guns.
Men driving Porsches trying to hold on to their youth,
and women getting lifted in places their husbands rarely see.
This world feels real.
Alive.
Cats run free
in search of birds,
or mice,
or anything they can find.
Dogs bark,
left out in the cold
to fend for themselves,
and the bass of the Bloods
drives past my street
on Saturday night.
Yes,
some good writing will come
out of here.