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.