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.