Broken Thing


Yesterday,
I was sure she was dead.
When the phone rang
and I ran to get it
leaving my mat in the middle of yoga class,
I expected to hear someone from the hospital tell me,
“we’re sorry.”
Instead, it was just a pre-recording about credit card debt
from Washington.
I immediately hung up
and returned to my downward dog.
When I got home,
I called and learned my mother was doing fine,
much better than yesterday.
I started crying.
Not because my mother was doing better,
but rather because
my mind had tricked me,
again.
I had succumbed to the little voice in my head that always tells me
terror is true.
I hate that voice.
It sounds so real.
I always believe it.
I always fall for it.
Like the magician pulling the coin out of someone’s ear,
or the rabbit out of the hat,
no matter how many times I’ve seen the trick, I still don’t know how it’s done.
It is the same voice that tells me
my lover is having an affair,
or that he’s been killed in a car accident when I can’t reach him.
Or that the little mole on my back is Cancer,
or that I’m going blind,
or that I’m destined to be poor.
It is the one that keeps me so tied up in worry,
that I wake up panicked.
But yesterday afternoon,
after sitting and crying and realizing I had been tricked once more,
I told myself, “enough.”
I told myself I was through listening to that little demon
and that I had other things to do.
And that
that was no longer going to be
me.
I do not need to be like the dog
chasing its tail round and round trying to catch it.
No,
I am through taking a bath in flames.
I am through being
this thing,
this worried,
broken thing.

Oranges and Fog


Thursday,
and my father is at it again.
Such are oranges and fog.
The body has forgotten
his social security check
again.
I am mostly toes
walking
along the shore
explaining over and over again
what is out of my control.
Photos of blackbirds
and foam,
the Alzheimer’s won’t let sink in.
It is like that now.
Some men talk,
other’s don’t.
Neither of them can remember anything.
Phone numbers.
Meal times.
It’s all too much.
What happened this morning.
The Saturday afternoon.
The walnuts and cars along the road.
I don’t know
the comedy of old men.
I weigh one hundred and twenty five pounds
in socks.
Each moment is a new beginning
they will quickly forget.
And still,
there’s enough fat to pinch
beneath my blouse.

Silent Picture

Snow
on the branches
and bushes.
Deep white.
Everywhere.
Hanging and melting
and blowing.
The frozen woods
forever
in my eyes.
The vast woods of clouds.
From my chair,
I see the grey.
The dog barks
disturbing my picture,
my silent picture.

Bill

Bill died today.
His wife called me a few hours ago
and said he passed away this morning.
I had a bad feeling when we called last week to ask him about a battery
and they said he’d been in the hospital for five weeks.
Bill kept my Volvo running.
He was always there when I called and needed something.
A few months ago,
when I couldn’t get it started I called him.
I told him the guy in the garage had tried to jump start it but that did nothing.
Bill said, “It sounds like a worn out starter. Try putting it in neutral and see if it starts.”
Sure enough,
it started right up.
He was right.
He was always right when it came to those 240 Volvos.
I could describe the smallest problem
and he would instantly know what it was.
He could have had his own show
like the guys on Car Talk.
He could have called it Bill Talk,
and he would have never been stumped by anyone.
But he was more than a mechanic.
Coming to see Bill was an experience.
You didn’t just get your car fixed.
Bill would talk to you about everything
from philosophy to politics.
And he knew just how things should be run in this country.
I don’t think he was a Republican,
but I’m more sure he wasn’t a Democrat.
Bill was probably an Independent.
He worked out of the garage of a house he owned.
Like some kind of mad genius’ workroom.
There were parts everywhere.
On the walls and on the floor
and on his workbench.
Parts no one had anymore.
Parts hard to come by.
Bill had them all.
Sometimes we’d talk for a long time
before he’d ever get started.
(sometimes I thought he’d never get started)
Usually he kept my car longer than he said he would,
but he’d always get it done.
Old friends would come by with their Volvo’s and ask him questions about why it was doing this or that,
and Bill would laugh and say, “Hell if I know.”
But then he’d always give a suggestion.
He kept my car cool in the summer
pumping it full of freeon they don’t make anymore.
And when my car died on the freeway
just outside of Memphis,
Bill talked me through what to do to get it running again
so we could drive it home to Nashville.
If someone else ever worked on my car, I’d show him what they said and he’d
look at the report and say,
“they don’t know Volvos.”
And he’d be right.
They didn’t.
No one knew Volvos like Bill.
Now that he’s gone,
I’m going to finally sell my 240.
It just won’t be the same without him.

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.