Feeling My Way Across Madness


It isn’t about what’s normal.
Or what isn’t normal.
It’s only about what I need.
And what I need is
time alone.
I’ve always been that way –
escaping into my internal world
while the rest of humanity escapes
outward.
My world is soft.
A world of pen and paper,
butterflies and flowers.
A world of observation
that I could disappear into
like a drop of water soaking into linen.
A gentle mist of rain
falling on to rose petals
in the garden.
It is my world.
My safe world,
that no one can enter into.
It has always been so.
When I abandon my world,
I am like a blind girl attempting to cross
a busy downtown intersection,
feeling my way across madness.
Each step,
unsure,
desperately
grabbing
onto the wrong people
and things,
unable to know which way I am going.
When I make it across,
if I make it across,
I do not know where I am anymore
and I am unable to get back
to where I started.
I can not recognize any of the signposts.
The sounds of the street
are like war bombs
going off in my ears
The voices are muffled and frightening,
and the hands reaching for me,
pulling at me,
are rough and insensitive.
I feel helpless to stop it.
I want to scream,
but no sound comes out of my mouth.
I want to run
but my legs are paralyzed.
It is as if I am being eaten alive
and there is nothing I can do about it.

Taking The Sun

I get scared about what’s going to happen to me.
I get scared about money
and if I will have enough
and that I have too much.
I worry that I don’t spend my days the way God wants me to.
I worry
that I worry too much.
I think about my life and I panic
over all the things I haven’t accomplished yet.
I’m not married and I don’t have children.
But then again,
neither does Oprah
and she seems to be doing alright.
But it’s not just that,
it’s more that feeling that somewhere in the last few decades I lost my way.
The ship I was supposed to be sailing left without me
and now I feel like I am in the ocean treading water,
just trying to keep my head from going under.
I am watching the ship sail off into the sunset without me
and I am helpless to try and stop it.
No matter how loud I scream
STOP
it just keeps going,
taking the sun along for the ride.
It is getting dark.
I pray that I won’t get eaten by a shark.
I feel the cold dark water all around me,
numbing my hands and feet,
chilling my stomach to the core.
It is an awful feeling.
It is the feeling of death.
I want to get back in the boat.
I want to get back on course.
But I am alone.
I am completely alone.

The Good Daughter's Work

All morning I have been the good daughter.
I tackled dental bills and hospital bills,
fought with warranties and corporations.
changed the oil on my Volvo,
and turned away from the box of hot doughnuts
sitting in the customer waiting room.
I pumped on the bike at the ‘Y’
drove to the health food store
for brown rice and green tea,
said no to lunch with my lover,
negotiated tree trimming with a large burly man
the neighbors had working next door,
found a driveway repairman
to fix my cracks,
and called the painter to see when he was coming.
I did all of this while preparing lunch,
checking my email,
and watching the market to see how much money I’ve lost today.
Now that all of that is “done”,
I don’t feel any better.
I still have the blank page before me.
Staring at me.
I keep thinking that if I could just move to Portland,
or New York,
or Madison,
everything would be different.
But I would still have bills to pay,
and rude drivers,
and parents to worry about it,
and the blank page before me.
And no one can fill it
but me.

A House of Madness

I am
building a house
with the shades down.
A madness
with nails
and balloons.
A dark empty
wrong
of whisper
and arms
scrawled with paint
pink
as a pig,
pink as a sunset.
I am building a house
caved like a wound.
A short,
poor shopping bag
of a house
with wallpaper
and bricks.
A decaying mass
flying from room to room
in search of
a window
like a swarm of bees.
Yeah, sure
sometimes you will knock
and I will not answer.
That is to be expected.
I might be reading Faust
or unable to cinch up my robe.
Or maybe I just don’t want to be disturbed.
Either way,
you’ll never know.

Martinis and Dead Engines

It is Hell outside today.
The animal inside me
yawns
wide open
like a wound.
I am
the alphabet,
letters jumbled
refusing to form words,
refusing to cooperate.
It is as if I have finally gone on strike
in protest
against the heat.
How could I melt the darkness
or put out the fire with my pen,
when there are monsters inside
roaming the streets of my soul?
You say
my mouth is a crater of hate.
My head is a maze
I cannot escape.
My skin,
is a naked beggar
thirsting for a drink.
If I were cut into a thousand pieces
and glued back together
I would never be united,
not in this sun.
I would surely melt
like a soft avocado.
I would dissolve like the old witch
and sizzle in to the ground
leaving nothing behind,
not even my shoes.
There is a name for this heat,
this poison,
that leaves me wanting to take a bath
in jello.
It is beyond oppressive.
It is beyond cruel.
It is the heat of slavery
and slamming doors.
It is the heat of lovers
and sun dogs.
It is the heat of dead engines
and martinis.
There is nothing to do
but be naked.
Nowhere to go
but inside.

My Sickness

When I get there,
nothing will have changed.
My father will be on the couch
with the t.v. blaring and
my mother will be half out of her mind
talking about Jesus.
She’ll ask me why I’m not married,
and fret over who she should give her engagement ring to,
my sister or me.
I will be greeted by wagging tails,
dog hair,
and the stench of dry dog food left in plastic dishes for days.
I will wonder how they live like they do
and then I will quietly thank God
that somehow
I managed to escape this part of my upbringing.
I will come to them
with my heart full and hopeful
and within a few seconds it will be dashed
by reality.
My father is just as happy
watching old movies on t.v. as he is seeing me
and my mother is always one second away from saying something nasty to me.
It wouldn’t matter to them if I came for an hour or two weeks.
So why do I go?
Yes,
that is my sickness.

New Summer Video

I just learned Final Cut!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvGM3MUmCC4

Hope you enjoy on a Summer day!

SuperWoman

I don’t know when I learned to fear my own greatness
but I do.
Somewhere along the way I learned to keep my head down low
and my voice silent,
and to disappear into the cracks as much as possible.
I learned that if they can’t see you,
You can’t get hurt.
But that’s a lie.
I get hurt everyday
and I’m sick of it.
Hell,
I’m the one who fixed the flapper in the toilet yesterday.
Just slid it right on
like I’d been doing it all my life.
One quick tutorial from the guy at Home Depot
and I was a regular seventy-five dollar-an-hour
minus-the-butt-crack plumber.
It was easy,
just like he said it would be.
But for two days I was forced to use the toilet in the back bedroom.
For two days I debated calling a plumber.
For two days I was lost.
After I fixed it I wondered what the big fuss was all about.
And it got me thinking,
if I can do that, I can do other things.
In fact, I can do most anything
I decide to do.
After all,
I’m the one who walked in Warner Bros.
and got put on staff out of a couple thousand people.
I’m the one who had my first album on NPR.
I’m the one who had a ninety-nine percent voter turnout in the precincts I managed in Clinton’s campaign of ’92.
It’s time to start that novel.
It’s time to make that film.
It’s time to finish that album
and publish my poetry,
and take that trip to Africa.
It’s time to remember just how amazing I am.

Nothing Means Anything

I guess I am a cynic.
Yes,
that’s what I am.
No matter how hard I try to stay positive
I always revert.
It is my natural state,
like hibernation for a bear
or lying for a politician.
Oh yes,
occasionally I put on a good face
and smile
and ogle a chubby baby and coo
like every other moron,
but
the truth is
I don’t get it.
Cooing at a baby doesn’t change anything in this world.
We walk around in some sort of sugar-induced daze.
Our T.V.’s pump us full of mindless crap
faster than any drug pusher ever could
and yet we don’t fear them or keep our children away from them.
Instead, we set them down in front of us and teach them what we have learned:
to feel thrill and excitement from watching other people
fail,
succeed,
win,
lose,
fuck,
kill,
and give birth.
We think that by doing this
we are somehow doing it with them.
“Did you see that guy climb that mountain yesterday.”
“Yes, so what?”
“Man, it was just like being there.”
No, it wasn’t.
Being there is just like being there.
Being there is freezing and numb hands
and starving and being terrified
and praying that you get to the top
before your rope breaks
and you plummet thousands of feet to your death.
Not being there is sitting on your ass in a warm room
drinking a beer and eating corndogs
with the remote in your hand.
Big difference.
The problem is we don’t understand that anymore.
Reality and fiction have blurred into one.
Angelina’s sex life with Brad gets as much airtime as a disaster in Kansas.
We cry just as much over the model who was rejected on a “reality” t.v. show
as we do over the children starving in Ethiopia.
We are more focused on erections and Viagra
than what’s happening to our civil liberties.
The result:
we are slowly becoming more and more numb to it all.
Everything is given the same weight.
So ultimately nothing means anything.
Yes, I am a cynic.
Thank God.

Hope

We have the poem.
The loveless soul.
The peach flower,
heavy shoulders,
and eyes.
We have the sea,
and the day,
and the rhyme.
It is not my face
shining
dead moon
or the eighty-five
crisis
I have survived
that leads me to shout,
“Now is the time.”
It is the one in the mirror looking back at me,
the one that greets me on my birthday.
The one that asks, “Where did the time go?”
For too long now,
I have waxed poetic
trying to stir up spirits
and corpses
when really there were only
dead rabbits
left behind.
Now, I must forget those
and move forward with all the ferocity of a young
sweetheart
in search of his love.
Now I must run,
throw off sparks,
and unhappiness,
(so much of it created in my mind),
and let
hope
be my flower.
There is still time
to live.

Enough

I am becoming
more and more alone
picnic.
The sounds I used to hear,
my mother’s voice,
my father’s laugh
are fading.
We drive Memorial down the road
listening to the radio.
The Beatles sing
“Help”and all that blue oyster
is out the window.
I am in the backseat mirror
watching the sun set.
I do not know how it got to be like this.
They are so far away
and I am here with nothing
but silence.
I want to go back to Texas.
To run inside my old house one more time.
To dip my feet in the orgasm swimming pool.
I want to go to the club
and never worry about how much anything costs,
and eat boiled shrimp by the plate.
I want to hit tennis with Jim
and flirt with Randy
and wander down the aisles of Neiman’s
buying six hundred dollar boots
I’ll wear once and then blister put away.
But all of that is gone.
Now we are broken,
limping along
like a three-headed duck
with no direction.
Enough.
It is time for a change.
It is time to greet the day
with a strawberry smile
and wash off what was
once and for all.

What Has To Be Done

What has to be done
usually doesn’t.
What should be done
really shouldn’t.
What has to be done
usually isn’t nearly as important
as what needs to be done.
And what needs to be done
should have been done
a long time before it needed to be done.
What has to be done
usually depletes my soul.
What has to be done
is mundane
and more about my wallet
than my words.
What has to be done
usually involves a machine,
or an appliance,
or a trip to some place
where I’ll spend money;
A grocery store,
or a department store,
or a gas station.
What should be done
implies guilt.
Such as a trip to one’s parent’s house.
Or something like that.
But what I want to do
rarely involves money.
Usually what I want involves sitting and writing
which is always free,
and always pays the biggest dividends
to my soul.

An Ounce of Prevention

The yellow daisies
on the kitchen table.
The white Spider Mums
in the master bedroom.
The golden sunflowers standing tall
in my office.
And the little lilac flowers in the black vase
in my room.
I tossed them all into the trash
and watched them make instant potpourri.
They were still good.
They still had life in them.
They still smelled fresh and pure.
But I am leaving tomorrow
and by the time I return
they will be lifeless,
folded over like fainting Southern Belles
left out in the sun for too long.
Their stems will be moldy.
Their petals droopy.
What beauty they once possessed will be gone.
Only the smell of death,
sick and cloying,
will be left to permeate my house.
I do not want to come home to death.

Cold Call

Whatever it is he’s selling
I don’t want.
I don’t like the tone of his voice.
It’s creepy.
All smoke and whiskey.
He sounds like he belongs in an AA meeting.
Jaded as they come.
I can see him now
in his leather recliner
leaning back on his black office phone
staring out at the window
Watching women walk by.
I bet he’s got yellow fingernails
and coffee stained teeth.
I bet he doesn’t sleep at night
and pops Tums like M&M’s.
I bet he drives a Buick
or some other gas guzzling American car.
I bet he thinks he knows the reason why
about everything.
I bet he thinks he knows “my type.”
It would never work.
I’d be down his throat faster than a spitting Cobra
at a circus.
Too much piss and vinegar.
He is all old school.
The clothes hanging on the line to dry.
Me,
I’m a SmartCar.
I want to get where I’m going
without spending thirty-five gallons
and get there in style.
If he calls back,
I won’t answer.
He’ll get the message.
He’ll know why.

Solitude Sunday


It is 1:22 and I am alone.
Ah!
There is something so decent
about solitude
(when you want it).
I’ll settle for six hours
on a rainy afternoon
any day without locks
and violets.
Just a long hot bath
inside myself.
Sixty acres of undisturbed ground
waiting to be explored,
made love to.
Suddenly I understand
the green grass
and the dead birds.
I understand old men in caves
and the Hollywood sign.
I think about the Mexican woman on the corner
with the shopping bag between her legs
waiting for her bus
and I wonder what solitude means to her.
Yes, this is the way I like it.
My pen.
My paper.
And me.

Sunshine And Breasts

Dirty fingernails.
Toes that do not care.
Hands walking where the body has forgotten.
I am mostly fog.
Headless.
An open window
holding apples
and onions.
A ball floating
without a nose.
Can you see me?
I arrive on time
like a lunatic
with the taste of roses
in my drawers.
I think of books.
Pages and pages of them.
Poems painted on a bench.
My French lover.
Young breasts and sunshine.
The fan by the radio
blowing
songs.
How beautiful life can be.

Silent War

Perhaps I should have said no
and made you come home that day.
But you wanted to see the sunset
and I was running late.
If I had only stopped
you might still be here.
But that is another story.
Now when I look at sunsets
I see you.
Your face.
Your eyes.
Your arms twisted in the orange and red
bleeding through the clouds
like a banner
unfurling
declaring
war
on my heart.
Where is the peace in death?
Tell me.
Is it only for the departed?
You are somewhere far away
while I am here
left alone to untangle this mess,
wondering
how I will survive
yet another day
without you.

The Eyes of Dogs

I don’t want to see her.
Or her friend.
Or anyone.
I am tired of calls and lockboxes
and accepting less than I should.
I am not grass.
I am not seed.
I am not shit.
The water that laps at my door
is unquestioning.
Drink.
Yes.
Drink.
There is so much emptiness in all of this.
This life.
I see faces crying in China
and hands asking why.
I see the eyes of dogs
begging me for salvation
but I have none.
I haven’t smiled in months.
I haven’t found the joy
in the first day of Spring.
I have wandered on the hill in search of him.
Always coming down alone.
At dinner I sat and rattled on about nothing
trying to fill the silence.
Now I am embarrassed.
I want to run in the field
alone
and call his name.
I want to walk with him and no one else.
I tell myself it will be different in Portland.
I can start again
and forget,
but I don’t think
my asking price is low enough
for someone to accept a pink bathroom
and take the last forty years
with them.

Bad Bed Partners

It’s over
as quick as it began.
A bad summer fling.
A mistaken passing in the night.
It never should have happened.
Never.
We were naive.
We picked her because she seemed cool.
We thought she was a go-getter.
She was.
The only problem was she was busy getting everyone else’s things.
She didn’t have time to go get us anything.
She made lots of promises.
But none of them seemed to materialize.
And then when things weren’t working out,
she didn’t even have time to sit down and talk with us
about it.
She was too busy,
selling.
Yes,
she was selling
everything but our house.

The Wrong House

It’s getting dark
and I am here in the den
writing.
This morning has been a mix
of threatening phone calls
and fainting men.
Too much fury before my eyes.
Too much anger.
I am the frog on the biology table,
cut in half,
intestines explored
with blunt instruments.
Eyes pulled out of sockets.
Limbs held back
flat
against the board,
against their will.
How many times have I been cut opened?
The stench of death around me?
When the morning fell I was there.
And though I tried to help
I was just a stranger
in it all.
It didn’t matter if I were guilty or innocent.
The giver of breath
and fire.
I was in the wrong house.

On The Outside

Yesterday
I called them
to tell my father
that the basketball playoffs were on.
Detroit vs. Boston.
My mother answered the phone in a huff.
“Well I’m glad you’re having a good night,” she said sarcastically.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
She was upset because my father wouldn’t help her open a can of soup.
When I asked to speak with him,
so that I could talk him into helping her,
she said, “here’s your precious daughter.”
As if by precious she meant fucking.
I have always been his “precious” daughter.
Why, I don’t know.
Maybe no one else wanted the job
and I took the only vacant role in the house.
My sister was smart and had taken my mother’s side long ago.
My pick was never around.
My father would leave and spend months at his downtown apartment
sentencing me to an odd in-house imprisonment,
banished from my sister and mother,
but still forced to live under the same roof with them.
In every decision I was always the odd girl out.
It didn’t make for a very good life then or now.
A few moments later, my sister came storming in through the front door of her house,
like a tornado let loose in a small Kansas town.
She was screaming at my parents and at the dog,
who tried to make a run for it out the open door.
Who can blame him? I thought.
Why didn’t they eat? she asked.
Why wasn’t the trash taken out?
Who let the dog out?
These were questions that neither of them could answer now
and probably would have had a difficult time answering even twenty years ago.
I listened to all of it over the phone like I were eavesdropping on some very dysfunctional reality t.v. show.
Finally my father said he had to go,
like a wounded animal
who had just been given the command to “kennel up.”
Now he is the in-house prisoner
and I am on the outside.
The only problem is
I don’t feel any freer.

This Place

I have found yet one more reason to dislike this place.
Stupidity.
I’m not kidding.
There are some of the stupidest people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting
here.
Really.
Not only are they stupid,
but they lie.
They lie about the mistakes they have made
and then they think no one will know they’ve made them.
Like the moron who hit me,
he didn’t know what color his light was
but he still flew through the intersection
(driving someone else’s truck without insurance).
Or what about the imbecile office assistant who messed my boyfriend up
because she wrote on his chart he had diabetes when he didn’t?
Now she refuses to do anything about it and he can’t get insurance.
Stupid.
Stupid people.
There seem to be more of them here than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.
Yesterday I test-drove a Subaru
and the girl taking us on the test drive didn’t know how many miles to the gallon the car got.
Nor did she know what the overdrive button did.
She didn’t even know what changes had been made to the new model.
Unbelievable.
Why is she working for this company?
Better question…why did they hire her?
It’s mind-boggling.
It happens in place after place here.
Restaurant after restaurant.
Nobody knows anything.
They all just walk around in a daze
happy and content,
stuffing their faces with Fritos and fried chicken
and buying twelve packs of Coke.
I want to slap one of them and say wake up
and tell them can’t they see what’s going on?
Don’t they know?
But they’d just lie and say they do,
when they don’t.
And nothing would change.
Nothing.
It’s Hell living among the stupid.

Trees

Trees.
Come closer.
I am listening to the sparrow sing.
December
can not bring me back.
I have thoughts beyond beauty.
The name of the Lord.
The dead city.
I am like them.
I have tried to befriend the past
but I can not.
It is still too present.
I push everything off my bed,
the eggs,
and salad,
and fish,
even the babies
pink and benign.
August is hot
and my head is the same.
One day I will marry the sun.
It is like that now.

The Lizard in The Sun

lies on the back patio
motionless.
Ants crawl past and over him
as if he were some boulder
dropped in their path.
They don’t seem to mind very much.
They don’t stop and worry and wonder
about which path to take,
and if they are taking the right path,
they just keep moving.
It is a good lesson to learn.
I have let myself trip
over too many lizards
never to get up again.

Monday Afternoon

I open a drawer
to butterflies,
insane
bagfuls of kisses,
unable to answer the knife,
the Saturday afternoon
burning the jar
Black.
The baby clock
rings at me
as if I were a man
in a four dollar room
looking for socks.
I am
a peach,
decent
as gold.
A Cadillac
of feelings.
My mouth is better than
spoon,
better than music.
I am a bed
gone
wrinkled
never to be let in.
I laugh
at the fearful,
the hobbled sleep of illness,
and the conversation
of dead birds.
If only
the waitress would bring me
my bill,
my life would be
complete.

Out of The Rabbit Hole

Sixteen years ago I ran away and hid.
I jumped so deep into the rabbit hole I forgot where and who I was.
I threw myself away and believed my circumstances.
Now I want to befriend those who hurt me,
because the poison I have been swallowing is only poisoning me.
I thought if I ran far enough away I could escape.
I rejected the parts of myself that had been rejected
and made myself half of who I was.
I let myself be small
and invisible
so I couldn’t be seen.
Now there is no time to hide.
There is only time to forgive
and become.
I've lived in the rabbit hole
long enough.

Red Dresses

This morning I had too many blueberries in my cereal
and now I am regretting them.
They feel like tiny spores embedded in my stomach lining
exploding at will.
Every few minutes,
KA-BOOM!
and I am sent
running.
I’ve been running for years.
Down hallways as a little girl
and later from bed to bed.
From Houston to Los Angeles,
and then from Los Angeles
to Nashville.
Each time staying too long.
Each time saying never again.
Nashville was a bigger mistake than L.A.
I got too restful here.
Lost track of time.
Forgot who I was.
In L.A. I was part of a crowd.
Writers.
Some writing crap, albeit,
but still writers.
I had the cache of U.S.C. behind me
and I could wear mini-skirts and not be looked at strangely.
Now I am in no man’s land,
a world where guns and cigarettes are touted as good things
and the average I.Q. seems to be double digits at best.
I miss my red dresses.

Originality

Each day
I tell myself
that I am getting out.
But each day
I am still here.
I tell myself that if I put in the right granite,
or stainless,
or curtains,
the right person will come.
But each day that passes I start to wonder
if they’ll come at all.
I am not like everyone else.
I don’t mind pink tile,
or white appliances,
or even fifty-year-old windows.
I like the original best.
I am tired of everything having to be new,
new and crappy.
I like what was laid down originally.
Our society is too quick to want nothing of the past.
It is a wonder we have museums.
You would think Picasso would be out of date.
Rembrant passé.
“Oh, I’ve seen him already.” I can hear some stupid suburbanite moaning.
You would think we have to put new artwork in our museums daily,
fill our galleries with Hallmark cards and cereal boxes,
just to satisfy these imbeciles.
“Yes, it’s a entirely new collection, “they would giggle as they run to their neighbors
to spread the news.
Good grief.

Mother

I am still trying to escape them.
They are the sore in my pocket.
The deep seat of fear
that keeps me rabid.
Each morning,
the call of her voice
in my ear,
the one that keeps me paralyzed.
Each night,
her self-assured domination,
the elephant in my dreams
trampling me
over and over.
I have fought to keep them away
like malaria,
like typhoid.
I have fought to break free as best I could,
but Houdini’s chains were never as tight.
I have drowned myself in words,
and songs,
and books,
hundreds and hundreds of books,
trying to escape into the page
Mother.
But I can not.
Still she comes
with her calls and her looks
and her threats.
And there is nothing for me.
Nothing.
I have been the shell in this game for too long.
Empty underneath.
My pea went missing long ago.
I have tried to contain myself.
Tried to curl up embryo-like
and escape the blows.
But I am tired.
I am losing the fight.
I have been pecked clean of flesh.
A lost beauty
hanging in the closet
with nowhere to run.

Hitting The Keys

He says I am obsessing
about the house.
And he’s right,
I am.
Each day I look on Craigslist,
and on Realtracs,
and in the newspaper,
at other homes for sale.
I look at what they are asking for them
and what they are selling for.
Then I compare mine to them.
“This one isn’t near as nice as mine,
it’s close to the freeway.”
“It doesn’t have a new roof.
You can hear highway 70 from that one. “
And on and on.
Yesterday, I noticed they just lowered the price of one around the corner
another fifteen thousand dollars.
That one has granite countertops and new stainless appliances.
Mine doesn’t.
I know it is wasted energy and wasted thought to keep doing what I am doing.
Each day I vow I am not going to go online and look
and each day I find myself hitting the keys.
I guess I’m scared.
I’m scared to just let go and trust.
I’m scared to let anyone else handle anything.
I’m scared that I will never get out of here.
It’s been over a year since Trouble died
and I’m still here.
I’m still looking out at the hill
that he loved
and wishing
I could move.
I don’t know if moving is the answer or not,
but it couldn’t hurt.
It would give me a fresh start.
Moving would feel symbolic,
like I was making progress
and heading in the right direction.
I could forget the accidents,
and his death,
and all the bad memories,
and just start over.

Passing By

There was no time to react
it all happened so fast.
One moment there were the normal sounds of the day
and the next,
screams.
I watched a hawk grab a baby from its nest
and fly away with it like a crazed pilot.
The baby’s parents followed with such ferocity
it was clear they had forgotten their attacker was three times bigger than they were.
The screams from the trees were worse than any human fight
I had ever heard.
Words and threats hurled back in forth,
rustling of leaves,
fighting and screaming.
From the sounds of it the hawk was in for more than he had bargained for.
One minute the parents were busy
hunting for food for their baby,
and taking turns with their vigil,
and the next,
they were in a fight for their child’s existence.
It was incredible how quickly things change.
Ten minutes later,
the screams just ended.
The silence was more terrifying than the shrieks
because I don’t know the ending.
Either the parents got their baby back
or the hawk got lunch.
I fear it was the later.
I wonder
what they will do now.
What will they fill their hours with?
Will they return to their empty nest
and hover above it?
Will they weep and wail
and blame each other like we would?
Or will they separate,
find another partner and start again?
There is no grief counselor for them to go to.
No source of wisdom.
There is only the day
and the hours and the seconds
passing by.

Counting Soldiers

I am counting soldiers
one by one.
In the field
and in the home.
They are piling up
outside my door
like old newspapers
I have forgotten to throw out.
Their blood and bones
are mine.
Their wounds are etched in my skin
like ugly tattoos
I can not erase.
Their graves are my graves.
In the morning when I step into my bath
it is their blood I bathe in
warm and salty.
It is their eyes I see in the mirror
when I look at myself.
It is their voices I hear
wailing outside my window
when I try to sleep at night.
It is their shoes I walk in
as I make my way down the hall
to piss.

Rapunzel's Ranch

Let down your hair,
Rapunzel.
Let down your hair,
Rapunzel,
and join us.
That’s what they’d say to her.
But she couldn’t join them.
Poor Rapunzel
was stuck in her fucking castle,
the one her mother bought for her.
The one her mother thought would be romantic.
All alone on the hill night after fucking night
with no way down.
Just her pen and her sword
and her needle
and the sound of nightingales
to keep her company.
Poor Rapunzel,
why didn’t some fucker bring her a ladder?
Couldn’t they see how lonely she was?
Why did they tell her to come down
knowing she had no way down
except to fall out of the window
and on to her pretty yellow head?
Miserable jerks.
Poor Rapunzel.
She sat there night after night
waiting and hoping she could find a way out of her
1950’s Ranch house,
the one with the outdated appliances and pink tile bathroom.
But no one would come.
No one would even look.
Why?
Because everyone wanted granite and stainless steel.
Sure her home
was safe.
And quiet.
But who wants that?
Not the guy with the Porsche
who pulled into the driveway briefly
then sped away
to the East
where all the new restaurants were springing up like toads.
If only Rapunzel had listened to herself and bought the little 1920’s cottage on Carden
instead of listening to her mother,
she would be rich now.
“That one had a sidewalk in front of it and new appliances,” she thought.
“I could have just walked out my front door
instead of waiting for someone to come and find me.”
Yes, Rapunzel,
you could have.

23 Acres

He tells me not to worry
over thirty or forty thousand
one way or the other.
“It’s just money,” he says.
If I want to move
I should move.
“What difference does it make?” he says.
And he’s right.
I know he’s right.
This is a man who was cutting deals for millions
while I was running around in diapers.
A man who had sixteen different partners.
A man who never worried about a dime.
He was bold
on paper.
I know.
A few weeks ago I flew to Houston to go through a storage unit
I didn’t know we had.
Inside I found my father’s file cabinets.
His entire business life
was in those two black file cabinets.
Every deal he ever made.
Every piece of property he ever owned.
Brazosport,
the Village shopping Center,
La Porte,
Pasadena,
and the 23 acres Charter bank took from him.
There was his letter to his partners in Bluebonnet productions
railing against them for their deceit,
his discharge papers from the army,
and his citizenship documents.
There were photos of his mother and father from the twenties
and postcards I wrote to him
from camp.
There was even a letter he submitted to the L.A. Times for publication about justice
and how justice is only for the rich.
Unfortunately, The Times rejected it.
Everything I never knew about my father was in those papers.
Papers that I was now dumping in trash bins all over Houston
while security guards weren’t looking.
I wanted to save them,
to box them up and bring them back on the plane,
to make sense of his life,
like I was Columbo putting together a puzzle
that would help me understand who he was.
But there were too many files
and no one to talk with about them now.
My father’s partners are dead
and my father doesn’t remember much.
I called him from the hotel
just to make sure he didn’t want any of his business records,
and to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten about some piece of property he still might own.
He said it was all gone,
all of it.
All those millions gone.
A life’s work just numbers on aging paper.
I asked him about his letter to his partners in Bluebonnet.
I asked him what happened and what they did to him
that left him feeling betrayed.
All he would say is, ‘the past is the past. What does it matter now?”
Yes,
what does it matter?

Maid Boyfriend Restaurant

You can never go back.
Not to maids or boyfriends
or restaurants.
It’s never the same
as the first time.
Somehow the floors never shine as brightly.
The conversation isn’t as sweet.
Touching doesn’t give you the same tingle.
And that perfectly cooked grouper,
isn’t.
It’s like that.
The shine wears off.
You notice the dust balls in the corner,
and the dental floss left in the trash can,
and the underwear hanging on the bathroom door.
And what you thought was the perfect
Maid
Boyfriend
Restaurant
turns out to be a disappointment.
So you look for another
and another
each time falling in love
with the sourdough,
if only for an instant.
Each time falling out of love
only to be left hungry for the next
Maid
Boyfriend
Restaurant.
I’ve stopped eating out.

Bad Isn't Good Anymore

It’s getting less fun
to be bad.
I can’t drink anymore.
Half a glass of anything
leaves me drunk.
And what’s more,
I don’t even enjoy the sensation.
Last week,
I had a couple of sips of a Mojito in New Orleans.
I could barely walk a straight line to the bathroom.
The room was spinning,
my face was flush, and I felt like I might end up face first in my plate of black beans and rice.
It wasn’t pretty.
I didn’t feel relaxed and I can’t say I’m glad I did it.
Same goes for sugar.
It’s starting to lose its thrill for me.
Doughnuts and cookies and cake
used to hold me spellbound.
I can still see those giant deli coconut cakes
spinning round and round in Alfred’s glass deli case,
a giant piece cut out
and all that golden yellow cake and white cream
staring back at me.
Getting a slice used to be more enticing than a trip to Disneyland.
Now, the thought of cake makes me sick.
I can feel my head start to spin and my eye sockets start to dry up and I feel fuzzy.
More and more
there is less and less that interests me
in the “what I’m supposed to enjoy” part of this world.
I don’t know how other people do it.
How do they eat and drink and smoke and live
and fill their minds with endless distractions?
There must be a place for someone like me.
There must be.

Going In

The hardest thing is the beginning.
Settling in to that deep part of yourself
that longs to be touched,
that has to be touched
in order to survive.
I can’t walk around like most people
running
from thing to thing,
appointment to appointment,
scattered like grass seed,
trying not to blow away with the first strong wind.
I need roots
and the dark dark earth to plant my feet in.
It has always been like that for me.
Going in
is what gives me life.
Going in
is what keeps me whole.
Without it,
I am lost,
a refugee on a raft
baking in the sun,
my back red and blistered.
Some would say I am exaggerating,
but it’s true.
I need to go in
the way people need three meals a day.
I need to go in
the way a diabetic needs insulin.
I need to go in.
For life.

Yellow

Somewhere in all this yellow
there is a writer.
Somewhere in the walls
and wood and tiffany lamp
there is the heart of a pen.
I’ve seen it
lost
in the bamboo blinds.
I’ve seen glimpses of it
behind the white sliding closet doors
and under the chocolate futon.
It is in the sheet music on the music stand,
the page turned to the Beatles’ “Good Morning”.
I’ve seen it
in desk drawers
and in dark corners
underneath the calculator
and the calendar.
I’ve seen it under paper napkins at restaurants
and on park benches and subway stops.
It is there
always beating
always waiting for me.
It is there
in the car with the windows rolled down
and at the grocery store contemplating cabbage over carrots.
It is in New Orleans
in the French Quarter
silently taking notes of the Cajun and Creole
and on the powdered sugar dusted on beignets.
It is in the air
dank
and musty
and on the wings of the cicada
soon to invade.
It is in the vase of sunflowers by my desk
and in the Ninth Ward,
empty and deserted.
It is in the gallop of Eight Belles
and in the silence of her fall.

Bird Girl

The cardinals outside my kitchen window
are busy.
They don’t have time to argue
over flying versus driving
or what the realtor said or didn’t say.
From the first light,
they are up and out
hunting worms for their bald babies.
I watch them day after day,
one bringing food,
feeding open mouths
while the other is off gathering more.
They do this hour after hour
from sunrise to sunset.
I wonder how they keep from collapsing.
We complain about the smallest inconvenience
and we have everything right at our fingertips.
We want something to eat
we go to the grocery store,
or to a restaurant,
or to a fast food place.
We don’t have to scour the ground
in search of movement
and wait till the coast is clear to feed our young
or ourselves.
Our lives are ones of instant gratification,
and yet,
I would rather be a cardinal.
I would rather not be burdened with telephones
and televisions and email and infomercials.
I would rather not worry about my IRA or my retirement
or whether or not some critic liked my last album.
I would rather spend my days in flight,
in the present,
with nothing to keep me tied down.

Yes

Yes
it would be nice
to curl up on the sofa
and sleep.
To let the soft yellow hues
of sunflower petal across my eyes
and into my dreams.
The rain
falling
down on my chocolate futon.
Here
I can button the dishwasher
like a lamp
and wait for morning
to come.

So Long

This time the neighbors know we’re serious.
This time they know it’s for real.
We’ve got the sign out,
the realtor sign.
No more “For Sale By Owner.”
No more black and white flyer
or rooms half-ready.
This time we’ve got all our ducks in a row.
We’ve got new pillows
and towels.
We’ve got white cotton shower curtains and park benches
and flowers by the door.
And we’ve got eco-friendly welcome mats.
We’ve got our floors scrubbed and our tables dusted
and our windows clean.
We’ve got every blade of grass cut
and yellow tulips planted by the mailbox.
This time we’re ready to leave.
The funny thing is,
now that it looks so good
part of me wants to stay.
But I tell myself there are better things ahead.
New adventures.
New places to explore.
Maybe New York
or Seattle.
Maybe I’ll live somewhere where the ticks won’t bite me in the summer
and the mosquitoes won’t know me on a first name basis.
Anyway,
I’ve been here long enough.
Trouble’s gone
and there’s no point staying in this house without him.
This was his hill,
and his yard,
and now that he’s gone
it’s time for me to go too.
He wouldn’t have wanted me to stay.
And so
I turn the page.

Talking To Liars

For three days we haven’t spoken.
It’s that way now,
now that she’s getting better.
The meanness is coming back
into her brain.
What made her soft is healing.
I can see the three of them
sitting on her couch,
sharing brie and Ritz crackers
and watching Dancing with The Stars
and talking about me,
and how horrible I am.
It’s perfect.
Let her keep her ring.
I don’t like talking to liars.

The Wasp Killer

He is no wasp killer,
this man I love.
Three different times now he has swung a newspaper
at the red-winged devil trying to build a nest at my back door,
and three times he has struck out.
Perhaps it is our vegetarian diet
that has left him unable to kill.
That instinct, that drive,
that leopard-like quickness, has been tempered by too much tofu and kale.
Now he is content to watch the ant crawl across the kitchen counter,
share space with the lone spider as he spins his web in the stereo cabinet,
and make friends with the honey bee buzzing near him on a park bench.
It is as if he has lost some “animalness” needed to survive in this world,
or rather what he is told he needs to survive.
I like him much better this way.

Petal Heads

How beautiful you are
with your big yellow head
and your brown eye watching me.
You look like a petaled periscope
on a mission from below,
a strange alien,
sent here to listen for life
and report back to your superiors all that you have witnessed.
What have you seen
sitting there in your glass vase?
Just the coming and going of legs,
voices rising and falling,
the strum of guitar notes
and frustrated fingers aching for more knowledge
than they have.
You have not seen much.
You’ve heard the ringing of the phone
and listened to the screaming of daughter against mother,
sister against sister.
You’ve seen crying and the pale face of betrayal
on the pillow beside you.
You’ve watched strangers come and go
with buckets and brooms and spray
and wondered what it was all for.
You’ve heard the t.v. in the background
and the evening news rattling on and on about politics
war and famine.
You’ve heard about the rising gas prices
and how women and men in countries
poor as Haiti are eating fried butter mixed with dirt to survive.
You’ve smelled garlic
cooking down the hall in the kitchen
and wondered how some can eat so well
while others have nothing.
You’ve swooned to the sound of the Bossa Nova
on Sunday morning
and thought for a moment you were in Brazil.
You have watched your relatives,
the other petal heads,
come and go,
tossed out with the garbage,
while you have survived.
You have wondered why they were so fragile
when you are so strong.
Your stems a hundred times wider than theirs.
You have listened for silence
and wondered why there is so little
to be found here.
You have not understood much of what you have seen.
Do not worry,
you are not alone.

Dead Trees

Dead trees are good
for birds to perch upon,
to land on and just rest.
Their bare limbs never hide the animals
that crawl upon their branches.
Dead trees are stoic as Army Generals,
never leaving their post
or changing their dress with the seasons.
They are always the same,
constant and immovable.
I like dead trees.

Waiting For Dave

I hate waiting for people.
I don’t mean standing in line for a bathroom
kind of waiting.
I mean waiting for people who say they are coming
to your house
to say, fix a door,
but then never show,
or if they do show,
they show up three hours later than they said they would.
It’s unnerving.
I mean,
don’t these people care?
Like the guy who’s helping me with my closet floor.
He seems really nice.
He said to call him if there’s a problem
and now that there’s a problem,
he doesn’t call back.
And the two times he’s said he was coming,
he doesn’t show.
What’s the deal?
He was so amazing and now the whole encounter
has turned into a bad date.
It’s not like I gave him a venereal disease
Or had food in my teeth when I was talking to him.
I even paid him more than what he asked for.
I’ve called his cell phone seven times.
(I’ve used call blocker to see if he would answer).
I’ve even called the office
that referred him to me and asked them to call him for me.
Still nothing.
No call.
I don’t get it.
Why would someone be so nice one minute
and completely different the next?
Has he inhaled too much polyurethane?
Or is he so busy he just doesn’t need to care?
Maybe he enjoys making women wait.
I don’t know
and I don’t care.
I just want my floor fixed.

Beatrice and Me

I think of Beatrice Wood
in Ojai,
making her pots out of clay,
the hot desert sun baking into her,
molding her
like a soufflé.
I went to see her once,
when I lived in L.A.
and I was feeling especially lost.
I brought her a Lindt chocolate bar
and had my picture taken with her on her couch.
I was so alone then
and feeling like I had nowhere to go.
Fifteen years later
nothing has changed.
I am still feeling lost and alone.
I thought when I drove to see her everything would change for me.
I would be touched by her love of life
and walk away with it in me.
I would see her smile and find my own.
I would touch her hand and her wisdom would be mine.
On the cover of her book she is thumbing her nose,
as if to say don’t take life too seriously,
or maybe she’s saying to be full of play,
even at a hundred.
Whatever it is,
I want to be like her.
I want to be alive and free and creative,
not sitting at a restaurant
telling a nine-year-old what they can and can’t eat.
I want to be dipping my hands in clay
and exploring small towns with my camera
and making music on instruments I have yet to learn.
I want to look back at my life,
many years from now,
and know that my trip to Ojai was not in vain.

Hungry

I’m hungry.
I know that’s absurd
because I just finished eating an hour ago,
but I’m hungry.
I want a tuna melt on rye
with purple onion on it.
I want it toasted golden brown.
I want to feel the crunch on my lips and
the heat on my tongue.
And I want to wash it all down with an unsweetened ice tea.
I want to sit in an empty diner with just me and the waitress
and stare out the window and write in my journal.
I want to ask myself how I ended up here.
I want to question the plate.
I want to ask the waitress what she’s doing here too.
I bet she’ll tell me to mind my own business.

The Land of Oz

When I stare at it now,
it gives me chills,
the tall grey building where they used to live.
It is there like an ugly skyscraper
misplaced in a world of overpriced green.
The prison-like windows,
the decaying sidewalk,
the stench of fried
emanating from its lobby.
I think of the people I came to know there:
The ninety-four year old with her Pomeranian dog named Timmy,
the dark-haired man who always said hello to me,
the nasty woman at the counter who always insisted I signed in,
even though she knew who I was,
the gossipy quartet who always ate lunch together and
whispered about my mother,
the black maintenance men
who never seemed to do anything,
but yet always seemed busy,
and the awful silver-haired woman who worked at the cafeteria
who was sure I was using my parents’ discount to buy my own lunch.
I see them sometimes
when I drive by,
out on their patio chairs,
or in the parking lot walking to work,
and I wonder how I ever survived those six months
with my own parents.
I know I will never see any of them again.

Wood Is Scary

I am trying to fix it myself.
But the truth is
I don’t know what I’m doing.
The man from Lowe’s said it was easy
as he handed me a sander,
wood filler,
wood stain,
and a can of polyurethane.
He told me I could do it myself.
He said just use an old t-shirt for the stain
and a brush for the gloss
and I’d be fine.
And I thought I was doing o.k.
until I put the wood filler in
and let it dry and began to sand.
He told me to sand lightly.
But that doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
Now,
I’m frightened I put too much on.
It looks blotchy and bulbous and I don’t know if this is how it is supposed to look or not.
I don’t see how this is going to end up looking smooth or natural.
I feel like calling up over there
and making the guy come over.
But I know he never would.
So instead, I’ve called for back-up.
I’ve called someone who actually refinishes hardwood floors for a living.
Hopefully they know what they’re doing.
Hopefully when they arrive they’ll say that what I’ve done is good.
But I doubt it.
They’ll probably tell me they have to double the price of the job,
because they have to undo my handiwork.
I knew I never should have gone to Lowe’s.
Those guys tell you you can do it yourself,
but they don’t know what the Hell they are talking about.
And they’re not around to clean up the mess.
What I’ve learned from this whole experience is that
I’m fine for painting or raking or mopping.
I can even change a light bulb without incident.
But wood,
wood is something I’ve never done.
Wood is scary.

I Hate That Gecko

I’m starting to think it’s all a racket.
Insurance.
They’re happy to take three hundred dollars a month from me,
but never want to pay me a dime
when I have a problem.
They had a great excuse when there was water under the house,
(long standing problem)
and now they claim my new problem is worth less than my deductible.
Of course it is, if you fix it cheaply enough.
But that doesn’t mean it’s done right.
It’s all so convenient.
I keep paying them,
but they never pay me a penny.
How is it possible?
No wonder they have millions of dollars.
They never pay out on anything.
I think about the poor victims of Katrina
still living in mobile homes,
still without power,
still waiting for checks that will never arrive
and I understand why some of them would want to get a gun and start shooting.
We are raised in this country not to steal,
don’t steal candy,
don’t steal at a drugstore,
don’t swipe a sweater,
but those crimes are paltry
compared to what the corporations do.
And they do it with such perfect rationale.
We’re sorry Mr. So and So,
but you have a pre-existing condition,
so we are going to deny your claim.
Or Ms. So and So, the tree that fell on your house died seven months ago,
If you look at section seven, letter c of your policy,
it is your responsibility to remove any dead trees,
that tree was a hazard and we are not responsible for hazards.
Oh please, give me a break.
What are we paying for in this country?
How is our society ever going to learn that stealing is wrong
when the very people running our society are the biggest thieves of them all?

Sleepless in Nashville

Last night
I couldn’t sleep.
It was the third night this week.
Tossing and turning.
My back aching.
My head talking.
My legs on a cross-country road trip
with no road beneath them.
I thought tonight I would have no problem falling asleep.
After all,
I took a very intense yoga class in a room that was almost eighty-five degrees
and bordered on masochistic.
Surely that would guarantee me passage into dreamland.
Surely pure physical exhaustion from two nights of no sleep
would leave me no alternative but slumber.
But no.
I stayed awake,
wide awake.
I spent hours looking at the clock,
counting how many hours had passed and how few I had left if I were actually going to
consider this night a success.
By four a.m.,
after three ibuprofen and a piece of valium,
I went in the bathroom and got a heating pad.
I feel asleep with it under my back.
An hour later I woke up sure I had third degree burns on my back.
By seven a.m. it was light out.
Morning had arrived.
Now,
not only was my back on fire, I also had a stomachache.
I can blame my back on the yoga,
but what caused the stomachache was something far more mysterious.
It was either a fruit roll-up,
some raisins,
or a vegan hamburger that had defrosted and been refrozen.
I don’t think I want to know.
I hobbled,
in unbelievable pain,
to the bathroom clutching my stomach in one hand
and holding my low back with the other.
I looked like some kind of arthritic train
chugging along to the first stop it could get to.
Now, eight hours later, neither my backache nor stomachache have gone away.
I want to go lie down,
but I know if I do I won’t wake up till dark
and then I’ll never fall asleep tonight.
So,
I’m going to stay awake and write,
and paint the ceiling,
and tell myself that tonight will be different,
tonight I will sleep.
I have to.

Spring

Spring is coming.
Can you see it?
It is in the air
like coffee roasting
or garlic browning in a hot skillet.
It is so near
I can taste it.
It is in the blues and reds and yellows.
It is in the daffodils’ heads
and robins’ breasts.
It is in the lawn with its new green shoots of grass.
It is in the backseat of cars,
and in school yards,
and in the morning sun
which comes earlier and earlier each day.
It is in my eyes,
and in my walk.
It is in the grasshopper’s flight,
and the bluebird’s song.
It is in the paws of pups hungry for adventure.
It is everywhere I turn.

Banana Girl

The yellow curve of sweet flesh
that comes at me this morning
is courtesy of Ecuador
where the sun is ripe and round.
I peel the skin back
and marvel at the golden beauty tucked inside.
So firm
and tender.
So perfect.
With each bite I take,
I shake my head in disbelief.
For twenty-one years
I didn’t like them.
Wouldn’t eat one if you begged me.
Now,
they feel as though they have always been in my repertoire,
like green grapes,
or black plums,
or the Velvet Underground.

Stinky

Yes,
that’s the name
I gave you.
Not Max or Oscar,
or Fred,
or Jack.
Stinky.
Maybe it was your coffee breath,
or the gas you expelled in my bed,
or the poopages you left right on the brick patio
when you had over an acre of grass to choose from.
Maybe it’s the pee puddle you left by your crate
or the pieces of kibble scattered on my den floor,
or the poop you tracked in on your paws.
Whatever the reason,
you are Stinky to me
and you always will be.
You don’t know anything yet.
You don’t know who to trust,
or who to let love you,
or why the sky is blue,
or where you fit in the pack.
You don’t know me
and I don’t know you.
You don’t know how to bark
or why you sleep in the den
or where your real mother is.
You don’t know where you’re next meal is coming from
or why the grass squirrels run when they see you coming.
You don’t know how to roll over on command or
why your red ball rolls down the hill.
And you certainly don’t know why the birds fly.
Everything is an adventure,
like the cardboard box in the hallway,
and the computer cable and the stereo wires,
and my green Crocs and my pink socks.
Everything is one giant amusement park.
I hope you stay Stinky forever.

Free Bird

No way out.
There is no way out.
There is no way out.
I have tried.
I have tried.
Last night I dreamed I was a bird
with my wings caught in a net.
I was crumpled and strangled and slowly dying
and I couldn’t get free.
I couldn’t get free.
My old friend Pam was in my dream.
She was a shaman now.
A poetess.
She had escaped her chains
and was wise.
She wore robes and draped herself in silver
and smelled of exotic oils.
She tried to tell me what to do.
She tried to help me to escape.
But I couldn’t get free.
No matter what I did,
I couldn’t get free.

Breathing

The first breath is the hardest.
The one that comes in
and slows the others down,
the one that says it is o.k. to take in,
to fill up,
to allow.
Without the first breath
there is nothing.
It is as if someone stopped the ocean’s rise and fall.
This morning the rain came
and blew winter through my front door.
I did not stop to gather the fallen branches
or stand to gaze at the clouds.
I unwrapped my hair and let it slide down my back
then pulled a knitted hat over my head.
I tried not to lick my lips
or leave myself vulnerable to the cold.
I breathed shallow breaths
as if the air were toxic
and taking it in would kill me.
It is hard not to remember
what can hurt you.
It becomes as involuntary as breathing.

Oh Oscar

Last night I watched the dribble.
The parade of chiffon and lace.
The golden tears of sincerity languished on listeners
too numb to care.
There were the famous and the longing to be famous.
The talented and the mediocre.
The broken and the botoxed.
They were all there,
polished and painted and perfected.
When I was little I wanted to be a part of all of that.
I thought it was glamorous.
The red carpet.
The photographers with their flashing light bulbs.
The limousines and champagne.
The fans screaming my name.
For years I dreamed of my acceptance speech.
What I would say,
and who I would destroy
in those brief thirty seconds.
Watching it last night,
it all felt empty,
like stealing broken cookies,
or downing Starbucks’ samples.
Sure, they’re sweet for a few moments,
but afterwards,
they leave me feeling sick.

Red

Everything is banging:
The mini-blinds in the den.
The black out shades in my bedroom.
The cords and boards and vents and pipes.
There is blowing in the hallway
and in the bathroom.
The heater is ticking like a bomb.
All that red,
glowing,
wanting to explode,
like me.

Wild Plums

Stillness is a song,
an idiot mind,
an egret in Florida standing at sunrise.
I find all the rest,
the rumba of war,
the plea of the sparrow,
the jagged milkweed,
just that,
a silent and snowy line
for me to cross.
Where is my mountain?
That which keeps me grounded
in imperfection and ghosts?
Has it run away like some lost dog
never to return?
I bury myself in the promise of poetry,
clinging to it like some gambler
holding out for one more roll,
one more ace.
When it doesn’t come
will I have nothing but despair to line my pockets?
For now,
I gather the wild plums
of tomorrow
with childlike abandon
certain
I can stave off
mediocrity
another day.

Highly Recommended

She’s listening to clairvoyants now,
and having EFT sessions,
and paying pet psychics to come over and communicate with her dead dog.
She’s going to tarot card readings,
and having herbal allergy testing done,
and going to acupuncturists,
even though she barely has one hundred dollars in her two accounts.
When I hang up the phone after speaking with her,
I feel scared.
She is so certain,
all because some “highly recommended” clairvoyant said so.
She told her she’ll get her job,
and her license, and sell her house in five months,
if she fixes it up some,
and gets a realtor.
Doesn’t sound very psychic to me.
The weird part is,
she believes every word they tell her.
She doesn’t doubt any of them.
The shaman.
The psychic.
Or the herbalist.
She pays them money and they tell her what she wants to hear.
Maybe I am the one being too cynical.
I seem to have lost my faith in most things.
My future feels as dead as the fish I kissed this morning.
Still, I don’t believe the answer to everything is to pay someone.
If I want to communicate with my dog,
I go up on the hill and sit by his grave and listen.
I don’t need to pay someone seventy-five dollars to tell me what he’s thinking.
I know.

Fly

We are dragging our feet through the snow,
across the ice
and black
parking lot
of winter.
The dog,
you and me,
the bread we ate
still warm in our bellies,
curled up in a ball on the purple rug
waiting for winter to pass
like a tummy ache.
Tomorrow we will wear sweaters and sit outside in the sun
and wonder how we were ever felt cold at all.
It is like that.
Our days
pass before us like seagulls on their way to the beach.
One moment we are in love,
the next alone.
In summer
we long for cool.
In winter, the reverse.
We are always wanting.
I do not think the birds think about such things.
They simply fly.

Finding Max

Finding a home for Max
while the blood still flows.
Last night
stained sheets
heart shaped
blood.
Cramping and bleeding
and dreams of what might have been.
I dreamed of new parents for Max
and how empty my den would be without him.
I told my therapist I didn’t want to keep him,
but I don’t think that’s true.
I told her I wanted to write
and be alone
but I don’t think that’s true.
For too long I have thought that the only way to have my life
was to be alone,
to keep everything away.
Love.
Children.
Even a wandering dog.
I told myself that I cannot have
if I want to be.
Great artists live in isolation
with commitments to no one
right?
They observe the world but don’t take part in it.
They are forever on the sidelines watching
with saucer-like eyes.
Everything is fodder for their next story.
The waiting room of girls,
stupid and uneducated.
The Southern kitchen of pies.
The pale walls of rest homes.
The neglected animals waiting to die.
The neighborhood scandal.
The missing dentures left on the elevator floor.
The yellow rose put out in the foyer to honor the dead.
Everything is something.
I think about Trouble
up on the hill,
the grass growing thicker over him day after day.
I think about how many months it has been
and how much it still hurts.
I think about my life,
all that I want for it,
all that it is not.
The new puppy before me.
The man I love.
My heart,
ready to burst with all that I see,
all that I have kept inside.
Perhaps I will keep him after all.

Courage

It is a lonely life,
a sad life,
a life where all our choices add up to all that we are
and all that we are not.
The choice to have a child or not
leads to a life alone
or a life of future generations.
I never thought much about it,
but now that I am running out of time,
I realize I’ve made my choice.
This is the end of the line.
There will be no more of whatever I am,
and that’s o.k.
It’s sad,
but it’s o.k.
I don’t want to repeat the past.
I don’t want to make a child a victim of my neurosis.
I look at my parents and think,
as I’ve always thought,
that they never should have had children.
What right did they have to bring my sister and myself
into their insanity?
I was fine where I was.
I was happy before I came.
Did they have so little care for me
that they couldn’t stop what they were doing for even a few moments
to worry whether or not they were hurting me?
The fighting and screaming?
The hitting and slamming of doors?
The leaving and returning over and over again?
Now, I am frightened.
I live on the edge,
always waiting for the next shoe to drop.
I didn’t deserve to grow up in a house like that
and I don’t deserve to feel that way now.
I don’t want to pass on my pain,
like passing on green eyes and brown hair,
or long legs and big teeth.
It is my job to protect the unborn,
to save them from the same misery I had,
to save myself from those that hurt me now.
If I can stop the cycle of abuse
then maybe,
I’ve done more than give life,
I’ve saved life,
and that’s just as courageous.

Noise

It is hard not to react to it all.
His screaming.
His depression.
Her dementia.
Her thievery.
Being bit.
Being late.
Being worried all the time about life.
Today I walked on the hill with the dog I haven’t named
and tried to forget all that is.
I focused on the short brown grass and the green struggling to bloom beneath it.
I looked at the green buds rising through the mud.
I felt the branches of my bare maple
and dreamed of soft leaves coming.
I forgot about the noises in my head
and listened to the wind.
It has been too long since I just walked in the woods to walk.
Too long since I sat by myself by the river and listened to no one and nothing
but its babble.
Life is beautiful.
It is here waiting for me to stop and look at it.
The rest is just
noise.

Leap of Faith

It is a leap of faith
to become a parent.
It is a leap I lack,
an inability to jump.
A fear of the unknown and what God holds in his candy box for me.
I envision a child capable of the most heinous crimes,
a child who would regard me with horror,
a child who would make my every moment a nightmare.
In short,
I envision the Bad Seed.
I think about what this child would do to my relationship with my partner.
I think about how many sleepless nights we would have.
No more sitting next to each other to cuddle,
but rather the thing always between us,
pressing his or her way against us,
watching us to see what we do.
A test.
One night after another.
Every day a new adventure.
I think about the hitting and biting and screaming and crying.
Then I think about the three of us lying together in the tall grass looking up at the stars
and counting them all.
I think about birthday parties and Christmases
and mile markers
like first steps
and first dates.
I think about my patience
and wonder if I would have enough.
I think about my fear
and pray I would not pass it on.
I think about my childhood
and wonder why my parents ever had me.

Coming Down

It’s pouring.
Big sheets of rain are coming down.
Today, he is in his cage
and I am across from him in my chair.
He is trying to get food out of his Kong.
I am trying to get words out of my head.
He is bored.
I have a headache and wish that I could tell the future.
He is in the moment,
stretched out on his back,
legs spread,
body open to the world
with no thought of tomorrow.
I am one giant thought
oiled and brooding,
watching
the sky get darker.

The Forgiven

If this keeps up
I won’t be poor for long.
If this keeps up
he’ll have to eat his words
and stop telling me
I don’t know what a put is.
He sits in that blue velvet recliner,
the one I bought him for twenty bucks,
telling me how stupid I am,
telling me I don’t know anything,
telling me I’m not a doctor.
Maybe so,
but I’m not the one who gambled away everything.
I’m not the one who tosses down valium like popcorn.
I’m not the one who is too stupid to know I’m being eaten away
by a disease day after day.
I’m not the one who doesn’t know what day it is
or repeats the same question twenty seven times in an hour.
I used to be his favorite.
Now, I’m his favorite target.
I try to hold it in.
I try not to argue back.
I try to just visit him,
cook for him,
give him his pills and leave.
But the truth is,
I’d like to smash his face in.
I’d like to take that rusty metal fry pan that sits on the stove
and whack him across the head
just to make him to shut up.
But I know I can’t do that.
So I tell myself it is the disease.
I tell myself he is not who he used to be.
I tell myself
to forgive him.

Your Neighborhood 'Y'

What falls on my head isn’t the soft rapping
of problems unsolved
but the hard thwacking of
the trip not taken.
The pill not swallowed.
The broken bottle left in the kitchen sink to cut me later.
The promise of showers and vegetables.
The midnight phone calls of heart attacks and pneumonia.
The Social Security check lost or forgotten.
The gripe of constipation.
The flood of diarrhea.
It isn’t glamorous,
or sexy,
or collagen producing.
To say the least,
it is beyond trying.
All this worry,
this desire to fight the flood of impossibility.
I wait for phone calls form attorneys and doctors,
and bus drivers,
and organizations.
I sit on edge for phone call after fucking phone call
and do my best to keep my head.
Yesterday,
my new plan for them,
the one I was positive would work,
was shot to Hell.
Seems my father is too political,
too atheistic,
too radical,
for the seniors at the ‘Y’.
According to the program director,
he’s offended some people there.
Like I give a damn.
Those Martha White Bread women need to loosen up
and get a sense of humor.
They say they know God,
but all they know is their tiny little world.
Better not shake it up,
better not let someone come and break bread at their table who has different ideas,
like atheism.
Things must be gentile.
Southern.
Proper.
But underneath, the belly writhes with pettiness and gossip.
Underneath, any one who is not like one of them is shunned.
“We’re not set-up for someone with his needs.”
“What needs are those, I asked.”
“Well, someone with Alzheimer’s.”
“It’s not like he defecated on the floor,” I said.
“What exactly did he do?” I pressed.
“He spoke against God.”
Spoke against God.
Wow.
That surely must be grounds for removal.
I thought this country was founded on free speech.
I guess not.
The ‘Y’ promotes itself as being for “everyone,”
but they don’t mean “everyone.”
Only those that watch the Fox news channel
and wave a flag and support the moron we have in office are ‘Y’ worthy.
Only those that eat mayonnaise on their turkey sandwiches are acceptable.
Saying there isn’t a God is tantamount to burning the flag,
or denouncing apple pie,
or believing in Communism.
My father told me he didn’t want to go to the ‘Y’.
He said he wasn’t comfortable around Christians.
Turns out he was right.
Just when I had gotten him to finally let go of his prejudices,
he got slapped in the face with theirs.

Confessions

I am trying to get back to basics.
Meditation.
Yoga.
Eating the way I tell everyone I eat.
Up by 7 a.m.
At my computer by 9 a.m.
No more checking the internet or email
or what the market is doing.
Just sitting down to write,
like I did when I lived in Santa Monica.
There,
every day was the same.
At my computer by 10 a.m.
after an hour and a half walk on the beach.
Writing for two hours,
a break for lunch,
and back at my desk till 5 p.m.
I liked my little schedule.
The consistency of it.
The formality of it.
It was always the same
day after day,
like the sun in L.A.
I rarely veered from it
or got bored by the tediousness of it,
or wished for a different life.
I was content being a writer.
I didn’t want to spend the day in Malibu,
star gazing.
Or wish for weeks at the beach in Cabo San Lucas.
I didn’t want a job where I had to deal with other people
or make small talk.
I didn’t want to be a doctor,
like my mother wanted.
Or a lawyer,
like everyone said I should be.
Or any other JOB.
Writing wasn’t a job,
it was part of who I was,
like breathing.
Without it,
I was dead.

Made From Scratch

Today it is gray and cold
and the snow that was promised never came.
I left the lights on last night
hoping to see it fall,
but when morning arrived,
the grass was still green
and there was nothing but disappointment in the air.
It is like that now.
One promise after another
left unfulfilled.
I arrived at their apartment
to find them both dressed.
She in her grey pants and green sweater.
He in his khakis,
both looking more alive than usual,
both excited to see the new puppy.
I cooked them broccoli and ravioli
and mashed potatoes made from scratch.
I helped her with her pills and her shot
and made them scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast.
I watched her lie on the bed while the puppy licked her face
over and over
nipping at her ears.
She laughed and screamed like a child.
He told me adopting the dog
was one of the only good things I ever did in my life.
We sat with them for two hours talking and watching the cooking channel
and promising them trips we would never take with them.
At noon,
my father opened up a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup,
stuck it in the microwave,
nuked it,
and ate it.
He didn’t even bother to add the required can of water to it.

Colors

Finding a home has never been easier,
than pulling back the covers of my mind
and letting myself swim into the blue of morning.
The black sock by my bed,
the green knitted hat of winter,
the one I swore I would never wear
rests on my table
stretched from use.
I once told myself how things would and wouldn’t be,
what I would and wouldn’t do.
But those vows were easily forgotten
like my high school journal
and sweaty backseats.
Now there are cords to untangle
and envelopes scattered like raisins.
The pull of t-shirts and jeans
follows me from room to room
like a ghost I can not escape.
My innocence,
once pure and inviting
has been marred
by the lies of others.
Now when I walk,
I leave no trail of white
to find my way back.

Jump For The Moon

We are on a new adventure,
you and I.
There will be hills to climb
and rivers to cross
and car trips and backpacks and socks.
We will sneak into hotel rooms
and restaurants
and wheel down grocery stores aisles
when no one is looking.
We will explore parks and beaches
and castles.
I will show you snakes and toads and turtles
and butterflies
and you will unearth creatures I never knew existed.
We will be best friends,
you and I,
fighting over balls and toys and sticks.
I will teach you right from wrong
and you will teach me patience.
You will teach me how to jump for the moon
and I will learn to catch it.

Max and June

This morning they stayed home.
I didn’t make them go to the Y
for spaghetti and meatballs
or attend a senior yoga class.
Instead,
I let them stay in their room and watch “Some Like It Hot.”
Neither of them wanted to go out in to the cold.
They were both happy with their bag of air popped popcorn, their corn beef sandwiches,
and a bowl of soup.
I didn’t worry that they needed stimulation
or that they would get charged for a lunch they didn’t
show up to eat.
I just let them stay home.
After all,
it’s their lives.
There comes a point when I have to stop trying to get them
to be and do what I would like them to be
and just accept them for who they are:
A man with Alzheimer’s
and a woman with dementia.

Nameless in Nashville

He is asleep.
Curled up in a ball,
nose pressed against the metal gate.
He is content to sleep
and play and eat and poop.
I am sleepy just looking at him.
Last night he kept us up all night,
crying
and peeing and needing us with him,
acting like he would die
without constant touching.
Now, when it is too late for us to go back to sleep,
he is content to rest by himself.
The baby fat folds of skin he has yet to grow into
hang over his crate.
Every so often he yawns and reaches his head toward the sky.
Then, exhausted by the effort that small movement took,
he returns to slumber.
He is adorable.
We have yet to name him.
Oscar,
Oliver,
Archie,
Charlie,
Bentley,
and Yudel,
are just a few of the names we have been batting around,
but none of them seem quite right.
My father wants us to name him Max,
after him,
but I’m not sure how I’d feel about having my father with us
twenty-four hours a day.
I know the name will come to me eventually,
just like potty training.
Hopefully, the sooner
the better.

Scarface

If it were up to me,
I don’t think I would have ever gotten a dog.
The only reason I had one in my life at all
was because he came to me
and I felt like I had no other choice but to keep him.
Left to my own devices,
I never would have taken the plunge.
I would have wanted to,
but I would have stopped and thought about the reality
of
feedings,
vet appointments,
obedience,
and
poop,
and I would have walked away.
Saying yes to things,
anything,
is getting harder and harder for me to do.
I tend to over think things.
I always have.
I’ve talked myself out of motherhood and marriage,
trips to Mexico and the Dominica Republic,
Japan, going out to dinner on New Years Eve,
and the Midnight Jamboree.
I don’t know if I’m being smart or stupid.
But the net result is I am making my world smaller and smaller
and my experiences fewer and fewer.
It is as if the picture book of my life has stopped adding pages.
Most people don’t contemplate the broken ankles and possible torn Achilles
of ski trips and marathons,
they just go do them
and deal with the doctor bills later.
They send out Christmas photos of their children
and marvel at how fast they are growing
while I keep a pregnancy test on my bathroom counter
and live in terror of what I would do if I ever saw a plus in the little window.
They plan dinners and parties and vacations
and work forty hours a week while they raise two children
while I eat at home alone
and barely keep my head afloat with no one but myself
to care for.
As for dinner parties,
I’ve never had one
nor would I know how.
Other people seem to open up their arms and embrace life.
Their lives are about having experiences,
good and bad ones.
My life is about escaping
with as few scars as possible.

Jesus Without God

I can imagine Jesus
without God
sitting at a restaurant
ordering steak and eggs
trying to remember what on earth
he is doing here.
No direction.
No blessed father telling him his mission.
Just Jesus sitting at a counter in his long white robe
eating bite after greasy bite.
Would he turn to crime?
Penniless and lost.
Or would his innate goodness prevail
and lead him to his divine work?
Would Jesus have a clue what he should be doing with his life
without God to guide him?
Or would he catch a bus to Mexico
and spend day after day lying in the sun
drinking tequila?
Without God
I fear Jesus would be a lost soul
haunted by dreams of crucifixes and Hebrews.
Men and women would be instinctively drawn to him
but he would be lost as to why.
He would spend days in front of the mirror staring at himself,
trying to understand what it is people see in him.
He would stretch out his hands and gaze at his long fingers,
rub his wrists,
and his neck and his forehead
and worry.
He would spend days wasting away in meaningless jobs:
a postman,
a plumber,
a carpenter,
a bus driver,
always knowing there was something more he was supposed to be doing
but unable to find out what.

Waiting For The Pot

They have found another polyp inside my uterus,
an ugly pronged creature clinging to me like a
deformed suckling babe.
Three years ago they removed two
while I lay sleeping in white.
I woke in a haze
to the sounds of nurses and monitors beeping at me.
I thought that was it forever
and I was through with surgeons.
Now they are talking of more
and I am unwilling.
Wasn’t once enough
to be scraped and cut
like a side of meat?
I am not some rabbit on a hook
waiting for the pot.
They said it happens.
Polyps can return
like unwelcome guests
and long lost relatives.
I just didn't expect them back so soon.
Tonight I am pulling up my welcome mat
and locking the front door.

Still Here

Could you throw me the ball?
That one in the corner.
The one with the red stripe and the yellow dots.
The one no one has played with
for years.
The dull one.
I know you were looking for something else.
Something shiny and new.
Something no one has touched
like a golden haired virgin.
Go ahead.
Pick it up.
It won’t hurt you.
You can touch it.
It’s round and beautiful
and resilient.
See?
What does it matter how long it has sat
unnoticed?
It still has bounce left in it.
It’s still worthy.
Maybe it’s better than all the others.
It’s still here.

Satisfied

What are we doing in this so called life?
Pursuing the dollar
without remorse?
Are our energies fixed on finding love
and keeping it close like a caged bird?
Is it shiny objects that make us move?
Like a cat having a mirror dangled before its eyes?
Or is it fame and the adoration of others
that fuels us?
Are we nothing more than selfish beings of desire
wanting only the biggest and best and grandest and richest
for ourselves regardless of the suffering of others?
Are our biggest worries about what car we should drive
and if we should get it with leather?
Or whether or not our kitchen needs a makeover?
Have we gotten so caught up in the drama of our own lives
that we have forgotten those around us who have far less?
I am guilty of the questions I ask.
I have worried over dollars
and watched my portfolio bloom
like some sort of Scrooge
counting my pennies
and smiling over each new copper accumulated,
only to be devastated by every loss.
Now I can see
what a waste of time.
What a fruitless waste.
I say that I am a humanitarian
because I don’t eat meat,
but what have I done for my fellow man
or animal?
Have I taken some poor refugee into my home?
Have I taken a few hours out of my day to visit an animal in a shelter
who has no one or nothing and has no promise of another day?
Have I done anything about the women in the Congo who are being raped?
Have I given my time to a child whose parents are addicts and unable to tell them
they love them?
No,
and for that I am ashamed.
I have let myself focus on the wrong things,
mundane things.
This is not what God wanted for me
or for any of us.
I pray to focus on what matters,
to keep myself always reaching for the higher good,
to remember I am here to serve others
especially the voiceless.
If I can do that,
I will be satisfied.

Strange

Once in August,
the city was silent and attentive.
It came to me
like a butterfly
and landed upon my hand.
Oh,
but I digress.
Did you see that fat woman in the Indian restaurant?
The one with the green cap on her head and the
pink stockings.
Strange.
It is getting harder for me to eat out.
Each bite is a nightmare
into a world unfamiliar.
Now the sky is turning grey
and the snow will begin to fall.
I wish I could be like that snow,
landing wherever I wanted,
tied to no one or nothing,
just falling,
falling,
falling.
Last summer I planted tomatoes in my yard.
They grew red and ripe and round.
I ate them before the insects came
and before the sun baked them into sauce.

Him

Images of him still come to me:
Him
in the backseat of my car barking at every cow and horse
we passed on our way to Chicago.
Him
running through the creeks at Warner Park
after some poor ground squirrel that was minding his own business
and didn’t see him coming.
Him
lying on his bed and staring at me for hours
hoping I would get up from my writing
and play with him or take him for a walk.
Him
coming in to my room in the morning
and yelling at me to get up,
as if he somehow knew how little time we had left together.
Him
barking at his meal before he ate it.
Him
humping his bed afterwards.
Him
sighing.
Him
struggling to howl out that pathetic howl of his
whenever a fire engine went by.
Him
jumping into my bed (till he couldn’t jump that high anymore)
and then taking up the entire bed once he was in.
Him
getting me out of my sadness.
Him
greeting me at the door with his tail always wagging.
Him
always ready for an adventure.
Him.

Dead Moon

It is time I found
the dead moon.
The part of me that beats
red
and says:
This is the rainy season.
It is time for buttered toast and jam
and the white eyes of a doll’s head.
It is time for cramming sugar into hallways
and squeezing milk out of flowers
and tasting colors and cocoa with cream.
I want to see the black of black
and know how far the sky.
It is time for the daisies
to suck down the ants
and have no remorse.

Yoga

In yoga
I follow my breath
down into my fingers and toes
out my nose,
and into my buttocks.
My body aches more now
than it used to.
I don’t know if that’s age or
the three car wrecks I have been in,
but whatever it is,
I hurt.
I look around and see others in ‘pigeon pose’
and wonder if they are in as much pain as I am in.
They all look so serene
draped over their legs like submissive swans.
It is all I can do to keep from screaming.
I think of the pain of so many years locked up inside me,
finding its way into the very fabric of my muscles
and I worry:
Can yoga erase years of abandonment?
Can it teach me to lighten up and flow?
Can it make the mental chatter in my head vanish
so I can sleep at night
without thought?
Can it teach me to live in the present
and not be concerned with what happened fifteen minutes earlier
or what’s coming an hour later when I leave this room?
Can it….?
Shut up, Diana.

I'm Sorry

I am really really really fucking angry.
I want my life back.
I want to be able to sit down and write and have no one,
I mean no one,
bother me.
I am sick of trips to the ER
and doctor’s appointments and going to St. Thomas
over and over again.
I am tired of answering the same questions my father asks day after day
while Alzheimer’s rots his brain.
I am sick of looking up at the hill and wishing my dog were still alive.
I am sick of waking up exhausted
even though I’m going to bed at 8 o’clock.
I am sick of having a sister I can’t trust.
I am sick of speeding tickets and cops
and people who have nothing better to do in this life
than make other people’s lives miserable.
I am sick of politics and pundits,
and the media,
and all the bullshit,
and the lack of truth,
there is so little truth left in this world.
I feel like I am coming apart at the seams.
I showed up in court today for a speeding ticket and the judge was late,
sick with some flu or something.
The damn police officer said she was sorry.
Sorry.
Great.
I guess I could just say I’m sorry too and that would be the end of it,
right?
Yeah,
right.
So now we’re all supposed to just sit there
and wait for some sick,
probably very pissed off judge to show up
and decide our fate,
as if there is any doubt as to what our fate will be.
Some world.
Some great fucking world.

Soldiers of Joy

In the den,
the Christmas decorations are back in their boxes
waiting to go up to the attic
so they can sit in the cold
and dark
for another year.
They do not mind the dust,
or the spiders that crawl past them,
or the rare mouse that scampers across
on his way to who knows where.
They do not mind being cooped up
in cramped quarters
only to be given a few short weeks to shine
downstairs.
They are soldiers of joy,
here to help me remember
there still is magic left
in this world.

Lemon In Water

If I sleep
I will wake up foggy,
unable to bring myself back
from the Mexican haze
rice and beans and guacamole have left me in.
There must have been MSG in the food
for I am mole faced now,
eyes closing back in my head,
mouth hung open
and dry like some plant left out in the sun
for too many days.
Normal Mexican food doesn’t do this to me
but this was Americanized Mexican food
staffed by waiters who call you “Amigo”.
They never speak mock Mexican in real Mexican restaurants,
nor do they have tables of bubble-headed teenagers
exchanging gifts and talking about endless hours of crap.
There are no bumper stickers on the backs of trucks that say “torture a terrorist”
or ones that support our current administration.
There are no fat white people jostling about trying to look at the Sunday football line-up
while they chug down a couple of margaritas.
Nor are there women in Christmas sweaters totting Oprah’s recommended read.
In real Mexican restaurants they don’t bring chips and salsa.
The fish arrives to the table whole,
eyes still in tact.
The waitresses wear tight jeans and bring tall glasses of Horchata.
They give you blank stares when you try to speak your high school Spanish to them.
In real Mexican restaurants they serve Caldo de Res,
and pozole and tripe,
things most Americans would never eat.
In real Mexican restaurants there is no Speedy Gonzalez plate
and no one ever gets lemon in their water.

Happy New Year

It’s a new year
and I’m hungry
for more than just rice and beans.
I want to walk outside in the cold
and feel awake.
I want the cold on my cheeks
and the crisp grasp of winter in my hair.
I want to take off my clothes and get warm
under the covers,
snuggle down into the down
and drink in the peace of flannel.
I want to savor a cup of hot tea
with a freshly baked muffin
and just be.
It’s like that now.
I am waking up to all that is
and could be,
like putting jalapenos in my cornbread.
For the first time.
I am realizing
I don’t have to wake up scared,
I can just
wake up.