Cut On The Bias

Outside my window three more have gone up,
father.
Brick and steel and wood.
Gravel everywhere.
The sound of hammers and generators.
Hardhats on hard men.
Hands clutching blankets in search of progress.
New structures taking the place of an empty lot
where an old grocery store used to be.
And still it beats.
People used to hang out and sell drugs
and do their laundry, and buy pork rinds and beer.
Now they will sell for 400k
and my view of the street will be blocked,
shortened,
reduced to nothing more
than a blinking green light.
Tell me more, father.
Tell me of oxygen and blue skies
and the way people used to sing the blues
sitting on concrete
while men who held scalpels cut on the bias.
Tell me of the strudel makers.
The ones who could roll out a pie crust flaky as a fall leaf,
whose hands were so strong they could wrench chickens’ necks
in one snap,
 whose teeth were full of gold when they smiled.
Where are they in these new town homes with the stainless appliances
and the granite countertops?
Do they even care about whose tears they are blotting?
Tomorrow the men in trucks will come again
and my world will become even smaller.

Route 66

My life has turned into a wait and wonder, and worry, ‘why’.
A do nothing bus ride full of screaming people
piled on thick as meringue
unable to fight their way out.
A wheel-chaired Korean Veteran
puffing himself up against the world
fighting with some woman
three rows back.
A shit-filled diaper
help-less to be changed,
no matter how loud the cries.
More and more they come.
The feet.
The hands.
The eyes.
The mouths.
All cussing the same driver.
And still, I haven’t arrived.
I watch the street signs.
The lip-stained billboards.
The high-heeled leopard strutting her way
across Michigan Avenue.
The bagged and bag less.
The hungry and well fed.
All begging to get off
the damn bus.

Before The Phone Rang

There is nothing I can do.
Now that he is in a hospital bed with tubes and needles sticking in him.
He is pale and sweaty and vomited.
They are trying to force fluids into him, trying to bring him back. 
I am hundreds of miles away
thirty-two floors up,
watching the waves lap at the shore,
and worrying.
This afternoon,
I lay on the table with needles in me,
trying to relax. Everything bothered me.
The wind blowing in through the open window.
The music in the distance.
The needle in my leg kept aching while the ones in my ears kept itching.
I felt pinned down, panicked,
the opposite
of what was supposed to be happening.
When it was over,
I didn’t get the “relaxed-high” I usually get.
I sat on the dark wooden bench
outside my room and put on my tennis shoes.
A few moments later,
my cell phone rang.
A nurse from my father’s assisted living facility
was calling to tell me the paramedics had just arrived
and were taking him to the hospital.
I don’t know if that’s why I couldn’t relax,
or not, but I think
some part of me
knew something was wrong
even before the phone rang.

The Drake

I’m sitting on the red sofa.
Back curved,
legs crossed
like a twisted pretzel
listening
to the white noise of Lake Shore Drive.
This morning I passed an old black man
on a bike.
His face was etched with years,
carved like a fine wooden bowl.
Each groove a testament
to his every breath.

Letting The Earthworms Starve

I think about death,
like lips curled round a plum
taking in all its flavors.
When I was nine and my grandmother died
I kissed her forehead as she lay in her coffin.
I hadn’t expected her to be
so cold and hard,
so unforgiving.
After I touched her, I cried,
and didn’t want to ever
die.
I didn’t ever want to feel
like that.
I wanted a way out, of this body,
without dying,
but how could I get out without
dying?
There was no way out but through death,
and yet,
I couldn’t stand the thought of dying.
I was mad at my parents for ever having had me.
Didn’t they know they had sentenced me to death?
I couldn’t make sense of it.
The circles in my brain
went round and round.
For months it was all
I could think about,
crying in the kitchen,
and in my bed at night,
and at school on the playground.
While other children played,
I thought about death.
Being buried beneath the ground with the earthworms
eating my flesh.
Screaming with no one to hear me.
Feeling suffocated
in the dark,
locked
in my tiny box
alone.
I thought about death so much,
I made myself sick.
I vomited.
Then one day, I stopped thinking about it.
I put it out of my mind.
Recently, I have found myself thinking about death again.
Not in the same terrified way I did as a child,
but as a woman
seeing my life pass quicker than I had ever imagined.
I know, now, I am moving towards death
like a swimmer caught in a riptide
being pulled out to sea.
I cannot fight against it.
I cannot swim harder than its pull.
Death will win.
But I also know I cannot just float
and let myself be taken.
I cannot sit idly by and wait for the inevitable.
I must fight.
I must forget what awaits me
and throw myself into every second of this life.
I must let the earthworms starve.

Yes 1

Yes,
go.
I am certain there will be pancakes.
You know the kind,
Big,
white,
fluffy
ones.
That hang on your lips and
Soak
up the syrup.
Because toothpicks
and almonds
are made for each other.
No,
That’s wrong.
The dog is in the park.
Trouble.
Running black.
As if still
here.
I dreamt about him last night.
He came to my bed
and curled up beside me.
Pressed himself so hard
against me,
I woke up warm.
My boy.
My soft boy.
I was a mother once.

Ode to L.A.

I do not miss you.
You with your smoggy, painfully, sunny skies.
You with your line of traffic
that crawls hour after hour, mocking me
and everyone else stupid enough to be stuck in it.
You with your tanned perfectly
toned bodies,
who worship your superficiality,
as if it were an alternative religion,
to sell their souls to.
You with your collection of cheap blondes,
over-processed sunflowers destined to remain exactly as they are
till they are placed in the ground at Forest Hills Cemetery.
I do not miss your monotonous weeks and months,
that look the same,
everyday
no matter what the season.
Nor do I miss the phony frenzy,
where everyone is judged solely on their next “big” project,
or who they just had lunch with,
or how many zeros are on their check.
I do not miss you.
You with your swank affairs and Beverly Hills mansions.
You with your Rolexes and lapdogs wearing diamond collars.
I do not miss you and your winding roads
up Topanga,
barfing to get to an art class that would leave me
emotionally defeated.
I do not miss your sun.
Or the teeth bleached whiter than the clouds.
Or the ever-present feeling that at any moment
I could be the next “hot” thing or just another footnote
in your Hollywood hills.
I do not miss your
sushi bars, (well, I guess I miss those a little).
Or your Farmer’s Market with the twelve-dollar corned beef sandwiches.
Or the receptionists trained in the art of exclusion,
except when they’ve deemed you worthy by some higher up.
I do not miss you and your parking spaces,
the fights over them,
the four letter words,
the pointed middle fingers.
I do not miss waiting hours to go to a movie,
or standing in lines at grocery stores no matter what time of night.
I do not miss your earthquakes
that left me naked in a doorway,
stumbling over broken glass and 20 inch t.v.’s thrown to the ground,
as if they were styrofoam props from a movie set.
I do not miss casting agents
and stars who would attempt rape in dressing rooms
and then laugh about it.
I do not miss you and your eighty-degree Christmases
that never felt like Christmas at all.
I do not miss you.
I do not miss you.

Suffering in Beauty

Yesterday,
walking back
I passed
the muttering,
freaks
in the city.
A man covered in filth
kicking a can across the street
screaming profanities.
The can flying
endlessly,
like the kicking.
A woman on her cell phone,
holding a baby,
yelling at someone
who wasn’t paying her support.
I wondered if she even cared about what she was doing
to the eardrums of the child in her arms.
They were both so loud,
so miserable,
so completely insane,
it occurred to me
that it is not enough to have the sun,
or the flowers,
or the sea to gaze upon.
It is not enough to have plums,
and figs, and lemons at your fingertips.
Or to walk in the hills and smell honeysuckle
and eucalyptus at every turn.
Suffering exists,
even in beauty.

Forty Minutes

Tomorrow I’m getting on a plane
to fly to California.
Unfortunately, it’s not a non-stop.
It makes a stop in Denver,
which is weird because my parents live
in Denver and
I’m not stopping to see them.
I’ll only be in Denver for about fifty minutes.
In the old days my parents might have gotten
in their car,
driven to the airport
and met me at the gate.
We would have talked for forty minutes
before I would have gotten on the next plane
to go wherever it was I was going.
But now, everything’s different.
They can’t drive anymore.
And even if they could,
they couldn’t get through security anymore,
without a ticket.
There’s no more surprise visits to airports.
Nor is there any more hummus
or yogurt in carry-on bags.
It’s all so serious now.
It’s too bad.
I would have enjoyed seeing them
for forty minutes.

Why The Dead Sing

I know why the dead
sing,
underground,
in the dark,
bound in boxes.
They have no one
to tell them
they can’t.
They have no one watching them
to see
what they’ll do.
If they flail their arms about
like wet mop heads,
who will care?
If their faces contort
all sunken
like the ripest of cantaloupes,
and their tongues
flop from their mouths
pale and white,
and helpless,
who will judge them?
Who would dare criticize the dead?
To unearth
them.
To disturb their sonorous slumber?
A choir of corpses,
shrouded in linen and lace.
Man and woman and child
locked arm and arm
unfettered by worry
or fear
marching on.
Marching.
Marching.
Marching.
But to what beat?
There is no heartbeat to listen to.
No pulse.
No rhythm,
to guide them in their song.
Nothing to feel when their pale hands are placed upon their vacant chests.
And yet,
they sing.
They sing.

Expectations

If I had to use one word to sum up my first trip in support of l V it would be, ‘expectations.’
What I ‘expected’ would happen, vs. what I didn’t.

Mark and I left at 6:00am on Tuesday to begin the five hundred mile,
eight hour and twenty minute drive to Raleigh, North Carolina.
We expected rain, because I had checked weather.com
pretty much incessantly over the past few days,
but we didn’t expect a rain so fierce it would leave us straining to see
out of the windshield and force us and everyone else around us
to put on their emergency lights just to avoid being hit.
Luckily, that was only the first hour, and the rest of the trip was just cloudy
with a few sprinkles.

The night before we left, we booked a hotel on Priceline,
choosing a 3.5 star hotel because the little arrow said, “best deal.”
So, we placed a $50 bid, and when it was accepted, we were thrilled.
It was apparently a 64% savings, meaning it must be pretty nice.

When we finally got off the highway, and pulled up to the hotel
our visions of downy-duvet cushiness vanished.
This couldn’t be it. Could it?
Was this hotel even in business?
There was no one there, except for a team of workers frantically putting on a new roof.
Blue plastic tarp covered the section that had yet to be redone.
How could this be a 3.5 star hotel?
Just half a star short of 4?
Priceline screwed us!

We got out of the car and walked into the lobby hoping things would improve.
They did, some.
It was an old style lobby, with marble floors
and a small store where you could buy shaving cream, band-aids and Coke.
There was also an outdated gigantic dining room…with no one eating in it.

We were handed our keys and then walked to our room.
The hallways were covered in a flowery beige wallpaper
and the carpets were a swirl of red and green.
None of it seemed to go together.
When I opened the door to our room,
the crazy décor continued, with added mustiness.
When I got into the room I headed straight for the beds.
If they were bad, I would attempt to get out of this Priceline “deal,” a feat I’m not sure has ever been done.
I quickly pressed on them, and surprisingly, they were good.
They were Sleep Number beds.
I could adjust them to whatever firmness I wanted.
I think I finally settled on 40.
And the room had something else going for it - it was quiet.

Agreeing to stay, I decided to take a hot shower.
The shower, however, was old,
and went from scalding hot to freezing cold and back again,
even when the rusty knob remained set in exactly the same position.
After a few minutes of jumping around in the shower trying to avoid third degree burns,
I gave up, got out, and tried to focus on why I was there – for my interview with Frank Stasio on WUNC
and for my in-store at All Day Records.

I hadn’t seen Frank in over nine years, (since he interviewed me for Fantasia Ball)
and I was really looking forward to seeing him again.
Over the years we had exchanged emails.
I always enjoyed hearing Frank’s musings about the world, which were deeply insightful.
I was looking forward to sitting down with him after the show (he mentioned a possible lunch in one email)
or having dinner and catching up on each other’s lives.
Instead, the next morning, I got an email from him telling me
that he wasn’t going to be able to have lunch after all….
Show tapings etc.
“That’s ok,” I thought.
I’m sure we’ll still have some time to talk after the taping.
Again, ‘expectations.’

What I hadn’t ‘expected’ was Frank and his staffs’ decision
to bring up my past, when I was briefly a Television Writer for “Full House,”
with a “this is your life, Diana Darby” kind of moment, complete with clip from the show.
It wasn’t the arc I was hoping for,
or the mood I wanted to set,
but I went with it.
Seventeen minutes later, the taping was over,
and Frank, who was incredibly busy, was helping us to the door.
We didn’t get to sit down and talk as I had hoped
and I was back in my car
before I knew
what had happened.

I left the studio feeling like I had driven 500 miles for nothing.
The seventeen-minute segment felt like three seconds
and I felt like some wind-up monkey in a box,
playing one song after another with very little time to talk about anything
that mattered.

I returned to my 3.5 star hotel and soothed my sorrow
on the treadmill in the workout room,
muttering to myself about what I “expected”
would have happened on the show vs. what actually did happen.

At 5 o’clock we decided to go check out Happy Hour at the hotel bar.
It turns out they don’t actually have Happy Hour in North Carolina.
MADD banned “Happy Hour” according to the bartender.
Now they have “food with drinks”.
It looks like Happy Hour, but you can’t call it that and you have to buy a drink
in order to have any of the food.
Anyway, we had been given two free Breakfast Buffets and two free drink coupons
to make up for some crackers left under our bed,
the faulty shower,
and the a/c unit that seemed to have a mind of its own.
I left my drink coupon in the room and didn’t want to go back and get it,
so Mark and I shared a Chivas.
I ate a few of his chips when the bartender wasn’t looking.
A man at the end of the bar, who was sitting with another man,
heard us talking and offered to buy me a drink.
When I refused, he offered to buy Mark one.
Neither of us quite knew what to think.

Then the man walked up to us and said he was the marketing director
at the hotel and he had been hired to completely remodel the hotel.
Then he proceeded to tell us about his life,
about the theatre company he founded in Miami,
and about his artist son,
how he had lost him for a while,
but now they were really close,
and about how miserable he had been following the path of a businessman.
I had had no expectations what so ever about this man,
or the Happy Hour, but somehow the intimacy I was hoping for earlier
was now being given to me by a total stranger
over a bowl of guacamole and chips.
I marveled at his honesty.
Did he realize some people go through their entire lives
and never reveal as much as he had in twenty-five minutes?
I wanted to kiss him, or hug him, or something.
But I had to go and get ready for the in-store at All Day Records.
So, I thanked him for the conversation.
He said he’d leave us two drinks for later.
I said I’d take him up on it after the show.

We got in the car and drove to the record store.
By now I was wishing I were on my way home to Nashville.
I was tired and I had very little hope of this show being anything.
When I walked into the store there was virtually nobody there,
except for the two guys who ran the record store and two other customers.
It was eight o’clock.
I was supposed to go on at eight o’clock.
A million thoughts went through my head.
All of them bad.
One of the guys got a chair and put it on a raised platform
at the front of the store.
Then he got out two very large speakers and the rest of a sound system.
He put one of the speakers outside the door to attract people.
My ‘expectations’ were low, beyond low.
NO one was there.
And it was raining.

I sat on my chair and started playing.
There was one guy at the counter buying records,
and another man thumbing through vinyl.
They listened politely, and applauded with each song.
But after about two songs, something changed.
Something kicked in.
Maybe it was the unearthly sound they had gotten me on that tiny sound system,
or the rainy sky,
or the fact that there was a small crowd gathering,
who were sitting and listening,
really listening.
But all of a sudden, something took over.
And before I knew it I was deep into my songs.
“Heaven” was nothing short of an exorcism,
which left me and the audience absolutely stunned.
In fact, I was so moved/confused by it, I couldn’t figure out what to play next.
I didn’t write out a set list because I figured I didn’t need one.
I’ve played enough shows to be able to pull out 10-15 songs at random.
But there I was, unable to play anything.
I reached for “Kierkegaard” and continued my descent.
Then, “Elena”, which left my voice breaking.
My hair was in my eyes and face, and my body was swaying.
I could feel the audience with me and yet I was completely alone in my very weird world.
Song after song came – “Crazy”, a song I usually leave the stage with,
and then “Snow.”

When I finished, the applause was huge.
I had given probably one of the best performances of my life,
in that tiny record store.
I felt drained and exhausted and HUNGRY
to return to the stage.
The show I had had no expectations for turned out to be
the best part of the trip.
Just like meeting the stranger at the hotel
who had been so open and vulnerable with me.

We thanked Ethan and Charlie at All Day Records
for having me and got in the car.
As we started driving the radio was set to WUNC.
I saw Frank Stasio’s name and “The State Of Things” lit-up on the display
and turned up the volume.
It was me!
They were airing a re-broadcast
of my performance from earlier that day.
I couldn’t believe it.
The timing was really incredible.
I missed maybe thirty seconds of a seventeen-minute segment.
I sat there listening,
waiting to cringe as I had that morning when we taped,
but I didn’t.
It was better than I had expected.

The next morning,
I sat in the enormous dining room of our hotel
and enjoyed my free breakfast buffet and marveled at the employees
who had been with the hotel for the last thirty years.
I liked this place,
weird wallpaper and all.
It was better than any new, 4 star hotel with perfect décor.
This place had soul.
And soul is a heck of a lot harder to come by
than new carpet.

Riding The 'L' Again

That same black man was on the train again today
asking for money.
Only this time
he needed a thirty-day pass.
This time
when he finished his speech,
no one gave him anything.
And this time,
I didn’t feel guilty.

Red Velvet

Come and see
the pink flesh.
You know the one
I speak of.
Curved and soft.
The forbidden.
Run your finger
over it.
There.
Yes.
Go slow.
Slow.
Or you will miss too much.
Do not be afraid
to touch,
inside.
To learn what makes it move.
To hear its secrets,
all of them.
You say it can not speak.
I say, you are not listening.
Come closer.
Closer.
There.
Now can you hear?
I thought so.

Acts of Culpability

So, this is how it is.
All my efforts
falling
on
not just deaf,
but severely deaf ears.
The family,
hard at work
casting votes
for their favorite child.
How sweet it is
to be
the one
incapable
of responsibility
for acts of culpability.
Spending run amok.
A closet full of dresses,
sandals,
and handbags,
all with the tags still attached.
Room after room of purchases.
A candy store
sickly sweet
with the smell of new.
A kitchen pantry
stuffed
with exotic teas and oils
from around the world.
A refrigerator imploding
with watermelons,
spinach, goat cheese, lettuce,
lemons, pineapple, and quail,
all growing mold
and rotting
while new deliveries arrive
to take their place.
Can they not see?
The pleas
keep coming,
to offer dollars,
help,
funds,
in her direction.
“She has no one.”
“Don’t be so hard.”
“Do you want her to starve?”
How many times have I heard their arsenal
used against me?
How many times have I been made to be
the hard-hearted one?
Yes,
I admit,
I am the responsible child,
living off rice and beans,
wearing old t-shirts and socks
with holes in them,
saving when I could spend.
But I do not begrudge my thrift.
I savor it.
I thank God
I do not have
her desire,
her disease.
I am satisfied to read
a book
on a couch
with a cup of tea.
Listen to the water lap
at the shore.
Watch minnows in search of sustenance.
Yes,
I am content in my plainness.
But I do not understand why I should be punished
for my mindfulness.
Am I not entitled to enjoy my half of the pie
at my own leisure?
Savor texture and flakiness and fruit ripe with sweetness?
She has wolfed down her half
and now has her eyes set on mine.
And what if I gave in?
In the morning she’d be hungry for more.
And all I would have would be a clean plate.

Riding the 'L'

The black man on the train
entered our car and in a very loud voice
asked for money.
Twenty-three dollars for a seven-day bus pass
so he could have transportation to go look for work.
He said he didn’t drink or do drugs and didn’t want to stand
on the corner begging for money.
He said he wanted to be a social worker
and he had resumes with him too.
When he was through with his speech,
everyone on the train sat with their heads down,
glancing at one another uncomfortably.
Nobody did anything.
Then, some touristy-looking white guy in the back handed him a dollar.
When he passed by me,
I didn’t give him anything.
I was pissed off.
I hated that he made his speech.
I didn’t want to hear it.
I didn’t ask to hear it.
I didn’t get on the train so I’d have to listen to his story.
I just wanted to make it back to my apartment
with my tofu noodle soup before it all leaked out.
Now, besides trying to get home,
I had to feel guilty.
I know he goes from car to car giving the exact same speech.
And I know someone on each car is giving him something.
Otherwise, he’d quit asking.
But what makes me so mad,
is that I don’t know what to believe.
Maybe he really is who he claims he is.
But maybe he isn’t.
Everyday, I pass by the same homeless people on the streets of Chicago.
Each one seems as bad off as the next.
And I want to help them all,
but I don’t know if the money I give would be going to drugs or cigarettes,
or if they own a house in some nice suburb
and they do this on the side rather than work some crappy job.
And that’s what makes me feel so bad -
I can’t trust them.
I want to do the right thing.
But I’m not sure what the right thing is.
I wish I had asked the man on the train to show me the inside of his pockets.
What if he already had twenty-three dollars in his pockets?
What if he had two hundred?
Then what?
Then he’d be a liar.
And I wouldn’t have to feel bad.
But I didn’t ask him anything.
Neither did anyone else.
Seems to me, if someone is going to make an announcement and claim all these things,
we should have the right to ask some questions.
But instead, we all just sat there with our heads down,
feeling guilty and annoyed and mainly guilty.
When the train stopped the black man made his way
through the emergency door
to the next car
and began his speech again.
Three gay looking guys sitting near me
laughed and snickered about him
and about how hard life was
and about the manicures
they were going to go get.
They were so mean-spirited about everyone and everything
that they annoyed me
much more than the poor black man.
At least he was sincere.
I stared at them, wishing
they would get off the train.
They did.
Three more stops to go.
I felt my soup slosh in its plastic container.
Next time, I’m taking the express bus.

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Crossing Delaware

To be honest,
there isn’t much I can
say
about ballet shoes
pointed
in first,
or the way some dancers
comb
their hair
into
big
round
buns.
Mine never holds.
It flops from side to side
like a geriatric breast,
until it finally breaks loose
sending the hair down my back,
in long embarrassing curls.
It’s easy to say
you understand
why note follows note,
or why silence comes
without warning.
But when the Nigerian cab driver turns left without looking,
and you are standing in the crosswalk,
none of it
will matter
anymore.

River Man

My man moves like the river.
Arching.
Bending.
Twisting
into space.
Arms and legs curving,
wrapping around me,
finding
the tiniest crevice
to slip inside.
My man isn’t shaken by adversity.
He keeps flowing
knowing there is nothing
that can keep him
from going
where he wants to go.
He will grow silent,
and still
for a time,
Sullen.
A brooding mass
pooled up,
and infinitely deep.
A green
I cannot see into
no matter how hard I try.
His power is more fierce
than any warrior’s.
His presence
can be felt
from miles away.
I know he is there
without having to look.
And when he is near,
I long to touch,
his body.
My man moves like the river.
An endless river.

The Taking Care of Hummingbirds

I have printed the forms
for each of us to sign,
so we will know
who gets what
when the time comes.
There is his stack and mine.
It is all there
in black and white.
The names of the people we love
or at least tolerate.
Our guilt money.
The taking care of hummingbirds.
I never worried about such things before.
But Sunday is gone.
Neither of us understands
how words on paper became so final.
Hands
painting
yellow and blue.
Innocent colors of streaks
running
down the page
settling
into carpet.
Everything seems so important now.
As if the wrong move
could mean my death.

Wildflowers

Their world is so small now.
Two queen beds.
One in the bedroom,
the other in their living room.
Two brown leather chairs with an ottoman
they rarely sit in.
A refrigerator full of diet soda
and peanut butter.
Half-eaten Ritz crackers and candy bars.
A bed strewn with watercolor pencils
and Chagal stencils.
Caretakers and pills.
Endless amounts of pills,
swallowed with applesauce and yogurt.
The long walk down the hall.
Three times a day
to a table for meals.
Photographs of families line their walk.
Each generation
smiling more stupidly than the one
before.
The pale pink walls.
The green patterned carpet,
lulling them to sleep.
The roses out their window.
Day after day,
it is always the same.
On good days,
they walk to the garden.
She pulls the head off a dead rose.
The white petals fall to the ground
and blow away.
On bad days,
they stay in their rooms
with the t.v. on
gathering dust.
And the mint keeps growing,
taking over
her little plot
of wildflowers.

From Above

As if the noise could end.
The hammering could
Stop
And I could
breathe
for a minute.
This back and forth
sawing,
lion growling,
nail-biting-torture
never ceases till
four-thirty on the dot.
Oh, and on the weekends.
But I’m never here on the weekends.
Everyday it comes.
From where,
I do not know.
It is as if the walls and the ceiling are possessed.
Just when I’m sure it’s coming from above,
it’s coming from next door.
And when I think it’s coming from next door,
it’s coming from above.
What the Hell are these people doing?
I mean, just how much can you do to a fifteen hundred square foot apartment?
Evidently, plenty.
If it were up to me, I’d live in it “as is.”
Just wheel in a really good bed,
a desk,
a couple of chairs,
and a sofa,
and start working.
Quietly.
Very quietly.
But these people here,
are more about style
than substance.
They’re more about “what’s in”
than what’s inside.
I see them in the elevators.
Dripping in diamonds and pearls.
Hair dyed bright red.
Lips dyed even redder.
Teeth whiter than humanly possible.
Perfume so strong it should come with a warning label
or at least a clothes pin.
Faces Botoxed and nipped and tucked and pulled
so many times
they could be wrapped in wax paper
and sold
as taffy.

A House Is Not A Home

Tonight I want to go home.
I want to be in my bed
with my sheets and my pillow.
I want to wake up to where I know.
I want grass and trees and white paint
on doors and windows.
I want the sound of crickets
and the taste of pressure-cooked brown rice.
I want my hot water bottle across my belly
and stillness.
I want someone to call me ‘baby’ or ‘honey’
and threaten to serve me a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy.
I want to drive across town in five minutes
and never worry if I’ll be hit by a cab, or a bus,
or a train.
I want to open my own mail
and throw out all the ads.
I want to be there when the phone rings
and listen for all the times it doesn’t.
I want to know who wants me.
And who doesn't.
I want to stare out behind the curtains
and watch the neighbors fight,
and then wait for the police to come.
I want to go home.
The only problem is
I don’t know where home is.
Home isn’t Nashville.
It never has been
and it never will be.
And home isn’t L.A.
with it’s endless palm trees and oppressive sunshine.
The only home I’ve ever known was in Houston,
but that house was torn down over five years ago.
And that house was never a home.
The truth is,
I’ve never had a home.
I’ve had roofs over my head.
And places where I’ve kept my stuff,
but I’ve never had a home.
I do not know the feeling of walking in the door and saying to myself, “it’s good to be home.”
Instead,
when I turn on the lights,
I walk in to silence
and the fear in my stomach
that keeps me running.
I walk in to the same empty hole
I’ve felt all my life.
I walk in to wishing
and longing,
and the feeling that wherever I am,
I am never home.

Feeding the needy

Our hands open to teeth.
Sandals and shorts,
sores ooze Coke and biscuits.
I watch them bake skin in the sun
and smoke picnic endlessly.
Where will they go when the rain comes?
In churches and under tables?
Their minds chatter tomatoes and beer cans and then they laugh.
And laugh.
Crazy laughs.
As if God came and sat beside them and whispered
in their ear “the dog broke the dishes”.
I am not one of them
in my perfect blue Victorian house
with the irises blooming
out front.
But I feel their hunger.
I know what it’s like to want gravy,
but settle for empty bowls
and lick the air for crumbs.
I understand the urgency that comes with time.
The press and flow of promises unrealized.
The stench of almost and the lure of not quite.
The brokenness of dreams.
Yes, I understand.

Holding Hands With The Blind

It is like that now,
holding hands with the blind,
trying to maneuver through the dark tunnels
of fire,
as they stumble
and fall.
I can not
save
them.
The sugar pulses in their veins
like pancakes,
their bright eyes
fading
with disease.

Slipping On Algae

It’s all moving too fast.
This single bleed.
The beans on the pot.
The cops across the street with pens in their hands
and guns tucked away.
There are too many questions
I can not answer.
Clouds
and pictures
and worries.
I sit
frozen
scared to move to the right
or to the left.
Slipping on algae with each step.
Feeling the pull
as it takes me
somewhere
I do not want to go.
When did life become like this?
Clots and pictures.
Pictures of dead people and animals.
smiling at me
wearing linen and pearls.
Hair dyed and lips reddened.
Tongues dipping into birdbaths
Longing to quench a thirst
No water can ever satisfy.
I want to plug my ears.
To run through the fields screaming
in search of silence.
To sit on a rock
and breathe
long and hard and deep
and still
where no one can listen.
To know
I am safe.

A Beginner

The doctor was a beginner,
turned around by a dying king
with a rope round his neck
and a cat in his lap.
A glint of a man,
once outnumbered by
courtesans and queens.
A simple man with a dream,
as all simple men are.
A working class fellow,
happy to pass his days with a beer
or a walk in the woods.
He didn’t know spit,
or blood for that matter,
but he was quick with a knife
and thread.
And when he saw a man in trouble
he would dive in,
head first,
with great aplomb.
And so this man,
this gentle man,
took hold of the city,
like crabgrass,
planting his roots
deep into the affections of others,
never questioning
the malformed foal
or the Cesarean section required.
Never charging more than was absolutely required.
Taking in trades
from the poor:
the occasional pig,
a one-legged rooster,
jars of jelly and home-made jam,
shoes cobbled by arthritic hands,
and sweaters knitted by fair-haired maids.
It was a good life.
A fair life.
That is,
until the king with the rope and the cat
came into his life.
He was summoned to the castle,
where he found the king slumped
in his chair.
Eyes bulging.
Rope taught.
Hands rigid and cold.
Heartbroken over the loss of the Queen’s affection.
And though he tried to save him,
He could not.
He worked for hours,
pumping and blowing,
and praying,
and swearing,
and rubbing hands and feet.
But nothing changed.
The king was dead.
So was his cat.
The doctor went home to his cottage,
locked his door
and turned off the lights.
Days passed.
But there were no calls for him to come.
No jars of jam,
or crippled birds left at his door.
No sweaters knitted by fair hands.
Nothing.
When he did make his way to town,
he was never greeted with a familiar smile,
or pleasant word,
or any word for that matter,
just snorts of disdain.
It was as if he wasn’t himself anymore.
And he wasn’t.
So he loaded up his cart and left,
and tried to become
a beginner
once more.

What's the Point?

There’s nothing to do anymore.
Really, there isn’t.
I woke up this morning, bored.
I thought to myself,
“Go to a movie.”
What’s the point of doing that?
It’s just sitting.
It’s not really doing anything.
Besides, I usually hate every movie I see
and then I wish I could have my two hours back,
and my nine fifty.
O.k. then, why don’t you clean?
Cleaning’s always good,
and it’s so productive.
That’s stupid, I thought.
I have to clean tomorrow before I leave.
If I clean today, I’ll still end up cleaning tomorrow too.
O.k. then, why don’t you write?
Write what? I thought.
And for whom?
There’s no one to write for.
I’ve written everything I want to write about.
So, go workout.
Burn some calories.
I already did that.
Well, then, there’s always the mall.
I hate the mall.
I wander around like a dying fish
looking for water.
I stare at everything and wonder why I don’t want any of it.
Just how much pleasure is a leather bag and a pair of boots supposed to give me,
and for how long?
Go to the library and get a good book.
Great idea,
except the book I want is checked out,
and the last time I went to the library it took me fifteen minutes to get out of the parking garage
all because there was only one guard on duty working the gate.
“It’s lunch time,” the disgruntled guard said.
“Why can’t they get someone to fill in when the other person goes to lunch,” I asked?
“Why don’t I just stop eating lunch all together?” he quipped.
Yeah, there’s no way I’m going there today.
I hate every choice I come up with.
I get so desperate I even call my sister.
“So, what are you doing?”I asked casually.
“Getting ready for my date,” she said.
She’s trying to buy panties at Macy’s.
Not because she needs new panties,
she just doesn’t want to do her laundry.
I hang up.
She’s too much for me.
I tell myself to come up with something I’ve never done.
Challenge myself.
Well, I’ve never gone skydiving.
I guess I could go skydiving.
But why would I want to do that?
I hate things like that.
Either I die on the way down,
or I survive and vomit when I hit the ground.
That doesn’t sound appealing.
Wait a minute,
I know,
I could go to that new ice cream shop that sells twelve-dollar-a-pint ice creams.
That’s what I’ll do.
Oh, wait,
I can’t do that,
I’m lactose intolerant
and sugar makes me sick.

The Gerber Girl

Today as the Valium slips through my veins,
I am calmer.
I do not yell at the man in front of me, who,
rather than making a left
on a green light,
waits for the arrow.
Nor do I flip out when the girl at the grocery store
cuts in front of me with her basket of coconut water.
I smile at the woman next to me who is blaring some offending music
from her green I-pod.
And I forgive the child with the miniature cart who runs over my foot
without a thought.
After all, it’s the holidays.
We are all supposed to be nice to each other, right?
It’s bad Karma to do anything else.
At least that’s what my yoga teacher tells me.
Don’t be nice just to be nice,
do it for your Karma.
How very yoga!
So, as I make my way through my errands,
I am careful not to do anything that could potentially bring more strife to myself.
At Trader Joe’s, I watch a girl hugging some friend she hasn’t seen in months.
She is carrying pink Gerber daisies in one hand and a fruit cake in the other.
And though I don’t know her, I can tell
she is one of those perpetually smiley people.
Always happy and cheery.
I walk past her,
standing there in her burgundy coat with her little brown boots,
and I think to myself,
I want to be that girl.
No, really,
I want to be that girl.
The girl who brings sunshine.
The girl everyone is happy to see.
Little Miss Daisy.
I think about pulling her aside and asking her her secret.
Are you on something?
Herbal or prescription?
How do you do it?
Are you faking it?
Or are you really that happy?
But I can’t ask her.
She’d think I’m insane.
So I continue on.
I walk past cut vegetables,
hummus, and olive spread,
and eighty kinds of cheese
I’ll never eat.
And right past those little chocolate cakes I think about buying,
but never do,
even on my most pre-menstrual days.
And when I check out,
she is there again,
the Gerber girl,
smiling and sniffing her daisies.
And I am standing in line
behind her,
wishing.

Safety In Numbers

There’s a cop parked in the empty lot across the alley.
It’s been there the last two hours
and I’m glad it’s there.
Earlier this week there were three cop cars in front of the house
and another four down the street.
And yellow police tape across the steps of the triplex next to us.
Something’s going on.
When I asked the undercover detective in the car in front of the house about it,
he said they were removing the tape.
Seems there had been some evidence there.
“Evidence?” “What evidence?” I asked, in my most friendly, pleasant, suburban voice.
He wouldn’t say.
Which only makes me wonder more.
Was there a dead body?
A gun?
A baggie of pills?
What?
There weren’t seven cop cars on our street over a whiskey bottle left behind.
No,
something bad had gone down.
Something is still going down.
That’s why that cop is sitting in his car in the lot behind my house.
That’s why the street is so damn quiet today.
No Rap music blaring.
Everyone in hiding.
It’s cat and mouse time.
Who’s gonna move first?
I tell myself all of this police presence is a good thing.
That I’m safe.
But how safe can I really be
when half the cops in the city are patrolling my street?

Saturday Market

At the market
we line up
for kale.
Dark green leaves
and yellow flowers.
Coffee dripped blue
and cream in bottles.
Dogs on leashes and babies running loose.
The sun on our backs
and frost in our mouths.
My fingers numb with the morning.
Here, the Asian women watch you
to see how many samples of pear you’ve eaten,
then shake their heads when you do not buy.
Parking is difficult
and the maids are always out with pen in hand
ready to ticket.
On the corner a man plays a milk crate
and broken guitar
hoping for change.

Turning Wild

I am starting to turn wild.
The way yams grow from the ground,
curved and bent and careless.
The way blackberries race across the vines
in Summer.
The way lions roar
and dogs howl.
The way night rolls in against the fog
without apologizing.
I am starting to turn wild.
I do not care so much what I say or don’t say.
Who I help or don’t help.
Who I fix or leave broken.
Here,
in my cave,
with the rain coming down
and the tarp uncovered letting in light,
I am starting to turn wild.
I can feel it in my blood.
In my eyes.
In the curve of my fingers and in the flare of my nostrils.
In the heat of my breath,
and the point of my tongue.
In the folds of my lips
and in between my legs.
It is coming.
I have tasted it now.
Like raw honey.
Thick and sweet.
I am starting to turn wild.

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.

Blue Gin

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

The Wise One

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

Ambitious Bird

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

The Real World

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

No Ants In My Volvo

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

Permanent Move

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

Shorn Into Sheepdom

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

First and Last

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

Black Oil

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

The Crab and Me

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

Driftwood

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

Pecan Pie and Dirty Clothes

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

The New Neighbors

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

The Dragon Lady

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

The Mediocre

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

Dark Haired Rose

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

Escape From Lowry

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

Green Hills

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

Just A Room

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

Cherry Coke Girl

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

Slipping Away

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

Come Down

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

Melting The Years

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