Born Beautiful

I am putting together the past,
one photo at a time.
My mother in her red flannel dress and black Mary Janes,
pearls around her neck,
her hair rolled under,
face scrubbed fresh
beneath the Christmas tree.
Her sisters gathered round her,
dim examples by comparison.
In each photo,
my mother is the star,
the shining light,
the one a stranger would ask about
if looking.
Her dark hair,
their mousey blonde.
Her perfect shape,
their dowdy forms.
How jealous they must have been of her.
United by ugliness,
they were a two-headed monster
determined to trip her,
determined to make her fall.
Stealing allowances,
jealous of boyfriends,
waiting under couches
to see her stolen kisses.
I have no sympathy for them.
If they wanted to be mad at someone
blame the Gods,
or DNA,
but not my mother.
It was not her fault
the fates smiled down on her
and not them.
Why should she suffer for being beautiful?
It is the same with my sister and I.
She hates me now
and probably always has.

The Great Divide

While the rich are having their five dollar coffees at Starbucks,
a car full of “lost boys” are sitting in the heat,
with their car engine running filling out an application
to work at a nearby grocery store.
They smile at me as I go in to complain about the two gray avocados I bought on Tuesday.
That about sums it up,
this dichotomy in the world.
While Bush is “on vacation” with his dad in the Hamptons,
a woman in New Orleans is still waiting for a home,
still waiting for someone to come and say, “I’m sorry.”
While most Americans are planning their weekends, and their barbeques,
and their back-to-school shopping sprees,
a woman in the Sudan is lying on the ground
left to die
after being raped by four soldiers.
While four businessmen eat a five hundred dollar lunch at The Palm,
another forty line up outside the mission
hoping for a warm meal and a bed.
I ask myself what’s wrong with this picture?
I ask myself what should I be doing?
What can I do?
I dream of standing on a corner with a poster saying Impeach Bush,
but all I would get for my time is either arrested, egged, or given a few honks
of agreement.
The tide would still keep coming.
There would still be Cheney.
I think about going to volunteer.
Join the Peace Corps.
Go down to New Orleans and build houses
but I don’t know how to build anything.
I think about what John Lennon might have said,
if he were still alive to see the world now.
I hear him in his English accent,
“It’s the government. They’re the ones telling lies. ”
Our world is collapsing before our very eyes
and we’re too spaced out on Double Mocha Lattes
to even know it.
Hell, you’ve got to be in denial
just to get out of bed in the morning.
If you thought about the reality of what’s happening
in this world,
we’d all be on Prozac.
(Oh, yeah, most of us are.)
We’re being screened at airports like felons,
while ninety percent of the cargo going on to the plane
isn’t even being x-rayed.
We’re being told we’re fighting terrorists,
when all we’re doing is killing innocent children
and creating a world in which America is more hated
than ever before.
We’re allowing our rivers and oceans to be polluted by Bush
and his oil cronies
and told it’s in our best interest
while they keep stuffing their pockets.
The FDA is in cahoots with the pharmaceutical companies.
People are popping pills and eating in their sleep.
Suicides are up.
Global warming is real,
and Iraq is in the middle of a civil war.
Meanwhile the biggest headlines in this country
are about who killed JonBenet Ramsey,
what does Tom Cruise’s baby look like,
and whether or not Oprah is having an affair with Gayle.
“Reality” t.v. is huge,
which I finally understand,
because real reality is unthinkable,
unimaginable,
impossible to contemplate.
So why not watch George Hamilton ice skate?
Better to have a latte,
and see what Pottery Barn has on sale
this week.
One day,
even the birds will refuse to land.

Yes

I am here
once again.
The eagle flies across
my window
frozen
wings outstretched.
He wants to get to work
and so do I.
Work.
What does that mean?
For so long now I thought work meant forcing,
demanding,
pushing,
the whipping of flesh.
In yoga, I push too hard.
Legs spread,
I reach forward
and feel my groin rip,
hips pop,
shoulders crack,
as if I were ripping in two.
I am in pain.
My face contorts like it were made of play-doh.
lips to one side,
eyes squinted shut.
I look around the room
to see if anyone else
looks the way I do.
The woman to my right
has her chest on the floor
and nothing but calm on her face.
Oh, yeah,
we aren't supposed to look
at anyone else.
No comparisons.
Our attention is to be on ourselves
and our breath.
Where is my breath?
I search for it,
forgetting it is always there.
I force myself to breathe slower.
In, out, in, out.
To let myself be.
To let myself feel
the wood floor beneath me.
I always think it has to be so hard.
Life.
Work.
Love.
I forget I don't have to push.
I can sit with my legs spread
and let it come to me.

Dude

It happened again.
This time it was a twenty-something guy
with a ponytail who gives colonics in Bellevue.
He stopped me on my way out of the grocery store
and asked if he could talk to me for a minute.
He had a notepad he was writing on
on the table in front of him
so I thought maybe he was doing a survey.
He shook my hand and said his name was "Thor"
or "Heat" or something like that.
He asked my name and I told him.
He said he noticed my energy in the store.
I wasn't sure if he noticed good energy or bad energy.
He didn't tell me.
He asked me what I had in my bag for him.
I told him "umeboshi plum vinegar".
He said, "cool".
I told him I eat macrobiotically.
He asked me if that was my "thing",
my "gift to the world."
I said, "no, I just like to eat that way."
He sat there looking at me with one eye going
one direction and the other going the other direction.
He was freaking me out.
Three tables down another guy was eating his dinner
watching us
like he were watching a bad reality t.v. show.
After a long pause he asked,
"Do you have a do?"
"A do?" I asked.
"No, a dude."
"A dude?"
Yes, I said, I do.
Then I laughed.
He asked me what was so funny
and I told him this was the second time today
a guy in this grocery store had come on to me.
He seemed stunned he wasn't the first.
I said goodbye and walked away.
There must be something in the air.
Either that
or I'm in heat.

Men Like You

The man who stood in line in front of me at the grocery store
hit on me.
Hit on me like it was 2 a.m.
and we were in a dark bar
and I was buying a vodka tonic.
Hit on me,
like I was at some weird singles party
that involved wife swapping and satin sheets.
It was weird.
Really weird.
First he asked me my name.
Then once I gave him my first name,
he wanted to know my last name.
Thankfully,
I didn’t give it to him.
Then he asked me what I did for a living.
When I said “writer,”
his eyes lit up
like I had just announced I wasn’t wearing
any panties and I knew of this great motel
around the corner
that offered a discount on rooms used just for the afternoon.
He asked me where I was from
and if I liked Nashville.
When I told him Houston, and I didn’t,
he asked me my top five reasons why not.
I said:
1. The drivers.
2. The food.
3. The conservative mentality.
4. The smoke.
5. The weather.
I should have said,
“Men like you”.
Then he asked me if I wanted to come join him while he ate his lunch.
I just shook my head “no”.
He went and sat down
and a few seconds later he came back and handed me his business card.
“If I ever need any painting or re-decorating.”
Right.
Next time I check out I’m going to make sure I’m standing in line
behind a woman.

The Truth

The truth is I feel alone,
lonely,
and very much forgotten.
Inside
my stomach feels
empty
yet full of
giant rocks
of sorrow.
I feel unhappy
like I have been standing on the street corner
with a cup in my hands and no one has stopped to put anything in.
I keep approaching the same people
asking them to fill it for me
like the little boy in Oliver,
“please sir, may I have some more.”
And when they leave I still feel empty.
I miss my mother,
and my father,
and talking with them
and having them understand what I am saying.
I miss my friends in Los Angeles,
and walking on the beach,
and being able to stand outside without being bitten by mosquitoes.
I miss feeling loved by a man
and having the first words that come out of his mouth
in the morning be,
“I love you.”
I miss feeling safe in this world,
(Well, I’ve never had that)
but I miss feeling like this world will be o.k.
because I don’t feel that now.
I miss feeling hopeful
like anything can happen.
I miss
my dreams
and knowing I can make them come true.
I miss me.

L.A. And Apple Pie

The South makes you slow,
like sausage gravy on a biscuit
too lazy to drip off the bread
and find the plate.
Slow,
like grits and bacon fat
turning solid in a metal can.
Your mind stops and simple tasks
like bringing in the groceries
become too difficult to manage.
It’s all that heat
day after day
baking your brain like apple pie.
It leaves you muddy and foggy.
Words come out slower
and sentences, once formed,
come out in drawls
slurred together as if the tongue
were dipped in molasses
and can’t find it’s way to the roof of the mouth.
I understand it,
but I don’t like it.
I miss the fast lane,
driving down the 10 to the 405,
rollerbladers shooting past me
on the Venice boardwalk,
girls in bikinis
that are actually skinny enough to be wearing them,
cell phones being used to cut the next big deal,
not order take-out from Hooters,
restaurants with a snooty attitude that’s deserved,
and cars that know how to turn left on a green light.

Watching The Dolphins Jump

I am leaving two weeks from today
on a jet plane to California,
my second home.
It isn’t the air that brings me there
or the lapping of the waves on the sand
walking
Santa Monica
watching the dolphins jump
the tide,
but my mother and father,
the wrinkled skin
of Alzheimer’s
and dementia
calling and hanging up
again and again.
This life is moving too fast
and I am being pulled in every direction
faster than I can
grow
arms and legs.
So I try to walk the balance beam.
Muttering
a language
no one understands,
searching through the sand
with broken lenses,
trying to see
what I have lost.

Fuck AT&T

and NES (Nashville Electric),
and all those big ass corporations
that charge $13 for a one-minute phone call.
Or those Drug companies charging $2,000 for a drug that cost them
$50 to manufacture.
Old people have to choose between having a caretaker or being blind.
That’s not right.
It’s just not right.
Those guys sit up in their skyscrapers,
going to their $500 lunches,
flying their private planes
all over the world,
with their fat bonuses,
while poor people are just trying to get by,
just trying to put food on their table
and live on $7 an hour.
It’s not right.
It’s not the black guy robbing the 7-11 we need to worry about
in this country.
It’s these rich (mainly white) motherfuckers.
When the hell are we going to learn we are prosecuting the wrong people?
My father taught me the guy who steals a loaf of bread to feed his family
isn’t half as bad as the guy in the Armani suit embezzling
millions.
And he was right.
I’m sick of it.
Sick of the wealthiest 1% getting all the breaks in this country.
Sick of the Republicans.
Sick of the lies.
Sick of people thinking they have the right to do whatever they want
just because they can.
Man, no wonder people take drugs.
It’s too painful to see.
Too fucking painful to deal with how things really are.
How can anyone begin to believe there is any justice in this world?
Or to teach their children not to steal
when Wild Oats is charging
$12 a pound for pecans?
Oh yeah,
I forgot,
that’s legal.

The Purple Man of Music

Who let them in,
these men with knives
who came and cut down the wild
who came and ripped down the free flowing green
while I was in Memphis
burying the dead?
The black,
the purple
man of music
who’s every breath was untamed
and uncertain,
who saw music
in the air
and sang words from God.
Who came?
How did they get in,
these men,
these simpletons,
who could not see the beauty
before their eyes?
They hacked and sawed,
and spat,
and left,
like men on a battlefield
leaving the bloody carnage behind.
Who let them in?
Not I.
I gather the limbs in my hands
and hold them to my chest,
breathe in the smell of dying honeysuckle
rotting in the sun
and cry.
Don’t they know what they have done?
That which is wild should always
remain
wild.

Nightfall (for Arthur)

I feel like I’m in a cage,
a long 1800 square foot cage.
A 1950’s ranch cage
with pink tile bathrooms
and all the shades pulled down
like I were some kind of Howard Hughes recluse.
I feel like I'm in solitary confinement,
only the food is better
and I’ve got a good mattress.
I’d try to get out,
but every time I open the door
I get knocked back by this heat that
feels like I’ve just opened the gates to Hell.
Even the dog won’t go out to pee.
He’s holding it till nightfall
he says.
So here we are,
he and I,
in this birth canal of a house,
waiting.
The dog doesn’t seem to mind.
He’s content to lie down in the front window
by the air conditioning vent
and sleep his life away until
dinner.
But me,
I feel stagnant.
I want to run.
I want to move.
I want to feel like I’m getting somewhere
in my life.
Everywhere I turn
people are dying.
And it scares me.
I don’t want to end up dead
before I ever become who I was meant to be.

Orange Street Afternoons

Jack wouldn’t approve
of my stealing
from Anne, or Sharon,
or Mary.
He would say, “start where you are.”
“Be in the moment and let the moment
take you somewhere swing set.”
Yes,
that’s what he would say.
As if swing set fit logically into that sentence.
Why it fits no more logically
than tomato lips walking barefoot
parakeet glue.
But Jack was always like that.
He’d throw in cows and sheep
mermaid
when the mood waterfall.
Sitting on his sofa
in his sweatshirt Cheetos
barking
Castro
at his students.
I miss those afternoons
on Orange Street.
Fall days of yellow
meter maid
leafs,
parking down side streets,
listening for hours to poetry
read in circles
while I bourbon eye
the room.

Deja Vu

All weekend we cleaned house.
I started in the bathroom
cleaning out drawers.
I found Benadryl from 2002,
expired Wal-tussin,
a filthy ice bag,
and condoms that were no longer safe.
I threw out hundreds of beauty samples I had gotten from Wild Oats and DHC
along with baby oil, petroleum products,
and shampoo with SLS.
I got rid of the Burt’s Bees Body Lotion
and the fancy lavender seaweed body splash
I got as a wedding souvenir five years ago.
I pretty much got rid of everything I couldn’t bear to get rid of
the last time we cleaned out the bathroom
(Which, judging from the dates on the pill bottles,
was about three years ago.)
This time getting rid of things was much easier.
Maybe it’s because I just cleared out my mother’s house
and the similarities between our bathroom drawers
was frightening.
She had drawers stuffed with old lipsticks.
So did I.
She had free gifts from Clinique.
So did I.
She had expired drugs and Valium.
So did I.
I couldn’t help but wonder if this way of living is learned
or if it is inherited
like brown eyes or fat ankles.
Either way,
I don’t want to be my mother.
And I'm happy to dump out every drawer
in my house
just to prove that I'm not.

When The Rain Came

I felt the grass go “ah".
I watched the leaves unfurl
like homeless men
stretching out their hands
for something warm to eat.
But It didn’t last long.
The drops came and went
barely giving the ground a taste
of wetness.
How often that is the case.
the threat of trouble is so much greater
than what actually comes.

The Asshole Who Cuts My Grass

quit today.
All because I told him
I didn’t want the grass cut.
It didn’t need cutting.
It’s almost dead.
It hasn’t rained here in days.
There are big brown patches
on the hill
and in the front.
Everywhere you look
people are watering their lawns,
not cutting them.
I haven’t heard the sound of a lawn mower
or a leaf blower
in days.
You’d think if he gave a damn at all
he would know that.
But all he cares about is the money.
So when I told him,
"I think we should wait until next week",
he told me,
“Maybe I should get another landscaper.”
Not “o.k.
it has been dry lately”
Or, “no problem”.
Just, “Maybe I should get another landscaper.”
“Landscaper?”
Who does he think he is?
Picasso?
All he's ever done is cut the grass and use a Weed Eater.
He’s never even pulled a weed out of the flower beds.
Landscaper?
Please.
I never liked him anyway.
He’s always been rude to me,
changing prices at whim,
charging extra for trimming bushes
and complaining about picking up dead limbs.
Who needs him?
Not me.
The only thing I did wrong
was keep him around
as long as I did.

Good Behavior

Two o’clock
and I’m sitting down to write
for the first time.
I don’t know where the morning went
I swear it was ten thirty a few minutes ago
and I was seventeen
leaving for college,
my wardrobe strung across the back of my Buick
on a pole
leaving my parent’s house
forever.
I didn’t realize till just now
that it was forever,
but it was.
Once I left for L.A.
I never came back.
Home was a dorm room,
then an apartment at the beach,
then a house in Nashville.
I never moved back into my own room
with the black out curtains and the Century furniture
and the fighting down the hall that never stopped.
I never even thought about going back
like the other kids who moved into their parent’s basement
and then hung out there for a couple of years till they got good jobs
and got married.
For me,
once I was gone,
I was gone for good.
I had done my time.
I even got out a year early
for good behavior.

One Robe One Bowl

There are too many choices in this world.
Now with the internet
information is as easy as saying,
“let me go online.”
Ideas pop into my head
and instantly I run to my computer
and “google” them.
Want to know what someone paid for their house?
Go to the Patriot Properties site and type in their last name.
Want to know where a yoga studio is in Nashville?
Type in yoga – Nashville and let yourself go crazy.
Want to find an ex-lover?
Type in their name and you’ll find out more information than you want to know.
I don’t like it.
I have too many thoughts in my head already.
I don’t need anymore to satisfy.
Now I can spend hours eavesdropping on a million different lives
other than my own by going to Myspace.com.
Ninety-nine percent of the time
I come to the same conclusion:
I don’t care about any of them.
It’s sensory overload.
Booking and re-booking airfares.
Ding!
Writing attorneys and hearing back on email.
Communicating with perfect strangers
back and forth,
like it were all perfectly normal.
No one knows what anyone sounds like
or looks like.
No one even cares.
I could be a three hundred pound elephant,
unless you “googled” me and found photos
to learn otherwise.
It’s too distracting.
We all know too much,
and it’s too much of the wrong stuff.
I liked it better when you had to actually
go
to the library to look something up.
You’d plan your day around it.
Maybe go get a cup of tea and a cookie
and stop to browse.
Now everything is too available
and too instant.
I think all these choices are making life harder.
I can have Sushi, Italian, Greek, Korean,
Indian or Chinese for lunch.
Or I can cook at home
which brings up an entirely new set of choices.
I don’t like it.
It makes me crazy.
I’d rather live like the monks.
One robe,
one bowl,
and I eat whatever is put in front of me.

The 'P' Word

I understand how poetry got its bad name.
After reading some of those literary journals
I was going to send my writing to,
I understand how the ‘p’ word could evoke
the sound of gagging, or even the throwing of oneself down on to the floor
like a rabid dog.
I read a poem entitled “Trees.”
After reading the poem,
I don’t have a clue what the author was talking about.
“Fractured stumps and bowels and boughs and limbs
and fallen crowns”.
It’s a tree God dammit!
How hard is it to talk about a tree?
But it wasn’t just that poem,
it was all the poems in the journal.
It was like having a seven-course meal
where every course was the cheese plate.
Yes, it’s rich
and smooth and creamy,
but it’s CHEESE.
How much cheese can one person eat
and still button their pants?
If this is what fine art is supposed to be,
then give me a Crayola.
When I read something
I want to feel it.
Not lean back and digest it like Port wine,
commenting on it with analytical detachment:
“A bit more color here.”
“To verbose there.”
“But look at the use of symbolism.”
Please.
These poems leave me cold,
cold as the frigid wind
that blew south across the whiskers of my
dog,
while he
lay
curled up
debating the angels
of architecture.

NIN

She took my sewing machine.
The 1940’s yellow Kenmore
with the drop-in table.
The one I bought from Habitat for $40
and vowed I would use.
The one that sat in my bedroom
and then sat by the den sofa for 9 months collecting dust.
She thought it was cool
and well worth the $25 I was asking.
She was one of those hip East Nashville girls
with a NIN sticker and an Apple logo on the back of her truck.
She wore a spaghetti strap top and had a bob haircut
and was taking sewing classes in Berry Hill.
She was the kind of girl I wish I had been,
driving around in her vintage SUV
not sure what she’s going to do next with her life.
Unafraid.
In her twenties.
I can see her now
in her terra cotta cottage
sewing cool dresses and patching jeans,
making trendy hats she sells for $75
all on my little machine.
The moment she took it I wanted it.
It’s always like that.
I’ve never wanted anything
until it was gone.

Covering The White

I am no hero in this play
pulling weeds and branches from the dirt
covering ivy with newspaper
and mulch.
My Latino helper, Douglas,
reads the papers I lay down.
He says they have a lot of sex ads.
He asks me where I got them.
I nod and smile
and pretend I don’t notice him
staring at my legs and rear.
Even the dog has gone inside now.
It’s too hot for him.
We stand there in the yard,
him wheeling out the black
covering up the years.
Me, tugging on my shorts
trying to cover
the white.