The Lost Acorn

I see them
with their heads down
and their tails up
gathering nuts for the winter.
They are always working,
always moving,
hopping with purpose
from one branch to another.
There is no time to stop
and sit,
and worry.
No time to reflect
the lost acorn,
or stolen twig.
Each day is another day
of preparation for
what
is to come.
Each day
is another chance
to survive.

Human Bondage

I want to be free of my own Human Bondage,
the bondage of self and of mind and of body.
The pain in my leg and back and neck.
The dark worry that clouds my brain and fills my dreams with demons
and watercolor mansions that melt on the page.
I feel the hunger for meaning in a meaningless world.
Hours filled with errands and bills and thoughts of tomorrow.
The endless treadmill that has become life,
the one that runs and runs and runs while I struggle to keep ahead.
It used to be enough just to be,
or so I thought,
to sit beneath the trees and watch the leaves fall,
to hear the birds chirp their warning,
to feel the sun bake my toes brown.
Now I am in the middle of life,
my childhood vanished before me.
The fear of wrinkles and old age are ever closer.
I see the aged differently now.
I see them sitting and waiting for death,
in hallways and in wheelchairs,
the light from their eyes growing dimmer.
I see them breathing.
But for what?
Even they do not know.
I see it all slipping away
like the monkey bars I reached for
when I was five.
I want to believe that there is a reason,
that all of this matters,
but each day I grow less sure.

Confessions

I don’t know if anyone is honest in this world.
I think of
the gunman
on the run
robbing liquor stores
to feed his habit.
Or the young New York businessman
promoting the merits of his company
when he knows it is destined to fail.
Then there’s the insurance company vowing to make an offer
when they have no intention to do so
and are only waiting for the statute of limitations to run out.
Or the lawyer,
offering to “negotiate” for free as a favor.
Or the doctor,
stealing from her parents’ bank accounts,
and calling it a loan.
What about the songwriter,
writing songs about coffee and cigarettes
when she’s never smoked
or ever tasted coffee.
All are dishonest.
To differentiate and say one is worse than the other
would only be justification.
Dishonesty is dishonesty right?
But who has the right to point a finger at another?
Who can say they’re honest?
Who can say they’ve never eaten out of the bin
at the health food store?
Or said yes
to a lover when they wanted to say no?
Who can say they are always true to themselves,
in every circumstance,
no matter what they might lose?
For me,
it isn’t the twenty five cent coupon I “illegally” used today,
or the fact that I bought organic onions and said they were conventional,
it’s the dirty feeling I get in my soul
after I’ve done it.
It’s knowing I can’t trust myself.

Ambulance Chasers

I am starting to learn the difference
between the good lawyers and the bad lawyers.
The bad lawyers tell you what you want to hear.
They promise you huge sums of money.
They coddle you and tell you that the insurance company doesn’t give a damn about you
and that they won’t offer you a dime.
(unless of course, you hire them).
They scare you, but they never tell you anything about themselves
or what they’ve accomplished in the courtroom.
They offer to hop a plane,
drive you to their office,
take you to lunch,
anything short of putting you in an ambulance
and carrying you to them
so you can sign the dotted line
and they can get to work
(collecting your money for themselves).
Listening to them is like listening to George W. Bush.
Everything is good vs. evil.
Danger!
Fear!
Look out!
Code Orange!
No one knows what it’s supposed to mean
or what you’re supposed to be afraid of.
Just don’t carry water,
or wear lip gloss,
or have more than three ounces of anything liquid
in your suitcase
and you’ll be fine.
The good lawyers, on the other hand,
tell you the merits of your case.
They tell you the pros and the cons.
They let you know how the other guy is going to look at it
when you step into the courtroom.
They don’t promise you the moon.
They talk in realistic figures,
albeit less than you want to hear,
but believable.
They tell you things like,
“I’m not going to sugar coat this.”
And they ask pointed questions of you,
the kind of questions you’d be asked on the stand by your opponent.
“When did you first notice the pain?”
“How is it possible that it went away but now it’s back?”
“Couldn’t this just be degenerative disc disease?
Questions that make sense.
Questions that require a certain degree of thought.
Questions that George W. Bush would never ask.
I am so glad that in listening to our president for the last six years
I haven’t lost my ability to be able to detect the difference
between “good” vs. “evil”.
I haven’t gotten lost in a code orange colored haze
so deep that I can’t see the truth from the lies.
And for that I say,
"Thank you George W.
Thank you."

Barbie Doll

I am in pain,
day after day,
my leg screwed in to the hip joint
all wrong,
like a Barbie doll
some little girl decided to torture.
There is pain
in my low back,
like someone struck a match
and left me to burn
till there was nothing left but ash.
I think of the invalids,
the ones in hospital beds,
the ones using walkers to make their way,
the ones in wheelchairs
the ones holding canes.
I see their faces
contorted with each step
as mine has become
and I pray that I won’t end up that way.
I pray mine is only temporary,
but I don’t know.
I really don’t.
Last night
I sat on the futon
and thought about killing myself
I thought,
“If I have to be in pain like this for the rest of my life,
I would rather die”.
And yet,
it is this pain that has brought me back to myself.
It is this pain that keeps me in my body,
in a way that no therapist ever could.
It is this pain that keeps me thinking about no one else
but me.

Walking in Birmingham

I think about the blacks
walking for months in Birmingham.
Their tireless efforts,
mile after mile,
the eyes of whites on them,
the jeers,
the stares.
I think about their steadfastness,
their resilience,
their desire
to know equality,
to sit at the front of the bus
and see
what was coming.
It would have been so easy
to give up,
to lie down,
to let another year go by
and accept
the unacceptable.
But they held together,
and they believed
their day would come
and it did.
I think about them now
when I want to give up,
when I believe the road ahead
is too long
and that I won’t get there.
I think about the good shoes on my feet,
and my warm bed,
and how lucky I am
to not have to fight
the color of my skin.

In Search of The Page

I can do nothing but close the door
and leave it all behind me
in search of the page.
This afternoon
I stood in the Atlantic
and let the ocean roll across my feet.
Broken Sand dollars
not worth the coral they were made from
lay on the sand
baking in the sun.
The Pina Colada
melting
in my bottle
and down my throat,
the lizard on the leaf
hiding
from the day.
These are the images,
the moments,
I hold.
My own moments,
that no one else
has
or will ever know that
I’m having.

Out of The Rabbit Hole

Perhaps it is the amino acids I started taking,
or the crisp fall mornings,
or the butterflies gathering outside my window,
or the leaves turning bright yellow and orange.
Perhaps it is the walk I took in the woods,
or my eating salmon weekly,
or the smile the valet gave me when I walked passed him
at the Kroger supermarket.
I don’t know.
But whatever it is,
I feel better today,
as if a veil were being lifted,
as if I were Alice in Wonderland,
and I were slowly,
slowly
finding my way
out
of the rabbit hole.

Black Butterfly

The black butterfly
came to me
and landed on my white t-shirt.
He fluttered near my ear
like a lover
tickling me.
He circled round me
teasing me
with his exotic beauty.
But
when I gave in,
to reach out and touch him,
he was gone.

Nature's Bounty

I am struggling against the tide.
Struggling against the ebb and flow
of age
and dollars and aches.
The morning stiffness
that claims my low back and limbs,
the fogginess of mind
that covers me daily.
Outside the leaves are coming down.
The long brown leaves
skinny as adolescent girls
cover the black mulch.
Nature knows when to come,
when to let go her bounty
and renew.
Not me.
I hold on till the end,
till
I have no choice
but to let go
in order
to become
who I am.

Forgotten Kindness

I should have known last night
when she called me at nine o’clock
and told me that she wanted to come see the house this morning
that she was a flake.
Instead I got up at eight and spent the next two and a half hours
vacuuming, mopping, scrubbing,
washing, polishing,
and Windexing everything.
I even drove to the grocery store and bought a four dollar bunch of white daisies
for the kitchen table.
Then she had the nerve to call my machine
at ten twenty and tell me that her buyers had decided on another house
and that they weren’t coming for their ten forty-five appointment.
I couldn’t believe it.
I had been stood up.
I felt rejected.
Horribly rejected.
They hadn’t even bothered to come see my house
after I worked on it for over two hours.
I wanted to call her back
and tell her off.
I wanted to tell her the least she could do
would be to come and see the house
even if they didn’t want to buy it.
I wanted to call her bosses
and tell them she was a phony bitch.
But instead I stood there and looked at my perfectly clean house
and tried to justify how I had spent my morning.
“the tub needed scrubbing anyway.” I whispered, like a forlorn child.
But tonight I am still hurt.
What kind of person does that?
Calls someone up,
puts them out,
and then doesn’t come twenty minutes before they are due?
I am not so cynical as to believe
that business is business.
There still must be kindness and manners in this world
even if we have all forgotten.

Tom the grocer

Gives me Honey Crisp apples,
dark chocolate,
organic coffee,
and slices of red plums.
He says he wants a lover,
but what he really wants is me.

Anything But Roses

It was like a reality t.v. show
The twenty-something couple sitting at the table behind us,
talking about their future.
“I don’t want to have kids any later than thirty-six.
But first I want to travel and just be with you.
I’m not ready for motherhood.”
I almost chocked on my Lard Nar.
I threatened to stab myself in the eyeballs with my chopsticks
if I had to listen to any more of her dribble.
It was nauseating.
She had it all perfectly worked out.
Where they would be,
how they would live,
how many kids.
We could barely decide if we wanted tofu in our Lard Nar
or not,
much less decide on what we were doing for the rest of our lives.
I turned back to look at her.
She had one of those Ivory soap faces,
perfectly white
with mousey blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Her lover
was nothing more than a lap dog
agreeing to her every thought.
He was like a mirror
refusing to reflect anything but roses.
When they got outside the restaurant
he grabbed her and they kissed for over a minute.
It was one of those long slow motion kisses,
full of arching backs and bodies.
Her hair blowing in the breeze.
Mouths open and moving.
I watched as two men sitting at a nearby table stopped eating
to watch them kiss.
They couldn’t believe it either.
Neither could the couple next to them.
We all just shook our heads and
then started laughing.
It went on for so long it was absurd.
I wanted to tell the other patrons,
“that’s nothing, if you want something really ridiculous,
just listen to them talk about their plans for the future."
Then they stopped kissing and he took her by the hand and they sauntered off.
Ten to one,
five years from now they won’t even remember
each other’s names.

Diapers and Gin

Who cares
that you’ve got nothing to wear?
“Not I,”
said the little red hen
who clucked and prattled on in the sun
in search of seed for her bread.
Go tell your problems
to someone who cares.
You who nurse
and bathe and wash
and pretend that motherhood and marriage
is everything.
Now that your nipples bleed
and your hands are cracked from washing bottoms
and bottles,
how does your garden grow?
You
who said they would make
you the woman you’ve never been,
look what you’ve become.
Bedraggled,
befuddled,
a lifeless corpse walking down grocery store aisles
in search of diapers and gin.
Your body
sagging
and drained.
Your eyes
dark circles of endless nights
and tears.
Where is your smile now?
You who proclaimed motherhood your salvation,
is it still all that you thought it would be?

The Proper Doll

After I said what I wanted
I froze.
The words,
once out of my lips,
hung
like icicles
off the roof.
How dare I ask for what I want?
How dare I make a sound?
When I orgasm,
when I cry,
when I hit my hand with a hammer
and break skin.
I should lie still
and be good,
and take it all in.
Yes, daddy,
take all of it in.
Isn’t that what you taught me?
To never say a word.
To never make a sound.
To be the proper doll
lonely and neat,
waiting in closets
for you
to come.

Open To September

I am tired of riding this dead horse,
across the plains,
across the valleys,
across the rivers that sing.
You say I don’t have to.
You say put down your sword
and pick up your flute.
How easy it is for you.
There,
in your leather chair
with the wrinkled cushion,
bottle of port at your side.
I watch the smoke curl round you
like a belly dancer’s veil.
But I digress.
It’s Monday and the towels need washing
and the floor needs mopping.
Yes.
I had forgotten the diary on the kitchen table
left open
to September
catching autumn leaves
and secrets
while I sat here on my
purple futon
smiling.

Running Water

I gave the dog a bath
but neither of us feel any better.
Not the dog,
lying in the sun
glaring at me
for what I had done,
or me,
wet,
from the dog's shaking.
I thought if I gave the dog a bath
it would be one thing
I could make better,
one thing I could control.
Besides
it was 90 degrees today,
the last hot day of summer,
before fall comes
and there aren’t any more warm days
to wash the dog.
I stood there with the water
running,
wetting and scrubbing the dog,
trying to get the dirt out,
trying to make something shiny
that had become dull.
But when I turned off the hose,
everything was exactly the same,
except my shoes
were wet.

Why I Write

There is a better way to do it
than the way they did it
with all the yelling and screaming
and insanity.
It didn’t have to be like that.
Eruptions and explosions,
the calm,
the Ben-gay,
the Valium
passed out to hands like communion.
I think of them now,
locked in that house
of dog hair and filth,
the t.v. blaring,
Gigi,
the daily struggle for control
over trash duties,
toilet seats,
and dishes,
the chaos of dysfunction
screaming
for attention,
lost on three sets of ears
who can not hear their own voices
much less anyone else’s.
No wonder I sat in the backseat and stared out the window
silent.
No wonder I write.
There was never room
for one more voice.
There still isn't.

Save Me Jesus

When she calls me she speaks of Jesus
and asks me if I’ve read the Bible
and if I’m a Christian yet.
She tells me she is dying,
in her “heart of hearts”
and I believe her.
I believe some part of her knows.
Like the day I knew I should have gone right
instead of left,
smacked by a white Ford truck,
driven by a man from the hills
who didn’t know the color of the light
or what day it was.
Blood dripping from my cracked nose.
A moment’s choice changed forever.
Somewhere I knew.
Just as she knows,
she is dying.
Slowly
losing her mind,
aware enough to know she is losing it,
aware enough to ask.
I try to calm her,
to tell her she’s o.k.
but I am lying.
Isn’t that what good Christians do?

Last Call

I am a fool.
An idiot.
A sucker for the ring,
the light of the dial.
My mother calls and tells me
she’s dying.
And I,
the fool that I am,
run from room to room
like some cockroach trying to escape
the shoe.
Each time she calls,
I am her puppet
dancing to her tears.
Each time she calls,
I am scared
it could be
her last.