Patch and Trouble

Patch died last night.
Hit by a car.
When I got the call I ran down
and saw her standing in the grass by the road,
visibly shaken.
Trouble was near her.
They had known each other for over ten years,
run off together
for hours at a time.
Run through mud and leaves and limbs
and hills.
Terrorized squirrels and neighborhood cats
like a couple of Southern teenagers.
Every morning at 5 a.m. he would wake me,
run across the backyard to the house next door,
and stand there barking and crying till they let her out.
Then they would take off together and come home in the evening
by five o’clock.
It was like that for years.
Gone from morning till night,
even later in the summer
when the sun hung around.
All the kids in the neighborhood who saw them
said they were in love,
and that they were married.
In a way,
they were more married that most couples I know.
For Trouble, there was never anyone else
but Patch.
So when Patch died last night at the vets,
I wondered if Trouble knew.
I wondered if somehow when he saw her being picked up
and driven away in the back of the Subaru
he knew it would be the last time
he would ever see her again.

The Power of Pine

Christmas came to me
with broken dreams and branches.
A three dollar tree
made beautiful with ornaments from my past.

New Again

The truth is
I don’t want to write.
I have bored myself silly.
I am tired of my problems and your problems
and all the problems in the world.
I’m tired of hearing about the war in Iraq,
and the AIDS epidemic,
and another sex scandal
by some politician that everyone knew was gay anyway.
What does it matter anymore?
How many more lives will be lost today?
One hundred?
Two hundred?
Is it me or has everything become too rote?
There are no surprises.
Cell phones have taken away spontaneity.
Any new “news” in the world
reaches us within seconds of it happening.
The squirrel in my backyard
runs from fence post to fence post
and knows none of what I know,
yet seems far more content.
Somewhere,
all of it,
and I do mean all of it,
has gotten old.
Even the holidays.
Christmas
means hanging up the same old decorations,
getting out the same box of Christmas cards
and sending them to the same people
year after Yuletide year.
All of it has left me feeling empty.
I don’t feel Christmassy,
even though every mailbox, street lamp
and commercial is telling me to.
I have drunk Eggnog,
eaten peppermint candy,
and gone to the mall to see Santa,
but I feel nothing.
It is always the same.
I wish someone would invent something new.
Santa has a weird twin brother
who takes away gifts
or there’s an entirely new Saint we discover.
A hidden Saint.,
one who brings world peace
or ends poverty.
I don’t know.
None of the old things are working for me.
I am smothered in tinsel,
and fruitcake,
and cherry pie,
and pine needles.
My stockings are hung up with care,
but there’s nothing I want,
unless someone could give me a gift
to make me feel new again.

In The Pig and The Blue

In the woods
I have wandered,
in the pig
and the blue
and the small Queen
Ferry.
So much has happened.
I can never say.
Look,
gather the dust
around you.
Put your head out the window
and feel the sun on your lips.
Taste the sea.
I have crossed that bridge
in all modicums of daylight.
Each morning is different.
Coming home
I saw the pinkest sky
as if the world were on fire.

Speed Poem

How fast can you write a poem
And let it flow
And let it rock
And forget about the words
And the tones
And the sunsets falling over the hill on
those cold winter nights
Just let the words come
Like breath
Like the deep birth of moons
And scorpions
And forget about the hours
And the moments
And the little man in the corner
writing down names
and notes on your life.
Just write
Write fast and hard
Like the hawk swooping down
To catch the squirrel
Then standing motionless over his catch
Refusing to move
Even when the lights of an old Volvo
Are shined on him.
Even when people point
And whisper
And stare.
Be
The poem
The words
The shadows of light
On the green of the hill.
Forget
What it feels like to feel
To taste
To touch
Just be the vessel
And let whatever comes
Come.
How fast can you write a poem.
Faster than you thought
You could.

Blueberry Girls

To break the ice,
we buy her tamales
and I play ping-pong with him
before I leave him at the JCC
just like they left me at camp
when I was seven years old.
I always hated camp.
I hated the counselors,
and the kids,
and the food,
and the rules.
I hated the secret sign language the girls used
during “quiet time’
when they were supposed to be sleeping in their bunk beds.
I hated getting dressed when it was freezing outside.
And I hated how alone I felt
picking blueberries and wild mint
in the woods.
I rarely befriended anyone
except for the occasional
weird outcast boy-girl
who was equally miserable.
Together we would talk about the other kids
and all the things we hated about them.
But the truth is,
if either one of us had ever been accepted by the “in” kids
we would have dumped each other
faster than the fake mashed potatoes
we threw into the trash bin
night after endless night.

Chai Chai

When I look at them
I see death.
Her frail thin body
moving from side to side
like a broken puppet.
His sore ridden body
and lost eyes
searching for something he’ll never see again.
I watch him,
trying to find the words
he used to know so effortlessly.
His mind,
is like a record player,
stuck in the same groove
playing the same stories over and over:
63 million shares of Columbia pictures
that he sold too soon,
going to Las Vegas to win a million dollars at the dice table,
how he quit college to help his sick father,
working eighty hours a week in the grocery store
before I was ever born.
singing
the Polish chai chai song
every time I pour myself a cup of tea.
It is always the same.
Twenty-four hours a day.

Tomato

Last night
in the pot
I ran
into the hole
into the yellow.
The smoke house thoughts
attached beyond beauty
like a rock.
Can
you believe it.
Certainty is the lie.
Remember
the truth changes
like cheese
left out on the kitchen table.
One day I bleed silver
like a sardine,
the next
the dragon takes me.
All of this pain is an envelope
I should have licked closed.
It’s all the same.
My head.
Your mother.
My body.
When a man sits down
to save his tomato,
run.

What Remains

I am sitting in the small yellow room
looking out the window.
The broken fence leans against the good one.
The brick outdoor fireplace,
built eighty years ago
sits stoically in the ground.
I imagine all of the steaks and ribs
and chickens that have been cooked on it over the years.
It holds stories,
of backyard parties,
wakes,
Fourth of July’s,
affairs,
divorces,
and births.
I imagine the backyard full of black men and women
dressed in their Sunday best,
laughing and playing the blues.
White dresses blowing in the breeze,
Easter hats of pink and blue,
the squirrels darting about eating leftover
crumbs of corncakes and sweet potato pie.
I see an old man sitting on the back porch
playing his harmonica,
drinking Wild Turkey,
yellowed eyes and fingernails,
knowing what he has built
will remain
even after he is gone.

Wonton Soup

Today
at the Chinese restaurant,
I watched
my mother try to eat
Wonton soup.
I watched her hand tremble
and shake the clear broth
as if she were in an earthquake,
or on a boat being tossed about in a storm.
She looked like she was ninety,
not seventy two.

One Week

They feed him turkey,
and ribs,
and cheese,
even when I ask them not to.
They refuse to bathe,
or walk,
or look in the refrigerator for roast beef
and bread.
They would rather call
and complain
and tell me there is nothing to eat in the house.
Lentils and rice are no good.
Nor is kale,
or anything of the sea.
Only animals
with warm blood
seem to be on the menu.
My father is convinced protein
can only come from one source.
So dinner is a fight,
and lunch is a fight,
and breakfast is a fight.
I cannot be the good daughter.
I cannot cook for them,
and clean up after them,
and bring them two dollar bar-b-que sandwiches on Sunday.
I need them to live somewhere else,
like Tucson, or Mexico.
Somewhere warm where I can walk on the beach with them,
cut up papaya for them,
bring them flowers,
and then gripe about the job some other poor sap is doing with them.
I am tired of being told “how awful I am.”
I am tired of being compared to my sister.
I am tired
and they have only been here
one week.

A Reprieve

I am looking for a reprieve,
a respite,
Somewhere to escape the chaos
of them.
My life is trips to the JCC,
poker days,
senior fitness morning,
and aqua for arthritis.
I am trying to be the good daughter,
trying to cook their meals,
and do their laundry,
but they are an uphill battle
impossible to climb.
My father gripes when I ask him to help
with any cleaning at all.
My mother walks down the hall
barking at her own shadow
convinced she hasn’t taken her pills
when she has.
My mind is a maze of “what if’s?”
What if they could live independently with a maid
and someone coming by to give them medicines?
Would that be cheaper than assisted living?
Or is it completely out of reach?
And in another year?
My father is worsening,
unable to find my house when it is only three blocks away.
They are a terrifying proposition.
Everything I do is met with gripery.
So now I am at a coffee house
just trying to breathe,
just trying to feel
whatever it is I used to feel
before they arrived.

Without Within

There is so much less
to fight against when they are here.
My mind
is free of the treadmill
of worry and love.
Night after night
there is only
the two of them.
How much easier
it is
to have insanity with you
than inside you.

Into The Lion's Den

They are coming tomorrow,
coming like the tornado that hit North Carolina.
The only difference is those people had no warning.
I, on the other hand,
have had over a week’s notice,
but I still have no where to hide.
Tonight, I am so nervous
trying to prepare for the unexpected and the inevitable.
The griping of my father as he opens the refrigerator looking for meat.
The fussing over showers and changing shirts.
My mother
falling into tubs
and down hallways
wandering off in search of magic dragons.
Her incessant questions of my marital status.
Her lack of boundaries
in conversation
if I should take her out in public.
It feels like a crazy circus has come to town.
But there is no trapeze
and no Fat Lady,
just the tight rope
I must walk across
day after day
as I try not to fall
into the lion’s den
below.

The Incubus

comes on Tuesday
to dine with me on brie and bread.
Not even a letter from my ex-wife
could free me from my engagement.
I can feel doom
sailboating down upon me
when the doorbell rings.
The incubus reads to me from the New Yorker
while I sit at the piano
playing Brahms.
It is always the same discussion.
My bellybutton propagandized
like a clock that never stops.
I weigh in on
the library,
the cathedrals,
CBGB’s,
the poem the chicken couldn’t use.
We are most decent
sometimes
he and I,
locked in our green room
waiting
to begin.

What I Want

Is the rush of caffeine
in my bones
The sweet dark smoky flavor
down my throat.
The clear headed alertness that comes
when I give in
to the cup.
What I want,
is his cock
inside me.
The deep thrusting
of flesh into flesh.
The smell of sex
on my skin.
The wet
marks of passion on my bed.
The screams of orgasm.
The muted whispers that follow.
What I want
is to know
that I am more than my sadness,
more than my poems,
more than my pathetic childhood.
What I want
is to taste all of me,
to know all of me,
to revel in my me,
to let myself
free
to explore.
Everything.

The Sun Dog

The sun never came,
like I promised the dog,
and we both sat
in the house
waiting.
The long walk postponed
like so many before.
Hopes dashed
on leashes and biscuits.
Now
the light fades so early.
He is on his bed
stretched long
staring at me
with guilt inducing brown eyes.
Winter is here
and once more
I am left waiting
a liar.

Going To Berkeley

Was like going to the Disneyland of the Yuppies.
Blocks of restaurants
with Chinese, Thai, Indian and
Burmese food.
Children wearing a cacophony of colors,
mismatched so perfectly
by their mothers as to be hip.
Intellectuals dining on coconut rice
and discussing world peace with prophetic clarity.
The chai drinking caffeine addict
wearing corduroy and carrying a hemp tote
for his Macintosh.
Sandals and jeans.
Braids and mochas.
Women carrying yoga mats
and nibbling seaweed jerky.
The parade of Spanish nannies
walking up and down the streets
pushing little blonde haired tots in strollers.
Not a pro ‘W’ sign could be found.
Anywhere.
It almost made me miss Nashville.
It almost made me feel sorry for George W.
Almost.

Haunted Theatre

I am glad she is still alive.
She hadn’t written in days
and I had begun to imagine the worst.
Looking at the photo of them,
I imagined he had killed her,
stuffed her in to a box,
and driven off to Utah
or some other remote state.
I imagined her lifeless body,
her heavy lifeless body,
shoved into a trunk,
wrapped in burlap
and tossed into the Harpeth River
where it would float downstream
until a jet skier found her.
It is like that with me.
I always imagine the worse.
My brain is a constant stream of terrifying scenarios.
Last night,
when my boyfriend didn’t call
twenty minutes after yoga class ended,
I was sure he had been in a car wreck.
I was sure the next call would be from the police
telling me to come identify the body.
I imagined how he would look on the table,
his body bruised, one eye missing,
mouth frozen like a dead sea bass
trying to suck in one last breath of air.
I imagined what I would have to say to his mother.
That didn’t turn out so good either.
All these thoughts make me wonder if I am the illegitimate daughter of Stephen King.
But then I remember
my mother.
She was always sitting on that turquoise ottoman
in the den
reading headlines out loud to us.
This one was murdered.
That one was stabbed.
Another was poisoned.
A man was beheaded and found in his apartment four days later
after his cat’s constant meows alerted the neighbors.
It never stopped.
Night after night.
Looking back at it,
I think she enjoyed scaring me,
like she were some kind of weird female Vincent Price
and we were prisoners in her 5,000 square foot Haunted Theatre.
I wish she had read me the weather instead.

Halloween Promise

The jack-o-lanterns glow.
The children scream.
Costumes
of witches
and poodles
and pirates.
Fathers dressed like mothers.
Mothers snapping photos.
All
in the neighborhood where every body goes.
There were thousands of us.
Hundreds of bags of candy handed out.
As I stood there,
eating my Kit-Kat and a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup,
I decided
I will trick or treat
till I am ninety.