My Sickness

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

New Summer Video

I just learned Final Cut!

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

Hope you enjoy on a Summer day!

SuperWoman

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

Nothing Means Anything

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

Hope

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

Enough

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

What Has To Be Done

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

An Ounce of Prevention

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

Cold Call

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

Solitude Sunday


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

Sunshine And Breasts

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

Silent War

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

The Eyes of Dogs

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

Bad Bed Partners

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

The Wrong House

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

On The Outside

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

This Place

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

Trees

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

The Lizard in The Sun

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

Monday Afternoon

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