What's Left

It is all on the left now,
piled up and waiting to move.
Cameras and pens and recorders and tuners.
four-tracks and cassettes and boom boxes
no one wants.
I have let myself get caught up in all of it,
tangled like a dolphin in a fishing net,
fighting and struggling to get
free,
unable to find my way out.
Dead.
Now,
I want nothing to hold me.
Not my past,
or bookcases,
or dressers,
or books.
I want to wake up in the morning
with nothing and no one,
and sit down to write,
knowing I have no one to answer to,
but my pen.

Note For Note

I am starting to question the costs of things.
The weight of tears and anger
against the fight.
The tolls of resentments against surrender.
I am slowly learning that the objects
and emotions I have carried around with me,
are no longer as valuable as I once thought.
The veil has been lifted
and I am learning that the weight upon my shoulders
has not been worth it.
People and feelings,
once held sacred,
are now nothing more than chalk marks on my forehead,
wrinkles around my eyes,
dark circles and dry skin.
How precious I thought they all were!
And how wrong I have been.
What I once thought valuable, isn’t.
And those things that I took so little notice of,
are now more valuable than ever.
So, here I sit, scared to let things go,
for fear I will never have another house or piano as nice as the one I have now.
For months I have worried about where I will live,
and in what,
and dreaded what my future life will look like.
For weeks I have worried that I won’t be able to provide a grand enough home
for my piano,
to honor the legacy my parents gave me.
That I have somehow failed as a daughter and a provider.
Now, I learn my piano isn’t as valuable as I thought it was.
Like someone who bought a Rembrandt, and is now learning they bought a Rembert,
or some other equally obscure and much less valuable painting,
I am disappointed and confused.
For the last few hours,
I have contemplated selling my piano.
Lifting some of the weight off my shoulders.
Starting over
with something different,
that suits my lifestyle better.
When I share this idea with my mother,
the first words out of her mouth are,
“you know you’ll never have another piano as nice as that one again.”
And in that very moment, I see,
everything.
That is where the voice came from,
the one that swirls round my head over and over again.
The one that keeps me tied to all my STUFF!
There it is,
as plain as the ivory keys,
I practiced scales on for hours.
It is her fear that I have ingested.
Her belief system.
Her song I am singing,
note for note.

Zombies and Puppets

I understand
the big white whale
in the living room.
The one that doesn’t speak.
The one that sits there
watching
it all unfold
like cardboard puppets.
We are all just
zombies,
brushing past each other,
never really touching,
always on our way
to somewhere else.

In Celebration of Less

Tomorrow it will begin again.
The cooking and the cleaning
and the eating.
When I was a child
my sister and I did most of the cooking for Thanksgiving.
We made squash casserole,
and turkey with stuffing,
sweet potato casserole with bourbon and marshmallows on top,
green beans,
mashed potatoes,
crescent dinner rolls,
fresh cranberry sauce,
a relish tray,
a cheesecake,
and sometimes my mother would make her tunnel of fudge cake too.
After four hours of cooking, the kitchen looked like a war zone.
Pots and pans everywhere.
A Sink full of dishes.
Smells of thyme and poultry seasoning,
sage, and cornbread.
My father would always walk in around ten in the morning,
after we had been up for hours,
Look at everything and say,
“girls, there’s too much food.”
To that, my sister would always reply, “no, there’s not.”
Then we would all sit down around two o’clock,
stuff our faces,
and then take a nap.
Looking back on all of it now,
I realize how lucky I was.
I never once had to worry about whether or nor that there’d be enough food
at Thanksgiving or enough presents at Christmas.
I never once had to worry about where the money would come from
to pay for my holiday.
I never made the association between the large house I grew up in
and my life of privilege.
The big white house was just my house.
And yes, I always wanted to give things to the poor,
and help out at homeless shelters,
but I don’t think I ever really took in what it felt like
to not know where your next meal is coming from,
or to worry about disappointing your family,
or to begrudge others for what they had.
The truth is, we were too worried about preparing our own Thanksgiving.
Everyone had to have their dish.
Nothing could be eliminated.
Especially not my favorite,
the cherry coke salad.
And my sister had to have her squash casserole.
And my mother had to have the bourbon sweet potatoes,
and of course, we had to have turkey.
No one was willing to give up anything
or there would be tears
and complaining.
But now I know,
my father was right,
we did have too much food.

Life Sentence

Why is it the words won’t come today?
I hate everything I write.
Nothing is.
It all is just.
And so I sit.
And erase.
And write and erase.
And go to the kitchen
to see what I can eat,
swallow,
cook.
Hoping
that when I sit down again to write,
someone else will have taken my place.
It has been like that lately.
My mind judges my words,
and all that I write.
It is a very cruel judge.
So unforgiving.
Sentencing me to insecurity and fear
with no possibility of parole.
I am on death row.
My last meal coming.
The sun setting out my window.
The guard with the key.
The clanging metal.
The long walk down the hall.
Leading to what?
Permanent silence.
No more judging.
No more fault finding.
No more wishing I were
somebody else.

On The Wall

Blank page
staring back at me,
an adventure waiting for my words,
I am not scared of you.
I welcome you,
like a mother awaiting her first child.
There is so much more for me to discover
than the basketball and grave.
There are roads to go down and get lost on.
Fields of green and blue.
Flowers blooming by the highway,
Indian paintbrush and bluebonnets.
Summer with heat and sweat and swimming pools
to dive into.
Chimneys full of black and birds
and soot.
There are airplane rides and trips to Italy.
Pasta and men with accents.
There are birthdays yet to come,
full of cake and ice cream and presents.
There are late nights in bed
and lights out with candles
and the feel of oil on my body.
There are memories to acquire and accumulate
and fold and paste into books.
There are sounds to breathe in,
like fireworks and laughter.
There are smells of Christmas mornings,
and Thanksgiving meals,
and rosemary and thyme.
Yes,
blank page,
I welcome you.

Empty

Tell me that it will all be o.k.,
that I will wake up from this so-called life
and find the door out.
I won’t tell you of my trials as a child,
or how God created love and suicide.
Or why the professor’s dog runs
and scratches
sucking at beer cans and bitches.
I suppose in two or three days
it will be different.
I will mail myself a letter
and leave out the pages,
just an empty envelope
will arrive in my box.
I will dump it out over and over again
onto my blue sofa,
attempting to solve its emptiness,
just as I have attempted to solve my own.

Fo Fo

When I look at him
sitting in the orange chair,
with his lips puckered out like a deranged monkey,
I wonder how much longer.
The man I knew is fading.
I can still playfully yell, “Fo Fo”, at him
and he’ll say, “Diana, leave me alone.”
I can still give him a hard time about his deafness
and he will respond without fail,
“If you need a hearing aid, get one.”
But the man I knew,
the man who made me laugh,
the man I shared football and basketball games with,
and “Who’s on first,”
is disappearing.
He forgets which room he is sleeping in,
which toothbrush is his,
where his underwear drawer is,
what he ate for dinner,
what day it is,
what pills he’s taken,
and he forgets when I tell him
I am leaving in the morning.
I come into his room to say goodbye.
He tells me he didn’t know I was leaving.
I tell him I told you yesterday.
He tells me I didn’t.
Then he tells me he will miss me.
I tell him I will miss him too.
I already do.

Brown Rice

It doesn’t matter any more if she sends it
or doesn’t send it.
If my eye clears up,
or if my thyroid is off,
or if the doctor who examined me is a condescending ass!
I am tired of scrimping my life
into little boxes of worry,
that are too small for me to breathe in.
I can’t go on like this,
tied up in knots,
wondering if I will marry or not marry,
reproduce or walk through this world alone.
Where is all that Goddamn brown rice
that is supposed to calm me?
Where are the lentils and tofu
and sweeteners?
Haven’t I given up enough already?
Hell, I’m purer than anyone I know,
but what has it gotten me?
Driving to deposit checks
and visits to Dr.’s,
waiting in line while some idiot,
who looks like he just got out of prison,
scoops up
filling for my burrito,
praying the plastic gloves on his hands
haven’t been in his crotch.
Fighting with water services,
and insurers,
and attorneys.
Driving behind drivers that don’t know where they are going
or how to get there or how to make a turn.
Weaving my way
through lane after lane of traffic
and tedium,
wishing someone or something would make me move.
It is all too much.
I can’t undo any of it.
I can’t make any of it right.
There is no one here to help me
but me.
And all the brown rice in the world
can’t make it better.

Solitude

Where is the black snake in the grass?
The one who was curled up on my brick patio
in the sun.
The one that slithered along the fence
outside my window.
Where has he gone?
I look for him when I am writing
and I see chipmunks running through the leaves.
I wait for his wide flat head to rise up
like a submarine coming out of the waves
and snatch any thing in his path
down
to a quick death.
I keep my eyes peeled
along the back fence
watching
for movement.
But all I see is stillness,
and the faded basketball
that has remained motionless
in the corner
since Trouble died.

Sleeping Salesman

I don’t like salesmen.
I don’t like how they slither
their way towards me
like creeping poison ivy.
They wrap themselves around me
and try to pull me towards their table
where they hope they will try get me to hand over my check,
or credit card,
or even,
cash.
They feign such concern over my well being,
such loyalty to my every need.
But the truth is,
they don’t really care about me.
They only want what’s in my pocket.
The minute I leave,
they will find a new mark.
Mattress salesmen are the worst offenders.
They’re like whores waiting for a customer
in a florescent showroom.
They pace back and forth in their empty stores,
full of pillowtops,
praying some unsuspecting idiot will come in.
Today, I was that idiot.
When I first walked in,
the salesman was all ears.
Then I told him I wouldn’t be buying the bed from him,
but from a store
in Denver.
You should have seen him.
He pulled away quicker from me than a hand on a hot stove.
His whole posture changed,
like a deflated balloon.
And that twinkle in his eye,
the one that met me when I walked in the door,
was now just mucous.
I felt it happen.
I saw the shift.
Gone was the façade.
Gone the dear uncle I had come to know and trust.
He no longer cared
about my back,
or my neck,
or who would be sleeping on what bed
with whom.
He just wanted me gone.
After all,
I was of no use to him now.
I was just a body.
A body
taking up his time and his space,
(even though there was no one else in the store).
He had things to do.
New customers to attract.
He tossed me out of there like a dust bunny
he found under the bed.
I wonder how he sleeps at night.
And what he sleeps on.

Brownie Batter Yogi

She told me there are yogis
who live on breath alone.
They can sit for days in meditation
needing only oxygen to sustain themselves.
I do not know if I believe her.
But then,
I watched her spin her stomach
round and round
like brownie batter.

Fall Amnesia

O.k.
so maybe this isn’t the first time
I’ve written a poem
about Fall.
Maybe it’s the fifteenth time,
or the thirtieth.
Maybe it’s number ninety-nine.
I don’t know.
I can’t help it.
Fall comes once a year,
and I’m a writer.
And every year there are yellow leaves,
and red leaves,
and brown leaves,
and leaves on the ground,
and leaves at my backdoor,
and leaves in my hair,
and leaves in my car,
and it’s always the same leaves,
well, it seems like it’s the same leaves,
and there’s always leaves to rake,
and bag,
and carry,
and they keep coming and coming.
And each year,
I sit with my journal in my lap,
and stare out the window
and take it all in.
That’s what writers do.
I notice the way a leaf curves,
or bends,
or points.
I notice the variation in color.
The subtle shades of red,
and orange,
and violet.
I listen for sound.
The rustle.
The crunch underneath my feet.
The squirrel digging for nuts.
The deer.
The hoot of the owl.
I look and listen and try to find
the poem in it all.
And as I sit there
listening and looking,
I realize I am getting hungry
for cool nights,
and pumpkin,
and apples,
and cinnamon,
and hot chocolate.
And
I wonder how it is possible,
that
even though Fall comes every year,
it is all still new to me,
as if I had never experienced
any of this
before.

Balloon Boy

It is easy to become obsessed
with the latest Balloon Boy drama.
To sail away with whatever crisis is at hand-
Family, boyfriend, hair, stock market,
job, agent, career, neck or mole.
But just like the balloon sailing up in the sky,
these so called crises, are empty when ripped open.
There is nothing inside of them but hot air.
Nothing to have wasted days or hours of worry upon.
What matters is the work.
The doing.
The sitting with and meditating upon.
The being still even when all else is going crazy.
It is too easy to get caught up in the next drama,
to watch the years get swept away
by some silver UFO that turns out to be nothing but a balloon.
Oh, yes, the years and hours lost are real,
but their captor is not.
Therein lies the lesson of the Balloon Boy -
Tell the truth.
Do honest work.
Don’t get caught up in the drama of others.
Don’t believe everything you see.
And most of all,
Reality T.V. – isn’t.

Suji

The writing comes from unwriting.
From sitting with the blank
and letting the truth creep out
one painful word at a time.
I think about living in L.A.
Fighting the cars,
and the sun,
and the blondes.
Giving in to the Valley girls
and the starlets on Hollywood Boulevard.
I think about palm trees,
and eighty-degree Chirstmases,
and how hard my body would have to be
just so I could walk down the street
without feeling inferior.
I think about Third Street,
and the Promenade,
and Ted Hawkins,
and the waiter at the Indian restaurant
who had a crush on me
and used to watch me write lyrics
and poems
while I ate Saag Paneer.
I think about the cliff
and sitting on the edge
watching the traffic
and the seagulls below.
I think about the rain
and how it never came,
and the homeless man
who lived in my laundry room
and ate out of the dumpster,
and the way the laundry room
always smelled like urine.
I think about USC,
and your old Honda,
and late nights fucking
in my bed.
I think about going back to L.A.,
and talking to agents again,
and
kissing asses,
and trying to act like I did when I was twenty.
That was before I knew
just how much
I hate the sun.

Puh-lease

Today they came and offered him
a hundred dollars.
“A hundred dollars for inconvenience,” they said.
Hell, it wasn’t inconvenience he suffered
when that woman plowed into him from behind.
Inconvenience is when you have to wait in line at a grocery store,
or when someone brings you the wrong meal,
or loses your dry cleaning.
That’s inconvenience.
This was more than inconvenience.
This was pain and suffering
and they knew it,
the little liars.
They come out to our house in their white Jeep with their clipboards,
acting like they know what’s what
when all they really know is what some fool in an office told them to say.
See, I’ve been down this road before.
I know the score.
I know the game.
They want to get away with paying as little as possible.
That’s how they can keep paying for all their fancy ads,
and the Jeeps that have their names on it.
Well, let me just say right here and now,
they’ve come to the wrong house.
A hundred dollars?
Puh-lease.

Worry Wart

I am a worry wart.
I worry about everything.
I worry that my house won’t sell.
I worry that my house will sell.
I worry about what will become of my parents.
I worry that my sister will spend all of their money and I’ll have to support them.
I worry about the stock market.
I worry that my father has cancer.
I worry about the gray hair I’m getting.
I worry that I will never get rid of the numbness in my arm.
I worry about my career and if I will ever make money.
I worry about getting married.
I worry about not getting married.
I worry about not having children.
I worry that if I have children, I’ll hate it.
I worry about where to move.
I worry that if I pick Portland we’ll be too close to relatives.
I worry that if we pick New York I won’t like the winters.
I worry that I’m not as talented as I thought I was.
I worry that I’ll never get to where I am supposed to go.
I worry that by worrying I am ruining my life.
I worry that I can’t stop worrying.

Sharks Kill

The sky is so grey today
it is as if it were full of soot
from some nearby coal company.
There is not an animal to be found.
They are all up in the trees
watching the sharks kill Beethoven.
Hey, get down from there!
You little whores.
Don’t you know the horses are dreaming
of horses?
I gave the water a drink
and waited for India to come out
from under the bed.
Tomorrow I will chase the ribbons
in my wallpaper.

White Writing

The truth is,
I hate writing
on a computer.
I hate the sound of the keys clicking
beneath my fingers
and the feel of cold
metal
on my wrists
like handcuffs.
I like the flow,
the softness,
of
paper.
The curl-myself-up in a chair kind of writing
that can only be done with a journal.
Sitting in front of a keyboard isn’t writing,
it’s being a secretary,
and I have no desire to be one of those.
I don’t want my page to glare at me,
or have a cursor blink at me
demanding direction,
or a swift ending.
I want the quiet of pen on paper,
the glide,
the flow,
the stream
of curled letters
leaning and falling
as they find their way into a world
of my creation.
I want to hear the sound of frustration,
paper being waded up,
crinkled,
a pen scratching out changes,
not a cursor running backwards eliminating
any trace of what could have been.
I want to leave an ugly mess behind me
for everyone to see.
I want the world to know
just what it took
to get me to
the end.

The Red Queen's Bidding

They’re out there.
The bastards.
Crawling on the holly.
Flying in and out of my gutters.
Winged henchmen
willing to do the red queen’s bidding.
I watch them from my kitchen window,
while I sit safe inside
eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
One by one they come,
until there are
five, ten, fifteen
red bodied devils,
all lined up on my white gutters,
each one taking flight in some weird insectian order
like World War II pilots going off to war.
I want to scream at them.
I want to tell them to leave my gutters alone.
I’d shoot them from my window if I could,
but the screens are in the way.
They seem to know they are well protected
tucked in the gutter.
We both know it.
They won’t be happy
until I climb up on the roof in the middle of the night
with my flashlight
and attack them while they sleep,
face to face.
They want my blood.
Tomorrow morning we’ll see
who comes back alive.