Feeling My Way Across Madness


It isn’t about what’s normal.
Or what isn’t normal.
It’s only about what I need.
And what I need is
time alone.
I’ve always been that way –
escaping into my internal world
while the rest of humanity escapes
outward.
My world is soft.
A world of pen and paper,
butterflies and flowers.
A world of observation
that I could disappear into
like a drop of water soaking into linen.
A gentle mist of rain
falling on to rose petals
in the garden.
It is my world.
My safe world,
that no one can enter into.
It has always been so.
When I abandon my world,
I am like a blind girl attempting to cross
a busy downtown intersection,
feeling my way across madness.
Each step,
unsure,
desperately
grabbing
onto the wrong people
and things,
unable to know which way I am going.
When I make it across,
if I make it across,
I do not know where I am anymore
and I am unable to get back
to where I started.
I can not recognize any of the signposts.
The sounds of the street
are like war bombs
going off in my ears
The voices are muffled and frightening,
and the hands reaching for me,
pulling at me,
are rough and insensitive.
I feel helpless to stop it.
I want to scream,
but no sound comes out of my mouth.
I want to run
but my legs are paralyzed.
It is as if I am being eaten alive
and there is nothing I can do about it.

Taking The Sun

I get scared about what’s going to happen to me.
I get scared about money
and if I will have enough
and that I have too much.
I worry that I don’t spend my days the way God wants me to.
I worry
that I worry too much.
I think about my life and I panic
over all the things I haven’t accomplished yet.
I’m not married and I don’t have children.
But then again,
neither does Oprah
and she seems to be doing alright.
But it’s not just that,
it’s more that feeling that somewhere in the last few decades I lost my way.
The ship I was supposed to be sailing left without me
and now I feel like I am in the ocean treading water,
just trying to keep my head from going under.
I am watching the ship sail off into the sunset without me
and I am helpless to try and stop it.
No matter how loud I scream
STOP
it just keeps going,
taking the sun along for the ride.
It is getting dark.
I pray that I won’t get eaten by a shark.
I feel the cold dark water all around me,
numbing my hands and feet,
chilling my stomach to the core.
It is an awful feeling.
It is the feeling of death.
I want to get back in the boat.
I want to get back on course.
But I am alone.
I am completely alone.

The Good Daughter's Work

All morning I have been the good daughter.
I tackled dental bills and hospital bills,
fought with warranties and corporations.
changed the oil on my Volvo,
and turned away from the box of hot doughnuts
sitting in the customer waiting room.
I pumped on the bike at the ‘Y’
drove to the health food store
for brown rice and green tea,
said no to lunch with my lover,
negotiated tree trimming with a large burly man
the neighbors had working next door,
found a driveway repairman
to fix my cracks,
and called the painter to see when he was coming.
I did all of this while preparing lunch,
checking my email,
and watching the market to see how much money I’ve lost today.
Now that all of that is “done”,
I don’t feel any better.
I still have the blank page before me.
Staring at me.
I keep thinking that if I could just move to Portland,
or New York,
or Madison,
everything would be different.
But I would still have bills to pay,
and rude drivers,
and parents to worry about it,
and the blank page before me.
And no one can fill it
but me.

A House of Madness

I am
building a house
with the shades down.
A madness
with nails
and balloons.
A dark empty
wrong
of whisper
and arms
scrawled with paint
pink
as a pig,
pink as a sunset.
I am building a house
caved like a wound.
A short,
poor shopping bag
of a house
with wallpaper
and bricks.
A decaying mass
flying from room to room
in search of
a window
like a swarm of bees.
Yeah, sure
sometimes you will knock
and I will not answer.
That is to be expected.
I might be reading Faust
or unable to cinch up my robe.
Or maybe I just don’t want to be disturbed.
Either way,
you’ll never know.

Martinis and Dead Engines

It is Hell outside today.
The animal inside me
yawns
wide open
like a wound.
I am
the alphabet,
letters jumbled
refusing to form words,
refusing to cooperate.
It is as if I have finally gone on strike
in protest
against the heat.
How could I melt the darkness
or put out the fire with my pen,
when there are monsters inside
roaming the streets of my soul?
You say
my mouth is a crater of hate.
My head is a maze
I cannot escape.
My skin,
is a naked beggar
thirsting for a drink.
If I were cut into a thousand pieces
and glued back together
I would never be united,
not in this sun.
I would surely melt
like a soft avocado.
I would dissolve like the old witch
and sizzle in to the ground
leaving nothing behind,
not even my shoes.
There is a name for this heat,
this poison,
that leaves me wanting to take a bath
in jello.
It is beyond oppressive.
It is beyond cruel.
It is the heat of slavery
and slamming doors.
It is the heat of lovers
and sun dogs.
It is the heat of dead engines
and martinis.
There is nothing to do
but be naked.
Nowhere to go
but inside.

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.