The Taking Care of Hummingbirds

I have printed the forms
for each of us to sign,
so we will know
who gets what
when the time comes.
There is his stack and mine.
It is all there
in black and white.
The names of the people we love
or at least tolerate.
Our guilt money.
The taking care of hummingbirds.
I never worried about such things before.
But Sunday is gone.
Neither of us understands
how words on paper became so final.
Hands
painting
yellow and blue.
Innocent colors of streaks
running
down the page
settling
into carpet.
Everything seems so important now.
As if the wrong move
could mean my death.

Wildflowers

Their world is so small now.
Two queen beds.
One in the bedroom,
the other in their living room.
Two brown leather chairs with an ottoman
they rarely sit in.
A refrigerator full of diet soda
and peanut butter.
Half-eaten Ritz crackers and candy bars.
A bed strewn with watercolor pencils
and Chagal stencils.
Caretakers and pills.
Endless amounts of pills,
swallowed with applesauce and yogurt.
The long walk down the hall.
Three times a day
to a table for meals.
Photographs of families line their walk.
Each generation
smiling more stupidly than the one
before.
The pale pink walls.
The green patterned carpet,
lulling them to sleep.
The roses out their window.
Day after day,
it is always the same.
On good days,
they walk to the garden.
She pulls the head off a dead rose.
The white petals fall to the ground
and blow away.
On bad days,
they stay in their rooms
with the t.v. on
gathering dust.
And the mint keeps growing,
taking over
her little plot
of wildflowers.

From Above

As if the noise could end.
The hammering could
Stop
And I could
breathe
for a minute.
This back and forth
sawing,
lion growling,
nail-biting-torture
never ceases till
four-thirty on the dot.
Oh, and on the weekends.
But I’m never here on the weekends.
Everyday it comes.
From where,
I do not know.
It is as if the walls and the ceiling are possessed.
Just when I’m sure it’s coming from above,
it’s coming from next door.
And when I think it’s coming from next door,
it’s coming from above.
What the Hell are these people doing?
I mean, just how much can you do to a fifteen hundred square foot apartment?
Evidently, plenty.
If it were up to me, I’d live in it “as is.”
Just wheel in a really good bed,
a desk,
a couple of chairs,
and a sofa,
and start working.
Quietly.
Very quietly.
But these people here,
are more about style
than substance.
They’re more about “what’s in”
than what’s inside.
I see them in the elevators.
Dripping in diamonds and pearls.
Hair dyed bright red.
Lips dyed even redder.
Teeth whiter than humanly possible.
Perfume so strong it should come with a warning label
or at least a clothes pin.
Faces Botoxed and nipped and tucked and pulled
so many times
they could be wrapped in wax paper
and sold
as taffy.

A House Is Not A Home

Tonight I want to go home.
I want to be in my bed
with my sheets and my pillow.
I want to wake up to where I know.
I want grass and trees and white paint
on doors and windows.
I want the sound of crickets
and the taste of pressure-cooked brown rice.
I want my hot water bottle across my belly
and stillness.
I want someone to call me ‘baby’ or ‘honey’
and threaten to serve me a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy.
I want to drive across town in five minutes
and never worry if I’ll be hit by a cab, or a bus,
or a train.
I want to open my own mail
and throw out all the ads.
I want to be there when the phone rings
and listen for all the times it doesn’t.
I want to know who wants me.
And who doesn't.
I want to stare out behind the curtains
and watch the neighbors fight,
and then wait for the police to come.
I want to go home.
The only problem is
I don’t know where home is.
Home isn’t Nashville.
It never has been
and it never will be.
And home isn’t L.A.
with it’s endless palm trees and oppressive sunshine.
The only home I’ve ever known was in Houston,
but that house was torn down over five years ago.
And that house was never a home.
The truth is,
I’ve never had a home.
I’ve had roofs over my head.
And places where I’ve kept my stuff,
but I’ve never had a home.
I do not know the feeling of walking in the door and saying to myself, “it’s good to be home.”
Instead,
when I turn on the lights,
I walk in to silence
and the fear in my stomach
that keeps me running.
I walk in to the same empty hole
I’ve felt all my life.
I walk in to wishing
and longing,
and the feeling that wherever I am,
I am never home.

Feeding the needy

Our hands open to teeth.
Sandals and shorts,
sores ooze Coke and biscuits.
I watch them bake skin in the sun
and smoke picnic endlessly.
Where will they go when the rain comes?
In churches and under tables?
Their minds chatter tomatoes and beer cans and then they laugh.
And laugh.
Crazy laughs.
As if God came and sat beside them and whispered
in their ear “the dog broke the dishes”.
I am not one of them
in my perfect blue Victorian house
with the irises blooming
out front.
But I feel their hunger.
I know what it’s like to want gravy,
but settle for empty bowls
and lick the air for crumbs.
I understand the urgency that comes with time.
The press and flow of promises unrealized.
The stench of almost and the lure of not quite.
The brokenness of dreams.
Yes, I understand.

Holding Hands With The Blind

It is like that now,
holding hands with the blind,
trying to maneuver through the dark tunnels
of fire,
as they stumble
and fall.
I can not
save
them.
The sugar pulses in their veins
like pancakes,
their bright eyes
fading
with disease.

Slipping On Algae

It’s all moving too fast.
This single bleed.
The beans on the pot.
The cops across the street with pens in their hands
and guns tucked away.
There are too many questions
I can not answer.
Clouds
and pictures
and worries.
I sit
frozen
scared to move to the right
or to the left.
Slipping on algae with each step.
Feeling the pull
as it takes me
somewhere
I do not want to go.
When did life become like this?
Clots and pictures.
Pictures of dead people and animals.
smiling at me
wearing linen and pearls.
Hair dyed and lips reddened.
Tongues dipping into birdbaths
Longing to quench a thirst
No water can ever satisfy.
I want to plug my ears.
To run through the fields screaming
in search of silence.
To sit on a rock
and breathe
long and hard and deep
and still
where no one can listen.
To know
I am safe.

A Beginner

The doctor was a beginner,
turned around by a dying king
with a rope round his neck
and a cat in his lap.
A glint of a man,
once outnumbered by
courtesans and queens.
A simple man with a dream,
as all simple men are.
A working class fellow,
happy to pass his days with a beer
or a walk in the woods.
He didn’t know spit,
or blood for that matter,
but he was quick with a knife
and thread.
And when he saw a man in trouble
he would dive in,
head first,
with great aplomb.
And so this man,
this gentle man,
took hold of the city,
like crabgrass,
planting his roots
deep into the affections of others,
never questioning
the malformed foal
or the Cesarean section required.
Never charging more than was absolutely required.
Taking in trades
from the poor:
the occasional pig,
a one-legged rooster,
jars of jelly and home-made jam,
shoes cobbled by arthritic hands,
and sweaters knitted by fair-haired maids.
It was a good life.
A fair life.
That is,
until the king with the rope and the cat
came into his life.
He was summoned to the castle,
where he found the king slumped
in his chair.
Eyes bulging.
Rope taught.
Hands rigid and cold.
Heartbroken over the loss of the Queen’s affection.
And though he tried to save him,
He could not.
He worked for hours,
pumping and blowing,
and praying,
and swearing,
and rubbing hands and feet.
But nothing changed.
The king was dead.
So was his cat.
The doctor went home to his cottage,
locked his door
and turned off the lights.
Days passed.
But there were no calls for him to come.
No jars of jam,
or crippled birds left at his door.
No sweaters knitted by fair hands.
Nothing.
When he did make his way to town,
he was never greeted with a familiar smile,
or pleasant word,
or any word for that matter,
just snorts of disdain.
It was as if he wasn’t himself anymore.
And he wasn’t.
So he loaded up his cart and left,
and tried to become
a beginner
once more.

What's the Point?

There’s nothing to do anymore.
Really, there isn’t.
I woke up this morning, bored.
I thought to myself,
“Go to a movie.”
What’s the point of doing that?
It’s just sitting.
It’s not really doing anything.
Besides, I usually hate every movie I see
and then I wish I could have my two hours back,
and my nine fifty.
O.k. then, why don’t you clean?
Cleaning’s always good,
and it’s so productive.
That’s stupid, I thought.
I have to clean tomorrow before I leave.
If I clean today, I’ll still end up cleaning tomorrow too.
O.k. then, why don’t you write?
Write what? I thought.
And for whom?
There’s no one to write for.
I’ve written everything I want to write about.
So, go workout.
Burn some calories.
I already did that.
Well, then, there’s always the mall.
I hate the mall.
I wander around like a dying fish
looking for water.
I stare at everything and wonder why I don’t want any of it.
Just how much pleasure is a leather bag and a pair of boots supposed to give me,
and for how long?
Go to the library and get a good book.
Great idea,
except the book I want is checked out,
and the last time I went to the library it took me fifteen minutes to get out of the parking garage
all because there was only one guard on duty working the gate.
“It’s lunch time,” the disgruntled guard said.
“Why can’t they get someone to fill in when the other person goes to lunch,” I asked?
“Why don’t I just stop eating lunch all together?” he quipped.
Yeah, there’s no way I’m going there today.
I hate every choice I come up with.
I get so desperate I even call my sister.
“So, what are you doing?”I asked casually.
“Getting ready for my date,” she said.
She’s trying to buy panties at Macy’s.
Not because she needs new panties,
she just doesn’t want to do her laundry.
I hang up.
She’s too much for me.
I tell myself to come up with something I’ve never done.
Challenge myself.
Well, I’ve never gone skydiving.
I guess I could go skydiving.
But why would I want to do that?
I hate things like that.
Either I die on the way down,
or I survive and vomit when I hit the ground.
That doesn’t sound appealing.
Wait a minute,
I know,
I could go to that new ice cream shop that sells twelve-dollar-a-pint ice creams.
That’s what I’ll do.
Oh, wait,
I can’t do that,
I’m lactose intolerant
and sugar makes me sick.

The Gerber Girl

Today as the Valium slips through my veins,
I am calmer.
I do not yell at the man in front of me, who,
rather than making a left
on a green light,
waits for the arrow.
Nor do I flip out when the girl at the grocery store
cuts in front of me with her basket of coconut water.
I smile at the woman next to me who is blaring some offending music
from her green I-pod.
And I forgive the child with the miniature cart who runs over my foot
without a thought.
After all, it’s the holidays.
We are all supposed to be nice to each other, right?
It’s bad Karma to do anything else.
At least that’s what my yoga teacher tells me.
Don’t be nice just to be nice,
do it for your Karma.
How very yoga!
So, as I make my way through my errands,
I am careful not to do anything that could potentially bring more strife to myself.
At Trader Joe’s, I watch a girl hugging some friend she hasn’t seen in months.
She is carrying pink Gerber daisies in one hand and a fruit cake in the other.
And though I don’t know her, I can tell
she is one of those perpetually smiley people.
Always happy and cheery.
I walk past her,
standing there in her burgundy coat with her little brown boots,
and I think to myself,
I want to be that girl.
No, really,
I want to be that girl.
The girl who brings sunshine.
The girl everyone is happy to see.
Little Miss Daisy.
I think about pulling her aside and asking her her secret.
Are you on something?
Herbal or prescription?
How do you do it?
Are you faking it?
Or are you really that happy?
But I can’t ask her.
She’d think I’m insane.
So I continue on.
I walk past cut vegetables,
hummus, and olive spread,
and eighty kinds of cheese
I’ll never eat.
And right past those little chocolate cakes I think about buying,
but never do,
even on my most pre-menstrual days.
And when I check out,
she is there again,
the Gerber girl,
smiling and sniffing her daisies.
And I am standing in line
behind her,
wishing.

Safety In Numbers

There’s a cop parked in the empty lot across the alley.
It’s been there the last two hours
and I’m glad it’s there.
Earlier this week there were three cop cars in front of the house
and another four down the street.
And yellow police tape across the steps of the triplex next to us.
Something’s going on.
When I asked the undercover detective in the car in front of the house about it,
he said they were removing the tape.
Seems there had been some evidence there.
“Evidence?” “What evidence?” I asked, in my most friendly, pleasant, suburban voice.
He wouldn’t say.
Which only makes me wonder more.
Was there a dead body?
A gun?
A baggie of pills?
What?
There weren’t seven cop cars on our street over a whiskey bottle left behind.
No,
something bad had gone down.
Something is still going down.
That’s why that cop is sitting in his car in the lot behind my house.
That’s why the street is so damn quiet today.
No Rap music blaring.
Everyone in hiding.
It’s cat and mouse time.
Who’s gonna move first?
I tell myself all of this police presence is a good thing.
That I’m safe.
But how safe can I really be
when half the cops in the city are patrolling my street?

Saturday Market

At the market
we line up
for kale.
Dark green leaves
and yellow flowers.
Coffee dripped blue
and cream in bottles.
Dogs on leashes and babies running loose.
The sun on our backs
and frost in our mouths.
My fingers numb with the morning.
Here, the Asian women watch you
to see how many samples of pear you’ve eaten,
then shake their heads when you do not buy.
Parking is difficult
and the maids are always out with pen in hand
ready to ticket.
On the corner a man plays a milk crate
and broken guitar
hoping for change.

Turning Wild

I am starting to turn wild.
The way yams grow from the ground,
curved and bent and careless.
The way blackberries race across the vines
in Summer.
The way lions roar
and dogs howl.
The way night rolls in against the fog
without apologizing.
I am starting to turn wild.
I do not care so much what I say or don’t say.
Who I help or don’t help.
Who I fix or leave broken.
Here,
in my cave,
with the rain coming down
and the tarp uncovered letting in light,
I am starting to turn wild.
I can feel it in my blood.
In my eyes.
In the curve of my fingers and in the flare of my nostrils.
In the heat of my breath,
and the point of my tongue.
In the folds of my lips
and in between my legs.
It is coming.
I have tasted it now.
Like raw honey.
Thick and sweet.
I am starting to turn wild.

Broken Thing


Yesterday,
I was sure she was dead.
When the phone rang
and I ran to get it
leaving my mat in the middle of yoga class,
I expected to hear someone from the hospital tell me,
“we’re sorry.”
Instead, it was just a pre-recording about credit card debt
from Washington.
I immediately hung up
and returned to my downward dog.
When I got home,
I called and learned my mother was doing fine,
much better than yesterday.
I started crying.
Not because my mother was doing better,
but rather because
my mind had tricked me,
again.
I had succumbed to the little voice in my head that always tells me
terror is true.
I hate that voice.
It sounds so real.
I always believe it.
I always fall for it.
Like the magician pulling the coin out of someone’s ear,
or the rabbit out of the hat,
no matter how many times I’ve seen the trick, I still don’t know how it’s done.
It is the same voice that tells me
my lover is having an affair,
or that he’s been killed in a car accident when I can’t reach him.
Or that the little mole on my back is Cancer,
or that I’m going blind,
or that I’m destined to be poor.
It is the one that keeps me so tied up in worry,
that I wake up panicked.
But yesterday afternoon,
after sitting and crying and realizing I had been tricked once more,
I told myself, “enough.”
I told myself I was through listening to that little demon
and that I had other things to do.
And that
that was no longer going to be
me.
I do not need to be like the dog
chasing its tail round and round trying to catch it.
No,
I am through taking a bath in flames.
I am through being
this thing,
this worried,
broken thing.

Oranges and Fog


Thursday,
and my father is at it again.
Such are oranges and fog.
The body has forgotten
his social security check
again.
I am mostly toes
walking
along the shore
explaining over and over again
what is out of my control.
Photos of blackbirds
and foam,
the Alzheimer’s won’t let sink in.
It is like that now.
Some men talk,
other’s don’t.
Neither of them can remember anything.
Phone numbers.
Meal times.
It’s all too much.
What happened this morning.
The Saturday afternoon.
The walnuts and cars along the road.
I don’t know
the comedy of old men.
I weigh one hundred and twenty five pounds
in socks.
Each moment is a new beginning
they will quickly forget.
And still,
there’s enough fat to pinch
beneath my blouse.

Silent Picture

Snow
on the branches
and bushes.
Deep white.
Everywhere.
Hanging and melting
and blowing.
The frozen woods
forever
in my eyes.
The vast woods of clouds.
From my chair,
I see the grey.
The dog barks
disturbing my picture,
my silent picture.

Bill

Bill died today.
His wife called me a few hours ago
and said he passed away this morning.
I had a bad feeling when we called last week to ask him about a battery
and they said he’d been in the hospital for five weeks.
Bill kept my Volvo running.
He was always there when I called and needed something.
A few months ago,
when I couldn’t get it started I called him.
I told him the guy in the garage had tried to jump start it but that did nothing.
Bill said, “It sounds like a worn out starter. Try putting it in neutral and see if it starts.”
Sure enough,
it started right up.
He was right.
He was always right when it came to those 240 Volvos.
I could describe the smallest problem
and he would instantly know what it was.
He could have had his own show
like the guys on Car Talk.
He could have called it Bill Talk,
and he would have never been stumped by anyone.
But he was more than a mechanic.
Coming to see Bill was an experience.
You didn’t just get your car fixed.
Bill would talk to you about everything
from philosophy to politics.
And he knew just how things should be run in this country.
I don’t think he was a Republican,
but I’m more sure he wasn’t a Democrat.
Bill was probably an Independent.
He worked out of the garage of a house he owned.
Like some kind of mad genius’ workroom.
There were parts everywhere.
On the walls and on the floor
and on his workbench.
Parts no one had anymore.
Parts hard to come by.
Bill had them all.
Sometimes we’d talk for a long time
before he’d ever get started.
(sometimes I thought he’d never get started)
Usually he kept my car longer than he said he would,
but he’d always get it done.
Old friends would come by with their Volvo’s and ask him questions about why it was doing this or that,
and Bill would laugh and say, “Hell if I know.”
But then he’d always give a suggestion.
He kept my car cool in the summer
pumping it full of freeon they don’t make anymore.
And when my car died on the freeway
just outside of Memphis,
Bill talked me through what to do to get it running again
so we could drive it home to Nashville.
If someone else ever worked on my car, I’d show him what they said and he’d
look at the report and say,
“they don’t know Volvos.”
And he’d be right.
They didn’t.
No one knew Volvos like Bill.
Now that he’s gone,
I’m going to finally sell my 240.
It just won’t be the same without him.

Bingo

She says she wants a house of her own.
A place with a yard and trees,
like she used to have in Houston.
When she says this,
I don’t know what to say.
She used to have a five thousand square foot home
made out of Miami Brick.
Now she has two rooms.
She is in
“assisted living”.
Meals are prepared and caretakers enter their room at will.
Showers are given and medicine is doled out like bitter candy.
I do not have the money to give her a home,
nor do I know how
to find a caretaker that wouldn’t steal from them,
or leave them to starve.
So I sit here and I feel guilty,
and then just when I’m starting to feel really bad,
I hear a little voice in my head say,
“wait a minute, she’s the one who did this to herself”.
She could have changed her habits years ago.
She could have started exercising instead of sitting on the couch.
She could have eaten a few carrots and some salads instead of boxes of chocolates
and pints of ice cream.
She could have changed
and none of this would have happened.
The strokes.
The diabetes.
The heart failure.
She could have just been a woman in her seventies now.
Still driving and enjoying life,
taking trips to Mexico
and Hawaii,
letting the sun melt her back while dipping her feet in the waves.
She could have been watching the sunset
from some veranda
dining on lobster and crab.
Instead,
she wears oxygen now,
pees in her pants,
and struggles to remember what time is Bingo.

Double Rainbows


She got out.
Pulled up and left
like a turnip yanked from the ground.
Headed west for the mountains
and snow
and double rainbows.
Carved her name into the hills
with her nails
and said, “enough.”
I envy her,
there with her dogs and her peace
and her solitude.
Alone with her thoughts and her body,
And her bed.
I envy how she took
just his money
and nothing more from him.
She had suffered long enough.
Now she is free
or so at least she seems.

Blind Judgment

Blind,
I thought,
but now I see.
I see everything.
My cord,
curled up and connected.
The silence,
outside.
The way the wind chime bangs against the door.
I see red.
Cranberries
and radishes,
and dark cherry pie.
I see my doctor,
the one with the turtlenecks and European loafers,
the one I had a crush on,
the one I thought I knew,
now I’ve learned
he’s gay.
How blind I was.
I thought I could tell who was what.
Gay.
Straight.
Rich.
Poor.
Stupid.
Schooled.
But perhaps I haven’t been able to see at all.
I was so cocky.
So sure
I knew right from wrong.
But do I?
Does anyone?
There is so much rush to judgment
in this world.
This person lied,
so that means they are and will always be a liar.
That person stole,
so that means they are and will always be a thief.
This person threw a tantrum
so that means they are and will always be unstable,
and unworthy, and a child.
Where is the understanding in this world?
What do we know?
What do any of us know?
We all think we know so damn much
about everything.
What another person should do.
How another person should feel.
But what gives us the right to decide for others
much less even ourselves?
What if we have been basing our decisions on incorrect assumptions
and everything we thought about others and ourselves was wrong?
What would we do then?
Could we undo the switch?
Unplug the needle?
Bring back the dead?
Take back the word?
The deed?
The finger?
The column written?
It’s easy to make decisions.
Too easy.