For what strange orchestra brings an old woman alone
Wandering her last solo year in charming Italy,
A lost village, cobble stone bones
And a man.
This is not as she had planned.
Purse tight to cracking hip
Sitting still to setting casts of evening
Light to the west of her days.
For a near hour.
Feeling naked, almost.
Scaling her up and down. Sharp. Up and down.
No age of permission giving her the right,
She scorned, to wonder this.
She knew what she looked like.
Why such matters took her to him
To see, how he looked at her.
She was bared-souled and couldn't for one more chromatic second stay.
"Il finito." Rolled down from his tongue
Just as his dark eyes lifted wispy black hair, his stubble jaw,
Conducting her to stand.
Flapping open her purse, then wallet, then forty euros trembling
For what? She could not behold even the question.
Temptation caught her, now, temptation called her
Fear, to look away, walk away, without a sight of memory of
The moment before.
Before she could turn,
He turned, her, around.
Her. A canvas.
Blankness covered in face of someone who, when she looked,
She recognized, in surrender.
She was not old. She was not young.
It was just her.
A timeless piece.
Her whole life, blushed in paint.
No wrinkle of insecurity,
Clef of pain,
Scowl of years,
Hollowness of impermanence.
Not a note of discord,
No mark of regret.
She knew this woman's eyes.
She knew this woman's expression.
Contours of ordinary beauty
Every octave of humanly life
Cast imperfect and forgiving,
Light from the east.
She gave him forty euros.
She gave him a "Grazie millie."
He gave her, her.
Face upon canvas, beautiful.
She walked into the evening,
Over cobble stone bones
Staring down into her eyes and thinking
Of her years, forgotten pieces
Below aged music.
He painted her, smiling, when
She hadn't smiled.
He painted her flowing mane black, when,
Her hair was cut gray.
He painted her eyes -
Alive.
Jubilant and singing.
He saw her life beneath,
A portrait of her whole color.
Her living art, her rich palette -
Beautiful enough to hang on a wall.
Or to live inside. And love.
"Grazie millie," she said again,
This time - to the paint sounds,
To the harsh brush strokes struck apart
Then swept finely together, strings of violins,
Acryllic tones without name, to
The irreplaceable mixture of herself in stillness.
It was not what he had seen.
It was belief of herself, he believed, left
Unseen.
Light of her days glimmering,
Quiet verbrato,
A finale setting west, and falling.
She placed her starry portrait inside
A plain night street bin.
She needed it no longer. She had memorized every note.
He had painted her a symphony
To tell a tale
Of an old woman who became
Her own portrait.
Who went Italy and returned
A painter.
Through moon night chords,
Cobble stone streets, a found village.
And a woman, softly moving in her portrait life,
Painting herself towards home.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Rare Winter Blue
I noticed so delicate a rare blue poem,
Through glass light shadows sang
Dulcet flutter, anthem unbroken
Still solemn winter, softened.
"Dear pray, poem," I brushed in whisper
Bent toward her radiant gravity,
"Renew me kind like airy jasper."
Polished tomb and unearthed wings.
Patient grace that I may slowly, lifting gently,
Cradle her million calling seasons
Then lay her sweet to fresh paper nest--
Awaiting her hymns of spring.
Through glass light shadows sang
Dulcet flutter, anthem unbroken
Still solemn winter, softened.
"Dear pray, poem," I brushed in whisper
Bent toward her radiant gravity,
"Renew me kind like airy jasper."
Polished tomb and unearthed wings.
Patient grace that I may slowly, lifting gently,
Cradle her million calling seasons
Then lay her sweet to fresh paper nest--
Awaiting her hymns of spring.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Kimchi
I don't know why
I have a hearty appetite for my
Korean kimchi.
Fermented cabbage seasoned spicy
Long salted pepper flakes
Garlic and ginger
And stinky fish sauce
When
I can't stand fish.
My embarrassing comfort food
Even before I can remember--
Embarrassment.
A present taste of something I loved
With my Korean tongue before
It adopted English.
Jars of pungent stench untwisting
For so very, very long.
I apologize with hidden humiliation.
But it sticks to me. Stays on my breath.
Though never enough to stir its aroma into
A face.
A reaching hand.
Fingernails to my feeding lips.
The scent of salty shape turning me toward--
then turning me away.
Tide to unmet tide,
A distant sea
Of whole beginning.
It's never coming back to me.
I eat it like it is
My last meal, or
My first.
Until
I cry hot tears
Down puffy pink cheeks
From almond eyes
Two years old and 30
Clinging to
The same hot tears
And not knowing why.
I eat it when
I am all alone. Lonely.
Abandoned of all else
Except, that spicy bowl and me.
Forcing my senses, unwilling,
To what came before.
Burning my belly, raw,
To the very empty bottom.
Eating me red as I eat.
Never far enough.
Never below the empty.
As if gorging a memory
Will give me
Access to it.
To something that loved me first.
Or perhaps not.
To something fed to me before I could feed myself.
Or perhaps not.
The empty bottom never turns to tell.
I eat as if it will.
I feed my children kimchi.
For myself.
To remind me that
I will feed them years past
Remembering my face.
So they remember my hands
Answering them over and over and over--
"Yes, I will feed you full."
Until,
They have had enough of me.
Enough of me to be embarrassed of me,
And never
Of themselves.
So that kimchi will just be
A stinky memory of their mother's familiar scent,
An open sea,
Tide to returning tide,
And nothing more.
For all the burning
Life of me
I don't know why I love to
Eat a past of me,
A growing-smaller-as-I-look-back part of me.
An empty distant bowl,
Always to the bottom, and
Never knowing why.
I have a hearty appetite for my
Korean kimchi.
Fermented cabbage seasoned spicy
Long salted pepper flakes
Garlic and ginger
And stinky fish sauce
When
I can't stand fish.
My embarrassing comfort food
Even before I can remember--
Embarrassment.
A present taste of something I loved
With my Korean tongue before
It adopted English.
Jars of pungent stench untwisting
For so very, very long.
I apologize with hidden humiliation.
But it sticks to me. Stays on my breath.
Though never enough to stir its aroma into
A face.
A reaching hand.
Fingernails to my feeding lips.
The scent of salty shape turning me toward--
then turning me away.
Tide to unmet tide,
A distant sea
Of whole beginning.
It's never coming back to me.
I eat it like it is
My last meal, or
My first.
Until
I cry hot tears
Down puffy pink cheeks
From almond eyes
Two years old and 30
Clinging to
The same hot tears
And not knowing why.
I eat it when
I am all alone. Lonely.
Abandoned of all else
Except, that spicy bowl and me.
Forcing my senses, unwilling,
To what came before.
Burning my belly, raw,
To the very empty bottom.
Eating me red as I eat.
Never far enough.
Never below the empty.
As if gorging a memory
Will give me
Access to it.
To something that loved me first.
Or perhaps not.
To something fed to me before I could feed myself.
Or perhaps not.
The empty bottom never turns to tell.
I eat as if it will.
I feed my children kimchi.
For myself.
To remind me that
I will feed them years past
Remembering my face.
So they remember my hands
Answering them over and over and over--
"Yes, I will feed you full."
Until,
They have had enough of me.
Enough of me to be embarrassed of me,
And never
Of themselves.
So that kimchi will just be
A stinky memory of their mother's familiar scent,
An open sea,
Tide to returning tide,
And nothing more.
For all the burning
Life of me
I don't know why I love to
Eat a past of me,
A growing-smaller-as-I-look-back part of me.
An empty distant bowl,
Always to the bottom, and
Never knowing why.
Speaking In *?<@! Circles
Introduction:
[(Me) = Y]
[Unliked me = y]
[Unlike me = X]
[Liked me = x]
(Me) ≠ [Liked Me]
Start music.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Searching for X,
baa-dumb, baa-dumb
Open new window to
My inner net*
Gray = Y.
That's Real Y (Me).
Multiple synoyms.
Not right
click, click, click,
Spell check that:
Synonyms.
Up tempo.
Be-doo, be-dumb
Say ∞ internet**:
Gray is cinereal.
But cinereal ≠ gray.
Cinereal > gray.
X > Y.
Cinereal is
Cinereal.
X = X,
Therefore,
≠ Real Y (Me).
Up tempo.
Faster keys.
Beat, beat, beat.
Inner net
Me > Y.
Taking cinereal.
To be
Liked me.
Smile @ X.
X is me.
Fortissimo! Crescendo!
Takes me to
Chorus:
Cinerea, O!
Definite shun, O!
Gray matter of the brain.
Lovely O! = Ugly
Mental image.
O! Mine!
It's me!
xO!
It's me!
xO!
Refrain.
Refrain.
Down tempo.
Thud, thud, thud.
Inner net me nt al.
Some things missing.
Never, mine.
Lovely.
Me ≠ @ all exactly
Smiling.
Dud, dud, dud.
It's me. Ugly.
Not smiling, exactly.
Pianissimo.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Close old window to
My fading
internet
Gray.
Music: off.
That's really me,
Just
Speaking.
Hmm?
What, exactly?
Gray is me.
Unliked.
A symbol.
Why?
Because,
y = unspeakable inner
Gray.
Am I Ms. Understood?
Don't understand
Why
I play symbols?
Why
I am a Shut Up
Window.
Exactly Y = gray.
Exactly Y = don't speak
Or sing.
I am no math.
Incalculable.
I am no song.
Un-notable.
I am no poem.
Silence.
So unspeakable,
It hurts.
"You're just a circle!" I shout.
Pointless.
l one l Y
Circle.
Me.
Well, enough.
Now, drum up
Inner encore:
Algorithmic
Beat. Beat. Beat.
Open new window.
Searching for
A + Other me / Unknown.
Swish, wish, wish,
I added up, up, up
To be more, more , more
(*Inner net > **internet)
[(Me) = Y]
[Unliked me = y]
[Unlike me = X]
[Liked me = x]
(Me) ≠ [Liked Me]
Start music.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Searching for X,
baa-dumb, baa-dumb
Open new window to
My inner net*
Gray = Y.
That's Real Y (Me).
Multiple synoyms.
Not right
click, click, click,
Spell check that:
Synonyms.
Up tempo.
Be-doo, be-dumb
Say ∞ internet**:
Gray is cinereal.
But cinereal ≠ gray.
Cinereal > gray.
X > Y.
Cinereal is
Cinereal.
X = X,
Therefore,
≠ Real Y (Me).
Up tempo.
Faster keys.
Beat, beat, beat.
Inner net
Me > Y.
Taking cinereal.
To be
Liked me.
Smile @ X.
X is me.
Fortissimo! Crescendo!
Takes me to
Chorus:
Cinerea, O!
Definite shun, O!
Gray matter of the brain.
Lovely O! = Ugly
Mental image.
O! Mine!
It's me!
xO!
It's me!
xO!
Refrain.
Refrain.
Down tempo.
Thud, thud, thud.
Inner net me nt al.
Some things missing.
Never, mine.
Lovely.
Me ≠ @ all exactly
Smiling.
Dud, dud, dud.
It's me. Ugly.
Not smiling, exactly.
Pianissimo.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Close old window to
My fading
internet
Gray.
Music: off.
That's really me,
Just
Speaking.
Hmm?
What, exactly?
Gray is me.
Unliked.
A symbol.
Why?
Because,
y = unspeakable inner
Gray.
Am I Ms. Understood?
Don't understand
Why
I play symbols?
Why
I am a Shut Up
Window.
Exactly Y = gray.
Exactly Y = don't speak
Or sing.
I am no math.
Incalculable.
I am no song.
Un-notable.
I am no poem.
Silence.
So unspeakable,
It hurts.
"You're just a circle!" I shout.
Pointless.
l one l Y
Circle.
Me.
Well, enough.
Now, drum up
Inner encore:
Algorithmic
Beat. Beat. Beat.
Open new window.
Searching for
A + Other me / Unknown.
Swish, wish, wish,
I added up, up, up
To be more, more , more
(*Inner net > **internet)
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Words & Wine
Here's the thing:
1. It's about words, words, words, and wine (for any of those who can or wish to partake).
2. All words welcome - words from any place, any time, or anyone.
3. Let's shed - shed as many layers to the honest you as you're comfortable shedding.
5. Appreciate - appreciate the apple you cannot see. (What does that mean? Friendships are like words. They both start small, like a seed. How that seed turns into an apple, sometimes we don't know, don't even see it grow, but if we appreciate words and appreciate friendship, we can have a great group that shares and grows both).
Words can be - anything. Books, short stories, magazine articles, news clippings, spiritual passages, or a billboard quote you read on I-55.
Our get-togethers: The person who hosts can decide how she wants to do it. Just apps? Great! Just drinks, that's awesome. Potluck it? Perfect. It doesn't matter.
Here's a few ideas to get our group rolling (maybe we won't every month, but for mental imaging's sake, I numbered them by month):
Month 1:
Bring words you love, love, love. Words that you adore, that kept you up thinking late at night or have stayed with you like a faithful friend. Bring those words and share them.
Month 2:
Think about 1 or 2 people who are really important to you. Ask them what their favorite book, passage, article, etc. is and why. When did they read it, how many times, which storyline, character, quotes, plot, or lessons do they most relate to or remember, and why. Try to read a bit of it yourself, or, all of it. Tell us what you think.
Month 3:
Bring 1 or 2 quotes, passages, excerpts from anything you have read in the past month that struck you, for any reason. Tell us why it struck you, what you thought about and how you felt when you read it or heard it the first time. Now, reading it, does it strike you differently?
Month 4:
Bring words you haven't been able to finish. Maybe just one page, one chapter or everything but one chapter. Bring it along. Let's see if anyone else has read it, or, let's see if we can digest a bit of it together to see if you'd want another crack at it or just shelve it for good.
Month 5:
Bring words that really surprised you. Something that blew your expectations of it out of the water. Maybe it was its aesthetics, or lack of, maybe your mood when you crossed it, or who gave it to you, or perhaps the critics' reviews. Tell us about your expectations, good or bad, and how they changed, word by unexpected word.
Month 6:
5. Bring words for someone else. Something you think they'd like or appreciate. Tell us about the words, your history with them, who you brought them for and why.
1. It's about words, words, words, and wine (for any of those who can or wish to partake).
2. All words welcome - words from any place, any time, or anyone.
3. Let's shed - shed as many layers to the honest you as you're comfortable shedding.
5. Appreciate - appreciate the apple you cannot see. (What does that mean? Friendships are like words. They both start small, like a seed. How that seed turns into an apple, sometimes we don't know, don't even see it grow, but if we appreciate words and appreciate friendship, we can have a great group that shares and grows both).
Words can be - anything. Books, short stories, magazine articles, news clippings, spiritual passages, or a billboard quote you read on I-55.
Our get-togethers: The person who hosts can decide how she wants to do it. Just apps? Great! Just drinks, that's awesome. Potluck it? Perfect. It doesn't matter.
Here's a few ideas to get our group rolling (maybe we won't every month, but for mental imaging's sake, I numbered them by month):
Month 1:
Bring words you love, love, love. Words that you adore, that kept you up thinking late at night or have stayed with you like a faithful friend. Bring those words and share them.
Month 2:
Think about 1 or 2 people who are really important to you. Ask them what their favorite book, passage, article, etc. is and why. When did they read it, how many times, which storyline, character, quotes, plot, or lessons do they most relate to or remember, and why. Try to read a bit of it yourself, or, all of it. Tell us what you think.
Month 3:
Bring 1 or 2 quotes, passages, excerpts from anything you have read in the past month that struck you, for any reason. Tell us why it struck you, what you thought about and how you felt when you read it or heard it the first time. Now, reading it, does it strike you differently?
Month 4:
Bring words you haven't been able to finish. Maybe just one page, one chapter or everything but one chapter. Bring it along. Let's see if anyone else has read it, or, let's see if we can digest a bit of it together to see if you'd want another crack at it or just shelve it for good.
Month 5:
Bring words that really surprised you. Something that blew your expectations of it out of the water. Maybe it was its aesthetics, or lack of, maybe your mood when you crossed it, or who gave it to you, or perhaps the critics' reviews. Tell us about your expectations, good or bad, and how they changed, word by unexpected word.
Month 6:
5. Bring words for someone else. Something you think they'd like or appreciate. Tell us about the words, your history with them, who you brought them for and why.
What I'm Trying to Say Is
Hair-split separating fury flung knob, regret, and
Slamming echo.
Rimming fingertip glass gaze through maroon Syrah seas, pause, and
Downing sediment.
Involuntary eye-bat shudder between tongue lash, fright, and
Awaiting response.
Half-revolution apart headlight shadows past dark bed, broken, and
Synchronized exhale.
Invention reborn self, flying, and
Literal reflection.
Ink-bogged bleeding salt to last thin paper edge, inexplicable, and
Word unleft.
What I'm trying to say is
Slamming echo.
Rimming fingertip glass gaze through maroon Syrah seas, pause, and
Downing sediment.
Involuntary eye-bat shudder between tongue lash, fright, and
Awaiting response.
Half-revolution apart headlight shadows past dark bed, broken, and
Synchronized exhale.
Invention reborn self, flying, and
Literal reflection.
Ink-bogged bleeding salt to last thin paper edge, inexplicable, and
Word unleft.
What I'm trying to say is
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Quotes I Love
Quote 1:
Found this on the website of a girl who is a member of the Springfield Writers and Poets. Of course, I immediately thought of Danny and I, but I see its worth in relating human to human, of any kind, connected in any close or near way.
"Once the realization is accepted that
even between the closest human beings
infinite distances continue, a wonderful
living side by side can grow, if they
succeed in loving the distance between
them which makes it possible for each to
see the other whole against the sky." -
Rainer Maria Rilke
Found this on the website of a girl who is a member of the Springfield Writers and Poets. Of course, I immediately thought of Danny and I, but I see its worth in relating human to human, of any kind, connected in any close or near way.
"Once the realization is accepted that
even between the closest human beings
infinite distances continue, a wonderful
living side by side can grow, if they
succeed in loving the distance between
them which makes it possible for each to
see the other whole against the sky." -
Rainer Maria Rilke
Monday, February 14, 2011
The In-Between
I have a friend.
She watches as
January 2 through February 14
Throws up everywhere
Red hearts, pink fake gas station flowers
And mocking white teddy bears
In every Walgreens across Hallmark America
Stating like a last resort: "Be Mine."
Okay, mocking white teddy bear
I will be yours.
Awesome.
Perhaps she will be throwing up
Noir red herself tonight.
Or maybe
She will be coercing
Like a wandering church prayer
To just fall sleeping
Until February 15 saves her.
Either way
She will be celebrating the Hallmark
Beginning of St. Patrick's Day
Fabulous plastic green shamrocks
Eating up 70% off Whitman's heart boxes
A green beer holiday not even born
In this country.
Commercialized Irish ecstasy,
Sweet Jesus,
She'll take it.
If only she knew
The here-to-there between of
Future somewhere love eluding her
Until
He doesn't.
Who will drink her everything up
From tear to happy tear
And quiet to sorrowful quiet
And life to everyday life.
Who will fill her up enough
To remember those mocking white teddy bears
And forgive herself
For forgetting all she is
364 other days of in-between
Somewhere,
Her someone
Not here today
Until
He is.
She watches as
January 2 through February 14
Throws up everywhere
Red hearts, pink fake gas station flowers
And mocking white teddy bears
In every Walgreens across Hallmark America
Stating like a last resort: "Be Mine."
Okay, mocking white teddy bear
I will be yours.
Awesome.
Perhaps she will be throwing up
Noir red herself tonight.
Or maybe
She will be coercing
Like a wandering church prayer
To just fall sleeping
Until February 15 saves her.
Either way
She will be celebrating the Hallmark
Beginning of St. Patrick's Day
Fabulous plastic green shamrocks
Eating up 70% off Whitman's heart boxes
A green beer holiday not even born
In this country.
Commercialized Irish ecstasy,
Sweet Jesus,
She'll take it.
If only she knew
The here-to-there between of
Future somewhere love eluding her
Until
He doesn't.
Who will drink her everything up
From tear to happy tear
And quiet to sorrowful quiet
And life to everyday life.
Who will fill her up enough
To remember those mocking white teddy bears
And forgive herself
For forgetting all she is
364 other days of in-between
Somewhere,
Her someone
Not here today
Until
He is.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Marriage Revelation #1
Forgiveness comes faster
With a cold bed
Wet hair
And one warm body
Beside your own.
With a cold bed
Wet hair
And one warm body
Beside your own.
Leaves Sing
Remembering,
My ears reached way, way up high today to hear
Brown afternoon leaves against a blue sun sky.
I leaned back, jacket open, gloves in my pocket,
Swinging like a melody below them
At the melting playground park
All by my splendid lonesome.
They sang a wind song so beautifully,
They reminded me
Of lost days on the lake,
My parents' towering cotton tree -
An old majestic shadow of mine who I could always hear
Standing in solitude
At the embankment of those passing waters.
From the sky. From way, way up high
His leaves would sing songs to me
All by my listening lonesome.
And between crescendos, that tall old cotton tree would
Breathe,
Sprinkling everywhere my eyes turned
White laughing cotton candy snow,
Falling moments into passing waters
Faint dustings of my childhood
My quiet father calling me home to
Listen
When wind blows,
Leaves sing.
My ears reached way, way up high today to hear
Brown afternoon leaves against a blue sun sky.
I leaned back, jacket open, gloves in my pocket,
Swinging like a melody below them
At the melting playground park
All by my splendid lonesome.
They sang a wind song so beautifully,
They reminded me
Of lost days on the lake,
My parents' towering cotton tree -
An old majestic shadow of mine who I could always hear
Standing in solitude
At the embankment of those passing waters.
From the sky. From way, way up high
His leaves would sing songs to me
All by my listening lonesome.
And between crescendos, that tall old cotton tree would
Breathe,
Sprinkling everywhere my eyes turned
White laughing cotton candy snow,
Falling moments into passing waters
Faint dustings of my childhood
My quiet father calling me home to
Listen
When wind blows,
Leaves sing.
Below the Keys
I position. I'm ready.
What's ready to pour out of me today?
I re-position.
Or be yanked, pulled, coerced, beckoned, or bribed to the surface?
Looking down. Square keys.
What's below the Sunday lazy morning pajama layer, or as it constitutes, my husband's boxers checkered like a black and white board and more comfortable than any Pajama Gram could buy.
Valentine's Day is tomorrow.
Four to a Kohl's pack. You can't beat it.
I can't get below the mind numb surface
Below the computer fingers and the
Superbly conscious composed
Word by unnecessary word.
Looking about me.
I drone on and on waiting impatient
A key pounding dredge of a try.
Get something above from below.
Looking down like prayer.
I keep looking at the checker board,
Wishing I was better at checkers,
Feeling not write-well enough to comment
Much beyond black and white.
One measly thought appears.
Why, I've been thinking of checkers the whole time
When, it's chess that the pattern replicates!
Comparing, a game I am far worse at,
That initial thought is what I might be more,
And that which I am less
Is, further down,
Escaping through the exits.
Covered thinly this morning in
One lazy chess board layer.
Checkmate.
Square keys win.
What's ready to pour out of me today?
I re-position.
Or be yanked, pulled, coerced, beckoned, or bribed to the surface?
Looking down. Square keys.
What's below the Sunday lazy morning pajama layer, or as it constitutes, my husband's boxers checkered like a black and white board and more comfortable than any Pajama Gram could buy.
Valentine's Day is tomorrow.
Four to a Kohl's pack. You can't beat it.
I can't get below the mind numb surface
Below the computer fingers and the
Superbly conscious composed
Word by unnecessary word.
Looking about me.
I drone on and on waiting impatient
A key pounding dredge of a try.
Get something above from below.
Looking down like prayer.
I keep looking at the checker board,
Wishing I was better at checkers,
Feeling not write-well enough to comment
Much beyond black and white.
One measly thought appears.
Why, I've been thinking of checkers the whole time
When, it's chess that the pattern replicates!
Comparing, a game I am far worse at,
That initial thought is what I might be more,
And that which I am less
Is, further down,
Escaping through the exits.
Covered thinly this morning in
One lazy chess board layer.
Checkmate.
Square keys win.
Beg the Sun
I can't believe it's time
To say goodbye
And not just goodnight
Dance with me
Beneath these stars
And tell me
The world is ours
For just tonight
That it's not goodbye
I can't believe
That this is happening
Tonight
Moonlight fades
Dawn breaks
I beg the sun
Please not today
But it comes anyway
I can't believe
That you are leaving
This morning
Every night
While you are gone
I promise to
Sing you our song
Listen
To the wind
Quiet hours
Close your eyes
Rest your soul
Please just try
To fall asleep
I'll come to you
After
You've fallen
Deep
And I'll take
And I'll take
Your dreams
Back home with me.
I'll take you home
So you can hold her close
Our tiny baby girl
She needs you home
From war.
I can't believe it's time
To say hello
And not just goodbye.
This is not a dream
Today my love
Comes home to me.
To say goodbye
And not just goodnight
Dance with me
Beneath these stars
And tell me
The world is ours
For just tonight
That it's not goodbye
I can't believe
That this is happening
Tonight
Moonlight fades
Dawn breaks
I beg the sun
Please not today
But it comes anyway
I can't believe
That you are leaving
This morning
Every night
While you are gone
I promise to
Sing you our song
Listen
To the wind
Quiet hours
Close your eyes
Rest your soul
Please just try
To fall asleep
I'll come to you
After
You've fallen
Deep
And I'll take
And I'll take
Your dreams
Back home with me.
I'll take you home
So you can hold her close
Our tiny baby girl
She needs you home
From war.
I can't believe it's time
To say hello
And not just goodbye.
This is not a dream
Today my love
Comes home to me.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Laundry Life
Laundry load number three was calling me from
Way down low.
Agitated for over a half hour,
Whirring our wearing life clean,
It stopped.
A silent signal for me to come back down
To visit again and change it out
Wet-wrung and cold
For another load of worn life.
I obey, not always on time
Sometimes weeks behind
Piled high to empty drawers and jeans
Reworn for the sixth time
In seven days.
I obey.
So down, down I go, to my basement calling
And I hear from above me
Slow, rolling, rattling increasing
Crying notching up deeper lungs
Vibrating screaming stair gate
Shaking, screeching and pulsing.
The entire time.
The entire seven minutes it takes
To change out.
To reload.
To fold.
To reappear.
He was there, 21 months hovering
Top of fuming stairs red face nostrils flaring
Heaving eyes wet angry and shrilling
Waiting, wailing until
I reached him.
Pulled him in.
Whispered in his ear.
Held him until he shrieked his last shriek.
Until his
Shriek shrunk to a muffled
Sniffling, teary, breath-catching
Sigh.
All better.
He looked at me and I looked at him.
That very moment.
That very, very moment I knew
He told me
Made me understand
What I never understood.
That
When he looks at me, that way,
That
I know, and he knows,
No one will ever cry for me
The way
He does. The way,
my children do.
No one will ever miss me
For seven minutes straight
While I disappear
Then reappear
The way
He misses me. The way,
my children do.
Maybe one gray day.
People will cry for me.
Or cry for my children over
What will never be again.
Maybe one gray day.
I will cry for me.
Or cry for my children over
What will never be again.
But in this year of my laundry life
Never will I be needed,
Needed for my love
For my simple warmth or to see my eyes
Finding theirs
The way
He needs me. The way,
my children do.
Way down low.
Agitated for over a half hour,
Whirring our wearing life clean,
It stopped.
A silent signal for me to come back down
To visit again and change it out
Wet-wrung and cold
For another load of worn life.
I obey, not always on time
Sometimes weeks behind
Piled high to empty drawers and jeans
Reworn for the sixth time
In seven days.
I obey.
So down, down I go, to my basement calling
And I hear from above me
Slow, rolling, rattling increasing
Crying notching up deeper lungs
Vibrating screaming stair gate
Shaking, screeching and pulsing.
The entire time.
The entire seven minutes it takes
To change out.
To reload.
To fold.
To reappear.
He was there, 21 months hovering
Top of fuming stairs red face nostrils flaring
Heaving eyes wet angry and shrilling
Waiting, wailing until
I reached him.
Pulled him in.
Whispered in his ear.
Held him until he shrieked his last shriek.
Until his
Shriek shrunk to a muffled
Sniffling, teary, breath-catching
Sigh.
All better.
He looked at me and I looked at him.
That very moment.
That very, very moment I knew
He told me
Made me understand
What I never understood.
That
When he looks at me, that way,
That
I know, and he knows,
No one will ever cry for me
The way
He does. The way,
my children do.
No one will ever miss me
For seven minutes straight
While I disappear
Then reappear
The way
He misses me. The way,
my children do.
Maybe one gray day.
People will cry for me.
Or cry for my children over
What will never be again.
Maybe one gray day.
I will cry for me.
Or cry for my children over
What will never be again.
But in this year of my laundry life
Never will I be needed,
Needed for my love
For my simple warmth or to see my eyes
Finding theirs
The way
He needs me. The way,
my children do.
Friday, February 11, 2011
What's worse
What's worse
Drinking enough to keep from thinking
Or writing enough to keep from drinking
Worse is
Just enough thinking to keep doing nothing.
Drinking enough to keep from thinking
Or writing enough to keep from drinking
Worse is
Just enough thinking to keep doing nothing.
To Edie
I learned your mother's name
Just a few days after she passed.
I am so very sorry.
I didn't know her.
I didn't know her name.
But
I know you.
I know your name.
I know you as
A mother.
I don't know your mother's story
Her life or her loves
Her beginning or middles or even
Her end.
I don't know
What inspired her or pushed her through
Moments of back-break
Or heartache
Or who she lived for day by day
For all her splendid years.
What I do know is that
She had a daughter.
A lovely daughter who grew up and became
An even lovelier mother -
An accomplishment worth more than
Any quiet words could hold
Or sympathy comfort.
You are more than just
A mother.
You are
Her daughter.
And she was more than just
A mother.
She was
Your mother.
Onward beautiful life, an end
To beautiful child, onward life again.
Just a few days after she passed.
I am so very sorry.
I didn't know her.
I didn't know her name.
But
I know you.
I know your name.
I know you as
A mother.
I don't know your mother's story
Her life or her loves
Her beginning or middles or even
Her end.
I don't know
What inspired her or pushed her through
Moments of back-break
Or heartache
Or who she lived for day by day
For all her splendid years.
What I do know is that
She had a daughter.
A lovely daughter who grew up and became
An even lovelier mother -
An accomplishment worth more than
Any quiet words could hold
Or sympathy comfort.
You are more than just
A mother.
You are
Her daughter.
And she was more than just
A mother.
She was
Your mother.
Onward beautiful life, an end
To beautiful child, onward life again.
Re-purposed
I accidentally poisoned Lionel.
He's a bird.
Yellow with gray, small and can't say a damn thing.
Just chirps and kinda bugs the shit out of me, all day long and into the night.
He was a charity case, flew into our house four years ago
Mangled wing.
I thought he was my calling.
Yellow sign from god
To be a better mother than I was
a person.
He was an addition to my prior purpose of: kitchen fixture
A wonderful title for a woman whose hands are faucets and
Nails are knives
And skin is scouring pads.
This was my purpose prior.
Now Lionel was my purpose.
That and still being a kitchen fixture of course.
So I went to Petsmart, bought a cage
too large for the house
And bird feed, and all the fixin's of a good good home.
Even splint him up, based on internet research,
And fixed him almost new.
Four years straight I was fixin' up every few or so hours
Flax and seed, stove top stuffing and minced meat and
zucchini bread and once a sip of red wine.
He didn't chirp right for a whole night, but
He chirped.
So years of cutting up grapes and sauteing celery and little fixin's
For Lionel, the yellow bird in the big cage
And standing there at the sink
A flesh covered kitchen fixture steely and sometimes
Walking to the bathroom to fix my makeup
For no one but Lionel
Or to the cage to empty his water
Or fill his water
Or clean his crap
Or say goodnight
Or see him standing, cock-eyed at me
Like I hadn't a brain in my head to believe
Really
That he was anything more than a strange flying accident.
Sorry Lionel, I sometimes say out loud.
How was I to think any different.
He was something that happened on a day when
Nothing else happened so he must have meant
Something.
Well, who'd have thunk it right, four years to the day
When into that window he came
I sickened him up so bad
That I thought he was a goner.
Woke up that morning,
walked over and said "good morning"
Walked into the kitchen
Which greeted me not a bit
Except with a foul odor of disdain
that I had abandoned my position for the night to sleep
Without cleaning its sink thoroughly the evening before.
After all this, I shout -
All I've tried to do and all I'm trying to do
to save a bird and feed him all the good fixin's a good mother
Would give to a broken wing miracle, my good calling
From somewhere
My kitchen gives not a single rat's ass
Just gives me hell that I ain't a better permanent fixture
Or a better flat surface to be cut on.
So I right there gave up,
Let it all be,
Dirty damn pots and pans and plates and forks and
Sharp dinner knives I prefer over butter knives when cutting up
All Lionel's good fixin's.
And they piled and they piled and they piled up more
Counter to counter when I
Gave up my kitchen fixture status, a big ole' middle finger F.U.
to my label as a fixture, and I decided I'd concentrate all happy and free
On being a better mother.
Well,
Dr. Vet Patricia looked at me accusin' and said "After a battery of tests,
we've determined by his bloodwork that he's been infected by:
Salmonella."
Turns out all my trying to be free from being a kitchen fixture
landed me a sick as a dog bird, poisoned from those
Damn dirty countertops and all those dishes I vetoed
Like law.
So for two days, Lionel was chirpin like a cross-covered dirt mound.
That means, not chirpin much at all
But a few sickly squawks.
But I resuscitated him back for
What I believe is his third go at life
My second motherly victory
And he's chirpin away again
Not happy or sad or wondering what happened or anything
Quite at all as much as I can tell
Just chirpin all damn day and night and seeming like
He could live forever and thinkin' about why.
And I'm back, flesh covered kitchen fixture
Scrubbing the bleachin' shit off those counters
And out of that sink
Every second hour of every single day
Back plain as dead
And keepin' whoever I can alive.
He's a bird.
Yellow with gray, small and can't say a damn thing.
Just chirps and kinda bugs the shit out of me, all day long and into the night.
He was a charity case, flew into our house four years ago
Mangled wing.
I thought he was my calling.
Yellow sign from god
To be a better mother than I was
a person.
He was an addition to my prior purpose of: kitchen fixture
A wonderful title for a woman whose hands are faucets and
Nails are knives
And skin is scouring pads.
This was my purpose prior.
Now Lionel was my purpose.
That and still being a kitchen fixture of course.
So I went to Petsmart, bought a cage
too large for the house
And bird feed, and all the fixin's of a good good home.
Even splint him up, based on internet research,
And fixed him almost new.
Four years straight I was fixin' up every few or so hours
Flax and seed, stove top stuffing and minced meat and
zucchini bread and once a sip of red wine.
He didn't chirp right for a whole night, but
He chirped.
So years of cutting up grapes and sauteing celery and little fixin's
For Lionel, the yellow bird in the big cage
And standing there at the sink
A flesh covered kitchen fixture steely and sometimes
Walking to the bathroom to fix my makeup
For no one but Lionel
Or to the cage to empty his water
Or fill his water
Or clean his crap
Or say goodnight
Or see him standing, cock-eyed at me
Like I hadn't a brain in my head to believe
Really
That he was anything more than a strange flying accident.
Sorry Lionel, I sometimes say out loud.
How was I to think any different.
He was something that happened on a day when
Nothing else happened so he must have meant
Something.
Well, who'd have thunk it right, four years to the day
When into that window he came
I sickened him up so bad
That I thought he was a goner.
Woke up that morning,
walked over and said "good morning"
Walked into the kitchen
Which greeted me not a bit
Except with a foul odor of disdain
that I had abandoned my position for the night to sleep
Without cleaning its sink thoroughly the evening before.
After all this, I shout -
All I've tried to do and all I'm trying to do
to save a bird and feed him all the good fixin's a good mother
Would give to a broken wing miracle, my good calling
From somewhere
My kitchen gives not a single rat's ass
Just gives me hell that I ain't a better permanent fixture
Or a better flat surface to be cut on.
So I right there gave up,
Let it all be,
Dirty damn pots and pans and plates and forks and
Sharp dinner knives I prefer over butter knives when cutting up
All Lionel's good fixin's.
And they piled and they piled and they piled up more
Counter to counter when I
Gave up my kitchen fixture status, a big ole' middle finger F.U.
to my label as a fixture, and I decided I'd concentrate all happy and free
On being a better mother.
Well,
Dr. Vet Patricia looked at me accusin' and said "After a battery of tests,
we've determined by his bloodwork that he's been infected by:
Salmonella."
Turns out all my trying to be free from being a kitchen fixture
landed me a sick as a dog bird, poisoned from those
Damn dirty countertops and all those dishes I vetoed
Like law.
So for two days, Lionel was chirpin like a cross-covered dirt mound.
That means, not chirpin much at all
But a few sickly squawks.
But I resuscitated him back for
What I believe is his third go at life
My second motherly victory
And he's chirpin away again
Not happy or sad or wondering what happened or anything
Quite at all as much as I can tell
Just chirpin all damn day and night and seeming like
He could live forever and thinkin' about why.
And I'm back, flesh covered kitchen fixture
Scrubbing the bleachin' shit off those counters
And out of that sink
Every second hour of every single day
Back plain as dead
And keepin' whoever I can alive.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Steeping
Quarter past eleven o'clock
I ignite liquid fire full blast
Into a porcelain ivory tea pot tub
Spicket spitting scalding heat
Hissing to a bubbling scream
I plunge myself
For eight long minutes: seethe and steep
Til I run clear and black darjeeling bleeds
Submerged below a hairline crack
Not trying to drown just oxidize and drain
Out chamomile boredom and peoke pain
Astringent anger wrung wrinkle dry
Steamed loose leaves float to water sky
I lift myself
Cleansed and cooled I fill my cup
By boiling life and pouring it out.
I ignite liquid fire full blast
Into a porcelain ivory tea pot tub
Spicket spitting scalding heat
Hissing to a bubbling scream
I plunge myself
For eight long minutes: seethe and steep
Til I run clear and black darjeeling bleeds
Submerged below a hairline crack
Not trying to drown just oxidize and drain
Out chamomile boredom and peoke pain
Astringent anger wrung wrinkle dry
Steamed loose leaves float to water sky
I lift myself
Cleansed and cooled I fill my cup
By boiling life and pouring it out.
whatever shall be
there be old joe untame scruff at sooty california and belmont.
uses so much space to stand and hold torn cardboard with prawny fingernails lifted from apartment A6 remnants overflowing out back a giant blue recycle bin with one empty unapologetic week of brownstone
organic black winter berries and spicy pad thai sticking msg to happy rice and speedy Lynksys routing manic internet connection life and would-be eye sore if colored but sangria red, blinking low square wall art against damask cyan panels and pearl sky architecture. alright
have at it old joe, impermanent frozen statue speaks whiskey pints and black permanent marker, and just where did he get that, Hammond Indiana bets all red he stole it from alley friend yellow teeth mauricio with purply gums, disgusting, to feed something beneath grimy navy coated blue and
tired old Banjo. poor big fella, tan retrieving eyes and belly upon cold, cold stone empty in gray, gray wind.
whatever shall be of him.
collective and apart winter zoom cars and walking boots worry heavy. search animal shelter click go when
green rings incoming unknown call a cellular traffic sign maybe from god but turns out from automated Albert of Audi Westland your car is due for an oil change of better deeds ahead of saving poor banjo resting two night paws on old joe's chatter-tap boots clanking copper moon music around one Solo cup sounding full enough when added to every other solo corner begging for instruments like plastic acapella stars fading flat out of harmony. but not like every other,
other big brassy beat life corner pumping better veins glassy with good deed hand outs to pretty lil' tinis and handsome high ball strangers flashing status signs against walled smashy twilight and rustic wood and inauthentic irish pleading
no prayer jars here just paper tips please in exchange for boxes out back exposing empty wreckage of
every night city life stomping rhythmic luck to moody old boy jazz and buzzing platinum techno plastic cards into sepulchral paper signatures bright in white Pumas and calf high boots each comfortably home swigging bankrupt bottles and needing
one warm place on earth to stand.
uses so much space to stand and hold torn cardboard with prawny fingernails lifted from apartment A6 remnants overflowing out back a giant blue recycle bin with one empty unapologetic week of brownstone
organic black winter berries and spicy pad thai sticking msg to happy rice and speedy Lynksys routing manic internet connection life and would-be eye sore if colored but sangria red, blinking low square wall art against damask cyan panels and pearl sky architecture. alright
have at it old joe, impermanent frozen statue speaks whiskey pints and black permanent marker, and just where did he get that, Hammond Indiana bets all red he stole it from alley friend yellow teeth mauricio with purply gums, disgusting, to feed something beneath grimy navy coated blue and
tired old Banjo. poor big fella, tan retrieving eyes and belly upon cold, cold stone empty in gray, gray wind.
whatever shall be of him.
collective and apart winter zoom cars and walking boots worry heavy. search animal shelter click go when
green rings incoming unknown call a cellular traffic sign maybe from god but turns out from automated Albert of Audi Westland your car is due for an oil change of better deeds ahead of saving poor banjo resting two night paws on old joe's chatter-tap boots clanking copper moon music around one Solo cup sounding full enough when added to every other solo corner begging for instruments like plastic acapella stars fading flat out of harmony. but not like every other,
other big brassy beat life corner pumping better veins glassy with good deed hand outs to pretty lil' tinis and handsome high ball strangers flashing status signs against walled smashy twilight and rustic wood and inauthentic irish pleading
no prayer jars here just paper tips please in exchange for boxes out back exposing empty wreckage of
every night city life stomping rhythmic luck to moody old boy jazz and buzzing platinum techno plastic cards into sepulchral paper signatures bright in white Pumas and calf high boots each comfortably home swigging bankrupt bottles and needing
one warm place on earth to stand.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Words and Words
WORDS I LOVE
Ephemeral
Capricious
Earthen
Visceral
Temporal
Fleeting
Lucid
Ostentatious
Pretentious
Petulance
Obliquity
Aggregate
Enjambment
Exposition
Euphony
Euphemism
Stodgy
Doublespeak
Peace
Caustic
Vitriol
Ascendancy
Colloquial
Acridity
Ambit
Dulcet
Felicitous
Dapple
Quiet
Poplar
Lovely
WORDS I LIKE
Palatable
Ambiguity
Copious
Actually
Organic
Sublime
Surreal
Libel
Belief
Life
Squander
Resplendence
Manna
Doggerel
Ephemeral
Capricious
Earthen
Visceral
Temporal
Fleeting
Lucid
Ostentatious
Pretentious
Petulance
Obliquity
Aggregate
Enjambment
Exposition
Euphony
Euphemism
Stodgy
Doublespeak
Peace
Caustic
Vitriol
Ascendancy
Colloquial
Acridity
Ambit
Dulcet
Felicitous
Dapple
Quiet
Poplar
Lovely
WORDS I LIKE
Palatable
Ambiguity
Copious
Actually
Organic
Sublime
Surreal
Libel
Belief
Life
Squander
Resplendence
Manna
Doggerel
City Life
There's an utter exhaustion that accompanies the miles of city stoplights that keep us breathing just well enough to slide through the yellows and resentfully satisfied when they flicker green. "It'll be red next time," we remind ourselves, and statistically speaking, given the lonesome stretch ahead, it's unfavorable that we'll be wrong.
The cliche: "Happiness is an eternal quest" helps elongate the deadline, pushes back the arrival time if the destination is still there to meet us at all, and ices over today's early February motionlessness with dank hope for moving traffic tomorrow. At the same damn time, it invokes a frustration that the likeliest possibility is that it won't be tomorrow's winter we're surviving for.
Actually, the "eternal" part of the cliche promises an almost holy certainty that it'll arrive at our latest rush hour when we're all but asleep at the wheel, in our narrowest bottleneck season when all we've got is one gasping final leap backwards, when all our deathly waters is behind us and we score the chance to scan panoramically our whole standstill skyline life for the first and only time, a last tourist in a city built entirely from our gravel eyes, lost work forgotten but still standing.
Inspecting closer in our final fall, we see that I-75 drive south through Kentucky to Atlanta, when we rapped multiple Eminem hits from a cassette tape in your rackety red S-10, all bleeping words bleeped out because you recorded the parental advisory version; and when Joey smashed the giant rubber band ball into the 50 inch, causing us to watch our flatscreen lives in black growing spotches until that Superbowl second quarter when it all fuzzed to gray, leaving us to eat Mexican dip, echoes of Amos Lee shuffling through the speakers, and reading an entire anthology of Curious George in one long sitting; and that crazy night that turned to a crazier morning when he dislocated his shoulder falling off the table after crying two overtired hours past his bedtime because the butter didn't reach every edge of his raisin bread, literally because we had not a scrape left, and you, the next month, waving around the $200 E.R. bill we charged as a reminder of my refusal to let you run to Walgreens. "The most expensive tub of butter I ever bought" you said, ego waltzing into the kitchen; and the night when Addy blew her curfew to smitherines, half past two in the morning, inebriated with love, searching the window for turning tailights, smiling past us wild and furious, and me, crying, in flannel pajamas, as if we never lived her glorious teenage punch-drunk moment; and that misty Novemember riverwalk in the lamplit fog when the sugar maples fell upon us, gold and amber walls, just long enough for you to wrap my cold hand like a glove and find me, waiting, all my life to be pulled back in.
Now there's nothing left to build. Every word have been chiseled, the music has soaked through as deep as your soul sculpture would let it, and the buildings of your life are going, leaning away, more majestic and interesting than you ever imagined in those years behind the bricks, tasting gritty mortar and crying at the raw feet of your unfinished work. In fact, you can't believe that there's anything left standing since you spent so much time and inner earth tearing down and recreating that you assumed you'd wind up with nothing but collapsing soil mounds and a cardboard sign that came to you by way of wind and chalked with red rock reading: "Hey, I tried." The cardboard, funny enough, is there, amidst your scraping walls, littering the corner streets of your footprints, but it escapes view before you can really read it. You wonder for a flash second what secret it spells.
For the longer part of the river plunge, you see dimensions of new depths through wide lens lines all the way across, and in, and all the way up. Especially that one mountain of a tower, the cloudy summit of your skyline. You wonder what you were doing when you got there, how you climbed up, and how you got back down, whether you took the elevator or ran the stairs, or just fell all the way down in one long excruciating descent. Searching for memory, you can't remember, lest who was with you, cheered you on or summoned your demise, but you must have happened that way, given the post-architecture of the following year, that steely bridge you hurdled up to connect the disconnect and the typefont sidewalks you paved to keep those parts of yourself from wandering into groundless intersections.
Those were your hands, alright, planting a whole city life, unmapped back alleys and flowering parks, and rooms of all kinds for others to live in and occupy like tenants, some renting a little space for a few months and others settling indefinitely into your larger suites and repainting you over and over in shades of themselves. They filled you, not just with the good stuff, but with the stuff that burned turkeys and broke windows and made you fully alive to the calamitous hues of pain masked as humor. Or, was it the other way around? You'll never quite be sure.
You can't help but wonder who's left and who has stayed, and, who is yet to go. It matters not one cent, you've collected your final inflated rent, a few debts and promises unpaid, for which you can do nothing, not even be sorry for slamming doors and refusing to reroof the garage he wanted for reasons apparent only after the flood. Apologies dissipate to clouds. Now, your meticulous measurements, everything you've built and labored to birth and bought to collect, it's all been given back to a city you've taken clay from and molded into a destiny that was never yours to keep. You were borrowing space with an unsigned lease. Who knew you never owned a thing.
So, you do just as you should, all that you can do and all there is left for you to do in your last winter snowfall as you watch that towering summit disappear into a whitewash sky: You breath in happiness like it's your first wondrous spring moment on earth. Then you exhale a long warm prayer through the gusty air, just long enough for it to be carried above you and deposited into the silty soil, grounds of a life you loved, roots of unbuilt towers beckoning like tomorrow's ghosts, for children of their own cities to, one quiet day, bend their summer souls toward sunset street corners in search of a lonely cardboard sage, unchiseled with words written in wind and waiting beneath city lights.
The cliche: "Happiness is an eternal quest" helps elongate the deadline, pushes back the arrival time if the destination is still there to meet us at all, and ices over today's early February motionlessness with dank hope for moving traffic tomorrow. At the same damn time, it invokes a frustration that the likeliest possibility is that it won't be tomorrow's winter we're surviving for.
Actually, the "eternal" part of the cliche promises an almost holy certainty that it'll arrive at our latest rush hour when we're all but asleep at the wheel, in our narrowest bottleneck season when all we've got is one gasping final leap backwards, when all our deathly waters is behind us and we score the chance to scan panoramically our whole standstill skyline life for the first and only time, a last tourist in a city built entirely from our gravel eyes, lost work forgotten but still standing.
Inspecting closer in our final fall, we see that I-75 drive south through Kentucky to Atlanta, when we rapped multiple Eminem hits from a cassette tape in your rackety red S-10, all bleeping words bleeped out because you recorded the parental advisory version; and when Joey smashed the giant rubber band ball into the 50 inch, causing us to watch our flatscreen lives in black growing spotches until that Superbowl second quarter when it all fuzzed to gray, leaving us to eat Mexican dip, echoes of Amos Lee shuffling through the speakers, and reading an entire anthology of Curious George in one long sitting; and that crazy night that turned to a crazier morning when he dislocated his shoulder falling off the table after crying two overtired hours past his bedtime because the butter didn't reach every edge of his raisin bread, literally because we had not a scrape left, and you, the next month, waving around the $200 E.R. bill we charged as a reminder of my refusal to let you run to Walgreens. "The most expensive tub of butter I ever bought" you said, ego waltzing into the kitchen; and the night when Addy blew her curfew to smitherines, half past two in the morning, inebriated with love, searching the window for turning tailights, smiling past us wild and furious, and me, crying, in flannel pajamas, as if we never lived her glorious teenage punch-drunk moment; and that misty Novemember riverwalk in the lamplit fog when the sugar maples fell upon us, gold and amber walls, just long enough for you to wrap my cold hand like a glove and find me, waiting, all my life to be pulled back in.
Now there's nothing left to build. Every word have been chiseled, the music has soaked through as deep as your soul sculpture would let it, and the buildings of your life are going, leaning away, more majestic and interesting than you ever imagined in those years behind the bricks, tasting gritty mortar and crying at the raw feet of your unfinished work. In fact, you can't believe that there's anything left standing since you spent so much time and inner earth tearing down and recreating that you assumed you'd wind up with nothing but collapsing soil mounds and a cardboard sign that came to you by way of wind and chalked with red rock reading: "Hey, I tried." The cardboard, funny enough, is there, amidst your scraping walls, littering the corner streets of your footprints, but it escapes view before you can really read it. You wonder for a flash second what secret it spells.
For the longer part of the river plunge, you see dimensions of new depths through wide lens lines all the way across, and in, and all the way up. Especially that one mountain of a tower, the cloudy summit of your skyline. You wonder what you were doing when you got there, how you climbed up, and how you got back down, whether you took the elevator or ran the stairs, or just fell all the way down in one long excruciating descent. Searching for memory, you can't remember, lest who was with you, cheered you on or summoned your demise, but you must have happened that way, given the post-architecture of the following year, that steely bridge you hurdled up to connect the disconnect and the typefont sidewalks you paved to keep those parts of yourself from wandering into groundless intersections.
Those were your hands, alright, planting a whole city life, unmapped back alleys and flowering parks, and rooms of all kinds for others to live in and occupy like tenants, some renting a little space for a few months and others settling indefinitely into your larger suites and repainting you over and over in shades of themselves. They filled you, not just with the good stuff, but with the stuff that burned turkeys and broke windows and made you fully alive to the calamitous hues of pain masked as humor. Or, was it the other way around? You'll never quite be sure.
You can't help but wonder who's left and who has stayed, and, who is yet to go. It matters not one cent, you've collected your final inflated rent, a few debts and promises unpaid, for which you can do nothing, not even be sorry for slamming doors and refusing to reroof the garage he wanted for reasons apparent only after the flood. Apologies dissipate to clouds. Now, your meticulous measurements, everything you've built and labored to birth and bought to collect, it's all been given back to a city you've taken clay from and molded into a destiny that was never yours to keep. You were borrowing space with an unsigned lease. Who knew you never owned a thing.
So, you do just as you should, all that you can do and all there is left for you to do in your last winter snowfall as you watch that towering summit disappear into a whitewash sky: You breath in happiness like it's your first wondrous spring moment on earth. Then you exhale a long warm prayer through the gusty air, just long enough for it to be carried above you and deposited into the silty soil, grounds of a life you loved, roots of unbuilt towers beckoning like tomorrow's ghosts, for children of their own cities to, one quiet day, bend their summer souls toward sunset street corners in search of a lonely cardboard sage, unchiseled with words written in wind and waiting beneath city lights.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Apologies to the Space Bar
Rapid words
I have no time
Every space bar a waste of space
Since my values these days are
In order
My family
Thinking with words
Time for words thinking of my family and other things
Space to write about my time thinking of words about my family and other things
It occurs to me that it's not the space bar
That's the problem.
My apologies, space bar.
It's the stupid fallacy of
The period.
A mark of the need. For something else.
More to say.
If only I could stop at the dot.
I wouldn't have to keep thinking
About words I need to write
To remember that
It's not the words I need most
Actually maybe it's the comma,
I have no time
Every space bar a waste of space
Since my values these days are
In order
My family
Thinking with words
Time for words thinking of my family and other things
Space to write about my time thinking of words about my family and other things
It occurs to me that it's not the space bar
That's the problem.
My apologies, space bar.
It's the stupid fallacy of
The period.
A mark of the need. For something else.
More to say.
If only I could stop at the dot.
I wouldn't have to keep thinking
About words I need to write
To remember that
It's not the words I need most
Actually maybe it's the comma,
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Who Knew
Parents are parables.
Histories below histories in
Reference shelves in scattery sea basements
Searching for our attention that's
Slipping quiet like culprits through a midnight window
When their chronological memory attempts a break through:
Dad: "It was Tuesday after Labor Day, and -"
Mom: "No it wasn't. It wasn't! How, when I was wearing those white heels?"
Those white heels?
Just like that snow storm that year
And that damn garage cat
And that wooden cottage dock
And that summer when the bee swarm "nearly killed ev'ry last one of us."
They take us there,
Raise us in those phantom hills and dusty toolboxes -
Every time,
Every single time,
Pulling out that rusty wrench:
"The best two fifty I ever spent, I tell ya."
You do, you tell me.
Then you tell me why
Quantity doesn't always equal quality.
And: "Say whatcha want, but Detroit knew how to make two things: cars and steel."
And without fail, those
Corner dime stores and the frying pan with a big head dent
Appear and reappear like shadow friends.
Then, of course, who could miss that heavy wood table right smack there
A lumbering living room idol giantly embarrassed and severely crowded,
Loyal like an antique dog waiting for a time that will never return.
(It would cross its legs and pee, if it could, I swear).
Why they need a four-by-seven oak slab memory instead of
Snapping a few pixels of the thing, well,
Only the table can tell.
Or they can.
But they won't; At least,
Not all the way.
Instead, they raise us as
Skipping stones, those in the
Creek behind their old movie theater
Trickling soft as years in ghost towns
Adorned with adventurous novel characters,
Names we almost love -
But not quite,
Because they talk about them
Like they breathed.
Some - frightening,
Most - beautiful.
In certain night moments at our bedside
Or on the July back porch, broken swing and all
It almost looks
As if they could cry
Pour out a life they've built and torn down.
But out comes lesson, prevailing like wind over rain
And we get instead
The story end, like children small and grown
Sitting around their sunset radio boxes, tuning into worn static.
Then, imperceptibly at once
Comes the time,
All different times for all different sorts of us
When our parents transform into more than just
Warm ovens baking
Broken doors fixed
Terrycloth robes and
Red pick up trucks.
More than
Heavy doors slamming
Cheap vanilla perfume
Friday night sewing needles
Bowling beer leagues and
Quiet thinking dinner tables.
More than words cried out
And words taken back.
They become
Hands
Raised above them like tiny questions
Waiting to be held,
Searching for love of all kinds.
Looking eyes
Witnessing whole years
Only their attics can keep
A silent plane ride home to
bury a child
And lake nights filled with nothing but
Dreams of each other. And
Still more, and more,
And more.
October drizzling rain upon their
Jumping feet and pounding pavement
Block by neighborhood block
Chasing away times they won't soon remember.
And that night burst of ocean, when
They saw for the very first time
Their worlds float together on a vanishing orange horizon
Sand beneath them
Mountain wind erasing
Footprints, as if
They had never stepped into that moment on earth
Or given away to tides so much more
Than their sea lungs could carry,
Like untold ocean beds and rock walls
Holding everything down and in
Water of their life, and ours,
Seeping through the bones.
"That's why you need to get flood insurance" they quibble, ankle deep
In our own regret
As we bucket out track trophies, a panoramic photo of an eighth grade D.C. trip,
And yearbook upon yearbook we've inherited as gifts
"From our basement to yours!" they exclaimed on our doorstep three years ago, laughing,
The funny intersecting exchange where histories meet like old friends swapping memories,
Forgetting they once
Lived together.
"What's this?" ask our sons and daughters
Smiling and quizzical like mini riddle detectives
Solving mysteries with their bare hands grabbing
For anything
Those fake Mardi Gras beads and
A soppy box of post cards from Germany,
Unusable dinar covered by an unrecognizable face, and
Decade-old cd sleeves.
Fossil evidence. They need more.
So with a wet wave to Grandma and Grandpa,
Excited, they plop like cushions,
Square between tired laps.
And around that basement table
Generations in a mirror
Children around golden children,
Awash in wet boxes and thoughtfully familiar relics,
They listen intently, as if around night fire,
To animated stories, big like oak,
straight from the dusty sea bottom,
Of parents who
Long ago,
Lived.
Histories below histories in
Reference shelves in scattery sea basements
Searching for our attention that's
Slipping quiet like culprits through a midnight window
When their chronological memory attempts a break through:
Dad: "It was Tuesday after Labor Day, and -"
Mom: "No it wasn't. It wasn't! How, when I was wearing those white heels?"
Those white heels?
Just like that snow storm that year
And that damn garage cat
And that wooden cottage dock
And that summer when the bee swarm "nearly killed ev'ry last one of us."
They take us there,
Raise us in those phantom hills and dusty toolboxes -
Every time,
Every single time,
Pulling out that rusty wrench:
"The best two fifty I ever spent, I tell ya."
You do, you tell me.
Then you tell me why
Quantity doesn't always equal quality.
And: "Say whatcha want, but Detroit knew how to make two things: cars and steel."
And without fail, those
Corner dime stores and the frying pan with a big head dent
Appear and reappear like shadow friends.
Then, of course, who could miss that heavy wood table right smack there
A lumbering living room idol giantly embarrassed and severely crowded,
Loyal like an antique dog waiting for a time that will never return.
(It would cross its legs and pee, if it could, I swear).
Why they need a four-by-seven oak slab memory instead of
Snapping a few pixels of the thing, well,
Only the table can tell.
Or they can.
But they won't; At least,
Not all the way.
Instead, they raise us as
Skipping stones, those in the
Creek behind their old movie theater
Trickling soft as years in ghost towns
Adorned with adventurous novel characters,
Names we almost love -
But not quite,
Because they talk about them
Like they breathed.
Some - frightening,
Most - beautiful.
In certain night moments at our bedside
Or on the July back porch, broken swing and all
It almost looks
As if they could cry
Pour out a life they've built and torn down.
But out comes lesson, prevailing like wind over rain
And we get instead
The story end, like children small and grown
Sitting around their sunset radio boxes, tuning into worn static.
Then, imperceptibly at once
Comes the time,
All different times for all different sorts of us
When our parents transform into more than just
Warm ovens baking
Broken doors fixed
Terrycloth robes and
Red pick up trucks.
More than
Heavy doors slamming
Cheap vanilla perfume
Friday night sewing needles
Bowling beer leagues and
Quiet thinking dinner tables.
More than words cried out
And words taken back.
They become
Hands
Raised above them like tiny questions
Waiting to be held,
Searching for love of all kinds.
Looking eyes
Witnessing whole years
Only their attics can keep
A silent plane ride home to
bury a child
And lake nights filled with nothing but
Dreams of each other. And
Still more, and more,
And more.
October drizzling rain upon their
Jumping feet and pounding pavement
Block by neighborhood block
Chasing away times they won't soon remember.
And that night burst of ocean, when
They saw for the very first time
Their worlds float together on a vanishing orange horizon
Sand beneath them
Mountain wind erasing
Footprints, as if
They had never stepped into that moment on earth
Or given away to tides so much more
Than their sea lungs could carry,
Like untold ocean beds and rock walls
Holding everything down and in
Water of their life, and ours,
Seeping through the bones.
"That's why you need to get flood insurance" they quibble, ankle deep
In our own regret
As we bucket out track trophies, a panoramic photo of an eighth grade D.C. trip,
And yearbook upon yearbook we've inherited as gifts
"From our basement to yours!" they exclaimed on our doorstep three years ago, laughing,
The funny intersecting exchange where histories meet like old friends swapping memories,
Forgetting they once
Lived together.
"What's this?" ask our sons and daughters
Smiling and quizzical like mini riddle detectives
Solving mysteries with their bare hands grabbing
For anything
Those fake Mardi Gras beads and
A soppy box of post cards from Germany,
Unusable dinar covered by an unrecognizable face, and
Decade-old cd sleeves.
Fossil evidence. They need more.
So with a wet wave to Grandma and Grandpa,
Excited, they plop like cushions,
Square between tired laps.
And around that basement table
Generations in a mirror
Children around golden children,
Awash in wet boxes and thoughtfully familiar relics,
They listen intently, as if around night fire,
To animated stories, big like oak,
straight from the dusty sea bottom,
Of parents who
Long ago,
Lived.
Thirty-three Inches Falling
Jelly stained face and bare
Except he doesn't care
For anything but pulling inner strings to hold
An awkward posture
Spontaneous recital in comic still motion
Only knowing well enough
To jostle around his
Spinning winter room universe
Simple elements and
Thirty-three inches falling
To soft ground,
Knee cries,
And morning pain
Melts
to
Charming mystery
Outside his corner eye window
Still white thought
Holding a wonder moment
Even though
The snows fell yesterday
Knee deep from their mother
Letting go her
Every glass tear
Held together just long enough
To reach him
Blanket skies and calling him
To stick out his tongue
Pressed to pane
And taste day
Like he's never lived before.
Except he doesn't care
For anything but pulling inner strings to hold
An awkward posture
Spontaneous recital in comic still motion
Only knowing well enough
To jostle around his
Spinning winter room universe
Simple elements and
Thirty-three inches falling
To soft ground,
Knee cries,
And morning pain
Melts
to
Charming mystery
Outside his corner eye window
Still white thought
Holding a wonder moment
Even though
The snows fell yesterday
Knee deep from their mother
Letting go her
Every glass tear
Held together just long enough
To reach him
Blanket skies and calling him
To stick out his tongue
Pressed to pane
And taste day
Like he's never lived before.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)