Quiet Commotion

Worship Can Happen Anywhere

2012-02-08T18:37:00.000-08:00

I worshipped today
Soul crunching worship.

Have you ever?
Then there is no explanation sufficient.

It's been so long
but the song was made from my own joints
the way they push together without cartilage
carving new pathways into this flat valley
for rivers to run
painful, yet no less of a journey.

So my soul rose up as
tears, meeting these lips
opened in allowance.
I sang.
It was time,
the voice was choked...but heard
my heart
ahhh, my heart
one measured bar released
from such a cage.
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Forgiving Me

2012-02-05T19:20:00.000-08:00

I think I forgave myself yesterday.
I meant to.
I actually looked in the mirror and told that woman
I forgive you

She balked
and can you blame her?

Hatching off days on the walls of her cell
bamboo shoots under the nails of her fingers
that self imposed agony of a slow pull.
Pain must be felt at all times (how else is it purgatory?)
each sliver removed bit by bit by bit
so as to feel every mile of road
as if it were neverendingneverendingneverending.

But there is only so much blood to spill.
I told her..."Woman, it's time."

That man.
That man who blew my fantasy-family house of cards
to fucking smithereens...
she forgave him the next day.
Sure as shit she wrote him and said all was forgiven.
And she meant it
because forgiving is not the same as forgetting.
It is simply an acknowledgement that something is done
and cannot be undone
and we're not going to keep hashing it out
torturing fingernails and demanding blood.

She can't do the same for herself.
Well...she couldn't...
until yesterday
(maybe)
tomorrow too.
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"There's a host of hurts we come across
None of which alike
From the air inside the birthing room
To the darkness where we die
Though I feel I'm just as strong as any man I know
I'm not able on my own
Carry round the secrets
Only heaven knows
Crawl into our darkened rooms where only victims go
Though I feel I'm strong enough to carry all this load
I'm not able on my own

All my actions, false or true
Selfish motives I will use
We were born with knives in hand
Trained to kill our fellow man
If we're not better than the rest
How will children do their best
Find your patience, find your truth
Love is all we have to lose

I'm not able on my own"

Failure To Thrive

2012-02-02T19:51:00.000-08:00

I have lost touch.
Did you know hormones have curled my hair?
But only my pull knows the wavy spring
or the way ringlets wind around my finger
as soft limbs entwining a lovers body.

She touches my wrist
says "unfist your hand"
I look down to find a truth I did not know.
These clenched hands always prepared now
to defend
shoulders hunched and ready.

My fingers open to her suggestion
life line exposed
both her hands grab my palm
thumbs firmly stroking the trigger points
on the ear of an agitated dog.

I think to cry.
I want to.
Inside I did...
stomach distended with all that is unreleased.
And I know why babies fail to thrive without
touch.
At 49 I am such a child.

Yet God knows I have need.
The wind came up against my sweating flesh
with it's playground hands, bigger than my body!
They touched everywhere at once
my lips, my arms, my heaving belly
tussling my hair in a way that felt like nurture.
Oh mother, wherefore art thou?
I was touched.

Can a breeze be enough?

I reached out yesterday.
Her judgement harmed me, caged me further.
I am so set back that I consider I will always be alone
in wait for the wind.
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Hung Up

2012-01-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

I've hung this prayer like wallpaper
lining up the seams
pasting the trailing vine against structure
and stepping back to check my work
for completeness and rigidity.

Everywhere I turn
this my vision
until it lost all sense of the familiar...
as foreign as another's hand
at the end of my own arm.

I've recited this invocation so often
I became an actor within it
the sentences coming loose of the script
and nouns stepping out of character
to confer with one another.

From the fallen word, letters
wriggled away like souls
departing in legion, but not free
caught with their work undone
between.

I watch them reassemble into song
hauntingly familiar, the score of which
papers my walls.
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I guess I need the meds

2012-01-24T05:47:00.000-08:00

(Prologue - I am fine. This was a mental note. This was me off my medication for two weeks and the bottom dropped out. Quickly. It dropped out quickly. Today you have no cause for concern. The fact that I want to hide this mess is all the more reason to shine a light on it.)

Is it suicide if you just write the note?
Lusting is equivalent to adultery. So....
I must be dead.

I lied to myself for a vague moment somewhere in yesterdays window. I guess I am depressed. I've quite the talent for talking myself into things. Such a pity my talents do not extend to talking myself out. I suppose it's unfortunate how well I can fool you. But don't fear your gullibility. I used myself as practice and I really did think it was true. I lied when I consoled my shaking hand with a preemptive strike against what was surely coming. As sure as the sun sets, hopelessness rises.

I lied when I told myself I had choices, but you'll be happy to note I've been set straight. I have no choices. I have no rights. As surely as I read it, it must be fact.

I lied when I said I'd seen the limitless bottom, for today I saw how hungry it was, and that kind of appetite is never satisfied. It will return again and again until I lay myself out as a banquet. Submission and surrender are so highly praised! Thereby, I will be praised.

Do not fight for yourself. Happiness is irrelevant. The most content among us will tell you...it isn't even biblical. The blood from your battles will only alert the wolves. In the end they will chant the familiar lullaby, "you are wrong you are wrong you are wrong." You can hardly fault them for it! Truth is truth, and "I know" will be the last thing you whisper before they eat your heart. It's some kind of sick joke to have your feelings be wrong. There seems no choice but to lie. Who the hell wants to be wrong all the time?

----------------------------------

It's taken about twenty minutes for the meds to kick in, for the calm stepford wife of reason and sense to take charge.

"Which Annie ARE you?"
Hell if I know.
But the one I was
pushed "publish"
before the one I am.

(That was the darkest place I've been. So far. I am deeply disturbed by the contrast but I want to remember and logically look at these feelings in a different moment.)

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She Helps

2012-01-22T19:10:00.000-08:00

I feel as much a rescue as the rest of these animals. There is an unwed mother of three, a half breed, a cross breed, a pedigree larger and heavier than I, and several previously homeless beggars. A total of nine, including myself, settled in this country kitchen. There is a fire roaring, and the poor little Chihuahua is as small as her milk ducts are large. We joke that she is not even a year old and her figure is ruined. Those breasts will NEVER be the same, and damn...she missed the prom altogether! She warms her saggy baaah-baaah's on the floor tiles in front of the fireplace and looks anxiously towards the pen where her three babies sleep. There were four, and I watched last month as she nudged and sniffed at the dead fourth, her mourning and grieving not done until she pushed it out of the pen. She's a good mother.

"Is your meeting with me a secret?" I ask. Despite her assurances, I am unsure she is at ease having me there and I have no intention of being a secret kept, or a compromise. She assures me that this fact is as known as all the rest. I am always tearful in her presence, for she is the hand out...held, until I take it. I know I am unworthy. It's a judgement that I cannot rectify yet.

She's good with animals. "Not so good with people" she says of herself...but I know different. I can see how some may not know what to make of her directness and candor, but I knew I wanted her as a friend the very first time I met her. Somehow, it happened. Her mothering makes me cry. I am mourning mothers as well as many other things right now. She is intent on feeding me and says I look thin. I shrug. I have no scale. She says, "No...really...like too thin. Here (she touches my neck). Here (her hard working fingers at my cheek)." I tell myself I really need that facelift, but it's nowhere in the near future (it is a thought. i let it go. there is nothing I can do to fix it today). She never tells me what she thinks I want to hear. She tells me what she thinks I need to hear. That is the mark of a true friend.

She says it seems like I "spew vitriol" on my blog. I tell her it is that scene from 'The Mummy'. Open mouth...the dust of poison escaping with my words. It is release. The darkness I carry is one of the hardest things for people to come to terms with. I've stopped attempting to explain. It is at odds with their daily experience with my flesh person and I can understand the discomfort. "Which Annie ARE you?" Hell if I know. Both, I imagine.

We watched 'The Help' and I cried through most of it. I am off my medications and I cry a lot. I don't think it's a bad thing and she agrees. I don't feel depressed, I just FEEL. This particular movie has me face off with my grief of mothers and fathers, and childhoods. ("you is kind, you is smart, you is important"). I wanted to recreate childhood within my own children, which in and of itself put too much pressure on them. I wanted to do it right. I had no model of what right was. I feel like I should apologize daily. "I don't know what I did, but I'm sure I did something and I'm sure it was awful and I'm sure that down the road you will realize all your problems were all my fault." Ah yes. The adult child of an alcoholic at work. The rational mind rolls "I did the best I could" around on the tongue like a roulette wheel.

It was a good day. It was an exhausting day. She is kind. She is smart. She is important to me.

Say Cheese

2012-01-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

I am the new person.
I am unknown
shy, even to myself
a mystery
grated.
I am all knuckle and blood
elements or elephants
separated from the room.

Everyone seems to know someone
everyone is met
the couples in step, the children supervised.

In my glass house
a hawk waving with both wings
casts its shadow puppets on my roof...
rabbit to wolverine with the tilt of a feather.

I pantomime,
There is nothing left to shred
as the onion cries out with a chortle of recrimination,
it's many layers mocking.
We've only glimpsed the Alpha.

I have felt the limitless bottom
and the memory is fresh

Dive anyway.
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Living It

2012-01-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

It's a little scary here. There are six people that like to sit and smoke on the steps leading to my apartment. They use "fuck" and "shit" and "mother fucker" as if they were "and", "the" and "um". I like profanity in it's place. But the children are small and it's almost as if the parental vocabulary is so truncated that they've lost their choices. They are young and they are loud and they think nothing of letting their children run back and forth and back and forth and shake the windowswallsdoorsfloorglass. They smoke tobacco and herbs, and their beers litter the lawn while they BBQ in the common area between the three wings. They roll down the windows of their cars and MAKE me listen to their rap music at full volume.

I am afraid, and it makes me hibernate. I've never been a particularly fearful person, but suddenly I am as unsure of others as I am of myself. This is no time to hide. I hide well. Why practice that more?

I went out on the small balcony to fill a small pot with soil. I have seeds from Marion that I am suppose to plant in Spring. (It is 80 degrees. Does that constitute Spring? I don't know when to plant. Help me Marion.) Four men come out onto the adjacent balcony...it is their women littering my stairway. BE BRAVE BE BRAVE BE BRAVE. Just like a kidnapped victim who tries to let the captor know they have a name, they are a person, they have children.

"Who actually lives in this apartment?" I ask over the balcony.

A man's smile fades. He thinks I am going to lecture, or critique, or judge, or complain. I can tell. I am learning to read body language better than words.

"I do" he says.

"My name is Annie. Nice to meet you" I say, holding out my hand. He shakes it. His name is Greg. He is smiling broadly now and missing a tooth.

I walk out front onto the steps. A woman spans the entire width of my stairway. If she did not move, I would not be able to get from my apartment to my car.

"Which of you actually lives in this apartment?" I ask again.

"I do" smiles a woman.

"I'm Annie. I just met your husband Gary."

"Greg" she says. I tell her my memory sucks. That I have a hard time listening. I am rarely present. She moves for me. She smiles. She asks me if I know her daughter. I do...she was the first person to say hello here. She is seven, likes flowers and the color pink.

The guys are swearing like sailors on the balcony. I cannot drown it out. Their music is not to my liking. But...I am less afraid than when we were all nameless.

I want them to be quiet.
I have no control.
It's hard for me.
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Poetry

2012-01-13T23:28:00.000-08:00

We are all so crushable, some of us eloquent.

And that's not even the right word.

So...arterial?

The pulse of every beat,

joy, peace, loss, grief

the unbearable, the unimaginable

our one.true.life sustained in letters.

Sometimes we get it just right, nick a jugular,

raise our hands to the drenching of blood rain

or we are dry,
the words of our bones
toothpicks.

According to Facebook

2012-01-09T21:47:00.000-08:00

According to Facebook I am smoking pot
According to Facebook I have left "the church"
According to Facebook my friends are of ill-repute
According to Facebook I am the latest newsworthy black sheep
for there is no greater pasture
than to drag someone else through the none of your business.

"Facebook is of the devil" she says
and I tend to believe her.
I don't go there
I don't even dare
because the grocery store isles are more filled with Annie
than any $2.99 per pound special on tri-tip.

I have a mirror
I have a soul
and God holds me beyond my push.
I have a heart that hurts just as much as yours.
And when you dwindle in your darkest hour...
those times when the sky and the earth meet as one inky blackness
enveloping a forgiveness you cannot find...

that's when you will realize I have learned something.

This egg splattered door will be your knocking place
and my knee the rest for your head.
That's when my Refuge
within His immutable echo of ancient truth
will be your harbor,
and some measure of grace and mercy
(perhaps more than I allow myself) will be served
until you can eat.

The black sheep have much to learn.
The white sheep think they should share all they "know".

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The Interior Age

2012-01-09T04:45:00.000-08:00

"The child of an alcoholic has no age. The same things hold true if you are five or fifty-five. Children of alcoholics simply do not have fun. Life was a very serious and angry business. There was no place for fun in your household. You gave it up. It just wasn't a workable idea. The spontaneous child got squashed and struggles to be released. The pressure to be an adult keeps the child repressed. You are at war with yourself." ~ Janet Geringer Woititz

I put my age in the pocket of my jeans
where it mingles with other minted years
those silver dollars feeling superiority
over coins as light as communion wafers
transparent and broken

their ashes though filling the grooves of dimes and quarters
foundation on the faces of Lincoln and Jefferson
knowing they belong and hanging on
through change

I swing my feet from an over sized chair
mindful, but not moved, by my unkempt laces or lopsided pigtails.
A moment ago I was pouring over a budget in my power suit
managing a department with a drivers permit and acne.

There are no digits to my thoughts
no category of defense that a number can blame.
She is only 5!
She is only 15!
She is only 50!
She is ageless, and stuck there

but determined not to be.
It just isn't a workable idea.
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Practice

2012-01-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Richard and Michael. They are father and son, Portuguese, loud yelling door slamming gruff loving caring people. I like the work I do for this small company. I like the hour and a half of work I do there on Friday mornings infinitely more than I like the work I do 40 hours a week. I watch this family arguing with their mouths and hands. Their passion is equally as evident in their anger as it is in their love and devotion to one another. They have no patience, but since neither of them do, they don't realize it's lacking. They howl and bang around without a thought to any notion that anger diminishes love in anyway. It is part and parcel to love. I think I would like this in my life to some degree, although it seems ridiculous to desire anger. I guess I want anger to be safe. I wonder if it can be. It is safe between these two men and so I examine it. Anger was not safe in the household of my childhood. It was out of control and there was no love in it. I think I have erred too far on the side of civility and it has harmed my relationships.

The people in my life are being practiced on. Unfortunately for them I am like a ten year old deciding to take Dad's Lincoln out for a spin with no idea how to steer. I run over mail boxes, into garbage cans, near miss a cat or two and nick a fence over correcting. I have asked one thing of Michael, to be in the office by 7:30 so I can do payroll and get to my full time job on time at 8:00. In the two years I've worked there I can count on one hand the times he actually has been. I'm always late for my next job. I am enabling him to be irresponsible every time I stay past the time I said I would because he won't arrive on time. Today, I practiced a little.

Michael: Sorry I'm late.

Annie: ARRRRRGH!

Michael: What?

Annie: What? It's the same gig every Friday, that's what! It's the same late as it always is. You're killing me Michael! (I put my arm on his shoulder.) Michael, we need counseling!

Michael: Oh God. Now you sound like my girlfriend. You have no idea...just like her.

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Weak Link

2012-01-02T16:23:00.000-08:00

The old woman bent to her task, gnarled hand trailing the chain
her fingers longing over each link
as if an instrument she played,
and each note out of tune required an effort greater than she felt she had.
But to discontinue was to begin again.

"What are you doing?" asked the boy.

"Looking for weak links" she replied wearily.
It was back breaking work, though it looked like a stroll.
There were those who assumed she just wanted to walk
and behind their hands they whispered conspiracies.

"Looks fine to me," said the boy.

"Does to most," replied the old woman
annoyed at the intrusion
for every derailment added to time.

"Then why don't you just let it be?" asked the boy, chewing a hangnail that would require a bloody freedom.

The old woman sighed, turned to the boy..."Because things are getting in which should stay out, and things that should stay out are getting in. Nothing knows its place anymore."

The boy shook his head. "Old woman...you're wasting your time. Everyone who sees that chain thinks it's strong enough."

She put her hands on her hips. "Which is exactly the problem. Everyone stops and requires an explanation for something they simply cannot see. It only delays the task. Leave me to it Boy, I need to do this alone."

"Why alone?" asked the boy as he turned to go.

"No one else believes in the mission" she said quietly.

He did not hear. He was not meant to.

My body is so smart

2011-12-31T07:12:00.000-08:00

it knows things

things you can't learn in books

things you can't even remember.

The steam was an after thought.

I have one pan, one lid...in use

so a plate, as a lid

and once lifted

THE STEAM!

and my thumb blistered before my brain could even register

heat

and my hand released.

Save the fingers

fuck the plate

and it shattered.

There were four, now three

and I am concerned

that I can't get another to match

and the downstairs neighbors must have jumped, and perhaps the baby next door was woken from it's nap and the mother is tired and the floor is messy and there is no thought to the fingers that bubble like boiling water.

but my body knows.

my body knows that in this place

the bathroom door does not need to be locked...

my hand does not even shut the door

and that is a strange freedom

but perhaps not a healthy one.

i am amazed that with all the times I have gagged this body

all the times I have taught it not to care for itself

all the times I have told it to lie

that it still knows how to save it's life!

I am listening to my body.

I don't think I should be the only one.

Wading Through

2011-12-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

Yestarday there were no tears. The first of such a day in a long time. Today I am all tears. I feel the target of many arrows. They sting. Everyone has their own agenda. I'm not going to try and explain myself anymore. I'm just going to do the only thing I know to do at this point, for myself, my husband, and our relationship. I suppose no one else has to understand it. We will understand it when we are through it. My husband and I have always been the King and Queen of hindsight.

Each of us is unique, a fingerprint, a snowflake. There is a language between myself and God. It is like no other. You cannot speak it. It is pain. Where once I would use denial, sin, alcohol, busyness, and lies to deflect this conversation between God and I, now I sit on the footstool in rapt attention. I WANT to learn the lesson no matter how much it hurts. I am hoping that on the other side of this, we will speak differently. My ears may only be attuned to the language of my parents. That has been no aid to me. It is no fault of God's that he must speak to me in the language I hear.

_____________________

He asked me if I talk to God.

"I beg him" I say.

And what does he tell you?

"He no longer speaks English. His language is pain."

And?

"And it hurts to understand."

Do you want to?

"I'm afraid."

Of?

"Pain. It's muddy. It transfers. It cannot be controlled. I cannot keep it to myself."

Should you?

"Should is no longer relevant I suppose. I can't."

Then what are you begging for?

"Hope."

________________________

Today is my husband's birthday. He does not need to wish for hope. He has always had it.
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Baseballs & Smiles

2011-12-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

Hold each thought and emotion separately.
Cling to none.
Push away none.

Like pitches across the plate, each thought is watched and labeled. "That is a curve ball." "That is a fast ball." Do not catch them. Do not swing for the fences. Observe and label, feel and release. Wait for the next. This is a metaphor in mindfulness and my daily exercise. With this practice I will eventually know a strike from a ball.

________________________________

Yesterday I was at Office Max waiting for a print job. A man was at the counter. He turned to leave and smiled at me. I thought I smiled back. He said, "Oh, don't give me that kind of smile. I've been getting those fake smiles all day." I gave him my best false 'Cheese'. He wasn't so thrilled with that one either. Another man walked in the door. He said, "Smile. It can't be all that bad!" I said, "Are people going to tell me to smile all day? Do I look that pathetic?" He said, "You woke up breathing didn't you? Smile."

The old cliche, "Things could always be worse" never really has any teeth. Of course they could! That's why we have the story of Job. I'm not sure when I'll feel like smiling again. I am grateful for my family, health, jobs, bills paid, grace, mercy, forgiveness. So much. But a smile comes from somewhere else, somewhere beyond gratitude. I'll know it when it comes. I'll take a swing at it.
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Christmas

2011-12-26T04:57:00.000-08:00

I held my sobbing husband in my arms. Once again it was my doing...this pain. I want to take it all back, to comfort, to heal. But there is no other way but through this now or I will just continue to harm him with my lies. I don't think anyone understands and I feel the weight of global disapproval. That can't matter. This time I must see it through. Lies are not best. I will use this time to find my truth and examine it, separate the wheat from the chaff, be open to anything but pretense.

We had breakfast as a family. I watched my boys tussle. I watched my husbands hands shake. We played dice and I saw my youngest follow in the tracks of my personality and my oldest pattern after his father. They are great young men. They are the best things we ever did and I have had nothing much to invest in them these last few years. That has to change.

It is Christmas day noon and I am now alone as the family gathers elsewhere. I have lived almost 50 years and even in the worst of them, I have never been alone on Christmas. Ah, but I am not alone. God is here and I feel him tugging to heal our relationship, for it is fractured like so many other things I tried to tape together. I am eating chips for Christmas dinner. It's almost humorous as I eat them with such a method. Suck the salt, pulverize the chip, swallow with a wine chaser. I can actually watch my hands swell.

I lay down on the floor and watch the sky turn against the trees and blacken their bark with fire. It is a high window in a high ceiling, and I so far down below it.

-from my iphone

Truth Monster

2011-12-20T08:29:00.000-08:00

The carpet is brown.
I am laying on the floor of this apartment
like a dirty snow angel
limbs askew...one shoe off, one shoe on
bare feet or shoes?bare feet or shoes.barefeetorshoesorbarefeetorshoes

My teeth are clenched
these jaws of life
having given birth to sequestered monsters
that ate the heart of man
while I held his convulsing body in my spent arms.

The monsters got too big to swallow.
Thou art loosed and the battle has begun.
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Knowing More

2011-12-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

We're afraid.
So we hole up in our preservations and stew in our fear.

We watch the steam rise from the water of our immobility and our skin starts to boil. We know we should be on a mission to escape, but the water has warmed so slowly that we thought we were simply bathing.....
....until we knew more.

And when the temperature gained ground, we reached out to turn a knob, and there our fingers scalded. We pulled back to preserve a hand...
...not realizing we might lose a life....
....until we knew more.

We heard a noise, like eggs coming to boil
realized the cacophony of our own bones rattling far beyond simmer.
To attempt a release now will surely be a far worse burn, for the flames....
...the flames are licking at the rim and dissonant against our skeletal racket.

The tea kettle starts to whistle, yet no one has called for tea. We find our mouths open and recognize the wail from our self tortured soul as anything as simple as tea.
We are knowing more.

Subconsciously, we begin to churn the water, our legs...barely within our reasoning...furiously kick. And our arms slap the water, making waves. We are so petrified to create movement with our mind
that our body
lie detector that it is
says "ENOUGH"
and as if, without our consent,
creates
The Perfect Storm.

We invite the wind.
We throw open the shutters and pull a tornado out of our hat.
We are knowing now....
that we WILL be moved...
that our bodies have rescued us from being poached,
or worse, hard boiled.

We've blamed the pot
we've blamed the water
we've blamed the bones.
We see movement only as a physical migration...
and for a time it has to be
we are so hot, so burned, so tired of heat.

We will come to know more.

Perhaps it wasn't about the pot.
it wasn't about the water.
It was just the bones
having something to say.
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Feather

2011-12-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

I thought I could be a feather

airy like that

no weight

moved by the will of a whisper

or merely by will itself

a footless print

a ridgeless finger

and being so unidentifiable, so light

I could do no damage, no harm

but to my own plumage

an oath, a denier's creed

desirous to be so anemic

but I sank

all iron feet and fingers

and with me I took you

choking and astonished

that your feather

could ever be something you were unable to carry.

Grandma's Heart

2011-12-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

Fragile is the ornament on my grandmother's tree
and her mother's before that, and my mother after.

Every year I unwrap this glass heart that could easily crush
with a tremor of my thumb.
I am amazed that year after year it withstands my clumsiness
though all the grace I have, I give it.

Do you think it survives because it has acknowledged it's own fragility...
puts on no airs as anything but?
It wears the word delicate as a namesake
a right for living so long.
Or perhaps it just always was, and is...

I am delicate.
Period.

My heart has made no such claim.
It has machismo and makes concrete statements, like
"I can handle this."
"I can carry you."

If I had conceded early on, that my heart was tissue thin
and crushable in an instant of unexpected cruelty,
would it make any difference?

I am delicate.

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Pretense

2011-12-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

'Without Pretense'
Artist Barbara Cole

Die to self.
I tried.
I believe I am dead, and yet
the pain is horrendous.
Do the dead have nerves?
Do they bleed from the insincerity of their eyes?

If so
I revoke my wish for death.
There is no peace in it.

__________________________

I would like to live more honest. I keep trying and failing, assuming there are appearances to keep, and people I need to live for. I have thought that to protect people from my ugly feelings was the kindest path to take. I have taken everything I felt that was not in line with how I thought I should feel and tucked it under my arm. Can you believe I thought that would work? The decay of that thing became the unmistakable odor of pretense. What a fraud! A friend called me egotistical. It is the grandest egotism to think that I can make someone else happy. I cannot. At this point I cannot even make myself happy.

I apologize to the blogs I follow. I tell myself...go there. I tell myself...read. I tell myself...comment. I should, I should, I SHOULD. And yet, I have nothing to give you. I am a fraud, even there. There was a time I had an investment that was true. Now I really have nothing of value to give you. I am too empty. Writing helps me, if I can be honest in it. I'll continue writing here, but won't be around much to your blogs. I've been dropping off, dropping out...too confused and too ashamed and too lost. Now I just don't want to fake it anymore. I have a lot of work to do. And can you believe, I want to ask your forgiveness for being absent where you write out your own hearts, your lives, your own pain? I feel like such a shit.
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Battering

2011-12-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

The wind is worried today,

restless spirit, touching here

touching there

unable to decide if he has whipped this landscape

enough for penance

or defrocked that tree sufficiently

that her completely bare and naked shape

is intimately acquainted with his touch.

He has knit his brows together in the clouds

concern an ever deepening wrinkle

that perhaps the work is not done

and never is.

So he strikes again, and Again, and AGAIN

at the weary world, as if to subdue it.

The sea fights back

with angry white swells that batter boats

as if to subdue them

and the boats bang the docks

as if to subdue them.

The work is not done.

And no one is free.

Swamp Women (for Marion)

2011-11-28T14:52:00.000-08:00

If we lived near each other, I would go bang on your door come midnight
though the full moon would've already disturbed your slumber...
the both of you, just staring at each other all googly eyed as you do...
but this night, I his hand to draw you.

In my plaid flannel PJ's,
grabbing the hem of your rose print cotton nightgown..
Come on, Come on I'd tug
cuz you're not that old and your hip will survive the outing
into the swamp where we'd find old timber
and set it on fire with the gasoline of our piss.

We'd whoop and holler and get naked,
just to show Mr. Moon that we still got some magic in the kindest light...
maybe not in the full spectrum sun,
where our carriage tends to turn again to pumpkin
but in the dim light of the planets and stars,
our skin still glows and our breasts have some allure

at least the alligators think so ;)
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His Journals

2011-11-21T14:42:00.000-08:00

He bequeaths me his journals
hand to page
pressing in, on the fabric of self
a scratch, a wound, a scar
petroglyph, fossil, a museum of the mind.

I do not take this lightly.
I can see the artifacts lined up above the piano
grave stones to passing years
the dusty mind of a younger man.

I rope my arm to the chair
for it would snake out to brrrshk brrrshk each cover
my lips to blow
yearly deposits of inattention from drying spines.

Why must I wait for death
to receive this gift?

Why is such a treasure held in a rubber band coffin,
the exhumation of which is only offered
when the pain is fresh and questions
lay like a wilting bouquet in the lap of an epitaph?

Is that it?
The questions?

I won't ask them!!!!
But let me know you while you live.
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Come back

2011-11-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

Stephanie and Me

Her smile dies in still birth
eyes weeping against the curvature
willowed lashes bent in the posture of submission
repeatedly coming up empty, but for a fist of soil
wishing to god-breath-it to life, into the shape her fingers trace, airly
above the space of a cavernous bed

I promised him
promised I'd take good care of her
because you'll promise anything when it feels sacrificial
enough for death

We watched each other fighting in separate wars
reached out a hand
but there was no trust in it
no salvation

We'd never needed each other more
or had each other less
I broke it Mike. I broke my promise

"So did she" his spirit assuages.
And he was that guy, that guy who never held you
to a drunk slur, or a bet you couldn't back.

I wanted to be better. More.

I tried to smile for her
she tried to navigate for me
and we both got lost
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The Crutch

2011-11-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

Your fingers slide into the palm of your addiction
press intently...red crescent moons anchoring
into the fleshy thing that has become your Bathsheba.

The one glance you stole
has become a hot need in your pants
quivering, seeking, alive.
And if it's alive, then to deprive it is death,
and so we don't.
Nicotine, alcohol, drugs, pornography, aggression...

What if I told you, you could live without it?
What if you believed me?
What then?
It makes you nervous just to consider that you could...
don't it? Yeah. I know.

There was a man.
He lived without a face.
13,800 volts for 3 minutes and his face was gone.
He took down all the mirrors, saying
"on occasion I would catch my reflection in a butter knife
and that was enough."

He lived without something as fundamental as features.
And then again,
they aren't so fundamental are they?
We think our face is unique and intrinsic to our identity.
But I look like Cindy Williams
and Sally Fields
and that neurosurgeon in Lodi
and that girl you kissed under the bleachers.

But a man without a face?
I am humbled by that man.
It's amazing what we can live without as soon as we have to.
Perhaps we should live that way
before the choice...no longer ours.
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My Creepy Halloween Post

2011-10-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

She was given no key. "Don't need one in these parts," they had said...and it seemed right, as the cottage was nestled among orchards of orange blossoms. The door swung open easily to a coverlet of red roses and the end of the world painted on the wall.

A small restroom held the necessities and three small shelves. She fingered the potions left for her...strange names like Mehyam, Si, Raen, and a clear jar self labeled 'Ant Poison' in a hurried script. She touched herself with Milk & Shea Butter, feeling decadent and fertile. After a moments reflection, she turned from the mirror. Behind her, a breeze startled the delicate white lace curtain covering the window, and the appliqued dragons began to hunt.

She brought nothing with her but what she wore, that being easy enough to discard. She pulled the dress over her head in one sharp tear, wishing with it, a layer of skin. Each foot removed the shoe of the other, and she left them by the door where they might be easily stolen.

He wached her shadow pass behind the flimsy shade, noticed when the form rose, dancing to music he couldn't hear, but it was jazz by the size of it.

In his hands the knife turned ever so slowly as he built his need. The rusty blade didn't seem to bother him, though the dullness would be a factor.

Ah the blood,
the blood he would use to paint the roses.
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Old Man Gutter

2011-10-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

As long as I can remember he is sweeping the gutters.
They are immaculate, those gutters.
as if his children would eat
from that trough, the sewage of the streets.
I can think of many things I should clean
but the street falls short.

His hair was brown
but it ran down the handle of his broom and into the grate
that said "no dumping" with a cobalt stencil of a fish.
I ain't never seen a cobalt fish
but it makes as much sense as all that sweeping I guess.

In the morning he swept
In the afternoon he swept
And in the evening, oh that poor damn leaf
having loosed itself of the branch
resting peacefully from aerial life,
he swept
the last vestige of its color right down the drain
where mysterious cobalt fish now play slap jack with rebellious leaves.

swish swish s w i s h
and his own joy along with it.

His hair is now gray,
as flat and lifeless as the gutter he rid
of everything it tried to gather.
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Atypical

2011-10-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

I've decided to refuse.

Yes, it's actually my decision,

seeming as one of few

(though a truer lie never spoken),

so I am POWER in it...

all might and back bone

as if this one adjective were the shackle

and I, ready now, to gnaw off my foot.

I've blacklisted the word

of, or pertaining to, this woman

What word?

It's gone. Redacted.

In it's place, a fingerprint

scored along my hip

which you colored so far outside the lines

it is unrecognizable by sight,

but to your fingers

it is Braille.

Paint me, every day love...

for I have never been so beautifully atypical.

Carnival

2011-10-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

I drove by a sleeping carnival early one morning, watched the sun rise and bathe it in mood. Finally loneliness had perfect images. Silent. Abandoned. Eeerie. I walked around in complete anonymity taking pictures. No security, no maintenance workers. Just me, alone, fingering fish bowls, leatherette seats, blinking lights on ticket booths, and staring at myself in the fun house mirror. Big rig cabs were lined up with curtains drawn as I imagined snoring carnies and their life on the road. If any one of them had been awake, I might have stumbled across an interview...some fodder for a story. As it was, the story found me anyway.

He was nothing more than a pipsqueak, scruffy hair plastered down with Brylcreem to please Momma in the mornings, but flying free by noon, which pleased him just fine. In first grade you learn to read. You learn a lot of things that get etched in your marrow. Sometimes they turn to cancer, and sometimes they don't. The flier next to the water fountain said "Carnival". He KNEW what carnival was. He felt it rub up against his shin in good and bad ways, a cat with sharp claws. He scratched his chin with the back of his nails as if he had stubble, a gesture he would come to repeat so often it was like a tic. Casting a furtive glance at the empty play yard, he tore the flier off it's nail and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans, depository of such treasures as coins, rocks, and broken toys that it had never seemed right to abandon.

With measured steps he ambled home, smoothed the leaflet out as best he could and placed it under his mattress, figuring to ask his teacher to point out July 4 on the calendar. Making his way into the kitchen he opened a can of beans for dinner...pots and spoons rattling around the empty house as if for company. He was grateful for the noise.

******************

One year earlier, as now, he had no curfew except to eventually show up, as if that were indication enough all was well. It was not. Holes had been forming where tendernesses should have been, and scabs across the backs of little hands that should have been held within bigger ones. He was hungry in ways that would never be satisfied. He knew it already, at the tender age of six, though having no words for the ache. Having spent the night darting among tents, staring mesmerized at the red and green lights dancing across the water of the little boat ride, and collecting tickets dropped by the throngs of the attendees, he was the last one standing. It was Carnival. It was dark. He was alone, and he'd never felt lonelier.

Soiled leaflets stuttered across the pavement and one forgotten fish swam lazily in an eternal arc around a bowl with a ping pong sized mouth. He turned towards it. He didn't like being forgotten and imagined the fish liked it less. But his ears lurched in another direction and his eyes did a slow uneasy roll towards the sound. Music coming in bursts and sputters, the kind that came from Grandma's music box when the ballerina was about to stop. He liked the country tunes that sometimes played on the radio when his parents were home and of a mood. But this was....an avoided sound, a siren song, a taunt. He was able to shut it out well enough when the park was packed and his buddies were screeching at the carnies for a free ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl. Alone, he could not block the sound anymore than he could stop his feet now moving in the direction of it. The Merry-go-round wanted a rider.

Stories had been passed down, gaining speed and heft as stories do, along with a goodly dose of fiction in most cases. But he didn't think "Merry" was accurate, not by a long shot. He'd heard that Merry-go-round horses were not solid. They had mouths, and inside the hollow tunnel that fed their gut....it was not empty. His mind backpedaled, but the song was the long arm of a sticky substance that wrapped itself around his narrow shoulders and pulled. Perhaps he knew that this was just one of many things he was going to have to face down alone. Squaring up, he kept walking, imaging himself taller and broader, when in fact he was a small boy, bearing the stature of his mother. When at last he stood before the horse, (the black one, with a blood red seat and a chipped smile, as if horses could smile...but it was...and not in a nice way. It was the same smile the bullies gave him when "after school" was going to be a big deal) he was barely nose to nose with it.

He fingered the trinkets in his worn jeans and then watched in mute panic as his hand reached unsteadily forward. He thought about the horror flicks he'd seen on the side of Mel's Diner, how everyone knew you shouldn't open that door, or enter the woods, or get in that car...but those actors always did anyway. Now he knew they had little choice in the matter. Knowing what was coming did nothing to lessen his terror when something alive snaked out of that horse so fast he would have missed it had he blinked. He stumbled backwards.....straight into a solid form.

not again, not again, not again.

Turning, he beseeched the radiation of a thousand suns and shrunk to the size of a marble, rolling away as fast as the uneven pavement would allow. As scared as he was of that Merry-go-round...clowns were far worse.

~ Epilogue ~

She removed the rainbow colored wig and shook out her brunette mane of curls. Shaking her head, she wiped a forearm across the white/red paint that made up her smile. It was no use chasing him down. She'd made attempts, but he was a fast little sprite. She tried so hard to love the boy. He never could let her.

More importantly...

2011-09-30T06:40:00.000-07:00

A favorite painting of my Dad's (this being just a crappy photo of a tiny replica postcard)

There...at my equator, you can split me like an Easter egg
my spirit saying up - up
a toddler longing for the saddle of a crooked hip
and a pillowy breast

my body pulled down
as if gravity were the mouth of a barren land
needing the nourishment of my decayed remains
to re-seed for another season.

None of this is particularly troublesome.
Of their own volition
my arms reach toward constellations I can't see
loving my own infinity
while the grass eats at my trunk
so slowly, I almost forget that I am dying.

But when my hands
fall
in vein attempt
to take back from the field all it has required,
my very soul lights a torch, smoke signal to all those stars,
and rallies for separation.

oh yes.
YES, YES!
I am not my body.
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Fibs and Fibonacci

2011-09-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

I have a talent for avoiding math, cultivated by my extreme anxiety over same. I think I am the first and last person to get a BA without taking one single math course. Perhaps I should have. I'm sold! I find this riveting, compelling and mysterious. I want to go find a sunflower and start counting!

*************

It's difficult for me to just accept someones word...no matter how accredited. ARE YOU FIBBING ME? When they told me Pergo flooring was nearly indestructible, I balked. "You do understand I have two little boys?" So I took a piece home and lit it on fire. They were right. I ran Hot Wheels and Tonka trucks on it, Crayons and Sharpies. I generally beat the hell out of that plank and it still smiled at me with nary a bruise. Pergo got several of our paychecks and we got sore backs learning to lay it down tongue and groove. I have not been sorry, and for someone with acute buyers remorse over just about everything...that's REALLY quite an endorsement!

I am bartering my bookkeeping services for a new granite kitchen counter. I was told granite would hold up to just about anything. I balked. "Have you seen the mess I make when I cook? It looks like the top blew off the blender!" So...I got me a sample chunk. I smushed a blackberry and a tomato on it and left them all day. No stain. I left a puddle of olive oil, and another of wine, coffee, balsamic vinegar, and let them sit over night. NO STAIN! I burned it. I lit it on fire (yes...I'm a bit of a pyro) and I am sold on granite!

My husband told me to look into buying a Mac, because I am always yelling at my PC for hobbling along behind me when I need it to giddy-up! I had to poll Facebook, everyone I met, and bang on one myself at the Apple Store (they wouldn't allow my torch in there, so I'm not sure how it will hold up in a fire). I'm sold! I'm getting a iMac this week. I'll be without my PC for awhile and deep into the Mac learning curve, which hopefully isn't too steep. But I want to learn it now before I'm too old to remember which room my desk is in, much less how to work a computer. I'm excited. Be back soon.

Missing The Point

2011-09-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to my mother ramble on along the nerves of my voicemail. Blah blah blah..."movie, I think you recommended it..." yadda yadda yadda "no need to call me back, I just loved the scenery, which I think you mentioned..." yackety yack...eye roll, finger drum..."I just shaved my friend's head and I'm heading back home."

My eyes snap to attention with pin-pricks of tears. I am surprised at myself and dab at the offense as if they were foreign objects instead of close friends.

My mother is calling me with more frequency. She is holding her words out to me like connective dots. She is reaching and I see her arms, one thin and one lymphatic, as they extend...wait...retract empty.

Monday, I asked her how she is. "I am....." (long pause and my toe tapping) "....sad." A woman she plays bridge with is Stage Four. It's like a chapter, no...a book...a monument, a continent. STAGE FOUR. I've battled stage four every which way but physically. I won't do it again. I will stamp it on my forehead like a destination and pack my bags for everywhere I've ever wanted to go. I've warned my family. They know.

But this woman has engaged in the battle and she is not winning. This round of chemo has her walking with a cane and trying to hide her clumpy hair under an ill fitting hat. "I refuse to pay $17.00 for someone to shave my head," she says. "It's ludicrous." And I know how much cancer costs in dollars. I know how much it costs in other ways. I know how much it eats. My mother tells her, "I will shave it for you", and my first thought is those unsteady hands of hers. I wonder if she will have a drink first and give those cells over to their craving before she puts a blade in her hands.

My mother has actually called because she is sad about her friend and upset over the fact that she cannot get her hair clippers to work. The thought passed through my mind like the single filament of a cobweb...

mine work...

but I let it pass in the stiff breeze of my concern with time and distance...and proximity.

I should have gone. I should have seat-belted my clippers in for the three hour drive and just gone...held the hand of my mother, and shaved the head of a stranger. I should have. And I could talk about how I never seem to do the right thing, but the fact is...this deed did not need me. It got done. I just missed it.
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Pearls and Possibilities

2011-09-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

The story is no longer unique. It's as tired as the seat of my favorite blue jeans. Abuse - Adoption - Molestation - Irreconciliation. And yet...it was a unique opportunity I had to photograph this wedding...to discover that two broken families had made their way back to each other.

When the bride was five years old, her family attended my church. Her father, Jack, had a brother....Sam. I became very good friends with Sam and his wife. Through the course of our friendship I discovered that, like myself, Sam was also adopted. He CHOSE to be adopted. When they were in high school, Jack and Sam were best friends. Sam's mother was a beast....a wretched woman who abused him in many ways. Jack's family offered to adopt him, and Jack took their name. They took him in as their own son, and two kids who always felt like brothers, now were. Sam and Jack both fell in love with beautiful women and had beautiful sons and daughters. The two families were very close, spending holidays together, vacations and daily interactions.

When Jack's daughter was five, Sam's son babysat her. They were alone. He molested her. The family broke apart. The son was labeled, the daughter was broken. The friends, turned brothers, became nothing...as dead as if they had died. Sam was no longer considered family for a myriad of complicated reasons. It was sad to watch. A decade went by with little or no contact other than police and attorney's and whatnot. Anyway, that's as short as I can make a long story. Eventually there was a hand out, and a hand receptive, and the two families started speaking again.

Saturday, Jack's daughter got married. Sam and his wife attended. Sam's daughter photographed the wedding with me. I am immensely happy for this bride, that on this day she is reconciled and the brothers are reconciled. Jack's son is absent, but that's not really the point.

Healing is possible.
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Funeral Friday

2011-09-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

I think lives have themes. Genres perhaps. You will find hers under TRIUMPH and his under COMEDY. I fear to name mine, as in doing so I might self-fulfill (but I already have. Shhhh, ignorance is bliss!)

************

Fridays are for funerals. Mondays...for mourning. All the days in between try to cheer me. They do a damn good job. Too good! Loss, that tenacious animal, poses as a mid-day and sneaks green-eyed peeks at how good I feel, how comfortable, how unaware of any boom about to jibe.

Then that beast reasserts itself. I hate that fucker...how it mocks. "I lulled you into something you enjoyed. I placed your hand into that of another and (heh heh...) you though it fit. You thought today was forever and you assumed you were some kind of gift and therefore....there were gifts you could keep (heh heh...)."

*************

I stare at my translucent hands and they have no mass. They are incapable of holding a single thing. They have no property, though on a Tuesday or Wednesday they grasp at Deeds. How could I know that paper so easily burned while I held it, and Title was just an accelerant?

*************

I am attending another wake today.

Looking down at my shoes, I burst out laughing. The canvas background is jet black, though peace signs, hearts and flowers scribble their way across the permanent theme.

What the hell? They must think it's a Wednesday!
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All We "Know"

2011-09-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

It's easy to live within the circle of your own sanctity
but out on the edge
is where chickens die.

Inviolable is an envious place
yet even condoms have holes
and the impenetrable get pregnant.

Do you lie to yourself when you say there is no god?
Your knowing is not immutable.
I would rather stalk truth
relentlessly
than squat down with my stake
cemented in the corner of a world I did not build.

Certainty is a slippery slope.
How long were we convinced the world was flat?

If you are closed to any truth
but the button you have pinned to your lapel,
the bumper sticker layered over the last worn statement,
it will crack you open like an egg.
You will run out and watch yourself separate
into what you know and what is true, and then untrue,
and then unknown.

I have been the bakers dozen
and that thirteenth was nearly my undoing.

I watched the sun rise this morning.
I watched it seduce the clouds
lick the underside of things thought dead.
I thought to rise tomorrow, ready to capture such a miracle again
as if it were a certainty
tomorrow
sun
rise
me

At that point I called my own folly
and labeled myself the fool.

(I've stared at my journal for the better part of a week. "Write something upbeat Annie. Write something POSITIVE. Be brilliant but bright." Ha! All I accomplished was to snuff out my muse. I know nothing but what needs to be written during a short lunch. This poem is stained with cucumber and pesto chicken. Perhaps it was indigestion.)
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Sea of Gullible Hearts

2011-09-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

"You sexy", she say. "So tan. Tan berry sexy on man."

Handing him his folded laundry, she thinks their relationship is solidified. She greases the customer and counts her cash drawer, but he is not one to be counted on. Sue has no idea he will leave his laundry AND the bill. Her small Asian hands have handled that which is intimate with his skin. And yet...and yet...he is completely unknown. He doesn't give a shit about Sue, or The Fluff & Fold. He uses sexy as a decoy. Women and men are shooting blanks at a false target. Sue has an earthquake in her forecast and only the dog trembles.

He gives notice via e-mail. He stands on the shore with his bourbon in hand, "sexy tan" and Burberry shades. One pedicured toe draws body parts in the sand, and with the other he shoves this ship out to sea with barely a backward glance at the crew he once led. They had vowed to invest in his life and did....helped him rent a home, helped him with the subterranean layers of business, threw birthday parties and wedding showers.

And when it trickles down,
as all lies finally do,
and words start falling foreign on shaking heads
(finding their purchase on ears most shattered in their hearing)
they watch in silent incredulity,
unsure of how to stand face to face with the retreating backside of a fraud.

So they stare at each other, red mouths bobbing
like wooden buoys on an undulating sea of recycled people,
taking on water
through the portholes of gullible hearts.

and it comes as no surprise to anyone really
that they've been taken for a ride,
only that it ended so soon.

(My boss was open with his hedonism. He made no bones about the fact that he would throw you under the bus if it would save himself. The photos of his children, were diversions among his office things. They simply drained his paycheck. Yes...he said that. We knew. We KNEW...but he was so engaging. Funny. Cheeky. I wanted to bottle him for dissection. So up front one moment, and the next he was passing out lies like soup to the homeless. Somehow we lapped it up. He left us on a Monday without warning. We are still finding all he swept under the rug.)
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After

2011-09-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

"Is this what you meant by how I should treat you after?" he said....kissing her lips with his plump ones, and teasing her nipple between his fingers.

"yeah...something like that", she said.

"Well, let's go get that drink", he said....and it wasn't just one, but two...or many, as she knew it would be. Quantity mattered little in such an equation. And there was no sweetness, no tenderness, no after. He'd learned nothing. More importantly, she'd learned less. The world spun no heavier on one side, though it should have.

She pulled the cheap hotel tissue from the box and soaked him up from between her thighs. She brought the tissue to her nose and inhaled the smell of regret. It was musty. Of course it would be. Mistakes are ancient and repeated. They are destined to the fate of a sratched record...annoying as hell...but no one wants to leave the arms of their "lover" to change the album, much less the needle. So we skip along.

He didn't kiss her after.
He didn't touch her.
She didn't really think he would.
But it was worth a shot.
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Rebellious Bones

2011-09-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

When he forced himself into her mouth, she gagged
told herself it was just a reflex...simple addition and all that.
But with her mouth so filled, it was hard to tell herself anything.

She fought behind her nipples though
and spread her legs into a mouth...labia forming pubic obscenities
which felt shouted. She sure as hell heard 'em!

We all know such things are carried into our silence by fear,
but it felt like she declined surrender
and she praised herself for it
for awhile.

Finally, it was her ribs that rebelled.
It was her ribs that never forgot their origin OF, not AS.
They cracked apart like wish bones and found their parallels and intersections
building of themselves a crude ladder.

Into her mouth, words effervesced...opinions
her opinions
HER OWN

With such notions escaping, such unpopular notions, (and at that she laughed...for hadn't 'agreeable' at one time or two hundred been a goal?) there was no longer space for him inside her mouth. Only between her ears.

(This piece is about the way I was raised for the most part. It is a story about the removal of a gag that I carried into my marriage. I felt such a need to be agreeable, to accept another's opinions as my own. I felt guilty for having opposing views. Ribs, and OF verses AS have biblical significance for me.)
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Imagining Surrender

2011-08-27T17:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I want to spread my arms in surrender, drop responsibilities like a sack of groceries. I want to lord over them with my arms crossed, stare down at all that mess as if it were someone else's. I would watch the eggs run and marvel at the glorious golden yolk, foregoing any inclination to save them. The whites would sizzle on the pavement as the paper sack reaches....wicking moisture like a parched pheasant at the well. I would not think about salmonella, or litter, or which bits belong in green waste and which to recycle. I would say "Ain't my job!" like I wear a hard hat and drive a back hoe, and anything outside my job description is a union infringement. INFRINGEMENT, you hear me!

I'd wager against my contents and equally for it. I would watch jars tumble and roll...place my nickles against olives and double or nothing for jam. I'd watch the heat mirage against the bread and imagine the mold building a nest of green down, like it's a beautiful thing...like the eggs belonged there and would incubate, grow, be productive members of the coop! I would not bend at the waist, nor use my thighs to squat in rescue, because somebody is coming....somebody else...(as if, as if)

Sometimes I want to spread my arms in surrender, drop responsibilities like a sack of groceries. But my arms are stiff, and muscle has memory, and as I understand it...there ain't no job description.
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A Dancer in Doc Martens

2011-08-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

One day you will doubt your life, and everything in it. You will try on the days like shirts, discarding one after another as an ill fit. You will buy shirts that hang in the closet, their paper tags...scratchy wind chimes against the flit of your hand over so many choices. You won't know your size, or the colors that highlight your skin. You'll choose a peuce silk that clings to EVERYTHING and makes you look ill or pregnant, and wonder how the hell it even wound up in your wardrobe. You'll put on a sweater to cover the lack of tailoring, and a coat to cover the sweater. The day will be hot and humid and you, a wilting lettuce beneath layers that do not belong.

You'll buy shoes....for shoes are always a good idea. But not these. You will put them on - a nurse in stilettos, a dancer in Doc Martens. You don't know who you are anymore. Just a person with shoes. Too many shoes. You'll throw the shoes against the people in your life, rip clothes from hangers and toss them at their feet until they are mountains of questions. You'll strip from your clothes and stand before the naked stranger.

You will question the slant of your eyes and your hair cut. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR HAIR? You will pin it up and let it down. You will brush it until it starts to fall into cancerous clumps, which you will pick up and hold beneath your armpits. You will hunch over in a neolithic stance, wondering of your age, concerned with where your childhood went and how long it will take to die.

You will run into the yard and lay your naked body down in the grass, center yourself and pray: "God take me", and He won't, because it is the one prayer that goes unanswered. And your tears will fall steady without sobs, just a river of grief with no distinct beginning and no funeral to attend. You will be startled by the grasshopper that lands on your leg, and again when the leaf falls upon your nipple. You will not know if it is day or night, winter or spring. But soon, you are no longer nude. You are clothed in insects and flora, completely outside your own effort. You rise again to the reflection and a glimmer of recognition dawns...something subliminal that feels known to you. You'll lean your forehead against the glass and look at your out of focus face...

...suddenly it all seems clear as mud.
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Mask of Evil

2011-08-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

It's barely harnessed...
this underlying benevolence that leaks out
from the corners of her disingenuous remarks.

It breathes beneath the surface of her deception
and I watch it straining against the leash
bug eyed and wanting.

Fuck how it strains!
Moorings are no match for this evil...
this way that it bloats

Part of me wants to sit court,
wait for the kind arrangement of features to crack...
watch the lava erupt from her boiling core
her face breaking off and carried away
like little toy boats
disintegrating and helpless in the molten bath

But the wiser self knows
I am a paper craft, and no match for fire.
I row my distance and watch her self destruction
with a telegraphed eye.

(Co-workers. Gotta love 'em. Or not.)
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immersion

2011-08-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

In this baptism

he worships the water

small mind knowing nothing but want

his want having no need

for he merely steps off the inkling of his desire

and into the fulfillment,

as if acquiescence were the soles of his feet

He unzips his arms

reveals the cavity of his chest

the waters rushing over the breakers of his ribs

infantile ideas carried on the rapids

churning down into his groin where they stir primal interests

submerge, resurface, bob, sink, drown.

The simplicity of it baffles me.

I want, I take.

I need, I enter...

unaware his joy is witnessed, photographed, journaled.

Man. Water. Baptism.

The ancient combination.

Over and over he enters, submerged and reborn.

A child joins him, sensing a kindred age.

A woman next, tentative against the spray

but his fingers stroke her conviction and she believes

It is said a little child shall lead them.

And so it was

a toddler in the body of a man.

(Where I work, there are several homes for the mentally challenged nearby. I spent my lunch hour photographing them playing in the park fountain. He almost had me. I was one towel away from going in.)

SWAMPED

2011-08-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks. I need a blog vacation. I can't get to your posts, I can't write, I can't do much of anything but work. Sorry. I hate it when I can't keep up. I'll be back sometime...

His Perfect Ending

2011-07-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

Where do I place him? The bed, the chair? Shall I center him like a television that we all gather around? Should I frame him in the hallway, where we will be sure and brush against him in the narrow passage? Do I hide him in the spare room so my denial can bake itself into a cheese lasagna on the kitchen counter?

What should I wear...his favorite dress, my naked skin? God how I hate my naked skin. God how he loves it. So for him, for me, this last vision....what? Naked. Clothed. Shit, I should have started that diet...been a lasting vision in one of those negligees that show everything instead of this saggy ass frump. Bermuda shorts and a low v-neck. Yeah. I guess. Shit.

How do I touch him? His face. Do I cup his sweet face? Do I hold his hand? Why does that seem so patronizing? Should I place his hand on my breast, pass my beats across the divide of dying? Should I lay against his side with our hearts together, his slowing, mine racing inevitably towards panic? Can he feel that? Should I show it,? Should I make a pretense at calm? Fuck calm. I can't hold my tears. He knows I can't. Why do I try? Why can't I shut up my mind and just sit with this, let it be it's own thing, watch it like a movie played out in super grain 8mm. Silent.

Do I call the children in? How do I share this? I don't want to share this. I have to pee. What if that's the moment? They say loved ones wait until you're out of the room. That's what they say. Right? What if he dies as I wipe? It's too common...too common a moment for death. I won't pee. I'll hold it. I'll pee right here in these fucking bermuda shorts. I'll void myself into the space he'll leave and maybe it won't seem so empty.

Oh hell! I can't control this. There is no way to set this stage and perfect this ending. Look at him! He's just watching me like I'm a fly buzzing around the room. "Land. Land. Land." He's amused. Doesn't even look sad. He looks amused. It's his death. Sheesh! Just ask.

"What do you want, babe....?"

(Our friend Matt W is home dying. One day...three...maybe four. I know nothing of these last moments for them. I just imagine. This is how my mind works itself into a state, whether it be over death, or a choice between brown or cream plates. Racing. I wish it would stop. Will I be buzzing around your death or able to just be still in it? I am wondering, and I'm sad.)
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A Good Death

2011-07-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

There is no single best kind of death. A good death is one that is "appropriate" for that 'being'. It is a death in which the hand of the way of dying slips easily into the glove of the act itself. It is in character, ego-syntonic. It, the death, fits the 'dying'. It is a death that one might choose if it were realistically possible for one to choose one's own death. - Edwin Shneidman, A Commonsense Book of Death

I thought he was dead. I reached down, wanting to touch him, wanting to feel the delicacy I saw. But my gentle stroke brought an arch to his body and my error was realized. Not dead, but passing over. Surely now I could hear him gasp...labor in these last moments. He was on his back, dying like a turtle...like a slow, heavy turtle. This was no good death. To die on the doorstep of an ugly building on an ugly swath of cement, could not be a good death. To be grounded in the path of footfalls, people who come and go and rarely look anywhere but into the screens of their cell phones...could not be a good death.

I thought of burial, perhaps to honor him. I wanted to honor this dragonfly for Marion. I reached down, but saw movement again and I was afraid. I have never been comfortable keeping watch with the dying. There is a choreography to it that I have not learned. I am even less comfortable with the dead. I remember my husband touching his dead father's hand...holding it. I could not. I remember his mother, and my sister in laws who dressed her embalmed body, and set her hair...loving in it...but I could not. The shell of a person frightens me. They are no longer of it, nor can I be. Not yet.

I got a piece of paper and gently turned him over onto the page. His leg scritched against it momentarily, as if to write, perhaps an epitaph. Burial now seemed a ludicrous idea. Carrying him carefully against the shield of my body, concerned the breeze would send him free falling, I preserved his pristine wings and unmarked body. I found a shaded section of the parking lot with foliage he could decay into with dignity. I left him, coward that I am, to die there in the arms of a flower. But I think he prefered it, having been at home with her all his life.
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It's Not Her

2011-07-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

She wears her face like a patch
the stitches unraveling
weaving into the haphazard disarray of hair
around the eyes, especially, the seams have torn
and the stuffing of insanity seems to dwarf the blue
irises ticking back and forth with shuddering apprehension

it is her face
only it isn't

in an arc she shuffles
an invisible tether to her front door
that reaches to mine no further
she will not enter anymore
presuming nefarious intent, or some other untruth
yet to her...it is stark raving certainty
hidden cameras are watching

behind her sewn on eyes
cockled with fear
my neighbor is in there...somewhere

her paranoia is warranted
'cuz sure as shit, someone took her away
and we are all watching
her face

only it isn't
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Alive in Almanor

2011-07-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

I heard footsteps.

That small yet distinctive sound of carpet pile
crushed under human weight.

It seemed off,

like a dinner bell at sunrise,

but I easily relegated it to my imagination....

until I heard it again....closer.

And again.

My ears now tuned to the frequency
and my heart beating a path away from the intrusion.

I heard the intake of air, a breath, not mine

and following it

my own gasp

as I wrestled covers and fought the lamp.

I saw no one, yet wide awake

noticed the window

more precisely, the view...

It was 5:20 AM and the moon was brilliantly large, like the rising sun...

as bright as...seemingly,

and I began to wonder,

who woke me for such splendor?

Whomever.

It was not to be wasted.

I found a coat, size 10

in whose world, I cannot imagine

for it dwarfed me, though the temperature made fashion

nonsensical

And my feet, Converse baring

cold, yet free

hit the pedals of my bike

basket full of cameras

Glorious.

The mist, the lake, the mystery.

Mine.

I saw no one, yet wide awake.

A parting shot

though as all leavings go

a cycle of emotion

around the inevitable funeral
digging the plotted field in preparation for burial
which gave birth to this...most glorious relic

And exhausting myself with it

smitten...

a rusty school girl crush, expended in film,

I took my ardor

higher

to a cratered lake

emerald as any jewel

Hiking beyond limits

up towards high contrast

to the Aspens

instruments of the wind
glittering in the sun against the envy of pine

Even fallen, their beauty

assuaged my weary limbs

forehead to stump

I pulled from it the remaining color

once life

now art

only to have it returned

from the fingers of a child

a color wicked with whimsy

slathered

as should color be

upon the skin of us

having been wakened

and so fully alive.

Farm Update

2011-07-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

I was in the mountains over the weekend without Internet and I couldn't get back to all the comments, however, your support is sweet! You guys rocked the support....seriously! Someone offered to let me work on their Facebook farm, which was neglected and near death. Cute!

An update and point of clarification:

I VOLUNTEERED at the farm. It is not a paying gig...but something I want to do, and have done since we started the thing five years ago. I do their marketing, newsletter, and work at the farm on Saturday mornings. I still have my full time job, and two side jobs.

I did talk to the owner face to face on Thursday. Prayed on the way over that I would be humble, because I was pretty much in my mad place by then. She was unable to tell me specifically what I had not done well or when. I spoke very specifically about how hurt I was and how I thought someone took my speed and efficiency as a sign that I wanted to be done and gone quickly, or that I was not being meticulous in my work. I spoke to that assumption and how it was incorrect. I am task oriented, but it doesn't mean I don't care or that I'm not doing a good job.

She was willing to see the points I was making and apologized. Came down to it really being my negativity that made her think I didn't want to be there. She assumed I would be relieved at being released from packing duty. I know my black rain cloud can get on people's nerves. I told her just to slap me upside the head with it. I'm not that delicate. She said she would in the future. When we left, the plan was to have Farmer Bob contact me when he had extra work in the fields to do. I've never made any secret of the fact that I would rather be working in the dirt than in the "kitchen" with the women. I'll be more conscious of my attitude. She won't make assumptions. All relationships have ups and downs. All relationships require work. We have a little work to do, and we both want to.

Change

2011-07-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

"People are always saying that change is a good thing. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all... has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store, did I ever tell you that? It's a lovely store, and in a week it'll be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon, it'll be just a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person, will probably think it's a tribute to this city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that's the sort of thing I'm always saying. But the truth is... I'm heartbroken. I feel as if a part of me has died, and my mother has died all over again, and no one can ever make it right."

(Kathleen Kelly - You've Got mail)

This is one of my most quoted movies besides The Sandlot and Steel Magnolias! I am thinking of this quote today, as well as one other...

Joe Fox: "It wasn't... personal."

Kathleen Kelly: "What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me. It's 'personal' to a lot of people. And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway?"

Joe Fox: "Uh, nothing."

Kathleen Kelly: "Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal."

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Blind Sided

2011-07-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

I got fired from my farm today. I opened my e-mail with my face straight to it...no fear...and without caution received a right hook so pointed it may have well been a bullet. You know this moment?...when your skin goes hot and nerves fire a heated buzz. A hive of confusion. A physical WTF! Blood rushes places that never seemed to know blood, yet now smart with being alive. I've never been fired from anything in my life, especially anything I volunteered for. But fired I am. I got an e-mail. After five years, I got an e-mail from my friend, and farm owner, saying things were more efficient without me on Saturdays, thank you very much, and I can pick up my crop share at the health food store along with everyone else. She said she could tell that packing the crates was not my "cup of tea" and that I just really didn't want to be there. (Have you read my posts about the farm? I am confused.)

I called her...asked her what was going on. She said I wasn't doing a good job. I said I didn't understand. She said that when Bob has to tell me three times to clean the crates, well that I must just not care. I was cleaning the crates as best I could with a jet spray hose and a round brush that had a hard time getting in the corners. I was cleaning them the regular way when Bob told me to make sure to clean all sides because they were really dirty. So I did. I had a system. Because I am fast, does not mean I am inefficient. I am a pretty fastidious person. I cleaned onions for an hour...was concerned it was taking me too long.

None-the-less, I told her I was sorry for whatever I had not done well, that if she'd give me another chance I would do it right. She said I complained about cleaning the carrots, that I didn't want to do it. Well, no one wants to do it. It's a shitty job and takes a long time. I said, "I complain about most things. When have you ever known me to be content in anything?" I told her..."I won't be me. I won't complain at all. Just give me another chance." She said she didn't think she was comfortable with that. I said, "Let's just try it another Saturday. If you are uncomfortable I won't come back." She said she would really need to think about that.

We've been friends for over ten years. Last week I asked her if she thought I was different on my medication, that I was afraid I was getting too talkative, perhaps manically energized. She said she didn't think so, and that she, of all people, would of course tell me. And now I'm fired. And I really don't understand. I apologized....for exactly what, I'm still not sure. But I humbled myself and did it because I love my farm. I have backed it and promoted it, and worked it since it's birth. And now I have done something irreconcilable. I am beyond sad. My body is running out of fluid for tears and my lips are chapped. If you have tears to lend, I could use them.

A huge part of me is dead. And perhaps a friendship with it. I have somehow horribly offended. I wish someone would tell me straight, so I could fix it. But there ain't always a fix, is there? Even I know that.
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Sharing Death

2011-07-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sacramento Historical Cemetery

My brother is calling me.

But he doesn't call. He doesn't ask me to visit. He isn't one to keep in touch. But he wants something. And I know what it is. He knows that I lived something, and he wants to know how to live it too...live through it. But I didn't live it. I died. Sure as self, I laid waste to my own being and parted ways.

How does one share death? Death seems singular. You travel alone.

All of a sudden he is chatty, and excited...as if I have the answer to his unanswered pain. I might have said that I did. I might have alluded to the fact I could help. I want to. It is my nature. I might have lied. I won't know until we sit cross legged on the battered carpet, once beige, now faded to an awful pink. I won't know until his smile breaks off and pieces of him fall to the carpet like Lego bricks. I won't know until we two-arm sweep those pieces...the way he did with his dinner, cutlery, and condiments, drawing them to himself, his two year old self, into himself. "All mine", he would say. "All mine." It was funny then.

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She sits beside me in a television studio.

"People want to solve. People want to help. They would say, 'Have you tried this, have you tried that.' Of course we had. In all that trying we grew further and further apart. And so we gave up one dream and decided to start living."

Amen sister!

And so a book is born. Through it she wants to solve. She wants to help. She did not live through it. She died. Sure as self, she laid waste to her own child and parted ways.

I see her living now. I've never seen such a glow come from death.
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Plot Full

2011-07-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

My air does catch, like a hiccup expelled long
too long
and lungs forget they have hollow spaces
which can be mindfully filled

but even when I will not....

forcefully then
there comes breath
and I scrunch my face
open mouthed in silent protest

Father, you should have let me go!

God can roll His eyes...
and does

I spent a good 30 minutes walking an old historical cemetery today. I thought of death. I thought of this poem. This was written awhile ago regarding a panic attack. If you have them, then you know this feeling of not being able to get enough air. I have considered ceasing air all together...giving it up like tobacco, or a bad hair color. It's never really a suicide thing....just a tired thing, perhaps an impatient thing. I'm often ready to be done. I am actually feeling happy today. I can't wait to get back to that cemetery though once the weather turns appropriately gloomy :)
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Adhesion

2011-06-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

Shenandoah Valley Winery Sculpture

I am adhesive
rolling into being
the way you stick to me, the tenacity.

We are adhesive
the way she sticks to us, permanent

All these adhesions
binding our tissue
such a delicate word....tissue
can we be made of something so fine?

We should shred, moving through the world
and I suppose we do
though rolling on
picking up adhesions

I've heard rumors of a whole woman
who had no need

She lived in a garden
and then she didn't
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Silent Conspiracy

2011-06-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

My Muse

I'm not sure

I'm not at all sure we haven't a mute existence between us that is conspiratorial.

The eyes have so much to say!

The slope of your shoulder is brethren to the tremor in my knee.

Together they whisper about the nature of our lives

and bat our wishes between them in the cloistered halls of our monastery.
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Make Love To Me Now

2011-06-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

quickly now

before our bodies turn on themselves

before I can no longer kneel between your legs

cat arched in supple curves

or bend into a position of acceptance

before time races from game show to game show

and we check mark the hours by our medications

before what drains from our bodies is no longer sweet

make love to me quickly

like a beast with uncontrolled temper

an appetite with a ravenous mouth

impatient hands, rough hands

scraping my skin with dirty words

make love to me slowly

the way I browse ancient books

fingers trailing along spines

cherished, reverent, sweet

young, as a stick against white washed pickets

make love to me now

tuck the scent into the album of our sleeves

to pull out like a tissue

gauzy in the dementia of our aging

dab at our eyes with the memory of twisted limbs

when our bodies lie flaccid and rebellious

against our pulse

quickly

slowly

NOW!

Does Anyone Remember Four?

2011-06-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

L-R: My brother Matt, Kimmy, Me

I guess it's been almost 30 years! Hard to believe. I still call her Kimmy. She still calls me Ann-marie. That's how we knew each other back in the day. Considering I don't remember much of the first twelve years of childhood, she is the largest portion of that, which ain't saying much. My memory sucks. I didn't remember she came to my wedding! (embarrassing) "I brought my boyfriend at the time" she says, chastising my memory, "...a horrid guy that talked and walked like a mobster! And....I spent $33.00 on a beige vase that looked like this (forming the shape of a woman with her hands). I don't know why I bought it. But I sure remember how much it cost. I couldn't afford it." I look at her apologetically. "It's still sitting on my kitchen table!" I blatantly lie. She laughs. Knows it isn't true.

We order our food. Her daughter got to order the perfectly sized portion of Fettucini Alfredo because she's a kid. We have to order the overly sized-pay-too-much for it portions because we're adults...only we aren't. We are both kids...she still...me becoming. My polenta was disgusting. "Send it back" Kimmy says. I sigh. "I'm not the type to send food back" I say. "Well..." she says, "lucky for you...I am!" My food goes back and the price is removed from the bill. I am watching Kimmy's facial expressions, and the timbre of her voice...the way it rises and falls, the way her hands move across the table. It is all so familiar. I consider that she really was a lifeline for me at one time. A strong, immeasurably assuring, solid girl...firm in herself. We are the same age. She always seemed older. Even she thought she was.

"I don't remember any of the other mothers", Kimmy says, "...but I remember Lucille." I ask her why. She thought, thinks, remembers, knows, my mom is "scary". She remembers always being in trouble at my house. "You don't remember us dancing around the bedroom with only our shirts on and singing?" she asks. No. I don't. I was four. Does anyone remember four? Kimmy does. "You're mom was just beside herself that we would do such a thing. She yelled at us and sent me home right away."

Kimmy remembers driving places with us. She and I would always be in the back seat. She said, "You don't remember how your mom would always look at you in the rear view mirror and say, "Smile Ann-Marie?" No, I don't. I was four. Does anyone remember four? Kimmy does. "You would always smile obediently", she said. I say, "I have so many pictures of me as a child where the smile never reached my eyes." Kimmy's daughter questions this, and Kimmy explains that you can tell when a smile is not genuine. Her daughter nods. She is almost nine. Does she remember four? Nobody remembers four. Right?

I do remember Kimmy and I singing on the swings in my backyard, legs pumping, arms straining, singing and singing and singing. We talk about this and wind up breaking into song: You Are My Sunshine....two parts. We finish a few verses and the whole restaurant claps. "Are you two sisters?" the waitress asks. We laugh. Kimmy says to me, "I love you, you know! I wasn't sure what you'd be like now. But I feel like we just picked up where we left off." I nod. It's true. I trust her. Hard to imagine that I do, but I sense she had my back at four. I sense I wouldn't have made it through those years without her. I sense she'd still be there for me if I needed her.

"We can't go another 30 years!" She says.

"No, we can't."

Me and Kimmy now

This Bird and The Bees

2011-06-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

It's early morning

but the bees

THE BEES

are already thrumming Rimsky-Korsakov

He had asked me if I could run
were I chased...
and I looked at the bolts of his joints
similar to my own
father-daughter scars, genetic weakness.
I bend a leg which creaks in protest
...could I?

I am standing in the moment of flash flood

where the gully is worn smooth and the road depressed

and the bees

THE BEES have picked up tempo

like the quickening of desire

I see them coming like the waters

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As promised, I am posting some things about myself. For those uninterested parties, you've a free pass to move on.

1. I don't like bees (ya think?). I'm deathly afraid of 'em because it's a big deal. It hurts...okay, not like child birth or kidney stones, or Carl the workout Nazi...but still! I swell up and itch for weeks. YES weeks. I'm not just being dramatic. Same with those damn mosquitos. They LOVE me, the blood thirsty bastards!

2. I'm persnickety. It all stems from control issues, of which I have a full deck. But I try to reign it in. And I can laugh at it now. I can point at myself like the world's biggest ball of string. "Get a load of this!"

3. Pessimistic is too weak a word. I'd go Goth if I wasn't so damn old. I've a very negative side. A very dark side. I fight those too. But when I told my boss I was going on anti-depressents, he said, "Oh man...I liked you angry!", so I keep a ~~truck load~~ little. Can't afford to get fired :)

4. Weight gain is my super power, so I'm always on a diet and definitely have the workout bug. Eat little. Move much. But then there's pizza...my first crush. We have dates every now and again...me and my hubba hubba veggie combo!

5. I'm not a prissy chick. I don't like pink, or lace, or ruffles, and I definitely don't want a girl bike. I like guy stuff. But I have a little girlie head and a small face. I practically have to buy my sunglasses in the kids department.

6. Independent. Yep! And dissociation is my go-to defense mechanism. I guess maybe you might say a bit anti-social. Of course, if by some quirk of nature I have gotten to know you, then you can't shut me up, or shut me out, or not invite me to your parties. My co-worker is a little blonde bit of a thing (two reasons to shun her, which I did at first...but I was up front about it), and she told me the other day that I was the funniest person she knows. "Really?" I said..."then it's a good thing I decided to like you Kate!"

7. Which brings me to the very unpolitically correct fact that I am horribly prejudiced against blonde's and skinny people. It's just....well...it's a visceral thing. I try ignore it, I really do. But, nah....I haven't really gotten the hang of it. You can call it jealousy if you want, which is ~~ridiculous~~ only fair.

8. I have two dads, two moms, two half brothers, one half sister, two non-biological brothers and I've lost count of how many nieces and nephews. My niece Stephanie (no biological relation) looks more like my child than my own! Weird. But being adopted gives me an affinity for these look-alike connections. My son Jordan used to say, "I have the same color-a eyes as my mom, but the shape-a eyes as my dad." It wasn't true. His eyes are hazel. Mine are brown. But they are big and round like his dad's.

9. I get really mad if you tell me I can't do something. I'll kill myself proving you wrong. I get really mad if you try to help me when I don't need it or didn't ask for it. I get mad when something on my body falls apart. I get mad when they run out of Peet's Decaf at the store. I get mad a lot. But I'm Italian. It's what we do....and I'm only now learning to show it, which helps with the ulcers.

10. I hate silly stuff....like cartoons, Austin Powers, spoof movies. I rarely laugh out loud when watching movies, TV, or reading books. (I do laugh watching Modern Family. That show cracks me the hell up.) I laugh the hardest at myself. When I type LOL, or LMAO, I'm usually lying. And, as luck would have it...rare as it is...my laugh is one of the few things I really like about myself. I think it's beautiful.

Gwen (Stephanie's Mom), Stephanie, Me wearing the wings Marion made me :)

Exhumation

2011-06-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

Muse: Shadow Of Iris

I think I'm breaking your heart
with my wings
spreading...
the span casting aspersions
that knit your eyebrows
into tenets,
presuming each feather as a space in between
ligaments separating from your bones

My spirit requested
an exhumation
from a burial I allowed, yet not intending to
fly away
just dance on the surface
of an old grave

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$3.99 per Dream

2011-06-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

I saw a cast off hat
that danced upon a wall of scarves
and placing the fedora upon my head
felt silk fingers run through my ego,
seductive strokes with a phlegmy cough
catching

Liza Minnelli passed by singing Judy Garland
her perfume as loud and long as her vibrato
layered with artifice
"Parts are posted for Chicago. Your name is on it!" she crooned.

My mirrored image bore black stockings
coat tails flashing Grable's gams
Monroe's pout covering Streisand vocals.

(the hat...the damn hat!!!)
and me all big in myself
breathing Hollywood life back into little girl dreams
hair brush microphone and oversized shoes
as if
now. pfffffft!

Discomfited by the power
the pull of a dangerous preoccupation,
self rescinding
tucking secret desires under the felt brim,
like a diary between the mattresses...

I place the hat on the head of my father.

He beams into the mirror with a lengthy "hmmmm" of self consideration.
It looks good on him. Suits his eccentricity.

"You think I should buy it?" he asks.

"No!" I say....taking it from him.

"It's perfect for me."

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Ostensible Knowledge of You

2011-06-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

I am a woman
of average brain
given to tiptoe after those of larger breed
watch them e x p a n d images
with the whip of their pen
reach under their paunch
and pull dusty words from the foreign concept of their skin

I've squinted into your poems with conceit
and pretended to pretend I know,
my simple embellishment
a macaroni broach on your silk garments

My neck has craned to find you speaking in tongues
while I sit in an indigo closet
trying your prayer language
on another body

Sometime my arms shake
from holding up such mercurial truths...
the moths of curiosity
having gorged, for hungers sake
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(I'm sorry. I pretend to understand sometimes, but I really don't know what the hell you're talking about. I want to. Desperately. But the veil of heady words, the cloak of multiple reference, the way you hide yourself....

I'm just a simple woman, in search of your truth. Lay it out Crayola style, so I can know you!)
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Rise To Terms

2011-06-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

I don't understand myself
have never...
truth be told, though it rarely is
(tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but...)
A small bird, with battered wings
trying so hard to be eagle
to soar....

I know most will tell you that they have come to terms
with their inner mechanisms, the gears, the drive, the lubricant
but I am so far afield of that

I'm only coming to know myself, you see
having so adeptly hidden
these workings that shift, drive, brake, speed!
Hell, I didn't want to look either
(click click click past the heinous show of why)

I told you I was broken
I told you I was abnormal
I told you of these dissociative disorders.
These I knew.

But they aren't attractive.
So a soft tell and a stong hide
was the best way to acceptance,
which was important, OHHHH SOOOOO.....
at a young age, but not so much, anymore.

If you could feel my intent...
if effort were a gauge you could see...
I think you'd be flabbergasted
at how much I can lift.

You'd look at the truck I'm lifting from your crushed heart
with two girlie biceps
and be thankful...(perhaps too strong a word)
appreciative that my adrenaline is in full gear
working, working, working

But effort drives a hard bargain
and hides it's agenda behind the bias of selfishness!
It is hidden and immeasurable
seemingly weak in comparison to results.
Oh bloody hell
I am trying
with the might of the hairy Samson,
of David with his slingshot...
I am fighting to know, with all I've got
but I wonder how many more
are fighting against.
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Things I'm reading...and maybe you should be.

2011-05-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'm writing ...about a book I keep passing on the freeway :)

A discarded volume
blown wide by passing exhaust
as though toxin breathed bird
with biblical wings of rice paper
and aching to fly,
it's effort born of script
across bloated pages

And reading...

Letting go.
For years I thought that meant not feeling anything.
Walking undisturbed down a street of broken hearted people;
thinking to myself: what fools, what god damn fools!

Barely seen and barely seen past
he still carries the weight of old
abrasions, sends possible pardons
to scarlet fires, do-it-yourself hell

I worked like a monk
a trance of oblivion
that day and into the next

My head started looking
like something nearly human,
and the third day it took on
a forlorn expression.

I made a strange man,
though I think my first vision
was to shape up a woman.
But women are weird
and my fingers were virgin.

One night, shortly after you ceased

To be amused, long before I realized

That I no longer amused you, I gave

Myself a pompadour with a bottle

Of Michelob.

some rocks gave way to an impetuous

Impulse to animate and dance

And dance they did not caring a whit for consequence

Like sleeping cats dreaming of wild things

To pounce upon and

Babies entering the fray

Feeling

2011-05-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

I look in the mirror and mourn.

Having just woken, it is unreasonable
but then I am unreasonable
have always been either with or without reason
poorly balanced against whimsy

Tears blink neon above the marquee question
"what in the HELL is wrong with you?"
while the house slumbers alongside my answer

Emotions line the block in colorful lawn chairs
anticipation rising in incremental volume
for this psychological thriller is opening right this very moment!
The hooded crowd huddles in their sleeping bags,
flasks long emptied of warmth and bladders full of tenacity

I am standing at the edge of the stage
toes gripping the beveled edge and g r i e v i n g

....."that music and the way it was recorded...so raw...so pure"

GRIEVING

....."the grain of the photos, so raw as well..."

in contrast to my life which seems set...done..not raw at all
no longer a blank canvas with an open future
for there is all that PAINT: responsibility and commitment and connection and economy and children and work and predictability and chorespetshousepaymentsloyaltiespromisesschedulesbaggage
and NOW and then and...

I don't know how!
this morning I don't know how
to feel more than an actor in my life
how to feel it more, FEEL motion, not DO motion
I have cultivated the art of dissociation
(in my own defense, Your Honor, it was necessary for survival)
back then...so far back it seems ovarian
a dropping egg

I don't know how
not to play act, but to be the uncooked egg
SPLUNK!
reaching out with all my edges
being raw, being new, being open
within a work of art already framed!

My eyes are dark brown
traced with aubergine ink dripping down the maudlin morning mirror
dropping off the precipice of my chin onto the furrowed carpet
and I realize I have done it just now!
Tears have changed the art
I have altered the canvas
It is not static, I am not boiled hard, I am not done!
Messier, uncertain, fearing, doubting
but o o z i n g yolk onto the floor
and FEELING
feeling my life
doing my life

(After this morning's harrowing introspection (*ironic smile*...for what have I to cry over when compared to Susan for instance), I got in the turn lane to enter the freeway. A hand painted sign...a canvas...read "Fears and Doubts are OK". No phone number, no website, no agenda but the heralded pronouncement.)
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Roll In The Hay

2011-05-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

(Got you with the title, didn't I? A bait and switch...)

I have a penchant for running off at parties. I can only handle so much mix and mingle. I'm no good at it for long periods of time. Like a windup toy, my arms start moving in slow motion and I tend to spill my wine as well as make evident my ineptitude at small talk. A re-charge is necessary.

The huge field behind the yard was calling me. The sun was low and lit the freshly mown grasses like a golden fleece. I wandered the garden rows behind two wild turkeys hoping to mate...well, I'm not sure the female was so inclined, but the tom continued his chase with the fervor of a teenage crush. I took inventory of all things sprouting. Onions. Garlic. Bad breath central, which matters little when the delicious flavors are mingling on your tongue.

I continued walking to the back of the property, eyes averted from the courtship in hopes that privacy would aid the deed. Two beautiful brown horses lifted their long lashes and slapped at the lazy flies within reach of their tails. Deciding I was innocuous, they continued to graze as the sunlight slipped another notch. As I turned back towards the house it was unearthly quiet. Acres of yellow field spread out in a come hither sigh and I wanted desperately to lie down on it...a vagrant, a stowaway, a field mouse. But I'd have hay in my hair, and weeds in my sweater, and dirt on my ass. Ha! What would our hosts think? I kept walking. Until I didn't.

This might be my last foray into THIS field, at THIS time of day, with all these elements hand picked for my enjoyment. To hell with the hay in my hair. I removed my sweater and lay down in the middle of the field. The sky was a solid color blue, as if a construction paper cutout suspended on string. The grasses were even softer than I imagined and I lay upon my huge manger feeling delightfully small. The breeze was gentle enough not to displace anything but my harried thoughts until a tickle against my arm turned my head. Somehow a tall stalk of green grass remained there...just one, and on it a spot of red. I could have easily stepped on it, or lain on it. I bent the stalk to bring the red into focus. Spots. A ladybug.

"What are you doing out here?"

"I might ask the same thing of you!"

(laughter) "Waiting."

"For...?"

"Whatever comes next."

"Which is...?"

"Unknown."

"And we lay waiting because...?"

"We'll miss it if we don't."

"Ahhhhh!"

I left her as I found her, unsure who had spoken first, but glad I'd not missed my connection.
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May Be Not

2011-05-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

(Harold Egbert Camping is a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio, a California-based religious broadcasting network that spans more than 150 outlets in the United States as well as a website. He has used mathematical predictions applied to the Bible to predict dates for the end of the world. His current end times prediction is May 21, 2011. He had previously predicted that the end would occur in September 1994. It did not. His followers are legion.)

Her petticoat scratched sharply at her skin, and the intimate place where her thighs met was slippery with sweat. She shifted, wishing to billow her skirt…circulate air…but her hands were firmly held on either side by the clammy suction of kin. A catch in her breath was the only indication she mourned the wind. Eighteen years had passed since the last prophecy. They had been three children shy back then, but the fear on the face of their oldest was forever etched, and echoing now in older lines. Frightened, yes...but something else rode his features and burrowed beneath the surface of a chin, freshly shaved not so long ago. It had been 23 hours since The Preparation, and Matthew now looked haggard and nervous. She could not know his fear was not of doom.

Her husband sat stoic, eyes closed, with determined lashes twitching away the seconds. He had bought into the necrosis willingly and raised his children according to their pre-determined end. He believed. He was alone in it. A loaf of bread sat next to an idle pitcher on the buffet, half filled with the color of sacrament and the taste of strawberries. The only sound in the room was the scuff-ting-thump of Ruthie's little feet bumping her chair legs in time with the clock. Questions hung as silent apparitions, dusty in the closet of their keeping. Doors threatened to pop with tension and even the chairs beneath them felt the unease of something about to go more horribly wrong than any End Of The World might be.

The only light in the room was the bright spots of the news vans...chomping at their microphones in hope of failure. Should tomorrow come, their humiliation would be the menu of all future meals...until the public forgot...and if she recalled correctly, public memory was long. She would not endure such ridicule again. As the clock struck midnight, on what was resignedly not the end and crested into the full moon of just another day, she squeezed the hands beside her and released them. "One last communion. We've twelve bells and this is how we shall commemorate the last."

All six of them reached for the glasses she had poured and grabbed a torn piece of bread. "Drink! Drink!" she encouraged as cups met lips, leaving a stain of tragedy like a mocker's grin. She gulped greedily, watching the adams apple of her husband as he also drank. His eyes closed, his faith unwavering, he did not question the cramp that shot through his gut at the stroke of midnight. She doubled over, surprised at the severity of it, the suddenness with which it threatened to take her. Raising up, she sought her children with one grimaced eye, as they bore the condition of their father's blind faith. What she saw was...unexpected. She shook her head against the blurry vision of Matthew and the rest of the children calmly putting their drinks down side by side.

It was then she noticed their glasses were full.

Matthew 24:36 “No one knows the day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
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I'll not have a grave ( for Monday Photo Prompt)

2011-05-18T06:25:00.000-07:00

Monday Morning Photo Prompt

i am not here

don't kneel beside this stone
or decorate it for the occasion of your varigated mourning
do not tell me your harbored secrets, or
hatchling dreams in the infancy of their awakening
i am not here

don't wick seconds into the knees of your slacks
or clasp your hands over the marker of my passing...
rocking as you do in penitent sorrow
feeling it expected
a thrice yearly payment due this vacant sepulcher
over which even the trees fall silent in monastic posturing
i am not here

kneel beside the bed we lay, hot in our expectancy
decorate the herb garden that knew our knees together
and our hands wrist deep in soil...touching earth, smelling heaven

lay out your sorrow like a sponge
soak in the memories that fall like hail stones
and melt into the burgeoning skin that holds us both enshrined
the skin that is you...still living.

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Again x 67

2011-05-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

a buzzing like steroid insects stops.
fist pump to the mirror
in acknowledgement that god is reflected
and for reasons unknown
bald

she opens her deed like a letter
contents spilling disagreements
unimpeded by halt of bone
again

sing it again sweetheart! daddy loves that song...

a g a i n
A G A I N

human fist, the handle of razor sharp psychosis
to the hilt, touching cloth

happy birthday daddy....it's your favorite color...

the blue of my eyes, remember daddy?...

viscous wet hands
finger this, the only barrier against the unexpected
shirttail in disarray
between her thumb and forefinger, she rolls it…tugs

but you said you'd just shut your eyes for a minute...

soft tencel blue now covered in flowers
brilliant yellow, orange, pink
a hillside bursting with life

she fists the mound
plucks at the wild bouquet of colors

did you pick these yourself honey? what a lovely gift for mommy!

startled as the flowers attempt to speak
stems brushing her moist bangs with a swoosh of sunset
soaking the gurgling stream
in which she dips her hands
again
a g a i n
A G A I N x 67

(On mother’s day, seventeen year old Shanna, daughter of Susan and Ken, shaved her head, proclaimed to be god, and stabbed her mother and father a total of 67 times. Ken was found dead at the scene and Susan was in critical condition with a punctured lung and other defensive wounds. Susan and Ken were married 46 years. Susan is my co-worker and delightful woman who always wears a smile and flowery scrubs. Does life truly pass before your eyes in violent death. Is there time for viewing such things? The poem is my fictional account from inside the diseased mind of Shanna. Wondering of Susan, perhaps trying to protect her husband, and the memories of a sweet young daughter in an earlier age... juxtaposed with this horror.)

Susan

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Denuded

2011-05-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

She secures her hair

behind the sash of her ears

lifts fringed shades

granting his eyes alight

like newly hatched wings

wet, roosting

that she allows, that she invites

stammering towards

shuttered space

she simply opens

though ceremoniously

aware

unbuttons her mouth

for penetration
stripping off

layer layer layer

pooling like cowled silk stockings

her mind

stands nude

in the shadow of her body

(Which is more intimate....physical sex, or naked exporation of the mind unveiled? Remove from the equation one-night sex, or paid for sex...rather sex within love, a naked mind within love. Which is the greater intimacy? Which is more vulnerable? I imagine the answers as diverse as our minds.)

Lucky to Survive the Weekend

2011-05-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

If the weekend officially starts Friday, (which it kind of does around here, when you're itching for it, and the boss is on a flight to Phoenix) it was a very strange weekend indeed. At 8:00 AM, a crew started working on the air conditioning unit at work...directly above my office. Sounded like the sky was falling, and I think it was. Shoulda been four-nineteen!

Around 10:00 AM, a woman had a heart attack or seizure or something...something bad...right outside my office window. She had a man with her but they both spoke only Spanish. I rushed out with a blanket (if you know me at all, you shouldn't be surprised that I have a blanket in my office) to place under her head. Another gentleman ran up with his cell phone. He also only speaks Spanish. I understood the womans request for "agua" and ran back into the building to get water. When I returned, the guy on the phone handed it to me, as the 911 operator did not speak Spanish (huh? We, as white folk, are the minority around here now. Seems like all 911 operators should be bi-lingual in this area!) So I explain she is having chest pains, wants water, and that's all I can figure out. Needless to say, the ambulance finally arrives and denies her the water...takes her away.

Exactly two hours later, I hear a big KABOOM outside my window. A car has run up onto the sidewalk, takes out a parking sign, tries to swerve back into the road and runs smack dab into the taco truck parked outside my window...from the grass side...not the street side! Hell....more ambulances and fire trucks. Told my staff to "run for the hills", save themselves. Weird ass day!
Got a last minute call for dinner at Bob and Janet's house out in the middle of nowhere. Had a lovely dinner! Somehow....SOME-DAMN-HOW (and as I was not hostess, I can blame our hosts for the "how") we are jamming on guitars and mashing out harmonies to "Annie's Latest iTune Downloads" when I glance at my phone. It's 1:30 AM! (If you know me at all, you know I am usually in bed by 9:30 at the latest!). I look at the kitchen counter. 8 bottles of wine are sitting up there like silent sentries to a strange feeling beginning in my gut. HOW? Did. We. Drink. All. That? I do the math....8 bottles, 4 people (and if you know me at all, you know my math ain't so good. I am the only person I have ever known that somehow managed to get a BA without taking a single math course!). So I figure I'm smashed, but I didn't feel bad...just tired.

We head home and pass out around 2:00 AM. I am up at 6:00 AM to work the farm with one hell of a headache. As the day progresses, things get worse. I actually considered going to emergency at one point,
'cuz I'm pretty sure I have blood alcohol poisoning. BAD. Real bad day...and I spend the rest of it in bed.

Up at 5:30 AM the next day for church (and if you know me at all, you know I sing in one of the church bands that inevitably ALWAYS plays the holidays). So I sing from 6:30 to Noon for all three services and have no kids for Mother's Day...one workin', one moved. Got a call. Got a text. BUT...the weird thing is, that Pastor Tim read my last poem in church. I've never heard my poetry read out loud before, especially not in church ('cuz if you know me at all, you know I have a 'potty pen'). Very strange sensation for me. It actually sounded okay...like I hadn't in fact written it, but was listening to someone else's words.

Strange weekend. Strange post. I think I'm still a little wacked from the wine. Tried a little hair of the dog on Sunday but couldn't stomach the stuff. Might have ruined it for me for good (but if you know me at all, you know it's not the first time I've said that!)

Holy Smoke

2011-05-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

Left - Pastor Tim Stevenson

She said,
Evil! Eeeeevil! God would never consort with sinners!
She called him Evil, like a title...couldn't even write it
had to use her mouth as the vile carrier for her twisted truth
that proud pious rebuke she burnt her lips with
then cooled her tongue with thank you...
the minty mouthwash of hypocrisy

She spat you'll go to hell, and all of them with you!
as the phone ran bloody with her curse,
verses like spikes she drove
out of order, and contradicted.

I know Jesus
I know he would sit across the table from a rebrobate
(me!)
would reach beyond his goblet
wine full...yes WINE, perhaps a cigar
haze like a holy spirit
to share, along with himself

and he'd say
........"Evil?
........A real piece of work, that one!
........As fast as I call 'em, she turns them away.
........I love her dearly."

(My brother in law has started Holy Smoke as "a gathering of truth —seekers enjoying a fine cigar and a beverage while discussing the 'deep' questions about life ... A real conversation about things that matter." He's under fire. But that's not unusual.)

Leap

2011-05-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

I can't know everything about tomorrow, what it will present, nor how you or I will move within it. I have no psychic abilities. The future is as wide open as it ever was, though at times I press it into a Jell-O mold and watch it jiggle in mock salute. I want it to set like concrete that can be etched with promises...indelible and intractable.

But these are the fanciful wishes of a child. Promises go forth as our attempts to lasso the beast. Tame it we can. But anything wild is unpredictable at times. We live wild. We are not concrete. We so desperately want to believe we can foretell forever if we word it in prophecy. Promises are fenceless yards where we set the dog, then slap our heads in disbelief when it has run off. Promises are well intended but immature. We cannot move forward or back on their conveyor. Better a leap of faith...no promise of sure footing, no promise of arms catching, no certainty...a leap into the wide open of us, and it being enough to know that it felt like the right thing to do now. Right. Now.

I will never know tomorrow today, but it can know my feet...leaping.

(This is not about the promises of God. Strictly human. There are things I want to know for certain. I clash with the realization there are no human certainties. The choice then...will incertitude be chain, or wing?)
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Elusion

2011-05-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

I can't grab hold...

elusive as innocence

as silk ribbons

through the oil slick of my hands

a hooked strand

though blurred

like partial prints under thumb

in astigmatic squint, I strain for focus

gather evidence in the creases of my face

commingle with sweat

and blood, from a forehead

banging

Your impatience swoons

towards my liquid arms...

formless and flowing,

my furrowed brow attempts

levy and dike

I can't grab hold

I can't hold you

you can

become one

with my water
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(The difficulty of knowing...really knowing something...an answer, grabbing hold of a niggling thought. Trying so hard to KNOW...ruminating in razors until there is nothing but the shredded thing that you were, and the understanding that you are the only one with thread enough for sutures.)

Exploding

2011-04-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

It was a loaded question, and the answer had a trigger finger.

Eyes searched for words
plucking them like almonds, hard in their shells
stuffing them down the barrel of your mouth
and the weight like a Magnum
unsteady

Sighted through the cross hairs of your threshold
I consider to deflect...
minimize the target
roll myself up like a down comforter
that once laid itself out like an oak from the closet of an acorn

......I can't, I can't
tired of the limp bone of cowardice
which subtracts my mass
reduces me from building to vestibule
from blocks, to cinder
like so much rubble

And so to then unfurl
a sail intent to catch wind
be moved
forcefully moved, from harbor to open sea
spread my arms
expose thumping target

feel it pierced before sound

we explode into a thousand tiny grains
for the moment forgetting we were ever a beach
an oak
a building
and not particulates, scratching between lids and eyes

knowing it only
in the shifting sand we rain
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Beginning Again

2011-04-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

I ran away twice when I was a teenager. Looking back I can't remember if the impetus was to make a statement or a break for freedom. Perhaps, as with most things, it wasn't all or nothing, but rather portions of both needs which hoisted my body out the window and up the hill on foot. I didn't get far. The station wagon was suffocating with screams and it seemed as if the move had been a grave mistake. The end would be far worse than the beginning. The ungrateful child prophecy was fulfilled, and there was something comforting about finally having that score settled. If you can't measure up, at least you can measure down.

So it was with these memories in tow that I ran away once more. Close to fifty years old and I packed my car haphazardly with the minimalists survival tools: clothes, shampoo, cans of beans, and an old journal written the year before my marriage...before me, the self that is now pervasive. I went out the front door and set out in my car with tears echoing in my ears and draining from my eyes. I marveled that I could do such a thing...rip a heart from it's chest and leave it lying there on the stained carpet, fish mouthed and airless. Truth was I wasn't running away so much as running up...to a point high enough that I could get a clear, unobstructed view of the road I was on, where it forked, and where the multiple paths led.

Each path began with my own fault and was littered with mile markers of cowardice and unworthiness. I felt guilt like a necklace of mortar shells...could barely lift my head with the weight of it, but forged on with an absolute need to know. Through the fog of my own apology I heard another, a statement not unlike my own, but louder still, and I realized I was not on this lookout alone. There was another surveying the road. He turned and spoke...

"I can see where you have worked this relationship with no reward. I can see that I have put you on the defensive for the last 27 years. I can see that I loved you the way I wanted to be loved, not the way you needed to be loved. I can see how you've set it before me time and again and I was too blind to see. I see now. I see you. I hear you. I am so sorry. Forgive me."

I felt redeemed. I know no other word for the relief of finding that all that broke was not entirely my own doing, nor would it be my own fixing. The blame between two can never be laid at the door of one, but admission is the first step towards a new beginning.
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Humiliation

2011-04-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

Have you ever started to feel okay
like you were at peace with the world
and everyone in it

and then you fell on your ass
naked
splayed open
and the world cries "OMG"
and you shout "SHIT"

and you wished the ground would open
and swallow you whole
but of course, instead
a pedestal is raised
in your fucking honor

and you
live
writhing
as the statue they mock

Oh God.....it's awful

and every day to relive it
is torture
and humiliating

rightfully so

and so it is

to be small

and human
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Assemble Something Scattered

2011-04-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

Linear drops lead

to a dusty tea cup
on display with like kind across the soffit

and again

to the mosaic box

holding pennies, trinkets, lint

I've carved off pieces of heart

with a preservetory scalpel

left blood crumb trails

to be found

I bled out

into the well of my midnight ink

let nib and quill

author a map to what's been strewn

as seed for birds

in every dot and tittle

In slow crawl

I re-collect

I can't leave clues. I must make statements, neon arrows with sharp points that pierce. They're not intended to injure, but to protect...to fight for me...the self that got submerged in everybody's needs and clothed itself in layers of shame, blame and guilt until they were just too damn heavy to move around in. I shouldn't expect those close to me to be detectives, but hopefully investigators...curious...interested... studious. Clues are missed. Clues are misinterpreted. Clues are Post-it notes that have fluttered off their perch in a stiff wind and are entombed beneath the refrigerator with a decade old Fruit Loop and a couple dead flies. As adjectives, I gather my dropped clues and place them into statements I wear like T-shirts.

"I like that shirt!"

This old thing?

"It suits you!"

Why....yes it does!

Four Nineteen

2011-04-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

Normalcy quivers, like tickled flesh, but nothing so common as that. I shrug off the chill and flip over in bed, one wary eye to the clock. 4:19 AM. I expect nothing different than to wake to these haunted numbers. The set of my alarm has little sway to the moment my eyelashes flutter their acknowledgement of numeraled ghosts. I rise, dress, and wonder….perhaps today?

Hot water strains through a French press as I check my e-mail and see the alert blinking, blinking…I have mail. Only one at 4:19 PM yesterday from my son…”Love you….” He rarely writes. I save the message as an anomaly and wonder if he'll call today.

Work is insignificant as always, and I spend the day on a spreadsheet of items. At 4:00 I crack my neck audibly, lean back in my chair and release the gas in my knuckles. I notice, only then, that the last line entered is row 419. I consider adding one more entry, or deleting the last, but there are forces at work, far beyond any remediation.

I glance to my iPod, note the song which auto shuffle has chosen for the end of my work day… The song is exactly 4 minutes and nineteen seconds long. I rub my arms as a louder disquiet settles between aging bones.

I was born a mistake. On April 19, a child was born into the world, unwanted, ill conceived in passion too large for consequence and handed off to a well intended institution. There has been a bill of lading, as yet unpaid. Perhaps tonight?

I gather my things, head home in a resigned direction as the miles click off the moments left on a declining meter. I stopped talking about the numbers after awhile. No one believed me. I want to agree it is coincidence that brings this date to life…or death. I look at the dashboard…4:19 PM as the strains of Joe Bonamassa's Had To Cry Today come through the radio...♫It's already written that today will be one to remember...♫

I stare too long.

“Mom?….I’m home…”

“She’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to reach her on cell….”

“She’s usually home by 5:00.”

“Yeah. She usually is.”

**************************************

(It's my birthday. The frequency with which these numerals show up in sequenced order in my life is hair raising. In habitually morbid fashion I began to wonder if the date of my birth would become the time or date of my death. Yeah....I know.... of course I'm being melodramatic, but even the world wide web has similarly macabre ideas.)

"Is April a cursed month? While there’s no scientific evidence readily available to show that a specific calendar date has any effect on human behavior, it is oddly coincidental that such a small range of dates (April 16 - 20) contains some of the darkest moments in US History." Specifically of April 19, just to name a few:

4.19.1775 - Revolution begins with the "shot heard round the world"

4.19.1861 - Lincoln orders blockage of Confederate ports, starting the Civil War

4.19.1993 - Waco

4.19.1995 - Oklahoma City Bombing

4.19.2010 - Gulf Oil Disaster

Soul's Errand

2011-03-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

I flayed his hands

watched them bleed from his eyes

every weighted word

I placed on raw nerves

and ever so gently

he carried them

his love a crimson wing

lifting boulders

I'll be leaving blogland for awhile. I've got work to do. Hard internal work where gears need to grind against my bones and shave off sharp slivers that I stab myself, and others, with daily. The kind of work where I harbor my mind until it begins to soften against itself...can open it's arms and treat me with more kindness. The kind of work that others are counting on, and shall not even for a moment be taken lightly. My husband says I "beat the shit" out of myself...overwork the body and mind. But perhaps this, a strengthening of spirit, I have never done.

A soul's errand.

An important one.

What Women Do

2011-03-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

This is a repost, but a follow up to Jos's poem.

(After a funeral for a friends father-in-law. It struck me that women hold funerals in bars, dressing rooms, parked cars and bedrooms. We gather together to mourn the death of a person, a dream, or a pant size. It starts young, before our birth, before we can name it...and we carry and encourage each other without request. It's what women do. )

Women have this ancient power to gather 'round and puff life into death. Even their hugs come from ancient places, translating through vibrations of incredible nurture honed in igloos and covered wagons. Five friends will gather at funeral's pew to surround with a life force that requires notice. And what we do for her, is done for me, for you, for she. At the moment of my own falter, one will steady. She...a friend of decades...she will pause her shoulder beneath my arm and limp me back, or forward, to wherever winds of change dictate. It's what women do. She...a friend of just weeks, will write a note which weights hope in my favor and sooths me enough to see life after this...this trauma, this loss, this heartbreak.

She, of waiting room only, will brush me with her glitter and make me shine enough to present a smile amidst unspeakable grief, not because she knows it's origin nor needs to know, it's just what women do. She will cry only because tears have flowed my cheeks and dropped on the carpet we both worry with our paces.

And when I've nothing left, no will of my own with which to continue this journey, she...my hearts true friend, my sister if ever I could choose, my soul...she pumps my heart until it beats again. She fills my lungs until they gasp in their own right. She takes my thigh and lifts the leg to begin the steps I cannot mount. My arms swing to her rhythm and she blinks my eyes. She lives in me until I can live apart. And I could say...it's just what women do, but it wouldn't be true. It's what women do, and so much more, when she carries me.
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Miss Insomnia

2011-03-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

Mid-night
holds the longest hours
the minutes roll by like lazy stones
on a decline so negligible
it halts descent

each pausing
like pageant contestants
white toothed blink
and I blink blink back
malcontent to observe
that which I wish to move on

and gracefully does
on swiveled hip
only to be replaced
by the same plastic pose.

2:39 took the crown.

I was too tired to applaud.
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Barometer

2011-03-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

The weather is angry
and I assume it from somewhere
God perhaps
the direction pointed and furiously sacrosanct

the wind has an odd bellow
from beyond
making no noise through the trees, though they are assaulted
nothing so expected....
just a warning of encroachment
howling far off, yet already here
quiet HERE
but following
while vehemently moving
every
thing

and the river has reached her banks
which seemed so inviolable
but she had a point
to break
and wishing now to saturate the ground with it
swells
while we stand at the window with a wary eye

hmmm now, look at that will you? Better board the windows...cover the patio chairs...latch things, protect things...

but none of that is done
we just watch her
rise
and face the anger
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Spilling

2011-03-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

I've unraveled...rather completely. I lay on my side like a toppled milk carton...tears dripping out, pain, confusion, angst. The milk was souring anyway. For years I'd peer at the expiration date with my camera eye and purposely shift the focus.

"You've been hiding yourself for a long time."

Yes. I've nothing left but to lay here until I've poured out.

"I will let you."

I watch you get in your boat, intent to navigate unchartered waters, looking so small against the spill, and yet larger and stronger than I ever remember.
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Balance of Give and Take

2011-03-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, why not? Better than mute I suppose. Here goes nuthin...

Bifocal Univision Monday Photo Prompt

Every single day he soaked like a sponge, only that which brought him pleasure. There came, inevitably, a moment of maximum capacity.

He sat with his regalement, until mirth was spent and the jaw quivered with fatigue from the ack ack ack of merriment. "I am too joyous" he mused, and wondered that there might be more somber things to consider. Resting his weary smile, he thought to stretch his mind, out into the hearts of others...further, further out, taking in the spherical earth as his own concern and everything therein. The oppressive load bore down on every muscle starting with the corners of his mouth, far reaching to a tension born underfoot. He felt as stone, immutable, and while stoically stable (certainly such steadfast immobility had merit?) he lacked the ability to move in any direction at all.

Round and round his thoughts circled like concentric bands, torqued by each consideration without solution. Deeper and deeper he delved into problems until formulas mocked in indecipherable answers beyond his grasp. His shoulders hunched with the effort to rid himself of the monumental task of solving that which was beyond his control. Attempting to lift his head, he found he could not. Not a finger could he bend. So, to the Giver of his joy, he used the centrifugal force of his spiraling thoughts to eject a note...a prayer really...

"Please, restore my balance. I cannot be what I was, but I cannot be this."

Not immediately, no certainly not, (for lessons learned in an instant are just as quickly dispensed) but following a time where moments were disproportionate to their duration, his skin relaxed and lips pursed. Head separated from the statuary of his body. He stood, first on one foot, then the other, noting that balance came easiest with arms outstretched. A slight nod towards a passerby was rewarded with a smile that melted him fully. His eyes crinkled and his mouth spread as he chuckled, "Ack ack ack".
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Migelina

2011-03-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

The soup is viscous
able to float my deeds
as they cannonball
from loose lips

I avoid looking at her
for she has long used bitter skin
to cloak her eyes into agreement I do not exist.

I have wronged her
I have not wronged her
She stole from me
She gave to me
Perhaps I should have paid her more
and used her less
so I could sit as a human again

The way she makes me invisible
I consider to be painful
the ache of answers
returning as questions.

(She was stealing time from me, lying on her time card. I let her go. It was six years ago. I see her now and then. I said "Hello" to her for the first year. I got no response. Now I pretend she is invisible too. Today we lunched as ghosts.)
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"Clean" Energy

2011-03-09T16:00:00.000-08:00

This is something I was working on a while back. It's crap...I know it is, but I can't seem to write anymore. It is the voice I have found and now I feel mute. It scares me. So here is something....crap and all....just cuz. Photo is kinda cool. Taken with iPhone and the 8mm camera app.

They sprung up like weeds

somehow perpetuating themselves

through their mechanical organs,

hard birthed with heads like that!

And the hillside

now littered

with alternative machines

looks ugly and unseemly

like Tommy James yard

after we forked it

The birds

confused by white wings

lulled by the hum

move upstream

like salmon

against

drop

one by one

leech their blood into the fields

iron fertilizer

for green metal

(Commentary: 5,000 windmills dot Northern California's Altamont Pass. It is adjacent to the densest nesting ground for golden eagles and directly in the migratory path of red-tailed hawks. As many as 4,721 birds a year are killed by this alternative "clean" energy source. I once thought of windmills as beautiful. I took the photo above at a roadside farm along Hwy 88.)

Altamont Pass

Your Burden Ain't Light

2011-02-22T15:52:00.000-08:00

Ahhh. Broken Wing. Here we are again...

Every time I see you I say, "How ya doin?" You say "fine". Today I press, ask after Kevin. "He's a great kid...." you say. "I really like him", and I wonder at the term 'like', though I myself have used it of my own, as more than love. Love for your child is born. Like is a choice.

I ask you, of his diagnosis...have never really ventured there...the land of terminology. And you start from birth, the weak trachea, reversed heart valve, the colostomy bag since. "You see him naked, and his chest is like a road map!" you say. First twelve months on a ventilator, celebrating baby's first birthday with open heart surgery. You make me feel real petty in my complaints...and rightfully so. I watch you rub your truncated arm across a brow that has lost definition. This is the brow you wear....down...while the other shows your tenacity.

"So there isn't really a term for it then?" I ask. He shakes his head. "The ultimately unique Kevin Syndrome!" I say. He smiles. "Yeah", but his broken wing rubs the one that is right, and I consider that he thinks the whole thing his doing...that one misaligned chromosome might equate to "Kevin Syndrome".

He talks about how his son is the "million dollar kid." $900 in meds alone....every month. I look at the scars on his own hand, where the table saw got the better of him last year. Rallied he did. Surgery. Rehabilitation. ($900 a month, and my wife don't work.) Such pressure.

"He's 17, with the mind of a ten year old. He doesn't understand the way hormones are changing him. No one knows what it's like when he flips out." I want to understand, and wish I did know...how bad it gets at home.

"He punishes himself you know...in these fits. He will self exile to his room, until he can't stand it anymore. And I say, Kevin...you need to apologize for your words, actions....but it's like pulling teeth."

We talk about how powerful those words are, especially in a relationship: forgive me...I'm sorry... You look discomfited, say "I don't know if that will ever be a reality for him. A relationship. I pray for the day someone says, "Don't worry. I've got him".

Damn. I think my life is hard? At seventeen, his father doesn't think he will ever be able to live on his own 'cuz a ten spot is STILL worth WAY more than ten one dollar bills, no matter how many times they count it out together.

Every time I see you, I say "How ya doin?"

You say "fine".
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Going Down

2011-02-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

There’s a level that you reach, erroneously think
it’s a basement.

dusty and moldy, which you wouldn’t mind,

but for the underlying stench of something less than alive

more than dead

barely

living

Your hand trembles along the fashioned wood, worn smooth

from endless digging in calloused amounts

required service, by a preternatural power

shoulder to it

unimaginably

heavy

but the labor

only dulls the blade

(Born of Justin Nozuka and not much else.)

Defaced

2011-02-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

I was reading a book of poetry...lovers were dying. She rode by, looking like a young lady from Mayberry R.F.D., long wavy brown hair tied neat with a blood red bow. Beach cruiser bike, not the usual pimped out affair of my urban stretch. As she passed, I saw her tattoo...similar to the one above but the beak facing left, beginning at the corner of her left eye and fanning out across her cheek and down to the jawline. WHY? I've got nothing against tatts, but fiercely dislike facial tattoos or piercings. I'm too old I guess. No! It's more than that. All that is denatured makes me value what is not. A friend of mine just texted me to say she got three new piercings: nose, lip, and tongue. I want to rip them out.

I sat in the cafe,

book open to the page my lover and I died on

word by word, as cinder we lit there

burning our final holes

My arms worked the surface of my soup

legs scissor spread and snapped

treading water posthumously as she passed...

the two wheels of her

ambling in parade.

Her left eye cried full peacock

feathered tips brushing her chin,

blue-green plumage of courtship

in the un-posturing position of peafowl blush

Saddened by the ruse upon her cheek,

I mourned her skin

fanning embers with fleshy molt

and pressed her artifice

into the fire.

Annie's Chair

2011-02-14T14:38:00.000-08:00

It did something so warm and fuzzy
like the melting of Mr. Winter
and the Grinch...when his heart did GROW
or when Mrs. Rust said
"your mug is green" as if I should have a mug
much less a color
in a kitchen not my own...
how I'd say "may I please have a drink"
just to see her reach into the cupboard
and pull green from the heart of it.

It wasn't just the appropriation
ooohhh nooooo
but that you pulled it from thin air
a weighty consideration...just
plucked
a thought of me, a concern from no-damn-where
and scratched your head with it!

I'm gonna have to hug you
although you might not be the hugging type
you might stand stiff and resolute next to your La-Z-Boy
while I hang from your neck
and drop ceremoniously
VERY ceremoniously
sacredly
into the chair you gave me
thinking how nice it is
to meet you
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Lie Like Yesterday

2011-02-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

"I don't trust you!"

Yesterday I blurt it out like an untimely belch, though reeking well deserved on the finish. I haven't, and still don't. Gawd, it hurts my heart to say it, but I've held in so much that there is just no more room in storage. I don't want to look at your eyes, unsure if I want my suspicions confirmed and less sure to see your injury... for right, or wrong, there will be that. So I stare at the logo on your shirt, wonder when the crease in the screen print will become a peel that falls off somewhere between first and second period...lie there unheeded until some ground watching idiot like myself notices it and decides to write a poem as if it mattered.

You tell me there was no lie...are no lies, but I've learned to trust myself, just a little...a grains worth, but still growing. I have no proof today, though previous convictions adhere to your shoes like gum. I know nothing with certainty but the four words I speak.

"I love you anyway."

You nod...say, "I'm glad you told me" and now I truly have no grain, no molecule.

Today a text. You ask if you can meet me for lunch. It's the first time....EVER. I am so afraid. There are not words.

The week has been heavy and I am compressed, my arms too short to protect myself. And though I want to beg..."please son, don't crush me today"...now is not the time for that. It is time to lay as yesterday's dog.
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Just Another Wish

2011-02-08T07:51:00.000-08:00

I want to lay myself out like a dog, limbs splayed and my underbelly begging all soft and warm…radiating submission and humility. I'd roll my head onto crinkled whiskers and pant against the shag of well worn carpet, loosen and unfurl my tongue from the jaws that held it tight and afraid. Reaching down your hand, you would enter my ribs between the first and the last break…pull one word, then another from the cavity where they misalign. You’d pile them next to a tail that has long since ceased to wag, too concerned that the breeze might unearth our funeral bones. You’d care little for the blood, and I’d care little for the pain as our viewpoints swapped like donated organs and compassion breathed fresh. You would scratch a joke behind my ear and make my tail stutter…keep telling it, until the words were airborne like dander, and we had understanding whipped.

Mexican Cantina

2011-02-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

(Herman Sillas - 'Guitar Player')

His eyebrows lift

wing tipped

as if they wish to

take flight

he plucks instead

worn strings

fingers nimble

ends

to fossilized arms

she touches her brow

he smooths his

don’t….don’t…

I want to say

let them fly

free from here - far from here

to the places you dance
with untamed thoughts

Morning Shorts

2011-02-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

PAINT A POINT

I painted my fingernails black
so they could travel
as foreigners
through my homeland...
entourage
to my alien
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NEWSPAPER

I took it
from the trash
folded tight
like a virgin
pressed into her convictions

It's been four months
since she felt my hands
or I, her spread
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(They startle me...of a sudden, I will reach or grab, and as insects...they startle me. That's the only reason to paint yourself grunge. It's so damn interesting to watch. And the newspaper? Had to give it up to my shrinking budget. No huge loss, seeing as the news was rarely favorable. But this morning, damn if it just didn't seem as a treasure and feel like a luxury!)
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Willfully Placed

2011-01-30T06:35:00.000-08:00

("Foggy Night")

He lay prostrate
like a leaf
to it's end
having no further
to float

and seeming thus
flattened
felt adornment
too lofty
for so low

removing
pieces
to reassemble
at hands breadth
he rose
listening to the breeze
whistling through holes

(The morning was dark and foggy, but the streetlamp caught metal and blinked off the surface. I saw two large silver stud earrings side by side on the cement. They had not fallen from ears, as the backs were on. They had not fallen from pockets, as they were both facing southeast, parallel and close...like parentheses around abandoned words. They had no dew. They were recent. I picked them up and placed them closer together on a cafe table, risen, to find new ears.)
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