godot laughs, sin is upon the living

It’s midnight. Nothing moves beyond the black. She smells something and follows the scent while I toss a green cellophane bag into the dumpster. Leave it, I tell her, go potty. She sniffs at me. I look up. It feels like country, but the pink glow of our small city kills any hopes of spying electrical energy.

Peculiar. A drone. Closing my eyes, the image of a plane, circa Casablanca, landing the black and white runway before Bogart. A gnawing grrrr grows louder. Where could it be going at midnight, flying so low. Was it real. Were we real. Sometimes the heat changes everything.

THOUGHT 1

She (Hannah Weiner, The Fast) keeps speaking in colours. How she feels the purple stripes – sees pink auras -hurts from too much green – each hue a metamorphoses of heavy energy. Her body throbs with pain until she resorts to going almost naked, devoid of any fabric that may carry a colour. It’s not just fabric or objects, but people who carry their burden… her neighbor who sent her into spasm, his person thick with a purple/yellow/black stripe pattern. It had nothing to do with gender/ we know not their heritage/ no, each soul a crayola box of communication in a world so few actually see. It makes me want to see your aura.

While reading this, I did see yellow flowers, and it made me think of Nora (Ephron).
Yellow daisies = You’ve Got Mail (Kathleen Kelly liked daisies, but they were white, but yellow is what get imagined). Death makes me feel heavy, the ribs actually start contracting. Death is so common, it happens every second, minute, hour, thousands upon thousands times a day – we may know one (if that) via six degrees.

I see my death often. When I ride, when I turn in traffic, even after I look both ways, I feel the car hit me / I don’t see color/ I feel metal go cold.
There is no delusion of what will happen, unexpected death is sad, but in days my person will be forgotten by most except for mom and dad. There is no false belief of grandeur, despite what one blogger (who hide his identity) has kindly told me more than once:

Narcissistic likes to to blog.

Web definitions: egotistic: characteristic of those having an inflated idea of their own importance.

90% of the bloggers that I’ve seen online….

And of course there’s very little to them under it all. Under the ACT. Under the Angela.

We shall give him a bit of credit for such insightful commentary. Yes, I am egotistical. I’d have to be to believe that anyone would ever read this…no? No / there is comfort in writing upon a white screen, hearing the click of keys keeping a record of thoughts that may or may not be thought through – that is the freedom of a blog.

THOUGHT 2

Death. I sat in lecture tonight (code for church – though as a skeptic, I prefer lecture) and we proceeded to delve into Roman rules. Romans shakes my nerves; I almost vibrate with angry thoughts – sin, this need for salvation; to be set up for a fall when the cast members were already given their faulty directive eons ago by a director who wanted continual action. It was always a tragedy.

…suddenly, i’m sitting there and things go quiet / the lecturer continues to talk but suddenly the ceiling above me goes brighter, the lights are on high above where the catwalk resides / there is a waterfall and we shouldn’t hear the 20 foot stream of baptismal water, but I swear that is what is drowning us all / C_ visits my thoughts / his death reaches out to touch me/ water wells / i will not to cry but there is a sense of overflow / how he would laugh at all this, we’d debate sin over red wine and coffee / what was i thinking to throw it away before it was stolen / coward, i am/ there will never be another brilliant light of color over this head in this life time / god laughs, sin is upon the living ~

(exiting the fullscreen it keeps saying saved…they said tonight that is only for the repenting)

when the heart burns

Heartburntaught me about loving, leaving, and coming around again. I was only 13.

Perhaps I should place the blame card on Ms. Ephron for a funked up love life…but I won’t. I’m an adult who has a wonderful sense of right with a terrible penchant for ignoring flags that wave red.

Never to succumb to tender trappings of chic flick fantasy, Nora held a different category. Yes, there was the impossibility of fate… when Annie bonded for life with the man on the radio…When Kathleen found her cheated destiny with F O X.

What of this, thou, since Ephron never dampened the point of the sword while it twisted in between scenes.

Back to Heartburn… Nora knew what it was to love, to love again, as if we are built with a capacity to carry many boulders upon shoulders without sinking to fingertip depths. It’s when, finally, winds change our mast homeward, twisting the current beneath our griping limbs that we cry, enough!

I shall now wonder if Ephron ever forgave Burnstein. Did the mashing of cream and green fluff placate enough to say, you’re a jackass, but at one time I loved you. **

If not her, it has been me. I see snippets of my life reflect back in a silver screen when emotions roll me. A character armed with a delightful quip, or a lament that only can come from one who has lived a love that has gone to war reminding us (me) to move on.

Life keeps coming around again. We just need to hang on to what was learned the first time.

Rest in peace, Nora Ephron, we thank you for bringing a bit of peace to us . ~

**I’ve been a Nora fan since 13. I’ve failed to read up on her life regarding Bernstein. She key limed him in the movie, but did she ever make peace. I’m sure there are books to come on that and more.

don’t tame the wild thang

What happens when time’s hands have stopped, leaving you uncertain which side of the clock is ticking. Perchance this room is dark because mother has left a drippy blanket to dry over the rising sun. We turn on a bedside lamp to reassure our searching eyes.

If the clouds never part; if the rain never abates; does that mean we are unwashable of certain sins?

Sin gone born again. It was early morning, the pup and I jogging underneath a blanket of Mother’s solitude. No one ventures out in the rain ’round here. But, would this earthy baptismal wash me clean? Then I wondered: why exactly was I dirty?

Awe lordy, don’t ask this one to pray! for she is angry! Experience tells me, you’ll take your breakables home no matter how much I beg to let them stay.

What of this you may say? This is that voice that perhaps we shouldn’t be projecting upon the page. Yet, if we stifle our muse with a whip eventually she’ll be a runaway, as any kept thing should. Art shouldn’t be defined by us or them. Art is energy when we allow the light turned on. If I control this electricity that swells from a place I cannot see, but I know, then there will be nothing on this page for you, or me, to grasp. Do we not read to get hungry?

This garden I planted long ago has been slowly dying. Certainly there is death after spring’s quiet rays is replaced by May’s heavy sun. The tulips bow forward in exhaustion, their silky blooms too delicate in nature to withstand too much heat or midwestern winds. The rose, however, how she has been creeping. Wild in nature, I’ve seen her throw down her blooms in protest by too much pruning.

So… here I am! as I stole from a movie. Today, I must express what has been brewing at the bottom of this burnt out copper pot. The copper has lost its luster because I’ve failed to take any energy to make her shine.

You shall be my energy, my wild vine that will help me to create more words upon this page. I’ve been away this week researching, trying to understand why my father lays in ICU in so much pain. We don’t appreciate how much we depend on other’s support and light until we tap our last reserve. Your words shall be an organic feeding frenzy filling this empty plate. I hope to digest it all in the next few days. Something tells me, there is even a wild vine to place in the empty vase longing to hold something beautiful.

(sidebar: this post came in part because I recently told another blogger that I was going to take a break from posting poetry in order to work on writing better poetry. When push came to shove, though, while sitting in ICU, it was only poetry that came to me. (I posted them yesterday) Even if what I posted is less than good…it seems to be the chosen voice of my muse. Caution: you may just kill what you tame, especially the wild thang that resides in each one of us… artists ~ )

wind and truth, a stream ~

I sit. It’s hard for me to just sit, to be of silence in body. The mind seems a magnet, each sound paper clips itself to place hold a thought, an image, an idea.

A paddle fan moves silently. It’s shadow reminds me of days when the weather vane emitted a squeak no oil can could heal.

Healing. I’m at a place of healing waiting for these winds to cease blowing so that not even one hair is moving. Iowa is never calm. Our winds have no metal edge to linger on. Even our cities are windy. There is too much energy building off acres of restless soil rich not from crop, but the sweat that has dropped upon its flat expanse.

A lone bird, no, now there are two, sound an evening song though it is only four. My work has not started. I am not done. I sit.

Four floors above me inside these glass metal doors he sleeps. Four miles to the west of me inside my ivory painted front door she may sleep. He fights for freedom from pain that sucked every ounce of unspent energy. Morphine now his slave. She must stay still so her back or hips heal. It’s man’s best friend. Her best man has no idea as he dreams in a pancreatic fog.

I, the off daughter, the one relatives murmur of how not to be, shows her love, kinda. He sleeps, so I escape to the breeze in this suburban dream of emergency brick and motor. A taj mahal that at his age I shall never know for I will have no one, I will own nothing, I will be a government subsidy.

Seriously, winds need to carry me upstairs to check and see. No one sees me here, near my bike, outside reading a book of zen-like breathing. A Mindful Writer has me thinking… Yes, why do I write?

Employees leave in blue scrubs. Employees enter in pink. I should move. Not every inch of skin is covered. A trance moves me nowhere.

Epiphany. Last nights weary sleep peeks. Who were those people. Why did I dance alone in the street? Why a case of wine from a trap door? When did dreams become such cinematic mysteries. A metaphor of things.

I don’t like the cinema. You must sit. I must move.

Truth. I am selfish to the nth of the smallest bone. There is nothing mindful to be out here. If I had just sat in there, I’d at least offer him the healing power of love.

I leave.

Sadness seems to travel in pairs

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My world became smaller today. The incessant mechanical whirl compacts this breath bit by bit. Headphones can’t block the warning; that jarring industrial scream every time metal claws rape the soil by one more layer.

Perhaps rape is harsh. It’s not a gentle word. Neither is moving the earth away to erect another brick and mortar, a turnkey development to brass the knuckles of some three piece trying to sell yet another surface American dream. Over caffeinated, over leveraged grads who think the burbs are better.

I’m no better. Trust me, there is no loss to this ironic rant. That field, though, was a last piece of zen sanity. The dog and I ran, snowshoed, and midnight moonlight gazed from its oasis; hearing its frog belly sounds, a nature tape of traffic and yesterday’s firefly girlhood.

Progress as a definable necessity. Do we need another rise of executive apartments when the ones a quarter mile are still vacant?

There was a lapse of sanity when I signed on the dotted line. The city apt was my dream, but every year I froze and paid 200 in heat. When moving westward, I never factored that this playground would disappear. In fact, it was my only pro making it palatable to move back to my home ‘town’ turned bedroom rock toss community.

I’m spoiled. I get that. Don’t judge this too harshly until you read this: I get I’m lucky. To be safe. To have a roof. To have so many things people don’t in a world too full of poverty.

Yesteryear, thou, when I made the escape from control’s ugly hand, it was a struggle. Two jobs; and I still charged the groceries. It took years to finally feel ‘free’. I moved up, but my mind still counts pennies that Romney will never understand. Do it again, I would be in the heartbeat of the pulse that compels so many to move a chair to the broken sidewalk to catch a breeze.

Damn lucky, I am. Yet, I can still lament the destruction. Julia butterfly Hill’s living in the red trees makes more sense now. Her passion isnt a mystery. Her tears watered a dream she didn’t want bulldozed. Gaia screamed, she couldn’t not hear her cry when it shook from the roots of a core we cannot know, but can understand.

Childish dreams. I lived a mystery of mystical beings created from milkweed pods; hickory shadows, and railroad tracks whose heat could burn July bare feet. You can take the girl from the ‘country’ but you can’t remove its husky rhythm that mixed dirt into her DNA.

This destruction rips open the core of who I am. I cannot stop the well from over flowing.

Sadness seems to travel in pairs.

The world became smaller last night…

A sleep creased cheek, there was a lingering warmth that I couldn’t fathom. It wasn’t until I heard his voice that I knew.

Looking down, but looking from a picture frame, it was his slightly off smile that made me smile. I caught a glimpse of his shoulder tattoo, but after twenty years, it was like seeing its outline yesterday. I could still feel his baby soft skin rub my cheek.

“Why so glum?”

“Because we are not really here.”

The puzzle never came to fit between our hands. His brief touch was lost to a realism of sensibilities.

I kissed the impossible. I turned my gaze before we melted away.

It was a dream of a dream that I actually saw from the perspective of being awake even though I was asleep. It was as if in sleep, I stared in a micro drama’s stage.

When I awoke, I still could feel his skin. Perhaps we glimpse at what may be the unrequited scenes that keep us dreaming. ~

tupelo honey and a feast of crow

There was a poem tapping deep inside me tonight. It first appeared while I was washing the baby spinach. Later, when I was rinsing the overly ripe strawberries, six hours from molding. I’ve always had small epiphanies in shower streams and rainstorms.

The poem has dried up. It lost its viscosity, I realized, while loading a mishmash of overly worn clothing, including a torn black tank in which I cannot toss. The sing-song voice, that ‘coming home’ narrator whose operatic range soars under the stream of conscious spell, fell flat.

Words teased the eyes; not the ocular, but burned in deep grooves of grey matter. A charcoal grave stone rubbing; only the whole thing gets doused in chlorine.

Chlorine. A powerful word I ran across tonight and wondered why I’ve never us it as metaphor. It caused pause, there are so many words I don’t use. Why?

I’m so glad you don’t read me. That I kept this place a mystery so that I can rage you away. Wash us in chlorine. There is an awful taste that rises up when a street sign reflects off the dim-lit cracks at midnight. Sweat beads between white scapula bones despite zero humidity. A flood of electric pulsations sends an urge after ‘we’ pass, and I realize you are just ‘no parking’ bent sideways. Who knew that the discomfort of a hit and run cramped the uterus beyond a monthly shedding. Fear of the wrong chromosomes attaching is something Darwin never wrote about. (Just a man)

Well, that wasn’t the poem, but it started out with that line. Damn, I really hope it resurfaces soon.

One more thought, the reason to post at all tonight:

In our culture, we over-rely on the idea that we have a choice, and it’s incredibly frustrating to me. Sure, when people whine about what their parents did to them 30 years ago I also want them to shut the fuck up, but I dedicate the book to my cousin who lived there and lives there still. And there is no reason. I could find little reasons, but there is no real reason. She got great grades. She is beautiful. I don’t know.

This is an excerpt from The Rumpus interview with Tupelo Hassman that I just read online.

(Rather serendipitous since I just requested this book be purchased today. I do this so rarely in libraryland since my choices oft raise eye-brows in a collection of ordinary best sellers.)

The interview is good; give the link a visit. Tupelo Hassman’s life (every time I read her name, I think Tupelo Honey) seems not that different from the young girl, Rory, who tells the story.

What caught in my throat while reading, was Hassman’s frustration regarding why her cousin never escaped her life. I certainly don’t take it that Hassman looks down on her cousin, but I’m surprised she doesn’t ‘get it’. As a first generation college grad, I get it and I wasn’t even in an enviro that was that bad.

I believe many of us got lost. College was such a mystery to me. My parents encouraged, but couldn’t offer any advice. I was there, but I wasn’t THERE. I kept one foot firmly planted in what I knew, never exploring the avenues that could have helped me go further. Even the profs who encouraged me couldn’t beat down that little voice that said, “you’re not talented enough to do that.”

It’s ironic that this made me think of the relationship with my mother, so close to ‘her’ day. The yelling matches have been ugly and angry over the years. Yes, I’ve been a bitchy child who has blamed her, or them, for never spreading my wings beyond our four corners. You know, though, Hassman is right, eventually you have to shut the fuck up and just deal.

Going into Mother’s Day weekend, perhaps I should remember this and be grateful that she doesn’t slap me with the irony stick. Twenty years ago, I called her weak for staying in a job she hated to pay the bills. If she were a spiteful person, I’d never hunger again after the feast of crow she could serve me. ~

Zen & the art of being directionless

Warning, I’m walking. Not just down the block, or up to the shoppe, but about six miles, to the library. I woke with an inner dialogue; restless and chatty.

It isn’t my night to corral the readers or keep watch on those porn wandering eyes( I joke but not: read: never date a man who spends hours upon days glued to a library computer). Fifty Shades is what my snarky mind was eluding, but truth set it free.

Last night, tonight, and again later this week; reliability is a curse.

The winds are Colorado cool. If I phoned my father right now, I’d bet money he’d say”feels like the mountains.” We’re displaced dreamers ready to move. They’ve always been an anchor; my mother has kept him moored safe for over 40 years.

40! Who does that anymore? Last night, famished before an 8 o’clock spread of spinach greens, arugula, fresh snapped asparagus, and a combo of humus and tampanade…oh, and squash and baby carrots, I feasted on Edith Pearlman’s words. It started as a wedding, it ended with a not quite affair.

We spoke of those briefly, a good friend and I while consuming the loveliest glasses of a ruby blend I swore hinted at currents. To coin the title of Pearlman’s short stories, emotional affairs are balanced with “binocular vision”. It was amazing to read the man actually kept that heavy golden ring in focus before it brushed her heat leaving a permanent scotch.

The sun seems white, I’m glad I didn’t run back for a light jacket. This screen is hard to read despite facing east.

Directionless. What can we imagine as our thoughts scatter? Around 1AM, after posting that crazy dream/not dream sequence, that frankly I had to finish after I wrote it on two cocktail squares while patron coffee brewed. It finished as I imagined it, it was her death that the lover already knew.

It’s these wanderings of our mind that I started to read about in Leher’s imagine. That last name needs another vowel.

We need to allow for different perspectives. Creativity isn’t so much the muse, it’s giving yourself wings, to jump without a guide, be directionless.

Anyone can write. Anyone can paint. It is the magnitude of intervention, mind control of the spark that could flame up to become white heat, if you let it.

Emily Dickinson didn’t seek direction when she reached out to Harrison. She just wished to be more animal than human, seeking a companion who would inspire her next vivid dream.

This seems to be quite long, sorry. It’s hard to gage lengths, thou miles has us at three to four. The wind has made a travesty of my look, but the breeze offered me a comfortable push. The chatter is now in here and scatters with puffed cottonwood seeds.

In peace, thank you for zen walking with me~

Gladys dances to Kafka

I’m being a bit of a voyuer.
I lie.
A suburban bookstore is not exactly adventuresome highway, nor route 66 into rose existence where perhaps mars landed some crew in the sixties. This is more about how the day wears on under a south wind that lacks the warmth of even the coldest lovers embrace; even that one filled with pinked passion and it sent your mind wondering if he kissed you while scenes of Ryan Gosslyn, (wrong spelling, forgive me for I’m rolling with this inspiration under creative duress of slogging long hours in this cracked cranium) flashed behind thin skin.

Staycations buried the muse; she even begged those two bucks at a stoplight for a drag of smoke. We tried to chase windmills today. Last night’s Fuel memories had me turning my non-diesel, non-bling Honda around, 29 miles out. Z and I meandered, tail between our legs, backing into where we came, but never really been. Miles of paved grey landscapes, foundations for salt box houses with tarpaper patches and plastic wrapping each sagging sash. How must the ghosts go running at midnight under such a forlorn cacophony. Next door, a beige prefab, a windowless barn filled with glass menagerie. Hard working buxom frames moving dreams around so your bedside table holds a full glass of water, a PBR chaser, after a good buddy offered a dance on the house. Be nice, perhaps she’ll decorate your table next holiday; bring your voyeuristic tendencies to climax if you read aloud Kafka, feeding her hunger for other’s nightmares.

Letters to a young contrarian, damn that Hitchens, can’t even curse him for fear HIS ghost will haunt.

Stop!
Train wreck of thought just interrupted by, get this, some gold sweatshirt donning twentysomething, reading fantasy, talking loudly on his phone. He didn’t just say”I love you, I’ll be down in a minute?” Here we sit, on the second level, milling ants down below, trying to fill that empty space, or missing missing face in that family picture. Right, it is all about escape, isn’t it?

In my lap, I hold Raymond Carver. No, not him, but his book, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. It is me being voyuer, or is it being stalker, when you try to figure out what makes the blood pump harder through a stranger’s veins so that it oxygenates his mind to write brilliant prose of red words and blue sighs. Each ball a pop fly into the universe of words; holding breath, wondering if it will go out of Wrigley. Scanning the latest memo, holding most insight for later, perhaps sipping it slowly with a glass of rose trying to ignoring the couple at the bar next to me arguing if he will stay tonight. I do know the write mentions this book; obsessively compelled to know what fills those empty pockets as to widen my blank landscape that struggles to be industrial, yet the streets we rolled through held no unusual sidewalk trash.

Even Gladys, whose probably getting ready with another coat of paint; cinching up black garters, one held together with a tiny pin; her German expression is deeper than any of my contrarian pondering. Looking down, there is that heaven someone promised me long ago, it swims between a thousand covers waiting to be opened.

a blue-collar girl: tool belts are sexy

The light has gone quiet since the golden bursts that wedged their way into my room, past heavy chocolate-colored drapes meant to block the east rising. Reluctantly awaking, 8AM seemed terribly early when you don’t fall into a dream until 2AM.

Another day of decadence, a staycation that allows me to ride the waves of time.

A day trip keeps calling me, yet, I worry of wasting fuel and precious writing time. I do envision chasing windmills; technologically advanced ones that dot this state from West to East. They are poetry in motion, a white tower with wings. If you watch them from afar, it becomes a mechanical symphony.

Today, however, I ended up at one of those stores that could outfit your entire house from inside out; it was here I found love. I dislike clothes/shoe/accessory shopping unless it is a secondhand place, or an artist’s store; but give me a place with aisles of paint chips and faucet taps of brushed silver to dark pewter; heaven.**

Confession; I also found thrill in observing the men. Their frayed ball caps, slung low over hair curling up with sweat and sawdust. Those once tan lug boots covered in four different shades of paint splatter. Carpenters, I grew up around their dusty lot.

I remember my grandfather, his sleek Italian frame always clad in knee worn chinos, and a white v-neck tee. His arms corded from wrist to shoulder with lean muscle; a man who relished a hard day’s work. He was a coal miner turned carpenter, after he dutifully served in the war. A man of no formal education past eighth grade; he learned his trade, then made a name for himself in two growing towns. Even at his funeral, I heard words of his talent as a builder.

As I looked around, there was a feeling of home; of comfort, watching the skill as they measured, figuring what was needed for the next project. In the lot, they swung truck gate’s open, loading two by fours, and random bits of plumbing. How I wished I could jump in back; ride with them; visit the site to recollect stray nails off the floor. A duty of great pride when I was a girl.

As I left, I spied a man pull up in a shiny black Mercedes. The car seemed out-of-place, pretentious, in a sea of beat-up Fords, and dirty Dodges. His presence made me realize, I prefer the smell of sawdust; a man’s callused hands. I guess I am a blue-collar girl.

**This wasn’t a trip of fun, however, just to seek a replacement for a microwave that decided to host a lightning storm.

for the birds

The blackbirds bicker outside, in and out
their shadows reflect off these salmon walls somehow
it has to do with the sunrise reflecting from the east windows
perhaps the glass is coated with layers of gravel
dust that never does seem to settle.
The morning dove coo stops
thank god, it travels a razor edge morning
back to summer, waking after three hours
paddles on the overhead fan
thump
thump
thump
pushing stale, humid air, never
escaping
last night’s sweetness that dresses burnt skin
and yet, rising
remembering, no longer a school girl
grown up now, in the way that there is debt to pay,
if not to a note holder, than to them,
raising you to not burden society
Punch in/
punch out
every long damn day until
a nurse coos like that incessant dove:
honey, just your morning medicine;
a yellow haze, reverting eyes, following a stream of dust filtering through cheap poly drapes with fat pink roses that have witnessed countless laying bodies of fragile state.
Yes, the morning dove tries
over another blackbird’s chatter,
you smile, trying to hold on to when you were that girl
rising, head humming with the whirl of the paddle fan, skin
gone sweet with bottle shots and rich laughs.
Morning calls again
a bird, you know not its song,
not anymore.

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