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 ~ )

twenty-one days

experts say
twenty-one days,
a fast learner cuts
that in half
or one quarter
if really fast.
this has no
curve. imagine a
nite ritual like
setting your watch.
adapting shouldn’t
be so easy.
not here.
the parking space
has not changed
in two days. only
the color of cars.
i could enter blind
with no cane.
the motion sensor
revolving entrance,
then you step right
to the elevator door,
only the right door opens.
the second floor button
gets pushed with the right
elbow. walk right again.
then left, then
go down a white hallway.
today the floor
was to change.
a room with a view.
shit happens.
i continue this bad habit.
icu is a place no one
should get used to,
quick study or
not.

hospital corners and broken muses

Somewhere fragments of words are trying to embed in hallways among beeping machines and urine soaked bedding. They must have spilled out of my red notebook, holding on for dear life as I wondered from window to window imaging the fresh kiss of rain-soaked air.

As I sit here, I imagine all the fragments I wrote on grey matter with a cloud dipped nib as I dodged wet bullets. Wheels spinning, smiling out loud thinking how dumb to be bike commuting for one hour of work in capri jeans and the pouring rain. Six miles later a cloud broke open to let her partner warm me up for the dance back home. A bit of moisture slid across my cheek dawning the realization that I rode because he couldn’t come outside. Father would prefer the kiss of mother’s tears verses the harsh horizon of morphine’s dream.

The daily card punched: one hour’s time because no one else could man the fort of hard covered words.

I headed back into the world of make-believe, where on every floor there is breath of death and exhale of verbs. Stored fragments of split infinitives haunt me. Perhaps he is still hiding in a corner gathering crumbs left by her after she stumbled into a narrow passageway. We all die. We all leave a noun or two behind.

Curious thing, yellow skin brings us closer. Perhaps the muse has gone on hiatus after too much interaction with the functional set. The damp conversations have stifled her fiery nature. You can never be too calm, or nice, when dealing with your DNA. Even sibling rivalry hit an all-time lull, not one word about his red view to my radical hues in four days.

Hug me tight, kiss me night, work stirs again tomorrow and I shall fake it like any good new wife. How we tease open our mouths wide with the right combo of caffeine and mint-chocolate gum. May eros bestow an epiphany while brewing half cup burnt grounds to drawn tap water not yet fracked with toxicity…or, I guess I’ve no lighter to test it anyway.

Epilogue: Another fragmented day between work, hospital and ‘play’. The muse has been silent despite snippets of 16 mm flash. She taps her foot listening to the Louis chops, but becomes a wallflower when a handsome suitor offers a hand to swing.

One lovely offshoot of today’s conversation was hearing about my name. I was chatting up books with my Aunt and Uncle when I mentioned Dreaming in French (I blogged about this book the other day). After speaking on Angela Davis’s chapter, my Aunt informed me that Ms. Davis was who my mother claimed I’m named. Say what?! An hour later, I casually inquired to my mother, “Who is Angela Davis?”

She gets this smile on her face and states, “Where do you think I got your name?”

“Angela Davis. As in…”

“The civil rights activist. Yes, she was in the news before you were born. Everyone had an opinion about the names I had picked out for you, so I said, fine, I’m going to name her after Angela Davis.”

And she did ~

(Backstory: we are a very boring, Midwest roots family of Italian/German/whatever else heritage. The fact that my mother knew of Angela Davis, let alone her politics, and still called me Angela tells me there are a few bits to her personality that I don’t quite get. Her naming me after a radical was the first in utero ‘mistake’, and the first thing that makes sense regarding my contrarian personality. I was already set to read more about Ms. Davis’s life, this just cements the binding.)

(P.S. As macabre as this may read…my father is stable for now. As I re-read this I realized some of the words could be misconstrued. I cannot ever visit this hospital without remember the death march I did with another loved one several years ago…he is the one who I imagine gathering words as he loved a good story.)

strange fruit

not human     more cat than dog
she sniffs the wind indifferently
the sky heavy with weekend guilt

the coffee tastes of blue smoke

Holiday  jazz  wading   through
Van Gogh skies     the sun undercover
masked by an infinite white brim

my body protests this cold       red flares
sent up my spine    body simmering a  revolt
replicating dna straining over something
foreign      a body double taking shape   scary
that’s how cancer  fishhooks     laying in wait
much as the black fly took over Hamburg
iridescent green wings orchestrating
a cacophony broken only by a hungry
contralto’s high note from a burnt out
doorway   licking her singed paw
curling around a familiar smell gone
silent       more human than animal
it bared its teeth when offered a bite of
strange fruit.

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