All posts tagged life

unwound

breaking open into a night which ticks silently by trying to figure why there is (there is what, is not the point) but just that there is and you can fill in the blank (but the typed keys wrote black but i erased that for in the blackness there is a blank that envelops us until we become so numb that we beg for there to be feeling). where was i  besides riding this wave of gone tide hoping to lampoon a whale to travel me to a land that holds an island where a native can teach me how to love in an unselfish way without the baggage of g(G)od or myths or power that pulls us in so many directions until we unravel into a heap that has so many frayed ends that there is no end to the number of ways one could become unraveled / could we not just start all over from zero. water freezes but this blood keeps the core beating to earth’s rhythm while contemplating today’s deaths/ why are there so many deaths in winter, is it not already a cold bleak time that buries us into a hole and we struggle under the dark sky trying to take hold, rooting but losing our grip on reality as daylight continues to waver on the side of the road. forty is looming and there is still no answer to the question posed a decade ago. what shall catapult me forward /what shall bring me backward besides rewinding this dead watch and watch it not move forward again. a white tattoo winks behind the cursor. curse her once more in this mirror but how can you be angry at one who was strong enough to survive. they did not survive and perhaps that is the lesson for today beyond the lesson learned in lecture that started these thoughts as the ravens flew down hanging midnight’s curtain starting at 5:15 on this midwestern landscape begging for Poe and rivers to open wide, swallow this boat that got lost since the moon felt it needed a night off after all. where is faith when you do not walk with confidence – he states that only the faith-filled walk with confidence but if that means his brand of belief than these shoes prefer a hunched path for at least when i get lectured about intellectual arrogance i understand that it no different from the one he flames from the pulpit when they place a former Jew on display who has renounced God for God and all the Christians clap/ no one sees the irony. someday we will all meet truth / until then continue to watch this watch for when it starts to work again we will know that we are finally at our destination ~

 

(this post is in memory of deaths revealed today : 1. AM text from coworker who read the obit of a patron who was dear to me (he had actually visited me a month ago to say good-bye, to tell me he was dying) 2. read that the young founder of Reddit was found dead (by hanging)  3. Neil Gaiman writes a moving post about the sudden death of his rescue dog, Cabal, who came to him during a lonely time of life which I so understand for my rescue dog was given to me after a prayer for help – it was perhaps the last time faith was in this room)

 

 

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by angela on 2013/01/13  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2013/01/13

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/unwound/

the chair was facing no where… just waiting.

guitar strings meld with a breeze that cries for thunder under a drape of southern sun. does this wind carry the cries of Isaac’s touchdown, surely it has swept into the echoes of yesteryear remnants. a land, a people, torn asunder only to revisit a nightmare that walks boldly anytime of day. 

a jet echoes our sky, the ground seems to sway under its lowing pressure. acoustic rhythm patterns a hard laborer’s hammer. he builds a dream of some other person’s castle.    

Is it construction, or destruction; we could argue, but there is no changing the West’s ways. We continue to get drunk on the oil of expansion, usurping all oil until we fight for that last dregs that shall shimmer in our enemies pupil, teasing us to try to capture its last weapon – mass destruction, we peril.

as the man lays dying, McCarthy describes the long look the weather-beaten horse gives from the shanty door. death torturing  the flea-bitten animal seems more mournful than the dark fate of one with four limbs – two to walk, two to destroy their kin with knife or gun. there will be blood – Cormac makes one cheer for the horse that races down the dusty arroyo, breaking free from the holds of its master’s whip and weathered boot. damn the man whose sole purpose is to hunt the scalps of humans. each animal that crawls from a wild moonlight breathes life, reveals a bit of humanity – isn’t it strange, that the animal is less beast than the animal not beast.

who in darkness shall spill blood out of an empty hunger? who under the shadows spills blood out of just emptiness? 

I took a random day off today…several hours of vacay are the one perk of living a boring, stable life in which one has held the same job for a decade. These thoughts were composed under a shade tree, a shady area that is a stones throw from where I reside. Pandora currently streams classical guitar (Christopher Parkening) while trucks next door honk with their filled dirt loads, signaling the next truck to pull into place. A constant chatter of hammers and nail guns compets with the random bird that doesn’t seek cover from the afternoon heat.

Heat rolls over the pup and me; flies dip for a taste of us; I taste the cooling coffee from an old glass jar. Cormac McCarthy  entertains with a brutal world of a wild west we’ve never experienced. He paints it heavily in blood and brilliance; not an ounce of compassion is spared except for an animal about to die. The 1800s were a beastly time – savagery on the plains and in the canyons, blood spilled was equal opportunity – be it white, black, red or brown,  down South, only the ghosts slept peacefully.

the chair was facing no where… just waiting.

Z and I went exploring – this is what we found after following a road that currently leads to no where. We rounded the bend to find this chair. What you cannot see is the nice neighborhood in rural suburbia that is on the other side. However, it seems more fantastical, romantic, not to reveal this bit of information. Instead, keep imagining a scrub of land where someone has decided to occupy time to just stare into where? Does he or she stare at the moon while whispering to the stars a lone desire. Perhaps the last  person on earth, too far from anywhere; too far to desire the last drop of oil or blood. ~

5 Comments
by angela on 2012/08/30  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2012/08/30

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/the-chair-was-facing-no-where-just-waiting/

head swimming, remembering: it landed, heads up

people, the fallen, the saved – we are all human – blood – bone – nerves that make our pain; yet that pain we experience is uniquely our own. each circuitry is woven into our being, our ticking is precisely timed to how we are wound. who wound me? what happens when the clock strikes that chime that is to send me beyond, into eternity, but this body fails to yield. is it one who opens ourselves to power of one. are we really condemned to hell if we capture our own castle, raising the bridge to a remote level, raising a red flag so that any passer of our humble reservoir knows entry is not for them, not for any child of the living or dead. how does evil walk among us and live if we are the fruit of love.

He casts his thick arm about my willowy neck until it breaks, a swollen fruit from the vine of goodness, overwhelmed and heavy with a sun spiked bounty, a juicy nectar of sugar and time. It can be sacrificed for a table, to fill each lead goblet with rose and blood. I shed this blood so that you may enter into a fantasy of head dreams, a talisman not of stone, a liquid born of synergy.

If he, however, took me early, before I was ready to be plucked from mother root, a baby of not yet birth shall taste bitter in your mouth causing each tongue to swell and recoil. spat out that sip of evil. His hands have spilled me all over the earth, leaving nothing, nothing but… but what couldn’t be a ticking, a mindless turning of wheels behind fog scape mirroring what used to be.

The screams build silently, holy; a chorus of Christmas Eve hymnals. Suddenly, Mary’s plight seems so real.

How we wish to cast away this planted memory that takes its claws into fallen ashes. The saved will murmur, she gets what she deserves. How dare she dangle, eve of a split moon, casting her bright light among the cloaked brethren. She was, I was, just twisting in an autumn wind, playing a coin toss in my head, wondering if it lands heads, then we shall be dead… wont we?

Little did I know the fever dream would awaken into a world pulsing with rot. Stench of his unwashed soul heavy upon his breath. There was not enough midnight left to blank out the white glow that spilled through the broken panes, past the white curtain now torn, dancing a dervish of pending disaster.

His breath upon my face, a mixture of acidity, blood and rye. He had tasted his own blade, licked it dry, its dull edge cutting a lie across his tongue in red.

Passing traffic was not loud enough. The street echoed no ones footsteps. The was no need for him to cover this O, this scream.

he yanked a life out of me. he forced a life into me.

Some say the seed should have never planted if the land was truly sacred, a pure valley laying for a golden kiss. Yet, it now thrives in this hollow cave that was once a body in musical harmony.

Down the hall, the only music that plays is the chime of Grandfather’s treasure. Its sounding recants the nightmare, every midnight; every half hour; how many ticks of breath have passed since that last night of innocence sleeping.

Tonight, the coin toss is upon me. It shall be no ones game of fate but mine. They’ve already buried my mind, this ticking being destroyed how many hours ago with written condemnation. This nation of forgivers, forgive me, as I’ve forgiven you. There cannot be two of me. There cannot be one if there is one in memory. It, too, must cease to exist.

I know not what the tomb shall offer for this transgression of mercy. A question, whispered with blue breath, I posit to you:

how can he convict a child who could find no ending to the horror composed as her original story…

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

stream of thought posting
sources credited, ‘inspirations’ :
No Country For Old Men
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Rep. Todd Akin in the news
Bible

3 Comments
by angela on 2012/08/27  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2012/08/27

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/head-swimming-remembering-it-landed-heads-up/

error message: game over

the light never stopped flashing even after she threw the phone across the bed, ripping the wires from the machine from the phone that kept repeating,

we’re sorry, you must hang up and dial that number again…

the voice trailed off with her scream that seemed to hold the air hostage. everything was going blue, even the curtains had paled eggshell to twilight, infused within a glimmer train of midnight mixed metaphor.

there were two different car crashes tonight; i heard one: the metal: the headlight: the horn that then kept time of the breaking and entering of our gaze as we tried to circle around the heaps and smoke. no one wants to be in an accident. he was shaking his head. she was in her bent, white car, shaking. there was too much visual damage to witness while navigating the glass. a horn kept blowing. my mind, kept going, it’s a warning of destruction. superstition bleeds into scenes you paint with a well-rounded brush.

one rolls along the moon. we should be going; we should be walking to the sound of silence,  this autumn-like night toying with our dry eyes, our parched mounds. tonight has conjured christmas past & christmas present; the future seems like eternity. we fear what we cannot see. i fear what i have seen, but don’t care to remember. a locked door doesn’t keep out a stranger who has found your hidden key.

secrets are often loud in a room of saints.

saint maybe; well, not me, but there was an interesting lecture tonight that made me think of intentional hypocrisy. where is it more rampant, in sermons of the pulpit, or the politico lectern. who was is that i just read regarding saints… Jean Genet, who believed that there was no great division between a saint and a criminal for both bothered society. what are we, really, but teetering on a game derived from a board composed of tectonic plates that continue to shift as each century mourns, never more.

did he ever imagine we’d last this long.

i had a game of monopoly go on for three days until boredom, not bankruptcy called its end. destruction was our silver lining. it never felt so good to close the board with the game pieces sliding off their prize facades, bright green and red buildings falling swiftly on blue shag floor. even the dice rolling snake eyes into the cardboard lid told us we were finished. we never played again that year, or ever, for the next summer we died as friends.

when kids bury their imagination, be wary, the land of impossibility was just stomped down. no one takes a leap of faith when they’ve figured out how to play with the devil.

next time you hear: would you like to play a game? 

take care, for even with hackers, there is a spoiler

(nobody wins)

2 Comments
by angela on 2012/08/05  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2012/08/05

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please stop funking the pathways

The dog seems to be growing – she is alice turning ten feet tall. Reality queues me to focus, watching her in deep sleep, the rise and fall of her chest, black coat co-mingling in shadows of this dim-lit room. The illusion continues, I cannot scientifically justify – her black legs seem to be growing against the cream-colored blanket.

Here I sit, toying with falsehoods, worrying the reality of truths. There seems to be a prism these days in which the light of what is, and what might be, cast the same radiance. Light tricks the optic nerve to interpret inception differently. Is it possible that CTs, MRIs or X-Rays are vast wastelands of false imaging. Are we not seeing what should be seen. A laying of hands can see, why cannot the multimillion dollar machine.

Most interesting to continue to ponder questions, but I’ve come to abhor the question mark. There is something too definitive about it. I’m certain it is just a stage, like when I insisted on using a lot of – - / or when i’d only write in lower case. i was trying (am) to find my voice.

Our voice is always within us. It is our eyes and ears that play the trick hand portending that there isn’t anything there when really quiet riots are going off inside the head. The riot continues as I continue imagining I’m outside when really I’m in. Actually, the foot rests on both sides of reality. Sensory motivation, a scent of pinion pine smoking** has me imaging a dirt road following the shadowed outline of the mountain scape behind an August moon. If there was a way to transport that memory into tonight’s ghost walking, I would honor her heartbeat.

The heart beats slowly. Where are we going. He spoke of a world that we couldn’t see. It was alarming. He couldn’t see anything in his dream. He accused us of turning off the lights. The room was flooded with diffused sun. We wait. We worry. He gets better. He declines. This is not a quality of life for anyone. Healing must begin.

Plant a dream within this pillow and lay your tears upon it to make it flourish. Flowers are beautiful until they die. Detritus takes hold if you don’t empty the oxygen-less water. I prefer to pull flush flowers before they retreat. A perfect striving has always strangled breathing. Never did I know how labored this type of living was until practicing yogic breathing. Hours a day are spent holding my breath.

I miss flowers. I miss the touch of a hand upon my shoulder, the crown of my head, the nape of my neck. Sometimes I forget that I’m alone. Sometimes I question if I’ve ever shared my mysteries. I worry this body is consuming this brain. If this posts makes no sense, no worries, it isn’t reader error, but circuitry breakdown.

Dear self ~ please stop funking the pathways, XO ~ me ~

**Lovely Pinion Pine incense from Light The Earth. Kim & John have the most wonderful store, which you can check out online. You know you are someplace special when stories spill out of people because the energy is just that good.

8 Comments
by angela on 2012/06/18  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2012/06/18

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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 ~ )

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by angela on 2012/05/31  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2012/05/31

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/dont-tame-the-wild-thang/

Sadness seems to travel in pairs

20120514-142346.jpg

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. ~

10 Comments
by angela on 2012/05/14  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2012/05/14

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/sadness-seems-to-travel-in-pairs/

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. ~

2 Comments
by angela on 2012/05/11  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2012/05/11

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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.

5 Comments
by angela on 2012/04/12  •  Permalink
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Posted by angela on 2012/04/12

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/a-blue-collar-girl-why-tool-belts-are-sexy/

it may be poetry/ it may be prose/ it is her/ it is me

Summer blew in soft and swift, never a moment too soon under school’s stifling four walls. Funny how now we notice a prairie wind blows; back then, it was never strong enough to lift sapling arms or spindly limbs, turning wildly round.
She laughed at my Wilder nature; that Easter I begged to be Nellie; she rolled each strand; come morning service, a halo of ringlets topped with a white satin bow had mother in embarrassed tears.
We had been quite a pair; heading to the five and dime, seeking
99 cent bins of orange/pink poly yarn. Nervousness got me when we’d leave; having to choose, a doll or a stuffed thing. Money seemed a luxury not for toys; she’d tell her later, “she got all red, not wanting it”. They whispered; questioning if a child’s mind should worry quite so much. Inheritance came in handfuls; her nervous laughter; fear in what came next.
So quiet as a little girl, disappearing for hours behind worn slipcovered chairs, playing dolls with makeshift yearbook walls; something about that back-cover colored paper seemed so lovely. She’d call out, “Angie, baby?” thinking I’d slipped away; quietly, I’d re-appear, knowing she startled easily. We’d go hang laundry with unforgiving wooden pins; and roll pie crusts, never caring if mine tore, or was thin.
Lost memories; yet she nods when I remind her about Fridays, a big plastic bowl of cast iron popped corn; or that time I thought death had come when the pink basin turned magenta. No one thought to warn me pickled beets were the enemy.
There was a quiet loveliness when we posed today. I showed her us, Nona just sighed; “I look old”. When I left, there was a dandelion bloom that needed to be pulled; I wonder if she’d still smile.

16 Comments
by angela on 2012/04/06  •  Permalink
Posted in life, poetry, writing
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Posted by angela on 2012/04/06

http://yellowhousecafe.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/it-may-be-poetry-it-may-be-prose-it-is-her-it-is-me/

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