a poem for two voices. maybe.

we wrote this yesterday morning, line by line and one plus one is two.  came to 8.   we played this:

a)                    Smooth jazz and serrated cutlery

b)                    Jagged wounds and swelling strings

a)                    Cross my mind with other things

b)                    And these things may not be denied

a)                     I’m tiptoeing through the flood:

b)                     Of ennui and disaster

a)                     And 40 days til noon

b)                     Is too long to wait to see your eyes.

 ***

oh morning man, you were a doozy!  and the coffee had just come. 

the surrealists had so much right, and i will, little poem, to play with you some more--you have great promise, to amuse-moi,  at the least.  

 

i like bukowski.

and as i was drinking my first cup of coffee this morning, i had a great conversation which reminded me to go read more bukowski. ( i would be remiss if i failed to mention that i was told few women like the man, because of his perceived misogyny.)  and as the conversations with this person tend to end, so ended today's:  i began to think about new stuff.  

which i like, a lot.  

this time i was thinking:  can my identification as a feminist, and my being completely turned on by bukowski's writing be in agreement, when he is largely viewed as, with great dedication and ferocious glee, spitting routinely into Eye of Woman?

well, to start with, in considering this question, i have to underscore to myself that in fact i am not a slave to agreement--- am not overly concerned with or expectant of consistency, since that just seems stupid--we are complex beings, after all, why not roll with it.  also, and along that line, (so, you know, somewhat consistently...), i am not particularly intimidated by the act of dissent--even within my clan--and for another, i am greedy and reserve for myself the right to determine what i like and eventually, maybe even to understand why.  but let's look a wee bit deeper into the bukowski attraction/his bukowski magnetism. 

i love bukowski because he spoke of the it of it, shamelessly, fearlessly, and (his) truly.  these are things i admire.  i think he spoke of love and pretty things with equal bluntness and appreciation--it wasn't that his slant was on the ugly, vulgar or savage nature of things only--or even that he was vulgar and savage only--it's that he took the noose and tried it on, and then stared right at a person and described the sensation.  and maybe with equal veracity of style he would stare right at a person and describe why he didn't kick the chair out from under himself.  it's the staring right a a person and saying it that people dislike.  i do like.   just tell me how it is, tell me what you really think.  then we're in the clear.  

so i was looking at some of his letters, and look:  this is why i like bukowski.   the motherfucker sings, is why.  

==

To William Packard, Editor of New York Quarterly

4/17/92 12:15 AM Hello Wm Packard:
Huh. Listen, I know that you can never print all the accepted poems on your backlog. First, it would freak all the good souls of the universe. And, second, there are other writers. Huh.
Yet, I can't resist, in spite of knowing all this, sending you a shit-balloon poem that might explode into the multi-faced reign of ultimate godliness. Huh. Huh, huh?
Still, some concern on "dumb night", for such a poem is considered anti-social enlightenment . . . such as a drunk vapid woman? Impossible and unfair. There are no longer any drunken sluts. There are only stupid, mean white men. There are no vicious homosexuals or lesbians or bisexuals. And there are no longer any stupid, mean black men. Although there might be some stupid, mean yellow men or brown men, depending upon the political climate and the local of the moment. Each only deserves attack and derision in direct relationship to any force they might apply to our survival. Most successful commercial writers know what to attack and when. And even the Artsy-Fartsies who are touched upon with the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, they too are screened for any dangerous signals of individuality. But how about . . . ? you say. How about them? They too sucked to the signal of the moment, the edict, the on-coming demand of thought control. They were only the forerunners of the obvious.
But getting back to small matters, it has always been curious to me that my writing has been attacked for portraying others as I have seen them, but my writing has never been criticized when I ended up as the jacknape. This could be art, they say, he is calling himself a fucking fool. They like that, it takes the heat off of their frightened asses.
We are living in a terrible climate now. Everybody is waiting to be insulted. I think that I believe more than almost anybody in the right to be whatever you want to be. In fact, I have probably worked more directly from that premise than most and have en ded up in any number of hells for doing so. But I did this from a singular stance, most alone, and not buddied up by a jolly group in safe chorus.
So often now, it is not so much a group demanding their rights as it is a group wanting more than their rights, it is almost a tribal on-surging, subconsciously or perhaps even consciously wanting to be top dog and screw all else. Also, there are those within each group who are simply psychotics who want to be seen and heard in parades or any other damned place or time.
As a writer, one must write what one sees and feels regardless of the consequences. In fact, the more the consequences the more one is goaded into going for it. Some call it madness, I call it near-truth. You know, there is nothing more entertaining, funnier than near-truth because you see it, read it so seldom. It hits you with a refreshing blast, it runs up the arms, into the head, it gets giddy, god damn, god damn, so rare, so lovely. I saw some of it in Celine, in Dostoevsky, in Hamsun, I started laughing as I read them, it was such a joy
In our age, the only safe target for the writer is the white heterosexual male. You can make him a murderer, a child-rapist, a motherfucker. Nobody protests. Not even the white heterosexual male. He's used to it. Also, things like "White men can't dance," "White men can't jump," "White men have no sense of rhythm", etc.. What is happening here might be a near-truth, still it is mostly mouthed by white women and promoted by white men in the media. Am I racist? Tell me, how many non-whites have you had in your home or in your room lately?
Well, we go on and on. Probably a certain psychosis working here. I hope so. It seems to give one an edge in the working place. Still the poem "dumb night' got me to thinking about this and about the reaction you'd get if you published it. Yet, many of us have had nights like this one. It's just a place within a place, something that explodes into the air, and for all its grossness there is a certain demented glamour of two people trapped together in a world that has never worked for them and never will. There is no insult to man or woman intended but if there is some insult there, then fine, it belongs.
Well, I'm drinking, have been or wouldn't have gone on so long. Basically, only want to say that at this time it is tough for the writer who wants to put it down as it is, or was. The 90's have far more strictures than the 50's ever had. We've gone back, not so much in how we think but in what we can say. Each Age has borne its own contriticions [?contradictions] but the end of the 20th century is a particularly sad one. We've lost our guts, our gamble, our heart. Listen, believe me, when we say it and say it true, the women will love it, the blacks, the browns, the yellows, the greens, the reds and the purples will love it, and the homosexuals and the lesbians and all the in between will love it. Let's not crap ourselves, we are different but we are one. We bring death to each other and death brings it to us. Did you ever see that flattened cat on the freeway as you drove by at 70 m.p.h.? That's us, baby. And I scream to the skies that there should be no way, no word, no limit. Just a roll of the dice, the tilting of the dark white light and the ability to laugh, a few times, at what has trapped us like this.

Buk

---

[This letter is included in the third volume of the letters of Charles Bukowski, edited by Seamus Cooney, from Black Sparrow Press, 1999.]

schadenfreude

schadenfreude pie, yes
schadenfreude pie.
i would so enjoy a slender slice
if someone would just die.

scadenfreude pie. yes.
schadenfreude pie. 
i want to whip up,  want to smile
in someone's tear-filled eye.

that murky juice delicious "why?"
slides sticky sweet goodbye
across my tongue and down my throat
oh! schadenfreude pie!  

the pulse

in august my fingers traced your wrist and
awakened globe and glow
crouching copper
crouching flame.

recalling:

that horizon was
a sunspill veil over hills
of naked plain.  hips and waists
pale   gold spun
  
and rolling.
rolling land and rolling.  and
it was heats crested
under cover of fire opal and flashing light.

under coral breeze.
that scape was sunset moonrise and
now you.  curving calves and shoulders
back alive and open space and

in august we were close.
then dusk.     trace us and
that wheat-scented sky

pretty words of trauma

I am divorcing right now.  Soon I will be a divorcee.  Being a word freak, I do think the word divorcee is pretty, kind of like the word nee, but the fact is, being one or the other isn't exotic.  It is like saying you lived through being run over by a semi-truck and are prettier and healthier for it.  It really can't be polished up.  So lately the writing I do does not often find it's way to this place, and when it does, it isn't overtly about "me":  I don't usually post about divorce, per se.  Or parenting, really.  Or deciding to live and then living in a way that is speakable, say-it-to-their-faceable, conscious (as conscious as we can be, we humans with our tricky slippery brains).  But lately the lawn has grown thick with weeds, and the daisies are few and wilting, and if I don't purge the soil of these unwanted things their presence may calcify and then I fear no hammock or trellis or other small edens can possibly arrive, because I will have dry dirt with only the hardiest of invasives thriving.  A place where nutrients and lush can't be, a place hard-packed.  Everything bad will flow off, and too everything good that I want to absorb, and relish.  And I don't want that.

So during the long and in my case hideous process of divorce I have discovered a few things about myself, some of which have been surprising and not in a good way, and other things have been discovered about others, sometimes too surprising, and not in a good way.  There have been realizations about friends and family and estranged partners, and so on and so forth (it is a long process), but the thing that has come clear throughout all this and that I wish to write about today is what I have discovered about having small people live with you who originally came from you, but aren't you, and what it means to parent through.

I've always thought about parenting.  There were never assumptions on my part that I would either be married or have children.  In fact, for the majority of my life I didn't think I would ever do either.  And then I changed my mind--but it wasn't without deliberation.  I had thought about it.  For myself, I can't imagine not thinking about it.  It is a funny thing to believe in self-determination:  is it a deceit?  Is it smoke and mirrors to believe that we have full power over ourselves if we are active in making choices, given we can never really calculate ahead of time or understand deeply after the fact the meaning of the choices others are making, and that will influence us?  Or if we wish to go further-meta, we must see that we cannot really calculate ahead of time or understand deeply the meaning of the choices we ourselves are making, or the nature of our own motivation.  At what point are we in fact simply reacting?  Is this a different conversation?  Is this the same conversation?

But I remember asking friends at some gathering or another how their feminism informed their parenting, and being met with universally blank stares.  I didn't know at the time--or even now--if members of the group were stunned (but it did look like it and responses did not come forth, even eventually, as the conversation shifted almost instantly--but to me not imperceptibly--to potty training or snack-time or the woes of napless days) and if they were, was it more by my assumption that they were feminists, or by my assumption that their parenting was informed by anything at all?  It was a disappointing and obviously unforgettable non-conversation, for me.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  It was 11 years ago. I knew I did not want to just bounce along, I wanted to steer my own craft, in parenting, as much as could be done.  I felt alone in this desire for determination.

So one thing we do not get to predict as we are getting married and having babies is how exactly it will all unfold with all the new x-factors, and how we will manage to parent through it all--even when it is done/over/finito.  What is correct?  What is traumatizing?  It isn't like I can turn to my partner--though perhaps some can--to agree on a way we feel is best, as a "we", because in fact we never did have that joint we-platform from which to spring.  But, conveniently since we can't predict everything, and in fact as it turns out, reacting in this situation and then self-reflecting can be very informative.  The parallel is of the mother who lifts the truck off her baby, or pulls the buggy off the tracks only seconds before the train screams past, or whatever it was--and then thinks.  That superhuman power that comes to us in defense of our children (a daisy, by the way) first, followed by thought, comes in to full play during a divorce, and is manifested in my case at least partially by having to protect my children by protecting myself.  To protect oneself in this circumstance means to understand and be able to tell oneself.  This may not make sense.  But it does.

There is an ongoing discussion, clearly, in a custody battle, about parenting (which turns out to be an umbrella term for every breath any person in the family dares in- or ex-hale---it's a catch-all.  Really.)  If there is a philosophy buried somewhere deep inside a parent, it will come out.  If there is anything informing the decisions that a parent is making at any time of day or night ("...and why did you let your children walk home from school?),  that informing thing will be demanded by others and will be scratched from the subterranean and articulated by oneself, and made official and put down on the record and used forevermore against (or for) one.  It is a fraught time.

So the other day I cried in front of my children.  And I was chastised for this doing.  At which point, being me, I felt the need to examine my behavior and figure out if I had in fact done wrong.  (It's possible.)  Now, going back to the previous paragraph wherein I say that we cannot honestly understand our motives, as human beings, we are going to skip that part for now and just stipulate that examination is going to help as much as it possibly can, and that that help may be somewhat limited.  But it's all we've got.

There is the school of thought on the matter of emoting negatively in front of children which says it scares them, it makes them feel they have no protector, it causes them to feel sympathy or the need to take care of the care-giver who is upset and/or crying, it is not the children's place to see a parent feeling vulnerable, as it exacerbates their own natural sense of vulnerability.  It places the children in the middle of what they perceive to be "sides".  Arguing in front of children is seen as similarly irresponsible--it is frightening, exposes them to ugly, teaches poor conflict resolution (if the conflicts in the argument are being resolved poorly, then I agree), etc. 

And I am of a different bent altogether.  While I do not choose for my children to see as much ugly as there is in this world, also I do not believe that all conflict or sadness or difficulties that adults (or children) experience is unhealthy to witness, and in fact, that the lack of witnessing these parts of reality is potentially very, very harmful.  What kid needs to grow up thinking every garden has daisies, and that they just grow that way, without any struggle?  A kid who grows up that way grows up delusional.  It seems to me that raising a delusional kid is the worst wrongdoing of all.

So I was accused of damaging behavior, and had to think about it.  I chose not to focus on the evolutionary purposes of crying, and to focus instead on this tiny thing:  at that time, I was So Sad.  I was profoundly, unspeakably, gut-twistingly sad.  and: What then?   If it were that I could calmly think at that moment (which I argue that I could not), and decide, "hm...how shall I react to this new kick-in-the-gut?"...perhaps I could have chosen to leave the house, leave the room, suck it up.   I think I would have reasoned "to be", but the truth is I did not reason, I just was. That is the verb.  To be.  Not "to do".  To be.  The difference between "to be" and "to do" has become distorted,  in English, which is too bad on many levels, and right now I want to lodge my complaint of that fact and clarify that "to be" is the verb I choose for describing myself the other night in that situation.  That's the difference between some and some others--there are be-ers and do-ers.  I'm a be-er.  And so the question flips to what we show our children of ourselves.  Some would say I was selfish, and should have thought of the children at that moment.  At some level maybe I did, but really, I am a be-er. 

And I think that is OK.  Even in retrospect and even with reasoning.   In this situation we are talking about my having been sad, and what I did with it.  It may be my left brain speaking, but here is what I have come up with:

That I cried in front of the children was not cruel, was not a mistake, and was not even regrettable.  I was showing "human" during a shitty piece of what it is like to be human.  A few moments later I was not crying.  And the next day I was not crying, and then was showing another part of "human".   We cry.  We have shitty moments.  We have euphoric moments.  Unless we are robots, it is ok to feel, and then what do we do with it?  Happy or sad, we call on friends.  We call on family.  And guess what?  They are there for us.  We ask for help where we can get help.  And help is there, we do get help.  We are not alone.  We are disconsolate for awhile and then consolation comes:  we accept hugs from our children and we tell them yes, we are sad, but it is just a moment, it will pass, and all will be OK.  We remind our children that everyone feels, and this includes feeling good and bad.  We tell them that as the good passes, so does the bad, and it all comes around again.  Emoting is not impugning, and that night it was certainly not planned, certainly was genuine, and was not placing anyone anywhere except smack in the middle of living. 

Absolute Truth:  My children are compassionate people, with universally high emotional intelligence.  I do my very best and am vigilant about teaching them that as they are not responsible for the moods or happiness of other people, others are not responsible for their happiness or moods--and I do this as a way to scaffold their entry into a world which will push things upon them and add emotional pressure and will be ruthless to their individual wellbeing.  I do this so that they do not look at the face of someone who is important to them and see disappointment when they express their preferences, and have that disappointment control them.  I do this so that when they are asked to do something they do not wish to do, they can refrain and feel good about themselves.  I do this so that they do not always feel that their value comes from someone else saying that they have value.  They must learn where their skin ends and that of others begins.  (Maybe I should draw them a vividly colored Venn.) They must. 

And so I cried and they saw sadness and because they are intuitive, but also because they are children, they do worry.  They are children.  They have no idea what is going on.  They have questions.  They have desires.  They want this to be over with.  It is taking forever.  It is the proverbial car ride with no end in sight.  They worry about each other, themselves, us, the dog, everything.  Nothing will stop that except answers, and an end to this.  My laughter does not cause them to feel hilarity, and nor should my crying cause them to worry about me.  But I do know it is a process. 

Absolute Truth:  They see me picking myself up off the ground and they see me get knocked down again.  They see me get up again.  They see me getting up again--this should cause, and eventually will cause--them to worry less, and to see that human beings--themselves--are resilient, and strong, and dignified.  I will never cause my children harm knowingly, and think about it a lot.  For all the good that does.  But as well, I cannot and will not and would not put them in cotton batting, in order to remove that one central lesson that we each need to learn--!!Get Back Up!!  !!Get Up Again!!-- in order to bleach and pad their lives today.

But our children--They see us.  They hear us.  They watch us.  None of us need interpretation or amplification of our qualities to be seen by these small people.  The are sentient and intelligent and discerning and do in fact have opinions and souls of their own, they are in fact people of their own, they make decisions and choices on their own, and they are not just clay to be molded or paper to be written upon.  This viewpoint is fundamentally different from that of others, I know--to me this instance of my crying having supposedly directly traumatized the children illustrates a quite limited understanding of the personhood of children.  But this point goes back to self-determination and will be lost on those who see themselves as at the mercy of the elements around:  as they see themselves the result of everything and everyone else, so do they see their children.

And I don't buy it.   We have to be ourselves as much as we can, and live in a way in which we can be OK with that.  Because it is all OK.

p.s. and also i miss you

i want you to come to me and press against my ceiling and i want to press against yours and i want your mouth on me and exploring and finding me and filling me in all the hollows and all the gaps and wants and your hands follow behind and taking up all my spaces and i want you hungry and i want you demanding and i want you accepting and i want you soft.  i want to feel your edges and the between velvet and rigid and the straight lines and the curves, and i want to cup you and taste you and i want you to insist.  and i want you to take and i want to hear you breathe and feel you expand and retract and i want to know your eyelids and your teeth with my tongue and i want your droplets one two three on me from above and i want to bury myself in your icewater hair and to twist our hands together in a body kiss and i want your massive and i want your thighs on mine and want you slow and kind.  and i want to run myself over the map of you and then tangle in your fine and tangle in the body of your mind and i want to find your empty and i want you to find my empty and i want us to go away.  i want you next to me.  in me. on me. i want to go places with you i have never been and i want you to go places with me you have never been and i want your wet heat and your breeze.  i want your imagination and your wonder and your skin against mine and you i want you to see my desire for you and my plain plaintive want of you.  i want you to come to me. soon.  again.  and soon.

i want this every day and i want this today.





-----

published in Poetry Quarterly Winter/Summer Tricky Edition, 2012

for stardust and rust, excerpted from

 The Drink: Your Winter into Spring transitional cocktail

• 
  

.
By Dappered Drinks Correspondent and Official Bartender Michael Bowers


...But what to drink as the weather turns again to tolerable?  50 degrees and drizzling isn’t weather for a dry gin martini, nor does it require the same fortifications as 10 degrees and snowing.  During the months on either side of winter, I often find myself still drinking cocktails based on brown, brooding spirits, but mixed with lighter accompaniments.  My favorite example is the Brooklyn...  Light, herbal and a little bit floral, it’s the ideal cocktail for March—equal parts lion and lamb.

Brooklyn

• 2 oz.  Rye Whiskey (preferably 100 proof)
• 1 oz.  Dry vermouth
• .25 oz  Luxardo Maraschino
• .25 oz  Amer Picon (unless you live in France, you’ll have to sub Torani Amer or make your own)

Stir over ice for 45 seconds.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish a real preserved cherry.  As I’ve noted before, good, fresh vermouth is essential.

======

i don't know.  just for fun.  yesterday was in the high 70's, today we have a freeze warning.  at least i'd like some lion and lamb in my pretty glass, please.  please?

anyway & though

anyway.

though


i speak of our wine

and you speak of the characteristics of the soil and the weather that year, the variety of grapes,  the mood of the pickers and the stainless steel or the oak, the cellaring conditions and the cork, the number of bottles produced in this lot, the reputation of the vintner and the price to personal taste ratio, and how long this particular bottle had to breathe upon our counter and the temperature at pouring and the shape of the glass and the food with which it was served and the relationship between the people drinking 

and i speak of our love.

you speak of biological drive, the urge to one another and the evolutionary imperative for progeny, and of cultures which name this magnetism emotionally, weakly, and the blur between attraction and affection and the relevance thereof, and of complex variations within human experience, of liking and fondness, and associations--positive and negative, some of which do not conflict much with the commonly understood notion of "love", and of risk:  the repercussion of the intended and unintended connotations of this word in use.  


anyway.  and

though.

to be. march 19, 2012

brush me breeze and hyacinth,
scent me spring and rye,
cherry blossom tangerine,
seersucker glide.  paint me.

brush me buds and genuflect,
scent me charmed goodbye,
candyapple vinyl spin,
copper cabled wire.  paint me.

brush me boozy bossa nova
paint me here on fire.  brush me.

blue electric.  and gardens.

Note to self: giving thanks, even anonymously, makes a difference.

----------

... What I found on your blog resonated very deeply with me so I assume that was the reason I found myself pulled in that direction. Your open letter might as well have been written by me or about me- mother of two children with a marriage full of cracks that neither of us can seem to pull the plug on or breathe life back into. Your writing is beautiful, poetic, tragic, and full of life. Thank you for touching this life this morning.


----------


months of writing on scraps of paper, my hands, calling my answering machine with words, creating in my head then losing it again as the sun rises or the child cries or a phone call makes me lurch.  nothing coming but scraps, dirty hands, full mailbox, frustration, and lurching.  and then this arrived for me, this note above, and something inside me broke.  and it helps.


thank you, you you who wrote me that note above.  i hope you read this, back at you.

contradiction

love is love and
lover is lover.
and you wake in some other, your bed.

i say:  good morning, sunshine
to the light of a certain star.

and think of sighs, poems
of breakbone fever, of cold.
you found shelley's "good-night" silly. 

alone at dawn and
i bid some beam good morning.
silence softly returns.  how can it be?   

untitled.

in draperies of saudades
drawn. 

mirage

rawhide and barb wire
tumbleweed ride.
creosote, sagebrush.
red hawk cries

so long as the sun is
keep on

through desert and
rattlesnake.  there is
wet tar shine.

rare things, the finest things

in a gravel lot at a               
                    jukebox joint the

oysters are crisp. and we                     
                    sip their flow

white wine and white wine and we                  
                     tip our cups

and crab leg snow.    the                   
                     butter runs down our fingers.   onto our tongues.

my bared foot is on your thigh and
                     your thumb strokes my sole. and

the hollow of your neck holds the perfume 
                     of rosewood and vintage leather.  clean laundry.

quarters are stocked and piled and                
                      is this the song

on metal chairs pulled closer    we vibrate.    cecelia and                              
                       making love...    and you purr.    and i purr. 

there is that purring.
 
later we will exit this                 
                      and slip back into our nights.   


******

so, sometimes, if i'm really seeing, i taste and smell and feel and hear that the moments are nothing less than a song.  and sometimes, i know that what that song is, is all of it.  everything important is right there.    

yes

you brought me to your hothouse
with walls of glass       without a lid
and i grew up again
to opened.
aloud and savored bliss
 
you sun
shone citrus on me      
yes pamplemousse   yes
jaune citron.  i yes.

shine on.  i'm climbing this stem thorn by thorn.

these are the daisies and defeat wrestling on my front lawn weedpatch

my angel baby,

when you were born it was with those long papery impossible to cut sharp dangerous infection carrying cornea scratching fingernails.  i was supposed to use scissors or my teeth to trim them, according to baby books, but my teeth didn't work and i was afraid i would just tear into the quick and since i've never chewed my nails i really didn't get how that whole thing worked and i didn't know how to use scissors to trim nails either.  despite the books i used the same nail trimmers that i use on my hands, because the little tiny ones in the drug store are so small that i couldn't control them well, and didn't want to slip, and hurt you.  so in the end, the first time i cut your nails i also cut your finger and you screamed bloody murder and we both cried.  i immediately began to breast feed you, and you settled in with hics and smuffled sobs, but i couldn't forgive myself, so i sat in the rocker he gave us, and called grandpa.  i was 32 years old and called my dad and sobbed to him the story of my first official maternal bad deed.  i wailed that i had betrayed your trust.

i was so young, angel baby.

grandpa did not laugh.  to his credit.  he just said it would not be the last time i would try my best and betray your trust.  this caused me to stop crying, because it made me think.  you are 11 now, and i'm still thinking about what grandpa said.  is this my last contrary act toward grandpa, the process of proving him wrong, or is this thinking just my ongoing response to his statement, a way to live other than how he told me it just will be?  

i say and try to show, all the time:  i do not to lie to you.  and i will always be with you, behind you, and for you.  those are my promises-- and that i will always love you.  those are all i have, all i will offer in the way of promises, and you can trust me with all of you. 


-----

in a different city at least a half an hour away, and at the time of the earthquake, you were home alone with the others while your dad and i were at a therapist's having a non-healing and not-even-palliative session.  i sat on that plaid couch and could feel my ribs being sawed separate, and everything soft inside me being bruised.  ransacked.  i heard the rumble first, and thought it was a semi truck driving by, but then i felt the vibration along with the roar, coming from below me.  it felt like the earth was vomiting and i knew immediately that it was the natural outcome of my state--my vibe caused the earth to quiver.  when the bookshelves started essing i saw it was not my rage.  not unrelievedly,  we realized it was an earthquake.

i had let my cell phone battery run out, and the land lines where i was didn't work now.  i was glad you wouldn't know that i had let my battery run out--if the land lines were out at home there was no way for me to reach you even with a charged cell.  i was already feeling the guilty mother thing, and didn't want you to see my shame.  but, regardless of reason or fault,  i couldn't reach you.  i just hoped that the quaking hadn't reached home.  i just hoped you were all still playing wii dance, and continued with the hopeless task at hand.  sitting far apart, and unable to reach one another, in our family of 5, our natural disasters that day were all distinct.  each of us had our own reality shift, and in some ways the only thing in common was the time and day.  in other ways, the altering was universal. 

at home you felt the shaking and all our paintings slid.  books fell and glasses skittered.  you were frightened.  you were calm.  you took the younger children and the puppy outside and to a neighbor's.  they had you all in and gave you snacks that you are not allowed to eat, and hung out with you until i arrived home.  telling me about it the next day, you told me how their attic was crammed full with christmas decorations, and i interrupted--you were in their attic?!!  and you looked at me with eyes bored, annoyed, and filled with my idiocy, and said:  of course!  we don't have an attic so i had to go into theirs.  i had to discover it, and when i asked they said i could.  there was this string hanging down, and i just...

you are so young, my angel baby. 

that was ago, and today i'm thinking of tomorrows, and how i am going to talk with you all about what is coming.  i'll be the one telling you.  i have conversations in my head and i try to anticipate how you will each be, since i've known you so long.  you, angel baby, will be stoic, and logical.  and afraid.  but you never back down in the face of afraid, and so i will have to be vigilant in my attention to your need, as it slivers forth.  cookie face will be sad that what he knows is changing, and my moon faced girl will cry, and will further develop her aversion to and mistrust of marriage.   i try to key out exactly how i can give you each, during those moments, a feeling of still being secure, and what i can say to let you know--you must know--that you are secure still, i will always be here for you, behind you, and with you.

but i think of the earthquake day.  i think of all that you and i discovered.  about attics and promises and security and strength and

angel baby:  i have tried so hard to prove him wrong on this one.


*****

october 8 is my dad's birthday, but he is long gone and so celebrating with him doesn't happen so much as celebrating him in my mind does.  our relationship was quite tempestuous, with dramatic ups and downs, a lot of downs, and they seem to be on my mind a lot.  anyway, but also especially since i have become a parent--a flawed, trying, failing and succeeding not super- not shitty- but rather medium mom.   i seem to react to him differently now, and yet, i still seem to react to him in the same way, as well.  now a mother, always a daughter.  

an open letter to readers in the distant future.

2011


hello future reader: 


maybe your life is centuries after the end of mine, and i wonder about you.  right now, in 2011, parts of humanity see the human race (as we know it) as the product of evolution and luck--and there are many who deny that, and believe in creationism (look it up—it’s a big deal here, now).  that is not why i'm writing, though i do find it moving:  understanding we are just the lucky ones--the ones that survived.


there are many things you must wonder about us, absent any direct instruction and relying upon your own interpretation of those traces of us that you wind up finding.  so i want to tell you one specific thing about us.  but first:  do you have love?  it doesn’t seem particularly relevant, love, in terms of reproduction and perpetuation of the species—maybe by the time you are reading this, love will have been selected against altogether… . do you know romeo and juliet? (look it up—it’s a good one).  basically, (spoiler alert) familial and romantic love can, tragically, lead to death—so you know, it could happen that over hundreds, thousands, millions (?) of years, love will have been selected against.  by the time you are reading this, perhaps a biological weakness has died out, a behavior that jeopardizes survival of the species has become unviable and vanishes: and so your lovelessness is an adaptation resulting from selective pressure and competition.  anyway, maybe it has, and maybe it hasn’t occurred, but (perhaps hypothetically):  do you know what it is like to lose love?  i'm going to give you some direct instruction on that, because it is very important.


i am sure you must have found documentation of the kinds of love we feel now, in all of their variety.  people are becoming more comfortable discussing the ins and outs of all kinds of loving, which is a step forward for us--at least in my opinion.  and if you have love, you probably have love falling apart, but you may crumble in entirely different ways than we do now--and if you don't have love, then how can you know the crumble at all? let's explore the crumbling.


so this is a story of love falling apart in a very 2011-human way.  it may or may not be fiction (do you know fiction?).  it is written for historical documentation, and whether it is ultimately fiction or not is irrelevant—this is a good description of heartbreak in many--but not all--parts of the world these days.


assuming you do not have love, i’ll tell you:  love starts out like a baby being born.  (i don't know if you know what being born is, or how you reproduce, and if i start getting all side tracked with explaining all the back story of this it'll take me forever, so forgive me, please.) the moment the baby begins living outside the womb, the reality is that this freshly baked newborn is drawing closer to death.  that is how love is--it's the birth of a new being that has a life and a lifetime of its own, and the joy and elation and exhaustion and overemotion of the two beings who produced this bundle of joy simply spill out at first, and then slowly settle down.  between the two lovers there is still much happiness as their love-baby grows and matures, and there is little disruption in that happiness.  and then one day, one of the two people in the original pair comes home from work and swipes his finger over the towel bar and announces that the other one missed a spot while cleaning.  and there we see it:  the aging of the love.  the first tiny teeny little crazing has happened--very faint, very trivial, but there. 


and, if the two are still together after that little event, there is more happiness and more crazing:  between the lovers, the lacks are spotlighted:  one is a poor role model for the children, one is falling down on “the job”, and the insults and the coldness grow and then one day, one finds the diary of the other and reads it,  and the aging turns in to a physically disabling illness, and professional help is sought.  and the treatment sessions occur and occur and occur but are, it seems, powerless against the dis-ease that has settled in the bones of that fragile body of love.


and then one october day, during a particularly bad marital counseling session, one bemoans a lack of respect and the other one yells that he is doing all the heavy lifting and she is not carrying her weight in their common daily life.  and he is sick of her excuses.  and he strides from their session early, slamming the door.  

now, at this moment:  their body of love slips into a coma. 

(do you know coma?  it is the state of being there, but not living.  existing.  and with a coma, eventually there will have to be a decision made:  to pull the plug, or to keep hoping and waiting to get the body to come back to life.)


so the love is in a coma.  and on this very day, after so many years of nurturing that body, trying to feed it and attend to it and keep it healthy, on this day she leaves the therapist's office in a state of shock, because she had done everything that she could and had given her best to make something strong, and after all this lifetime of that, she saw that body lying there anyway, and saw that she had never been enough.  but she was yet not willing to pull the plug on that thing she had helped create.  it was too soon.  instead, on the drive home, she unbuckles her seat belt, presses the accelerator, and points the car straight at the concrete wall made by the freeway overpass above her.   then she pulls herself back on track, after an image of her kids flits through her head.


it turns out she herself isn't hospitalized, though her doctor wants her to be.  she insists:  she can't be:  there are kids to consider and other important things, and so with two medications (big for remediation of all sorts of things, in 2011), and in two months she drags herself through two major holidays, four birthdays and the requisite parties--that she plans and executes, two visits from out of town family (hers, then his), and fills the roles of santa and new years eve festivity planner.


and no one around her knows that she is a shell.  everyone is happy and well fed and entertained and no one even notices her absence.  (this is significant.) she slips away for naps a lot, and she doesn't laugh ever during this time, but she holds it all together superficially, and no one sees the difference (this is significant.)   and then in the first days of january, after all of the important things have taken place, she collapses.  eventually in february she gets to her knees again.


and this is when she admits:  it will be this relationship, or it will be me.  and she realizes: it isn't going to be me.  

so, she has decided, and the plug is pulled.  the love-child that had fallen to coma is now, and at what appears to be by her own hand, just a corpse. it doesn't make it easier for her that she made the call.  in this case the line between life and death was a formality.  it was an announcement. 


so, can you see the lifespan of love?  its growing up is a slow process, with fits and spurts of polish and ragged edges, just like the life of a person now is.  and its end is as the death of a treasured person is, viewed today, as well: first denied and then wished and worked against, and then sudden.  and irrevocable.


and so you see how it worked way way back in time, for your human ancestors.  not always, of course, but in some cases it was definitely like this.  although in this story the she pulled the plug, in some cases the he will have, and in some situations both parties just wander away from their love and it withers and neither care.  today there are as many forms of betrayal and endings are there are loves and beginnings, it's true. some love-bodies last entire lifetimes, until the pair die a week apart, because the one left behind can't live on without his or her sweetie pie (not a food in this case, but rather a 21st century term of endearment).  but i can vouch, personally promise you, that sometimes it was exactly like this.


what are they like for you, the stages of life for the bodies of love? at all similar?  (i am really not at all sure that love hasn't been selected against.)

i’m sorry:  it turns out that this is not a description of the particular crumbling that can be experienced in the loss of love in the year 2011, of the grinding of the spirit that occurs as love ages, and the pulverization of the spirit that happens when it dies.  rats.


but really, future reader, i am too sad to describe that, now.  you'll have to find a different artifact.

sidewalk mary/or: the american dream

humbly, i am teaching my children that sidewalk mary is a person
with a whole life, a whole story, and the story is important,
and because she is sitting on the sidewalk every day in
sticky heat or dripping sky,  car exhaust and
dust

doesn't mean she is insane.  it means she is dusty. 
hot.  sticky.
that she has a moustache does not mean
she is insane.  or unclean.  or a man.
that she is surrounded
by teddy bears and is always
rocking one on her shoulder, patting and

rocking to    rocking fro
rocking to    rocking fro

means she is rocking her bear, and maybe she loves it.  she was a child once
just like they are and they love their stuffed bears too, right? 
who can't sleep without doggie?  maybe she has no one else to love.  we
talk.  we explore. 

and maybe we could take her
a root beer, on a hot day
or a cocoa, on a cold day
and take her a new teddy. 

let her know we see her.  that she is. 

at first they think i am maybe making valid points but still
--cynics the bunch of them--
who but the insane wear a moustache when they are a woman,
or sit on the sidewalk every day? 

but my children are learning compassion, and relativism. 
that we all do not live the same way.  they have come to think this
teddy and drink idea is a good one.  they wonder where sidewalk mary is
when we drive by and the corner is unoccupied.
what about taking a few of the cookies grandma sent us?  let's sit with her, they
say.  tomorrow, i say.  i'm happy they have good will.  they are generous with
their love. 

but i am afraid that when we sit by her, she will pull a knife on us.
this is the part i do not tell my children.

finishing up

i have just finished a piece begun ago, dated september 24.  check it out...is it ginsbergish?  what was the essence of the beat movement anyway?  --to stick to rules and patterns?  i think not.  so fuck it.
this one is me-ish.

what a learning process.

do not confuse them (sex and love)

this,  fadeless.

today i missed your hands.

and...about honest writing...

In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.

                                                                                       ---John Steinbeck in a 1938 journal entry

end beginning middle end beginning... (after ginsberg)

in the end:
with raindrop style we shattered stone                   

the cankered guts   the brittle bone

of us whelmed.  gush    unclothed     unknown

in the beginning:
we were for each the other's Ruth
wild blankets covered spurring truth
abroad we danced with purling youth
traced river reach and rush and ebb
too,  surge recede   too, dry stream bed
conviction crocheted   spindled web

in the middle:
elaborate lacings tat by claws
stitched up our failings   netted flaws
gripped all our moonlights   all our dawns.
awake asleep in numb and sting
cold beast infested plainer things      
froze fly condensed to seep and cling

in the end:
i could have knelt   i could have prayed
on slated floors     i could have stayed
but faith was gone.    love came too late.

now: 
             blast implode    multiverse                 
anonymous   surrounding    first
on planes of string uncurled, emerged.

oh hello space:   you lift me high
and gravity throws down my sighs                              
in starry soup   this all    divine



*******

i thought i'd give it a swing and experiment a bit after reading some beat stuff and allen ginsberg telling his truth in a strict rhyme scheme, which i found odd and interesting.  so, this little scrap above is my interpretation of (one of) his styles.  i am not accustomed to working within the scheme, and find it tedious and near impossible to express without the rhymes sounding completely contrived and idiotic.  i thought it would be nice to get out of my voice for awhile, and this has turned out ok, but i don't really dig it much.  i don't think it sings.  oh well.  **you play you win you play you lose you play.**


also, as bob dylan did and said, he only practiced during concerts, so what people heard was his working away toward something new.  i think i like that, too.  i will probably be editing this poem after the fact, so this dog may have its day yet.   or not.  ha!

**added sunday 9/25--
one of the things i want in my writing, beyond the obvious, is to create something that can be universally understood, without spelling things out so specifically that relating to the piece--not liking it or admiring it or hating it--but relating to it, is only possible for a few.  everyone can have an evaluative opinion based objectively upon some established standard, or subjectively, and upon their own aesthetics--but relating is something completely different.  if a story of rags to riches is so specific that it may appeal to some in an observational way, that's nice.  it's nice to get a different vantage point of the world.  but if a story of rags to riches is told specifically and generally enough, everyone should be able to find some angle or some part of it that is theirs, and they should feel recognized.  this is difficult to achieve--often people assume the work is autobiographical (of the writer, of course) of one person, when what i am going for, at least, is a work that is autobiographical in a more universal sense.

so, all that said, my pieces succeed or fail toward that end, of course.

and, with all that said, i ask you:  what is this particular poem, above, about?  you can think about it yourself awhile, then i will give you some multiple choice offerings.  think think think think, now:

a)  the falling apart of a team/group of some sort--baseball, PAC, book club
b)  two people breaking up/coming apart
c)  soldiers in some theater of operations far away or close to home
d)  existentialism
e)  the aging process
f) none of the above
g) all of the above
h)  faith

**added later pm 9/25--i'm continuing to revise, and change this thing up, and am getting closer to "can do no more--for reasons of skill and will"...

***added 9/26--i am so done with this thing.

****9/28.  ditto the above.  maybe really, this time.
*****much later 9/28.  ug. ug. ug.  i may be done but this thing isn't.
******10/1.  i do not think i have ever hated anything i have written as much as i hate this thing.  a curse upon it, a pox, i give it my evil eye, HexHex!  i abandon this effort now, having lost the battle, and maybe will return later to wrestle again.

10/2.   i am done.  i am happy (-enough).  i couldn't stick with his style completely i felt like i was strangling.  i changed it a bit and have learned my lesson-- i should not try to shake my voice.

sabine's poem, april 2011--(3rd grade)

do you ever think,
do you ever glide?  i do
and here's why:
i live like you
in my heart
but deep inside i have
my part.
i keep my talent to myself
but you my dear, you're just an elf.


---------


of course i am a proud mother who thinks her children are Brilliant, but aside from that, i love the innocent confidence, and the deep, revealing truth that she shares in this poem, and which may be said to be universal.  she had written this in her diary, but brought it out to show me today.  thank you sabine!, and:

that's my girl!

to stay asleep

not awaited not invited.  deep
indigo, deep night.   and sweeping
in they come.  unwanted from behind the bed
unwanted from below.  or from the
very in of it.  unwanted.  from the diagonal distant
familiar place.  the stark place,  from far.
from far too close to see.  from far. 

the monster hiss, the seethe
knobby and plain.  and true

with ears and eyes:
mine is a zenith horizontal. 

an already.

diagonally distant.  far. 

pay attention,  i think
in the middle of the night in 

the middle of the mare 
of me i
know:

i want my zenith. 

jumpstand.  and
not awaited not invited visions
damn and visions dark.   and sweeping
in they come.

those feral figments:  the old        
the done.

that flailing mahogany phantasm, that fabled
white inferno.   awakened   

from it: the smiled upon, the understood
the bloodless itchy-warmth.   comfortable. 

lilifed sanctuary.         flat-lineation and
jumpstand.  and it is morning.

at the edge, I'm facing the blaze. 

a faith to spell me back to myself

many personhood-central things along the curl to here i have lightly, or not so lightly, lost.  or tossed.  and as with all nows, this now will vanish and is really nothing but a single flashing, a bulge of possibility with little information as to the direction of next--of the zing.  and like all the others, this time is one for a bit of retrospective tracing and a lot of opening up to the unmapped.  (is it real, this moment, or is it just momentum?)---during the zip between then and next we carry memories, and happily today i stumbled upon this one, in a conversation, this not-lost thing, and re-realized my religion.  and that i do in fact believe its creed.  and practice it. 

i try to assure people that i really Really am calm, i really Really am ok, even if along with the losses-- desired or otherwise--i am sometimes crushed,--but how to translate above that fact the gains achieved alongside, and the sigh of relief upon recognizing oneself, again, still, and/or maybe despite? and that that is sometimes all that matters. 

the following articulation, this quote, comes from Jeanette Winterson, a contemporary author i favor.  i have it tattooed on my bloodstream, (my only tattoo) and have had ever since i discovered it in the early 90's.  it is from her book The Passion.   when i read it, it may have been the first time i have felt recognized, or reflected somehow.  (i've made friends and have maybe lost them over this book...--it is an important part of my story.)

You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play.
It’s the playing that’s irresistible.
Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love,
what you risk reveals what you value. 

right this very moment, as you are reading this, you and i may be friends or strangers.  in either case, you know me now.  

the strand running through each one

crouching on the strand,
forming definitely one brick.  and one brick

patting the shit and straw
into rough evens, and fathoming
the sun.  dream bake turn bake dream turn bake turn to dry.  and hard.  strong.

some bricks break.  and
not.  saving one and one

rain no sun no straw.  double-dutching a puddle.  there is
drought no straw no water.  hide and seeking the dust.
there is no shortage of shit.

in plenty in even bright, measuring
mix the champagne and haunting.

bricks coming slow next to that tongue of questions:
of traveling snakes and god and.
one and one     saving them.

sweating in
steeping in the biscuit rose and in the stink 
creating magnificent castles

take. 3.

then: sit on that red shag carpet or lie on the bear rug spread eagle on my stomach with my chin resting on the head of that poor dead bear’s and  i would watch the zenith. the thing that i remember about star trek (tos, now) on that tv is that dr mccoy was crabby-compassion and had that polaroid camera looking thing and could detect disease. from the outside,  scan people and then with fancy sonogram laser unnamed beam and through their clothes, cutless, germless, would heal them, and no matter how bad the diagnosis, no matter the nature of the injury or the freaky composition of the poison,   bones who was left with nothing but his skeleton after his         could treat almost every broken. and after a few hours or days all would be well.  or   well enough.  kirk still had the blue eye shadow problem but that was small in comparison to the        cases mccoy was able to cure.  now: i picture i am standing in my kitchen with fabulous hair wearing too much blue eye shadow and a zippy black catsuit and with command. i call into the retro modern brooch high at my shoulder, urgently but calm.:  McCoy!  Quickly! The Kitchen!  and then bones is transported from the enterprise or the unknown territories right in to my house despite mistrust, of the whole transporter contraption and runs to me with his migrating geese eyebrows and starts to take out scanner c or something and i turn to him and put aside my jigger and look at him. and say:  just fix me here.  here is where it hurts.  and i point to my weakly fluttering wings and he grimaces a bit and with his hair loosened flailing mahogany, like a white inferno. he ministers to me with his gun of medicine and i wake up. in some sickbay.  scarless..  with an edelweiss engraved brass cowbell on my chest and a terse mccoy patting my hand tenderly reluctantly understandingly, and saying:  i'm stepping back. now.  just      this if you need me.  but i don't need him any more.

scene 1 take two

then i would sit on that red shag carpet or lie on the bear rug spread eagle on my stomach with my chin resting on the head of that poor dead bear’s and  i would watch the zenith.  the thing that i remember about star trek (tos, now) on that tv is that dr mccoy was crabby-compassion and had that polaroid camera looking thing and could detect disease from the outside,  scan people and then with fancy sonogram laser unnamed beam and through their clothes, cutless, germless, would heal them, and no matter how bad the diagnosis, no matter the nature of the injury or the freaky composition of the poison,   bones who was left with nothing but his skeleton after his divorce could treat almost every broken and after a few hours or days all would be well.  or   well enough.  kirk still had the blue eye shadow problem but that was small in comparison to the severe cases mccoy was able to cure.  now i picture i am standing in my kitchen with fabulous hair wearing too much blue eye shadow and a zippy black catsuit and with command i call into the retro modern brooch high at my shoulder, urgently but calm:  McCoy!  Quickly! The Kitchen!  and then bones is transported from the enterprise or the unknown territories right in to my house despite mistrust of the whole transporter contraption and runs to me with his migrating geese eyebrows and starts to take out scanner c or something and i turn to him and put aside my jigger and look at him and say:  just fix me here.  here is where it hurts.  and i point to my weakly fluttering wings and he grimaces a bit and with his hair loosened flailing mahogany like a white inferno he ministers to me with his gun of medicine and i wake up in some sickbay.  scarless.  with an edelweiss engraved brass cowbell on my chest and a terse mccoy patting my hand tenderly reluctantly understandingly and saying:  i'm stepping back now.  just ring this if you need me.  but i don't need him any more.

thank you for coming to my sight

i am so happy.  look what came to me today!  a beautiful, beautiful present--

being looked for
being seen
being responded to
and music that soars to match. 


"hi, suzanne!

i attached a song in response to your visual images.  if you look closely - real closely - at the wheat field, you will see..."
 




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg0vHnk9_28&feature=fvst

**very important, if you go to this link.  close your eyes and listen.  do not watch. 



what an honor, what pleasure.  i feel like a drunk in a midnight choir.  with a bunch of others kind of different but kind of the same.

peter, again :  thank you.

she's not dead, jim.

then i would sit on that red shag carpet or lie on the bear rug spread eagle on my stomach with my chin resting on the head of that poor dead bear’s and  i would watch the zenith.  the thing that i remember about star trek (tos, now) on that tv is that dr mccoy was crabby-compassion and had that polaroid camera looking thing and could detect disease from the outside,  scan people and then with fancy sonogram laser unnamed beam and through their clothes, cutless, germless, would heal them, and no matter how bad the diagnosis, no matter the nature of the injury or the freaky composition of the poison,   bones who was left with nothing but his skeleton after his divorce could treat almost every broken and after a few hours or days all would be well.  or   well enough.  kirk still had the blue eye shadow problem but that was small in comparison to the severe cases mccoy was able to cure.  now i picture i am standing in my kitchen with fabulous hair wearing too much blue eye shadow and a zippy black catsuit and with command i call into the retro modern brooch high at my shoulder, urgently but calm:  McCoy!  Quickly! The Kitchen!  and then bones is transported from the enterprise or the unknown territories right in to my house despite mistrust of the whole transporter contraption and runs to me with his migrating geese eyebrows and starts to take out scanner c or something and i turn to him and put aside my jigger and look at him and say:  just fix me here.  here is where it hurts.  and i point to my weakly fluttering wings and he grimaces a bit and with his hair loosened flailing mahogany like a white inferno he ministers to me with his gun of medicine and i wake up in some sickbay.  scarless.  with an edelweiss engraved brass cowbell on my chest and a terse mccoy patting my hand tenderly reluctantly understandingly and saying:  i'm stepping back now.  just ring this if you need me.  but i won't need him any more.