Monthly Archives: December 2015

Imagine How Her Poems Taste

30 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

She won’t cook with onions, no

Cuz she don’t like to cry

She won’t cook with spices, no

Why in the world would she want to try

some kind of magic powder

harvested beneath a humid moon with fingertips and moist lips

singing saffron songs

or put some kind of thing in her pot that burns a tender tongue? Who wants to eat something that makes you sweat, uncomftable?

Oh no. Hell no.

Don’t make a mess in her kitchen with your spicy sticks and sprigs and powders, make you sneeze, stuff you can’t pronounce, stuff that grows in pots on your porch, what are you some kind of witch?

She don’t need your fancy ideas and implements or your comments, so come back in five when dinner’s served.

(I doubt you’ll be wanting to lick the plate and ask for thirds)

Are You All In?

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Ope! There it was. I saw it, just a little bit of joy peeking out from between those majestic, shining, impervious robes of doom and gloom you wear day to day.  Yes, it’s true I reply, sheepishly. A little bit of joy came to me and from me on Sunday. Guilty as charged. (Ohh, I think I need to expound on that one privately, boys and girls.)

Anyway!  This will be my third year as a rookie NY Jets fan. I started watching them after I heard so much moaning and groaning about this team and what a heartache it is to be one of their fans.  Gee, no stretch there, an underdog being drawn to underdogs?  I recall a work associate from years ago, real big Cowboys fan, who said, “If you’re gonna be a fan, BE a fan, not just when they’re winning.” Not sure why that struck me back then. Maybe because he sounded sexy as hell on the phone and worked on motorcycles, or maybe it was something the universe intended for me?  Today I have only an inkling of what means to be a Jets fan, but one thing I know for sure: They’re in, all in, thick and thin.

I gave myself a great day on Sunday.  Haircut. Colored my hair. Bought lots of fresh veggies (ok, and greasy finger food), beer, and set myself up for the game.  Not only did I get to watch the whole game, but the Jets freaking won. I spent 4 quarters and a little sliver of overtime watching two teams work hard (and making some questionable plays), noshing, sipping, jumping up and down, hollering, and I didn’t care if they won or lost. I just wanted this thing to myself, this day, a “me” day, to enjoy.  I had a JOYFUL day, a HAPPY day, one that felt so alien later when I examined it.  Why don’t I do that more often? Oh, Padawan, that’s the question–the rub. The resistance is strong with this one.

Where is my joy, and where is it more often?  When was the last time I sang for joy instead of bleating some cathartic, moribund dirge?  Or–god–danced?  It takes determination and will to want happiness and joy, did you know that?  I didn’t, until a friend turned me on to it. I learned it. Then forgot it in the haze of pain. Often.  I want to tap into the energy of happiness because I know there’s writing, wordsmithing, in there along with it. How easy it is to succumb to what’s beaten me down for so long, every day, and lose sight of the fact that there is a little bit of light in each day, there for the asking. And if I tap into that happiness, maybe, just maybe, I can share it too– if I am strong enough. Brave enough. Part those impervious robes of doom and gloom long enough to let a beam of light come through?  Question marks where I want periods to reign, something solid and sure.

So. What the hell does any of this have to do with writing?  Everything.  Write if it pleases you, when it pleases you.  Create. Use your will above all, beyond all. Fight! Win!  Extinguish everything around you that holds your heart and soul down and put wings on words, darling.  This means you.  Are you all in?

Love.

Venite, Venite!

25 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Hazy memory.  Who  knows if it was while we were dating or if it was after we married? Either way, it was before my son was born (before my son had me.)

I guess we just worked too many nights, or maybe we’re just not the most Christmasy people, never have been, but we put up the tree because it’s tradition.  The season just didn’t feel right without a tree in the living room for a few…weeks.  That year the tree went up but we never decorated it; just too damned tired or not really gung-ho for it? Who knows.

What I do recall is that we noticed at the last minute that there were no decorations on the plastic tree in the living room that would soon have presents beneath. (One gift, I recall, was a purple neon license plate holder for my Ford Bronco, which I loved, but had to cut the wires because the po-lice said it was ill-e-gal to have any other color on my truck besides what’s factory. Yes sir. Snip snip. No more pretty purple lights to adorn my darling Bronco, but it sure was the thought that counted.)  We each took a clean sock from our drawer and tossed it onto the tree, and THAT was how we decorated for Christmas one year: no lights, no ornaments, just socks on a tree.

Every year since, the final decoration is one clean sock from each of us, carelessly, but joyfully, flung at the tree. It’s not Christmas without this tradition. Tonight I tossed the socks while the guys were out doing last minute errands, the house dark and quiet and it all felt right.

May everyone find darkness tonight, and quiet, or the warmth of a simple tradition;  a nearly full moon. May everyone find a simple peace tonight and let that place occupy your hearts all year.  Sappy? Maybe. But I don’t care.

O Come, Light!

 

Breathe Dark

22 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

Solstice.  The longest night.  Sweeping out the dark corners of my heart.  They say pressure and time makes diamonds. What about dreams? What about art? What about the weakest spots in the heart that sprung leak, spilling out and do I care if it overflows?  Will it make precious words worth sharing?

I carry in me the longest shadows, the hardest heart. The glow of a candle against the longest night is kind, but weak.  It is a sigh from the goddess who knows there is nothing she can do.

So the time comes to choose. To decide if I will share shadows today, cast gloom on all, or walk in sunlight on the shortest day of the year. Some things just won’t be swept away like silky cobwebs adrift on the breeze. I choose you. I choose darkness.

Let tomorrow take care of itself…

You Brought It On Yourself

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Oh, what, excuse me? You want me to love you?

I’ve got the usual world around me, and I’ve got this other softer, secret, sacred world around me, the one where I write. I deal with the outer world best I can, and I create in this inner world better, and then there’s you (said with disdain.)

You come flying down the hall, leap into my lap unexpectedly, push off my thigh with your claws and squeeze between the monitor and the desk cubby so you can sit at the window beyond so you can do whatever while I rub my thigh where the skin starts to swell and itch, that is how allergic I am to  you.  I wish you weren’t here.

You are currently sprawled across the left side of my desk, on papers, next to notebooks, calendars, and my dad’s journal.  You do the same thing all the time, your back feet pushing away my favored pictures and knickknacks so you can have more room.  You are Sphinx, paws before you, looking at me softly, saying nothing at all, but it is still a challenge, those green-yellow eyes and gray paws next to my keyboard your body saying “Touch me, stroke me, love me, I dare you.”  But I don’t touch you, you horrible gray thing who sits quietly on top of papers in my office that I did not invite.  If I touch you, you will think I like you, acquiesce to your need, you get what you want, just like everyone else who gets what they need from me just because they are near, they smile, they ask in a sweet way. Fuck you! Get off my fucking desk, I did not invite you into my world, my place, and I have to leave my office to hit the bathroom because it’s that early morning 18 cups of coffee thing I have to relieve, and when I come back you are still there but no longer looking at me but sprawled on your side on top of my papers.   At least I don’t have to touch your paws and make nice with you, but I still can’t stand the fact that you are here, leaving your hairs everywhere and the throb of your claws in my leg has not subsided.

You crawl on top of me in bed when I turn out the lights exhausted, between my legs, 20 pounds of you alighting on my bladder, abdomen, ribs, face, making your home in my hair and my pillow. You are not happy until you knead my head and hair for ten minutes, then you go back to the end of the bed where my feet should be, but I can’t sleep straight because you’re in the way.  You puke on my expensive quilt covered in seashells and starfish or shit on it because  you hate your litter box, and you expect me to love you and pet you and endure you and your 99 problems.

I suppose God has the same feelings as I do right now towards humanity.  I made you, you are in my life, you’ve got issues you needy things who tear each other apart and this world that I created and now you want me to love you? They look up towards me with their green-yellow eyes curled up on their sides immersed in bad dreams, hoping for solace in between the heartbeats of their lives, but no, I hate you, I am angry with the shit you leave all around, and I hate myself for the hate you make me feel in the morning when I should feel agape and speechless at the color of morning, and the birds and the memory of the stars I left behind.

How hard it is for me, this goddess, to love the things that hurt me every day (or the goddess who suffers the hurts you gave me these 18 and 20 years.)  I know for the most part they don’t mean to hurt me but they do.  How hard is it for me, this goddess, to return love and patience to creatures who don’t understand me.  Soft, gentle, needy beings, feline or human who deserve love, in all their imperfections.  Goddess, do you need to bend to love the imperfect things that love you, or is it enough to be, and accept those that love you alone.

Oh Goddess would it kill you to acquiesce, renounce anger, show compassion and stroke the grey cat who reclines on your papers and needs just a little bit of love; breathe and listen to those imperfect humans who inhabit your world and listen to them, be merciful and kind instead of offering them your harpy nature and hanging up on them?

Addendum:  1/5/2006.  I’ve made the effort to pet the cat in the morning as she’s curled up on the bed, or greet her with a pet at night when I come home.  There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Showing just a little love in a hateful world?  All it takes is one small act, one pebble tossed into the lake.

Becoming

14 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Give me the strength and the grace to get through it, this shedding that happens all at once, this brick wall that falls down upon me that I can’t get out of its way fast enough.   Even the snake, miracles of color that explore the earth on their bellies, seekers of heat, shed slowly, so slowly, not allatonce in this raw way that I do, sometimes.

When we shed we are vulnerable, it hurts, and we do not wish anyone to see our new, naked selves until the shedding is done. We are ready. We are become.  Even we do not know what color the goddess will paint us (or will we choose our own color to spite her like some tattoo that daddy hates?)

I wish I could shed slowly like sleepy trees in summer, one scarlet leaf, one saffron, calling it a day, leaping from the belly of a C-130, parachuting to the ground, nestling in the grass, one great fall at a time. Keep my shy birds hid until their true songs are ready to be sung.

Solstice, grant me strength and grace to get through the long, dark nights (long and dark, as it should be!)  I think I am ready for snow now, a cold white blanket to see where she been and where she’s bound to be. Allatonce.

 

 

Cold (lament)

14 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

fragile white bread crumbs lead up to my stairs
it snowed again only lightly
lead up to my stairs, come in
come in and listen for awhile
but listening is not a boy’s best business

‘I want to play with you
I want to sleep all day,
I want to cut fragile white bread crumb shapes of snow
from paper and hang them in your heart’
says my son

snow melts and mud runs
sun sets and what have we done
when he’s six foot two
and we didn’t know what to do
with his heart

Dec 17, 2009

What’s Coming

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Current obsession:  An old story that needs another chance.  Oh you know the one. Let’s just say our aging bad-boy rock star gets what’s coming to him. You know how I appreciate justice.  The vigilante in me wrote this story some time ago. Now let’s see if the writer in me can make it a better read.

Addendum: Yeah, I know what we send out is returned to us thrice, so I’d better watch my own karmic ass.

Late To The Party

08 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

I don’t know if anyone else remembers it, the first time they received a piece of mail addressed to them that wasn’t a glittery birthday card from Mom Mom wishing you happiness, Xs and Os, along with a starched five dollar bill wrapped in a blank sheet of legal paper. Today I think about a piece of mail addressed to me of all people, my name, how did they get my name, how cool is this, to get a bit of correspondence from the New York Public Library, here in this place where I kind of lived, unsolicited. It arrived like… well…rather like Harry Potter’s acceptance letter from Hogwarts.  It was an invitation to a talk given by well-known authors, and sadly the only name I can recall is Jane Yolen. I was maybe 15 years of age and there was no way, in that time of my life, that I could conceive of asking my parents to take me to the event.   My best friend’s father died and I couldn’t even ask them for a ride to the funeral because I didn’t know how, and I knew without need of an oracle that my Dad would never drive me to the hated city for any reason at all. It was a folly, that bit of letter, and the idea that I-I–had been invited was very cool but that’s as far as it went.  (As an aside, the other letters I recall receiving in those days were heart-shredding solicitations from PETA and the Republican Party, neither of which I subscribe.)

Some years ago I came across a book of essays by Henry Rollins titled “Solipsis.” I flipped through it and found the writing visceral, angry, fascinating, but I wasn’t ready for it: I was too young to understand.  I have rediscovered Mr. Rollins who causes my writing self to be disturbed, unmoored, get a lady boner, and hungry. NOW I get it.  I made a few mouse clicks and discovered he has a spoken word tour going on, and lo and behold, one in traveling distance!  I went to click on the “buy ticket” button only to discover both nights have been sold out.  He won’t be back within 300 miles of me mostly likely for the rest of the year.  Late. Gutted.

So many things have opened up to me because of that magic thing called ‘internet.’ It’s how I discovered a taste for flash fiction, came to fall into the arms of a cadre of writers who help keep my creative mind moving, and more importantly, their friendships.  Thanks to this thing called a Twitter feed I was able to attend a conversation with Junot Diaz.  There are so many events and calls for submissions I find it hard to keep up.  I am drowning in opportunity, and the only thing holding me back is me!   I discovered a talk about Tarot and the Poetics of Imaginary Solutions fairly locally, but I found out a little too late. There was no way I was going to be able to wrest myself from my job in order to attend.  This morning I regret not trying hard enough to swap days with someone so I could attend. It was a little adventure I declined to fight for. What did I miss? What might I have gained? How many adventures have I declined? Oh god, that’s hard to think about.

I have been late to the party so many times, like that night I fell into Social Distortion and never looked back, or the day I was captured by Concrete Blonde; blessings.   These bands have been around a long time, and I’m running around waving my arms going “Hey look this is awesome! Wow!” And everyone else is like, “Yeah babe, we know, where you been?”  Today I am sorry I didn’t fight harder to attend a little bookstore talk, a missed opportunity, adventure.  There’s a little adventure in every day, there has to be.  I’m not some scared 15-year-old without access to a car and handwritten directions to get me to the parking garage so I can get to the NYPL, to be surrounded by a bunch of people that outrank me in every way… right?  Oh god…

Today I will meditate on how to get hungry enough to take it all, fill my plate, devour fearlessly, and fill reams of paper with results.  And write, baby, write!

 

 

Henry & Me, A Work In Progress

07 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

I guess it was only a matter of time.  My muse who I once painted in a lilac goddess gown, communicative only with her facial expressions (the wrinkled nose, the head shake, the “what the hell??”, and the nod of “now you’ve got it,” has been supplanted.  My new muse is a drill instructor from hell.  That’s right. Mr. Henry Rollins.  I WILL awaken, I WILL think, I WILL learn, I WILL write to answer my life’s call, otherwise I’m just another useless piece of shitbag crying at the breakfast table unable to say why I’m crying when YES I REALLY DO KNOW WHY.

Yes, Henry, I really do know why.  And now you’re taking this trip with me, as I took the trip with you. The one where I got to know you a little bit when you said you couldn’t bear to have a space with free time in it for fear you might become one of us mere mortals that lounge about aimlessly instead of gearing up SURVIVAL, so your long-suffering travel agent booked you on the Transiberian express… because you wanted to experience.  I’m taking this trip with you because you’ve shown me that if we’re not breathing, living, thriving, learning, asking, reaching, thinking, DOING…  we’re just better off throwing ourselves off a cliff.  I used to think the saying “an unexamined life is one not worth living” was harsh as hell and horrible and wrong. But once you start examining, and you recognize your agony of living among “mortals,” the Wal-Mart masses, the complacent, the ones who never thought or even tried to make themselves or this world a better place, then yeah, we reap what we sowed.  And maybe that’s harsh as hell, but is it worse than drinking cups of regret and dying from it every day?

No more.