Sunday, December 27, 2009

Flat Bed of Grass.

The flowers are all white
And lay in a flat bed of grass,
High in the Himalayas,
The mice make nests.

The pigeons sleep in roofs
Made of glass.
In rivers born of tears.
Emotions sharpen in quick sand.
Everything I know has been sunk.

Memories fade down me slowly.
Justice has been broken over rocks.
Pouring rain comes down.
Sleep is a broken meadow.

The flowers hide under things.
Pictures are cut out of magazines.
Women wear high heels to work,
I have worked every day.

You broke me, you broke me.
I am sheltered in broken things.
Sleep is a meadow, sleep is promise,
Sleep is dew wrapped in dew.

I have never wakened.
I have never spoken of glass.
Candle flames flicker in a white candle.
The flowers are all white and lay in a flat bed of grass.

The woman used to live here.
She has disappeared.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Houses Remain

The houses remain unscathed in the ruin
Of the drainage of rain water,
Pouring down, down, down.
The sky glares at me and speaks-“Hark!”
The song of a lark stills me wills me nothing is gone,
Dead, or buried.
A musician has been buried. An artist has been buried.
The words are transient; a nine-year-old plays
A violin, before the darkness comes,
Every day, trying to wake the aunt,
Ask her to make food.
Food. It fills the soul. It is the soul.
The field mice are the fruit of the soul, the wolves
In their dens hunt field mice, their whiskers
Slightly damp in the cool night air. Hair.
Stare at me from a dream that has not ended.
Stare at me from waterfalls, sprinkling diamonds,
I turn myself into a work of art,
Of a man sitting in a chair with a broken radio
And a dumb dial,
Cracked and worn from being hidden in the attic
For so long.
The zoos are filled. My niece asks me where
The lions, where the zebras, the horses.
The horses sleep in meadows. Sleep in shelters
In London. Old men named William have lost
Their hair,
Eyes glistening with tears.
He cries for the lost, lost, lost.
Wonders what it has cost him.

Blue Daffodils Speak, Open.

Blue daffodils open, speak to me in a language
That is devoid of light, life.

Blue skies whisper to me from beaches.
Sunny skies sultry eyes and multi-colored stained glass windows.

The pope sang at the church, he was an old man,
Ninety-seven, and spun stories from napkins.
His mind broke through the torrential waters.
His heart has mended.

Tomorrow we have been caught in a spiral
Of nothingness, a spiral of gladness that fills the heart,
The spiral of words broken, broken.
The symbol of nothingness is more barren than

The nothingness that came from me. Words are memory.
I look out of my bedroom window and stare at the sparrow

On a branch, singing a sad, lonely song.
The daffodils are broken and nothing is left.
A man comes riding on a bicycle, his gaze is fixed on

a cloud, high above him, the clouds are dark.
His mind is broken, broken. He can’t open himself up,
He wears a black hat, and speaks to the sun gods-
Don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me.

Tomorrow is another day.
The sun rises over the hills. The hills are barren.
I make sure everything is set for my mother, my father,
My sister.
I don’t understand how anything is done.

I don’t understand how a spring rain remains, hidden,
In the bush of the bough.

Depths An Old Man Reaches.

How do you remain, like daisies,
Unfurled drops of rain
that falls slowly
Down from infinite reaches,
spaces that are divided.
Slowly moving, rhythms blend
with the riches

Around you, a trial of chances,
a beam of
Darkness that lights up a mirror and speaks of voices.
Slowly, they come, melting into the dark that
Does not fade to gray,
shadows open up
A tendril daffodil and shelter(ed) things remain.

So softly, teardrops fall to the countertop;
A letter is stained with droplets of tears.
My memory sifts in sunlit rooms; a door opens
Into twilight.

I am caught in the middle
between floors.
I plead to the security
guard for breathing room,
But he shakes his head,
mumbles curses under
His breath, and scurries away to join the old
Man standing at the end
of the stairwell.

Friday, December 25, 2009

The Endless Road.

Follow me to the endless road,
Route 409.
My mother is a nurse in some hospital,
She talks to old men who
Act like they’re in high school
Still.
We never get out of school,
It seems-the darkness
Crawls out of the world,
And whispers sad songs to broken
Houses.
The edge of reason is not reason enough.
I have been to Detroit, Flint, Walled Lake,
There was no wall built in
The lake,
Nothing to hold the water in.
Sea gulls fly over the sparkling water,
Dipping and diving.
We are out of school forever.
I don’t remember why we went
There in the first place-ah, yes,
I was right,
My mother made me go.
She thought it was good for me.
I didn’t know about that.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Elven's Keep Part 1.

The Woman Who Had No Face was lonely.
She had a face-ears; nose; eyes; she could breathe, in and out she breathed, standing in the line at the grocery store, clutching a bag of bread. She trembled. Her eyelids trembled. She wasn’t afraid; she was never afraid of anything and the darkness in her mind was vaster than the sea, the darkness in her heart was vast. She paid for the bag of bread and took it outside and huddled under a red tree and ate the bread and her nose was long and peaked and she snarled at anyone who tried to come in contact with her. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be anywhere.
She wanted the bread, wanted it in a way that was close to desperation more than a wantingness inside of her. She was hungry. She was on the brink of destruction.
She was one of the ones Who Could See the Dead. The Dead weren’t any more frightening than little children; the living were more frightening than the Dead. She was right about things and gave paid readings and the seer wasn’t happy. She was never happy. She couldn’t be happy because she was alone in a cruel heartless world.
The darkness surrounded her. She found comfort in the darkness. Sometimes, she dreamt about Elves. She always thought the Elves were good, kind beings and helped people in any way they could; they were mischievous and never really did any harm. The ones in her dreams were cruel and cold and heartless. They didn’t understand anything that was happening or how to change it. They didn’t understand the things going on around them.
She lived in a hut on the edge of a bubbling, brown mess of a bog. The bog smelled bad and she didn’t like the smell but it was the only place to sleep. She wandered throughout the city during the day and came home and slept on a bed of rocks. The Woman With No Face didn’t know a magic genie lived in the hut. The hut smelled like a swamp and she finished the last of the bread and sat by the bog late at night, listening to the cry of the cicadas and the swamp monster singing a sad song and the lonely song came to her and made her sad and she didn’t know how to cry.
She didn’t know anything about her past, present and future and she returned to the hut and took the dreamcatcher off the wall and went outside and tried to catch the stars in its net.
The dreamcatcher had been made by a Ianasi girl a long time ago, before she became Ignored. Being Ignored was worst than being Exiled. Maybe she had been Exiled in her thirties she didn’t know.
The bog was smelly.
It smelled worse than old shoes.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

changed the title.

I changed the title again. It is now called "Cosmonaut."

Friday, December 18, 2009

I changed the title of my novel. It is now called "Space."

Dreams.

Saturday nights, I am alone in my room,
Leafing through an old copy of Times magazine
From a few years ago.
I am miserable again, miserable in a way that

I cannot remember anymore than yesterday,
Or the one before; clouds form outside my window,
I see yesterday has come again. I cannot think,
Cannot dream, cannot move; my heart is a

Shadow that comes before me, my heart beats in rhythm
Like a glass drum. I am not a singer; I am not a criminal;
I am something that I cannot quite explain,
An excuse in genetic code.

Who gave me these things, that I cannot quite remember?
Who gave me these things, the potted plant in
The corner of my living room?
I bought those things with the coins from my purse,

Which I bought used at a garage sale.
Monday roles back again; time moves forward;
The heart does not beat, I cannot seem to wake myself
From the depths of my dreams.

Women and Boxes.

Men walk on lone roads scattered cans along the freeway.
Sunlight falls on broken slabs of stone, idiot makers breathe down
My back.
I walk around to the back door and open it to let sunlight stream in.
Certain words develop within boxes and boxes strewn out on
The highway. A quiet voice resonates in the room.
She likes her freedom, to walk about wishing for silent thought,
Trying to piece together echoes of the past.
Her boyfriend, Xavier, plucks melodies on an old tuba;
The highway is void of anything we can see and experience.
I swallow a cup of water. My mother walks into the room, wearing
A sunny yellow dress. She asks for a cup of sugar; I give her the whole
Bag.
My mother, she has MS, and is tired all the time; my mother,
She knows things I do not remember.
I forgave her a long time ago for leaving me in the shopping mall to
Get a paperback from the library, one of those ten cent romances
At a ma and pa store.
She likes her freedom; men walk on lone roads.
The roads are paved. She paves a way to freedom.
The sin is freedom.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

THE BLUE HERON.

*this is the beginning of a novel I've started...it's not the very beginning, as I have to include the first scene where the billionaire suffers from heat stroke that turns out to be a case of "bird flu." The novel is going to be part science fiction, part thriller, like that of Robin Cook or James Patterson, if you want to use specifics.

Geoff is a very homely doctor. He lost his wife and children in a tragic car accident, and turns his grief into saving lives-that is, until he discovers he can't save everyone, especially when cases of the bird flu sprout all over the place, especially in India, China, and three cases in the United States. Can Geoff discover the cause of the bird flu, or will the blue heron have to throw in his towel and admit he doesn't know everything?

******



India was the place to do the surgery. Geoff Fernandez aka “the Blue Heron” rode the elevator up to the third floor of Juarez Fields Medical Hospital and hesitated outside Room 309. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be on an island some place far away, tanning himself alongside a beautiful blonde and drinking from a coconut. That sounded about right. He loved coconut drinks. He hadn’t had one in about three years, since he and the other doctors on the medical team took a trip to New Mexico to remove a lung from an ailing billionaire. Now, they had another rich man on the brink of death-Mario Hernandez Martines Shae. The man was the owner of a famous stock company, Iliade & Burgens, and helped people make the decisions on their stock. Mario was famous in that regards, he was almost right about his predictions and he made just enough money to buy a black Porsche it sat in the driveway of his small condo in Miami, Florida. He didn’t know why he chose to live in Miami. It was warm all year round and everyone was skinny and hardly ever needed medical attention, which was good, which was nice, blue as ice and all that. Geoff never did learn how to rhyme.
His eyes settled on the flatscreen tv the hospital installed last month. It was always on CNN. They were talking about the inflation of the stock exchange. When Mario woke from his coma, he wasn’t going to be happy about it. Not one bit. His wife was going to be the one to break it to him.
“Miami,” he muttered, and shook his head. He went into the patient’s room and picked up a clipboard and pretended everything was going to be all right.
Mario’s face was pale, ashen gray. It looked like it was losing color and his eyes were bloodshot. He dove inside and out of a feverish sleep. Geoff wondered if he was coherent. Maybe he wasn’t. He wasn’t coherent half the time. The other half of the time, he was peeing on his own leg. The smell of urine was strong, a putrid smell wafted from the bed sheets.
They were going to have to get him out of there and on a plane. And fast.
He turned to Nurse Susie. She was watching the scene with a wary expression on her face. She was a beautiful blonde woman and her blue eyes were watching the entire scene with an expression on her face that was part worry and part bemusement. She had seen all of this before-the same discoloration of the face; the same pinched face and the hollowed eyes. Susie was certain he was on the edge of death. Her thirteen year title as a nurse told him he didn’t think the man had a chance. Maybe he didn’t. They were going to find out.
“Susan,” he said between clenched teeth.
Her eyes focused on his. She looked pale. She swallowed. “Yes?” she whispered.
“Will the hospital let us use the helicopter to transfer him to the airport?”
“What about the tickets?”
“The hospital will cover it,” he replied reassuringly. “
“But last month, Mr. Martin told me we couldn’t afford-”
“Just do it!” he ordered. He didn’t like to yell. He hated yelling. He was tired. He wanted to go home and sleep. He glanced at Mario. He wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight.

Random Objects.

The vase sits in a room made out of glass.
Frost whispers on windows. Winter, and the sun
Drifts through the trees and falls on the very
Windows in the room. The sun is cold as ice. It burns like
Fire.

Three deer wander into my yard. I put the deer pellets
In the bird feed last week, their tongues roll out of their
Mouths, nostrils move up and down. Fog reaches three
Feet in front of me.

She said you shouldn’t leave your scrapbook on
The gray porch. She said aliens are sometimes real.
I say what kind. She says nothing. I am alone. Poe
Warned me about it in third grade. He said I wouldn’t
Live past age 50, I have light years to go, but you make
Me want to sleep. Sailors in ancient ships flock graveyards,
Robert, Melanie, Deran, Patrick. They all told me to get lost. I said
I never was in the first place.

Party on Tuesday. You put your hair up nice,
And move the clock to the windowsill. The window hums.
The wind slams the front door shut.

Friday, December 11, 2009

The Sky Speaks. Speaks.

I read the works of sauerkraut, mundane, penchance.
Dusk enters the darkening doorway and the flowers bloom in some man’s
Garden, and she wears the funny brown hat and sings songs about the Cold War.
I ain’t never been in no war.
I recite the works of Shakespeare, meadow, cowdung, the smell clings
To my skin and the snow melts in the Himalayas and otherwhen,
The cattle drone out the sound of the rain. Distance swallows me. I live in Kentucky.
My English teacher, the yellow rose from seventh grade, sits on his porch step,
Drinking whiskey, beer, red wine, anger fills his entire being. He wants to paint,
Write, sing in a Broadway musical. He is stuck on the porch, spinning stories in
His mind, unable to get up, up, up. His wife is in a Book Club, they are reading The Iliad.
His students aren’t mature enough to read it yet, it’s ninth grade material,
The tenth grade meter on the metronome shakes, shivers, whispers.
I can’t bear to let you go.
The pain lances through my heart like an arrow. I am moved by your very being
It flocks the pages of time, the pages of time have been worn, faded, are old and misused.
You told me you were neglected and a tear drops from my eye, we make brown bread
And sing sad Christmas carols. You are not Jewish, Christian, Catholic. The sadness
In your eyes moves mountains.
In and out, you breathe, the metallic breathing of you fills deep inside of me, I have no
Recollection of the soul and what it means, what it feels, how it is to me. I told you
I couldn’t tell time. I got a concussion from a baseball bat that fell upon my head,
Egg yolk spewing onto the grass.
Summer and I am on the john, reading a newspaper. You are gone. You are at work.
I call you on my cell phone and you praise Hitler, Johnson, Stalin, Poe. I ask why you’re
Talking about Poe at work and you say you are bored. You are climbing mountains.
They are also called flowers.
Darkness protrudes from the sky. It is God’s mathematical equation, this sky, this darkness,
This old hand that keeps me awake and dreaming, drawing the hand of the three.
A tree bends low over my bedroom window. The night is not sound. I wake up from a dream and read the works of sauerkraut, mundane, penchance.
You tell me nothing will ever change. The sorrow is in your words. I keep my feelings out of it.
I haven’t a chance to speak. You are blue-collared, working from nine to five,
You tell me you’ll do anything for me and you speak to the blue-eyed gravel instead,
Speak of egg shells and peonies in gardens.
Sadness is enchanting. The color of rose, pissed off, heartworm, flits through my mind.
The sky is broken! Broken.
We are walking on egg shells tonight.
You told me I broke things. I said I hadn’t never.
The sky.

The Man Who Liked Being Homeless.

He never cried, not even when his mother died. He wished he could cry. It didn’t do any good but at least he remembered he was human. The tears didn’t fall. What happened to the good ole days when an old man could have a secure job? It didn’t happen anymore, no sir, it didn’t. Times were changing. Faces changed, too. One day you had a best friend and the next day he was your worst enemy. It happened to Tom McCaw, too. He was a nice fellow but sometimes things didn’t work out for him. It was a lesson he had to learn on his own. A woman tapped him on the shoulder. “Sir,” she said. “Are you all right?” Surprised to see her standing behind him, h e shrunk inside himself and didn’t answer. Tom was homeless and as the months and years went past, he grew more and more introverted and he didn’t want to talk to anyone. But, she talked to him first and homeless people were polite, especially the men. He studied her. She was pretty. Her blonde hair was pretty. He expected to be alone. It was dark outside, but it wasn’t late out. It was the time between sunset and just after dark. A calm wind blew. It was cold. It was October. October was always cold. He discovered this after moving to New York from somewhere else. He would rather not discuss his life before New York and what it meant to him. Which was nothing. He didn’t want to talk about his problems with a stranger. Especially not a pretty stranger. It wasn’t a good idea to talk about your life with strangers. Maybe he was losing it. Maybe that was all right. Losing it should be a new law. He thought about the White House and all the strange going-ons in politics and he realized he didn’t want to work in politics ever again. He worked in politics once, for the Mayor of Shuttesburg. The Mayor of Shuttesburg asked if he wanted to be President of the United States. He responded with a resounding, “No way!”
He quit the next week and got another job at Morgan & Stanley. Morgan & Stanley was a stock broker company and also helped smaller companies thrive on the side. It was a long way from getting a degree in law school and his father was surprised by his change in careers and didn’t comment. His father never said anything about anything he did. Tom learned to welcome it. He was glad he didn’t have children. He didn’t have to explain to anyone the idiocy of the world and why he couldn’t change the government.
“I’m fine,” he answered hastily. “Just…a little lost.” He smiled encouragingly at her, praying she would move along or that she wouldn’t see the fear burning behind his eyes, or maybe the fear was passion. Maybe he was an artist and he wanted to draw the building or maybe he used to own it. Angela heard the Mayor had to sell the building to New Jersey in order to pay off a loan. That would be like him. Mayor Yettle McKenzie was a cheapskate. Most politicians were. They couldn’t help it. Angela found it was best to ignore it and move on with her life. She wasn’t even in real estate.
“Do you need any help?” she asked. “Are you homeless?” A little alarm bell went off in her brain. She shouldn’t be talking to him. She should be running in the opposite direction. She shouldn’t have walked home from work. She should have gotten in the taxi. She only had ten dollars on her, enough for a hot dog and a small Pepsi. New York was getting more expensive every year. He was a strange man staring up at a building and she had to get home and fix meatloaf for dinner. She was hungry. She continued to stare at the man looking up at the building. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. It was like staring at the sun. Something big and shiny.
“I don’t need any help,” he answered, shaking his head. “I’m lost in thought. Thinking.” He smiled. He was pleased. It was a good response. She muttered something about “crazy pedestrians,” and moved along. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He was bitter about his lack of communication skills. He was bitter about a lot of things, especially his wife who left him three months before and he hadn’t gotten over it and didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. His uncle advised him to get over it with a lawyer but Tom loved her still and didn’t want to put her through all of it. He signed the divorce papers without any fuss or muss and they didn’t have children, just a house with a meadow and a beat-up Chevy and she said he could keep the Chevy. He kept the Chevy. “Something’s going to happen,” he muttered. “Something not good.” The feel of it was all wrong. The feel of everything. The feel of both night and day and the wind crept up behind him and sang and tugged at his ear and the sound of voices on the edge of his vision, the vision of someone following him, speaking to him about God and Heaven and the angels and Da Vinci and Mozart. It was just like his dream. The dream of waking plagued him. He, too, moved along. He used to live in a house with a large backyard. His mother begged him to get a pet and he replied he didn’t have enough money to take care of it, he’d probably end up naming it Margaret or Joe or after some stupid piece of fruit and wouldn’t take care of it very good. He showed her. He showed everyone he could take care of a pet and the guinea pig lived to be very old. Now he was dead and Tom was lonely and alone and he wanted to live in a house and thought he couldn’t afford it. The market was different. He lived in the 70s and everything was so cheap it was practically free. Tom went into the grocery store and bought a loaf of bread and bologna. He went to Central Park and huddled under a large oak tree and ate three sandwiches, one right after the other. His father wouldn’t be happy to see him like this. His father wouldn’t be happy to see he was homeless and not poor. He bought a newspaper and pulled out the classified ads and spread them on the grass, looking at the apartments. He had almost one thousand dollars saved. That would be enough to pay the deposit and the first month’s rent. He had six hundred dollars on him and he could be a coke distributor, if worst came to worst. Everyone was looking for coke. The business was booming. Coke was a huge seller. Tom sighed and put the paper away. He called one of the ads on an apartment and she said she could meet him tomorrow at 4pm. That was almost a whole day away. He was going to have to think about what to do until then. Maybe he could see a movie.
A movie would take his mind off a lot of things. Like finding a good apartment. He had to wait for his meeting with the apartment manager.
The movie was okay. Actually, it sucked. The plot was muddled. He didn’t understand the plot. It was about falling in and out of love. Tom didn’t understand love. He fixed cars and bought businesses that made millions and he got one percent of the share. Being a sell-out was easy. It's what he did best.
New York City was cold. The cold burned his cheeks. He wound up standing outside the apartment complex office fifteen minutes before the manager arrived. She was tall and blonde. Tom liked. He showed her his bank statements. He told her he’d never been evicted. She asked where he was living now. He said he had a P.O. Box. It was good enough. Tom moved in the next day. Business at his job was booming and the week after that he went to a furniture store and bought a table, a desk, and a bed. It was an air mattress and fit the bedroom perfectly. Tom couldn’t sleep. He missed being homeless. He missed Tom.

You Can't Right Tell.

He ain't got what it takes. It ain't the snow that kept him from seeing me, it was that half-wit of an ex wife I know it as well as I know my own name.
She knows about me, the git.
She knows I worked at Walmart, and I have a crooked front tooth.
She knows I don't have kids.
She don't know much anymore. John says she's got cancer now. She wants his help and he says no. Good.
We'll keep it that way.
I don't want my man taking care of some stupid dame. Probably has some screws loose in her old noggin. I wouldn't doubt it.
I worked today. I got out of my new black Jeep and peered up at the store. I was working at Walmart's. It wasn't the best gig, but it pays the bills. I hope to be a superstar one day. Like that'll ever happen.
Mary Ann was working today.
Mary Ann was my coworker. She had blonde hair and big bangs and big, red lips. She looked thirty. I didn't ask 'cause it ain't polite for my generation to ask about things. Nothin' around here is polite nowadays.
Take Jack Bean. He's been askin' me for sex 'till the cows come home. I always say no. I say I'm attached.
He wants to know if John was gay. I said no. He wants to know if I'll cheat. I said no a hundred times. He don't get it.
He's sexy, handsome, and has money, but he ain't the brightest cat in the bag, if you know what I mean.
My John ain't the brightest cat in the bag. At least he treats his woman right.
He picked me. It was a match made in Heaven.
People look at us and go, "I guess they'll last." We have for six months. It's almost Christmas. I got done shopping that afternoon.
I didn't buy my John anything. It's hard to pick out a gift for him, for any occasion. He told me he wants sex and lots of it. It's what he likes most, he said.
I gave him plenty of that.
My man is as selfless as they come. He gave thirty dollars to an orphanage last year for Christmas.
Walter was another coworker.
He was fifty-nine and wore plugs in his ears. His nose was pointy and he had three grandchildren.
They all lived in Mississippi. He missed them.
I wouldn't blame him. Today he worked alongside me and we sang Christmas carols. I can't remember all the words to the songs. I got that right ole good feelin' in the bottom of my chest, it chases away all the blues and shit in my life that ain't goin' right. I don't like it when shit don't go right.
It was three weeks before Christmas.
We didn't get any snow.
It don't snow much in Georgia, hardly ever. My second cousin was majoring in economics at the University of Georgia and spent Thanksgiving at my house.
We had a nice turkey and lots of stuffing. It was three-thirty.
It was after quittin' time and I was waiting outside for John. He was fixing his truck again. The thing broke down a million times already. We didn't have any money to fix it up. Wish we did. He fixed it himself and usually did a pretty good job.
I don't like work much nowadays. I got a problem with my back and a problem with my hearing, too. I didn't do anything to deserve this. Don't own a Bible, it's my own fault.
Some teenagers came up to me and asked for directions to some diner downtown and I had to repeat myself, twice, fo'sho. "Go two blocks west," I said. They said, "What?" I said, "Two blocks west." They got it right afore that. Nothin' much else to git. Use a map. I got one myself.
John drove up in his truck and I hopped into it and we drove home.
We had our late evening sex in the den and I made dinner.
John went outside to mow the lawn.
The next day was the same.
Saturday we had a wedding for my friend, Barbara, and I wore my pretty purple dress and put my hair up in a bun and I remembered to get a bottle of wine at the grocery store.
It was two weeks before Christmas. I couldn't wait. I finally knew what to get John, a photo album for all of our wedding photos, and one of those flavored popcorn tins he liked so much.
Popcorn was his favorite.
I preferred mashed potatoes as my favorite dish. I was starting to do more cooking. Not too much more, just a little.
I didn't know how to cook very well.
I tried my darnest but it didn't help.
My mother was the cook of the family.
She could make anything and it would turn out good.
Me, I can't cook a tv dinner right.
Christmas Eve, the snow was falling outside. My hubby built a fire and we cuddled and talked.
John said work was goin' good, he wanted to get a new job that made more dough. I didn't blame him.
I hated working at the store, the boss made me feel small and stupid. He was too uptight.
John thought so. I wondered how Jen knew I worked at Walmart and John said she probably just saw me that's how she knew.
Everyone goes to Walmart.
I admitted that made sense.
Most didn't nowadays, what with all the war and the economic depression. I didn't understand war.
It made me feel small and stupid, too many unanswered questions and I didn't have the guts to ask.
Too many unanswered questions about all the wars that happened before the current war, the one in Afghanistan and Iraq.
My cousin's son, Thomas, was in Iraq.
We were waiting to hear word about how that boy was doing.
I figured he would make it.
God usually looked out for the good folk.
I thought I was one of the good folk every now and again. If no one knew all the good things I done, maybe some child, in some far off place, will recognize it and do some more good things. I didn't know. I hoped it was true.
I had a garden in the backyard. It was the beginning of a garden. I bought some seeds-pumpkin, onions, and strawberries-and a rake and a couple other supplies and started the garden last spring. I picked the onions and was too discouraged to buy more; the pumpkins withered and died; the flowers were still blooming, maybe I liked those the best anyway, I can't right tell.
This afternoon I got ready for church. I've been startin' to go to church more regular, like, I don't know why, but I got a feelin' in my bones that somethin' might happen, maybe the troops are going to be sent home. Them troops in Iraq, I hope my cousin is all right. His name was Thomas. Remember that name, he's going to win a medal I just know it he'll make us all proud. I hope I made my Daddy proud. I did my best in school. My grades weren't the best but I liked to write stories and they were in the attic, gathering dust. I hoped to look through them one of these days and find the best ones and submit them somewhere. I don't write anymore. It's too darned hard. I don't have much of a life and I can't think of anything to write about. I wish I could.
John was humming in the shower. I had half a mind to sneak into the shower with him. He had to go to work. He was a cashier at a furniture store and did a pretty good job, too, and made money on the side fixin' cars. I was proud of him. Proud as any wife should be. Ought ain't a word I wanted to use. Our parents don't got money for college.
The ex-wife was on my mind again. Darn, I wish she would just get out of there. I didn't want to have anything to do with her. They didn't have kids but he said she still had the big couch and the tv John wanted. She said she would give it to him if he came over to talk to her and work out their problems-their differences and she wanted someone to take her to get her medication regular. Yeah, I bet that's what she wanted to talk about, the no-good psycho cunt. She could call a cab. John said she was married to some man named Michael and he was on disability and couldn't drive. What a dumb name. Cool it, cowgirl, no need to be mean. My Momma taught me to be nice to everyone, even if they weren't nice back. She grew me up right even though we didn't have any money.
We lived in a small community. My next door neighbor was named Marellina Henchback. She was thirty-seven and had a boyfriend named Phil. She'd gone through some rough times and she was always right with me when I was going through mine. She and I were friends the first day we met. Friends the first day, that's a pretty good deal, I thought.
Tonight was Spaghetti Night. John was making dinner for me. He makes dinner once a week and tries to cook the rest of the week. It's hard for men to learn to cook. John couldn't sit still very long. He was always running around. He should join the track team. Maybe he could join a track team at the local college and then join the Special Olympics; he was on disability for being not too bright and having something called bipolar. I don't got that, heart disease runs in my family now, it right sure does. Don't think doctors know everything. My grandpa never went to the doctor a day in his life, past being born. I don't believe it's true.
Life ain't about the ups and downs. It's about what we do with it that counts. You can sit here and blame yourself for every bald spot on your head, or you can git with it and work it out, work through it. Sometimes it feels like things are going too slow for me, don't seem to stand a chance with nothin' no how. I ain't that bright, like I said.
Tomorrow was another day. It snowed again. The weatherman said it was goin' to snow every night this week. I didn't believe it was going to snow every night, maybe three out of the seven nights and that's it. I don't know if that's true or not. Don't think nothin' bout the weather, know how. We drive in it when we got to, we take care of it when we're in it. Don't know nothin' bout anything else.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

The History of Histograms.

The information is a body of stalwart images.
Old crones beat on banjos and false stories flit in
The news.

Tigers crowd in jungle alleys, weaving
Their tails, darkness flocks the moon. My eyes are
Full of pollen. My lips are rosy red and lock in struggle

Between manbear and bargirl. My mother tells me
Histograms are the finest art; she is polite to the man in
The green truck. He wanders by, fresh as daisies.

His mood changes from sea to sky. The Indians melt in
The snow. Tales of lost laundry and broken dreams
In the sky.

A blue-tailed crane is in flight.

Shadows
Float the moon.

The wind whispers sad, lonely things.
The crying of ghosts meets the whisper of words
And images fade in my memories.

Monday, December 07, 2009

Crying For Eternity.

I'm looking out the window at the street below.
Rain glistens on the sidewalk of eternity,
clouds cover the sky there are tears in your eyes,
please, baby, what are you crying for?
We bought our house and we bought our car,
your eyes shine like teardrops and you are far,
far, far away from me-this is eternity, is this eternity?

I'm looking out the window at the street below.
My eyes are following your eyes but I can't read them,
you've got them shadows locked up tight tonight,
you've got them shadows locked up in your heart tonight.

The rain patters down, the rain patters down,
no one will come near me, it's a quiet little town
on the edge of a big city, I thought livin' here would be pretty,
it just brings me down. It just brings me down.

Please, baby, what are you crying for?
I cup the tears in the palm of my hand,
the chill of midnight comes from a far-off shore,
it's like being in some strange and distant land,
what are you crying for, what are you crying for?

You've got me in the...palm of your hand.
You don't know me, you don't know me, say goodbye,
you got those tears in your eyes,
it's a little drop of eternity.

The rain is falling, the rain is falling,
the rain is falling, the rain is falling, the rain is falling,
down.
In this strange and distant town,
this strange and distant town.

Saturday, December 05, 2009

What They Wrote About In Mexico.

In Mexico, the steel glass glow from the cars
Sits in driveways, overtakes the minuscule
Lines of poverty, overtakes the greatness of it.
No one taught me how to climb a mountain, she said.
My hand is flat.
My palm is flat.
In Mexico, the Mexicans talk about the shaping of
Profound visions of red clay, strewn over
Barren land.
Shape me in gardens. Shape mountains
From the dust of no return.
I am poor. I go from door to door,

Begging someone to talk to me,
Asking them not to judge me, asking them for peace
Of mind. You are cruel and heartless,
A dictator of decisions.

My hand is flat. My palm is flat.
I love take-out food and gardens,
I feel bad about everything. My mother told
Me not to cross streets, not to talk to bad boys
With long hair, not to rhyme crime with time.

In Mexico, a boy makes tacos for Taco Night,
And dreams of playing baseball in high school.

Friday, December 04, 2009

Crawl Into Bed.

Some days I just want to crawl into bed and not
wake up. My mind is a sieve. I am steady.

I work as a missionary, going from country to country,
asking for forgiveness for something that was not
my fault, it was my mother's fault, the fault of

my grandfather, his great-uncle, his friend, Maurice,
he owned a coffee shop on the west side of Brooklyn,
remember in school, the students liked West better
than East, and white bread better than yeast.

I never know what I'm putting in my mouth. If it's full
of starch, macaroni and butter, dripping on the stove.
My drawers are full. My name is Melanie. I don't remember

anything about school. My brother asked to be in my wedding,
I told him maybe, if we had enough money to add a third person.
The sun came out on the morning of
December 1st,
it awakens the world, and the deer came out, looking for
peanuts and not finding what they wanted, they headed north,
hoping to find something better.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

About Trees.

The trees are bare and brown. The snow falls in Manhattan. My mother, Lucy, is put in a nursing home and her brother dies swiftly, in his sleep. He used to be an architect and built houses out of popsicle sticks. The popsicle sticks dry in the sun. Happiness is barren. Happiness is faded, worn, like a pair of blue jeans that needs to be washed. The sun is dried out like a raisin. The ocean is full of water, full of fish. The fish are dry. The fish aren’t dead. My father used to fish in the Atlantic Ocean in a canoe and caught five salmon on the first day. He hated Ernest Hemingway. His face turned red whenever he thought about him. The man broke his spirit. His spirit was broken. The trees are bare and brown. It is autumn. Autumn has come. The snow is falling. The white snowflakes fall to the ground and blanket the world and the world is dark and the moon is light. My mother said she found a field mouse in her closet. I said I didn’t believe her.