Pot of Bastards

Michael and Marie met in the middle of their names

as unexpected as any surprise ending,

especially for a beginning.

She, there then

when someone loosed the ties of their lips

and let slip the cat

which ran straight for his legs and stretched languidly

like a tired truth

      "you were a mistake"

which she also was

and understood how the 's'

hisssssses out

like a deflating balloon.

And she was there

when her void

pulled the truth from him, hand over hand

reeling the marlin in...

only it wasn't that difficult,

from an observers point of view,

he gave it.

He owned up to the boy,

baby hand in a mothers fist

hearing the words reverberate through a cavernous bank

of marble, wood, expanse, huge word

BASTARD

the oh so tiny plea...

       "please mommy! never say it again!"

and her arterial apology spraying across his sweet

fallen face...

      "Never again love. Never again!"

He already knew...

the deep down knew
that gets hooked with a word now
hauled to consciousness, gasping, half dead

and brave heart...

he faked it.

I think we spiraled from there,

the pot of us bastards

and some un-named spoon

stirring.
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Note To Self

Wake as if you have somewhere to be. Curl your hair and paint your face as if you might meet someone famous, or better yet infamous. On second thought, you might meet a nobody who's a somebody and will bump into your grocery cart with their uncurled hair and sheet creased face. You will laugh, knowing she woke with nowhere to be, and she will know you made up a schedule when you had no errand. You might be new best friends.

Say something between the walls of your rooms. It is strange to go five hours without a spoken word. How do you even know your voice still makes sound? How will the couch know that you are still of an opinion? Say to the guitar, "Do you miss my fingers?" It will reply from it's dusty orifice and cobwebbed strings, "What do you think?" You will scowl in reprimand for such a sarcastic and sassy reply. Apologize to the withered plant, your words like a snake charmer coaxing something out of nothing. Realize the plant and the guitar have every right to feel neglected and pissy. Apologize to the guitar also.

Clean up your spaces as if a guest might arrive, a surprise guest, a surprise guest who may be a brother, or a stranger, and each will need the same care and feeding. Where will they sit if you leave your laundry unfolded on the chairs? Play Adagio For Strings, Op 11 because it is long, and you have the time, and it cuts through silence like mourning. Hug the lost parts of you, watch them wandering through the score, alternately sweet and sad. Change the music before a guest is greeted at the door with your wailing.

String together beautiful beads to rid yourself of the collection. A collection is just the accumulation of things that once had homes elsewhere. They grow along your emptiness and feel important. This is how hoarding begins. It begins with emptiness. Wear eight of your bracelets on your wrists and walk through the streets with your gifts brushing against your hips. Seek out recipients as if you are a philanthropist wearing your charitable foundation just above the hands that shake it loose. Know it is not charitable. It is just you not being a hoarder. Perfect motive is elusive.

Say a prayer. Speak it while laying on your back and playing with your curls. Feel small so you know your place. Grow wings because you know you're loved. Grab your shoes. God himself may send you on an errand. Be ready. Round up your purse, your keys, a sweater, and set them next to the screen door while giving thanks for the breeze. It cools. It makes sound between the blinds. It rushes through the room, from south to north, on a mission it seems, having woken with somewhere to be.
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The Stroller

The women all have sundresses and strollers. A stroller comes with a husband and a baby. If you have a stroller, then the husband it came with has a steady job and affords you holidays. If you have a stroller, then you have a sun hat that matches the print on the baby's onesie, and the baby has little baby sunglasses and little baby shoes and everything is small and manageable.

You walk your stroller, with baby and husband in tow...your straight back saying "Look, look! I am really a writer, but just now I am managing my stroller!" There is no time to think outside this managerial occupation. Doing so creates a perilous environment where the wheel might come off the stroller. You might lean down to fix it and your sun hat would disengage itself from your head, and the wind would take it into another life where it will sit atop the head of a woman you never became. You will hardly notice its absence as your hands fidget apologetically with a broken stroller you do not know how to fix.

The baby cries because you have been still too long and the sun is beating down like the sun always does. Looking up, you beseech the sky, but it is what it is and there is no powerlessness like you against the sun. You reach to pull the canopy down, provide shade for him and obscurity for you, but he is wearing a suit and tie, and was actually just requesting a little help with this months rent.

"Ask your father! Can't you see I am busy with the stroller?"

He gives you a quizzical look that lets you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your husband is dead, and you are old, and the stroller should have gone out of focus a hundred years ago. The canopy down, you drape a blanket over that. It is freezing, and seasons have passed behind your sidewalk workshop like freeway cars. Woosh! Woosh!

Somehow the stroller is fixed and you are not, and nothing is small or manageable. You straighten your back and push forward with your hatless head advertising silver hair. Your grandchild stops crying and begins to coo. "Look, look!" you tell her. "I was once a mother, but just now, I am managing my stroller."
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Abba Father

I sit rather gingerly on the edge of a lap I did not know was this comfortable. One hand holds his, and I feel awkward. Looking at his face, I see ancient and ageless mixed into an incredible beauty I fear I will never possess.




"Yes you will."




(How does he know my thoughts?)




"I see everything. You've hidden nothing, though I see you've tried," he smiles.




"All of this?" I ask, my hand leaving his to pantomime the warped human I inhabit.




"Yes."




"Even that?" I point behind me, incredulous!




“Yes."




"Even.........this?" My eyes spill over as I tap my heart with a shaking finger.




"Especially that. I know why it's there...ALL of it."




"And yet you love me?"




"Without question."




"Beyond all sense or reason?"




He laughs. "Child, you are not so hard to love. With every sense and reason, I love you. You are mine."




Acceptance branches out through a slow, giddy smile.  I take my hand from my heart and place it back into his, feeling the beat between our palms as if this heart is home. Leaning back against his expanse, I sigh into all that space. "I love you too Daddy.”
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Happy Father's Day to all you Papa's.

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Needing My Friend

Yes...we're gambling!

We’ve only our hearts to guide us this day,

where once we were more form than substance
now some kind of strange piñata

the bones of us covered in paste, held as body by crepe paper.

But no matter all that. Our hearts have GROWN

in equal measure to our deterioration and they have become

the governing force.

It is our hearts that beat us through those daily walks

to grease what’s left of our bitching joints.

Beneath these sagging breasts
beats the warrior child, the gator’s jaw

     fighting for
           releasing not
all that remains. We will

reach for our face to face moments...

two old souls, coming ‘round to a new innocence.

Our playground awaits.
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"With Sympathy" is not sufficient...

A blogger (a friend) I know, have known, since before...
Oh man...to say it
BEFORE

Since before the world became a incoherent swirl
since before there was a name spoken
not yet engraved

Oh GOD
I hate this part of life...
release, without consent, to
to...

More than death
what startles me is my sorrow.

We've not met
I've not held your infant
but he grew beneath me in the words you cradled him in
and I knew him
well...I knew him through you
well...I knew you through this
and I knew this through many

And the same avenue that brought him to life for me
takes his life.

Words.

And there are none.


I'm so proud of him, you, her.
So little
and yet so much he became...
becomes...
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My Fading Portrait

(For my friend P. You have always been so vibrant and alive to me. I will remind you every chance I get.)

When did my colors start to fade?

The first time you overlooked my dress

and the care I took to turn you on, only you weren’t

and aren’t, and can you believe I still try?

When did my paint peel, like a weathered door

that you no longer cared to enter

and I, the gauze ghost behind a pane of cobwebs

stuck between life and death?

When did I become an outline of a woman

all women, any woman

and too soon thereafter, just a frame

so long without my nuance

that I lost my face?

Was it the first time my desire tired you?

Was it the last time you took my energy and rolled your eyes with it

or when you tamped this rambunctious spirit down

with the toe of your sensible work boot?

Honey, draw my portrait.

I have so long forgotten the space between my eyes

and how you once traveled the distance.

Were my lips full, or just swollen with kisses

that once came without request?

I am fading, and who will conjure the me you met?

Who will remind me that I was once a masterpiece

screaming with saturated color,

excitement, and possibility…like a traveling van to Woodstock?

(you hitched a ride… don’t you remember? You stuck out your thumb and said “take me with you.” And I did.)

Sweetheart, do not age me so soon.

Do not pull me into a gray cinched bun

with these tresses still so unwilling to be tamed.

We are not old.

I am not done.

I cannot be the empty frame you just look through

to the chair, where the newspaper holds your eye

and the television, your ear.

Paint me with passion

Leave nothing to memory.

I need to see it all.

Do you remember?

Show me

PLEASE show me

before the mirror has no face.