Legacy

Legacy

As a boy, I used to watch my Aunt Moira
apply cream blush to the apples of her cheeks,
warming the brush, pressing it in, curious
at the ritual as she applied powder afterward,
slipping cinnamon gloss onto her lips
as she prepared for ungrateful guests
at our family’s reunion. The ritual prepared
her to smile widely, and mentally, to look
ready as she crumbled, just slightly, under
mossy pressure, the weight of arguing
third cousins, the ungracious criticism
of people she barely knew odious.

“When will the burgers be ready?”
“Who’s going to organize the picnic tables?”
And once again.
“When will the burgers be ready?”

“You’re stronger than you know!”
I would say admiringly, unsure of precisely
what I meant, but meaning it wholeheartedly.

My admiration multiplied as I watched Moira
do it all: make potato salad, bake a lemon
chess pie, preparing her famous marinated
eggplant, flipping those perfect burgers
on that late, hot, August afternoon, causing
me to reflect on all the burger makers
that came before her: Grandma Ruth,
Aunt Allie-Beth, and Grandpa Houston. I’d
yell – “Stand tall guru!” -- as she would slip
me a smile along with a coy wink, meant
for just us two, only, serving the masses:
grumpy folks who had nothing in common
except distant bloodlines, and stories
of Uncle Ray, who could complete a back flip
and land on his feet at fifty-one years old,
to the delight of misty children. It was in these moments,
that I’d marvel and be in awe of her salty determination
and cornflower sass, and melt into a world
of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies,
as this crystal clear memory floats into my current
consciousness of years past.

Aunt Moira passed when I was twelve years old.
We stopped going to family reunions after that,
Instead visiting my Grandma Ruth’s dairy farm
on gentle spring weekends, the smell
of cornfields palpable, but Moira’s indelible
footprints left me dazzled and speechless,
a true pioneer among women living
in moldy small towns, emerging victorious
without even a bat of a false eyelash.

Written at the High Desert Retreat, October 2010

Father

Father

He was born in a pin striped suit
with hair slicked back like Dracula.
I would tease and he would chuckle.
He was quiet, sincere:
a gentleman’s gentleman.

That was just his nature I suppose.
Not that he spoke a lot in shadowed crowds,
but in sunflower moments,
and crystalline rain clouds, thoughts illuminate,
and he would open like a bright white lily,
and tell of incredible tales: how he dodged
the Korean War, how he reeled in the blue swordfish
now mounted in his conference room at work,
or about his commitment to community,
to service, to a life fulfilled.

For a man who said very little,
it’s beautiful really, and revealing.
That tall man with the deep voice
whose ominous presence challenged you,
how his piercing blue eyes, your eyes,
looked directly into your own
was just a man. Just a man.
Like anyone else I guess, with stories
to be told, sharing his heart, baring all, spinning
tales of fear, honor, and privilege,
how he grew up in a small town,
or how he secured his master’s degree
after attending college on the GI bill,
or how he played the lead role
in “I Never Sang For My Father,”
still hiding behind that suit,
which assumes an assuming man,
but underneath were just cotton pillows,
painted deserts, liquid dreams,
and the plain desire to be human.
Just human.
To find connection.
To be like everyone else.

Integration by Pablo Neruda

I did not write this poem, but had to share the beautiful words by Chilean poet P. Neruda.

Intregrations

After everything, I will love you as if it were always before, as if after so much waiting, not seeing you and you not coming, you were breathing close to me forever.


Close to me with your habits with your color and your guitar just as countries unite in schoolroom lectures and two regions become blurred and there is a river near a river and two volcanoes grow together.

Close to you is close to me and your absence is far from everything and the moon is the color of clay in the night of quaking earth when, in terror of the earth, all the roots join together and silence is heard ringing with the music of fright. Fear is also a street. And among its terrifying stones tenderness somehow is able to march with four feet and four lips.

Since, without leaving the present that is a fragile ring, we touch the sand of yesterday and on the sea, love reveals a repeated fury.

---------- Whoever loved as we did? Let us hunt for the ancient cinders of a heart that burned and make our kisses fall one by one, till that empty flower rises again. Let us love the love that consumed its fruit and went down, its image and its power, into the earth: you and I are the light that endures, its irrevocable delicate thorn. Bring to that love, entombed by so much cold time, by snow and spring, by oblivion and autumn, the light of a new apple, light of a freshness opened by a new wound, like that ancient love that passes in silence through an eternity of buried mouths.

---------- Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence, without your moving, lulcing the moon like a blue flower, without you walking later through the fog and the cobbles, without the light you carry in your hand, golden, which maybe others will not see, which maybe no one knew was growing like the red beginnings of a rose. In short, without your presence: without your coming suddenly, incitingly, to know my life, gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind: since then I am because you are, since then you are, I am, we are, and through love I will be, you will be, we'll be.

by Pablo Neruda









Spiral

This was a two minute write believe it or not. Hope it works. LOL

Spiraling,
a rose petal eaten
by thorns.
I survive,
barely,
to beseech
my soul.
Alabaster thoughts
shimmer
with perseverance.
I’m whole.

Darkness (2)

This was another class write. It surprised me and choked me up as I read it. It is what it is.


Incredible (Darkness, Part 2)

I stepped into the cold, wet sleet, the ground silvery, slushy gray, pulling my scarf tighter as I followed first a pair of footprints, followed by another and another, as a crowd of a hundred mixed and mingled, until I lost my first friend. That cement and steel structure brewed, breathing and beckoning me, asking me to face the reality, the verdict, of what lay dormant, for now, in that vanilla envelope at my appointed time, the first appointment of the day. Nine a.m. – the first damned appointment of the day. There was a disconnect, an incredible floating sensation, where you view your body from above, much like an astronaut looking down upon the Earth (poor souls), as you observe your breathing, the pounding heart as it thump, thump, thumped against your ribcage, the bully bruising internal organs recklessly. I didn't feel it so much as understood and watched.

As I opened the door, I walked from the frigid ice into Hansel and Gretel's oven, the witch at reception, cold, unblinking, dismissive, not even acknowledging me except for this:

"Your name please?"

The anxiety began in the pit of my stomach, the acid forming, flowing into my veins, seizing my heart and eclipsing my shallow breath as I opened my mouth, no words forming. Finally I swallowed and told her that I had an appointment. She averted her gaze.

"Incredible," I thought. "That little brat."

My seething was a way to avoid the daunting task of sitting and waiting, my skin fleeing my body like a mouse scurrying from a cat, but immediately she motioned me with her index finger into an empty board room, that suddenly felt deathly cool compared to the waiting room just outside. There was a long table with a telephone in the center, one used for conference calls I thought, and about twenty chairs surrounding it, the ghosts about to conduct a group interview. I wondered who the applicant was. I tried to breathe, but couldn't find any air, the dichotomy between cold, hot and cold damaging my fragile lungs.

Then she came in, the middle aged woman, hair permed, dyed red, with a squeegee holding somewhat in place. She smiled, but it was a weak attempt at being approachable. I remember her telling me her name, but it went in one ear and out the other, the roadrunner outrunning the coyote. In my mine I called her Tess the mess, but it was me who felt messed up. She briefed me on her experience – she returned school at the age of forty-one to pursue her MSW after her some went to college, and she immediately was hired by the County's Health Department.

Tess then abruptly stopped talking, paused, and produced the envelope with the test results, test results that would alter my immediate and future plans. She handed the me the index card which displayed a confidential identification number that was meant to be me. Underneath this code were two words in all caps, red, the same word stamped twice on top of the other, a benign ledger that was only used to display data.

POSITIVE
POSITIVE

The repetition of the word confirmed what I already knew, that the second lab had verified the fist test for accuracy.

I no longer felt cold, nor warmth, or anything else that produced a sensation. I'd expected this. I had expected it, especially when my ex-boyfriend had received his news over the telephone. I had expected it, but still felt shock. "Incredible," I thought.

She began to cry as I stared dumbly at the card. She cried, and then I looked over at her, my face pale. I thought I might puke if I thought I could move from that chair to the bathroom.

"I'm new," she said, 'and I have never had to deliver news like this before." She paused before beginning again. "You look just like my son."

And then incredibly, I stood up and walked over to her as she wept, and hugged her, telling her that I was sorry.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

It was the only thing I knew to do, and inside a door slammed shut, locked itself. No dreams. No future. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I hugged her and in my head, I felt and saw nothing. Incredible. It was 1987. I would die within the year, and that was that. There was no prognosis, no treatment, and people were dying, those sweet men who had no idea of what had hit them. Incredible, just incredible. I hugged her as she cried until I finally sighed, allowing myself to emit a tight breath of air, trying to ignore the panic as it washed over me like the tide robbing sand from the shore.

Darkness (1)

I wrote ,the first three installments in 2007-09, but have since written two more installments, so I wanted to start over. Hope you like them:

Darkness, Part One:

As I walk down blackened corridors, each door in succession is locked, bolted, no way out of this thick, damp fog. My steps are small, my eyes as wide open as I can muster, trying to force light in so that I can see where the path leads, but it is still too dark, and I am afraid I will stumble, fall, scrape my knees and shins. I keep my arms straight out from my sides, feeling the walls I cannot see in deafening blindness, inching forward, passing door after door after door. Locked, locked, locked, locked, locked, and finally opening, finally, as daylight drifts towards me, enveloping me. But the cement floor turns to icy ground, and the light deceives, because I am still trapped by the slippery soil below, trying, trying, not to fall and split my head open.

And that is how some memories are, aren't they? Some you anticipate, but are now dislodged, and though your mind etches forward to retrieve them, that moment in time is still a prize unearned. And, then the ones you do remember, the ones that are solidified as an artifact, can steal your breath in their crushing beauty and pain. Behind that door, I was twenty-four.

And, it is strange what you can see so clearly in that claret pool of water. That morning in the warmth of my car, while the outside blew flurries of snow, I waited sipping my coffee, cream, no sugar. And, like the gray of the outdoors, inside I sat on the silvery tinged vinyl seat, finally having warmed as I reached my destination and pulled into the parking lot. The heartless, cold, cement building pulsated, beckoned, as I waited for my appointed time. I took a look in the mirror – I stared at the eyes that betray, a fragile vulnerability disguised as quiet confidence.

In this moment, this dream, my reality, I can even see what I am wearing, feel the textures – the white cotton t-shirt under the scratchy wool red cardigan with the missing bottom button, something I pulled out of someone else's closet, borrowed, and the steel toed boots, black baggy pants, and the herring-boned wool top coat. I can see it as if I am wearing it now, but that was then.

In that moment, I already know what the test results will reveal, can even see the index card with the poisonous stigma attached to it. I can see it, and it's just a memory, but in that reality, in that moment I could not know that this present would be both my past and my future. I sit numb, unblinking, staring at those steely eyes that speak back to me, and rattle me from head to toe.

"You're a phony," they seared. "Everyone knows how weak you really are." And, I knew it too without words spoken. I knew it, so I thought, knew it was soon to be my end, dreams shattered, bones and flesh lying mangled in a shallow grave. And it dawns on me in this moment, that this memory is not just something you witness, something you refuse to tear your eyes from, like some hideous YouTube experiment gone horribly wrong, but it is something you feel deeply, feel so intensely that I gasp out loud, take a deep breath, and remind myself that that's how it was then. And, that's what it looked like and that's how it felt. And, it's in the past where it can still haunt, injure, draw blood, feed off my anxieties like a parasite.

I pull the door shut, close my eyes, and open them again.

I wrote ,the first three installments in 2007-09, but have since written two more installments, so I wanted to start over. Hope you like them:

Warning: Rated PG-13 - R!

Darkness, Part One:

As I walk down blackened corridors, each door in succession is locked, bolted, no way out of this thick, damp fog. My steps are small, my eyes as wide open as I can muster, trying to force light in so that I can see where the path leads, but it is still too dark, and I am afraid I will stumble, fall, scrape my knees and shins. I keep my arms straight out from my sides, feeling the walls I cannot see in deafening blindness, inching forward, passing door after door after door. Locked, locked, locked, locked, locked, and finally opening, finally, as daylight drifts towards me, enveloping me. But the cement floor turns to icy ground, and the light deceives, because I am still trapped by the slippery soil below, trying, trying, not to fall and split my head open.

And that is how some memories are, aren't they? Some you anticipate, but are now dislodged, and though your mind etches forward to retrieve them, that moment in time is still a prize unearned. And, then the ones you do remember, the ones that are solidified as an artifact, can steal your breath in their crushing beauty and pain. Behind that door, I was twenty-four.

And, it is strange what you can see so clearly in that claret pool of water. That morning in the warmth of my car, while the outside blew flurries of snow, I waited sipping my coffee, cream, no sugar. And, like the gray of the outdoors, inside I sat on the silvery tinged vinyl seat, finally having warmed as I reached my destination and pulled into the parking lot. The heartless, cold, cement building pulsated, beckoned, as I waited for my appointed time. I took a look in the mirror – I stared at the eyes that betray, a fragile vulnerability disguised as quiet confidence.

In this moment, this dream, my reality, I can even see what I am wearing, feel the textures – the white cotton t-shirt under the scratchy wool red cardigan with the missing bottom button, something I pulled out of someone else's closet, borrowed, and the steel toed boots, black baggy pants, and the herring-boned wool top coat. I can see it as if I am wearing it now, but that was then.

In that moment, I already know what the test results will reveal, can even see the index card with the poisonous stigma attached to it. I can see it, and it's just a memory, but in that reality, in that moment I could not know that this present would be both my past and my future. I sit numb, unblinking, staring at those steely eyes that speak back to me, and rattle me from head to toe.

"You're a phony," they seared. "Everyone knows how weak you really are." And, I knew it too without words spoken. I knew it, so I thought, knew it was soon to be my end, dreams shattered, bones and flesh lying mangled in a shallow grave. And it dawns on me in this moment, that this memory is not just something you witness, something you refuse to tear your eyes from, like some hideous YouTube experiment gone horribly wrong, but it is something you feel deeply, feel so intensely that I gasp out loud, take a deep breath, and remind myself that that's how it was then. And, that's what it looked like and that's how it felt. And, it's in the past where it can still haunt, injure, draw blood, feed off my anxieties like a parasite.

I pull the door shut, close my eyes, and open them again.

Follow

Follow

The sons of Mothers do not comprehend,
and so they stray into pale fleshy lips
that pout, preen and argue, while white veneers
climb pious soapboxes, spewing filth,
asking the masses to
follow,
follow,
follow,
where scorpions lurk, and cobwebs bind, antennae
waving, eight legs clapping as one. After all,
what's wrong with wise mature men preaching
the gospel, singing sanctified songs, seducing
young lads, claiming consent?

Sixteen year olds, hormones raging, no taller
than five foot eight, a first opportunity
to uncover forbidden glances in nodding dusky
shadows. Repulsive grins whisper and coo, beckoning:

“Trust me. Trust me. And, we'll fly to Italy in a bat's eye. Board
my personal jet with worn treasure, and copper stains” –
even if there is no truth to speak of.

And the boys craving for attention, love, and contact,
respond naturally to their call. They answer and
follow,
follow,
follow,
into depth's misery, forgetting to anticipate
the enemy. Instead those boys welcome abhorrent villains,
absorbing spiteful venom senselessly. Only those boys
can’t discern a merciless monster from a devoted comrade,
so they seek the sanctity of shore and
follow
follow,
follow,
the wicked pied piper who guides these callow boy-scouts
to that nefarious point just past the tide where
the indifferent undertow pulls fiercely, and folly criticizes
and obliterates naiveté. They
follow,
follow,
follow,
never questioning, just trusting blindly, propelled into futures unknown,
where terror screams, and the cold night scurries
across bewitched skin, astonished that no one heeded them,
warned them to lock their doors fiercely, question
what is not permitted to be discussed.

And so they
follow, once again,
into dusty silhouettes
and ghost worlds gray.

Ebbs and Flows

Ebbs and Flows




Baby’s Girls thoughts turned cobalt, then translucent. As she sits admiring sassafras sand and the cranberry ocean watching balmy waves, something inside shifts, left becomes more center, noises lift and separate like silver apparitions, until she only hears crashing sea tides and her purring heart. Baker Beach was a refuge, no an oasis, a place, a moment where she feels safe, and yet, twenty minutes East, and she was in the thick of concrete jungles merging with a cacophony of others. She called them others in that those people, those aliens, did not inhabit her world and universe. What had happened the night previous? The Tuxedo had delivered her, the rose, to her door, had scotched lips against the nape of her neck, had begged earnestly, like some silly school boy who had pulled her hair, to come up to her quarters, to sweep her to her bed, make love to her harmoniously, tilting the crescent moon on its ear. She acquiesced. The truth – she had wanted his custard love to fill her, like helium in a balloon, to make her walk on air unafraid and unashamed. So “yes” she had said, her rose lipstick caressing his mouth, his cheeks, wherever, he would allow her to roam. And inside, inside where it was hot and sticky, creamy and floating, inside was where he was granted permission, his passion merciless, she gave in, allowing someone else to steer. And so it had been, and so he had slipped out, after cerulean promises and insincere affectations, slipped away while her silken auburn hair enveloped her in her sleep, slipped away into a shadow, into a parallel world, one where she had not been invited, not been included, where she had simply been shut out. The tide ebbs and flows, stealing the sand as it leaves, returning to tumble abandoned sand castles, and depositing fragmented shells, battered and bruised, leaving her right where Tuxedo had left her the night previous, completely, devastatingly alone to sift through amber winds, citrus heat, and granite thoughts, a place she knows better than most, a place that cost her much, a place that failed to leave the most meager of tips, and one that sold her soul to black market thieves.

Why They Call It Falling

Why They Call It Falling

Someone please push me, so I gain momentum. What
has appeared to be so effortless, that “something” that
has developed between you and me, protons reacting
to electrons, that makes the you and me, the we.
It’s magical, fantastical, an elixir for love, filled with
all of love’s complexities and love’s frailties. I watch as we
fall into a feather bed, ether if you will, supporting us
so we become aware of both inner and outer worlds.
I feel both calm and fluttery, living in shades of silver layers
and translucent dreams, a reluctance for being accepted and loved.
Nagging tapes play in the back of my head, the ones
that are no longer pertinent, the ones pushing buttons,
pulling me down just below the surface, the undertow,
lying to the world again, again, again, revealing sordid, rancid
past remembrances, so I think, as to why I will never will be
good enough, so much so, that although my head truth knows
better, my heart truth grows wary.

“You never were good enough, so you will never be good enough.
You’re diseased. Recovery is an impossibility from the trauma
that was chosen for you. Just for you!”

So my face smacks down hard against harsh pavement, everything
growing grey. It’s almost best to start over than try and fix what is
dilapidated. Damaged goods sear my soul. I try to cascade
upon a safe netting, that soft, secure, that sanctuary. I still cannot
fully accept with an entirely open heart, that appreciation
has been earned. I return to “I’m sorry”, aware that
each time I say it, no matter how many times I mean it,
it lacks the same amount of sincerity, punch, as it did previously.
And I do mean it. Besides, who am I apologizing to anyway? That I can’t
give you more? That I am paralyzed in fear? These shards
undermine what is true.

Time to suck up, return to bat, line up over first plate, and allow that
first pitch to hit in the winning run. For a time that works. That works.
Just fine.