poetry

This End Up

Moving means “This End Up”

Moving means saying goodbye to dust

A house is always so  much uglier on the way out.

On the way in the end was up,

they were happy, hopeful, the marriage was so new.

 The carpet, once bone colored, fresh-

now is ash grey.

Stains of arguments leave cigarette burns where they stood

and cursed.

Moving time and memories are crammed into separate boxes.

What parts of their marriage will be donated?

 Or thrown away?

He weeps one last time as they pass in the bathroom,

 a dispassionate changing of the guards as they take turns for the shower.

He weeps.

“It’s been such a long time since we were naked together.”

Moving means “This End Up”

Our fragile boxes must be handled with care.

poetry

The Party

I was totally thankful for the party,

for the balloons that squeaked when you rubbed them

 and crepe paper like the skin of an old woman’s throat.

I was touched by the invitation on pink construction paper, 

my name spelled out in glittering stickers.

The silver letters were crooked, but the meaning was the same.

We whistled like birds,

and gorged on cookies and cake.

My heart quickened by sugar, 

lips red from fruit punch, 

brown crumbs under my fingernails.

Sweat was mashed to our skin,

panting on our bikes as we left the party.

The sickly sweet feeling of being too full and too sticky

we stopped at the park,

rolled on the cool grass and 

decided to count the clouds.

Then a man in sunglasses came, with a black mustache.

I could see our faces in the reflection of the lens, mouths agape 

in timid horror.

He said we were pretty,

and asked for directions to the elementary school.

more poetry

Walmart

I want to walk down the spacious aisles 

with white beams crossing each other in a grid overhead.

I’m sentimental for three dollar shirts where the hem comes undone in a week.

I imagine my mom’s dry hands

with long red fingernails

gripped around the blue handle of the shopping cart,

her lips pressed back in a closed-mouth, half smile.

Her eyes cooly observing as she strolls from aisle to aisle,

carelessly unaware or rather purposely unaware 

of the fact

that she can’t afford to shop there.

She’s not paying attention to how badly her hair has thinned.

My heart sees her the way it always has;

majestic in her full bosom and red nails,

pushing a shopping cart like a queen.

Her hair is white at the temples and the rest hangs in a low curl

of bottle brown.

Yet her cooly observing eyes are still regal, beautiful in Walmart,

beautiful in shabby sandals,

stretching a dime

More poetry

But not Superman

The celebrated artist took his life.

Hero to many

he defied stylistic consistency,

fully grasped small anybodies

trying to understand,

and perhaps order

the show, not a career.

Revealing.

Pursuing.

Videos from earlier,

which began in the 1980s,

it was organized,

insightful.

The main attraction here was working when he died.

An old compressed air tank lies on the floor,

a hose connects it to the bell-jar,

and each picture in close-up:

a bottle. 

Thus you behold

different colored liquid that is swirling because of a stream of air,

You behold

in pristine miniature under glass

the chaos that nearly consumed it.

A grown-up’s fantasy of childhood 

as a blissful, golden age;

it was a vision,

 the repressed memories of real-life tarnish and terror.

The utopian culmination of a crystal city

was marred

by a clear awareness of its own history.

This Superman, champion of truth,

had been reciting passages from literature about horrors

before he slept.

Superman meant something more;

saving the world in great and small ways,

was an idealist of the first order,

a deeply disappointed one.

 -Claudine Woodard

poetry....

Believe in the limitless.

Create something you care about.

You can watch,

stagnant,

waiting.

Or you can move.

Press forward.

Chase the dream;

an idea that cannot get away.

Run.

-Claudine Woodard

Watching a Netflix doc about Muslim punks. Not too bad. The glass of wine is nice reminding me of just how long it has been since I have smelled the sweat and felt the heat of a live show. I miss vinyl but I know that you just can't hold on to anything too tightly. Not people, not jobs, not even yourself. Eventually it all fades to the great beyond and these days I am questioning everything.I ate meat last week for the first time in 16 years. I have considered all things, ending a life, beginning a new one. Yes, being married and in love is a glorious thing but I feel at odds with society. I feel at odds with the system and yet blind allegiance makes the money. what would I do if I was poor? I mean really poor... really really fucking dirt on the street poor. i would do what anyone does... survive.  It can all go in a dust cloud. I have lived long enough to realize this. Work hard, play hard, be a weekend warrior... what else is there? Get the money, get the house, live long and old and content... In the end does the great understanding come? When we are face to face with our end do we see the truth? Does the end ever really come? You see I was raised on the time of the end. I was raised with that glorious prospect of the kingdom and then I had to accept it wasn't real. I have seen enough to know revolution is an illusion, things reset themselves to the status quo in a matter of years. Change the world? That's the talk of rainbows....

Birds of the desert

A person tends to wonder what longing really means. We are late-comers in terms of evolution but the landscape keeps changing. There are no boundaries for those who can fly but left on the side of the road is the windfall for vultures and the years will continue to pass. A therapist cannot understand why you don't want children. A 7% bonus merges on the back of the antfarm you live in and everyone is hungry. Netflix numbs, facebook numbs, instagram reminds you how pretty your enemies are. But facing the steady stream of the winds with my blue wings something tells me I will survive. It crashes, it crashes, it crashes, the images and memories, lost. Is there water in the desert?

time

I listened to 'Flesh and Blood' for the first time in about 3 years this morning. It was a glorious dawn as I waited for the bus; frigid crisp air kissing my cheeks and the intoxicating wash of midnight blue fading to the pale of early morning. I love Bryan Ferry's voice. I hadn't heard 'Oh, Yeah' in so long and I remembered how much I love his fluttery tenor.

I can't wait for Jackie to get home. Marriage does strange things to the passing of time. The day of the wedding was a rapid fire blur, fast as a shooting star we were kissing in the church and then drinking wine in the hotel room. Last night was the first night I have had to spend away from him since we got married and it feels as though I haven't laid eyes on him for a week.

Time passes in strange ways these days. Reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' at work made my breaks stretch out considerable but now that I have the blasted iPhone my break goes by in an instant. Is this the coil of technology? Is it speeding up time? Is marriage speeding up time?

All I want is sleep right now...

jukebox

you've got this new head filled up with smoke and i've got my veins all tangled close to those jukebox bars you frequent, the safest place to hide.

a long night spent with your most obvious weakness, you start shaking at the thought. you are everything i want, because you're everything i'm not...

and we lay together, just not too close.

how close is close enough?

i just want to break you down so badly.

in the worst way.

my inarticulate, store-bought, hangover hobby-kit it talks... and it says "you, oh, you are so cool." you're scissor-shaped across the bed.

you are red.

violent red.

you hollow out my hungry eyes.

you hollow out my hungry eyes...

just not too close...

how close?

how close is close enough...

-louis

Thursday, No Answers

Can you feel it in the dead of night?
I thought of releasing the thetans Friday night and felt a sense of horror. The request to let go of the demons haunted my mind. The webcast that drove me insane. "I can hear the ocean when I say your name."

End of May...

Losing a grip on the fog and the grip on the City skyline I forgot about my years in SF. Last weekend I was there again, basking in the gloriousness of music and City sounds. Cafe Du Nord has always been my favorite venue in San Francisco. Once a speakeasy in the 1920s, one descends a red-carpeted staircase to another world of opulent red walls and a deep mahogany bar. There was an amber warmth to the lighting and I felt a sense of homecoming. Everything seemed somehow smaller than it was in my imagination. It had been almost ten years since I was below the City street to see a band, and what a band to see!

The Ocean Blue have always held a place of nostalgic tenderness in my heart and seeing them once more after 12 years was truly sweet. Those fragile spider's web thick with dew-drop jewels of memories cling to my heart. For all its misty frailty, the memory pierces. It holds your heart. It warms your heart. Music that enchanted me as a younger girl entrances my mind and I feel a wholeness and a healing.

It is impossible to truly explain what home means, but San Francisco was such a place for many years. I saw not the times of loneliness and confusion. Or if I did, the loneliness and confusion took on a gleaming hue because feeling those things in your 20s is unlike any other time. As the plane drifted up I looked back through my window, touched my fingers to my lips and blew the City a kiss. I will always love you.

Back in the sun of Orange County, summer's easy embrace has opened her arms again. Our skin will be kissed by the gold of the sun. Our clothes slip off our skin with ease, muscles tighten and release in the thick, warm balm of night.

It has to be summer.

When I meet the blank canvas I am faced with questions. I am faced with wondering if I am full of ideas or full of breath. Jack is at work right now and the house has a sense of quiet I will notice until he comes again. I loved his lips this morning. I love his eyes. He is so perfect. I know this sounds cheesy but I don't care. Being in love is a wonderful thing. I am not in love in the manic drunk way that it was when we first met, not it is such a part of my being I feel normal again. Not that the manic drunk feeling doesn't come again when I see him, when I hear his voice. It is just astounding to me how one can actually get used to being happy as much as they had gotten used to being sad. That is what amazes me, how for years pain was my food and now joy is breath and life. I told Jack once that every time I am around him I feel like I am on vacation. It's so true. He is everything I could ever want. I wish I could make a proper tribute. There are no fights, nothing to disagree on. Why should love be about fighting? Why should love be about getting the last word? It's not. It's about opening your soul to another and trusting them with your everything. Knowing Jack loves me, that he has given me his heart, why would I ever want to win a fight or get the last word?

I am so excited that it has been 2 years since I met him and that we are on the verge of another summer together. I feels so good sitting here in his room, looking at his shoes and the picture he has of us taped to the inside door of his closet. I think of his soft and gentle voice, his laugh and silly sayings.  Love is so strong and real to me. Other things don't matter. Perceptions of self in unflattering lights are false illusions. They don't hold weight, they can't hold water. It is so difficult to break free from that false illusion I hold of myself, of feeling less than what others are. But I will be the master of contentment. I will be a warrior of light. Every day can be lived in bliss. Every day can be lived with so much light and so much warmth. I think of the happily ever after and I was googling pictures of ballerinas last night. I think that is how I want to look on my wedding day, like a springtime ballerina...

Joel will be moving soon and that is a point of transition I am facing soon. Things have fallen in place so much in these past two years I think I really am ready for it. I am ready to grow up after these seven years of healing. It is a wonderful thing to let go of being fragile and helpless. It is a great joy God has given me to be independent, to be strong and capable. I think I tend to sell myself short and think that somehow I can't get things done. I can see, though, how these past two years have been preparing me for what is to come. I just had to look back and let God enlighten me. I will always face times of doubt, when I think somehow I am not passing the test but that is when I need to continue to look at God. God gives me everything I need. I look at Jack's books and hats, his t-shirts hanging in the closet and I know he is all I ever did need.

This has been a great year of change. I lost my grandpa and have learned to reassess everything. I think I am finally free. It will continue to grow. The flower will still bloom, the years will still pass. I don't think I will age. I have let go of that thought. When the spirit is young we do not age. We are free from the heavy burdens of cynicism and doubt. Things can be as pure and lovely as they were when we were children. I feel a time of rebirth. It has to be the summer. It has to be summer...

I find it so hard...

I think the coffee is still coursing through my veins. Profundity entices me but nothing comes out. Squeezing words out of the anguish is easier than out of joy. So I will think of happy words.. bliss, felicity, joy, ecstasy. I will be met with the salt air, the fog, the sound of the ocean. I remember the sound of the fog horn at three in the morning and watching the orange clouds roll by over the pavement. That image on California and 8th will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Like November 3 1993, the first time I saw The Ocean Blue, or Stockton earlier that day. Long red hair and a black dress, opaque black tights and black patent leather mary jane shoes. I remember the way my boxy black patent leather purse with the silver snap smelled like the peppermint oil my grandma had given me that summer. It came in handy for early morning kisses after late hours of 15 year old drinking. The juxtaposition of alcohol and innocence is alarmingly amusing now. I remember wandering around the community college in Stockton that day. It was still warm in the valley and I was hoping the boy with the shoulder length hair and the trench coat would follow me and my friends.

Every min ute was like a song on an autumn leaf. Strains of warm sun on my hands and the soft swell of November wind. It was all like a floating dream, warm soft and tenuous. The smell of peppermint and brown lipstick haunt me know, the sounds my old friends haunts me, too... Girlish laghter light and low, knowing and yet unknowing. I twisted a magenta curl around a pale finger and simpered at a boy who sat next to me in the theater. Trying on his sunglasses at the community college field trip the theater was split into red and blue.

"This looks like what the world would be like if you were on acid. Not that I have ever done acid." I was quick to add. I might have told him I liked to drink. Maybe it made my 15 seem more like 17, or maybe it was blatant honesty. Wouldn't a boy in trench coat be the same?

I caught the eye of another boy on the stairs. He was talking to a statuesque strawberry blonde in a close fitting black shirt and black jeans. He kept looking over her shoulder and smiling at me. He was a boy I met in a vision when I was 12. Too young to understand the Eve of St. Agnes. I wasn't Catholic anyway...

I can't wait!!!!

This I call my sailboatThese are all my friendsThat beyond's the shorelineAnd that is where it ends
High and dry are we?
Stinging sighs the salt airTaste it on your skinStomach's sense of flyingThe feeling of the wind
High and dryHigh and dry are we?
This I call my sailboatThese are all my friendsThat beyond's the shorelineAnd that is where it ends
High and dryHigh and dry are we?

The Coffee Cantata

Life, love and the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. What a marvelous afternoon it was at Paradise Perks. I have abandoned my blog for too long. I must remedy this. What's new world? It is a wonderful feeling to no longer worry about whether or not I am "seen". In the end I only want this from the All Seeing, All Knowing.  I will be in San Francisco next week. The Ocean Blue is playing at Cafe Du Nord and I am going to be able to attend both sets. This is going to be like a miracle, a brilliant fantasy. The music means so much to me and I have not been to Cafe Du Nord in years. It was once a speakeasy in the 1920s. A staircase leads you down below the street level to a luscious lounge with red velvet hangings and baroque furniture. The is a small ball room with a black and white checkered floor that remind me of the final scene in Twin Peaks when Agent Dale Cooper see the backwards-talking ghost of Laura Palmer. This will be a great homecoming.

I think of so many things as the holiday approaches. This has been a hard year. Now my mom is moving away from the house I have known for 11 years and it truly pulls on my heart strings. Last night the coffee from my writing group keep me aake and I kept obsessing on 2004 and the early days in San Jose. So many images flood my mind from that fall and winter. I remembered the way the icy cold would cut through my stockings as I walked the dark walk through the parking lot of the train station. I remember the oat cakes and bad coffee I would buy at the magazine stand at the train station and the December issue of Roling Stone with Lindsay LOhan on the cover, so fresh faced and nubile. I remember Howard Stern railing against the FCC on my discman and playing Warren Zevon as he bid his approaching farewell to mainstream media. My heart hurts at those times and I feel the psychic burden of memeory. I have struggled with memory for so many years and yet my unconcious mind was filled with so much joy. It is interesting that in the concious world I was feeling such pain yet when I fell asleep my dreams reflected a happy place to come. I dreamed it was next semester and I was in Lisa's class. I was creative and successful. Jack was by my side and we were happy and in love. THe great thing was that this was not a memory dream, a looking back on happier times, this was a projection of the future. Then I turned over on my side and cuddled in close to Jack and felt so much love. It was amazing. The begging for crumbs of memories was over. I was able to curl my arms around Jack and feel his safe, warm, gentle sleeping body next to mine and I thanked God for sending me such love and light.

I must stay focused on the daily miracles and let go of old grief. It doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is the future.

thinking

thinking so much i tend to want to burst. why must i obsess on time. i think it must be the fall, it gives time for reflection. i am a reflective person by nature and here i am, unable to write with a pen for fear of it's physical obviousness. but i can type and not a soul suspects. i like that the window is in view, the sight of the trees beckons me with the many shades of brown and orange. last night we read a poem about san jose and it still brought a point home. i don't want to be a gloomy gus and i think it is just my fatigue talking.

he is so beautiful. i don't need to know his past because he is my future. i want us to travel, see the world. he is my blessing from heaven. i'm finally in love again. it takes away my pain and my breath.

a decade under the influence

it's so hard to get a firm grasp on ten ears, to completely digest what two pentameters of years can mean. i was goth then. i saw some old pictures with my raven colored hair and a satin black corset. my mom and step-dad are getting a divorce. goodbye house in san jose. goodbye cinnamon rolls and coffee. goodbye to old memories of my cell phone and louis. so much happened there. so many years make me sick. i don't want to look at old pictures, i just have to convince myself to start taking new ones.

new is good. i am in love again and it has been nearly a year and a half, jack is wonderful. my heart is just so heavy at the years. i treasure them. i curse them. they pass and grasp and hold me. a decade and i will never know. i will never understand what happened in 2004 because i guess i am just not meant to. it's not important now.

but i will miss that house. i will miss the train station. i have no reason to go there now. it is a sorry and sad state.

blog, blog, bog... always waiting and hoping it drove me insane. i was feasting on where you want to be crumbs. scraping the vinyl plate with my finger and never getting any closer, cloaking with metaphors like heathcliff and peter parker. it is better now.

i won't ever know.

i can't let it matter anymore.

ticking clock

Ticking clock, setting sun
time, oh time
loves everyone
those who linger
those who wait
for patient time
and a lover's fate
ticking clock, moments pass
time, oh time
like liquid glass
I see through moments
that spread to days
transparent intentions
and a dream that stays...
time, oh time
loves everyone.

Floating into the morning..

Taking a cue from am unnamed personage that has stirred an alarming fondness in me I have decided to start rising very, very early. I remember Anne Rice's Louis taking particular note of the last sunrise he ever saw...he watched it as though it was his first. I have always been fond of watching the opening and closing of the day...
Sunrise was likened to coming closer and closer to God's kingdom in my mind as a youth. I thought I could see God's promise of eternal life in a paradise illustrated by the gilded purple clouds. There was always something magical about 5am.

After watching black and white television for hours in the middle of the night when I was 7 years old I noticed the blackness fade to a blanched blue through the window. I clutched my cat and felt a deep sense of relief. At last it was light out. At last fears disappeared. But as I grew a couple years older and the insomnia remained I grew to love the blackness. I could draw, write poems, being enthralled by the petticoats and bouffants of the 1950s television shows that ran all night. Something about black and white television always made me feel so safe...

The tea that was supposed to enable a peaceful repose only worked for a few hours. The next thing I knew it would be 1 in the morning and I was wide awake, eager to turn on the lights in the family room, let my cat sit on my lap and obsess over the world of black and white...the soft tones of endless shades of grey. Pencils skirts and petticoats, Dobie Gillis and Donna Reed... I would drift in and out a little bit through the night, sponge rollers in my hair to try and imitate Tuesday Weld at school the next day... and I would sleep a little bit...

And in my dreams I was in a poodle skirt sipping a malt with my steady...someone faceless held my hand as the saxophone played on the jukebox... and in my dreams I was black and white... and endless shades of grey...

The night-tide glow of electronics still fascinates me.. but now it is a computer screen or an ipod... It isn't a world of malt shops, do-wop, hand in hand going steady forever...on TV

older years enticed me with a couple centuries prior... organs filled my mind, masks in the catacombs and a voice that could never be forgotten. The Angel of Music coaxed me out of bed. I embraced the feeling of a ghost leading me down the gloomy hallway as the hem of my nightgown slid along the carpet underfoot... I'd stare at the moon and see an angel's face singing a melancholy song. I was enamored of the shadows. I was in love with the sound of the train running through town at 4 am...

There was a tear in the sleeve of my blue night  gown with the peach ribbons...it was never repaired...

I am going to get up early from now on...