A World In A Week In a Droplet

Call From

Unavailable keeps calling
Sometimes I answer
"Hello?"
The line goes to a buzz
Hung up.



The "Practical" Joke

Sophia was home
Free of recent pushes and pulls
Mom and daughter
Set aside.
It was delightful
For me.
She needed pants and shoes
The rain chilled her feet
Clad in flip flops
She said her slippers smelled
From going in the recent deluge
We shopped
On a Saturday.
It was funny because
I felt
Our talking like chatter
Of birds
Comforting, here's a seed
That branch, watch.
Good to be with her
Each other trying to find the clothes
Then
In the Nordstrom's Rack
My leg stopped functioning
As I stood by the wheel of pants
Looking for her.
This time
None of my choices were perfect.
But I didn't say anything
At first.
Just tried to go on.
Couldn't lift it
I had felt weak, but this was disconnection
It was something wrong
Deep inside my spine
But I decided to make this
Not be Sophia's day
Not about me.
I hobbled on
To pay and go to the next stop
Somehow.
My mind reeling
We went on for shoes and called her Dad
In case.
He was bust
With a cracked radiator
The next morning
She had to return to school
It's a beautiful drive
To Santa Barbara
As much a treat
As an eclair
Sophia grew quiet on the way and texted
On her phone
Like mad
As she got out of the car
With her wash piled, she was so pale,
I'll remember that I think
How white and drawn she looked,
A bit later
Alone
As we sat eating soup
Her Dad told me that
Her best friend
A boy
Was being taken to Nigeria
Where he was born
Without choice
Just got his shots.
Pulled from his school
His stuff just left
His Dad requiring it
Something of birthrights and sons
A dad gone crazed
And things that seemed ridiculous
Her Dad went outside and called her.
I texted.
She was crying
"I have no way to say goodbye."
And "I don't want to talk to you Mom about it."
The distance returned.
Full force.
It was so felt
And the next day I carried it
Heavy, this turn in the weather
that bled away the warmth
Of her coming home
Took away the sunshine.
I called Sophia last night
"How are you now baby?"
And she told me
That this had been
Just a joke.
Just a joke.
A trick played at her expense,
Perhaps by someone that
Wanted to see her in tears, I thought
I can't have
Back what was stolen
What a price
Those cheering moments
we were sharing gone.
It's like my legs
Just so much the same.
A practical joke
Robbing the moments.
This was the push and pull
Embracing my love
For Sophia.


Boardwalk

As I walked on the pier
My body felt weak
Chill, my throat unnatural
As I took some pictures of a bird, I turned
"It's too cold here for me."
And we retraced the steps and left.



Yarn

Potential sits in baskets
In my kitchen
Skeins of yarn saturated with color
That, with time and effort
A formula
Might become blankets, scarves
Something that can be used
And be a part of life.
It's chaotic sitting there
Wound.
Unfinished
A reminder of all that could be made.
Like a child
Or a mind
It is, and yet it isn't.


Their lives left in boxes

Why when the cooking shows
Flash across the television screen
Showing far away markets
Dishes, the food of the world
Do I just see the death
Of so many kinds of beings?
From the sea, the air
From the rivers, streams, the forests
It piles into my mind as something
Like an elegy to their life
Last night I watched in Taiwan
Black chickens be held
Killed, cooked into some soup
In a herbalists elixir
For a man to eat
His show is about how he will
Consume anything
No matter how odd
He eats the tongue of geese
Or the testicles of a black chicken in a soup.
I still see this morning
as if on a replay
That black skin beneath the feathers
As it was held prior to the butcher.
Completely without a way to escape.
Gone.



Into the wall

Just awhile ago
a phantom
Caught the corner of my eye
moved from the room of my daughter
Into the hall
And fled
Gone as I raised my eyes
An image
Who was that?
For years my eyes
often as I was in bed
Or walking in my home
caught a cat
that ghosted the corners
Of peripheral sight
Remnants of those that had
Once walked my life.
Was this the way of it?
Are my children now
Fleeting flashes
Of an untrained eye?
Allowed to wander the empty spaces?
Talking to me of feelings
That are rising with the morning.


Lost in the stream

For the week my leg
Wakes me at seven
In fits
Cramped
turning itself in.
Tightly bound into a ball
a rock of sinew
I don't know what's going on
There is a feeling through it like a river that runs
as the nerves
Do something
They aren't allowed to do
In you
Sometimes I still and ride
that current
Thinking of waterfalls
Landing in the rocks
Watching it eddy
And move
My leg hurts
It has a kind of memory
That keeps the trail
Of this cramp fresh
My arms numb in an echo
"We know you are losing"
As the system gives away
Another set
Of connections unlocks
I am in the feedback
Of nerves that cannot
Communicate to my head
I dream about the things
That don't seem to find their way
Back to me.
Lost in the stream.


You Never Will

Get it.
No, like everything
It passed by
When I was trying
To understand
You.
Why it was hurting
But you have
So many
That seem to laugh
At everything
You say

Dreams

The Robbery That Didn't Happen

I didn't wake up
But in a mind trick it felt like I was wide awake
Looking down at a broken lamp
And pieces of the closet mixed in with it
The Monet on the glass
A gift given
In a first few years
Of married life, smashed.

It is shards and pieces, cords and tangle, looking at it
Fully restored
By waking
Remain in pieces.

I'd been robbed.
A son, not my son
Called for me to cops and reluctantly
Went to check for my computer
As I counted up the losses.
Sent him, failing to register who he was.
My grandmother's cameo
A few rings selected out fron
The bubblegum prize selection
I'd lost the only two old things we have of course of our family
and thought about them being bent and melted
To extract a dimes worth of metal.
In the glass pile on the bathroom floor was a bag, black, pulled with a drawstring
Coins of my husband's
Big dollar ones
I don't think he has anything like that.

But my mind kept explaining, thinking, reasoning, rationalizing
Until I got to the fact I hadn't left the room
The night began with a lamp intact
We'd grown a window and curtains downstairs that I decided were things my mom was doing
I asked this shadow son
To get me a baseball bat out of the garage
Because it felt likely the closet
Had a visitor.
Why I didn't suspect the strange non son
Only came to me later.

Much later I woke up.
The lamp restored.
No coins.
The thrifty store still in my jewelery box
Telling its stories
No one is interested in hearing
All put back away after this emotional upheaval.
Like the dancing toys that flop back into place
In a kid's fable after a night of wild action.

Still I'm not walking on that floor without my shoes.
I don't want glass in my feet.
I have trouble feeling them and the blood stains the carpets.


Larry David in Oxnard

Last night, no two nights ago
I watched a show made by Larry David.
He was running around in it, dating an old girlfriend
Fleeing from her boyfriend
Running through mansions
Talking to Ted Danson,
Being a cheap dick mostly.
But explaining a lot.

It was on. I didn't pick it.
I would have watched it though if I were picking, maybe.
Who cares.

Somehow last night he ended up in Oxnard
In my head
I was sitting on a bench at the beach in the sun, on a blanket, with my camera
And a crocheted scarf around my chill neck. Looking at the ocean and he actually
asked to sit on part of the blanket.
The seats, he said, you see are filthy.
They had maybe some sand, normal stuff.
I thought about it because
In the style he often uses, I started to debate whether you talk to him or not
Two people sitting that close
in nowhere with no one else around
What do you say
"I like your shows."
I thought of that,
And how thrilling he'd find that.
Basically I figured I'd just ask.
So I did. Not that this helps anything
But a fat woman talking in a dream to a relatively wealthy
Seemingly shallow comedy writer overall highlighted to me
The impossibility of such a thing happening, my infinite lack of worth
For this being
The distant galaxy possibility of shared conversational interest
And he wasn't going out on a limb to lower that a notch.
So it sucked.
But he was on my blanket and I couldn't hoist him off
And slink off.
I had a big tablet of drawings on my lap.
Actually a project I'm planning
It was a bit reassuring to see I'd finished them.
He asked to look at it.
So he did.
That somehow ended up in walking up to the Mandalay Hotel to get lunch
Or sit in the lobby
I think I was mortified to be a fat lady eating
With a guy that wouldn't spare you
Telling you how grotesque you are to look at.
Or say it loudly as you walked away to "somebody."

I remember fumbling around trying to carry the drawings , blanket and my pencils and make it walking. Trying to talk to the guy.

Of all the things that never happened
And let's face it
Dreams never happen
That was as clear a metaphor as I've gotten on my place now
In another's world
Or "this world"

It wasn't funny, it wasn't anything other than a discomfort of mine
For intruding into the world owned by Larry David
Being on a bench too ugly to look at
On a sunny day.

Failure

At six to fail was sitting beside a girl that saw the board, read her book, and already rode a two wheel.
At nine having a plump tummy in a bathing suit pointed out by a mother and finding my way in a new school.
Failing at fifteen was keeping family secrets
Failing at 19 was revealing a few.
Failing at 25 was finding no good way to leave home and few great options to make a living
Failing at 27 was working in a hood where shots were ringing as, amazingly enough, the teacher.
At 30 it was having the energy to cope with being a mom, work, wife and being told I was failing by someone I wanted to love me.
Failing at 33 was falling into the issues buried in my spine, the headaches, pain and the fear of trying to find over the next 15 years what was going on.
Failing at 35 was trying to just be present for the kids.
Failing at 39 was trying to be invisible for the kids.
Failing at 41 was trying to survive the peritonitis, anemias, infections and hysterectomy.
Failing at 45 was having someone tell me for five days they thought I could be loved
Failing at 50 is bound in a broken back, a bleeding cervix, an inability to work in a situation intolerable, kids that want to be free of it, a spouse that has a fine tuned recall for critical concerns, a page on an internet that tells me that I'm not nearly worth the effort because others are.

A complete failure in a lifetime gnaws at the edges of perception all the time.

At six, 15, 25, 30 the luxury of sitting and feeling what was going on was pushed and pulled and knocked and moved by the passage of the minutes in the situations that demanded.
There wasn't a freedom to consider choices or order thoughts or house blame. I just pushed through it, poorly, seeking survival, hope, better moments.
But at 50 I seem to have sunk into the lull.
Which might be the greatest difference because I am looking at all of this.
Thinking of the illusions of success, and of the compromises I endured.
I've really gotten to a point where I just don't expect to be understood.
But I do want to figure out what makes me happy.
And I do want to try to value that.

Mom

Today I actually went to the store. Really hard, I have a herniated disc, and I think things are worse than I'm realizing/communicating, and have not been up in two weeks.
But the kids are coming in for Thanksgiving, thankfully, and I wanted to see how my back felt. Not good.
My mom unloaded the groceries and was putting them away.
She either had a TIA, or is starting a stroke. As quick as a wink she started to fall over, throw up.
And now I am waiting. Jack is on the road getting Sophia in Santa Barbara. Luca and I, we are sitting here. Waiting.
We don't know.

I'd write a poem. Maybe in awhile I'll be able to. I'm afraid.
I remembered one I wrote in an episode like this. She's been unwell for several days, weak. I'm not sure things are ok.
I am very worried.

Waiting for Mrs Goodbar

She loved them you know, Goodbars
And fudge and salt water taffy.
And right now I'm sitting watching her breathe.
She gave me my life.
She has been my responsibility for a very long time, in a way.
She's afraid and sometimes then she hears people in her mind.
They aren't nice to her and I don't believe her.
For that she cannot forgive me,
she tells me that someone is doing this to her.
And she gets agitated, angry, bitter.
Sudden turns of destructive fury. It's hard to wade.. I've never seen her sit in a chair in our homes except briefly to eat or Outside to smoke on the wall.
She doesn't sit still.
She is birdlike really. And she relates to birds.
Always watches them, and she cooks such nice butter food.
I think she's having a major stroke.Yeah right now.
I have a few tears here to clear as I pass my night
But she is curled in this bed, waiting a little bit
And I'm held by a mind that isn't rational.
Maybe I'm talking of myself,
we both seem to have left here and now a long time ago
Because she can get so agitated if you do what she refuses
I'm sitting when we should be going.
And I'm watching her as I watched her mom with Altzheimers manys the night,
but especially when it got to be the nights that might end her days.
sitting like an incompetent nothing
For a little second awhile ago I thought that I'd swallowed my own heart and soul.

But I saw my kids and got a hold on that and shoved it down into my tummy.

My Momma is having another stroke.
And I'm waiting to do my job to make this night, just keep us going.
If I could just give her my life I would.

I'm Getting Older Too

We're Getting Older Too

Pills haunt my morning, swallow wash,
Hold the banister
Thoughts look at toilets, limits
Bills, always bills, and guilt.
Losing the reasons.

Arguing finds us selectively wiping out
Is memory all that meant anything.
Too busy in some vacuous defending poses
Remember who was in those days?
Look out into eyes, full of deceit and contempt
Love dies.

Becoming just the lease on your freedom
On the neck of a mad dog, we are needing put down
Cannot even ride in a mid-size car
Go to do anything
Without the wrenches of furious testosterone

Never wanted the roles
Appeasing another's flaring resistance
I'm getting older too.
My bodies aching, is this a poem?
Waiting for some day I make a move
You say will do.



Fallin' Sky

It broke, my back
In pieces like the Legos
My nephew has in piles on his bedroom floor
Tucked in plastic containers like fly fisherman ties
Heads, arms, weapons
Pull to find what you need,
I need the drawer marked
Spines

All from lifting the books of Native American poems
Turkeys, pilgrims and all
I want to share with my children in class
My back broke
I had to waddle
To the front and leave
Like a falling burning star
It hurt so badly
Snapped

My class looked at me
Ran around, I stood stiffening, Frankenstein,
Asked about the chrysalis' in the aquarium
Wouldn't settle
And write about salad
I left them to think about what salad they would make
It went in their journals
They were happily
Drawing the mix in bowls
After writing

Their drawing was so insightful
When my husband finally got there, to remove me
I couldn't move
Except I did.
Electric pain ran the length of me
My legs felt numb
But he said the kids were engaged and
Their work was extraordinary
It was him coaxing me
To come
Home

Now I'm trying to find a way to heal
It's a pill for pain, for muscle relaxing
One for nerve support, inflammation
A heart pill
Another for the stomach to move the food
Through a partially blocked intestine
And I wash it down
Three times a day
Losing focus
Creation

Kids draw to express their meanings
Like their song
Something else is there, hear it,
Something at the level of gesture
Neuron
Synapse, connection
That holds the group bound in the activity
Mind
It is a golden thing this way of seeing
Becoming human
Through
Art.

Just a few days ago I dreamt a way
To start healing, by seeing a shawl to make
And now I'm dreaming ways to show place, time, space
Seeing ideas, releasing from the person
Inside me, foreign feeling, almost given,
That I am getting
When I am doing something
That matters
It helps
Me heal.

In some debate about what narrowing in schools
Does or why to maintain the arts
I find the word Healing
I find the Dream
I experience the real Truths
Of its power of positive
The reason is in the Connection
Allowing us to be vehicles for vision
For making
Seeing.

Why would I think everything should be bound up
In the arts?
It is in the saving that I find in that
medium
The shawl that holds me
The image that possesses me
The music that I hear
That has to be sung
It transforms my being
into the butterfly.

I am a butterfly now, one that is falling
The sky that held me is falling
The lead and I go down
Broken flight
Held in gravity, pulled down
Heavy and hurt
Flapping wings, breath
Flight stolen
Body snapped
The sky has fallen.


See My Reflection in Snow covered Hills

Into a room a whiteness came
The quiet induced me to the window
With the pane frosted with crystal
Delicate designs, a white background
Turned the outside new

I haven't felt that way in a long time.

Across the porch in tentative step
The footprints of cat, and bird
Their chase
Cross just at the edges where the depths
Were shallow and the cement still
Had just a slight cold frozen face upturned

I haven't seen that edge in a long time.

The door opens outward to the bracing
Cold of the calm quiet beauty of the snow
That fell last evening layering
The world silent in its wake
No death looked so charmed

I haven't looked in the face of winter in a long while.

But the peaches and pears are lost again this year
Buds frozen under this late snow
The daffodils peeking out are bit away, the grapevines
Will not spout, nor the plums that froze in place
The early babies born in hidden holes, succumbed

I haven't felt winters cost just in fears these real years.

Looking out the door gathering in the morning
Into a breath of air that is so clean and cold
The mountains are visible, far away and brilliant
They say nothing at all
Standing, unaffected by a beating heart or my wet tears

Distant, cold, deaf, I see I'm talking to you there too.



Take My Love Take It Down

"bad marriage on my front
major arguments
going on again about our money
sarah's mom etc.....

its ugly"
He wrote this off
And I can't hold it in these hands

You'd find that taste on your tongue and
Traitorous lip today

flung us all into that ugly

Not nearly as truth, as the fact of writing something like this. Off hidden. Crow. Fly. Black.

I always knew that you did this,
But the ink on the page is harder to see
and forget.
Said things to people, off to the side, implied, to facilitate impressions you wanted them to carry.
we both saw it

Where does this state the part about how you helped, why framing that "bad marriage?"
or of all the things you gained? Why? Why?

A guiltless, shameless code of conduct.

Hand in a wall, shoved, intimidation, stoned liar
I waded up useless days of thousands of calls to a cell
Dreaming dreams not of tenderness but nightmares over the failure to connect.

Not even to bother you -my bleeding, her breathing, you can't be reached
In action after action after action in petty mind numbing punishing and passive aggressive scenes yelling F- you to a face. Run the tape of it again. For them. See you actor.

Write.

Where does this state the umpteen million pounds of efforts put into this bad marriage.

Who started arguments, you've been there, where is the part about that demeanor?
Yes, you have "been strategic" It is ugly. It's incredibly ugly, disheartening and entirely about winning
And it rips apart things like love
Love.

Take us down, money stands for that
It's about a lot more than "the money"
Who bought me, who sold me.Who made it, who spent it.
It's about adolescent failure to understand.

I deal with enough. You enough. So now I know. And as they say "it's real for me."
Of course you won't "dwell in the past"

you might have to look at things
Things others did for you Or in what they gave up or what you got.
In the sheer audacity of that I'm amazed.
"bad marriage on my front
major arguments going about money
sarah's mom etc.....
its ugly"

I'll think about that for a long time, flap wings, go scavenge and eat the entrails of the dead heart.

Children Get Older

She put her arms into my closet
Around my child and pulled me close

You bellowed me into the fears. Again.
We insist I inhabit this way, so as a group we "can function"
A child grown up now to comfort an angry hurt babe

A mom grown weary

The toys go away

They mock you sometimes

As I teach and handle the traces

In my day, it's a hot pain to hold, transitions, selves
How much I miss the joy of time gone
Turning the pages of the stories, I now can't read aloud to someone near

You don't find this in the garden
The peas and snails so miraculous to find

Your baby grown, do they return?
To be just snails in old shells annoyingly

Eating a part through the flowers in your yard

The wonder is ordinary once more

There were minutes then, hours, weeks

When their life was felt as your miracle
A redemption of your person, a hope blew by it, moved into past thoughts
All the pains of grinding away, discourse and trashing flooded in too

Shelter from the storm
They took you to thinking you'd make it

It was purpose and wet noses and a life
That kept you feeling good and whole
And necessary to the going on of future

Free of the hatred of any one
That vilified you, even for taking away any freedoms
Into this good thing, that was your kids playing on the slide

Playing now these babes are running hide and seek
So far from this. They can't be found
There really isn't tinkling laughing in their going

Blame and accusation comes in a new form too, bad surprise but it may blow away one day
One that hits a dull blow to your musing.

Onto a face looking around the corner for their blocks

Nothing but an empty car
Rides nowhere now, not to the dance place
Or rapidly hitting the road to ball and fast food, happy meal

Trying to get there and place experiences into beings, to last in a temporal corps

He says you wasted money and drove

Everyone into the ground, hit back.

Characterize this shift to your kids
I have to wake up every morning to an empty nest

And the hatreds and angers of a person lonely, bruising me with the reality

Avoided in the packages and times that I played
Danced and skipped their heartbeats
Failing to see this enemy called time.



Can I Handle The Seasons of My Life

Spring
It was hopeful in the impossible
The day would stretch and blaze, walk into a moment
Harboring thoughts of a you and me
Thinking of something, hinted all night
Doing with less, and dressing in the things I found in the clutter of a shop
Just moving, swiftly a rapid running time
Over the rocks and dangers into craziness and stupids
That fell like the flower petals with the sound of clashing silent boom
Filled with songs, deep wonder, and that possibility
Inside in verse, all of the universe could be written springing into notes.
To sing a happy ending in the night.

Summer
The long hot days of birthing into being
The deepest thing I ever knew resided in me
My heart formed into the perfection of carrying
Something as carnal as that
Into the life it allowed
Born out of the blood of life,
You contracted this tearing
Lives out of the soul, into the days of diapers, lifting, asthma, chasing, giving small bites
Tippy cups and thinking your spouse saw you
In all that you gave to this. Saw me.

(Maybe looked in you as a mirror to admire his own efforts)

The evaporation was intensified by the sun overhead
Spending, shopping, consuming, the cancers, bloodshed
Anemia's, operations infections overtaken in the fetid heating
A stinking rotting mass was there on the sidewalk
To desiccate. Not everyone will know these long hot days
Of summer as happy. But as living they know the possibilities.
It was working without any relief, while other self longed, vacationed
Swam and moved through the water.

Fall
In a 17 day stretch of pain that knifed through me
I didn't know where it was, it had no name
One thread it breathed, a blanket this cold, the skin was ice
Having not enough to make it care
All those that depended. Falling leaves.
While the game went on, the tennis match through brain tissues.
No hand held, no conversation, angry man sitting doing papers.
A tumor bleeding, "Someone has to function"
"When will you be through."
Cancer.
Suggestion of Christian counseling and my not knowing
How to "handle stress?" Two died, a baby, a wife.
I was induced into depending on the blade
Being dulled by a vein filled with morphine and Demerol
Anxiety and a Satan
That sounds exactly condescending as a voice as you demanded the time I'll
Get released so you can "Go back to work."
Leaves fell silent.


Winter

In cold everything waits and stops
Red birds forage
Under the frozen snow even in the sunny warmth
Of Southern California
I enter the time of endings, pain, joints, fragile bodies
Goodbyes, needing love, lessening the blames
Facing the truths. Losing every battle.
Lost you.
Saying I can't and then breaking with it.
But snow covers it all, hides, transforms, blankets, chills.
Buries.
Snow angels, sliding, sledding, skiing, walks
Snow fights, frozen toes, frosted breath, it holds
Out hot chocolate, knitting, the internal.
A cabin in that wood is waiting.

My heart beats. yeah I've gotten older too.

More Time Less Time All Time

Tick Tock

When a clock is ticking a morning feels
Brief, counted
Waits between ticks and tocks
A life can pass
Like this
Managed
Scheduled
Filler between appointments


On a hummingbird

The story was the hummingbird
Flew into the corner of their driveway
Over the fences
That hold the great California neighbors
Then it dropped down onto the pavement
As if it were falling out of its time
To be tended briefly,
While it gave up life, with sweetened water and a straw,
It died

Because someone noticed this event
In time
As we notice things affected by change
Like dropping little birds at your feet
It was tended
And mourned just a little
Then placed into a plastic bag and frozen
At my suggestion
To think if it might help us understand why

The thing is there are those
That study and look for patterns
Globally, locally
That might answer if this was a hummer
That lost its way
Migrating too late, or affected by virus,
Struck by a pane, or just normal
Dropping out dead from whirring your wings
At that velocity, one day beyond your time

It could be collected
Just to see if it fit
Something someone noticed
In the blanket of time
Where noticing
Is all we really have
To record and create the dimension.
The hummingbird is in a tin box now
Motion, something, has left its tiny body



Thread With Gold

Threaded with a golden line
My friend and I looked at the chrysalis
Of the monarch
Wondering how such a thing
Could be coming forth from a
Caterpillar, equally amazing
It's little puce green hanging
Form pulling us to
Our tank where school children
Pushed and shoved
To be first to see.
Acting out another
Natural event
Within the confines of our current
Learning environment
That scripts our words and thoughts
Into rigid roles and forms
Calling it "critical thought"
Collaborative, and other mealy mouthed
Forms of separation between deed and act
Nothing new
Nothing changed
Replicating the same
Kinds of forms that
Have held the children
In many ages
Of waiting.


The golden threads round.


What Would A Tree Of Learning Grow?

What would a tree of learning grow
Silver apples
Children that know?

What kind of leaves would we see?
Shapes of pure geometry

What would it feel to touch the bark
Our fingers would glide in our dark

What would a tree offer us now,
when we are climbing its lowering bough?

What would a tree of learning know
Of children and seeds and ideas that flow?

What would we pick at the end of the day
After we've stayed and sat to play?

What would a tree of learning grow
Ideas, of course, the fruit that we show.

Time

I've been hearing this echo lately about time
Moving quickly
Moving on
Time having no dimension
It's even come home in a pop psychology book
My spouse says he's studying it
Exploring it
Charting orbits
They seem to be able to duet
I'm wasting it
Feeling time within my broken back
In my aging
On the radio a children's poet
Bound it up in her sing song
Saying that you can't fall out of it
And a great writer I read
Stated back that every writer
Of story seeks to suspend it
To tell what happened
Where it didn't
Move on.

I've been waking up
Every night at about three
Staring at the ceiling
In pain
Wondering how to do a job
With my back in such bad shape
Watching minutes countdown to starting a day
Driven through that day
By each piece of the work
Charted, mandated, scripted
In a framework of time
Recess here, meeting there
Chanting then,
When your every move and venture can't be moved or bent
Free of intense pain
Time shifts in meanings a little

The past intrudes
Dances forward on the feet you lost
Bends and bows
And curls around you supine
Reclining
Saying why don't you think of something else
You could take me out to play
Think about me in your mornings
Remember all my possibility
That you took for granted
Mistakes
Pleasures
Look hard at somethings you delude yourself into
Forgetting
Watch me in the space of that cranial
contraption
That built these clocks

I've been up most of the night
Watching one of those performances
It was staged fairly
Effectively this night
Shuddering, echoing through the hallways
With a great show of absurdity
Profundity
And some heart stopping ability to
Tie me in knots
Time has an elegance
A syncopation
Hilarious way
Of using irony
With such insight into your
experiences.
A variety act one minute
An elegy the next.

And she bows
Having given the performance
Of my lifetime
I blink out
And that is gone
As I type a way to tack it to a here
And hold it down
For the critic at least.
To be able to
Justify
Staying awake in her clutches
Suspended by her movements
Captivated with her charms
A head on a pillow
Replaying her best show of shows
Inconsiderately
failing to
Fully attend to the credits.

Times been on my mind
Of late.