A Random Act of Poetry

Thanksgiving Prayers

2011-11-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

Wayward Daughter

when are you coming home
to family
fresh sheets
some cleaning
(one can hope)
to several boys
that aren't even
biologically related
that I find

to gravy
and all things
you look upon skeptically
home to the
few folks
that you'll spend a lifetime
wondering about,
one who has
her mind

on you

I'm honored, If Only the Billionaire Reformers Cared about THIS Data

2011-10-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

I'm truly honored by this post from Anthony Cody. Honored because I'm quoted, but more so because poverty is addressed.
We haven't been "allowed" to talk to poverty in teaching for so long.
Teacher that did so were "making excuses" or "whining."
This year the ugliness of poverty is taking my breath, along with the beauty of my class.
My father grew up in poverty. I cannot look away now.

If Only the Billionaire Reformers Cared about THIS Data

harms way

2011-10-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

So I've been wanting to write you a set of poems
The paper for this stacked on books I'm avoiding too
But things for us took a decidedly serious course
What I have to give is inadequate
And ( I know you like those ands) the kind of verse you like escapes me
Right now.

This Is Not About A Guy That Killed Himself

Because, after all, we don't talk about it now
He appeared three times in my life
Charming, affirming, removed from my chaos
(I never thought he held his own)

The first time when we met was a day my family home had an intruder
As the detective sat down to get the details
He came to the house to see if my brother would sell books for him
Yeah, in a Christian kind of pyramidish thing
Staying through the interview
As my mom was taking over
With her theory of a person mind controlling her the FBI needed to investigate.
Meeting me, my dip of a mom, grandmom wandering through with Altzheimers
In my trying to get back to the part where I had to put my arms up
And push this guy out the door.
He just surveyed the scene with a kind of compassion
Never bothered my brother again about any books.

It was interesting he was a close friend of my boyfriend
One I found years later and married,
Who I didn't know then.
He owned things, like a student house,
Unique in my student poverty position to contemplate
Red brick with a porch full of suggestive drinkers
Plastic cups in hand, charming entreaties
I walked by with grocery bags unaided on a five mile haul

Then he appeared bounding over a field, I taught in a migrant town
Smiling polo shirt, happy, "Hello Sarah."
He knew who I was, yes, and my class was there running over
(I was supposedly calling that game)
Greeting him like the arrival of a celebrity.
We had dinner, caught up with our lives.
It meant the world to my new husband, who tells their stories over and over
We'd married after my spouse lost his Dad and Aunt, a nightmare,
In a little room, over a table of magazines.
He came to welcome me to the guys.

The third time we piled our kids in the car
Drove down to Malibu onto the Kersey-Warner estates
Found one house in a compound of them
Meeting his wife and young family,
Several charming kids, one a baby turning
Bright pink in the sun just like his Daddy,
A red head burning- with even a touch of the sun.
Dad was just slavering on the sunscreen, burning toast
Saying, "The heck with it," that big burly laugh.
That strange house by the shore had a twisting, wooden interior staircase that wound
Down to the beach, but it let in such a chill.

Last week or so my husband got an email
With no information to say he died on his 50th birthday.

Two Endings

After we met, again, thirty years later
Well,
He was a guy
He wasn't honest with me then
But he had been there always in my spaces,
He took time with me, but it was strangely unclear
Not physical,
I encouraged him to paint
So he acted.

Invited me one day to go on a visit to his home
In Pennsylvania
In the car I realized he was fixing me up
With a friend
That was uncomfortable and a betrayal
He introduced me to a 19 year old
Fiancee
That in an entire year of our closeness
He'd failed to mention,
As if he was saying "see."
I had to wait through one of the longest nights of my life
To gain my ground and recover.
Years later I realize the trust that broke.
I contacted him recently on-line
Until I saw him
Going on for two or three or five days
Talking on the phone, texting
He was effusive,
And then he saw me.

"See."
So, anyway, not talking again,
I aged badly
Which is okay, actually, because
I didn't want anything
But to remember what happened to me once.
I do.

After that though
I looked up and wrote a man
That had been my painting teacher
At that time
He told me I was "uniquely talented."
Now he has a career, position, art , an oeuvre.
He replied graciously,
He was always that.
He doesn't remember me remotely.
Now he finds my poetry quirky,
Appreciates my thoughts
About those days.

Duty Calls
Now it's come to the day when
I represent in someone's
Mind something I fought to
Change.
Their lack of insight, compassion, education, development, fairness
Plus the defensiveness
Means my role for them
Of their choosing
Will be as a target
This may serve
To allow me to face
I failed others
Similarly through time.
That in my lack of some set of experience or skills I never understood

recess crabpot

you get assigned a week of duty
in the month at the school
you watch the yard with two teachers
a field, an expanse of blacktop
500 or more children who madly take up stations
on spinners, slides, with balls flying
their noise a cacophony of escape
children run up with cards to punch
a leftover trace from a principal they moved
who thought they could
run their laps and get punched, earn rewards
that have slidden away as that unkempt
thought that might never continue
under a new person that doesnt know
she finds herself clutching a walkie-talkie
coming out, to pursue a thirty year teacher
she's spotted talking during her duty
another teacher she never watched turned her in
because she missed her duty, came late
and in her perceptions will blast and castigate another for it
loudly
out comes the new principal
armed with her just gotten authority
onto the prison like yard
clutching her prejudices, processing in full view
to order this teacher "to the dirt"
the teacher stood and stared, lost for awhile in the perspectives and time
wondering if this was worth
the cost to her health
the month passes to the second days of duty, nine in all now
when this principal who cant normally find her yard at all
purposely arrives to chase the teacher and
catch her "being bad"
and once again order her in
an exposed english, "to the dirt"
because
she needs to see her on the dirt, track
no, it's not done
to other instructors
it's personal
they both know it
the start of what will be
a health crisis for someone
that gave a life to allow someone like this girl
into a job,
one she clearly cannot handle

So you tried a different
kind of apology

I know that you offer this
because you want me to
truly disappear without
holding onto a hostility
or coming forward
I appreciate that.
It was not what this needed

But it did remind me
that I have used excuses
at times, in circumstances,
built up cases, hidden my own
faults.
So once again you
did show me something
I stated at the outset
you have a real gift, true
cognitive awareness

The apology I'm owed
will only come when you've
exposed something
that if I reject will
damage you
It's written now into our karma
One of us, both of us,
has to be there for the other now
think of how the other feels
understanding we will part

ive been hurt
you are flailing
we will die

for that matter life is suffering
these things are playing out
and we cannot do much more
than learn
taught real compassion
one for another
until then
my acquaintance
we both bathe in pain

cliches are memes

2011-08-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

your opinion of me is none of my business.

clutched to the heart of someone
who wasted the opportunities
sullied the innocence
and abused the trust
I suppose its their new national anthem
but i suspect
until that opinion rises
and finds you in pursuit of understanding
your effects
will just erode the both of us
my opinion matters, and ultimately
is entirely the business

some of us managed to grow, change, suffer
incorporate, sort, and integrate to arrive a perspective

take on your rage.
figure out what happened
reverse positions and step in my shoes
look out

then realize that was just a judgment
in a statement of passive aggression

A set about Monterey

2011-08-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

i've thought in the last week about my life
about clues
experiences
about patterns so on

love isnt an intellectual pursuit
nor is it wrong
haggled
it isnt convincing someone

it isnt someones
brothers advise
or caught on a chair leg
dabbling

it stands with you
under the monterey pines
wrapping you in memory
you say softly

I wish you could see this
as you photograph
a pink
stained glass window

look down at how you are
were
love recognizes you
in the morning fog

it is intimate
this internal sense of
an external reality
close

in the next
four years I'm going to choose
follow my heart
settle into the place

of my heart

Poetry for the Save Our School March on Washington (dedicated to those marching and for those who stand with public education)

2011-07-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

The Public School Teacher's Alphabet

A is for Affirm, for all students come to us full of self doubt

B is for Bridge to meaning, across the varied waters

C is for Comfort us in our fears and efforts

D is for Demonstrate excellence and understanding

E is for Equate reason, learning with meaningful actions

F is for Facilitate the exchange of our ideas

G is for Generate with creative insight and connection

H is for Hear every silent voice

I is for Interject only to inspire our thought

J is for Justify sparingly

K is for Know that the unknown is bound in all things

L is for Laugh with

M is for Mediate misunderstanding

N is for Notice something new everyday

O is for Offer different perspectives

P is for Practice over preach

Q is for Qualify statements of opinion

R is for Reason with a heart

S is for Suggest with compassion

T is for Teach to our future by seeing this moment as the opportunity

U is for Utilize resources, experts, students, standards, structure, freedom, nature, observation, data, facilities, community, technologies, text, time, history, glitter, music, theory, barnacles, brains, brawn, talents, communication and every thing under sky and moon

V is for Visualize our success

W is for Welcome everyone and their input

X-amine truths

Yesterday just holds the past

Zebras like teachers are animals of a different stripe,
Can we transcend the black and white?
And fashion our alphabet to write the future?

Once We Met at School

the children of the community-
the good, the strong, the believers, the daredevils-
met on the cement commons staring at the flag
and a doorway of possibility
together they faced the first day

in the cacophony in the hallways, wrong answers, rules-
the structures, the standards, the society-
we marked "a", "b", or "c" to none of the above questions
putting our names at the top of the papers
together we learned of a wider world

there was always an older teacher that recounted their war,
we watched a diminutive woman still collecting tin foil
and folded into the noisy business of school life
cafeteria lunches, text book assignments
debate teams, sports competitions, together singing our generation's songs

some days we sat with the doctor's son,
or a welfare mother's daughter
got our pizza with a kid whose dad was a gardener
held one another through the loss of a classmate
found loves, friends, the "other" as a lot like us

sometimes we knew the kid whose family owned the cab company,
maybe he was bad in math but a journalist
who swept out the local market's small wooden floors
to earn his way, or went home
to cold fries served by the mother of our best friend

we'd loan one another pencils
witness each other's oral reports, applaud,
snicker our way through a substitute that
built our memories of "that time when"
that fills reams of virtual year book pages

they say this is all changing
that it failed us, that they failed us-our teachers
our schools in this public commons
where we met to find ourselves
but you cannot be swallowed by this different version

in our schools we were together once as one nation

Your First Day of School

For many years I've been someones first day of public school
Can you imagine?
Sometimes these backpacked, shiny, hesitant children
Could not even understand my language
As they nervously looked around the big room
Eyes alighting on the painting center
Or teared with giant drops, of fears
And there I stood holding back the dam with my finger in a puppet,
A book and a set of crayolas I just purchased on the desks
Telling rules, showing samples, just waving my magic arms
At these tiny beings, at critically important moments in their lives
When the child met the unknown
Needing to see it as all possible.

What I would like from you is a reflection.
What do you remember of that first day in school?
Do you remember? How was the room arranged
Did you go outside to play? What kinds of feelings were you experiencing?
Was the day long, or did it fly by like water through fingers?
What will be the first days for our children's children
If we lose the understanding of a free, fair public education?
What will we tell children, that because they were born in this neighborhood
Their days are to be spent on drill, practice, explicit removal
Of the opportunity to dream of all the things, or nothing to go "to" at all,
Another will now know themselves in the academy.
Can we stop and think of these future first days as something
We want to give to every child, in perpetuity?

The Love Song of the Public School Teacher

It was 786 steps to school when I lived on Maple Avenue,
1241 on Roosevelt Street and several thousand to my high school and junior high
I walked there past Victorian houses set in hills
Of working class folks, professors and plumbers
Townsfolk that sent their kids to the public schools
If we had private school it really escaped me.
I was counting my way to school.

You Never Know

A public school teacher
Doesn't know their long term successes or failures
Except what a newspaper, visit or letter brings

We fail to find out, for all our love of "data"
Not charting our kids into their lives
We don't even ask them to communicate their perceptions school

We don't ask them who among us
Made the difference, or didn't reach out well enough
They'd be glad to tell us, and we'd deal with more truth if we did ask

As it is now, you just never know.

The March

"Children are more than test scores," Jesse penned,
Plucking from history's oxygen
The notion of movement
Steps for change, a march towards
The right to reclaim the American ideal of protest, to say something important
The goal to help shape public education policies
One step at a time.
One drop at a time, coalescing into the river rushing
People along his path heard the footfalls- Anthony, Susan, Stephen, Jonathon, Diane
Actors, journalists, politicians, parents, children, activists, pacifists, educators
In books, blogs, tweets, releases, calls, whispers into the wind
Coming together into a call for action
"Students are more than test scores."
Teachers need the autonomy of a professional standing, to make critical educational decisions,
They stated in so many profound ways, this
Deconstructing, privatizing, selling away a public system
Destabilizes the ground of our commons
where democracy meets to ensure our nation.
For these children, now, today, people are placing one foot in front of another.
In a march,
Assessment must be meaningful, evaluation must be fair,
An end to narrowing the curriculum in areas of poverty
Already so very narrowed by their need, it all calls for a
Better design for school change that grows real leadership
and will not degenerate into petty power,
threats, punitive measures that ultimately punish children
"Children are more than test scores"
As these marchers rise to show that their home grown responding in leadership
Is something that can come to aid us in the ninth hour
Save Our Schools and March in Washington, to wave farewell to July 2011,
Then, please, continue the marches, efforts, for public education,
"Children are not really test scores"
The organizing, befriending, talking, writing, conversations
Allow a public school system to find its way
To survive and prosper, serving these challenges and children
The march can be sustained as a mechanism to support
A dream for America's future.
" Our Children are so much more than test scores."

Once You said,

President Obama said, because I heard him,
Why can't the unemployed build the schools of the future
He posed this as a question
That stills the air even now, unanswered.
I voted "for" that because it echoed within me.
Internally, from my past, I saw those beautiful structures at Cooper's Rock State Park
Where we once as a family cooked up our outdoor breakfasts
Built by the Conservation Corps.
When another President, unafraid and undaunted, said why can't the unemployed build our state and national parks, place art in our governmental spaces, photograph our people
Find their dignity again in building a better community?
The nation pulling together to answer troubled times.
Those were the stories my own father soothed me with
as I grew from a cradle he crafted
Holding a wooden toy boat he carved for my brother.
But cynicism grows, a debt ceiling looms, black humor pokes at possibility
The schools of the future still need to be built, not generously assistedinto the goals and money of our commerce and corporation
No, directed by America's people visioning for their kids
The schools still need to be built, not of mason block and cement alone
The children of today, need these public spaces to create our tomorrows.

Pledging Allegiance To The Brand

I had a dream a week ago
Every student in my room
Dozens and dozens in traditional
Rows, and not my class at all you see,
Had brand symbols tattooed on the foreheads
Symbols of corporations, or corporate sponsorship.
I thought, "It's come to this."
I had traveled to a future day
So I started to teach, but I was using antiquated thinking
So much couldn't be taught without a
Sensitivity to their sponsors.
And I woke up.
Within an hour, completely unconnected
A friend was suggesting I find corporations willing to donate
To make up for the loses of supplies
In a state slashing everything in funding to education.

Whale Watch

When I taught Kindergarten nine years ago,
They gave me a set of these thick test booklets,
Directing us to "test" the children on a fixed schedule.
So I opened up the teacher script, which demanded adherence to the text,
and read aloud.

Three children, new to anything like school, and not speakers of English,
Decided to take their pencils and submerge under the tables
Which suggested to them, and then others, "whales."
After my fussing and fuming off script, they breached
As I started all "over again" saying to the group
To find the "big star"
Several children looked up.
Then other children looked up.
It asked them to put your finger on the star, now fingers wagged at
The north star on our ceiling.

The boy who had remained on the carpet coughed.
I went over to retrieve him. Yes, I had, in my nervousness over
All of this just left him there, forgotten.
Inexcusably true.
One of the whales required the facilities- swimming rapidly through the currents
A pod followed.
After all it was our second or third week in school,
Lots of ocean to explore.
I felt these tears spraying me, frustration and personal failure
Beaded sweat down my back.
Because I had too many books, I'd placed book boxes in the bathroom along the wall,
The whales opened the door going about business, to reveal
An interest in Native American literature and leprechauns.

Question after question
Filling in bubbles, with kids not seeing bubbles, drawing doodles, my children now using
Pencils that broke or were turned around in hands that couldn't grasp them
Having never been taught how, I could not get through it
My rescuing a mermaid took more time, taking an eraser
Swimming to shore.
It all was so long, well over two hours- on two days.
Books flipping, pages turning, children unable to see page numbers or know numbers.

My favorite mentor, because
every teacher no matter how experienced needs a coach
said to me, as I swam over to her at recess,
"Well if they do poorly, and they don't have a clue what's happening,
it'll just allow us to show progress when they makes us do it again."
And she smiled. At her humor.

All I could think was
"Oh my God we have to do this again."
This really was not like the testing we were already doing.
Calling a child to recite colors, numbers, letters, to write their name,
To try to read a small book, to do hundreds of tasks related
to what we were teaching.
This was such a big booklet.
With fill in bubbles, fat number two pencils-
The sea otters chewed them really like beavers
And the one test booklet floated rather nicely in the sink
For fair William.

This was how I first
Came face to face with how
Accountable we now were going to get,
Watching the whales on a test day while
My small ship started sinking.

Dibels

My school is late to this party,
we can thank the literacy coach that "got trained" and into it- well after everyone else is questioning this test for children like we have,
Here we are.
She just got Nationally Certified,
So the one minute races
To beat the clock began
We DORF, sift and measure
In this recipe for success in a failing school
No excuses.

My first graders fixated, with this coach
on reading nonsense words quickly
Very quickly.
These are entirely without long vowels
Many violating the patterns we know such as the lovely "pis"
For the second language learner so early in the introduction of English
This test is a particular disadvantage.
We do know that!
The child may well sound out "get"
But make no connection to that word.
Now they could stay with nonsense, so difficult for those struggling the most.

Daily practice for months took over reading groups
as lup, zat, pif, dut
Became what once was time for SSR,
teacher Read Alouds, story reading practice, journals
We dove headlong
Some students were so entrenched they could not then
accept silent e and long vowels.
When I tried to introduce them.

They then were graduated from "at risk" groups
generated by the test, alone, as if it knew best
That placed students with no letter sounds with a reader at second or third grade level
together as equal
From scores
Going now
To practice reading paragraphs
In one minute.
Stop and summarize even if you did not read yet enough here to understand any meaning
Fast. You must go fast
Fluency.

This they took on as in all things
With serious, sincere, studious first grade effort.
Some growing confident, others perceiving themselves as lesser readers
Developing skilled diversions, aversion, creeping towards shame
Now having lower scores to "prove it"
Felt this as "less" with much now "identified"
"to be addressed"
A coach so pleased that this sorting was so well done.

Where once we were reading the daily news, performing and memorizing pattern books
Like Madeline, reading our Rosemary Wells, Eric Carles, Tomie De Paolas
Summarizing Ramona the Brave.
Ah, this was so specific.

Yes, I did work to help them
Succeed on the Dibel's, I was ordered to give it.
Because no child can stomach this feeling we introduced so starkly
Of their failure.
But I do know how to work through these early days in literacy
Differently.
and well.

Yes, we're late to the party,
But do we ever sit down and talk about
Which invitations we are accepting and why?
Or what we might well expect to see in students that must
Approach reading a little differently
Because it is a second language?

No. Not in a mandated reality, we don't.

Walking Man
Jesse Turner

Walking Man

A momma follows your footsteps
Sitting on your shoulder
Like the proverbial bluebird of happiness
Aware of your courage
To stand, walk, care for how
We educate our children in public schools

Walking man

Your daughter, more precious to you than life,
Looks to see her father
Place a silly hat upon a head,
Reaching out in a Sear's suit
To all the young readers
That look to our public schools for the best that we can be

Walking man

Those that saw your steps, heard your refrains,
Listened
To you offering the wisdom in this gift of sight
Seeing our children-
For that we will walk along side you awhile
Sharing the march with the walking man.

Talking "FOR"

Being united behind an angry woman
With her broom, determined to sweep away the "bad teachers"
Out to the curb- not to say it is acceptable to allow poor methodology or praxis-
It just is the wrong message
Or the wrong agenda

The wrong symbol

We can find teachers
Shining examples of leaders,
Speak to their realities
Learn from them-
It isn't hard
But the change in emphasis means everything.

The symbol

Let us call forward exemplars of those that lead peers, students, demonstrating their abilities not JUST in sets of scores but in their producing projects, plays, poems, papers, books, articles, research, reflection, models, quizzes, portfolios, exams, files, dioramas, scrolls, artworks, choirs, debates, math nights, festivals, murals, teams, mock trials, competitions, missions, read a thons, libraries, and so much more.

Let's look to them-
our public education heroes
Centering on what they teach us
Allowing them to mentor us
With something other
than a stick.

Entitled

Yes. I do believe
Every child is
Actually entitled
To the best possible
Free public education
America can give them.
One that grants them
The opportunity to realize
Their potentials through
Great leadership, teaching,
Technology, literature,
Science, Math, Art, SSR

Yep.
The works.
The full entitlement.

I see it as a
Star shooting across
A western sky at the dawn
Of a new age
Where the challenges
They face, that we have left to them,
Largely in our folly,
Are met by their light

We must give them that.

What Can I say About Tests

Teachers need to know what your students know
Have they got their letter sounds, did you instruct well enough
Can they grasp the concepts, content, what needs re-teaching
Where do they need support? And it is as varied as every child.
You must figure this out,
Use the data to inform next steps, and even see yourself
Your teaching, school, students realistically against another.

Where I fail to understand tests is what I have witnessed
First graders tested every three basal stories- choices of what they read dependent
On easy prefabricated purchased test formats- for three to five hours in tests.
A fifth of the reading instructional time spent in the assessment
Of the reading program. Entire Fridays, mandated, day long testing sessions.
I fail to understand using data to condemn the teacher, one without the ability to select the content/curriculum, who cannot choose their students, done over supporting her efforts with programatic supports. I fail to get a test as a curriculum.

Which is what we have packaged and sold ourselves.

Child

seed
love
mother
father
child
birth
bond
care
love
hold
ouch
change
dress
trust
watch
speak
grow
school
numbers
letters
sounds
words
recess
tests
fears
teacher
report
reassure
label
sort
group
read
write
win
lose
self
memory
survive
thrive
become
test
bubble
please
rebel
debate
play
finish
graduate
dream
adult

America's Got Talent

He washes cars in a tiny West Virginia town
Which is not who he is, but a part of him
Then strolls across a Hollywood stage singing Sinatra
Dreds pulled back, tuxedo on
A foot in the ramps-his roots,
Reaching for his sun.
I happened to see him on America's Got Talent

Public teachers know these children
In hollers and urban dead ends
Dreaming of a day they can
Step from Logan County into a spot light,
We have so much talent
To water, cultivate, support and search out
Because it surely is time for their voices to rise.

Paul

A long long time ago, over fifteen years, my class contained an entrepreneurial
11 year old who liked to question, argue, debate, and generally engage me in
proving to him that I had something worthwhile to offer
When we created our model economy, in the form of a town, Paul pretty soon
bought the bank, because he won a lottery, demanded a stock market, sold and purchased
the entertainment, and even allowed a welfare state. When we needed a criminal justice system in this 6th grade he tried a case as our first District Attorney. "This one," I thought, may well kill me. He brought to court several three inch legal volumes and dressed in a suit.
He actually hated the art we did-my real forte. Balked on making Buckminster Fuller models,
moaned when I assigned contour drawing or taught Pysanky, and really, excelled everyday. Nothing I did then would be "tolerated" now. Nothing. We journaled it all. We also wrote journals as characters from books. I almost lost my job then. He said I used too much "direct instruction." He did lose his job. What I did never fit the District "ideal".
Paul however absorbed every lesson, took it all as play, and went to the edge. I see him in my mind's eye.

He sent me a note a few years ago. Thanking me for being one of two teachers that inspired him. Thanked me for the creative contribution to his life. He'd graduated UCSB and Stanford too, I think-in several areas. He's an artist. And yes, I do tend to make artists. But I had not expected this. I fell into the blue sky we teachers sometimes feel envelope us once in a great while. He is a photographer with these major clients in a global world in LA. His website is so slick I find myself uncomfortable looking at it-is this possible "Do you remember me?" We keep in touch, a bit, as I see him devour his world. Someone that taught me so much, that I taught in our public school- once upon a time.

My Birthday

2011-06-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Bad seeds

On my birthday guilt compels me outside to water my yard
Dying from a blown sprinkler valve, that went unnoticed
Much as it escaped me this year that across a continent a loved one
Was forced to a dry desert.
It feels utterly absurd to celebrate my life
Against this knowledge of what I so blindly missed
Stuck in my own demons, I know what it is to fail someone
That reached out to offer me comfort and belonging
Who needed audience, acknowledgment, answers, a witness
Not a coward collapsed by their own mortality and flaws
As the streams of droplets race down, a beautiful white light
Into the garden, I pace struggling to accept
That she took her very life, eluded destiny, stopped time
Or released herself into the energy of all things
I don't know. My conscious intellect
At war with the fates, religions, emptiness, meaninglessness
I've been battling the depression and hurt, the history, the internal conflicts
This last six months grieving something it was mine to understand.
Insights into her pain, her utter loneliness, the wrenching
Unfathomable moments that ticked away until she stopped functioning
Could not bring her love and comfort, her essence to anyone else.
This fills me with such collapsing inertia.
Seeds were planted long long ago in my family
Ugly, dark, shadowy mean kernels of guilt, shame, conflict and blame
Fueled by isolation, poverty, domination and they took root
Long after, in times when it makes no sense,
In the generations later with the babies, the rushing energy, the progress, growth, change
These dirty tentacles wrapped around an innocent being
Pulling her deep underground, buried, weighted, wormy rotten suffocating despair
She lies in a grave on a hill where nothing can
Talk about what these folks never truly faced
The mist falls across my glasses, cooling my pants, seeping in the tennis shoes
Birthday arrives, rainbow sprays, patches of dead and dying grass
Responding to this gift of a drink
In the desert of a Southern Ca illusion.

Poetry On Sylvia's Cal Tech Graduation-June 11, 2011

2011-06-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

"Starting a Set Of Poems
To My Daughter"

Hazy from sleep and a cold in my head
I hear your grandmother
Shouting into our phone
"Call back, call back"
And then I'm frozen and her
Narrative continues
"She's not here yet
And I don't know what
You are saying.
She's graduated, call back."
She's the deaf one but
She considerately shouted as if
They were as well.

And I can't help.
So I figure that someone
"Out of area" on the look-up
Piqued her interest
And she got on the call
Then into my dreams a bit
Before I came to
To start a set of poetry.
On Cal Tech's 2011 Commencement.

Something Your Sister Said While We Were Waiting

There is a woman at work
Well, in fact she worked for your father,
Vacant, thin, surviving
A mother and a teacher
I remember once asking her
If she ever experienced extreme anxiety
Which made her say yes thoughtfully and then go.
A really, really nice person
Seeming to exist without conflict
She retired, took up painting
Just spent a year in Italy
Making art,
Sophia told me

This made me both a little envious
And aware that things really do change
Dreams percolate, stuff brews,
Despite appearances to the contrary.
We do, in our life, harbor inner artists.
What will call you Sylvia one day?
To stop the this and move to the that?
I don't know,
But it amuses me today waiting your entrance
To think about it.

I Bought A Skirt And Went as A Hippie

Way back in '61
Stardust permeated everyone
Feynman lectured
The zen of the motorcycle
In 2000 and 11
Folks held up iphones
Arms laden with designer bags
Caught digital stars

So here you are then
My daughter, who I knew with a third eye
Raised by two artists
In the place that scientific dreamers built
Getting your BS in Science

It used to be their "boys only" dreamin' club
Fun, fun, fun
But in your year 33% of you
Had more feminine charms
Arriving on your scores and whatever they use to divine these things

Someone on the phone
Four years ago told me she was off
"To the Industrial Military Complex"
After that I stopped being able to speak to them
It was such a robbery of my hopes, I awoke.

I'd given you a set of those early lectures
when you were in the 7th grade
It had not fully come to me
That they had come to that
Propping up and designing missile systems over starpaths.

Do you remember the strange kid
Chanting a repetitive I don't know, staring blankly,
When we were walking in the hallway
While in the next room
They were constructing a hot tub

We were visiting with you on a rainy, dreary day
After you were accepted
Going to look at the Hogwart's school
With the Guernica mural
That you chose-CalTech you said was your dream.

Today to see you on life's way
I wore a batik shirt
Thought about times lived in wax resist
And all your effort
What we've learned from moonbeams.

My Sylvia

I caught a glimpse
A smile in her
Processional
The recognition of
My daughter
Where we were
Like a compass orienting
her in this latest
Performance
Somehow it marked the
day.

In life
we are oriented
by the love of others
Their recognition
of us, expectation,
the rapid moment of our
existence in which for
it seems just a second
we see the potentials,
the accomplishments
and delight.
One to
another.

Diploma

Degree
Indicates
Professional
Luminescence
Of
Maturing
Adult

Commencement Speaker
Ahmed H. Zewail

An Egyptian chemist that didn't win a Pulitzer
But did win a Nobel Prize gave the address
To the students. What I heard in the
Words was that 80% of the world can't hope
Could not, would not, ever, walk in their shoes
And know just the opportunity to go make
A fairer, better world. This is something
That maybe was kept secret over the
Last four years, at least my daughter said
That to me once. My mind admittedly
Wandered to how I was in the 80%.
I'm teaching trying to send them off to real dreams,
Reaching toward this elite, just hoping for a few to change this world,
And certainly thinking of the children in poverty
I teach, 100% not here today, with most having
Parents not knowing school.
He spoke of the obligation to build
a better world. He spoke of Egypt and
What he saw in their peaceful revolution.
He spoke of democracy and poverty.
Quoting Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr.
This is a time when people in the
World aspire towards freedom through
education and he asked graduates to
engage scientifically in building a
World to solve problems that keep
us divided, unfair, ignorant and he
Did this saying he felt a personal optimism.
A hope, a way to turn technological
and scientific discoveries into bridges
of new possibility.

It falls on those Cal Tech
Kids to carry that into meaning
From June 10, 2011
We wish them well.

Carousel

At three
She bravely sat
On a white horse
They took a snapshot
Transferred it to a T-shirt
And onto two cups
We picked them up later that day.

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

Her dad kept that shirt
Through five moves
When it seemed
Everything was lost
To storage

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

He wore her
When life took her
To CalTech,
After two high schools
a valedictorian
telling us to
be autodidacts

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

He unpacked her few boxes
We left her in
a dormroom,
We were so silly
it felt like abandonment to us.
But we did it for her.
Her dreams

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

He put that shirt back on again
For her day
Of graduating
A proud father
Saying things are ok
I'll always love you.

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

Re-cycled Rumplestiltskin

Your gown was made
From plastic bottles
Rumpelstiltskin spun into
Fabric just to celebrate
The sciences of Cal Tech
And the death of myth.
He used a mountain of water bottles
(That maybe cause breast cancer
Over time, which is
Why you'll want to wear
The gown sparingly)
Plus who knew what he could do
With water resistance.
Rumple longs for the old
Alchemical days when
Gold was enough
It appears Cal Tech wanted
a New Age Image.

So our kids will have to spin their
Own fortunes, pay for this schooling
Clothe the rich
And ask not what Rumple
Can spin for them, but what corporate
Industry can be built
On recycling water bottles into
Ball gowns.

Snap Crackle Pop

Behind me
Sat a thirteen year old
"Kid with a Plastic Cup"
He cracked it
All through
My daughter's graduation
Through the Processional
The silent anticipation
(they had no prayers)
Through the speaker
Through the address
Through the hundreds of names
Through his own sister's name

I wanted after awhile
To recycle
the cup
Into a new gown
But I was specifically
Told to
"Be nice."
Which I certainly was.

I was also told he must
"have a condition."
His mom leaned in
To tell him
(I was hoping it was cup stuff)
that she
was looking forward to
His graduation.

I think
His condition
Must be
worthy of my saving cups
For his
Big day.

new set in progress...

2011-05-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

then I'll know

i can't interpret signals anymore
don't want to wave in a blur
can't see beneath the mask
or read between the lines
was that an acknowledgment
or an unconscious mistake
if you want me to know
then don't leave a shadow of a doubt

but things are murky
and nights are long hard affairs
with pain and frightening fears
very slogging times wade
in to pull you to the muck
somehow
opaque is the color
of what I get

put the mona lisa as your profile
write a note that says you care
ship out a golden ring
email a ticket to a destination
take the phone and call it
order sets of colored pencils
photograph somewhere i would love
show it to me as me

but not something hidden
not something I can never know
not something ambiguous
not something like the life I've had
in the relations of being sort of
the hope that writes if I'll get thin
or the day my intestines burst
they might send you a card
not enough to warrant their support

not hints of the kinds of meaning
that never come
or hidden readings of a website without the one time
saying the words that mattered
deeply when I needed them
take the time and make the effort I need
its just such a small amount
and then I'll know

Visiting LACMA, in Poems 2011 (in progress)

2011-04-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

In this set of pictures are poems.
This set will take me awhile to write, and I'm adding daily, bear with me and scroll.

y
m

Subsistence
by Sylvia Puglisi

Four million four thousand

Three hundred twenty-four

Corn flakes. In neat boxes

Is enough to survive on for

The average expected life.

And, if you run out, due to

Proclivity for carelessness

Or unexpected emergency

Or plague of cereal locusts

You can always eat the box.

The Egg, the Girl, Mozart and a Tiny Guard

World-Champion Bullshitter
by Sylvia Puglisi

This next piece addresses

the fundamental impossibility of art.

The blank wooden canvas represents art

into which the frustrated artist cannot cram the themes he desires to address

the personal and the political.

Frustrated, he instead takes a step back

and photographs this abortion of his artistic process

in turn framing and presenting that photograph to the viewer as art.

This abandonment of his artistic goal

in turn achieves that very goal

and creates the original piece of art that he was unable to create.

Thus his inability becomes his inspiration

and the paradox of art

draws the viewer further into the empty frame.

o

d

e

a

s
k
l

The Immigrant Woman

She worked in a seed factory
In Philadelphia when she was
Just twelve years old
A city of bricks, mortar, history
And industrial explosion
Her job was to put the tiny bits of life
A dozen to a packet for seed catalogs
Her wages kept her family in a tenement.

She bought a tiny copper bracelet
From a first paycheck for twelve cents
It is in my jewelry box drawer
The only legacy left to remind me
Of her, her needs, desires, decoration
Passed from mother to daughters
Until it fades out for my girls
Only a shadow now

Her womanhood would bloom
Blossoming into people that gave me life
I teach school now to other immigrant children
Alive with hope and dreams
My great grandmother had no
School room days past the fourth grade
Destined instead to factories,
Building the future
With her beautiful tears.

Twentieth Century City of Angels

Overlooking the age
This erect angel
Stands gazing down at
Those climbing
Those descending
Staring and sitting
Caught in repoussoir
She's wrapped, bronzed in a nude's
chiffon slip
A female fertility goddess
In a Kazan film
Stella and her sister
Breeding life in LA
Humanity climbing Bunker Hill
For a shot at the view.

The Kentuckian

"take life in big bites, son"
Lil Eli looked to Big Eli
Set down on canvas by Thomas Hart Benton
Then one day onto a whiskey label
Burt Lancaster conjured some
Hollywood promotion
For his The Kentuckian
Starrin' America's own heartland
Father and son headed for a Promise Land
Milk and honey in Texas
Blowing Gabriel's horn
There was teacher Susie, servant Hannah
Elias Wakefield, his boy
Sam Bodine's bullwhip
Ole Walter Matthieu grimacing in a western
All landin' in LACMA
Publicly not seen since commissioned
(except on the booze)
Pulsing with movement
This man stares toward
A future in the great American West
Our artist's vision projected on their screens.

Bubbles

Circles with infinite points of symmetry
Bubbly soapy instant points of happiness
Floating form follows function
Pop, it is no more
Riding the iridescent wave
On a celestial plane

The Hour Glass

Life is where time is kept
In an hour glass
Precarious sand runs
While
Tottering on a
Vibrating universe

Fire Escape

Crawl out of this building
Escaping the reality
A hand runs on cool metal rails
The past recedes
Corporeal dissolves

Raise fire alarms
Screaming danger signs
Freed in the panic
The white starkness
Turned to glare.

Zantedeschia

Your inflorescence
Bring forth the spathe
A spadix juts

fertility goddess

calla lily
carried to market
displaying his wares
she weighs
he waits

The real thing

This is Mrs. somebody or the other
She can easily afford to hire
Diego one figures and she sits to
Have her portrait done
Because she's the real thing,
Her fur can buy and sell him.
Those pearls exquisite reminders
Of aquiline elegance
No peasant, she inherited,
Cocking a look
At her artist in repose,
The reflection of her beauty
Is in his strokes,
He strips away her patronage.

Impression Doomsday

Steak knives
Steel balls
Flying techno
Christmas tornado

No Loose Ends

One arm bandits
Pineapple coladas
Apple cores
Just a collection of unrelated items
Gets assembled in the mind,
What do we draw from this?
Metaphorical connection.

Pictograph

There was a house
A man, his food
Built on the foundation
Of all his ancestors
He spoke, he wrote.
Beliefs rose
Under one roof
They watched
Centuries.

What was Broken
What was Not Broken

What was broken?
This back, yet I hold my head aloft.

What was not broken?
The spirit, so I send my soul on high.

What was broken?
The rib, this Diego was once my Adam.

What was not broken?
Just bones shattered, I am whole in my father's tribe.

What was broken?
This pelvis held unborn and it was crushed.

What was not broken?
The birth of my creative vision remained intact.

What was broken?
My foot I step upon the earth, absorbed the accident.

What was not broken?
The blue hearth, my earthly home, alive in my time and place.

What was broken
in the woman,

Was not broken
in the artist.

Pain's Pageant

Coconut Khalo olive skin
Lemon lime Diego squash belly pumpkin
Pomegranates tequilas infant heartbreaks
Tears mango sienna bloodworm

virgen de guadalupe

Mother of Mexico
Sweet vision of Juan
"These roses I bring you Bishop"
So they may transform us
Turn our blood
To the rose petals of our days
Enfold us in her visions
That we may see her running
In the veins of our children.

at your own risk

if you want you can walk over a pile of gravel in the la art museum
at your own risk
you can not get a big handful
and throw it at the other patrons or paintings
or at a donor clearly because you can read that
on the sign conveniently located right there
so you know whats allowed
in this artland of gravel walkers
singlefile
holding hands
up and over you go
(their lawyers commissioned the sign)

call pensis.is u
fseuo.gdsuop
it.s you birtda go marc
noeebudy knows..
flat oout soewesoome
you for.T
eyes Weslfchfydh tt.y
ed.jdd/.itrs.gdt

jfduy.gydutl..
grilla s.a

They may not have written "Art id ded"

If you left a pile of glass letters
on a platform in a museum
would you expect someone to write "eat me?"
Or feel afraid to interact and touch one piece
to spell out some message
There was a family fumbling through
From the hood
with kids that were climbing over the elevator
like a bizarre reenactment of a Gene Kelly movie
sideways at the ceiling
As doors opened
invading the art rooms
laughing, crawling, tossing, loud
They touched the letters, so hard it sounded like
Lots broke.

Flayed Alive

We don't need in this modern world medieval torture
The mind is wired to explore those notions
Without an actual rack, we go virtual
Modern neuroscience can tell us what synaptic network is pulsing
With their authority of science
Sans the scalpel,we pathologize life in nightmarish depths
Fear of acceptance, magical thinking, splayed across the psyche
The greatest of these tortuous mechanisms embedded in the possibility of poverty
The reality of cruelty on display to shock one into awareness
Then there is anonymity, weight gain, the disregard of the other beings
As you are hoisted on the committees tenterhooks
And found wanting, going to die, commented upon, spammed
Beaten alive perhaps for your woman's figure, life giver be damned here,
Beaten for desires, inadequacies, cellulite, aging, sagging
Hung by the skin that lacked the proper Max factor finish, had a wrinkle, a surface
That bespoke only what you were to others, a shell.
Womanhood today has found a way to art's canvas as the modern scream
I stood, I was ugly in their eyes, I am.

Gasping for Air

She might be thinking
that the smell from this elaborate wooden
particle board display
needs venting fans

She might be thinking
that the native art
on display would not have understood
press board

Walking there trying to see through display glass
it reflected your own image at you obscuring every piece
It seemed more of the same timeless stupid carelessness
a stage set

Built in the city that gave you the western
The horses rounded up and the whooping
calls as the slaughters began
blazing on the screen, now this mess

A giant couple rooms caged pieces of simple life
Vessels to eat, utensils,
Elegant baskets
papoose holders, the things that lived and breathed once

Out away from this museum of caged natives
On plains, in villages, a native people with wisdom
That foretold times
So indifferent as to asphyxiate those looking here, choking on meanings

Entropy

I was used to the museums back east
With collections that were so magnificent
Rooms in The Carnegie, East Wings, New York
So Los Angeles was different
It was pretty ratty public art space
Had a few expensive things
No sign of volunteers and involvement with community
Nothing that said let's talk with the children
Just a courtship with celebrity
Guards from the hoods
Something very different happen here
Didn't seem to invest in its art as a city
And we sat outside
On this courtyard to rest there, bad chairs
That didn't want you to sit down,
I recall a recorder player
For the longest time in the eighties
That stood along the one wall playing
Renaissance stuff, threw nickles in his backpack.
Now they've got a corporate monster
A house of glass and steel
Falling in permanent things
amateur hour
Arranged with paintings blocked by furniture
A room to Indians with particle board shapes
drenching you in formaldehyde fumes
The same plaza sits undisturbed
Orienting me again to my times now in a sadder iteration
And there's a new happening courtyard built
Moved over to smooze those contributors
That must not walk over two buildings to see
Things are still really falling in.
Like a lot of the city.
One that bleeds the new.

Disinclined

"Why would this get here
It's a bale of hay?"
She quipped as we
strolled down
The Japanese pavilion
Stopping to see some roosters
Stylistically scratching
I never saw the hay bale, truthfully.
The roosters seemed
Playfully pecking the linen
That might have a moth or two
Such were the fallen times
Of LA's art erosion
Worn carpets, bonsai with no keeper
Just a hacking mess
The guard said,
"I saw you folks before."
To wave off ticket showing.
He told us, "You'll want to go to the top floor on three
then walk your way down."
Saving me the climb.
A kindness
I had forgotten this.
In spaces declined
I started to tell her
How once, twenty five years before
I found it so lovely
Balanced, meaningful.
How
I never could get her father to go in this part again.
Not once in the next twenty years.
But it seemed
My story
not hers.

Screens

Folded
You approach
From any angle
Much is hidden
The plane of existence
Bent
Images
Dance meaning
In time and space
Glimpses
Hint
At secrets
Beyond.

Photo Reality

There was not a single picture in the museum
Of the art that I loved once, which had sought to just be a photograph
Nothing photo real there, no Close, no Perlman, no Fish.
Coming out of the exhibits, driving home in a cramped car
Everything was a painting to me then looking out, there caught in the evening golden light
I lost the dimension of the living
It just flattened into what had no boundary or frame, two dimensional image
It was that missing photo reality work, I understood that empty language speaking
Better than what was being cloistered
IN a modern art space in LA.

There in the art world this group was being shuttled in for 'the auction' party,
People that we mortals couldn't disturb, that was not the art there on the 101 highway
As young fashionably dressed girls teetered on heels
With walkie talkies
To light candles on a walkway , cradled in glass jars, men holding trays in white coats
The LA patrons were feted, (they know who they are),
We held the door for one
Ancient in her wool.
After walking through a building Broad built, we were going home.
What wasn't purchased, or placed in the new museum,
Outside of this place
Actually then held the wonder of the artistic expanse of my mind.

The End

Hanging over the city
Shone a paper thin cellophane moon
This sci--fi looking set in the city of make believers
It appeared over Korea town
As the traffic rushed through a narrow shoulder-less labyrinth
Concrete roads rushing me back to a gated community
In a hollow echo on the freeways I moved
Couldn't find a way to play our game of hide and seek
To get the image captured of how it looked
Or how it felt, for your eyes to silently share the moon with me.

Hall of Mirrors, If walls could talk

2011-04-03T06:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't written a poem in a bit
Or tried
But I sometimes try to force my dreams on these pages..
I wonder why I find them poetic?

The Art Fair, a nightmare

In my dream today it referenced something that happened that is unresolved, I guess.
An experience of feeling wronged which I carry.
What I am recalling waking, with a severe headache- is this
Thin brown threads, ones I just called just awful to look at.
And indeed what is held in these threads is awful to look at.

The dream starting with a special ed teacher coming into my old, old room in the portable to tell my friend
That unlike I said, saying my last name with a candor and disgust in the way one does when someone isn't there, "strings could be put across the cafeteria to hold art."
A more artless person I never met.
So I get up with her to go look, I am visible to her now.
She realizing I'm there to hear her falls quiet, but remains relating to my friend,
Who she wants to "see " this.

Shall I fill you in on what the poet knows:
.....this relates to how things went in my life when a student died several years ago- I had the student during the last art fair I ran...which is why I'm back in that old portable and I ran a phenomenal art show, and he and my class did wonderful work, some of that work sat on the altar in his funeral....it came forward like the tragic feelings I hold grieving his loss sometimes just come forward....
this teacher who confronts my honesty here, in a dream, over "string" and holding and hanging art -out of nowhere turning what I did into an opportunity to seek out a lie, hold a trial, prove me wrong....once in real painful life three years ago she denied I taught a student that was shot dead-in the day or so after it happened-
humiliating me.
...... her own caddy and unkind remarks about his death I confronted raw the AM coming in when I knew he was dead, just passed the hospital where they were taking him off life support, and his organs going to LA that day after a long talk with his Dad the night before this happened....anyway I came in to hear her seizing attention....she was announcing he would be fine that in fact he was going to use the head wound to turn his life around-
sadly I said things like being shot in the head are not ways we achieve personal growth-I was so raw in my listening to others taking possession of the facts, deliberately saying the child was fine when the father told me he had notified the school he was brain dead....it was a time I needed to remain silent but didn't...,

but in an hour or two she spread the story I never taught him, she was furious to not be the one telling everyone the "way it was" I think, so in retaliation began this as if I invented this teaching "for attention," in a bit she told others, bosses so helpfully fueling a lie, immediately one backing up the other...and brewed by my boss, who would/does get into messes like this (though she hadn't been there and she didn't know too well-altho she had once contacted me in Temecula when he had a hard incident in 3rd grade)...perhaps she was just not sure what she was doing, brewed into a huge "story" all behind my back, all in a day.

Nothing hurts quite like it in recall, it was so humiliating.

A huge thing grew for days, for weeks, for months-while in my personal life a monster troll attacked me on Amazon, while I was wounded to the heart by the rejection of another there....

As a result, I wasn't allowed the group grief counseling that day, teachers were called to it a group session but I was not called-and I went over anyway to directly deal with this lie-because I was in terrible grief- but it was so humiliating to me as a person to be singled out and excluded.....the door held against my entering by the psychologist ( "no no" he said at the door "you need to wait and go away ...this is for his teachers"
And not to go on and on but this child always held I was the teacher he loved...there are independent verifications, the family, his third grade teacher, notes but it was somehow a part of the degradation of the place) - until this happened this psychologist a person I previously thought something of, held nothing but respectful thought about (and boy, this reminds me I need to pull him aside sometime and tell him that that holding the door-sending me away-that all of that going on behind my back as it did out of those folks projection and lack of feeling hurt me deeply and I don't think I can quite recover working with these folks from it)-
And so I was kept in a hall, like an uninvited intruder.
Holding the group shame and guilt.

I need to confront it now. The dream reminds me.
I thought I tried to then, later in the day they insisted I go in with the union person, him, the principal, the nurse-to grief counseling but actually in the way this worked my psyche has been harmed, and I think permanently so.
I cannot actually ever again deal with these folks openly.
They all were believing I had not taught him and was in some psychotic episode of empathy and a need to be I guess center stage...jesus...who knows.
Which like they say about all wrongs would be in a short day or so directly confronted. I trusted in that, because I had no way to defend myself at the time.
I just was a victim and serve here as a witness to it.

At the time I simply stated I was his teacher, directly, and dealt with asking the psychologist who was there when he was shot just what he suffered as I needed to know. I wanted to understand how it was for him at the end because I felt he would want me to know that. In fact I feel to this day he expects me to be truthful about the ALL of this place.

I have tried to do that.

I did not deal then so much with their nonsense. Because they saw me as capable of doing them harm legally- perhaps- that's why they had me in at all to a "session"....which was so hard to deal with so I simply stated my grief...

in a day or so the family of the child made SURE the school SAW I taught him by projecting my image and the child's all over the funeral-and I really appreciate their doing that in their pain) I mentioned what was happening when they called to have me go to the graveside service, the only non family member or teacher there.
It was important to me and I think the hardest thing I've done.

I do remember-the other teachers implying I was seeking attention-the fact I understood I needed to be misconceived. That I was being set up, that I had to just hold it, my issues nothing compared to the child's.
Then helping this to be shortened in time, the family in the funeral putting up my pictures dispelling this, of my teaching him-the sheer horror of all of this for me held by this teacher in my current dream who then in a real life did what I saw repeated in the dream in different form...

- my own friend in life over confronting others out saying that I had not taught him took the easy route and said to them-"what difference does it make?"-her doing that was repeated to me on friday and once again my not turning to her directly and stating the truth-you did not own me-support me when I need you.....again...would she, no. This pulled the STRINGS of memory.
I cannot control a dream.
I can control only how I let it move me later.

All the very thread of this

OH OF COURSE...the thread...
Is ugly...I get it...hanging, hanging art, my hanging, the connections
the difficulty of being thought so little of
and really where is that the most difficult for me now

in losing a friendship I cared about...

I do get this now...

I did want to do that, hang strings over the tables,
I did not do that because they sagged. In the real show.

When I get there to see this, a line of tables holds chairs on them.
At the room's front.
From the top of the chairs to the floor are these thin, thin, thin brown strings.
And a guy from my writing retreat (who I so want to name) and a friend -Mr. Van- quietly are stringing.
(This other guy goes by his last name only.
It starts with an O and he calls himself that.)
I was referred to by him at the retreat as if I were a non person,
in a Shakespearean aside-
as "Look at her, that's probably what people see when they think of a teacher."
In a "Well times have thankfully changed with me now what a teacher can be " way.
God/It was very personal.
I felt bad about myself at the retreat then-as a pudgy white teacher.
So I said Mrs. Claus to diffuse it with a joke.
But he was in this dream for this reason. A symbol, then.
On that day.

Anyway this was not good for a couple reasons.
This "idea" proving me wrong about hanging lines.
You couldn't see art on these strings, pics interfered with seeing other pics.

No one else saw it that way or cared.

It was like a triangle to the floor of multiple strings.
Art on them would sag and block other pictures.
I remember being amazed my mind would think of such construction for the purpose of a dream.
I do recall thinking that,
As if outside my dream it checking in which I did several times.
Dreams being entirely of your own mind entered my thoughts.
Or dreaming.

And the strings would snap,
Plus you couldn't use the tables to eat.
I was required to keep the place school functional in the art fair
So I had to let it be able to use the floor space for the cafeteria tables-you can't build a rig like this.
In reality.
I did this art fair because I was asked. Only.
Quite different than I had several years ago past
-when I think I wanted to show everyone my gifts.
In terms of ego.

So in the dream I go in and ask to speak to the Principal.
About this string thing.
Her office, different than reality, is also covered with brown string.
So I say something, knowing there is no point in my doing this,
And I'm saying, "Well I guess you do know about this
But I removed the art last week."
And they are pretty much ignoring me.
So I repeat to her that the strings will break, you can't see art they are too close.
But she says something like she loves it.
And I feel like it's junior high again where one is always judged by appearance.

It matches so well the exclusion of where I work.
And how unsophisticated Darwinian rule rule.
In a school no less.
again something entering my writing.
And I just go back over to see these folks building this thing aided by a K teacher
Who is nervously looking at me saying,"Oh isn't it great."
She mouselike.
I feel like the implication is I am angry.

And I think maybe more classes will put stuff up,
The only positive I can find,
well maybe people will take time and display children's effort
WHICH NEVER HAPPENS.
They don't see the images really differentiating the quality.

During the experience I was treated to quite a few pokes pulling from memory,
It was helpful to me to put together with a few other isolated incidents where I look at memory.
They say it is selective and emotional. I also see it as defensive.
Jealous, capable of aiding our projections, or crystalizing them into a kind of magical mirror reality.
It wasn't like that, I heard myself whispering.
It wasn't.

And yet there I am trapped in a memory of my making.

I've struggled with being abandoned, or ignored, or just passed by for being not what someone wanted, needed, for lacking.

I suppose that's what put one of those guys in that room, he represented a person that said my exterior was wrong, the other represented ignoring/oblivion, the one teacher represented someone that saw my talents but was evading dealing with me, others just rejecting who I am. In fact the entire dream was about a group constructing another memory or experience to replace the real one.

Ah....that is what I am processing, even me doing that. I took time in the dream to go look at pictures to be sure it had looked nice. Pictures I took. I started trying to take pictures and write in things and seek to at least go back and look at my representations in the moment and with the films to try to recall. I am finding that helpful in taking away how hard I am on myself, in facing my dedication and effort. in lowering my disgust with myself.

And perhaps I have become aware of how unaware folks are that do unkindnesses. Including looking at my own capacity for it. Or answering a question that lingered as a child-I never could figure out how my father recalled as he did, or how he took how emotionally hard he was on me and my brother-but I see he put it away emotional-he stored it as something he justified. He really can't empathize.

What opens eyes to seeing the other point of view?

It's morning.
My head hurts.
I feel like I just went through a horrible nightmare. I'm alone and I can't quite sort the meanings without an awareness they'll sort back into the false things as well as the true.
I can see the value of a person processing with you...

the thread of what was tied to the art fair....well hopefully it was healing to me to move on through this...
to write to something no one knows

Paint Stains

2011-03-09T01:10:00.000-08:00

Taking time to photograph your reflection in a window seat
Staring ahead, through what you were projecting perhaps, maybe saying you are your own mirror now, great.
It tells my story, not yours, in this poem, though, the story you cannot feel
Your white shirt I longed to breathe in against this pain, just to hold.

I'm starting a mural with a hundred or more children now
That I can know, it is real and I feel it grow with them.
A line of kids holding a welcome sign at an institution under siege.
Numb in the cold, struggling to do this well enough, and prepare an art fair in a few week's effort.

You are there, for me, in your time, maybe I really glimpsed you once
Glancing now at fingernails choked with gummy purple tempera
You never really saw who I am, that came to mind today, clear like this giant blue marble sky
So I never probably got you either, I asked myself though what does love mean?

Now it's one thirty in the morning, trying to shake off wakefulness, anxiety, the longing
Get back and find a way through this project, that is my only real
Thinking of how little either of us knew of the other's fragile heart, yes they beat,
Besides what did we cast into the internet as origami shadow forms

Folded tenderly and tossed aside, lying torn, a mountain fold on the concrete
Atop a paperdoll, sagging with the loss of her leg blowing
In the chill of a california spring, as I sit drawing the children in the night.
Old poetry archived is poor representative of my utter skillessness speaking

The naivete, the Spanish royal family, an ugly dwarf, my work to develop culture in cement block
Strange mind wanderings and brutally untrained awkward verbal spewing.
Still I do look at your shirt, even across this dimension, through the projection, past your clocks
And think of how it would be, to smell some warm detergent in the cotton

Relax into an acceptance and eternity in a moment, it's late.
Still cannot entirely decline that tissue box comforting mirage,
But I know that what I need to do is plan the projects
Use my brushes, and think about how to complete these new images for the school.

As you reflect on your picture in a window I must now just contemplate my role as witness.
Later in the day, around seven tonight, after I bought the paint cups for tomorrow
Walking through the market just wishing for home
I thought about this back that fails to hold me up, how it broke into the loneliness to ask I care for myself.

The days kaleidoscopic moments shifted, watched the news as nightmares in tears
Felt an array of feelings, and held the calm fall of night, the sliver of a silver moon and star
The adult in me was seeking to choose someone, another adult, that's all I did once
Wanting to do that, it was not in your reflection. That was my reality. It's on me.

Poems For Maria Ellen Rice

2011-01-24T09:04:00.000-08:00

These are a set of poems in memory of my cousin Maria Ellen Rice who died in January 2011 before the spring.

I know that she held a deep love of flowers, and these were ones we talked about in a long call I am thankful we had. I cannot think what else to say or do, but I do know that my skills are not up to what she deserves. I'll add as I can.

Violets

Stems snap at root
Beneath heart shaped leaves
Mountain floor jewels.

Azaleas

Mine were folded tissue presents
Unwrapped in springs long past
Gifted by a father and a queenly being
Origami folds
As simple as what
Sprang on a cold morning
Carmen, tangerine, magenta
Onto snowy branches
Opening a promise in spring fecundity

I teach an Azalea now
Not to dance and flower
Or to wave on the breezes
Removed from mountain and frosts
She is a blossom of possibility unfolding
I tell you this
As you lie wounded
Spilling your crimson heart
How can it be that
Our flowers could not just continue to
Sustain you?

Begonias

On grandma's porch in tiny plastic pots
There was always an overture of welcome
On heavy laden stems
(that I always thought would snap, did snap)
Begonias just dragged the edges
Enormous, folded, dancing mirandas
Set against log cabin up to the sky
Peering in to witness us
As grandma was watering and tending

Maria

I know your mother kept day lilies
for you. She told me so
Planted bulbs around your home
for you. She told me so
Sent me photographs once of them
all for you. She told me so

The lilies that I drew came from down our road
Growing wild in welcoming summer heat rushes
In the hills I knew as my mountains.
My mother scorned lilies
too rough, wild, too freely given.
To her a marigold, zinnia, the lily
Were "common."
So when I drew them she
Never failed to tell me that
Along with a secondary compliment
On the technical craft.

I think in some way you are aware of that,
Maria, in some way
You took in the lily
The wild look of wind
And reed, raw perfume spread
Into a fiery July night
Her tattered spent blooms
Set on these wandering stems welcoming
Another to try again.

I think you took in
Rock and stone, on sandy soil
That she could navigate. Her weedy
Humble attempt to beautify
The vacant lot.
You saw beauty there
Your momma told me so.

Wild Roses

We talked of them, do you remember?
Those you stretch a hand out
Only to have a finger full of her thorns
A splash of petals, a fence in
A pasture calling out Wild Rose.
While a gray horse stands
Watching our childish actions
We climb and grasp a handful of
Blossoms upsetting a bumbly bee
In the sticky, fetid, wet morning
Down by the creek bed still
Sticky with juice from a volunteer
Strawberry.

She's wild, this rose you say
Through the walk we took
In time and space there on the phone
But these are the ones worth knowing.
The wild roses in our hearts
That once grew around the fence
Posts in a pasture
Overgrown with thorny vines.

Lilacs

Avon made soaps
That also held the scent
We'd get them
From a neighbor
For our order.

Lilacs fell from
An old bush
In our yard
Planted years before
My house was parted off
And built.

Spring meant
Many things arrived
Congratulations on
Surviving the winter
Sorry for our losses
None more pleasant
Than pushing a
Nose into the lilacs.

Lily of The Valley

In the moss
Under the plum
Past the apple
By the black raspberry stand
Before the dahlias
Came the
Lily of the Valley.

Pretty girls,
Bell-headed
Strung on their stems
Ringing away in the breezes
Calling me to
Morning
Vespers.

Sweet little lilies
I might crouch
To say
Tell me of your
Days and they
Reply with nods,
"It's Spring."

Apple Blossoms

Once the breezes blew
All at once
Petals left their tiny fruit
Falling gracefully onto the
Greenest grass
A shower of pink and white.

That's how I think of
You now.

A moment in time,
Stage in life
Of the fruit of knowledge,
Delicate, ethereal,
Tissue, falling
Gently to the good earth,
In quiet repose.

Daffodils

when my parents divorced
My father wanted to take away
The daffodil bulbs he brought
From his mother's, that had
Belonged to her mother
Because he did not remember
That I was also connected
To them, but he waited
Until he had the victory of mom
Losing our home
And then dug them to place
At his new home
With another, then another.

They weren't yellow
They weren't single
They weren't even my favorite
Daffodils. What they were
Was my history.

Larkspur

A tender star
Held on a stem
Tiny estrella
Milky way zen.

Columbine

In the mountain
Pastures among
The burr and sticky
Sap that chaffs
My leg
Is a Columbine
Searching out
her spaces
Shedding as she can
Her tiny seed
Alive for a moment
In golden, with a reddish
Interior,
She resists
Transplanting
To the side
Of a wall
In a suburban split level
Ever after choking
Hers is the life
Of a mountain survivor now
Always free.

Dogwood

Let me crawl up my cross
swallow whole the news
The passing of your soul.

She is a stained cross
This bloom the reverend
Is preaching

Symbol of eternal life
Strong in spring snows
Her horseshoe petals splayed

In a crowded center
In four part harmony
She sits on her branches

This tree of life
Natural bonsai
The dogwood of the mountain

Conferring spring upon our
Cruel, claiming winter
An etude against our darkness.

Peonies

If a writer could be a flower
Then I think Eudora would be
A peony.

Hung heavy on the morning
Still, thickly perfumed
Made from layer upon layer
Of petals folded
Like an elaborate cuff
On an ancient grandmother's portrait
Or a ruffle on my hat
Silken taffeta in a
Room frozen by time.
The peony.

Queen Anne's Lace

As doilies go, this floral one
Reigns above the rest
We bow to her
Her intricately woven face
Held to mid-day heat
Sweltering with grace
The curtsy we offer
Of buttercup and court
In deference.
She's often entertaining
Lady bug or sparrow,
Duke of this or that
A cup of dandelion tea perhaps,
Some shortbread or sweet anise,
Upon a mustard leaf?

A Bouquet Too Lovely For This World

One day I looked up and in the field
Where my own violets grew anonymously, where lilies roamed
and I rumored snakes to keep things for myself
The neighbor stood with tractors
And a huge violently churning truck filled with cement
My father came to talk to me, through my pleading
He said, "Nedrow hasn't got the aesthetic
Of understanding what he does today, why your field
Matters dear heart."
Dad knew though, he had planted that in me, seeds I've watered
All my life.
Just as within you our family placed something to delicate to explain to a harsh
Industry.
Leaving a field wild matters, I said defiantly.
Dad told me then that it would be like talking to a rock
But he dutifully went out and failed
To make the blind see.

Somehow Maria you must be that field.
Oh cousin of mine
Home to these hidden flowers, insights, things to precious to save now
Lost to those of us casting a gaze
Out our life windows these mornings after
As the ground is torn apart, the cement cast churning
The beauty of the gentle flower
Plowed away.

Here in my heart, Maria, I carry you in a bouquet
One too beautiful to last
That I'm holding in my inadequate hands
With my poetic craft a miserable
Vessel to contain the sweetness of your good life.
I could not stand against that tractor
And failed to hold this back as well,
But your life was of greatest meaning to me.

The Trillium

When we talked
I asked you
If you saw trillium and may apples

You said
That you
Loved them and we rapidly spoke

Of this
And that
The rich deep reds the ones for me

You stopped
I listened
And in that silence stood all we couldn't say.

Spring

It must be true that
Spring's greatest gift
Is her floral
Reminder of the eternal
Triumph of life
Over our death
Hope for tired hearts

If I were

If I were a flower
I might be a

Crocus popping
Through the frozen ground
Unfolding my head
To caress the warmth.

Or , perhaps, a tulip
Pushing through the snow pack
Showing a cup of red
Opening to the sun

Or perhaps I'd grace
The forsythia's stalk as a pageant
In golden yellow coming out
To dawn's early light

If I were a flower
dancing in the precarious arrival of spring
Wondrous at the day
Perhaps a brief moment I'd light your eyes.

2010-11-22T22:21:00.000-08:00

You attacked me for my love of art
As a vanity
As indulgence
Though in the last thirty years I have not lived it for work with children.

You attacked me for my grammar
My writing
Though I wrote alone
Trying to help another, as a plea.

You attacked me for your anxiety
Though I was ill, in operations
Trying to
Make another day shake a little less.

You attacked my size
Saying I was a social outcast.
Though I had spent 37 years thin
And able to navigate your requirements.

You attacked me for taking your time
Saying you don't have time for it
Now you can
Play a video game, go ahead and push your buttons

You attacked me for so much nonsense
While acting as if your great kindness
was deeply offended
By my presence, please don't do this

I asked you to help me understand all of it.

I read this romance novel
It said two lines that stuck with me
That I don't walk away from relationships
That I don't throw people away

It was so cliche
It was so obvious to me
Closing the Kindle
As I was reading

That you idealize and devalue
Because you can't hold onto who someone
Is.

I made the mistake
Of defending myself

I have no idea why.

Day's Thoughts

2010-11-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

The golden light
Catches on the venetian blind
For just a second, in the harvest sunrise

I lift my head walking in
Through the bedroom doorway
To catch a glow of autumn

Folded Hands

My tired hands
Clasped one another
While I thought
Bent over this shaggy
Ruby mat
A bad moments buy from the Target

Staying bound together
Resolved to sad thoughts
My throat burned raw
I was immobile
Looking at my feelings, still laced

The hands glowered scarlet
Until I, lifting them
Upward with such effort, was surprised
Felt this carnal red rush
Blood beating through the fingers
Still interwoven
In crimson contemplation.

They had turned the color
Of this floor carpet
Completely transformed
As red as candy apple
I was so immobile
Looking at these fingers
That had florescence before my tired blinking eyes.

Child's Gift

She laced her fingers
Into mine at the pumpkin patch
Like the coolest compress
This action of a daughter
Calmed hours of fire and buried fury.
Easing something so unnoticed.
I realized it then,
"Will you be okay Mommy?"

Her fingers are so Long
I thought feeling them detached from the autumn
My children have this gift
Amazingly long thin digits, fingers,
She wrapped my wounds
As surely as I realized
This pain I'm carrying
"Will you be okay Mommy?"

The need for love, acceptance
The beauty of this child's simple action
We walked on the muddy straw
Corn mazes, pomegranates
Squash, breathed in
Turquoise bright, tangerines
Thinking lost to buzzing bees
"Will you be okay Mommy?"

The Phony

Encouraged me to send him emails
"I love your emails."
Until one day he said,
"I don't have time for this
I never did."
If the rejection
wasn't clear enough
Deleting and blocking was
Deliberate annihilation
"That's the problem with email relationships."
Stated emphatically by
This person
So uneasy with the record
That the last word matters.

Phony's aren't real
False, fronts, fakes, facades
Just like an assertion
I was not worth his time
Or there is too little of it
For direct communication

I wrote recently of the confusion
What we were to one another
How to find a space and time
Of understanding
After being eliminated
On his Facebook

I can't give another beauty
And sometimes not truth
Or clarity
I try
I offer grammatical
embarrassment
And the length,
It takes me so much time
To know.

It still hits
In a deep real place
From the miscues
The re-directions
From once reading I love you
As real.

There won't be a next time
Another version
For me
The phony can't absorb that
Or tackle the reason
For the last time.

Hands

The clock hands
Pass by
Circling
Marking the passage
Of what we know

My hands
Hold the pen
Scribbling
The passing
Of what was once felt.

I Walk Them Out

Everyday I walk my little class out
To a tree
Expectant faces looking for a parent
Or the babysitter
For some affirmation, a smile,
One by one they tell me
"He's here for me, teacher.

Or say, "My babysitter."

Sometimes no one smiles
Sometimes no one is there
So I say, "Stand over here by the wall.
I am waiting with you,
They are coming."
Children worry about it.
Scanning they do get filled with concern.
I do this everyday.
I used to allow children to play in the room
Be distracted by the piano, blocks, books.
But the "system" mandated
This higher level of concern
The release in this format.
Which is identified as
"Being on the same page."

I wish the parents
Understood the fleeting nature of these days
In the six year old lives
Grabbed them up with hugs
"How are you's?"
"I missed you sooo much."
As I walk out holding
Madeline's hand
She turns saying,
"They are here for me, teacher."

Día de los Muertos

It seemed macabre
Skulls, the dead
So for years
Las dios de la muertos
Was a day
In teaching that just passed
I hurt my back last year just as it left
Gone the way we celebrate Chavez
At our Hispanic school
Silently and without recognition

This year I saw a friend
Dressed for the Day of the Dead
With her daughter
So I went to read
About the origins of the day on Wiki
Rites, places and reasons for this
Remembering those passed on
The ephemeral nature
Sugar skulls
Every bit crafted
For a moment in time
The beauty of life.

Then I looked for a project
Children could do
Sugar skulls too much to make
Overnight for all of us
There are incredible skull art ideas
Everywhere on-line
I found floral aspects
Again and again
Marigolds, daisies
Folded over the bones
Laughing, mocking death
Reminding us of family loses
Ancestors, sisters, brothers

How quickly time goes
Quick, sharp searing pain
We lose one another
One child said to me.
As we made our skulls,
"We all remember someone
It's so sad."
And so we celebrated that realization.

Block/Report abuse

He says
"I didn't report you."
Yells it
"And I didn't report you by the way."
But the button
He used to block me
Delete me
says "Block/Report Abuse'
He pressed that button
Among others.
To make his point.
To me
Another blow
Another failure
Another lie
Another mark
Who he is.

The cost is the friend
"I didn't report you
And I didn't report you."
Falls away
Another lie
Another joke
Another thing in his arsenal
A media bound coward
"Yes you did."
"Yes you did."
"Yes you did."
And failed
Again
To help me
Understand?
Why?

Wonder

What would we sing?
What would we do
If we lost all the past
And started now?

Beheld nothing
Through the lens
Of history or mistakes
Curse or cure
What would we do?

Skull's Eyes

Some filled the cavities with flowers
Others drew spirals
Fake eyes
Strange lakes of color
Floating in the skull
Looking out blankly
At time passing us by

Laughing at their work
They shifted back and forth
Showing ideas one to the other
Concentrating
Examining the work
Eyes taking in the designs.

Realities

Sometimes it's worse
Than I tell anyone
A month with my sinus on fire
Throat aflame
Stopped me today
For an antibiotic and rest.

I ran yesterday
Out of my work
Away from a staff meeting
To my car
Pushing out of the hood
Knowing I was going too early
Dizzy

Echoes went through me
Of days I collapsed
bleeding, in pain
Cancer
so many things
I'd walked my class to the library
In the high heat
Taught
Faint
And hiding it.

Out of control,
My mom was waiting
By the gate when I drove in
to go vote
Purse in her hand
So I left my son
With his bucket of chicken
driving out again
Desperate to rest
Trying to get home again.

Spent the evening
Cutting out children's art
Matting, arranging
Doing lesson plans
ignoring
But it was the fifth sleepless night
Stopped me with a high fever.

This is real,
I woke in a dreaming night
Married to the brother,
A stranger to me,
another guy
And then I shifted to sitting
On huge stone steps
In a valley with a cliff, steps
Carved into the base

Tons of people with cellphones
were waiting
Sat excited, noisy
A waterfall coming to drench them
In a massive on rushing
a torrent- they were there
To experience it
Over them into the riverbed
A ritual of life.

They were there in my dream
It was dangerous
Unrealized
Pending
The crowd seemed oblivious to fear
Watching wild native dancing
Animals stampeding in a kind of
first stage
I could almost touch all of them.

My dream shifted back
to my asking this stranger
Husband, if they wanted children
I needed to know that,
Since I was so old
He touched me.
Just as I was reaching out
Back in the stadium to hold the first drops
Of water cascading soon
Over the crowd
Bizarre moderns in Aztec ceremony.

No, he said.
"You'll be my muse
That's enough."
Which seems impossible now
To explain in writing
But children were impossible
for me to ever give him.
He had beautiful eyes,
I'm not sure I understood
Anything of yesterday
I was too ill.

Doodling

2010-10-25T14:50:00.001-07:00

Doodling...a poem.

The Week

2010-10-02T06:15:00.000-07:00

He "Labels"

Probably the line about my "just seeing me as victimizing you"
Got to me the most last week
As he writes his case, so I'm borderline
Making me defend
As he once again dumps his odd, icky behavior my way,
Without stating it directly though
And then and putting up the two headed snake picture as his profile
While deleting me as a friend from a social media site.
For communication.
He states we don't "communicate well."
Failing to consider that as "his problem."
But then, he's "a drunk."
I'm told.
So that he can obfuscate his behavior
In this online relating
He now says "to whatever extent it was a relationship"
This the guy
That wrote "no matter what you say, we are in a relationship"
Once.
And "I love you."
To whatever extent that means anything.
I suppose he should say
"I come with an expiration date."
The amnesiac drunk
That earned a degree in psychiatry from Harvard
And wants now to have the last word.

I believe that was "let's just leave each other alone"

It's funny about the few things you learn as a teacher
Labels basically are ways you watch your peers set aside
Students, to alleviate their worry
That they needed to work with them, or they might be seeing in them
The issues they most struggle with in a self.
Children we fail with.

I've had this friend assume the role of the "explainer"
The judge, or possibly the superior for quite a long while
I've waited, read, and figured out
I am entitled to understand the context and situation that affected me once,
It would help me to get past it, to integrate it.
It isn't particularly helpful to hold these projections
Or deal with something called counter-transference
Wade around in the terminology of another's domain
I don't want to hear something like "I'm sorry for all past, present and future hurt."
But I do need to understand this thing that happened once in my life within the context of your life.
So that I can move on.

Tests

I gave four assessments Friday.
To five and six year olds
Friday is test day,
While I gave them, two "assessors" came to the room
One was giving students another big global test-the CELDT, and the other Dibeling them
My tests took backseat to those.
Mine were on the first unit in math, the first unit in reading, spelling and science.
One child, not the one I expected,
Managed to do so poorly he got two 10%'s , 50%, 45%
He's a premie
His parents said when we met at Open House Thursaday
When I asked if they've noticed him running into walls
Doing things differently, having trouble adjusting to growing up
To the high stakes
They mostly stared,
But now I have failure "data" to take before them
Or others, to say it
Officially.

I've been wondering about him
Rubbing his eyes, distracting others, wandering
Failing to show that anything makes sense to him
On a test.
Wondering if now I'm not labeling a child I once would have thought just needed more time, more snowmen to make
More opportunities to take turns and share

We've tracked him down in the lowest 10%.
Kid that ruins the averages
A child that fails us?

This is the current educational model that is so important
A movie is made to name me less than Superwoman this week.
For not using tests and test practice to "fix" him fast or enthusiastically
Or super enough.

What I see on our projects
Despite his parents unwillingness to go to an ophthalmologist
Is a child with vision issues, if not that then a struggle to process visual input.
A child that started school as the youngest in the room
A boy that isn't yet ready to take on the tasks we are mandated to ask of him
That needs to drive big trucks, paint his letters
One that will take a year of trying to shield from his failure
So he might gain a little success.

Hot

"Can we drink water"
was the refrain that played
In the oven last week
As I held up one hand saying five
and the other saying ten
Until I counted by 5's to a hundred
Again
It was the week the thermometer was introduced
we got to see it on 98 in our room
Watched it plunge to 50 in ice water
That I drank anyway
Despite it going in the cup
From the dirty cupboard
Desperate for a way to cool down
Several children wilted
As did our sunflowers
They just sprouted
While we read our stories
Worked on our workbooks
Sang, calendared, number gridded
First grade on the 30th day of school
Three failed the reading, math and spelling tests
That was sad
Everyone liked making the expressive pumpkins
That are "embarrassed"
"Disappointed" "Proud" and "Worried"
As they sit on the paper looking out
At the start of the new month.
Monday I get to teach
For someone from China visiting
But I've lost my voice.
What will I do?
The new theme is "Surprise"
I'll probably have to try going in at 5 AM to get ready
One of the children
Asked me,
"Can I drink water?"
One last time as I waved goodbye
Friday, just after a teacher
Informed me another student
in my room was
trying to kiss another boy
and imitated sexual body language.
So I sent this child to the fountain
He just said,
"I'm so thirsty."

Me too.

Writing Lesson

2010-09-06T04:11:00.000-07:00

I fell asleep wanting to think about it.
The interaction in the mud of the day
After a short run out for a sale shirt.
I had stood my ground, but just wanted to think about it.
I woke up though later from a dream that was holding me in such a similar way,
wanting to think about it I came downstairs to write
At 4 AM alone.
I was in a large writing class, in this dream.
I'd come in late, couldn't see an instructor, everyone was busy writing.
(In my defense I don't ever come in late to classes),
But I was late.
I asked several students the assignment- thinking most were already done, leaving,
or nearly done
So this would be very difficult to complete.
Just hating the rudeness to interrupt them.
But.
I started a piece trying to remember just the rules of writing.
So often I struggle to remember rules of written form,
Can't be succinct. Word choice.
As close as possible to what I know, I thought, scooping out those insides,
It was written in my red and blue pens,
Several paragraphs- that you got approved and took to finish at homes
But I don't know where I resided, it was the dream uncomfortable.
The story was somehow of a girl that had gone for it, it was a failed love story really,
Decided to try to love someone through the pain of a difficult life.
It was kind of an ordeal to strip it down and put it on the page.

The teacher read this last-stopping my leaving class,
He read it through the lousy scrawling handwriting, and around others packing up
And he settled to discuss it,
In my discomfort.
He held it out, speaking to someone dismissive-of the value.
Said it was going to work, if I would finish it.
It felt like I would feel at someone reading this,
I explained my not hearing the assignment at all, because basically he said
That I took the assignments and wrote independent of that
In both pieces he'd read of mine.
He looked me in the eye saying I was a writer he still wanted to read.
That shocked me.
Which I then explained I missed the lecture-and I didn't know how I had.
Missed it.
But he said looking at me, this paper torn from a binder, it wouldn't matter
It was a good piece on its own.
"You just keep writing."
That stays with me, despite the fact I know I say it to myself-the dream is me.
Then he pulled out a book anthologizing black writers-bios-
To tell me to read it. He wanted me to have it, and had meant to give it before.
And I, guessing, asked if he wrote this.
I also told the story-a real story of my life- because I turned to the front of this book that was dedicated to jazz- telling him about jazz in my life. And of these great originators of sound.
I told him I'd read this volume, before I ever heard the music.
That I grew up unable to get access to this music, that is true, but I read about it
Had looked forward to hearing it-knew it would fit me.
It was funny because
I expected him to tell me
Waited for him to tell me,
That I lacked discipline, form.

But he didn't.

I woke then in the pain that defines my days, in my hips and back,feverish.
It's inundating my rest.
I cannot sleep because of it.
And started to think through the events in the dream, proceeding the dream.
Thought of today.
I wrote a comment on a "wall" in this social space called Facebook.
Big deal.
It seems to me to be a space one goes to hang out.
To announce things
Some use it like a beat might.
Some perfect the art of a line of poetry,
Some provoke, others tell of passing temporal happenings
It's just a there, a hear, a then, a was.
I don't really know why I commented on this person's page.

I read something that sounded like a lyric,
But it was also sort of raunchy, sort of provocative
At the same time it wasn't
It could be read as free of those things
That seemed to be something I "saw" in them originally.
That duality I struggle with still.
Maybe I wanted to just say hello, to be free of the rest of it.
I'd commented because of the melody, or the whim, or the decision to say something that way,
Or to see
Or just to do it, to figure out the rest of this.
Something not thought about so much
Not an impulse really though at all either.
I was fully conscious and comfortable
With my intention.
It was so small.
Just like the story written in my dream though, a risk.
And he deleted it.
And I'd then commented on that removing on my "wall."
Honestly. It made me rather angry, I had to use humor to staunch the bite-
a talent I do have....I'd wrote this- exposing myself, revealing vulnerability.
Because I am trying
To grow.
And then I experimented and put it back
It was removed again.
It wasn't so hard to interpret.
There aren't that many ways to see that action.
Here-not there.
Not nearly as difficult as the dream might be in processing,
I wasn't eliminated in my dream, I was praised.
In my posting in my space I wrote that this hurt my feelings , but actually I think
It just confirmed something.
The story I was trying to write in my dream got at this feeling
The risks of loving, rejection, the futility of communication
To walls.
The heartbeat-a story of a person that stood open
Completely misread, uncomprehended, unwanted
It was why I think this teacher in the dream went from an older Jewish man in a trench coat morphing into a black man leaning over me he was tall.
As I tried to listen to his lessons.
As we talked about the theme in my work,
As I tried to understand that.
Both men as artists -and he was a writer I valued, that was there-symbols in my psyche of those bearing the utter
Weight of being outside, devalued by our society at some point
Knowing the shoes of prophets
walking as the unclean, unwanted voices
Speaking into the darkness of ignorance, scapegoat days
That had, as writers, allowed us somehow through their work
To grasp the loss, the value, the lessons.
They walked on the page and into my head.
The real meaning of writing.

I got an idea for some of my own writing
When my words were erased.
Of a site
Or a wall
Or a space, where people could post their erased comments from on-line experiences
Things someone chose to just edit away
Erase, as I was also erased.
Again.
Make the invisible-visible
Reclaim their voices.
Called "Off Their Wall."
I got an idea about making this pain I felt
Validated.
It seemed like it could intrigue, be funny, suggest meanings and be of value.
The unheard.

It's a good idea, standing in the ruin of all of it.

The Meaning of Life

2010-08-22T00:53:00.000-07:00

The Meaning of Life

There is no meaning, someone scrawled on a boulder
We used to pass by on our way out to a rock overhang
written boldly in spray paint
Next to god is dead,
Sometimes my mother felt compelled to answer
But what she said stays in the past,
I only brought the granite forward
I was just a child in a car moving forward in the sixties,
Slowly erosion, snows, crawling vines reclaimed
This billboard of the roadway.

It seems that I failed the one thing my father most wanted
Because I cannot seem to make money
Get a good job, save, earn
It was like water through a sieve
The greatest testament to happiness and living
Seemed to be defined by the accumulation of wealth
For him, and looking around now I know he meant well
It opens opportunity, doors, heavens
My age took a vow of prosperity.

I dreamed of someone
At a racetrack betting with a brother
Sitting in the stands describing to him
-while they joked, laughed, drank and partied-
This naive woman that gave them enough
Material to generate hilarity all day
Jokes, sex, two guys out playing the odds
Let the good times roll

A wise man tells me now to balance
Carefully over the carnival below me
Without looking down
Holding my breath as I step across the rope
Seeing the horses running, some coins on the street,
And that proclamation written for some reason here too
That we are balls in play juggling the emotions
While we walk the tightropes doing our own tricks
Choosing our steps with care.

Maybe I don't see so well in the dark
But ultimately life rushes around me provoking feelings,
Reactions, sinking and swimming
Currents and eddies in a chain of illusions
Of time and the river,
Small drop in an ocean of meanings
I can't see the whole
Though I am carried within it
Contained by the experience I am just the medium.

2010-08-07T03:08:00.000-07:00

Me

I suggested The Will Ferrell one
I also suggested an art museum
And going to walk in the woods
After all I was "told"
He was home to take me somewhere.
But that was a lie I think
He was home for something
Else.
So we stalled around
He looked up free concerts
In hot places
The kids following cues
Don't "like these places"
of my choosing,
No one dared go.
They probably really don't "like them"
Then I read a romance novel.
Five years ago I sat in a chair for a year and read
A thousand of them in 9 months.
You do the math,
I'd lost any connection to the warmth.
Today the pages were warming my numb heart.
A guy
A prince
Was unable to have
His love
Cause he had to marry for another's fortune
To keep up his estates
It was full of romance
Bid damask satin
But it doesn't really work
No more than my pretending
Makes a Facebook page about me
And a love
That once was.
Real.
It's just a hope
An illusion.
That I still illude.

So eventually I suggested taking my son to see
A movie he likes.
But he's smart, he knows it's better to want nothing on these days
I got a call from my Dad though at 6:30,
And talked too long
A little bit into the time to leave.
My Dad's got pain, and is completely lost to back issues
He can't hope for anything he says but a quick death.
I was struggling within the call
Struggling after it.
One of my struggles is about the deaths of these parents
My brother's realities too.
I worked a lifetime trying
To cope with them all.

I'd been on his shoulders at three looking at alligators- in my call
I'd been in the room as he was rejected for an operation for a spinal stimulator,
Due to a form filled out wrong,
I'd been back thinking of Micheal Bouchemin and
His mom.
His picky diet, Micheal's,
Days his 90 year old mom spent Thursdays with us
With me
For ten years or more.
He had died
Dad was recalling that the French he taught-
We spoke-
Didn't change like the science
He loved and learned
And taught.
Somehow Dad said it was on his mind
How much the brain held that just went at death
Stated it so eloquently-wistful thoughts
This stirred my awareness he won't be here so much longer,
Upsetting me
Because I can't tell him about my fevers
My news of cancers,
We'd discussed obsolescence.
His. Mine, in science.
He essentially said everything he knew was replaced.
Dad is unflinchingly able
To put it as it is.
Another hard thing to integrate into a lifetime of other truths and other untruths.
There was so much in the call.
I was trying to find him Krista's number-
He wants to ask her things about the Embassy
In China
To do this violates a code I have.
Just a personal one.
Never ask people for anything...
I stalled
His girlfriend wants something
Dad is feeling pressured.
I was dealing in MY life.
This needed time for me to think alone,
But I got off the phone
After being signaled clearly that my once a month call went on too long.
My mom wanted, as ever,
For me to spout back every detail.
She was also hovering in the wings
Ever eavesdropping it's
Her passion.
Another instant demand.
This kind of thing, the call shakedown, she reasons this is fine to do
Because she deems it so.
There he was
Demanding I get in the car right now.
I did.
My son wouldn't come.
So I'm going to a movie for him, without him.
At this point
The day was as shitty as it gets.

And these were, after all, "my ideas."
I HAVE to be punished for that.
So he tells me
Condescendingly
Impressing the daughter
That my mom and I always have "our fighting it out thing"
And how tiring it is for him
Knowing that really he's leveraged me.
Made me walk out on her slow questioning, her nasty fury at my going then,
Carrying later the price I'll pay for that.
Because she can be utterly a child
Self centered, cruel, demanding, a piece of work.
He knew what he was doing all day.
Being mean.

He really has done it enough times.
Ugh-The karma of it.
It seems I can never find a way through it to peace.
Playing "the game."
Smashing my buttons,
Getting back I think for having over these last months- as I lost the use of legs
Had an operation, got numb feet, broke,
Slowly pulled back some through sheer exhaustion and work, had to deal with blood sugar and now lung stuff
After 50 days of fevers-
He was pushing down what is daily life stuff of all that.
Today it was return to normal.
So he starts ramming the car around.
Because I said
That I basically needed to process my feelings about Dad's call,
That he was so rude,
That I wasn't slipping this all into an envelope.

It got so bad so fast, so hard, I had top get out.
It overrode any thought.
Cars can scare me
At one time in my life,
My early life
The life he doesn't give two shits about in this narcissism
I was terrorized in them
By my father's rage,
Which was less than this I realize,
Now the rage is his.
But the fear is mine.
I got out to walk.
I had to.
I walked, it's along the coast, about 8 miles from home, bad area in a way to walk.
Just a lot of speed.
Rundown.
He drove off in a fury with my kid.
I watched it.
The main thing I finally could feel were just the steps
The weight of carrying the purse.
Relief to be able to walk.
How hard it is to breathe now.
The fever.
But who cares.
I was hurt of course.
I'd forgotten how much of my time
Is an exercise in not saying
I want to go here or see this
Or to need or want except for something like an appointment for a doctor
I am begrudged and allowed and punished I think for that.
So I walked about two miles when a car dove at me
"Get in the fucking car."
That's the chariot someone else
Calls me Cinderella
And laughs about.
I'm going to hope my life isn't about ever waiting
For the Prince I love.
I got in
To a rage storm.
I held my ground against all that male aggression and rage.
I met it with aggression.
Which is really hard,
I stated what was going on.
I was shouted down
Scared by the car careening
But I said the truths.
My truths.
I know that every time my daughter is around he does this.
I get it.
I get he won't own anything.
I was summarily told in every single way possible
How I am crazy
How this is all me.
I get this from more than one place.
I just said
And will re-say, I really am working on me.
You need to look at the screaming, the driving
The inability of any of you to do something I'd like to do nicely
And just see YOUR OWN STUFF.
I'm no perfect being.
Shit
I need to process these calls from my Dad though
To look at my mom manipulating to
Get and "use" the information
I need to look at what her borderline stuff does
Turning me into a rat
Into guilt.
I need to have some level of kindness
Not be made into a screaming c*nt
Or told that I am
F_cking crazy
And he's been forced to "suffer"
My choices.
Basically amid several pretty bad alternatives
I picked to take on things
The best I could
Sucky though that might be.
I was walking this...
I stated it.
I had to scream to drown out the screaming
The buttons being pushed and slammed.
And Mr. Self righteous and involved
NEVER, ever admits a thing
Ever.
He didn't take something hurting me
Or tough, see it or care
He had his agenda yesterday
He's so controlling and I let it go
Let it go
Let it go.
I gotta deal with this
As much as my weight
My lungs
My love
My life.
I have no choice.
So I was trying
I asked to do something I love.
No one was interested because after the hell of the last year they can't give three fucking hours.
Bullshit.
I came home
Walked two hours.
Got in bed
He stomped off
Another punishment
In the wall of silence
That will be the next month
As the kids hear loud and clear
Your mom is a b*tch.
He no longer even has to scream the words.

So how are things
Who decides to go on Amazon and bully me some more
With things that are insignificant
And untrue
What do I say or do
Facing a teaching year
Ill
How do I figure out a way through the muck to be good for others
To live in the now
To feel more like a person
To throw off a coat of victim.
How do I take in this day
And move out of it?

I don't have that answer.
Is art
Telling the truths
Making it sing or wail
Or bellow into a page
To become
Something else altogether?
Why am I compulsively
All my life turning around to draw, to sing, make
Bury this in little doll making,
Telling others my perceptions
People don't need it anyway
What's beauty to me?
What's truth
What's love, what's profane.
Why do I reach out to
This person
Who obviously sits
On the other side of eternity
With a pair of eyes
And I feel naked
Exposed.

You

I apologize
For a long time ago
Writing a lot
Of things on a review page
I really thought then no one ever read it
Writing about school
About the things I didn't share with anyone
And catching you on the net
Because I didn't really
Know I was spinning a web
It's no excuse
But it's true.
It was unconscious.
I'd been reading romances
On and off
For a long time
They have a ridiculous format
That ends in marriage
And forever after
I'd kind of just decided
To look
Through a fairy tale hope-
And they have a sexuality in them too.
But then somewhere in there
I met this humor
This connection
It was fast
And unthought
I couldn't even get the buttons
Being pushed inside my head
Doctor, Harvard, eating disorder,laughter, fun,
I saw none of it
And in fact for me
To this day
I just felt you
Like a search
through me
Through you
Through all the wires
Through the universe
It was about being chosen
Someone said
No it was being able
To find
For me,
then it was so hard to be
Known
And then
Then
Unpicked.
It created inside
One of the greatest hurts of my being
I think I just hoped
I had something to offer
Or to say
Or to be seen
To value
I really can't see this part
I'm blind
I keep trying
To work through all of this
To be honest about things
To do my work
To get to a place
To know what my ego was doing
Or what my patterns are
Or to cope with what I might have said, wanted
To be realistic
A fat, old person
Can't inspire someone who is younger
And so intelligent
And obviously just free
To love.
It was so strange these last months
I lost walking
Now I'm losing breath
I have been in such fear
At the edge of cliffs
Falling
Walking
But I thought
I'm judging when
I'm reading you
And I can't integrate it into me sometimes
You don't take insurance.
You are lewd
You banter and flirt.
Your kids are so core
You are so fast
So completely outside myself
So inside my ribbons
The entire thing
Is so threaded into something of my making
You wanted an apology
You gave two apologies I couldn't really understand
They were actually rejections,
Not apologies.
But I do apologize
But I can't quite understand why.

I'm trying to be in the place of the eyes reading
Looking
What am I sorry for?

Me, I'm sorry "for the loss"
For not being beautiful
For not being wealthy
For not having anything to give I think
Or for some manipulation
To know you
Which ultimately
Must have been running through all of this making, doing, saying
Writing.
But I didn't stop any of it.
I was trying to see what it was too you know.

I'm sorry.
I wanted to hear my heart beat again.

Chanting at a Smiling moon

2010-07-13T22:17:00.001-07:00

Have you ever known someone
And you wanted to tell them
About something important
Say some thing
that was a belief
Or a dream
Or eating away at you
And you realized
Because they'd precluded it
By stating their
Way, their system,
By their taking the floor
That nothing you said
Would be anything
But an offense to their
Entire way of thought
They don't believe in a god
Or they think
Therapists create fairy tales
They have
Lost all respect for you
Or they think you
Are like the uncle that goes on too long.
But you hear this...
And you want to say something else
Something important
Something you needed to
Carry from your being.
But the door is blocked.
You can only reflect for them.
You can never
Be allowed the right to be heard.

That makes you shrivel.
It takes your voice.
It keeps you from actually
Being able to be there
Or to smile.
Or to find a way to be a friend.
As the you, you are.
You have no way at all.
And you feel this
Like a cage around an animal
In a zoo that
Presents to all the world
The mighty lion
That is nothing like the one he really
Is.

Something bothers me now.
Maybe because I've had fevers twenty three days
Maybe because I've had four or five major
Operations in four years.
Maybe it just intruded
One night into my thoughts
But like all of my believing
It has no value
To someone
I might want to share thinking with
I realize this
Anyway
It bothers me to think
There are people
That seem to be in some kind of twisted
Tangled knot
with in my relating
I can't reduce it
To anything other than
Terms I understand
Which are about that disdain
From the one I need to talk to about it
But I do worry about karmic debts
It came into my head that
I lacked a form
A language
A way of expressing this
twisted nest of interconnection
That I never really
Shared my beliefs
That were assumed
I was labeled
But I , myself, never had
An opportunity
To share my feeling
About who I think I am, we are
And have that be valued.
But it worried me
That if I am trying to change
To live freer
To move on and into different states, that I couldn't
Get beyond the hurt that i'm
Not allowed to state it, I'm
voiceless.
It creates for me a cycle
Of feeling
Completely disenfranchised
null.

And I think then
We will be compelled
Somehow
To deal
Again.
and again
Because there wasn't anything learned
There was nothing
really shared.

I had things
I needed to
Be able to say.

I'm holding too much hurt.

2010-06-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

It got so quiet
The room is now filled with a humming, the tick of the clock,
my fingers on these keys.
It got so quiet
At dinner a huge restaurant of sound served bursts of laughter
shouted conversations, my kids engaging
It got so silent
They took off for workouts, trips, to go and fly
I'm sitting in a room
It is so quiet as I feel the evening move away.

Starting a set

2010-05-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

shrink talk
Do they have a way of slaying
What the voices are all saying
Do they have a way of asking
Who it is that you are masking?
When they slip into a reverie
Is their jacket soft and leathery?
Do they cast a long dark shadow
(damn it rhymes with rachel maddow)
When they look into a mirror
Is the image their posterior..
Ah the talk of the common shrink
Would make us common folk drink
Oh, wait, I hear they do imbibe a bit for two
(You recline upon the couch)
Offer the best that they can do
Little charge, charge a little, little ouch..
What do psychiatrists discuss
When they are out here amongst us?
I think they play a game
Pretend that they are normal, "sane"
Diagnosing all the while
Giving us a pedigree smile
Then talk of your amygdala
As you contemplate Caligula
Or switch into an ink blot
(While you tell who mommy fought)
But in the new profession
It"s a pharmaceutical confection
As they speak of synaptic plastic
The brain demonstrating a gymnastic.
I think the shrink is talking
Shh let's listen by the door...
He's angrily stomping on the floor
Ah insurance s actually balking

Once one said to me
Things that sounded so very free.

Sad Song

2010-05-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

I'm freezing
This morning's not any colder
Than the others
But I feel it
In my feet, in my fears
I can't sleep past six
My body hurts too much
This morning it was a choking feeling
That greeted me with the sun pouring in unblocked
By the tightly drawn shades
Doubts about whether I can ever
Feel my feet normally again
About the numbess, burning
About the pain in the back
The struggle to walk
The doubt list goes on and on
It's a legitimate list
Ranging from fears around money problems
To fears around growing old and infirmed
To feeling the loss of love,
( I can't read a romance til one AM anymore)
Could it be this?
Was I really suffering that?
Would this matter?
Could someone help me figure it out
Or live with it?
Canceling the therapist
Triggered this
Somewhat.
Like I've done something so awful
Failed a test.
I waited two and a half months
For an appointment twenty minutes shortened
By her seeing someone else
A humorless, unhappy, person
That can see me at one time I can't sustain in fifteen more days
But this makes me feel defeated
Because I am human.
I canceled because it was so apathetic, invaded my spaces too far
I even was asked about the sex life with my husband
And had to pull out the past for a parade.
In the space of twenty minutes.
Deep stuff I've decided doesn't have to
Do a show for someone else to "decide."
You tell someone some of these things
Your inner being
So they tell you they are focused on "now,"
Or are in over their head
Or that they care, but not for you
And you get the message.
I got the message. Again
Believe me. I got it.
Don't tell people about yourself, they don't care.
And they aren't going to care if you have walked over nails.
It's all in how little you bother anyone.
But anyway I have to pick up myself
And go back to work
Defeated, hurting, not feeling my feet
Having gotten nothing really figured out.
But I tried.
I tried,
I canceled that appointment
And ran from a program a DR. was selling
Where you check in daily as if a twelve step thing
Minus the drinking, minus the steps
Minus the neuroscience
I was hooked by the word
Missing my daughter who wants to study in that field.
This Dr. when I missed called to say not "Are you ok?",
When I missed Wednesday after I hurt my back,
But to tell me if I wasn't going to continue
There was a wait list
It never occurred to her I guess
That there might be a reason
That I might be feeling strange, that my partner wasn't calling
That I was apprehensive
Feeling worse
Made to feel further alienation
That there was something other than
My apathy.
I'm not apathetic.
I'm struggling.
With feelings, with limits, with health
With pain, with years of stuff that I can't tell
Anyone.
With the regrets of telling two or three people
Especially one
Thinking it was a lifeline.
Having to learn, again,
That no one wants me.
Oh well
It's cold this morning.
I'm supposed to go to a movie later
I suggested it to my friend
The sitting bothers me
My back hurts
But
I thought she and I should try it
We both are too sad.

So I'll hang my coat
Of syrinx, fibromyalgia,
Back pain, feet numbness, weight, fear
On the rack by the door
Pretend it's not an effort just to walk out and do it.
I wish I had a feeling of hope.

For Mother's Day

2010-05-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

One Mother's Day

One morning you may wake up
Finding the days slipped right through your noticing,

Your kids are growing into the people
They are learning to be, laughing, running, working

Enjoying the memories of all
The things you've forgotten, like the turkey your son won at the dentist!

As they stand and allow you to catch another moment
In a picture you can barely look at, it's so fast, flickering away.

That head I held in the crook of my arm
Washed, fluffed, brushed and wondered what filled up your thoughts, hey, not so long ago.

Where they are now reaches inside where you once were
As you walk along in memory, hoping to help them find peace...find you as you really were,

When they took a hold of their albums to look, they talked about the clothes!
It was so interesting, "I remember that shirt."

As they laugh and shake it off
To go on in their own paths. A family expands.

Silly gesture I'm making waving to them, then,
When they are passing through the moments with such desire and joy.

A momma that seeks to suspend us here in the ether,
Over moving into the possible.

On the sand I thought about all the holes we dug
And called them castles!

All the waves I'd watch, and I had to stop myself from yelling out
Be careful girls in that water, it's an OCEAN.

Following along thinking about their friendship
The love within my children.

They helped me learn to do something that mattered
To find in myself the capacity to love as I always wanted to be loved.

It's Mother's Day
And we are together, I can always treasure that.
For a moment.

In a minute, on a day in our life.

2010-04-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

The Blood Draw

In the air, in the space
With the badly upholstered chairs, and the sitting old women and wizened men,
Was this screaming
That came to your awareness in intervals
Sounding like a muffled "Oh no," "I can't."
But more like "uh nuh."
What was interesting, at first, was how disinterested people remained
As it screamed through a dull gray morning
In the Quest blood lab.
I walked up to turn in my paper
To get my blood taken and the billing right, called by the girl with this entire
Set of nails dipped in jewels and bad scenic reminders up to the desk.
I'd already signed in and sat down.
That's the drill, as I know it.
A particularly pained wail let escape into the room, just then, full of dark worried thoughts.
I was sent to the inner hallway to sit in one of four chairs, moved along,
between a four hundred pound woman with an ankle bracelet, and a man that spoke no English.
I'd heard the woman tell a friend in the other room her difficult, painful story
Of faxes each month to confirm her disease, worker's disability, serious immune dis-orders with names she didn't know, couldn't pronounce, couldn't share.
They had tried to talk over the screaming, friends from somewhere, trying to catch up on each other's lives.
Both were uncomfortable, ill, older, alone, finding things hard.
One told the other, then they traded places and listened,
Commiserating.
Then it was my turn to go in for the second wait, and I missed how this large woman got in the hallway ahead of me,
Must have had her named called.
While I was distracted by trying to see who kept screaming.
Or rather, trying to not look wondering if it was Tourette's or just something very bad.
One of the Filipino ladies drawing blood said "Marta?"
And in came this shrieking unhappy, discombobulated
woman, going for her bloodwork,
Half in pajamas, half dressed in a poorly tucked simple cotton shirt,
with a girl on a cell-phone as her keeper.
This was not a first time for Martha.
This was not a first time for me either.
It would seem Martha has lost a little bit more than I have.
But she wanted, and asked for "chips."
I can't eat them anymore, she still can apparently, and think of the can of soda
That cell-phone girl promises from "the liquor store" on their ride
Back to her "program."
That bugged me, couldn't she enjoy something nicer?
But, thoughts aren't heard.
"Martha's" yelling cycles every few seconds
A rhythm filling these bloodless halls
That all day long take tube after tube from broken strangers
While a scream rents the air this morning
Making it alive with feeling
In a deafening vacuum.
I stuck my arm out
While the guy made five or six jokes too many about closing his eyes.
Thought about why my veins are hard to dig out, when once it was easier.
Wondered if I really have given blood this many times-
Thousands of little tubes looking at my system.
One day it'll all be on a computer so someone else can sit in this same dirt seat
Saying "This is my 678th draw."
I just guess, knowing that my number is very high.
Martha was led out with a technician telling her she'd get "ice creams."
She failed to listen to the phone gal telling her to do another test on her,
So she had to do the CVC a second time for Martha
On a last minute notice from the desk gal,
I thought about Martha-
Who was, despite all the fear she was communicating to them, in vain
Unbelievably compliant.
They only yelled at her, there was no quieter talk, saying her treat was coming.
It seemed hard for these folks to really speak to Martha, to explain what was happening.
In part because they didn't think anyone was there to talk to really.
That was more painful to me than the needle in my arm.
I think she would respond well to it.
And I drifted into a place I have to go as the needle gouges around in my arm.
Then the five vials got filled,
I was walking through the waiting area
Looking at these broken bodies, waiting,
Opening the big glass doors
And then into the chill air leaving the lab behind.

i'm tired

of the negative smirking stranger
that crawls through my thoughts
raining down
his empty criticism
from such an empty chair
if you want to talk
try something
that isn't destroying
someone that cared for you
petty boy
hop on the fast lane bus
and enjoy the view
nothing escapes realization
nothing

Early Haiku Exercises

2010-04-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

Silence

Finch slices through air
Alert- a shadow falls overhead
Hawk glides the current.

Compassion

Bus at the twilight
Old lady on a worn seat,
Driver lifts her bags.

Separation

Moon held above ground
Shining- a world busies, works
Failing to look up.

Wounds

Bleeding cut anew
Words raw edged-knife blade wet,
Back of head waits.

Jokes

Did you hear the one
About the streetcar named Joe?
Laughter hid punchlines.

Defenses

Laugh, hide, attack, dodge
Creating-no way into heart
Walls block painful thought.

Happiness

Tinkling bells sound
Merrily- friends on a porch
Rest in each other.

Home

A stairwell for dolls
Running circles through center-
The children grew up.

Boundaries

For rabbit the hole,
Tortoise has a shell-watching
Fox creates distance

Rules

Love no one too long
Or hold onto a moment-
Life steals the lover.

Paradigm Shift

On one side alone
A continent shifted south-
You watched mesmerized.

The Way

Path, dusty footfalls
Walking into autumn leaves-
A way emerges.

Future

Blossoms fill branches
Tree offers her spring beauty,
Ripe peaches hide here.

Egos

This idea drives you
Clashing, crashing, over us-
Collision of me.

Pain

Needle gouges in
A searing white light slices,
Cool night collapses.

Piano

Two hands caress keys
Body engages with rhythm,
Etude lifts away.

Jazz

Some watermelon night
Juicy fruit splashes Harlem
Orleans, Chicago.

Dark Secrets

Wrapped in a fig leaf
Placed deep in dank cabinet-
Fruit of passion waits.

Doctor

Titled, healer, man
Professional protocol-
Falls away in life.

Choices

She had only one
It was to survive her life-
Choosing then to try.

Support

Hands offered a hug
Or clasped in a circle,
Catching breath in a morn.

Crushes

Waves of affection
Brought the desire to know you-
Temporarily.

Me

A pair of clown pants
My mother holds out, expands
Empty of my soul.

Loss

It was a rainy
Day in February that we-
Discovered nightmares.

Freedom

You use the word now
When thinking of going on-
Freedom to get laid.

Exhaustion

Running in my place
Wanting my legs to function-
Exhaustion of mind.

Truth

So rare a thing is
Truth- she watched the petals fall,
Rose spoke selflessly.

Loss

Looking around here
Your towel's not on the floor-
Waves roar, winter storms.

Cartoon

Ink lines scribbled you
Capturing the nose and moles
Boasting Don Juan, nerd.

Journalist

News happens daily
Reporting conspiracy-
Caught by fact checking.

Emptiness

A hollow sound stills
Tired of wandering mind,
Possible drained.

Experience

Put down the pencil
Come away to adventure,
Build new repertoires.

Addiction

A potato calls
Softly saying my name in soup
Waiting to catch me.

Manure

Every kind of shit
Seems to name human efforts
That fall short of dreams.

Feeling

Weeds shook garden
Rain, snow, plow her earthen beds
Tulip struggled up.

Romance

Has unexpected
Joy lit afire the candle
Within your heart's wick?

Support

The judge signs this sheet
It is 100 a month-
Payment for her life.

Ukulele

Island instrument
Strumming close to chest caressed-
Silly messenger.

Reversals

He said my love "is"
And then he left the cold room
Contradictory.

Artist

Under words, images
Dance out meaning silently-
One draws intention.

Capacity

A well was dug deep
Into the body of mankind
An infinity.

Woman

The capacity
To contain all of mankind
Remains in her alone.

Mistakes

Missing a note once
While playing a violin,
Squeak tortured the ear.

Penguin

Estevan loves them
"Jumping up dance Happy Feet"
Child imitates bird.

Dance
We weave entangled
Rhythmic kismet syncopate
Where you lead we go.

Tulips

Tulips bright headed
Bouquet held out through the screen
Note returned two lips.

.....mmmmm

An utterance in
Lines-upon a pixel pillow
Laid bear heavy hearts.

Cart

In the plastic bags
Her world reduced-a sweater
Cart rolled down busy street.

Violets

Fingers reach to earth
Snapping stems for a bouquet,
Woodland treasure hides.

Tension

Knotted muscle spasm-
A fly disturbs the waiting room,
A crash of conscious.

Losing

His bet-a long shot,
She read the pages over
He bought a house.

Love

Stars, brilliant, clear night-
A distant light travels the road
Evening begins.

Vanity

Look in her mirror
Admire again the long strands-
As brush glides through hair.

Bile

Welling resentment,
A cup is carefully placed
Fury cascades in.

Sunshine

Send me country tides
Ocean times, city forests-
Hot brushed by her fire.

Daughters

Chocolate, vanilla
Lopped doll heads, stuffing purses,
Laughter in a room.

Sons

Springing somersault
Thrown ball against the wall again-
Boy contains man.

Dogwood
Once my wires crossed
Heard wood supplying the cross
Gentle flower in four.

Eggs

Leaving the play yard
Crushed confetti celebrates
Advent of springtime.

Fish

Scales contain gills
Breath glides golden current stream
Fish chases, light flash

Blues

Honey drips- dew drops
Meadow lays down on sweet head
Succulent cherry.

Barbed Wires

A razor lined it
Pasture lupine buttercup
Bounded desire-knife.

Shade

Dreams were cast this day
Shadows passed us overhead-
Cool, we laid alone.

inferiority

no one is less than
those we cast stones at their heart-
wind whispers silence

Fishing

trout, pond, lily pad
worm, line, pole, reel, bamboo rod
waiting, quiet, catch

Hate

A thorn in the flesh
Winter ice encases pond
Life frozen decays

Competence

String the beans she
Filled the pan with water turning
To fry cornmeal fish.

Kool-Aid
Sent package, two hands
Pitcher in to get the water
Returning blue lips.

Triangles

Three sides define space
With sides, indices, angles
Shape defeats we two.

School

Cement block construct
Overhead projectors
Teacher talks, child.

Marmalade

Sticky finger goo
Tart floridian jelly-
Buttered beds, warm toast.

Tuna

Grandma said one time-
Oh what beautiful tuna,
The rose bed blinked back.

Post Op

2010-04-16T05:14:00.000-07:00

Lost In the haze of post operative pain
I can't know
Not really
What is healing
What will work
What is happening within
My spine now

But I can feel the river
Running withing that current
Through my system
Carrying the impulses
Signals
Glimmers
Of Thoughts
To my fatigued awareness.

Last Night

All at once all of it met
At a place that came
Right in the middle of a show
On the Buddha
My fears were there
Being out of work
The endless strolling
Of that lane
The place of hurt
The simple logistics
Of too little too late,
There was the call in the days
A friend to re-experience
Unthinkable, unimahginable descriptions
Of inhumanity
Recounting our losses
Or puzzling to make
some sense of something
Gone so wrong
Of things where we lost the ability to help
The forces against which we pitch out a tent
Call it teaching
Watch the winds blow it away.
We plowed through the manure of the profane
Again.
There was also the looking at someone
Someone I thought
I knew.
Caught in the vocabulary
Of a teen,
licking, sucking, blowing
Dispensing
It just all felt
All of it felt
Like I needed to take a kind of bath
In a rain
That washes
From a place
That allows us to
find anything worthy
There
under this skin.
In something real again
Something good,
Something I could experience
As worthwhile.

Have you asked yourself
lately what can I do
To feel more a part of the good
How to fold myself
Into helping something bloom
Knowing that the tree needs no lesson
The rose understands her art
The seed can find the sun
My work can't be in those ways
I look inside
What emerges
Through this night
Into tomorrows
Dawn?

I can look at what goes in my mouth
Make different choices
I can look at the steps I take, people I speak to
I can reflect on the processes
Consider the ways
Make decisions to move over time, toward something
Attempting to meet illness
With my trying to do right things.

Free myself of the doubts a little
The guilt, some of the reactions,
The behaviors that came
From running in fear
Or responding and reacting
Over looking at the calm light

I can do this.

What shocks me
Really is the
Deliberateness
The complete thinking
Mind that is
carefully crafting these odd
And coded
Messages that are
Woven into a time
Where in my life
The ability to
Translate just might well be
At a low piont.

It's funny
That the things I read
Always come in several fundamental
Kinds of feelings
Of a god,
Of a boy,
Of someone so dear,
Someone so angry
Someone with basic
Fears, just
As if I were Listening to
A stream babbling
By as I sat
On the banks thinking
Of a cool drink,
Or putting in my fingers
Shocked at the cool
The water is so cold.
Missing a try to catch
This small fish in the eddies
Just to hold him for
A second in a little pool
I made.

It isn't
easy to
hold the water of
another's being
In my hands
They shake now
Nor am I sure if
My thirst can
Be quenched
It's hard for me
To bend to drink
So I am
watching
The shimmering
Streams
As they are passing.

My thoughts come
And go with the clouds
Passing over
Weather of the heart
I find a storm
Or feel an ominous
Cloud
Shiver
Or feel the sun shining
On my face
Warming my toes
As I rest here
On the banks.

You are moving
Wherever you go
Flowing
Rushing
From one drop
I look at the
Glistening fluid
But hear the
Rushing through
My senses
As this stream plays
it's dancing rythmns.

Shall I enter
Into the pool
Submerging myself
Put in a foot
Or wash my hands
As I rest I picture the
Possibility
Of moments that are not yet here
And I rest.
A tired back
Worried mind
Hurting heart
Looking at the stones wearing away the edges
Seeing the
Gentle flow.

There is this
rapidity,
movement
This inability I have to keep
Up
A kind of crash of current
It is
A pace unfamiliar now.
As I have slowed
To standing.
Lifting myself
To stand
Watching
this little river
Move me through
My days.

Write What You Know

2010-04-03T20:53:00.000-07:00

Tell Me Your Story

When we write a book
We tell a story.
But we tell a story too
with our hands.
A story is enfolded
in the bread we knead.
When you sit there
And I sit way over here
that's a story.

If we play a game, you moving
you begin to tell about "one time"
a story holds us both
As we we tell ourselves.
When we sit by the fire
a story sparkles.
On a bank, a cool clear evening
We share our story.
You sing your song
maybe on a Sunday
A story floated.

We bounce the ball
beating out your story.
There, in all the libraries
All the stories ever told
It is your story too.
Walking a long dark road
One still night
You unfolded your story
in rapid breaths we saw in the air.
Listening to the wren
It chirped and brought to mind
Another day's story.

Sweeping my floors
Slowly the story emerged
Yours was the story I found once
As I looked from my sweeping
Found on the floor
Folded and hidden.
It took awhile for it to unfold
And I am reading it still
Like the stories of a life
It is still telling itself
Within me as I feel it
in my heart beating.

Tell me your story
The one that shines from within
Maybe the one no one has spoken aloud
of the days you have lived
The ones you have loved
The hurt that you held
The teachers you knew
Yours is the story
That only you hold.
Tell me your story
It's never been told.

The Teacher That Changed Us

On the most practical of levels
I remember how she smelled
Leaning over me
Looking into my work for signs of understandings
Uttering a reassurance
Pointing out a thing to do
Catching a mistake for me to see myself
Lots of teachers did that.
What made her any different?

She sang and played piano
Brought in guava jelly homemade
Took off her glasses at fire drills
Noticed a thing I call her fairness, she kept order
But didn't impose it really
Established routines
Worked backwards within my time
So that now, when I am grown
And she is long gone from these places
In my work, life, she talks as I
sit with a student struggling
Lean in to offer my help
Struggle with unfairnesses and impossibilities
The poverty, the things
Outside our making
She still speaks into my life.

She taught her career in a segregated system
Was integrated in the last years
Into a school where
I stood at the wooden double doors
Welcomed, enjoyed, praised
Appreciated just for myself
It was enough, and it was
Important enough she remembered
Me long later, my family, my father
The professor, she said later to me
A few years after I had moved
I visited my teacher
Admonished, at my thanks, to go on
Give to the children
With your life
Thinking of me.

Asking

I always ask new people I meet
To tell me about school
Their teachers, experiences
What they hold
What mattered.

Many powerful things
Come rushing
Sometime a volcano erupts
Lava burns my questioning
It can pop like corn
Fast and furious
Or like a wave in the ocean wash over
My worn and sagging spirit

But I ask to know them better
So I might understand what they
Were shaped to think of me, too
How we think of school
Is our common understanding
It is something
Building our inner being
Defining so much
About who we are
And who, I,
as a Teacher
Can then be.

Beginning To Teach

Each year felt as if
I walked into a strange town
New community, unrecognized
a place with the need
To construct this as life.
I've had many new beginnings.

In teaching nothing was
Ever like an old song
It was always
The shock of the new
Waking up new ideas, new fibers
I've had many new beginnings.

One new beginning put
Me into nothing more than a closet, with a cart
A grade book, set of state curricular objectives, a classlist
and my lesson planner, 350 children to rotate
A rolling art cart
Serving to allow teachers a planning break
I've had many new beginnings.

One beginning I was locked and checked inside a metal cage
Afraid ever to step out onto the streets
Bullets flew, graffiti marred, rage roared
Heat, screams, restless tensions
With no books, few skills, no material goods, little hope
I've had many new beginnings.

One beginning I found
Myself within a community
where I didn't speak the language, then
Or really understand the culture
But I had Frosty The Snowman
And understood we could parrot.
I've had many new beginnings.

In one new beginning I was in an
Empty room in 1958, before I even was born transported
Thrust backward when a perky young head
Popped in to offer help
And to tell me about her life
She just popped up again a few months ago
I've had many new beginnings.

In one beginning I was
Up on a hill, piles of stuff
Exhausted, alone, in the mountains
With kids from the Rez
And holdng onto my collection of forbidden books
On black history
I've had many new beginnings.

In one beginning I
Decided to return to places
That didn't want a me there
And firmly called to tell me so
Violating every rule we have, of schools
No understanding there of worth.
So I went and unloaded my tricks
I've had many new beginnings.

In one beginning it started with an end
My things were piled, my back broken
Moved, stack, ruined
A system trying to
Shed its conscious
I've had many new beginnings.

In every beginning
I stood in the chaos and my fears
Holding arms around myself
And sought the things
That we would do together.
To honor the days of our lives.
I've had many new beginnings.

What Would You Say?

What would you say
To the tears of a child
On the first day
Of separation from the family
One they've only known?
To a lost coat at recess?
To dirty hands discovered during ELD,
in mandated instruction?
To a secretary refusing to send
a vomiting child home?
To one who cannot wait a turn?
To the child with no friend at recess?
To the 12 years you waited for
any functional technology?
To a desire to be in respected role in the society?
To no soap in the restroom?
To chicken nuggets again on cheap paper plates?
To hot rooms in summer, cold in winter?
To a literacy coach fixated on sound sight cards,
sight words, fluency and walls with no voice for literacy?
To a perception word saying is reading, or thinking in word?
To a child lost years ago, learning is drowning?
To standards?
To the loss of teacher discretion?

What would you say
When a child comes to your class
with her teeth knocked out, lip bleeding?
To a wild boar baby piglet
appearing in a coat?
To the persons unknown that
stole your supplies?
To those that want the "same page"?
To situations where you are
asked to say not what is, but what isn't?
To no time to read, no story allowed?
To changes that utterly miss
what you can be there to do that must be seen?

What would you say to those
that tell you it would all be
fine if you were gone?
What would you say realizing what you model
is the most important thing of all?
What would you say if you were
asked to continue on
sans your conscious?

Tellin' The Life Of A Child

Her name was Phyllis
In my new life she
Defined the child that
Needed everything
When I had nothing but time.
She wore a dirt coat
Matted corn rowed hair with pockets full
Of school rolls or linted candy
Food for later.
Blue fingers, long nails on elongated fingers
Blue toes and lips
Rickety flip flops
I could have replaced her coat
Bought her clean clothes
Or some good sneakers
Even cut her nails
But I had yet to learn how to do that.
That I could or had to do that.
She demanded we teach
Her to read, and sat an hour afterschool to get it
And so we opened
"Ramona the Brave"
Reading with a child surviving
On streets, literally a bag child, homeless,
Parentless, Auntie-less, calling out
At recesses to set up a place for the night
To kids that all were devoid
Of much more than a shrug or a screamed no way,
It took me months to understand what was going on
So obviously.
We were reading with a child surviving
On the street, literally, in a book about a child
She must have wanted to be,
we read it over and over
For lack of any books or materials in the school.
When someone came in my room
One day, an older threatening
Knife welding gangster
She chased him off
With a loud voice
As she returned from wherever she went daily
"Peewee, wha you doin in here get on."

I hold her as "the child"
I wished to have helped
To have raised
To have realized I needed
to understand so much more.

Teachers have inside
The children to tell
Their lives, their accomplishments
Struggles, the funny things
The time they upset
The yard duty collecting and pocketing
For their teacher thousands of ladybugs
Until their body was motion
In red crawling dots lifting off
As she flew into fits.

Each story tells the days passing
On those calendars of life
As meanings we have made.

The Child as Novel

Since childhood I'd peek
At the end of a book of fiction-novel
To see how it all came out
Then I'd work my way to the destination.
Not a cheat against myself, more
To appreciate the path there, the writer's choices.

With a child in my class
There is a sense of that hidden story
That I am gazing at the end
Of a journey already begun
That slowly I may read from
The pages of our own days together
As we go forward to write a sequel,
Or an alternate ending, or our forward.

On Drawing

When the drawing starts
Then I can watch
Learning,
Who am I working with?
How will they learn
They reveal their ways of seeing
How they break down the task
Interpret direction,
Initiate and process.
I'm learning when to step aside.
I'm learning as they step
Inside their own idea and vision
Or peek around to collect
A group responding
Sometimes they are grappling
Stuck in some gap or hollow
Those are the times to keenly
watch myself
Try to suspend inclinations
To remove that feeling completely.
I'm learning as the chalk, pencil,
Pens move across the surfaces.
Or there is laughter, distraction, reaction, self-talk
Socializing the activity begins to weigh in.
I'm now learning the dynamics and social
Conventions in play, as the students are testing
The limits, or limiting the tests.

And as I'm learning
I'm observing myself, free of too many
Conclusions, judgments
Just making and releasing
Associations as the children
reveal what they've known and seen
Speaking to me in art
Of their motivation, trying, struggles.
It goes into a place
Core to the moment
To be written, thought, sorted
In my leisure as I design
Next steps and what
This group and these particular children
Can do, might do, like to do, will do, want to do, must do
To learn from each drawing
A language for being.

Acts

Act I

I've held forth that what we do
Trumps what we say
Because early in my life
The lesson was well taught
That words spoken on many things
Can be be broken, withdrawn,
Forgotten, twisted, confused
Working to jettison hope.
But what you did, that was real
How you acted "was"

Act II

I built an artist within myself
Refining making into symbols
Meanings, visual, crafted, made
Learning processes and procedures
seeing this as the path to knowing self and others
Intuitive, creating, self-directed
Used to the messy chaos in a state of unknowing

Act III

I entered teaching
applying the lessons of art
Much like I entered
Relating, life, mothering
as a sticky, messy, making
Doing, playing, building,
Reading, coloring, construction
That can only exist in the
There and now, the here and us.

Act IV

The walls of my construction
Fail to keep out the
Onslaught of external forces mounted
Attack on the work of a life, the truths,
The lessons, the objects,
Models are smashed, as I
Lose to the elephant tromping here
My acts are not applauded
Made into same pages, tests, mandates, directives
Construction is destroyed.

Conversations In The Written Word

Two people ( or twenty)
Sit within a space
Exchanging right answers or thoughts
Their insights into a book or plot
Calling out gleefully
But in a conversation
There is the push and pull
The right answer
Bends to reveal
This always is evolving
Redefined, incorporating, observing
Theorizing, testing, turning over and around
Upside down.

In this conversation there is no "one."

How Do You See Me?

I did not ask
During this time we related
When so much occurred
So much was stated
So much was not
Who do you see
When you look my way?

The truth if you would
(my egos deflated)

Constructing Ourselves

Like you, I had to build a "me."
A personal one, one as a wife,
a being that mothers, one within a life
I had to construct a self in a job, community, place
A vision of belonging and a kind
Of defining what were my gifts,
what strengths did I have,
What were my joys, what good, what?
I chose a profession, or allowed it
To chose me. Then all of the
Images, the books, the characters
The notions of "teacher" came in
Through those doors. They brought
Senses of purpose, meanings and methods,
But dullness, authority, corners,
The teachers that come in media packages said
That darkness ran on the screens
I had to react to what I'd seen.

Constructing myself I cannot
Avoid the things that have happened
as a void of frontal assault on each
Day of my work confronted
Even a friend can think
A teacher is a jerk, loss
Not for things
That I taught or words
That I said, but wrapped in
Political rhetorical times.
Projections that live in the head of the culture
Brought through the ways
We communicate meanings.

I've had to construct a
Me just the same
That loves to push words,
Play a refrain, get out some markers
Surf on a net, write poems to a friend
Talk about death,
Explore what I do or ask how
Can I better define this
Thing we call "I"

Immense Scope Of Teaching

in the first three weeks of
the first year i taught
i learned that the social dynamics
ruled, narrowly missing my
higher intentions sailing by my head like a missile
the perceptions kids held of classrooms
bounced right into my obliviousness
like a spitball cast by that frank wise cracker

in the first three months
the content overwhelmed me as i
realized all i suddenly didn't know
every dimension in literature, society,
Science, systems, i plowed
into lesson plans, cook books, content, structures
what kids would do
how it would unfold, steps, directions
divergence, symbols, meanings
a flood of how to learn how to teach
how to learn

in the first three years
i traveled the continent from appalachia
to a los angeles ghetto
learning of something
that made education more
than just what I said or we did
it was clear in the moments
kids lost their lives in hoods
we ignored they actually die
i took this in then
re-designed me
in teaching we taught
to organize lives

in the first three decades
i've seen theory wade in
the passage of time
the out and the in
in several years
whole language was lost, books
came and went, school got very
lost as a critical construct
technology grew, we questioned the content
what we are here to do

the incredible scope of teaching
contains the times as we are in it,
what remains of our how and why
lives on in our pupils, the models
the methods,
it's beyond all we say
cause seeking knowledge
is our active ethic

Ideal / Real

I
You come loving to learn
Exploring, racing, touching, moving,
Talking, feeling, a wonder of parents

R
You get a seat, learn the rules
Slowly drop the petals,
Ask permissions, imitate, recite
Reproduce, take the test, listen carefully

I
You come a living question
Ready to challenge, turn, confront
Twist, dance, disassemble, knock down
Make, invite, figure out

R
You get your turn, a parking lot
Group norms, praise for conforming
A rational, logic system, a set theory
And a verbal warning

I
You come with your blocks
Your favorite toys, find friends,
Watch eyes, express feelings,
Spring forth from a womb

R

Now you are instructed
One of many not one,
Told what to do, modeled into systems,
Learning how it works "out there"
Contained, tamed
Socially framed

School has the role
Of talking the Ideals into the Realities.
If too imperfect a world then you
give rise to the terms "hidden curriculum"
And lose all meaning
To see the right one become the other.

With Love All Things Are Possible

2010-04-03T07:21:00.000-07:00

With Sylvia

I had a dream of my daughter
So close to our real life
I wonder what it's telling my heart
It followed several dreams of a hospital, baby, art gallery/studio.
In the dream Sylvia was very tense,
She was working on a wall design
On a huge wall, say like the kind
Outside a set of elevator doors.
Somehow it had that feel
Of being within narrow confined space, but a very big wall
Very big wall.
She somehow had gotten pulled in from some program
Connected to her father, (which has happened, in the past
Work to forward his business.)
I suppose if you looked for logic
That might be why I was there.
Also called into do that kind of supporting.
She was struggling, really struggling, with what was "wanted"
Decoration of "the wall"
Some fidelity to some principle of some program.
I, on the other hand, was just annoyed.
Really doubtful of the egos that were in the next room blowing.
(As it often can be of these experiences.)
"If they are getting this much from your effort, Sylvia, they'll be happy"
But she looked very clear they wouldn't.
So I listened, as she described these relatively small
8 inch squares she was going to cover this surface with,
Thinking, boy is that going to be a pain, and upon that making a design in paint.
She said that the person in charge wanted the tops of the squares cut off,
"Rectangles?" I asked- thinking- tape, how to adhere that many shapes, glue on a surface of paper.
The practical way to apply it.
Well, it has to be made as squares, she said, but then changed, "the top folded back this way."
So I thought what kind of so called expert calls rectangles, squares
And plays around to this degree, we are talking thousands of these things
I told her to go get my big paper cutter out.
she was buried making each one precisely.

I will give you rectangles. They'll never know. Believe me Sylvia.

We were discussing the color next
It was so clear Sylvia felt incredible pressure
She attended things, sessions, on whatever theory this was based on previously
Ones I was not included in hearing.
Although, frankly, I seldom hear much new, I thought.
Throughout this I was really struggling with that,
So I said to her I'd like to go get this lady
And ask her for some guidance
To this Sylvia said something like,
"Oh thank you mommy."
Fine, it was okay for me to see this to the wall.
So in I went, wading into a room on the other side
Huge space, big tables
Finding Miss Theory of Self Importance
She was like every other art thing I ever did for someone,
Pulling teeth getting it out of their grandiose visioning mouth,
The practical vision, so I could actually do the work.
For that matter it's like
Teaching under mandated education. Exactly.
She said,this expert, did we have white or black paper?
I have to tell you I had a special feeling about
Saying those two colors were just unavailable.
Also like teaching under mandates-we have nothing.
The conditions that need to be met invariably are not.
I think we were using cheap school construction
Far below her speed.
Then I suggested lime green, turquoise, fuchsia.
"But it cannot be those,
They violate the program ideals."
At that internally I thought piss off.
"Children", in her perfect world, "Cannot be exposed to bright colors."
Earth tones, she said.
Lacking her solutions and theory I was dumber than dirt to her.
Now at this point, and I could feel Sylvia thinking,
I was about to offer her the wall.
But I knew my daughter was pleasing her father.
So I allowed the person to put forward for me
The theories of her university, her research, her stuff, short version
To get her entrance made as she "visioned" for the people she wanted to impress, all made.
And they'd tell her, as if it was her, how wonderful.
"I've lived a life of this," I thought.
Here I go again.
Guiding her to say these had to be small rectangles, I still don't know why
Cause in every way that was going to be an aesthetic mess,
"To resemble a mosaic?" I asked.
She looked at the worm mouthing that.
And a tree here, I suggested, a blossoming cherry?
She didn't say no
As I was thinking, we'll do an oriental screen, that ought to
Make her happy.
Somehow a desert kept imposing itself in my head, I noted that.
When I work on this kind of level I think to pictures.
That was not a dream skill, or a poem process,
It was just how it works for me all the time.
I have to make it, so I have to have a way into it.
Then this prophetess left the space, to her important prep for the big day.
And I was telling Syl what colors to try pulling out.
Explaining a bit what to do.
On the other side of the tree we'd been directed to have a woman
Seated but rising up with her arms in the air toward the tree
Pretty old school, I thought.
Definitely been done.

Little Girl Be Careful What You Say

You know
This time
I don't know
What I said.
Or didn't.
Or how
I offended.
I was
Trying.

Fears

Well if I were to order them today..
surgery
blood clots
losing the ability to work
walk
dependency
fat
pain
losing love
being reviled
rejection
mocking
taunting
something happening o my kids
poverty
eating
isolation
bleeding
aggression
violence
deaths
inability
......

I Just Need To Have

Have you ever
Really told someone who you are
Told them the inner places
Taken the time
To draw the diagrams
Open the well

And then what happens?

With Love All Things Are Possible

All of the art,
The music,
The things I read
The creation I have
Has taught one lesson
In the absurdity
With love all things are possible.

To this you have presented the impossible.
Held this to me as a dogma
And I have had the pain of losing this for 6 months
Having it ripped from me.

With love all things are possible.

I know some small few things myself.

Atonement

2010-03-29T06:51:00.000-07:00

Another Dream

Yesterday was disturbing, living is disturbing,
So dreams, it follows are disturbing
As my equilibrium is shot to shit
But last night my mind went on its own
Places of resting are different now,
Apparently preferring to remain
On haunches, alert
Watching, in a stance of the animal within,
Two dreams took over the landscape
In the second the scenes were like
Summer camp,
With someone throwing a grenade in a concession
It failed however
And a cat with red hair
With some move to a house
I'd never seen in the woods,
A long bit about ordering a hamburger.

It doesn't matter
I can't bring it back.
The important thing in that dream
Was the red haired cat was brilliant,
smarter, delightful, accepting like my Bootsie
Or possibly Calico, who was brilliant.
I was getting to keep it.

Over a room full of potentials.

The first dream was the one
Where you were now god.
Not exactly a kind and gentle one
And in the sky, literally, that was true
All around.
It felt like I ought to pay attention.

(What preceded this I think was
Something coming out of a real experience
Some person I started to read
Read 2000 or more purged things he wrote
On books and music
I took to be you.
It still is confusing for me.
It was some funny slide, don't know why
But generally I learned
That when we read free of knowing people
What we read falls into some of
Our idealization of people. I guess
I can only maintain so many voices.
I missed someone, so I thought
Everyone was the same. Sort of.
Anyway I read all 2000 plus pieces
This person has immense desire to be an authority
On everything, or to learn everything
To demonstrate to everyone their authority
So quite commonly they restate their credentials and reassert
Never, ever, do they seem capable
Of thinking outside of their needs and ego-
I read him noting if ANYONE breathed a hair
In some sort of disagreeing without
Much ego massage he cracked into such a hateful being.
In that he was entirely plainly caught-
Yesterday I read him again
After a several week hiatus, but after I wrote then
To say the little bit I needed to say
At this time of the year
It seems important to clear the air with people.
At this time of the year I try to tell those that hurt me
How it still feels inside
I also try to address myself
Anyway that angered him, what I said was not good for him.
He wrote a review of the DSM I think to respond.
Outlining personality disorders
Of people reading him on-line.
Effectively insulting every woman that might read him
But I'm sure aiming it at me as the target.
That's hard to parse out.
But of course I felt it.

I'd responded to some comment of his on my ungratefulness
That I'd given my time
All I really had to give.
But you can't always donate a kidney to the cause.
Now he deftly categorized that into a dis-order
Assigned me one of three or four hateful categories)

But again I thought of you.
Apparently I also thought
Of an awfully personal God being.
In the dream I was struggling to be on equal footing
With someone
To be allowed to write
Speak, talk, communicate
Not be told to remain within writing persona
Or rules one side arbitrarily throws out.
I suppose inherent in this
Is my wanting that friendship and equality,
damn it.

I said that in the beginning
didn't I clearly enough?
But look what happened.
Look exactly what you did.
Look at the way it went.
There you are in the sky,
setting the boundary.
I did not want a therapeutic relationship
Like it or not I'd come
To the place in my life I was ready for the real thing
I buy the other stuff
I no longer wanted to have a relationship built on the dynamics I'd lived and known.
I still feel that way,
I want the think you said
The real thing.
That is what I said to the sky in the dream
That infuriated the sky.
The one sided authority or judge or sky isn't good.
A problem for me all along.
I did not understand on-line stuff so well
Or any of that so well
But I knew that
Even then.
And I took things that were said to me
Dealing with you, to be meaningful,
Not to be lies
To be real.
I insist on that perception, sorry.
Not as mistakes of character
Or about disease processes
Or defenses systems
Or about projections and other things
That are balled up in the wash.
No, I didn't know that realm then
Don't entirely now.
I offered my love then, as I would now.
Anyway I was left to argue with a voice
Or a feeling, or to try to
Communicate through a medium.
Or through the screens.
In my dreaming this feature was there
For me to look at I suppose.
Made my heart race, anxiety producing,
It was, not it is, the thing that has
To be fixed now, where I am damaged.
It has to be addressed with me.
Me.
Where I have to have repair.
I have to repair and understand it all.
I don't know why
I can't have a lot of dark secrets.
I can take on the truths.
In the dream,
Which I need to stop interpreting,
I was held by this god
In some kind of theater
Or orchestra, and all the people
They were aware of the fact that rules
From above were imposed by a very angry being
Boy I know this one.
You had to stay in seats or in a very limited place.
I stood there with things to do
Furious watching some faces I knew
People that were just now going to abide it.
I put my hands angrily at my sides, head up to the sky
Screaming to say,
" "Your name", I am going to the bathroom, I have to go
And I have bloody clots."
All the others, as I rushed this bloody barrier,
Of invisibility said, no it lets off gas,
They pulled my arms the imbeciles.
That kills us all,they chimed, but I did get in to a restroom.
Where there were now many women and children
Who must have needed the same.
I was directly addressing with you
Some of this.
Good grief. What a cage.
The pettiness, the hurt, the outragousness.
I suppose thinking about it
It reminded me of Greek God stuff.

Then I did something I think is consistent
With the last months, with who I am.
I walked straight into this barrier
Blocking me from a car outside the place
And decided to die.
On my mind in the dream was that
That was the preferable thing to do
And from your new found godhood you could
Face the consequences of your furies
Didn't seem like it would really matter.

Waking up, I have to think about what this was saying.

2010-03-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Nurse Stepped out And Said

It's funny but I'm working on eating
On Blood sugar
On changing some stuff that is bad for me
(That I did long enough it's a security blanket)
But I had to go with this blood monitor
Start the whole awareness,
Learn how it works
(The funny part being the pharmacy didn't get it ready
Until after I went then comp'ed it, yep
My pharmacy loves me)
So I was in an office to listen
To a thin tiny together empowered nurse tell me about food
I can deal with the fact she talks
To me like I'm five because I do
Struggle at these times to take it in
And crave picking out a ring or sticker after.

She went over the way to eat, what to do
Very carefully.
But the form for a blood draw was missing
So she went out in the hall
To get it
"Jesus Christ where the hell are they?"
I was listening.
She was more than put out
This tiny person, so together in ways I'm not.

I know someone that
Is trying to tell me
Something I would tell them in return
It's rather interesting
But more like you feel
Realizing how
Debilitating it is
To be so flawed
Hard to fully
Know what is true
Beyond this feeling
Gosh I wish we had grace
I wish we got passes
I wish I'd quit working
Against myself
And I wish I had
The power of some
Superbeing but I don't
I just appreciate your thoughts.
And the care.

2010-03-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

In Which I Attempt To Digest an Elephant

I'm reading the man book again
Like for at least the fifth time
It says that it decodes the secret language of them.
Then I discussed emotional absence at dinner
And shared I was reading the man book
The only thing I said at all, ((that wasn't an echo))
The men left the room.
One to one restroom, the other interestingly
To do the wash. Immediately.
I can count my son, he'd already left the table.

Really I thought, is it really so hard to see stuff ?
But for me it really can be very difficult.
My daughter said she didn't feel badly I spoke,
I felt rather awful again,
I hadn't intended to make anyone run.
"They weren't caring about letting us talk about anything
On our minds. Like your surgery, or theories."
She laughed in this delightful way
She laughs when she discovers something.
Okay, I thought this is important to pay attention to.
So later I said, why would you leave the table when I was
Defining what I was reading from the man book.
He said, "You ruin conversations with stuff like that."
That was first chapter stuff.

Right now I'm reading about male insecurity.
From it blooms hyper-masculinity.
The man book came up again in a personal storm raging
Brought into the car conversationally
On the way back from a 7 AM blood test
The day before my surgery, today.
That surgery is postponed.
The problem once again is in my blood.
I was anemic for years to dangerous levels
From a mystery, not to leave that allusion unexplained
For ten years I had my blood drawn just about weekly
If you average it all out.
The cancer in my tummy hid that long.

My blood has decided to reveal a few more of my secrets
Out into the public clothesline
Not that anyone missed it.
My blood sugar is too high
I have repeated failures on tests. Diabetes.
I certainly seem to have the peripheral nerve issues.
we were riding back after I gave the second blood test very early in the morning
Conversations at these times I notice
I'll be in the middle of incorporating into my consciousness
Some intense agony, this was like that.
My husband brought up he was referencing the book
With an employee to assist her in her communication
With men I guess.

So I told him interestingly I'd moved on to
Another thing you have to understand, besides absence
( a very hard one for me personally to get)
I was on this insecurity piece.
Meanwhile outside we were cutting over through the field
The dirt, rows, people, openness passing by as it does
Rows move rapidly like on a carousel, further away mountains seem to slide,
While the moon visible still in the blue hung and meandered
Slowly, somewhat reluctantly, the definitions
I'd been reading found a way to come out
Talking has been kind of like listening to
Someone inhabiting me.
It made me laugh when my spouse said that he
Didn't have that because he never really
Identified "like that" with his mom, "I just was into my Dad."
The basis for this is that in trying to be a "man"
The female mother gets super ejected, representing
Weakness, softness, not wanting to feel insecure they man up.

Later in the day panic decided to visit
I was on the phone repeatedly
Canceled surgery, getting monitors ordered
Talking about more tests, pin pricks, test strips, brands
Things like what insurance covers.
It was like being walked into a formal dinner
Naked.
From what I can tell about the rest of the evening
it doesn't say to too much about me
I craved starchy foods and cokes.
Ultimately food defeated me all my life
I was sitting there with that on the plate.

Somehow my girlfriend made me think about
How I avoid dealing with my things by trying to force
The men I care for to deal with their things.
Or at the least to be hidden within
Whatever mess our relating is about.
"It's about picking."
I'm fighting wanting to flee this piece's end.
For reasons I don't know I'm sunk in something
I just do not want to control it all.
I almost fell on the floor returning from a phone call
That broke my thoughts.
I don't want to go back to that level of control.
I just don't.

just stirring in my head today

2010-03-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

Lima Beans

on coming home
she had a pot full
it was warm
they were so fat
a head full of worry
a plate full of limas
in butter

zz top

ma, look
my son said as we drove out of the school
zz top,
in the chevy sat an old
beard picking up a young awkward girl
in a sweater
it looks like her Dad
i said
nah, that's gramps he said
adding his friend sean
saw me once
and said
who's that, your grandma

i'd been sitting in the car
thinking about lovers
situations, reading raymond carter
sliding over something
sticky sweet but
complicated
now i was a grandma at the wheel
of my vibe
driving a kid home
reduced to this
outer shell
the status as the oldest mother
in the world

son, i started
i'd like to talk to sean
just for a minute
he doesn't go here anymore
came the smiling response
he moved far away
with his mom
and her implants
it was a lame retort but
I'd gotten a flash from the chevy
it wasnt so great
the place i drove to

interestingly next stop
was the store
to get my kids tissues
sodas, meat, ice cream
my son carried that in for me
saying that the kid thought
my mom was at least one hundred
that was supposed
to cheer me up
by comparison
as we were riding
i said
i have a great name for a rock band
my son plays guitar
very well
he'd like to be in a band
your mom doesn't name your
rock band
unless she looks like sean's

so he said
he'd listen to the name
but it wasn't something
he really wanted to do
it's "this" I said
it's a good name,
the first album could be
"this is it"
with variations each time
"this way"
"this and that"
"this time"
it works out in my head
he was laughing
you know what I see mom
I see this disney channel thing
with these kids all jumping out saying
"we're the this,
it's incredible to be here"

thanks for the ride mom
and now I'm sitting
listening to my mom
talk about jimmy buffet
he didn't write
don't stop the carnival
she says
which seems
almost like a hit of acid
it's by herman wouk
she says
i don't know where we are
she's in an old hotel in
the caribbean
its a book she gave away
she says
and it's one of those days

pre-surgery visit

in 24 hours
i stick my arm out to get poked again
have a pint of blood drawn
get an ekg
fill out reams of papers
say i'll pay if insurance doesnt
look at something for a second
describing what's going on
get smeared, cultured, scanned
for wednesdays surgery
it scares me
but my legs arent really working
so its one mans attempt
to reconnect the circuits
at night one foot rubs
against the other
it feels like one
but not the right one one is dead
he says the right should be the problem
it feels like
it's been on ice
still it's stuff you go through
in this your mess you have to repeatedly undress
put on a ugly sheet
tie the strips
foist yourself up on the table
lift, move, thrust,
shove, feeling trapped within
flesh that's clearly lost
anything like you or you
read about in poetry

awhile ago as i sat
reading some poetry
about love
things that we feel in hearts
i pictured this because of that
appointment in the morning
you do that
visualize whats coming
right or wrong
i need a picture to go there
you remember the last time you woke up feeling suffocated
into pain and sounds
cold flopping metallic discomfort
stitched and trussed
pulling on a bar
it was hard to put myself
into the book then
not for me to know
that bottle or those oranges peeled
with the knife you left
on the table

my veins are very hard to find
they run away
they understand
so tomorrow
into my arm, the crook of both elbows
a needle will prod around and fail
while i look away into feeling
it will hurt
then in disgust as if i asked them to
hightail it
the nurse, it'll be a man,
will jam it into my left hand
on the back, finally dig out the vein
theres actually a scar on my hand from all the failed times
that came before this time
they'll take the blood

if things go wrong later
i'll be transfused with my own
until they look at the blood
then they'll tell me
again as if i were doing this on purpose
to screw around
because they won't listen
that there is an issue
that my blood won't work
the iron will be wrong
or something isn't right
thin walls, platlets, something
there will be the bleeding discussion
important someones will be involved
in deciding

it'll just be a part of the morning
and i'll go in an elevator
with some of my underwear gone
to get the xray
without the metal in the bra
holing a purse over myself
between floors and lockers
of my chest
then on the elevator
to the floor with the ekg and i'll be rubbed and prodded
they'll be an issue with
that test, sticky stuff will be everywhere
so that'll mean I sit
a long time
they'll be after another decision
about it

downstairs i'll have to get the draw
for other things
like the aids test they require
the things that never will be told
to me
until it's over and it's four thirty
i came at 9
but back in the locker
after i reattach my bra
I'll go look in the gift store at the things
old ladies make
buy some gum
or something like a romance novel
get myself in the car
that'll be harder with my legs not working
drive home
ready now
to go try to survive it

getting ready

the larder is stocked
so full of things the kids like to eat
it's jammed in like some chaos
of wrapper and fat
cases of drinks
pork bellies
cereal, paper towels
cans, noodles, grapes, sourcreams
milk, bunches of commodities
so that i can rest next week
knowing if they want a cheeto
or need clothes washed
or run a vacuum that there
will be everything we buy bought

this weekend i'll clean
the restrooms, run the vacuum,
take the car through the carwash
cook, freeze and stuff some stuff
in the fridge
to reheat along with wipe these walls
mop the tiles
sort my closet
look over everything and put it in order
so that while
i'm gone
they don't notice much difference

i wrote three years of my head in here
took the time to put
articles, values, likes, things, a little of a me
warts for sure
out there against my own
inclinations
if this is all
so that they can
figure out stuff if they need it
they won't need it but
it will be floating there just the same
and i sorted some stuff inside the last few months too
it seems like it's come down to
my facing off the past
i made a lot of mistakes
walking the mudslide
in reaction to a lot of mistakes
feet of clay
some of it hurt the kids that i love
and some of it shaped the kids i love

for all of that
today it feels like
there are things i've forgotten
left undone, missed
there is this strange thing
going on inside that reminds me
of the state you are in
looking backwards
before you fell off the cliff
or went through something that
you had the insight to realize, retrospectively
you didn't really understand
but should have seen it
like the character caught in the movie
where everyone else figured out not to
open up that door

!00 Eggs Say I love you

2010-03-11T22:09:00.000-08:00

Words Lead To Misunderstanding

What's hard about I love you?
What is hard about that.
It crawls all through the fiber of my thinking
When the wind shudders
Blasts like the rush
Down the cement tunnels
Here inside
It just reminds me of how
It has been since I woke up
One day and felt that howling
Though my fiber
It was blowing me down
Whipping me around, flinging
Me to the pavement.
I said I love you.
I love you
I love you
Hear it in the wind.

Blues
Azure chose me
For an afternoon swim
In the great singing sea
Indigo selected my mind
Thinking we might
wander the meadow
Cerulean indicated
That we could
Dance a petal softly
Turquoise picked my heart
From stones
Wearing away their edges
Yet the blue
Of your eyes
Evades ever offering
To Fold us both
Within two wings
So we can just simply fly away
Lifted into the beautiful
As one.

working on it...tbc

Going Home

2010-03-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

Where Was I?
I woke up in a room with an open space in the wall, like a mission might have
That openness to the outside elements surprised me
Which isn't at all where I went to sleep, another issue, so I stumbled up, pulled on something
Went out into the hall where children, children that were my nieces and nephews
(Returned to being very young) had drawn all over the wall
This upset me at first, as if that would be a source of trouble on their house wall
Until the artistry of the pieces pulled me in
One of them drew repeatedly these paddle boats, amazingly accurate
There were astronauts, buildings, intense works that really floored me
Mechanical, engineered, discovery oriented work
Still has me looking so carefully in my mind to see them.
I went down this strange convoluted hall through this series of bedrooms,
In one a child practiced cello, and I found their Dad, my brother in law sitting with
His brothers. I told him carefully about the sheer talent in this stuff on the wall
He came to look rather indulgently, sheepishly smiling as he can do,
I realized this was done on big wall sized paper
Stapled up and these images were something he said the kids did for me to see, for me.
After that remarkable moment, and it was amazing
I went back into the living area where there were lots of things going on
For one thing a friend was over playing with my young nephew
But he'd left a dog out, or something, and a very angry woman
Was there, like a neighbor, demanding to know where her dog was
So my sister in law was preoccupied with her, calling some of her girls
To go out and help find this dog with her,
But she was laughing at the fussing good naturedly as she does
In the other room my other nephew, different brother in law's son
He was using huge math pages, on a double white board, projected, or on big screen touch TV's
To answer math sets he was doing, he wasn't interested in the
Parts of the page explaining what to do, he was solving for x
That was amazing too for me, really so motivated as he is, so I went into the kitchen
Vast amounts of kid painting, drawing, school work
Lined the tables, up on the fridge, just the sheer
Amount of enthusiastic investigation. It was daunting.
A nun, yes a nun, I don't ever think I've dreamed a nun,
Was working with the neighbor boy, the buddy, who was in some trouble for the dog stuff
She was scolding him with some expression like he was like a hole in a condom.
I was completely dumbstruck, thinking, what? Did she say that?
So I wandered back to the kids rooms wondering about, of course, where I was
My own inadequacies parenting somehow, or something, something
But there was such a lovely amount of music lessons and activity going on in the house.
It really seemed like somewhere so familiar.

Go Ask Alice

2010-03-06T21:55:00.000-08:00

After Alice

After the movie
Leaving the seat
I got pushed hard
In the blackness
By a guy as he was attaching
Himself to the Wall
"Wow," he said to his friends
"Look," he knocked the surface
He was feeling
"Here, here, here
There are studs in there"

He was thrilled by the pole that
Held the rope thing
Where they line you up
Feeling it, showing it
To anyone with him that would look
"Other people watch out"
He started kicking at the air cussing.
Karate kicks over his head
I ducked one to my space.

"Is he driving?"
I said to a girl with him
She had her eyes
Deep in the carpet
A tiny frail little 17 year old
She didn't speak
But it was too much for her
'Well, if he is driving that's
Going to be a long
Interesting affection for the steering
Wheel."

I suggested to the theater boy
That they allow the karate kid
To feel a chair awhile
Call his parents on a cell
Cause he was zooming on acid
But the kid thought I was the adult.
He looked 16, and by then
Objectifier had stumbled over to the napkins
"These were trees man."

Pussy Willow

In spring
Flowers are blooming in the market
Tulips, daffodils, iris
Ripening as you
Gather a plastic bag
To stuff them in
A little bit like
It used to be

My son said
Come on mom
So we wheeled through
The store
I was looking for this and that
With a basket full of
Pussy willows
All jutting out
Everywhere

My son said
Ah shit
Partly because they extended
6 feet out of the cart
But it was
something to share with him
We had these
On bushes
When I was a kid
History lesson

He looked ready to
Choke me
I was rounding a corner
And one branch
Grabbed at a lady's
Sweater, opps I said
Smiling
You know,
Pussy willows.

By the milk a gut
was stocking butter
He had his cart moved back
For me to wheel by
My son said
I'm gonna jam
so I looked away to see what
He was doing

One of the pieces of
Tree poked out a long way
And stuck the stocker
In the eye.
Oh I'm sorry
He was pretty ouched
"What was that?"

His eyes were shut so I leaned in
I hate to tell you what
I said kind of quietly
He shouted
What was it
In my eye.
So I said
Well, it's Pussy willow.

Now he got kinda indignant
I felt pretty bad
After all I just stuck this in his eye
So I said
It's from a bush
It's really one of my favorites
Pussy willow
He said
"Pussy what?"

Looked at me
With a look
Just entirely unique
To a modern
American grocery store
It was easily
a different kind
Of poke.

to be continued

13 Steps

2010-03-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

Nonsense After Hitting My Head
Maybe at ten last night
It was time to go upstairs
Run a bath, get into pajamas
Call it a night.
But I forgot something
Downstairs
So I was at the top of the staircase
My leg gave way
I do now remember that
I remember lunging into space
Going forward flying
Feeling this
Acceleration, grabbing at the wall
Then my head, cheek
Hit the floor, kind of.
A lot got smashed

My neck got thrown back
That reminded me of the
Fall up the stairs
In chilldhood
I got stitches
And a skull fracture
At four years old,
But I was tripped that day.
When I was 40, Dad's third wife
I guess checking out
My telling her about this awful
Fall from being tripped
Running on the stairs
Suspicious
Informed me he said
I had NO skull fracture
What?

I actually laugh
It took me days
To stop trying to convince her
It had happened.
Finally I reassured myself
From the images
On a CAT scan
After a trip to the doctor.
People can do that
they can take away
What you know
Question you
About things
That even mark you
I don't know why.
The power it brings
Seems sort of useless
Invalidators.

When I fell last night
I went on to read
Something so odd
On my computer
I took it as a message
Just to me, you feel strange
At those moments,
It's impossible to communicate
Without looking nuts
Later,
After I fell
I sat for a few hours
Is the point
Shaken up pretty badly
With the pain
Over just going to bed
Lost a night's sleep.
When I hit my head
They made me stay awake all night
Way back as a child
That came back to me
I had a concussion.
I'm not sure
Why they did that
I think it was misinterpreting the Dr.
I'm sure I have one now
I might
Dizzy and tummy sick
I think I got syringomyelia then
I know I hurt with it now
Because I'm having
A whirlwind of nerve stuff
Beyond this mess
Maybe Dad's fifth wife
Can ask me to
Prove it

After this fall
I decided to sit at the computer
Wait to see if the vision
Came back in one eye
I kind of lost it awhile.
It's funny but
No one woke up
In the noises
In the house
I sat also to calm the headache
Figure out where to put ice
Had to crawl
Upstairs
Couldn't for quite a long time walk
Turns out the computer
Really didn't
Do much talking
I was worrying.
There was some
Hesitation of mine
Over reading
Some Hitchcockian
Stuff
But
I never was that into his films

I had to see them all
His films
In film class twice over
In college
That prof died
So the missing grade
Gave you two choices
Retake the class
(I attempted that)
Or just have an
On-going incomplete.
They tried when you
Graduated to turn that
Into an "F"
But my mother
Who knew the Dean,
In a rare act of my
Allowing myself to
Remain 11,
Called and had it made
Into another grade
Because I was so distraught,
Having failed to handle something
(the second time
I took it
To fulfill their requirement but
In the last week
They just removed my name
From the roster
Saying I wasn't
Properly registered
and therefore couldn't
Take it twice)
The Dean said
"What did she think her grade was?"
Here I had to hesitate
Listening to her phone call
She was friend's with
That Dean
So I said, "A"
That's what I then got

I probably had a B+ when he died
But I had plans to do well
On the final
Anyway I saw the films
Over again with a younger teacher
Trying in vain
To fix it.
He lectured A LOT
The older teacher
Was more satisfied to basically
Read to you and tell you
Film gossip.
Hitchcock was one
Maker where they showed them all
I was forever at the screenings
On big huge reels
In fact
That class probably took
20 or more hours a week
In the dark
I just don't like thrillers
Psycho stuff

Or falling down a stairs
Then reading
All the titles
Arranged into
A kind of cryptic
message
This book I'm reading
Says
When "a male" is doing that
Kind of speaking
He's struggling with
Shame
So I offer that
To my computer
So much for
reading
after a fall.

I'm pretty sure
Falling and busting
Your head in
Then reading
Something
Hoping for
Just some
Nice
Thoughts
Love
Isn't
Recommended by the AMA.

And when my feet and legs
Stop cramping so tight
Preventing me from
Getting any sleep
I'm going to try
This morning
To coax myself
Into a nice
Dream to coast
Off to sleep
Last night for a second I was
Sitting at a table
Greeting someone that
Was dressed in a rather
Old linen suit
Kind of dapper though
Who loved my black dress
A lot was fixed in that fantasy
I was just plainly there
Slipped in to the booth
Talking
As the dance music and clinking
All went on
Lost in a nice conversation
About where I came from
Then out to a dinner
In the elegant room
A gift of a diamond
That just fit
It was so beautiful.
It was astoundingly
Clear I was
In a world
I don't know
But this companion was so thoughtful
Loving
I was just going
Back to my room
When pain plunged
Me back toward the keyboard
To tell my story.