On This Day

Today My Grandfather

There he gave his life
It's Richard's birthday today ( September 28, 1906)
He would be older than the century that held his life

Happy Birthday to a man that lived
A life so very difficult in East Tennessee
That it reminds me now of kids I teach in this world so far away from then.

Lacking the ability to introduce him
To his great grand kids I am
Introducing them to just these memories of mine that are fading.

He used to say to me "Give me some sugar."
Nuzzle your cheek and take your hand
To share the land he worked, you'd go for a happy walk talk in silence

Actually my Grandfather was quiet, but teaching always
Calm, like water in the palm
When we talked it mattered, life distilled

Grandpa survived in ways most don't even vaguely care or
Understand this day.
Growing, factory, butchering, canning, events of doing.

He'd get me real milk.
That's a secret we had, he knew I'd balk at the cow's taste
Suppose I just told him as a kid would it was yucky, truthful

A chick caught my interest when I was five
and a hen sought to kill me for it
Grandpa always penned them after that, remembering his grin.

I reminded him of his mother, he said
Who wed the man that shot his dad
His Dad who tried to stop that man from beating his dog senseless

His was the life of fire on the mountain
He worked at "the plant" in town all week
Had seven children that still survive

I recall us eating blueberries and cream
At an oiled red checkered tablecloth
In a kitchen with a wood burning stove

He didn't take to hand outs or others
Doing for him refusing indoor plumbing
Because it wasn't from his own efforts, but as a gift from his kin

We went up on Bald Mountain once, huge beautiful chunks of marble are on that site
He, uncle and my father, the men, dealt with a flat tire and no spare
Somehow in fury they aimed a great deal of anger womanward.

I saw that, the fierceness of those men
The rawness of the angers in a truly difficult situation
But you saw too the protectiveness, they accepted the job of hunters.

He wore shirts that I loved to put my nose in
My affinity for white shirts goes to this Grandpa
With the stiff starch it was simple inhaling love

Once I opened the big door of our faculty apartment to see a man
He was holding a few clothes on hangers
I yelled to my mom the laundry man was here

Grandpa laughed. He had actually
Boarded a bus to come see me at four
To come to be my playmate and we colored our pictures.

When I was nine he did that again, he seldom left his mountains that envelope and smother you
He came and took me downtown (on the buses I rode with my driver buddies)
We walked and I admired a pile of rings strewn in the window of Yagle's Jewelery

He said "Wait a minute." I really thought
He was going inside to perhaps use the restroom
Coming out he gave me the ring I admired.

He bought me that without a question. I was mortified.
I thought "My father is going to kill me."
He said "It'll be our secret."

It was a ruby ring, it was on my hand until my thirties.
It is still our secret because it was the most
Spontaneously kind thing I ever knew.

My grandpa is turning today to travel the sun again.
But he is many years gone from living it, felled by a stroke and cancer.
I missed the end of his life, my father taking this

The high price of divorce fell on the kids that got
Treated to my father's destructive lies.
It would have been impossible to reconcile my words into his pot there, so we were kept away.

I saw grandpa in his casket after four years of no contact, looking so small, frail and stonelike
Waiting the judgment he talked to me about
The elemental truth he knew was: living is harsh.

Judgment would be harsher still.
He wasn't gilting the lily on that.
He lay there as if in cloud of anger waiting it and I felt so lost to assuage this.

My grandfather was gone away to the rock froze ground he tilled
Harsh wind on a country hill where his men laid him that day in the freezing eternity of stone.
Unakite actually. Which is marbled with color and polished as a jewel, but just rock, rare. Like him.*

His kids went to be teachers, PHD's , be in service all, run factories
Hold positions in Kodak, be artists, nurses, nuclear plant specialists, mathematicians.
He birthed physicists, pharmacists, leaders and lovers. Workers.

In his children and their children and their children
Are the things that he , himself, did not get to do
Go to libraries, drive sedans, fly airplanes, chose upholstery.

He did not walk the golf courses of a luxury or line up his drive.
No, grandfather worked the land, fished, and kept the children
Alive so that all of us could have all that we have.

My grandfather sacrificed for his family
He read the Bible as his book, he looked hard at the lessons
He looked uniquely at the texts and from this extracted things he shared.

He told me that I was to treat others with respect.
He told me to look at actions, told me to be proud of my artistic talents.
He valued that he said.

Gifts. He spoke of gifts.
He considered me a gift. He considered children as our most precious
Treasures and he took time with his butterball my cousin

And all the kin he had owe him our lives,
My grandfather Richard's birthday is today
And I'm celebrating him in a place he did not know.

In the poem and land of a typing ethernet
A price of walless brain wave and emotional dysfunction
Far from his hands that knew well this land.

Happy Birthday Grandfather.



*The granodioritic gneiss unit crops out in a band trending northeast from the Tennessee-North Carolina state line through Sioux to the Nolichucky River. Historically, these rocks have been called the Cranberry Granite, Beech Granite, and unakite. Unakite is known for its bright pink, red, dark green and white to bluish gray colors. Collectors who often polish their specimens into attractive lapidary pieces seek samples of unakite.

Shedding The Overcoat

Was It About the Weight One Feels

I'm holding a book the History Of Art
To show an eager group of young artists a picture. They're ready to
interpret Van Gogh into their own still tempera sunflowers
On construction paper with Q-Tips.
I am thinking about both
My tuna sandwich and an upset tummy that arose again today before
This lesson dipping our toes in the cultural pool.
"To Meme or not To Meme." that is somewhat the question,
when the book shifted and a breast almost
Slipped into view from a page
Of another artist revealed.

There were a lot of breasts as it turned out, so I,
A first grade teacher lost in meme-ings,
I decided to count them,
There were round thighs and juicy limbs, succulent flesh
Rather all through this book of all of time image from cave to David
From fig leaf to Newton.
Quite the bouquet of desires seems to suspend the meadow of this guilted
Art, into the den of antiquity (get Groucho if you can)
Looking at my kids and thinking of how this would
Remove my career now to "picture walk" and cause gales of peeling laughter
The nudity so ridiculous to them in the new world workbook order,
I was wondering why all the naked ladies?

There was one, as I was hiding this behind my desk in an empty room at lunch
Dressed in her skin on an Arabian divan
So devine I suppose with a black choker around her neck
The look is clear, the reason for this painting , completely clear.
Painted in times supposedly more stilted and sutured than this time,
Far more devout and in commune with spirit
She sits like a porkchop on a plate.
I thought, I majored in this field?
My early life creating was to this end, a cutlet?

Once to my daughter I said of this observation of hers
that museums were great if you needed to look in everybodies clothes,
Giving her in reply what old people told and taught me
That old standby
"It is so beautiful, the female body."
I didn't believe it really, not particularly, not at all actually, and never think that,
at an exhibit like this.

I always think the same thing, well almost always,
What was the purpose of painting so much female flesh
What compelled this to the canvas?
What possible set of needs or concerns over rode all else
To make this the thing I'm having to hide in my lessons?
Is it my age or my lack of beauty that finds this
so utterly ridiculous that we are
Projecting onto these treasures from the past, these windows into
Those that came before us the skin that cannot be shown,
was not shown so that now
In a time of so much utter undressing we find
We cannot find art, looking backwards we look upon
The forbidden was and transgress
Our children with the inability to remove from them
The stigmas around these functions of being and expression such that
To see a two thousand year old nude, or one almost 80 descend
Is indeed for me a firing offense?

At that I laugh and put the book into the dumpster on my way home.
The Jansons can just come here and explain it to all of us.

Stilll Haven't Found

Footfalls in Santa Barbara

still working on this




Watching

Looking out plate glass they seemed to race
Shifting weight around a red buoy
Sailing dreams in calm heat

As I ordered my plate of salmon and a margarita
Having two actually in a silent lunch.
A lady in a wheelchair sat by the bathroom, I visited twice
Eating her food alone watching these sailing kites
Fly through the waters, she was immobile but motorized.
The juxtaposition of those two whispered me and my life.

The waiter said thank you over and over again
Thanked you for your choices, he said thank you the way
You would if so grateful to get it over with,
"Thank you for ordering calamari appetizers and that crab cake
Thank you for the clam chowder and thank you for stopping by,"
As I sat on the wharf and watched the sails
Round the buoy, "Let's thank them too."
" Maybe you would like some dessert?"

Something about the water, it reflected the light, it
Was as invisible as the panes I looked beyond
To see this day passing, while we ate watching the waterdance
For signs that we could do this, together, thank you.






Mate

Flying the flag of the pirate Black Pete
They tossed one back and sang yo ho, it's part of the trip.
It cost you a fair high price to get aboard this grand
Ship for the tour. That probably was the real piracy
Of the experience, but we looked to see if you got a parrot
And some cussing, drink, wenches or treasure trinkets.
It looked to be a rather maidenly voyage of
The glass bottom tours. No boarding, gouging
Swords or stem to stern stuff. O eye patches
Do you think in hundreds of years
Around some bay will be boats flying the flags
of the gangs or terrorists or groups of our times, our happy criminals?
That sent to my mind not the Jolly Roger but the
Corporate Raiders under banner of the dollar bill flying. On BMW's.
Glass bottom boat under flag of the pirate
Turns into the luxury sedan or Hummer limo touring
Urban decay to see the way it used to be.








At Moby Dick's the Language of the Menu

Strawberry margarita, Red Lady special, (hit twice blender in a glass)
Calamari, yeah, the Tentacles gone just breaded hunks of rubber
with tartar, a house specialty, chewy.
Water, soda, not diet, lemonade, Hefazizen, no glass
We appreciate a bit of bread as you can see, Butter basket
I'll order last, he wants a plate of clams and fries, Diggers
She have the halibut and bowl of chowder, White
Another round of waters too and bring
Us both another glass of this to drink, see red again,

She wants a rare steak , ok, walking, or maybe crab cakes
He'll have the sandwich with the fish, yeah the one that says Top Fin
and I'll just get the salmon grilled with nothing on it, Naked? Sure
Do we need to say the Mighty Dick and the Boiler's special
the Fisherman's delight and Thar She Blows because if we do
We can't complete the order.
Can't talk like that anymore for laughing.
Yes I said he's getting the Mermaid under grass but hold the bed of
Seaweed because he hates it. Just spread an extra layer of
Mayo over her toasty digs and they'll both be happy
It'll slide down easier.
I need a bib and some shore leave after we dock.
See told you, ordering like this makes me seasick.



Someone

Someone here just lost their heart
To a person that left them
Alone to sit on a shore

Someone here needs enough money
To pay some bills
That overwhelm them with worry

Someone here has never seen their
Uses in life, not had enough hugs
Not felt friendships

Someone here bounces with the joy
Of feeling the sand in their toes
And hearing the seagulls looks to a picture taker

Someone here is running the shore
As the trim themselves
Into their body a beauty is being built

Someone here argues for belief
While they sit with a vibration
Who sees them a fool for needing a way.

Someone here has offered their care and time
To a day that held the possible
While waves washed it away

Someone here was lost on this day
Capturing the moment no one
Cared to freeze, of someone nowhere but here.



No Railings

We reached a section
Down the pier walking, open
There with no railings.


It Once

This is not the wood
That burned, see this pier ablaze
In memory of


Having Pistachio

Sweet shops with Salt Water
Taffy , ordering ice creams
Waffle cones, French silk.

Shells

Clam held by rubber bands
A cowrie, abalone
Sea snail bought today.


Click

My daughter said no
To capturing her there on
The pier but I lied.








They Turned Around

The days went with such
Swift speed that the goods
Bought were blown through time
As just laughing bits
Of memories lost to my photographs

They turned their heads and
Days were gone of childhood
Toys gotten and knees skinned
Places seen, walking
Into the now they looked

Hoping to find it was there
In the markets, an us again,
Trying to revisit the shopping
Done as little ones, lost homes gone by
Stocked with once we

They turned their heads
When upon a time they smiled
And took a photo
Having now outgrown the thrill of capture
In a mom's camera.




Casbah

Hot saffron burning sun
Tents billow in the souk of Moroccan wares
Patterns swirl, tassels on cushions for our den
The one we built in Marrakesh
Salaam A Ley kum, A Ley Kum Salaam
Rock the Casbah.




Commerce

Older than the spices
That wrapped man around a planet
And laid the paths
In Silken pursuits
The market stood.
The whore and saviors there
Faced into her routes
As the stream of rivers to the seas
She built the system
Capable of moving through the multitudes
Decades of man's destinies
His unfolded wants sit on her tables.
Looking at her wares
They buy.

Gold exchanged in the blaze of color.
Under tents in silent
Bargaining over veiled eyes
The ardor of a deal
Mysterious
Capable of knowing no one
As valued above his coin.
Aging timelessly,
Watching young girl grow to dust
Measuring on balances
Weighing 300 year floods, plagues of locusts
And the famine
That is man's footprint.

Infidels and faceless men
Moved her goods
The faithful bought alongside the
Hordes of unclean
Trade passing through them
Goods moved in the blink of their eye.
Exotic things
Stacked by her
Greedy and her resigned men,
Her carpets walked
By artisans and craft
Lover and tyrant
The Casbahs of need and want.

In the late afternoons
As market turns cold
Emptying her commodities
The souls drifting to
Commune.
Empty this market
Exhaling the humanity from
The reddening skies that watch
Closing now her tired
Seeing eyes to
Begin a watch of
Blind weeping.





Ruby
Tangerine, opal, aubergine, olives.
These float
Inhale the winds
Of trade
Tents of madras,
Inks washing geometrics
Amaryllis,
Jasmine, saffron amber, indigo
Tied with golden threads.







My Roommates' Closet

Nothing could be separated out from the rest
To put on the counter and buy on Monday
We were walking through the time
Of our children, out strolling through the
Shopping to try to find normal pleasure with them again.
They were tense feeling held by our guilt laden bonding
In these times of trepidation, reinventing selves in flux of change
As we too become someone else, that copes now with children that grow
Into roommates closets and know Hawkings in a morning out
Strolling their school. Within his mind unfolds
The universe, within this day of calm observation
Unfolded the limits of these children held still by our hands.




Green Elephants
The orange met the indigo with triangles on the frame
That collapsed into an umbrella of green elephants
Facing one another in shows of territory and strength, protection.
Designed onto fabrics that shade us from knowing the burning of sky.

A lotus framed the center as a harmony in this form.
It is Lord Ganesha, rider of the mouse.
He blesses this market, first asked for favor at the start of the day
Sought for help with the endeavors of life.

Ganesha rides the rat of our ignorance.
With ears to hear and a call to activation
The green elephant calls to us to stand and act on the truth,
This parasol my heart sought out, we were meant today to walk in her cool wake.

In Ganapati the universe lies held
By his gigantic belly in her body this elephant divines truth
That the mind is mighty and hears the words we tell as lies
My umbrella shielded me from harm, designed to say my secrets are safe.

Under the orange and indigo patterns
A green elephant was listening to the world passing and chatting
She held the light around her darkness, while breezes blew through her
She held the universe I have not known, she absorbed the strength of her sun.












urine that's the way it smelled
nooking into the shop to look at things
that are called antiques

at one time, another place, these things were cast off
i wore once the old mans pants and vests
being a version of keyton styling

a girl i knew, secretary in the office
of the president of the university,
said she admired my willingness to wear "anything"

greeting me this betty boop with the biggest head
in my looking through the junk that clutters
it induces a claustrophobic zen

joan, mom in law, liked betty boop, she used her to
decorate her apartment before she died
and her things returned to these kinds of shelves after

I feel like I'm looking in a tomb in egypt
in these shops like a massive dig unveiling the culture
staring anthropologically, collected for needs, their afterlife

smelling of the pee and the dust
being sold and stolen, grave robbed, to the markets
by the living into new nowheres with no way to know them

history and thing lost, story untold, it holds secreted
betty there, who once was caressed by the laughter of
a russian dancer that had a room for her memories

and these ruby plates served cakes that were made
by a dedicated wife of a professor, she mourned his passing
for 37 years alone until she no longer recalled how to cook

there was a picture of a fat ugly breasted drooping nude
monster woman my spouse said looked
hideous, but it was a self portrait looking like me now

in this back space in a place of simpson dolls and around some
rusty lunch boxes was something remarkable
a piece of a letter written on a postcard

it said that there's was a true love that
never would die, it spoke of the
hearts that were forever linked, written by man signed your joe

that card I took to ask the price
printed on a scene from a city awhile past, the thirties,
would anyone know this now as their family

it cost ten dollars, really rather outrageous to me
and i didn't have that in my purse
like everything there it was out of time and place, expensive

no way back home, the barges burnt,
betty boop greeting the next set of wandering wallets
smelling their way into the jumbled past, i left


















Shark dressed Hawaiian serving you a beer
Wrapped by a lei says Paul Newman to me with
A bit of Cat on the Hot Tin and Big Daddy's
Maybe Dean might pass this by in a movie
We forget the scene but the bad boy
Walks in looking for a night of taming his shark
In the beauty of an Elizabeth or Eva Marie.
Finding this Chanel wrapped American slip draped piece of pie
To swallow through the mediums of celluloid projection
Into rooms of tables of rolling balls across pool tables, shots
Smokes, long cool ones gulped by our throats in vicarious
Libidinous voyeurism, he evokes the mako, and these places
Of a sultry slipping into a scene of danger and desire.





Magically Delicious

He babbled something about a leprechaun, gold, repaying a coin
lucky charm
On a page written to be found and wondered about
as a piece of this trail into his being, I could read it,
wandering there again today it trailed back to writing on the end of his love

There is a lot in these pages he wrote about lost love, betrayals, desires fading
the way it goes, knowing "the end"
Lots of writing about this as if it was
spun from the myths and stories of a magical place with the spiritual
knowing of a being that reflects to us all the time that's known, his doubts so great

Mirror man in lucky shamrock was wandering was on a beach
building a castle to lock up this or that
intent on writing to us. To me. Hurting.
And so I read it all when lead there by hand to find it
In a terrible terrible time so much was failing me, my eyes especially

He cannot trust passion or my spirit
Doesn't believe in lasting love, loses interest waxes and wanes
Misleads, disappears, worries and struggles
cannot hold on even for a moment or two through the winds of
discovering a flawed being

Is the devaluing and the reality flooding
I guess this is something you have practice doing, you said as much
right from the first day you sought the last.
giving me the impression you did function within the biblical limits
you so disdain.

The greatest story ever told is written about inevitable conclusions ,
it's downhill from here...yeah yeah okay....it blows
Write of change, inevitable disappointment and
Give up on someone who cares but don't shame me with your mirror i wasn't looking
In to get out. Not trying for luck this time.

That was your coin. You can find the music
and play on but I'm singing to us both
A song I wrote myself, it's unique
Quiet, no one has evr heard it but the two of us
It plays for free, it is lucky enough, it is enchanting enough. One day you'll hear it.








Christ, Baby Boomers working out their dad stuff in public,
(with apologies to a doctor who can barely take the narcissism of it)

That porch of yours isn't one everyone can sit on
Full of values of the working pop
Those that put in a 9 to 5 and chugged and kept on going.
They were a special breed I'm pretty sure
I was born at the end of the boom
To a country bred vet that forgot that you can't hit the baby
Or terrorize her either, or do a lot of things 45 years
Kept plastered in her shut mouth.

But you know better chili pepper
You know me to be a billowing skirted 60's indulgent
Hipping thing with all about me, swilling my Perrier now
And seeking enlightenment facing a crystal
Looking in the mirror and blaming the ole man
For all that wasn't just right. That chafs.
Years of saying just give me another chance
I had a hard time of it, you wouldn't believe it.

But porch dweller, I never spoke of my family, not in the 45
Years of trying to keep them from shooting someone
From calling the FBI, from going to stay
On the 8th floor, a euphemism for the psyche ward.
I signed away my life to try to keep it together.
I worked. I got no calls, my dad
wasn't steeped in values of the hard worker, but he worked hard.
And he manipulated to destroy us.

The correct response to hot sauce is apparently
To sit and let it burn you, die with these secrets
Recall I talked here as you did not talk to me.
No one asked about it.
This wasn't sung out from the Malibu canyon.
But the generation did sit with that to chant about it.

Silently, go internally, accepting the fact
Behind the windows there is nothing
That if you told someone you were once so hurt
That if you bared it out to the world or in this case a friend
It would be so that you were marked
Their ungrateful goat, derided for it.

Would you like to change places, porches?
Try out the life you think you have analyzed
And found to be the tapestries
of wrapping self in that hunt for the love
That will last, so sophomoric.


And far away? If it is my porch you'll sit upon
Know you'll be unsafe from birth, abused, hit, intimidated,
Frightened, left to be sexually hurt,
Used as a way to survive by those you want to love you
Expected to be silent, publicly announced to be a waste,

And then so scared come upon someone who in their
Limitless knowledge of what you need to do
prescribes a cure they'd never try
Permanent silences, facelessness and
Saying what a great guy.
Yep the pop to look up to.

Waiting for Mrs Goodbar

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

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

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