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.

A Day in the Life of the Cafeteria

Butter

Momma sculpted all out food out of butter
Required with searing fury it be eaten
Pies, cakes, roasts, fudge, vegetables
Layered with a stick of fat.
Rich and slimy, like
The witch of Hansel and Gretel
Required me be fattened up
(maybe ready for the Kill)








Woodburn

In my school where i was invisible
In 4th through 6th when not being thrown down the stairs
The teacher said the abuse must certainly be me
I got to going in the kitchen to help the cooks and make some friends.
They let me wrap the silverware and talked about
lives in the mountains, their recipes, their gardens
Miner husbands and often
we would laugh about how harsh kids could be
To me.

They taught me how to make oatmeal no bake peanut-butter cookies
(I also learned in 4 H , home ec. to cook some things)
They taught me to cook white beans, corn bread
green beans with bacon drippings, luscious bread
In time I learned what they did in our small cafeteria.
When I moved on to junior high downtown I spent time there
Doing the same at breaks. Hiding to get there unnoticed.
Learned pizza their style which was very unique,
Pepperoni rolls and the cinnamon buns that were
the specialty. Then I was thin.
That group were more Italian, and they were very
Expressive in the making of food for kids
Remarkably impolite to them.

High school it was different I never ate, sat on a bleacher and studied
Missing those warm kitchens. I've loved
To cook my entire life. I can do it pretty well
I suppose the recipes and the practicalities are all from these places I ate
The food of the schools. It was good in the hills.
It was such a surprise to find the food for kids here in my teaching life
Now it is just pulled and warmed, so unappealing and poorly made
Below what they could do if allowed to cook
And given enough people to do it better.
This seems the way it is in my teaching world.
The cafeteria is managed 'at the top 'and seen to
Compete for salaries or something. no pride.
It makes you sick to see the stuff they serve
Think of the collard greens and other stuff
We once had, golden tomatoes
Mandarin salads, cucumbers in vinegar
And even the franks and beans were good.
Then, when food wasn't my enemy, but a
Salvation from a beating day.

14 Stations

Babel

You alphabetize the U
and misplace the Y for C.

It takes the R in re-direction
T for two is no perfection.

The B cannot
Nor will the A

(No longer can we P)
You can Double every U

And none of us will ever
C the Y as B-ing true.




Orion

A soft voice
Illuminated the sky
Look, you should
See Orion. So
I looked.

It's beautiful I said.

We began to talk
Hushed, calm, lullaby.
Our woolen scarf
Holding us in wonder

You're beautiful we said.

Discovering our Orion
Another way
Inside the looking
Far away
A gentle voice

Buttered up sweet night in reply.



'Observable Universe'

The screaming man at the
Meeting said the universe we see
Was "Just a mistake."

That it was hydrogen
he said, this proved it wrong, then he
chuckled inwardly.

When you see it this way
Time and space he said
Cannot be taken for granted.

Just existence. The oneness
The wholeness, the totality
That's granted. Energy is.

But then he screamed, "You jerk"
Tried to demonstrate the profanity
of the model of the universe he projected it out on me

The 60's came to my mind
When he was screaming jerk on
on Carson and talking then about the circle

Winding up the wheel eternally
Sliding into the womb.
He was such a biter though and smoking his weeds.

Measuring the universe at edges recycling
You should be attacking me
For this he said, question it.

But little gray lambs looked up
Flock in this
Age of reason where time and space defined.





Power roars
I am
Anger spews
It's time.



Gamer

Move your piece
My mind moves mine
My stance is laden
Your ready defeat is time.




Unkind

If you take the
last cupcake.

That actually is divine
(I'll offer of course)

It's completely fine.

Later I'll find a way
To make myself

Another one from clay.




Profaner

Inside the beauty
of a flower
Your heart
Is wrapped by
Knowledge
We want to know
Tomorrow.



Bore

In taking the floor
It became yours
(So I sat down)

Watching you take yourself in arms
On ballroom floor
For the waltz of one.



Withholding

Has its merits.
In the ration

Saving for the "future"
Heightening desire
Control of the day
Share your secrets inside self.

Then to
Channel this into resenting.
The "others"
Those not in on "the plan"
See them fail
To find
The rationality of
Your mind.

A pretty thing I learned
One day while saving this
Time slipped away

I'd rationed freedom
It left my day
Like love it was no game to play.



Dreams

Flash of insight in a night
It held for you a power in flight
You walked in a hall
Glided in a glen
Went to the source and back again.

It could be visions from the hunt
Allude to fears and inner worth
Allow you a stuff to paste
Down things that often
Seem to drown you
Hound you.

Movement in our daily strife
When asleep you strive to come to life.



Da Dub

If 2 hearts can
Beat as one
What's that thumping

Why carry the gun

Mine is thumping in its fears

An early beat
Your running feet

No way
to live with rhythmic
dis-rhythmic

Combined count
I'm out.



Dice

Get rolled
to number six

What thing in life has this ever fixed?

Even if you number seven

Would the win be a lush slice of heaven?

What if you got a double?

Brother you're still
In some real trouble.

Toss them high
In worldly brilliant iridescent sky.

But it looks like your life work
Crap shoot a lie?

Then rolling assuredly we die.


Thief

Ah the back story is
My tummy hurts
Washing every single piece of life

A raccoon with her dinner
Bandit to this
Picnic living.




Scared

This thing you are doing
Is frightening. Scary
It makes you so ugly
Defines you as mean
Mocking in such extreme
Without your path
Of goodness, at my expense, this laugh.

Blowing others to bits
To get them from behind
A guerrilla tactic
You practicing saboteur
Built a wall of distrust
You were offered
A kiss and you
Morphed it into this.


Pandora Held It

Given a key
To unlock the mind
You opened a heart
Hope fled mankind.


Not me, it's you.

Pink Aquarium, Rain, Love

The aquarium I keep for my 1st graders is pink.
It kind of matters to them with frogs, fish
hey, it's cool.
We have a plecostomus that has grown four inches
He's so big.
Over the winter break someone turned off the power
for two days to the filters, so that they burned out in coming back on,
This is exciting to explain but you have to feed water
Into them starting them up.
They were probably doing some electric check in my room on the
Computers that don't work and so now the few fish left alive are dying.
Or maybe someone just decided to kill my tank.

Try thinking about that the night before school starts.

I'm a teacher, not a savior and so they are just dead.


It's raining outside and it's late and I'm sitting here
Covered with fish water, as I bleakly in vain tried changing the water.
So it's not working.

I'm listening to the rain...drip. Pouring now.

I have no meter.
I'm out of rhyme.
My smile is not good.
And I'm in love with a mime.

Actually I'm in love with a shadow.
Who would probably find this humorous if only for the
Fish germs that I splashed all over myself
And I used words not allowed in school finding this
Wreck of the 1st grade hindenberger.
And then topping that off I'm watching them die.

Were you ever in love with someone?
Someone that was "unattainable" ? And perhaps
A bit of the problem was also that it reminded you of all the other screw up
things in your rather impressive list of screw ups in your life?

Rain reminds me of a funny story. Not about fish.
I used to walk in my hometown. Long
Impressive distances. Like 15 miles to the mall. I had no car
And maybe I walked out of need to move.
I walked to the mall at least 15 miles away but it began to pour and I missed the last bus.
I had no money but the drivers knew me, just missed it.
So I walked. Had to cut over a huge hill and through an area of fields.
In West Virginia, Morgantown, think
Major fields.

I got in thick mud. Which was hard. I was littler then.
My foot went in and the mud took my shoe. It sucked my shoe away. No fishing it out.
So I walked with a bare foot through the rain another, umm ten miles home.
No one noticed at home. It was about 45 degrees. I got sick later from it.
That feeling is how I feel about telling the kids about this tank.
And how it feels this happened.
And how it feels, my love , to know

You are there but I can never know where.
It's raining and I'm headed out.

I

On You

There is something Little Rabbit Foo Foo about you, no?
"Running through the forest scooping up the field mice, bopping them on the head...."
Noticed that rubbing the newest lump on my knoggin
Yeah, the one right here stickin out thousands of miles
Something that makes me want to notice the little things
With my chestnuts roasting on the open fire.

So here we are.........
You make we an invisibility impossibly awaiting the call
that won't come.
You speak in the voicing of a boy wearing grandfathers hat.
You veil more than the Arabian nights.
You have too much to lose but keep looking.
You seem to enjoy obfuscation.
But even better winning the point in a game.
You have beautiful eyes and mind.
There is nothing to change now.

And along comes the Goof Fairy
And she says, Little Rabbit Foo Foo hopping through the forest scooping up
The field mice...."

Dreams

Of Sylvia

My daughter was in my dreams two night past
At college now, there are days I grieve my loneliness.
And think how foolish, stop this.
My life was built around her tiny hand in mine.
You would think each night dream would be of her
But, no, just there two nights ago, after three months away.
And I felt anxious. Suffocating and woke gasping.
Images of not really having made her ready enough to meet the dangers
In life, these were in my flashes of insight.

I put on my little lamp and looked out into my room.
Alone with these fears. That my daughter was not safe.
In the morning I couldn't reach her by phone.
It's mildly ironic as this was the recurrent nightmare I've had for
Twenty some years about her father, and in many ways she is his image.
She is very hard to catch, well, like a moonbeam. Cliche but so.
She left me an email this morning, a cry in her dark.
Her friend  at school bled to death internally in the night,
Some horrific collapse at their school that no one could understand
And I thought of the dream, and how hard it is
For me to protect her from this awful pain.


Little one she was so hurt when characters in her books suffered.
I tried to pluck those books away from her
Stone fox still hangs in the air as a story that she felt so deeply.
In my daughter my capacity for empathy and pain, joy and dreaming found companion
She has gone to her school that is popped from Potter's
And death struck like a viper but I cannot
Pull this volume away, she's read it now
I can't take this kind of knowing from her or shield it.

On the phone this tiny distracted frightened voice said
Bravely , "He was so kind and loved by everyone,
there was no one that did not speak so well of him, mummy."
And you want to encapsulate this in some grand wisdom, design,
Some truth and all I could say was I had no reasons.
The first time I ever saw her bleed she cut herself on a metal train toy
That I threw away brashly and instinctively called it "Bad."
To distract her. And it got to me. I've seen this so much
With three children and teaching but that tiny cut on her finger got to me.
Syl was so shocked and looked at it in horror.
This thing hurt me, how could this happen?

This thing, this nightmare hurts her, how can such a thing happen?
How can such a good child go away like this?

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.

poison

went to bed couldn't drag sleep thinking
of the year of living poisonously
thinking of being told I'd maybe be seen over coffee nowhere
of sleeping alone ten years
and being alone a much longer time with a bitter mom
and a furious father, hiding in a closet and panic coming in this night waking,

thinking of "mom, mom" said in my heads and nights my son wakes me blinded
and then a snake large and elaborate
starts to move back and forth
through the spaces
that are now a home underwater
(i'd cleaned the aquarium where things are so amiss tonight)
in my two day three day work hiatus with a warring tummy and illness brewing
this snake moving in the house of water
that is now my home with a father fish researcher
who i can't see exactly as anyone i know
i call him screaming, screaming and he does come
and somehow he is never bothered in his work of the wall and door
not seen through the walls of science and meanings

he loves this snake and stares as one might in a mirror
but the kids (i am ranting) it will get the kids
please the kids think of the kids face this
they will be, if not now, one day, poisoned
and i'm in fear for my life. I'm begging.
he kills it, beheads it, after he moves me behind a door
closes the door. They are alone, in fact I can't see him
i don't think he'll kill it, and I'm so hurt.
Hurt in a way that I feel through the dream.
but he shows the head wrapped in something
then he's somehow himself taken by his assurance. It won't
do anything to him, it's like watching a horror film.

Over in the water, or on the floor, he's hurt by venom
9the house on the edge of a pier
or something right at the water)
and the father is somehow gone with this, as he should be?
As in dead and gone.
I dont know it all screams at you with silence
a plate with water with drips from the fangs got him.
It's unclear to me now, it was clear then
and then the dream went on into other things of the then.
Relief and things that had siblings iI do not have
(this is the way it is for me my mind is less now
i think i am suffering from memory issues)
and unfamiliar explanations of this
other fishy things
and on and on like a net of dream nonsense but
i pulled awake to write this down in the right now
as i went to sleep this night in utter
confusion and i remember gale( forgetting this followed the snake)
and anise were in my dream
i was talking to him at the table in that house
about how he backed out of running against senator byrd,
how he was encouraged to run, he told me as he might really talk,
of wanting to live without these pressures
and i asked, as i might, about their trip to china
and trips to see the world, wanting to hear more of travels.
Telling them of the poison, the snake the children
and then I pulled into being awake to think that
i understood everything about the year
having looked hard at all the writing and words and pieces without
understanding what was i
thinking. On going to sleep saying I'm so sad and ill
and on and on saying that too, too much to index even
such oddity and fragility
such exposure and such an awareness of loss and repulsion
and the snake wound through all of it
all of it.

Not, the old man said lovingly,
at all harmful if left alone
as if the two of them were somehow related
at least in some kind of admiration
and i woke up with this stomach turning in utter anxiety

typing

It's Not Easy Being Green

Today it was calm and music played reminding me of links to my life
Days when I felt like I was vital, and today I was unable to pull away from
This fatigue of the heart and body that is so difficult
To manage until midway through the day
I just break. And it shakes its sadness all over and I'm just without hope.

Just that sick, and, if I forget, the blood peering up at me in the
Staff bathroom reminds me things aren't ever working out
It's as real as it looks staring back like a fresh cut.
And there isn't anyone to call to talk to about it.
There really isn't anyone to talk to about it.

Random Emo-Poems

Kidney Stones

Aren't brilliant like diamonds
You don't wish or worry with them
Like pocket stones,
They don't blaze a sapphire star
Or reflect the moon's glow.
These stones are unable to
Build a wall.
Or be mined from a quarry
Michelangelo cannot choose one
To look deep inside to find the David.
They are unworthy of a verse.

No, the kidney stone that's tearing me apart
Is a flake, minuscule, cowardly.
Worthless as anything
But an agent of torture.
Dust from a heartless god
That on waking tossed this at you
Reminder of your impertinence
The insignificance of you.
Irritant in a cosmic shoe,
Felled by a speck humorously called
A "stone."


Ode To Joy

I haven't talked to my brother in a year
And it doesn't feel so painful or sad.
Well no more painful or sad than how it was,
Nor does it feel particularly depressing.
Not to hear from someone (who knows you are in a hospital),
Or felled by illness. This seems my normal kind of relationship
This a brother that I tried to silently support for 40 years.
It actually feels like I've been tossed away
Like a used tissue or a peanut shell.

When I set a limit on the funds I could send
And couldn't accept the blame anymore
For the things 40 years old I had no control over,
Couldn't find ways to hold and hear his angers
Or agree with the justifications
For self destruction as revenge in "our case".
He apparently decided that I'm not worth his time
(My father concluding the same in my teens.)

It seems that the movie has ended.
Then you just walk out in the light
Disoriented.


Chelsea Mourning

We had a fight because I didn't care anymore
felled by pain and bloody urine

Because I wanted to be talked to directly
See if I'd be cared for, laughed at, taunted, made fun of for feelings of exclusion, and lesser worth, derided on intellect or not be treated as an equal, simply channeled and managed.
Be put in a compartment. I wanted to know so I tested and it was combative.

If I was in my mind form we'd go arm and arm.
But now we are locked in a wrestling match.


Ice Bath

Ran the shower
Distracted
by my eyebrows talking
Bright lights blaring
In a late night attempt to hush crawling itchy skin.

Stepped on the pain
It reached through the
screaming
Cold I froze
Neck talking about hair's failings again.

Burning ice
Legs woke up first
struggling to fall
Telling my head
The water is cold ice not hot, belly was chastising me about it.

Arms broke off
And my head rolled
on the linoleum.
Every part of myself
A cacophony of irritated nerves conversing.



No One Loves the Fatwoman In the Circus

Not for mind or heart am I admired
Certainly not for walk or stance.
Gaining this was a kind of disappearing.
When very thin the invitation then said bring it on.
And that was another kind of weight.
You couldn't understand that either.
As a woman to be wanted for something I had no part in making
Just those thighs or breasts please
And a rump to get palmed while I writhed
This was how it was, and my thinking was
often requested to be turned off
"Just try not to talk."
I created that person again on paper, the thin
And seductive person that hints at all the lovely thoughts
That are in my mind free to get.
But I put her inside my writing to be picked out of bones
Paper girl was able to walk and talk to people
That would never look twice my way.
She made a paper lover imagine her face.
I think the only time a face was ever required it was so good.

The fatwoman in the room is the deal breaker.
And sick with all the things despised, age, cancer,
Memories, hurts, needs, desires, appetites and willingness.
The repulsion is so very extreme
That everyone is needed elsewhere.
No one loves the fatwoman.

It's a very busy time, for my invisible lard.

The Day

Rescue Fantasy Meets Life

I have a rescue fantasy that came in a dream last night again.
I'll wake up one day in a stadium of golf, football and baseball
All sports are there and being played, (with this fantastic kids sports set up too.
It has this kid elevator to the activities for them on the various complex "floors")
Seated in one event I'm basically watching nothing, which isn't interesting me,
I look over from my seat
and see next door the old abandoned Victorian on the street that runs by this place.
The house sits stuffed by a parking garage awaiting demolition, which is so sad.
There by the stadium complex, it is completely on fire,
Mostly I see the roof, the blaze breaking through it as it reaches through to the roof.

I try to tell everyone at this sporting event that the fire is a real danger.
It is real and certainly spreading, but they don't care.
Because the sports games are now turned into somehow wrestling on a track
and they get to join in, it somehow gets interactive.
They are doing this 'review of the rules' for the wrestle fest now
As I, outside the male group, try to pull away someone to listen to fire information,
And very excited men and boys are listening intently to that rule thing
and start to wrestle in huge packs.
It is a male wrestling twisted knot of behinds sticking out.
I have to give up with my pleading to be heard.
I'm talking to their behinds to try and tell them the sky is blackened from this fire.
The cloud of smoke covers the sun.
So I call the 911 operator trying to get the fire attended,
The operator asks a lot
Of questions and tells me it's "contained" finally.
The fire I see blazing.


This cloud taking the sun away from it roiling out thick and thicker, a life ending fire.
So I go across the street to the parking garage to check things out
The fire is beside the place we parked a car.
I'm also unclear on who "we" are.
I can't remember what the car looked like really either, but want to go get it anyway.
You are not supposed to go near the place, it's taped off.
I ride on the kid elevator to get there
So I bend over like Alice and have to hold my finger down on a kid button
You have to push it a lot. In my dream I think GOOD IDEA, patent that.
(It's for kids so they like to push in the button to make it go.)
They ride this to the golfing floor
Or the soccer floor or to different places they can play sports.
One side faces a terrarium that is behind a wall of glass in the elevator.

Then on the street outside I get out
which is a completely different and a city reality
As if I did leave that sporting complex
The fire is spreading everywhere and we are calling the place San Fran.
I hear the firemen talking about how it is now "underground" and threatening three
Structures.
I see it flaming so out of control so I kind of steal my car as a get-a-way and go back on the
Kid elevator to get the people I need to get to go, who keep saying,
"What did they tell you on the phone." As if my own two eyes
Meant nothing which cycles several times.
That part the most "real."
What I saw and know is meaningless here.

Then I get involved in something where I am diverted to an outside cafe that my
Mom is running that doesn't really sell food but she seems to be considering it as she has
"customers". And into some nonsense on one of the levels of the complex
Where someone isn't really helping someone else who is dying
And not comforting them, but instead buying them a candle
Which I smash for it's wrongness and they keep giving cards and there is a judge now
Who seems to be my husband, and then isn't, that says the dying person just needed
To be talked to through the end.
At that point in an inside mall Drugstore and finally outside somehow, looking at the worst fire one could ever see that will take out this world.

In a beautiful Victorian ablaze and watching it spread to buildings and thinking
That I can't get the people I care about into the car to save because
I can't see them, find them,
Convince them, show them and so I'll either have to
Escape by driving this car away by myself or go back in and suffer this confusion.
And just be like they are, blinded by this fun going on and this sleek place.
Unconvinced anything might be able to take us out and that we might be in danger.
I know now, know for certain had I been able to be heard
Be able to be heard, we early on could have gotten out or saved ourselves.
I've always known that.

And so I go in the kids elevator and play a long time on my way back because
Being free by myself would hurt too much knowing all of this blind stupidity
And then I woke up.
Hurting, head pain, disoriented with an image of a sky thick with smoke
And an eerie sun and that house burning that had
Lit on fire the foundations of a city.

september 11th, by Sylvia Puglisi, sitting in for her Mom

A depressing sort of poem. But there could hardly be a happy one today, I suppose.

* * *

september 11
17 first-graders
moment of silence skipped
for the immediacy of fresh strawberries
and the novelty of pencil sharpeners
(which may never wear off in this lifetime)

invisible principal over the intercom
(like in the old cartoons that reliably reproduced so many aspects of school particularly the cliched plots and precocious love lives)
reading bad poetry in a
flat lifeless voice
like shakespeare in junior high
with unenthused classmates
esoteric
and meaningless.
stephen asks me to sharp his pencil
and wonders why i
teacher stands there for several moments
staring blankly ahead
looking like she's about to cry
and then laughing quietly
at how absurd it all is.

come to the rug, children.
i want to tell you a story
of something that happened before you were born
to people you will never get to know
in a place you've never been.
(next will be a story of a
giant blue-green ball hurtling through space
and a giant yellow ball
they hold like lovers
el sol y la tierra
we love story time
especially doctor seuss!)

in the story it is a tuesday
just like today.
here is the sign for tuesday, make a t with your fingers and circle
tuesday
a cold bright tuesday just like today
it was september 11 that day
just like today.
september is a long word that starts with an s
and let's count to eleven
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven
and in spanish
uno dos tres quatro cinco seis siete ocho nueve diez once
once upon a time
in the year 2001
before most of you were
born or when you were the tiniest infant
gnawing your fist and smiling to the delight of your parents.
on a day just like today
when little children just like you were counting the date
a bad thing happened.
a very bad thing.

bad people
very angry, nasty people
who perhaps did not have enough
people to love them
hurt our country
the United States of America
you know America in sign language, children
it is like a hug in a circle
show me, children.

our country was attacked
some airplanes were flown into buildings
important buildings
two tall ones in New York
which fell down
also a military building called the Pentagon
which has five sides
show me five fingers, children.
very good.
and the last plane
the good people took from the bad people
and flew into the ground instead of a building.
many, many people died.
the people in the planes and the buildings
and some of the firefighters who tried to save them
they were heros, do you know that word?
it means brave, brave people who did something amazing
like going into a building that is on fire and falling down
and rescuing people.
are you listening, children?
isaac, put your head down.

this was the biggest attack on American soil ever
which means
that it was really scary for us
really scary for your parents
who probably grabbed you
their babies
from the cradles
and held you close
and whispered soft comforting words to themselves
as they watched pictures on the tv
and cried or
just sat
watching.

the world is different now
you don't know because you don't remember
how it was before
you can't ever know the time when parents
worried about teething rings and toes
and not fiery explosions.
you weren't sitting there like i was
in a classroom on tuesday
(which was picture day and everyone
was dressed to the nines
it was two days after my birthday
and i had new clothes
i was looking sharp)
a whisper went around
that something terrible had happened
a disaster
an earthquake
a bomb
people were dying
where? new york
new york which was more magical and mystical to us than disneyland
new york with the giant apple and the statue of liberty
with the buildings that scraped the sky.

there was a moment of silence

kids fidgeted a little just like
you fidget today just like
we fidgeted when old men with gravelly voices told us of pearl harbor.
they speak of it like an old scar
the memory is still fresh.
september 11 is for me a cut
that it took a long time for me to realize was bleeding
like the scrape on the leg that i got from band
which i didn't feel at the time any more than a poke
but later my band teacher gasped and
pointed at when the blood was dripping to the floor.
i have a scar now, too.

but you children have no scars
you are young and
tiny and unblemished and i
truly hope no history is made in your lifetime
because it is a messy business
or so i have found.
we with memory scars will age and fade
recounting stories for
our childrens' school reports on historical events.
you will grow and replace us and get your own scars
falling off your bicycle.
you will remember the date as a
sad story and me
teacher crying a little when you're not looking
and so will move past me
into the future
without my fears and doubts.

this consoles me, children
on this big blue ball going around the big yellow ball
you have danced around six times
keep dancing, children
the slow beautiful waltz of time.

Dance Me To The End

A year ago I went to a doctor
A referral to figure out pain
My heart or stomach cancer or a cyst in my spine?
Or if the neurologist could help figure it out.

Within my two sentences he said,
"You are a dog. If you were a dog
We would give you Prozac."
This followed some trajectory for him.

I'm fatter now and in pain.
Want a few answers, some idea
Of why the syrnix causes such debilitating issues
How to distinguish it from my intestinal cancer.

It's a bit odd to have to bark and fetch
Whoof and shake my tail
In order to deal with a medical
Examination gone wrong.

One in which I am also informed he is
"Not my father" or not really, "Paid to care"
As if I would ever have the illusion I was
Paying some neurologist to "care"

I'd prefer to pay ten dollars
And buy a bag of peanut butter patties from See's
You'd get something worth sharing
With the ladies on the bus.

This the same doctor that took my drivers license
Four years earlier when I was passing out
Referred after a hysterectomy
When I noted repeat fainting and the surgeon

Was in follow up two weeks home, "Too busy to see me then."
His nurse saying , "It sounds neurological."
Sure after a hysterectomy fever and fainting
Always sounds neurological to me too.

Went on, in a week, to a month's hospitalization
I was fainting from the infections
Through my entire abdominal cavity
"Missed" by the men of science who were definitely not looking.

6 months without driving, recovering from the Demerol
Pumped in IV into my arm, head then trapped
In a hospital stay from hell that destroyed life for many days
When the cancer in my intestine was also "missed"

Returned to work, through these four years, always worked
One year of which I had to wait to get that license due to
Seizures the Demerol triggered, so walks, buses, rides
And now having that botched hysterectomy....

Several cancer surgeries, scans, tests, pills, pains
Weekly infusions, full time job teaching, kids to try to love
Years of severe anemia, often no care for it, transfusions,
A spinal problem escalated through this, untreated

A life of peritonitis and gastric bleeds
From a GIST tumor that caused immense infiltrations of an artery
Then catastrophic bleeding and chaos, confusion
With lovely, lovely issues in a heart damaged long past by attack

I wanted then to be thought of as
A fat dog that was lolling around
Waiting for a neurological egomaniac to
Throw me a bone and tell me what to expect

From my expanding syrnix, how fair he was.
But for all of that as hard as it is, as revealing to me about life
To hold in my middle aged and "needing someone to listen"
Self, having another doctor, one I thought of with love

Take "the dog" and turn it again
Into myself, into my eyes wide open
Looking at the scrolling page and reading
Something written in such cold blood

Mine.
Convinces me that
I am less a dog now than I ever was
A year ago.

Life Expert

4 Poems that Came From 2, from pain released

December Yields

Red raspberries
Picked out of the
Chambers of my
Heart

You gorged and spit
Seeds to lie
Awaiting another
Spring with possibility
Of fruit.



Pomegranates

filled with sticky sweet bud
and slime

seed planted to return to dark
underworld

to a being with no light
and form

passion red fruit eaten in December
juice splashing hope of love

given by a thief
a map back to nowhere.

Abandoned

Because you might be
Caught eating in this
Heart field with
Stolen fruit.
A cowardice of retreat

Gorged fruit left rotting.


Parenthetical Relating

( Inside the boundaries of your parameters, held by the words , "On another note" , I found I existed alongside a mark called parenthetically that was easily addend-ed and so, was lost inside another story)


Can You Have Any Label

Love
Can you exist beating on a door that sees you,
"Borderline, dysfunctional, PDD, Mood disordered "
and worse,
"I'm making your situation worse, through our relating."

Love,
Can you connect the sticky fruits of charms
Moments of buzzing discovery to such twist and turn
and vomit,
Vomiting away feeling, away the touch.

Love,
Are you real?
Real never the construction of this love.
and charade,
Living this charade, I can no longer carry my label.


Coward

You sit behind an encyclopedia of mind
feeling afraid.

Of phone ,connection, voice, of real and time.
A kind of scrolling typeface you sit choosing a font.

You ask nothing.Offer a thing spelled LOVE,
A chimera.

Coward. So turn to your "work"

What is the work of a coward?
Oh, the explanation of life.