strands

As a prelude to Goya
I walk through these vines
As sure as sweet is wet
As his Maja is here now

What was given is not as important as what was
Withheld; Cassandra’s torch lit that room greatly

I was deliciously tied back
And I was, I was done to
A chord of my favorite song
To accompany the hemlock

To live in Van Gogh’s ear,
I cut off my hair. And I would have given
My toes, one at a quiet time, and I would
Have given my fingers and my eyes
And my my

You took good care of those strands.
I didn’t find them in the street in
Front of my window.
You were a good little matchstick
And it was my body grasped that sill
And I held onto it real good
Didn’t I?

Something in my heart is telling me it's time
to rock the heart of destiny and leave it all behind

without pretense

Some years ago, a series of my poems were in an art show. All the artists were asked to write a statement about their work, and this is what I wrote. I just came across it in an old folder and thought it was sort of funny.

I write things that I like to think anyone can read – as long as they know how to form words by interpreting symbols on a page. Even if they don’t like "poetry." Such a strange animal, poetry is. E.E. Cummings said, "Anyone could become a poet merely by doing the necessary anything; whichever that anything might or might not entail." And some may think that this means exactly nothing; however it says as much as I can possibly say about my poems, or his poems, or the art of poetry in general.

Many are scared of poetry, or put off by its pretense. Poetry, after all, strives to be "beautiful." (Poets like this.) It wants to touch, to feel, to get inside you without, necessarily, an invitation. It is understandable why it is uncomfortable for people. I become often uncomfortable about it when I am writing, because perhaps it is quite intrusive. Writing or reading a poem is like finding an amazing new lover; it is too wonderful and frightful and you know that you aren’t going to get away without taking off some emotional clothing.

Emotional clothing? Yes, poets also like "deep metaphor," I suppose. It’s just something to get used to. I, like most artists, hesitate to write “about” my work; there is a fear that this will detract from nuance and the possibility for magic. However I am insistent that anything I have written will be received and enjoyed by you the reader, or else it will not. No matter what I “say.” Or you could just believe me when I say that I am truly without pretense and that my poetry therefore is without pretension. That should make you less skittish. Of course then you who are not pretentious would see through this gaunt veil, as no one who is without pretense ever talks about it.

Rest assured that in any event, you can undress in front of my (or any) poems. They are safe. I can say from experience that if they bite, it will only hurt for a moment. Or if they are unsafe, it is only because you need them to be.

November 2003

canyon

Can’t be pretending all the time
That it’s right
If it’s pretending
Then it’s time to go
Need to stop before this velocity
Hits no

You conquer just a little bit
But are escorted out again;
You’re starving for pain.
The momentum is growing
And I’m breathing
Why can’t the music just
Speak for itself?

I’ll let my heart
Speak for itself
Its only harvest
On the other side of today
Thinking it might make a difference
If the song just sees itself
For awhile

Go on
Mean something to yourself
We’re hinging
Our hearts keep twisting
They change but they never untie

Will you find anything alive?
It’s a comedy with chance
Out here in this blue canyon echo
Ripe with stars fruits and hollies

My ego perks up and
Listens.
It is…
It is all alive,
Everything here.
But it turns on its side now-
You know now what you were saying
From behind your leather jacket
You know what your leather says,

‘I cannot be touched here.’

growing up girl

Oh, my parents.

They both come from conservative and very traditional families. In spite of all the dysfunction on both sides, they really came away from their respective upbringings with a strong sense of what a family should be: American, nuclear, Protestant, possessing of mortgages... and fully delineated by gender.

I continue to be astounded by just how different my childhood was from my brother's. To this day, I hear stories about adventures he had that I never got to share or even know about. I missed out on a lot of fun and independence. My brother went on camping and hunting trips, got to slide in the mud with ALL THE OTHER neighborhood kids in the winter, could ride his bike wherever he wanted, played all kinds of sports, climbed trees, had himself a BB gun, and all the other cool toys like erector sets, Legos, Star Wars action figures, etc. I spent as much time in his room as he would allow, making landing strips for the Millennium Falcon or playing Battle Ships.
In contrast to my brother's veritable wonderland of all things cool, I spent a lot of time with my mom and grandmother, learning crafts, painting, sewing Cabbage Patch Kid clothes (seriously), antiquing, playing with my Barbies. Come to think of it, I had a rather large wardrobe for my Barbies, and while I dug all the ballgowns and such, one of my favorite things to do was to dress my favorite one in her red sweatshirt, jeans and hiking boots - and she would go "hiking" in the backyard. Hah.

I wasn't really allowed to play sports, and as a result have almost no hand-eye coordination. Sadly, throwing and catching are terrifying to me. That ball may as well be a Tomahawk missile aimed straight at my head.


I really like the idea of playing some softball at the park or something. I briefly tried my hand at basketball, without my parents knowing, since I love the sport so much, and even that was hard. Consistently dribbling the ball while making one's way up court may seem natural to some. But it was my Everest.

I've always had a wistful admiration for those for whom athletics comes easily. Phys Ed was no doubt a fun time at school for such people, and never a cause for panic attacks in the locker room. How nice that must be, to be able to have fun like that, not even thinking about looking like a fool.

Similarly, I have almost no aptitude for anything remotely mechanical. I consider myself an intelligent person, capable of deconstructing elaborate concepts, but a particularly sophisticated door handle can cause an undue amount of distress. When something breaks, I ask someone else to fix it. My attempts to understand these things over the years have caused some frustration, so I would kind of rather someone do it who will not lose their head over it.

These things leave me feeling inadequate. I'm just not quite the prepared, capable woman I should be. It's gotten better over the years, for sure, and I've tried to pay attention whenever I see someone manipulating physical objects in such ways as to not injure themselves -- this has helped immensely.

I'm not really sharing all this because I feel like whining -- though it may sound like it. It's my guess that I'm not the only one out there, male or female, who feels this way. I think that's why I've had a connection to certain types of gay men my whole life - the ones who were pushed toward Boy Things and never had a natural inclination for them.

Heck, I think I've always just had an affinity for people who are different.

lineage

She believed I would become part of the lineage
Which one was not important.
I believed far above the kitchen table, I believed
In color.

I know someday I will miss
The chemical bitterness smell of her hairspray
When a woman of a certain age walks past
I will miss the Chinese restaurant around the corner
From our house
Where for some reason I would always sit on her lap
And kiss her cheek while we waited for our food.
The little barrettes she made for my hair.

Her eyes, as she grew older, smoldered over
Drying to rid me of my pride
Her throat
Sputtered forth the lies

But through my life when I look at the hills across from my house
I want to see only the olives of her skin dancing across the horizon
Her ballerina brown eyes
Woman’s ankles.
Please, her. Please be this sandy moment
And pour through me like I’ve always wanted
Please be water and wine and bark and no envy
Build on all this, all
Of chance
For you, for me
When you hear the faint fluttered wood darkness calling
Go to sleep
Let the spice earth seep in
Like Venus learned to do
Retreat to a seashell
Hear it?
Momma can you hear it?

Taste the soil Momma?
Taste the hallowed Momma soil?

the seventh night

What is it about Sunday nights? I've spoken to several friends about this over the years and it seems I'm not alone. Sunday nights are strange. They can take you out of yourself a bit, and become fraught with nameless emotion.

We are programmed, our very internal clocks have attuned themselves to, the seven-day cycle of the thing known as the week.

You work, dawdle, think, play, live during your week. Then old Sunday comes along and brings with it the evening. It's the ending of something. It's the denouement of the tiny opera that was the preceding six days of your life. A microcosm of things happened - things went smoothly, things were shitty, perhaps you reached a particular milestone; you learned things, you looked out windows, got drunk, took care of something or someone, had reactions to events, had sex, had no sex, or maybe ate a giant bowl of pasta. On Sunday, all those things come to end.


Is this in any way oppressive? For the most part, I am down with the current calendar system. Time being the most precious resource, I appreciate that it is constructed in accordance with the seasons and, ultimately, the sun. This is our most fundamental connection to traditional Paganism (sshh! Don't tell the Christians!) and I value that very much. It's just a little strange, isn't it, that no matter what may be happening with our emotional ebb and flow, things come to a head at this particular time every seven days.

Actually though - as I process this I begin to see - it's not just that it's the end of something. It's that it's the beginning of something as well. There is no knowing what the next week will bring. Even when you're in a calm period of your life, there is always the slight panic of the unknown. Beginnings bring us face to face with the infinity of possibility. How we face that is maybe an indicator of how life is going.

These Sundays, I'm feeling lost. A little unknown. But I feel acceptance for the unknown, as well as my being in some ways unknown, and I'm old enough now that I know how to treat these strange turns in the road. I draw a tarot card. I read a poem that I know and love well. I let the hot water of the shower run over me for several silent minutes. And I touch that thing, just with the tip of my finger - that thing so intrinsic to the universe that it transcends all measurements of space and time. And there are no questions. Just a calm perception that the thing called "Monday" brings a new era of possibility, chance, wreckage and miracles. I am ready.