| Your storys fetching but it sounds just like a lie's Journal |
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Your storys fetching but it sounds just like a lie
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| Aunt Elena in Ybor City. |
[28 Mar 2006|09:59am] |
In the 50s, Aunt Elena wore printed skirts
that hid the skyline of London
& the rocks of California
& the palm trees of Havana
in flowing folds of blue & pink.
She wore starched white shirts
that fell off her shoulders
& showed off her tan skin
& tended to end up wrinkled
by the time she said goodnight.
But her mother was always too
safe in bed to notice.
And her father too
sad to care.
In her 50s, Aunt Elena regretted
saying goodnight,
& eventually goodbye
& never 'I love you'
to the cigar roller she met in Florida.
She regretted her marriage to a man
who her brother worked with at AT&T,
& who never loved her skirts
& who never kissed her shoulders
all the time they shared a bed.
But she was already married
five years with two kids
before she knew what he was.
And what love wasn�t.
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| 1972. |
[02 Jun 2005|10:36pm] |
your parents swam together when they were children,
celebrating kicking limbs and floating bodies
in the summer before the fall.
they were married under the stars
as august circled near,
with an experimental kiss
and an a.m. radio.
and now you sit at their table,
older than they and quietly alone,
23 and recently departed from a girl
who gave you nothing more
than purple, mouth-shaped bruises
and someone to like when bored.
you wonder how your parents have
kept their sun-browned skin and favorite songs,
while you sit at their table,
23 and alone.
and you decide, finally, that either a piece
of the story is missing, or a piece of it,
you don’t understand.
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| 24 |
[02 May 2005|10:51pm] |
Marti spent 24 falling asleep
with her hand on her husband’s chest,
counting beats and
listening to breaths,
pacing seconds as the
hours pass by.
Her son of a second husband
spent his 24th year feeling lonely
and lost in his job,
but he slept soundly,
without consciousness
of the hours, or life,
or death.
And when he still complained,
she hung up the phone,
and sighed, because
she remembered
Alan, sick, and Alan, cold.
And the apartment, dark
and her friends, who left.
And hospital coffee,
and drugs, and tests.
Marti spent 52 reciting
lessons she learned the hard way,
over two time zones and
an old cell phone
with a bad connection.
When she hung up, she sighed,
and paced the seconds as the
hours passed by.
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| Letter From The Bastille. |
[22 Apr 2005|12:14am] |
Dear.
I write to you in exile
to inquire after your well being,
and general state
since my banishment.
Are you happy?
Do you smile?
I hope you remember to wear your
coat when it’s cold,
but I doubt it, since
practical self-preservation
was never
an art you mastered.
I, if you wanted to know,
have grown accustomed to
the walls here.
My heart has learned to
pace patiently
within them.
And my eyes are dry
now, during the day.
But my tongue is having trouble
settling into this pattern.
It yearns to greet visitors with
the warmth and affection I
lost the privilege to exercise when
I lost you.
Words like “beautiful” and
“darling” bubble in my throat
daily – hourly! with every second! –
but that will pass, I think,
just as all my longings
are beginning to pass.
Dear,
I write to you with the last
vestiges of our love folded
inside these lines,
packed and wrapped
for safe keeping.
Store them carefully,
remember them fondly,
and if this ban is ever lifted –
this life I live as your ex-patriot –
send this back to me, and
I will welcome it with open arms.
Until that day, if ever it comes,
I remain,
Formerly Yours.
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| Southern Drive. |
[07 Mar 2005|11:14pm] |
You said,
“I wonder how far we’d have to drive before
we stopped seeing things we know?”
And I wondered, too.
So we drove,
past baseball fields and fast-food places,
into an expanse of pine trees and
two-laned roads.
You made poetry from the road signs,
and pulled names from family restaurants
to write an Alabama opera,
until we crossed a border guard of
construction workers, and found
ourselves in the land that
Starbucks and time forgot.
We passed the ancient ruins of
gas stations, and creaking porches
where old men still
bang the drums of the confederacy.
Clay – orange - and sadness – heavy -
coated the world outside
our windows,
and I struggled to remember
what we were looking for.
But you said you knew.
And when night fell, we
finally stopped and looked over
the tree tops to the stars, shining freely,
without competition from neon signs.
And you said, “This is what we came for.”
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| You & The Windows Down. |
[04 Jan 2005|03:24pm] |
we spent the night on winding roads,
cutting through cold fog that slipped
down past bare & budding branches
to hang above us,
& you told me stories of your childhood.
of your brothers,
of yourself,
of a summer in Ohio with an uncle you
never knew you had,
and a winter at home,
after his death.
i can still feel the rushing air as my
hand stretched outside the window
& traveled along side us,
flying in a rhythm with your words.
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[09 Nov 2004|09:10pm] |
Jared is wrapped up in UGA baseball caps
and baggy jeans.
He is Southern football and baby blue eyes.
But when he sits to take tests,
he wonders, just for a moment,
what life would be like if
he wore glasses.
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| To India. |
[21 Sep 2004|04:00pm] |
To India.
I can hear your crowded city calls
of market men and bicycles and
polluted traffic hours.
I can see your tiny rooms,
sharing too many buildings,
shoulder to shoulder,
like the people on your streets.
I could touch your goods for sale,
your exotic fruits and brilliant
saris, made for the blazing, overbearing
atmosphere.
I can taste dirty spices hanging
in the air.
But I still feel your heart,
in fairy tales of your beauty,
and I worship it.
It beats a rhythm
as I walk with bare feet
over the ancient temple stones.
It pulses through the jungle
and its vines.
It compels the tigers that I
tame as companions.
I watch the dancers telling
the love stories of the gods,
with their hands in subtle
language I only begin
to understand.
And I begin to understand.
The glistening throb of the
orange holy rivers bridge them
together,
the old soul of ancient mysteries
and this modern place
of computers and poverty.
The water is made of religion,
and in it people bathe.
They stand on weary steps that
descend beneath the water’s surface,
mingling beneath the waves
with the heat and sun
of a thousand years ago.
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| Arabella. |
[08 Sep 2004|09:56pm] |
Arabella is a mystery
to people on the street,
and they’re just as much a mystery
to her.
they won’t know what she thinks of
and she won’t know their sorrows.
she dreams in parks and sentences
and they need milk tomorrow.
Late at night, and Arabella,
wonder that that she is,
lies awake in bed, achingly not his.
she rolls words around her mouth
like ‘heartbreak’ and ‘lover.’
they press against her lips,
like fleeting fingertips.
she wanders around an empty office.
she talks into mirrors when no one’s home.
she whispers to tired reflections,
“you kill me when you don’t
answer your phone.”
[everyday is wonderland when your
mind is on its own.
so she dresses in a skirt that’s a novel.
and a coat that’s a Tennyson poem.]
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| Charlie And His Wives. |
[30 Aug 2004|08:07pm] |
Chaplin
i.
the soft hair of a young girl was
always irresistible. it meant
soft lips, and soft skin, and
soft eyes.
inner longings won’t let you
deny how easy
it would be to reach out
and touch, just once.
ii.
his Annabelle still waits
in the wings for her cue,
and he sees her in the kitchen
late at night.
she does not see him.
but then, she never saw him.
does she know that she originated a
role? made it famous. cemented
her image in the audience’s
mind. not on a west end
stage, but behind one,
between acts.
the sequins on her costume
still dazzle him.
iii.
it is a California oasis.
the girl in her tennis whites
(his darling child-bride),
the palm tree parties
at Christmastime.
the seclusion by the pool.
he takes drives in the roadster,
and receives kisses on his neck and arm,
and the flutter of
little hands along his
beating chest.
iv.
his life is in black & white,
cold and trapped in photographs
and muted movies,
looking bleak, like winter.
not at all the vibrant color
he remembers in
her cheeks.
why must children get old?
and why, so, must
their mothers?
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| A Week In Poems: Sunday. |
[29 Aug 2004|10:23pm] |
Sunday
is a stopgap, floating
and tense between
errands in suburbia.
Church and the grocery
store. T.V. with the family
in the evening.
Sunday is the day I wait
for things to end and
things to begin.
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| A Week In Poems: Saturday. |
[28 Aug 2004|03:41pm] |
Saturday
is the day of work and
state parks. For the
sounds of the lawn mower
outside the window, and
10 a.m. wake-up calls.
For the library.
Saturday is the
longest of days.
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| A Week In Poems: Friday. |
[27 Aug 2004|07:50pm] |
Friday,
and it's time for
deadlines and loud music.
To see movies and chew
gum. To promise that you'll
talk later, and sit on
the steps outside.
It is Friday, and it's time
to feel the week
wash over you.
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| A Week In Poems: Thursday. |
[26 Aug 2004|11:43pm] |
Thursday
is made of secrets and smiles,
a day hidden from the
others, between the humps
of the camel.
I cement friendships with
boys, on Thursday,
and count the minutes
'till midnight.
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| A Week In Poems: Wednesday. |
[25 Aug 2004|08:42pm] |
Wednesday
is for haircuts and
mid-week makeovers. For
humanity and grocery store
observations. For rainy
afternoons and terrifying
phone calls to boys.
Wednesday is for haircuts
and humanity.
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| A Week In Poems: Tuesday. |
[24 Aug 2004|11:34pm] |
Tuesday,
all my hopes are pinned on you.
A precarious day that
promises failure or success,
make or break,
and no where in between.
A lottery, run behind the scenes.
Tuesday, be productive, and
accomplished, and all those
things that I am not.
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| A Week In Poems: Monday |
[23 Aug 2004|04:41pm] |
Monday,
you are full of
missteps and mistakes.
You are broken resolutions
and another seven day war.
I can count on you
for late starts and
thwarted good intentions.
Always the same as the Monday before.
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| If I Had A Band, It Would Be Called 'A P.G. Wodehouse Love Story.' |
[24 Jul 2004|04:09pm] |
A P.G. Wodehouse Love Story.
You thrive by dancing on the theater stages,
Two things I for which I’ve never learned to care.
I’m home by the fireside, turning book pages,
Nestled in a blanket and a chair.
Your world is show biz,
And mine just a slow biz,
But somehow, dearest,
Magic’s in the air.
For I dare say, Katie!
I think I rather love you.
Though I be but a banker, and you
A chorus queen,
Looks can be deceiving
And nothing what it seems.
I’ve taken weekly rumba lessons
With Madam Overlou.
And know my steps from right to left,
just to be with you.
My heart is aching now, and my feet as well,
For your simple presence lacking from my life.
I’d give you the world on a chain and a bell,
If you only you would say you’d be my wife.
Tell me dear it’s all right
And we shall dance all night,
And heaven help us,
We shouldn’t have a care!
For I dare say, Katie!
I think I rather love you.
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| Note To Reader: Fiction. |
[21 Jul 2004|07:35pm] |
a recount of loves past
I.
Teddy was an artist,
melodramatic and hedonistic,
with whispers and paint splattered clothes.
‘i will immortalize you.
i will make you famous.
i see your life, your flesh
your blood, and in silks and
creams on canvases,
they will stay.’
if he still starves in San Francisco,
i wouldn’t be the least surprised.
II.
Paul i met at a café.
it was sunny and so was he.
it’s so hard to say no to a boy
in brightly colored shirts and
smiles, who waves away your
purse to pay your bill.
he was made for walks in the
park and kisses on the
shoulder,
and waterfronts at dusk.
but not so much for me.
III.
Ernest came from a family
of himselfs, who read lit.
from between the wars, and passed
their passion down to their children –
sisters Zelda and Gertrude can attest.
he was not quite a boy, like many others,
but a skip and a hop and a jump
away from being a man.
it is a shame he was not
yet there.
he took break ups like a baby.
IV.
what is there to say of Ian?
he was a continent away from
a blood red vespa.
his hands were always gripping the
handles.
[it is actually much more
pleasant than it sounds.]
V.
Brian.
short.
VI.
Andrew.
tall.
VII.
Brendan, Benjamin, Mark, and Jason.
obnoxious, boring, rich, nice.
VIII.
Charles was a man who spent his
entire life falling out
of love with things.
with his family. with God.
with me.
IX.
Alexander was the greatest,
like those Alexanders past.
[those who conquered deserts and
countries and long novels.]
with dark eyes and curly hair,
he was ancient, and so was I,
and we spent Sunday afternoons
channeling the philosophers and nymphs
we were always meant to be.
we called down to our solid counterparts -
on pedestals and fountains,
in museums and in lobbies -
to join us in our Greek parade,
but they would not listen.
Alexander said they were captive,
and as soon as we were done with this
strawberry ice cream,
we would have to set them free.
every syllable and sound rolled on his tongue
in a way that Laurence Olivier would envy.
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| Cosmetics Counter. |
[19 May 2004|05:54pm] |
They have stiff smiles
And powdered faces,
The women at the make-up counters
Scattered through the mall.
They smell dry and old
And simper or scowl
Depending on the day’s
Progression.
In discounted high heels
They tap their feet
And with lipstick too bold
They purse their lips
And with nails that make
My skin crawl and itch,
They tap their fingers
Along the glass,
And ask would I like to
Join their ranks of dried out
Geisha girls.
Like flowers pressed
And aged.
Like moths drawn to fluorescent bulbs.
(Oh honey, no one looks
Good in that lighting!)
With red scarves with gold patterns
To make a black smock
Look sophisticated -
Accessorizing becomes
An obsession
When you have to look
Your best for perfume tests
On slips of paper.
They are flanked by
Tommy Hilfiger on one side,
And Liz Claiborne
On the other, and in
Full armor, painstakingly applied –
Carefully avoiding
Mascara clumps and
Lipstick teeth –
They continue the traditional
Practices of our dear Clinique.
Cheating women
Into cheating age.
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