Sunday, October 18, 2015

Heated Arguments


At 105 degrees, the body shuts down.
The blood has boiled away, leaving skin tight to sinew,
Oxygen starved muscles and bones.

Mine boiled away long before that,
Mine boiled away on the long trip here, seeking a wet savior
Every movement frantic, every movement slower to stop.
The pointless journey of self flagellation that put my heart
Through a meat grinder leaving a pile of scarlet mixed
With pieces that do not pass FDA approval.

I stand in judgment, fun house mirrors of me,
As jury, defendant, prosecutor and gavel pounding judge.
Order in the court.
The folded note, passed from trembling hand to trembling fingers,
Held by me, for me, waiting to be opened and read
Suicide by proxy, running into a hail of bullets,
Jetes and plies punctuate a full split on the floor and
An arabesque .

Overpriced macchiato that I won’t drink provides a shield,
I will watch and I will wait and I will fall and I will fail
To reach any conclusion except I am lost.

The Joy of Cleaning

There were few things she excelled at, few things she was even good at, but, by golly, she could clean.

Properly outfitted in headscarf, pinafore, heavy duty to the elbow rubber gloves, a bucket of hot, soapy water by her side, spray bottles of bleach, vinegar and foam cleaner clipped to her utility belt, steel wool scrubbies and polishing clothes in various pockets, bathroom grime was doomed.

Stripping towels, shower curtains and mats, she sprayed the shower enclosure with one of her magic concoctions and poured some vinegar into the toilet tank before tossing them into the wash, set on a hot/warm cycle. She returned to the bath, the aforementioned magic concoctions having already done a good deal of the work for her.  All the doodads that accumulated on the vanity were placed in shallow tray filled with warm water and a splash of bleach.  The toothbrushes and combs soaked in a mixture of boiling water and industrial strength peroxide.

She scrubbed from top to bottom, rinsed the walls, then sprayed the walls with hot water to remove any soap residue. Next, she wrapped the shower nozzle in a plastic bag with a few tablespoons of vinegar to dissolve the mineral deposits that accumulated in the spray holes.  An old towel made the toilet sparkle, after a good scrubbing with foam cleaner and disinfection with bleach. She switched to a non-abrasive polishing cloth for the granite counter.  The drawer faces and pulls, the towel bars, light switch plate, door knobs, even the door hinges were subject to her attention.

The timer clipped to her collar beeped, indicating it was time to put the shower curtains into an extra hot dryer just long enough to release the wrinkles. She hung the curtain, now dry and algae free, then reset the dryer for an hour to dry the towels and mats. She went over the floor again, wiping down the coving and using a cotton swab in the corners. 

The timer beeped again for the towels.  She enjoyed folding the warm towels into thirds, hanging them so the seams faced the same way, aligning the hand towels on top of the bath sheets, folding and stacking the washcloths and placing them on the wrought iron towel rack.

The bathroom didn’t just smell clean, it smelled hygienic. 

Everything was neat and shiny.  The towels were crisp, the shower curtain draped just so, the doodads replaced, the combs were back in the hair accessory holder. Soap slivers had been removed and replaced with a new bar of soap. The antibacterial liquid soap container had been replaced with a new one, appropriate to the season. The artificial flowers in the corner vase had been vacuumed. The toothbrushes, floss and dental pics were in the toothbrush tray and all four tubes of toothpaste were in a row, the ends neatly rolled up.

She smiled, surveying her morning’s work.

The Missus walked in, gave her a cold nod, picked up one of the toothpaste tubes and squeezed it, right in the middle. 

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Red Wheelbarrow for William Carlos Williams

So much depends upon                                           Sept 29 2015
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain
beside the white chickens.

Dust road shimmer, another dry afternoon
Cloudburst enough for runnels
And rotting spilt grain,
A week’s worth of grain
On the ground, near the coop
But not enough for new corn
Or unshrivel beans.
She sends the children,
Barrow tippers of grain, now
mixed with rotgut bottles in the
knobbyshade tree roots,
to a neighbor, and watches
the chickens peck peck peck
at precious scattered gold.
Yellow marks and cigarette ‘O’s
on her arms and ankles
wait for new color.

There was no money to paint the house
but, soon, she would be vivid as sunset.

Cutting the Cord

Your long silence
You could be dead.
But, so could I.

Awake alternatives a stately reel
in quarter time. The fiddler
switches to a dirge and a
rotating paceline parades
through places I have lived.

It passes your door, pauses.
You do not emerge, not even
for the cymbals, not even
for the hurdy gurdy man.

New York October


We spend the equinox together
testing, toes frozen in puddles,
testing if I can live in
darkness, on streets of quiet except
for the trash collector and the
cries of pimps beating the last few
pennies from crack whores.

You have already rejected my
sunrise. It made you squint and plead
for inner corridors and musty Victorian
drapes and carved doors locked with
fobbed keys.

We share a $2.95 breakfast special at
Moondance.  You pay the check.
I leave a $5 tip before I dive into the light.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Waiting for the Rapture

You tell me,
with a certainty I envy,
what you'll change,
what you’ll do:
Stay awake,
watching the clock click random numbers,
as the ducks,
a family of old Muscovies,
Gramps and Tricky and Jeanette and
Ambrose, who has only part of one foot
because feral cats ate the rest,
curl up under the tree next to
the retention pond filled with
fish hiding under the algae
to avoid becoming cormorant breakfast,
southwest breeze rippling the moonlight reflection.
You'll stay awake while I sleep, half on top of you,
just like every other night.
"Not a blessed thing different," you say.
"Not a blessed thing."

Glass Slivers and Glue

Ship in a bottle, relic
Of a visit to a whaling museum, relic
Of a relationship once
as whole as the spigot,
small piece hidden
under the carved wooden stand,
bottle turned to conceal
its unwholeness.

Glass slivers and glue
Applied with fine brush
toothpick
canting needle
But all the precision
Concentrated in his fingertips
Cannot make one
That which is broken.

Tommy Salami

Unaccompanied, she wanders into
The children’s room,
Violating rules written and unwritten
But the Librarian doesn’t stop her.
She wanders into
The children’s room
Takes a seat at the low table
Opens books at random
Disarranging the piles.
The eighth book, familiar to tears,
Scarred into her memory,
Tale of a lost child,
abandoned
taken by strangers
rejected
returned to the grocery store.
over and over,
until he is claimed by his
rightful mother and
carried home to tea.
She has no child to carry home
And brews her tea with the
Warm salt water streaming from her eyes.

It is closing time. 
The Librarian asks if she would prefer muffins or
toast for breakfast tomorrow

Vacation 1963

No matter how much gas you put in the tank,
it does not mend a broken piston.
Two or three or four or five days for a
replacement, here on the northeast side
of We-Got-Lost, Canada,
or a local farmer might maybe make
alterations to a tractor engine
sufficient reshaping for a
Sturdy American Sedan, crammed
full of adults, teens and one
small child, who wonders if the bats
flying against the window
are vampires and if they
break that window,
will they kill her?

The small child, wrapped
smaller still, huddles under the
bed, so she can’t see those
fluttering wings or hear the high
pitched squeaks, just like she
hid in the backseat footwell
to avoid her brothers’ pinches.

Perhaps the farmer can reshape her
small enough to box her
and ship her
home.