What is Real?

We studied connections
Thoughts versus the actions
Intent versus disconnect
Encouragement to go through the motions
“Fake it until you make it” motions
which might work in golf
or bread baking or painting
or deposition creation
Because hey! Going through the motions
practice leading to some kind of
sad almost perfection
some shift in perspective
alteration in perception
might yield real
or not

“What is real?” I ask, in my velveteen suit
standing outside, looking through the dirty,
streaked window, hazy with memories
wondering if I stop going through the motions
Will I be real then?

I can build a tower of indecision
walk never-ending cladograms
look forward and back
not knowing which is which
because it is all smoke and alcohol drenched days
and nights in the bar at the corner of
Whenever and Nowhere

I have a running tab
I can’t pay so I can’t leave

I smile, they tell me to smile
Women are supposed to smile
even when the dragon you shoved under my ribs
wakes up
gnaws on my lungs

I smile, I apply fresh lipstick
mascara
rouge
find another junction
another maybe
crawl because the dragon is sucking out my nerves
so I have no muscle command
only brainstem medulla responses

But I smile
and tell lies

-I’m fine-

-its all good-

-Thank you-

And sip my wine
balancing on high heels
pretending

-Really, I’m fine-

No one knows

-A-okay here-

I am waiting

-Yes, indeed-

To pull the cord and the blade fall

Chop

I won’t have to go through motions
any more

 

Green Tea with Honey

‘There is a ghost in the machine!’

I sip my tea, green tea, avoiding his eyes
After three years on and off
on and off
on
and
off

I avoid his eyes
avoid looking at all the parts of him
that made me want to drown
made me want to crawl to the surface
from the dark Scottish loch
into his bed
because my bed
no matter who else is there
is too big without him.

 All I said was, ‘Oh?’

 ‘No matter where we are
every single day
I can’t, I can’t
many miles away
so close to me
unfilled chasms
deep blue sea
your song, our song comes on the radio.
Every Fucking Time.’

 All I said was, ‘Oh?’

 and shrugged
turning to look out the window
avoiding the helix of his ear
neck
collarbone
flat squared fingertips.

 The song ends, another begins

 ‘See! Different album, but still his.
You ride with him once, just once
he offers you a seat
and now – he’s everywhere.’

 ‘The train was full and
I was holding a large painting.
He's a gentleman, in New York.'

 My ex
my sometimes ex
my sometimes now
refills my cup, adds honey, stirs.
It is brimstone and treacle
being near him, hot and sweet and gall
curing nothing and everything.

 I know we’ll end up back at his apartment
We’ll be together
wrapped around each other
because I can’t stand losing you
I know I should never see your face again
but every time I close my eyes I see your face.

I fill the chasm with tears and regrets
and dance alone
for I am too fragile
he is the shape of my heart.

 I kiss him.

 The song changes.

 I am already crying inside
on infinite repeat
crying inside
crying inside
crying inside.

I am crying.

 

 

Sweater

I started this many, many years ago. Poem, prose, poem, prose. Not satisfied. Unfinished. After 8?10? years of 'not there yet' I realized the narrator had more to say, a conclusion. So I paused, listened to the words behind the words, to what happened after the Great Ending. And then I knew.  While we can't go back, we can't keep turning ourselves into pillars of salt. we can keep a few pieces, light a candle, sing a reprise. 

Opening another box of clothes, winter clothes this time-

How many years since I needed winter clothes,

since I lived in a land of slush and ice-broken trees?

Here, despite the perpetual August of Florida,

I wear long sleeves to protect myself from

excessive air-conditioning

or perhaps to hide the knife calligraphy

paisley tribal keloids

trailing around my wrists

handwriting on concrete walls

not yet driven into.

I place more shirts on

another shelf and take

another pile out of a

maw-gape box.

 

Where did that come from?

How in god’s good name did that end up here?

I’ve moved so many times since then, since that life,

at least a dozen times in the past year alone,

from car

to shelter

to bedsit

to short stay

to extended stay

to here,

finally,

a place that I can call my own

and now this? 

 

That old fisherman sweater he wore.Once.

Fifteen? Twenty? years ago.

It still smells of him.

 

That sweater. My fingers tremble, reach out

to the sweater that escaped Goodwill

and garbage and abandonment

to the sweater that somehow hung onto

 a fragment of a shadow of me

to the sweater still in the box and

I stroke it with fingertips. 

 

Kiss them,

as if they had just touched the Torah, the holy book, 

pick up the sweater, hold it to my cheek, eyes closed.

Kneeling by that box, swaying slightly,

time slows to stop.

 

It still smells of him,

testosterone musk and the chemical reek

of stage two alcoholism.

Rising bile squeezes my trachea,

his hands around my throat,

fingerprint dust in my nose,

so hard to breathe, let alone think.                 

Rubbing my face on it, inhaling him,

the texture of him on my skin,

remembering it as a Proustian call,

as a seismic vibration,

as a marker in my DNA. 

 

His Jack Daniels-coated tongue against mine,

now moving over me, lapping at the whiskey,

spilt by clinking glasses,

the whiskey pooled in my navel,

white powder fueled laughter

emerging between numbed kisses. 

 

I can feel him.

 

Oh god, I remember.

I am doomed to remember.

 

I stand, slip my arms into

that sweater he wore,

that sweater he wore

once

and only once,

and made his own. 

Hands trace the cables, in out, in out, in out.

Pull it down over face, neck, torso, smooths

the soft cotton over breasts that he touched,

held, loved, so long ago,

pulls the sweater all the way down to my hips. 

Lean against the wall,

as his phantom grinds against me.

                       

I slide down the wall to the floor. 

Wrap my arms,

warm sweatered arms

around my knees and bury my face in them.

I drown my lungs in nicotine ghosts,

a beached creature seeking oxygen

in an alien place. 

 

“Mama, mama, we’re hungry. We want lunch.”

My children call from the next room.

“Just a sec, sweeties.”

I pull that sweater off,

drop it on the floor. 

“Mac and cheese or sandwiches?” 

The Quest for the Holy Grail

Hot

Juicy

Toothsome

Sliding down my throat

Gooey stringiness

Accented with texture

Spongy exterior with a

Solid interior

Just a tad salty

Now that’s what I call

A perfect mushroom-swiss burger

Checkers

99 cents

Bed's Too Big

No more boxes.

Pack the rest, disgusted, detritus, debris.

Toss it in a pillowcase, doesn’t matter anyway. 

A striped yellow and pink pillowcase. Hers.  

Stripes worn and faded, from the double bed. 

Before they upgraded to a king. 

A king size bed, so much more room.

Life was good.

And when life was not good? 

So much more room to hug the ends of the bed.

Avoid ‘accidentally’ touching each other. 

In a double bed, you always bump each other. 

Can’t go to sleep angry in a double bed.   

In a king, the hurts can lay there.

They lay there, right in the middle of the bed. 

The hurts send out suckers all night long,

Grow new branches, push the root systems deeper. 

How many piles on the floor?

Splitting a household is much tougher than merging. 

Merging was gradual, books, clothes, pots and pans. 

Separation sudden. Picking apart who got what?

Figuring out what gets kept, what gets sold?

They did not have the luxury of time for that, 

Each eager to have a new life. 

He looked at the pillowcases, her pillowcases

filled with the sheets and towels he was taking.

His new life wrapped in a bit of her old life. 

And no bed to put them on.

Rejected sheets, towels, clothes, sundries

heaps on the garage floor. 

He kicked them, then walked through the piles,

scattering them down the driveway.

Sometimes.  Just sometimes.  But sometimes

Love is not enough.

The Median Divides the Here and

Another night to forget

another night with the man who will not be named

Hamelech Malchai Hamlochim-

or so he acted, and so he thought-

Another long trip back to the house-not-home because

I was never asked to see the morning

car redirected, traffic crawls past flashers

battalion of emergency vehicles

even Jaws of Life! slicing open a belly up Civic,

wheels still spinning.

And then I

And then I

I know that car

Where’s my phone and I’m pushing buttons and

I Don’t Know

And my ex answers.

What the hell are you doing calling at 3 am?

She’s upstairs, asleep.

Like you care.

Bitch.

Pale ribbons, soggy bears, rivulet ink paeans,

marking a long ago night to forget.

Families move away, move on,

The crypt island shrinks, as the road is widened

“to facilitate more, faster, travel”

Now, barely large enough for one faded cross,

crooked with years,

three new crosses join it.

My baby is asleep in her bed.

The hand-me-down Civic is in pieces.

Shadow reaches from my stagger

I find my keys and drive to the house-not-home

But still more of a home than where 

New York December - Revision

We spend the solstice together

testing, toes frozen in puddles,

testing if I can live in darkness,

on streets of solemn quiet,

an audience for

the garbage man’s orchestra,

arias of pimps beating the last few

quarters from crack whores,

the applause of my heels on concrete.

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.

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. 

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."

Chef Salad

Hunger spills over, wraps around strangers, eager to respond.
Waiting to take a bite, taste, chew, press against the upper palate,
smooth or gritty on the teeth, thin as water, thick as an oil slick, bubbly,
sweeping up to shore, covering random pelicans and otters.


Sauces, meats and tofu and vegetables all diced into interchangeable cubes,
heated surface a rumpled, now-neglected bed wondering who'll be next,
so ready I can see the waves rise up to me, beckoning.


Nursing my drink, I watch the chef, thinking,
He doesn't have to do that. Not for me, anyway.
All I need to feed my hunger is already here.

Never Ask a Question If You Don't Want to Hear the Answer

"I really like that purple lace." He reaches over and strokes her thigh, high up, then cups her ass.

"You know, these panties have a story." She wriggles down towards him and puts a pillow under her chest.

"Yeah? You're pulling my leg. No, I'm pulling your leg. Will you tell me?" He bites the back of her thigh. "You never tell me your stories, it's always, ‘Oh that's history, you'd be bored,' or ‘I don't want to discuss it,' or ‘It's unpleasant remembering.'" He bites her again. " Did that hurt?" She shakes her head. "Not even a little? You never tell me anything, you're so need to know basis I wonder if you're actually a CIA agent."

She shrugs, as much as it's possible for someone laying on their stomach with their head propped on their hands to shrug, and turns to look at him over her shoulder. "Of course not, I don't speak Russian or Arabic, I can't be a CIA agent. I just like to horde my words. I don't waste them. Watch, I want to turn over, my shoulders hurt." She flips over and puts the pillow under her head.

He flutters his eyelashes at her, ducks his face into her groin for a second and then looks up. "Please? Please tell? Pretty please with sugar on top?"

"Fine. I went to every Wal-Mart around here looking for my size, every single one."

"You went to Wal-Mart?" He hyperventilates for a few beats, holding his hand over his heart. "You went to all the Wal-Marts? To buy panties? And you admit it?"

"Stop or I'll stop. No, don't stop. Yeah, that's better." She pushes his head back down. "Good. I was there grocering when I saw them on the rack near the umbrellas. So I looked for my size. That purple lace, how could I resist? Of course, they didn't have my size, they only had extra-extra large, if they did have my size there wouldn't be a story now, would there? Wal-Mart, home of the uber-queen-sized. Stop, I'm talking!"

"Mmmfffle mmmfffle. I thought you didn't want me to stop."

"Men, you're all the same. No, you're not, you're actually surprisingly competent. Anyway, I looked the next time I was there. And the next. And the next. It became an obsession, a quest, a purple lace Holy Grail. Oh, god, that's good. I looked for these panties every single time I went to Wal-Mart, every single one of them, and there's how many around here? Three, four?"

He sighs, sliding his fingers under the lace trim, sliding his fingers along her thigh where his lips had been moments before. "Three in a five mile radius, four in a seven. That's devotion to the cause. So much trouble for a pair of panties, but so worth it. They're really nice."

"Yeah, they are. It's kinda almost a pity." She reaches down and strokes the cotton covering her lower abdomen, snaps the lace band a few inches below her navel. "It is."

"Oh?" He walks his fingers to the hipband and starts to tug them down.

"Only wearing them for maybe an hour. They're so comfortable, too."

He pauses in his ministrations and smiles. "I'm sorry, but much as I like them on, I like them better off. Maybe next time?"

"That would be a first. I've worn them lots of times. I've had them about two years now, but every time I put them on, before I know it, they're off." She smiles a dreamy half-smile, eyes almost closed. "The color's stayed so true and the elastic still has snap."

He does a rapid calculation. She's had them two years. They've known each other for about eighteen months. He's never seen them before although she's worn them ‘lots of times.' How could she have worn them ‘lots of times' and he's never seen them before and ‘before she knows it, they're off'? When did she wear them? Where? Why? What memory put that smile on her face? And most important, who? He starts to open his mouth to ask, but clamps it shut again.

There are some questions you don't want to know the answer.

Too Close for Comfort

She doesn't understand what is right in front of her
How could she? She's too young too small too innocent
but they are ... distracting
It disturbs her, the way they fall into each other
heads almost touching, an intimacy thick as buttermilk
their voices softer than the fall of her hair
eyes flickering in the ambient glow of respective laptops.
He shifts his legs so they encase her knees, leaning into him.
She squints, absolutely sire there are sending little bitty tentacles out,
and she doesn't understand it at all.

Veganism

"I can see it, the vegetable man. There are a whole bunch of pieces, people portrayed by fruits, flowers, precious gems I think, but my favorite was the vegetable man. The cherry tomato eyes, onion cheeks, cabbage ear and the eggplant forming his beautiful Roman nose and brow. I can't remember the artist's name, Giovanni Archibaldo or something like that, but we can google it later. There are many examples of his work on artmuseum.com and artchive.com and folio.com. I think there's a folio.com anyway, I'm not sure about that either, but I know there's a artchive.com." I sighed and rolled over onto my stomach.

"I can think of other things to do with vegetables. If you'd like." His fingers slither over the veins in my arms and pause at the scar on my shoulder. "Fruits, sauces, ice cubes and, of course, eggplant. We can go shopping at the farmer's market. I'd like to roll a kiwi on you, drizzle honey down your thighs and just imagine the ecstasy you'll experience with an eggplant. Or two." He smiled wickedly.

"You're silly. I'm talking serious art here, museum art."

"We're naked. It's hard to be serious when we're naked. Besides, it's vegetable art."

"It is hard." I run a fingernail along his skin. "Never mind the farmer's market. Let's just toss a salad with what we have here."

Comparison Shopping

She is stunning in her concentration on the task at hand,
English muffin price comparison,
list in hand and furrowed brow.
I can see her hands, naked.
How could such lovely long fingers be ringless?
I see her, veiled; me, sliding a wide band onto the third digit of her left hand.
Her eyes flick at me. Does she feel my stare?
Her ponytail curves under, caressing the back of her neck.
It needs pearls, a long strand, with an extender hanging down the bones of her spine.
She pushes her cart to the end of the aisle and disappears around the corner.

Dirty Little Secret

He was my dirty little secret, except he wasn't little and if he was a secret, he was a very badly kept one, secret not because no one knew about him, but because everyone chose to ignore his existence in my life.

But he was dirty. Oh yes, he was dirty, as dirty-minded as any teenager could be with a worldly older woman as his sub rosa lover, a woman who was willing and eager to do anything and everything she'd ever thought of or seen before. He was prime, a juicy fig plucked down that I could sink my teeth into, bite down, chew and swallow, and he loved it. I was more fantasy flesh than any of his compatriots could even imagine, let alone aspire to and I was his. So yes, he was dirty.

Another facet of my fragmented life, everything in it's compartment, sharply separated, no overlap, nice and tidy. I like keeping things orderly. I like the concept of separation of church and state and I practiced it with great enthusiasm. I had my state, my public side, and I had my church to worship in. He was my church and I got down on my knees and committed sacrilege to make your hair curl and your stomach churn.

Until, years later, it all came crashing down, when the letter I wrote, telling him it was over, it was all over, over to the extent that I doubted it had ever been, that I wondered if it had all been a wet dream powered by a fevered imagination, the result of too much anesthesia at the dentist or too many donuts after a night of reefer, the letter which took "Dear John" letters to heights never before or since seen, the letter which I never mailed but kept, relished in rereading, treasured words, 24K calligraphy on cheap looseleaf, was found.

By my kids.

Lust

How can I get shoes like that? What they say about her, her skills, interests, abilities, income level, all the socio-economic crap we get buried under, as opposed to my cheap generic foot coverings, multipurpose plain which means that they are good for everything but really good at nothing. You cannot be all things to all people and a shoe cannot be all things on one foot.

What leads a person to make the moves, choices in life that allow her to afford those?

Why do I end up making the wrong choices or what feels like the wrong choices certainly, over and over, looking back, all shot to shit, my lifeview widening as I move away from the now, all the choices I rejected, by design or misinformation or hidden agenda or need for approval, a river of choices, and back to the now, tunnel vision staring at a pair of shoes on someone else's feet on a sad, foggy evening.

Strut

He struts, shakes his pompadour back, preening, I think.
I can't be sure because he's so far away
but it looks like preening to me anyway.
Last time I saw him,
He was biting her neck, hard,
while he bent her over, spread her legs with his knees and fucked her.
She didn't say a word, just stared out into nothing,
and after, staggered away, numb, perhaps bemused by the experience.
Now, he preens,
makes himself pretty for another one.
"Hi, have we met, you sure are cute, anything you want, I can get you.
Why don't you come over here?" and wham!
Another one. Another notch in his asshole belt.
I sit here, sipping my tea, watching out the window.
Ducks aren't so different from people