I love...

The smell of roasting pumpkin seeds
watching the little kids walk home from school
full moon nights, the sky scrubbed with clouds
the shine of wet leaves on a brick sidewalk
California sleeping in the far off distance
unlocking doors
my lover's breath between my shoulderblades, cold hands between my thighs
bells in the morning
pealing pistachios
honeycrisp apples dusted with cinnamon
accordions
naked trees rippled upside down in puddles
a cigarette and coffee in the cold outside morning waiting for the train
tucking him in before I leave for work
crysanthamum petals edged in frost
warming cold coffee cups with hot water now that it is November.

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These Evil Nightmares

And I keep dreaming that I'm drowning, in a sea of my own blood
and you keep screaming you will save me, but you don't know how to swim.

In My Room the Women Come and Go

If only they would limit their discussions to art.


Instead, they lament, voices plaintive and thick, slurred with alcohol and death.

Go away, mournful ghosts. I do not want to know the weight of your sad hearts, the texture of your scars.


Why pour your misery into me with such intimate whispering? You have no secrets. You splashed everything out in bright blood blossoms all over your pages for everyone to read, the neglect of parents, the betrayals of husbands and lovers, the abuse and abandonment of your children. You have no secrets left. Your words and memories should be enough to carry all your guilt. Your ghosts should not even exist. And still.



Even when I sleep, your voices drill into my head, mewing complaints forcing me awake. I spend my time in your cigarette garden, whiskey watered guilt-flowers stinking up the landscape.



God, given me back the bachelor butchers: the General, the Surgeon, the bleak and sour-faced soul-reeking priest.

I'm more comfortable with demons bent on destroying me than these mad, mournful ghost-ladies clawing for pity, tearing my heart into strips, swallowing the pieces.

With All Due Respect.

And now a toast to my drunken formothers, Dorothy, Anne, and Sylvia, Virginia, Zelda and poor, sad Vivienne, "Dear Muses, thanks, but no thanks. I will decline your fame and hearbreak and die content in benign obscurity. Take your gin and genius and leave me just my sanity. Amen."

A Reminder

When there is a day or a stretch of days or a year that is so hard that all the sweetness goes out of the sky, when Music is no longer luscious, and food and fabrics and words are leeched of all their precious taste and touch and the lists of life's amazements mock rather than comfort, when someone says, "I love you" and you say, "It doesn't matter," this is as bad as it gets. It isn't a question of pills and razorblades but of walking out of your own life forever and not even stopping to say goodbye.

Walking until you just dissolve, and who knows what's become of you?

Unless someone says, "It matters to me."

It's a pin through the heart and it hurts but it keeps you there. It's a chain of names and faces far too heavy but they anchor you.

You cannot drift; you will not come to nothing.

When it is as bad as it gets, balanced on that edge and about to fall

there is nothing left that can be done, or undone or wished or said except, "I love you, that is all."

Between the Boy and the Bees

1.

Is this going to be one of those days?
Everything reminds me of you,

the Honeybear,
the radio buzzing out of tune,

the cranefly on the windowsill,
back legs crushed:
useless and dangling.


2.

Our Mother's voice,
cracking with static electricity
jolts the sleep right out of me.

Last night it got too hard for you
to breathe,
and they took you in an ambulance.
"Infection. Complications. Tests."
Of what things she said
that's all I heard.

Now my own breath catches
and I wait for words to see,
if, with the coming weeks
you will vanish, like the bees.


3.

On Monday you called to say,
"Melissa,
all the honeybees are leaving."

The use of my true name
sent a shiver straight
through my skin.

In my legs, a hum
like a hundred
thousand pairs
of missing wings.

"Dying," I said,
thick and low, but
"No. Just disappearing."

You told me the mystery.
Abandoned hives, still and empty,
no predators nearby,
no poisons, parasites,
no bodies.
I told you it worried me.

Your reply stretched like golden glass,
a sparkling amber about to smash.
"I'm not worried for the bees,
just for human beings, maybe.
What will we do if they all go?
What do bees know
that we don't?"

Translucent words
too bright with wonder,
so sun-kissed sweet they
made me shudder.
If the bees come back,
will you get better?

4.

The wounded cranefly at the window
dances up the glass,
legs swinging in
a broken jig.

I stir my coffee with cream and honey.
You've been eating Royal Jelly,
pollen, honeycomb and nectar.

It gives you strange dreams
but they say it's good medicine.

I dream of you going away with them.
I dream of your back
split open with wings.


5.

This is one of those days.
Everything reminds me of you.

On my cafe table,
on my lunch break,
an arrangement of sunflowers
poses for a picture.

One droops dying,
seeds swollen,
petals wilted.

The other,
yellow corona bursting in
full bloom,
attracts a dusty bumblebee,

6 legs strong
and fat with pollen.

More in the Jazz Vein

I don't know if it's all the stormy weather, but it seems to suit my mood these days. 

This one I wrote listening to "Lady In Blue" off of Tori Amos's New Album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin.  It's not a bad record. Better, in my opinion, than her last two, as a whole (although if I had my way as an editor I would cut all three to pieces, leave out all the fluff and crap [Tori Amos I will never forgive you or your producers for the abomination that is Posse Bonus. For Shame, Madam.] and make the one bangin', award winning album that exists now in brief diamonds amongst the detritus.) 

Anyway, one such diamond is "Lady In Blue," a haunting torch piece with a surprising (and refreshing) guitar solo that makes up the last 2 minutes of the 7+ minute song. It makes me think of sad old Movie Stars, back when they were Movie Stars and not Celebrities. Some Leggy Dame in Tights from a Noir Picture with a Sinatra soundtrack. 

On a rainy day, with a bottle of wine and a pack of cigarettes, I got this little poem lodged in between my ears and head. Enjoy.

It Girl

Glitter Eyes,

with your head on the table

empty bottle still in your hand.

Don't you know

there's no savior to wait for

only Alexander's Band

playing 'Song d'Automne' 

as the ship sinks down,

playing as the waves come up

to swallow you

in the frozen blue.

They put words

in your mouth like pills.

Don't I know how it goes? 

Yes, I know.

Champagne kisses, 

rings on every finger till

you can't play piano anymore.

And you did it all for love,

a million eyes in the dark.

Did you think there were no consequences for

turning a spotlight

into a star?

Glitter Eyes,

you burn too bright.

Your cigarette tip

is crumbling now,

and when they smoke you down 

to the filter,

toss you into

the rain-choked gutter,

at last 

at least I think 

we all will remember

your face

under water

as you drown.

The 23rd Street Cafe

Although I haven't been to the jazz club in a while, I was thinkin' about it the other day while cleanin' the house...

1. The Big Top

Trumpets stretch long notes

in the blue light. 

Blue smoke 

tears apart as it lifts.

Shadows drape against sound.

In these wires her song hovers.

Conversation suspends 

as she sings.

The slow notes fall up, 

balanced on the pull 

of martinis 

on our senses.

Straining apart, 

we hold our breaths 

to hear the precise spin 

of elevation;

the sequined wink

of the catch in her voice

before the rising refrain.

Smoke and held breaths

are not a net.

Her voice does not fall. 

Torch singer.

Not because

of the smoky burn 

of her songs;

the fire they build 

within 

the frame of our ribs.

It is the weight 

of her brightness,

how it carries

over distance.

2. The Haunted Attic

There are ghosts here;

the world is doubled.

One

stands behind me,

filling the same space

as your right arm

spread across my shoulders.

Another 

in a bowler hat

sprawls sideways

in the lap of our friend

and occasionally sips

his whiskey.

The bar is draped

with ghost women draped

in ghost feathers.

The rising smoke defines them.

Blue light fills their eyes

and the murmur of their laughter bubbles 

under the echoed notes

of a ghost piano and a ghost trombone.

What haunts me 

is the smokey thought 

that one day

I will grace the bar

in dead feathers.

You will disturb the lap

of a teenaged clarinet player

perched on a table's edge,

waiting to play.

Your smile flickers across his face.

With a sudden jerk he spills his gin

and thinks 

it is just nerves.

3. The Cathedral

I could go blind here.

What would it matter?

Bright green bursts

in my mouth: 

gin-soaked olives.

Conversations stained

with sophistication:

lipstick red.

The violet scent of smoke,

pink perfumes,

the orange flick of matches.

This light,

stained glass blue bouncing 

off the amber of the ashtrays,

and halcyon trumpets

in every phrase

she lifts, carries,

and turns.

When I close my eyes

I hear her bending light.

I bow my head and clasp my hands.

I bow my head and give thanks.

In this place,

it doesn’t matter if you are blind.

Why Our Towels at the Marriott Might Smell Like Death

After three weeks of traveling in opposite directions, we arrived again in the same hotel. 

Repeating conversations, we worked in a circle. The maybe-we-shouldn’ts and we-can-start-overs. 

A quick, it-hasn’t-worked-before dismissed by another this-time-will-be-different. 

A bottle of wine, “Do Not Disturb” sign, and once again we were back in bed.

Three days later, between breakfast and the shower, we were arguing again. Signs of dismay were settling in across my forehead and around your mouth. When the shouting ended, you went to brush your teeth, running the water to drown me out. I opened the door for room service breakfast and found Love dead on the doorstep, naked and blue across the Sunday Paper. 

I picked it up, all baby fat and sad feathers, and put it in the bathtub with some ice and cold cokes. I closed the shower curtain. You spat in the sink and rinsed  and sighed. Who knew disappointment could be so minty fresh? We went back to the sitting room, deciding what to do. 

I picked at the breakfast, the grapefruit and toast. Your poured cream into your coffee, watching it star and cloud. We sat in Sunday Edition silence. When I got to the personals, there was a pathetic, watery cough from the bathroom and you looked up in a panic. 

"We shouldn’t try to save it. It will just come back a zombie."

"Yes, and it will eat our brains. The only good bits we have left!" 

There are aching holes where our hearts used to be. We pulled our hotel bathrobes closed and tied the white terry cloth belts in tight knots.

We decided to bury it. You pulled it out of the bathtub, all icy and wet, somehow smaller than before, though pregnant with death. I dried it off with the hotel towels and the feathers started falling out from between the chubby shoulders. We folded it up and wrapped in the used newspaper. You built a little coffin and, fearful of zombification, we dug a deep hole on the county line to make sure it would stay put. 

Crossroads would have been better, sure, but they’re paved over these days, or already filled up. Secure prisons for devils, werewolves, imps, and jinns, rockstars, suicides, and  other wicked creatures.

We chopped off its head and stuffed it with garlic. You drove a spike of oak straight through for good measure. I asked if we should burn it too, and you said no, ashes scatter. 

"The right gust of wind and it could get into our eyes and mouths, good God, and then what?" 

It all went into the box: baby fat and feathered wings and garlic and oak stake and Sunday Edition. The box went into the ground and the ground was laced with salt.  It wouldn’t come back again. There would be no resurrection. No Lazarus tricks.  No fourth, or fifth, or sixteenth coming. 

“Good and dead and put to bed, stake through its heart, garlic in its head!” we said, 3 times, and spat like gypsies. Then we covered it over and patted the dirt down hard and tight.

Now that it’s done, and the knees of our pants are sodden with dew, and our fingers blue with cold and painful with the dirt pinching under our nails, we stand here in Burial silence. You fidget with the loose thread of your sweater, like always, and stupidly, I notice, just like always. You tuck a  loose curl behind my ear, and leave a smudge of dirt down my right cheek. I rock back on my heels and look up at the stars. There is no moon. 

So what next? Being finally rid of it, the world should feel different. Your eyes should become duller. I should notice the ragged stupidity in the strings of your sweater.  But somehow, nothing’s changed at all. Just a small, sad mound of earth raised up on the county line, roughly the size and shape of a lunchbox, and the raw dirt aching under our fingernails.

Little Things

 

 

 

Sciencin' Around

Looking for a way to spend a rainy afternoon, I stumbled upon Carl Sagan's Cosmos in all it's season one splendid entirety on hulu. Even though the show was made in 1979 and first aired in 1980, the science behind it is sound, the visuals are stunning, the soundtrack is epic, and the entire package is delivered in the soothing, dulcet tones and sweeping gestures of a dashing, young, mop-topped Carl Sagan.

He approaches the macro and micro of the cosmos with a delightful sense of awe-filled optimism that is entirely refreshing the the current, cynical, panic-stricken climate of Science for Profit and Evangelical Atheism. It's science without an agenda, other than to explore and better understand our world. 

When I was a kid, I loved science, in large part because of this show. I'm sure I watched it with my dad, along with Nova and National Geographic Presents. I remember the long reclusive hours I spent as a kid making observations and conducting experiments.

Somewhere along the line, my attention turned significantly to language arts. The joys of science became bogged down in the horrors of math, while language led down a slouchy, jazzy path of literature, music, and visual art where it seemed anybody with an idea, even a stupid one, and an elegant or gimicky way to express it, could explode into a happenin' scene of epic proportions. 

Lately tho, I feel kinda done with happenin' scenes of any proportions. At the same time, my fine young nephew has brought the dazzling world of Science back into my center of focus. Ever since our trip to the Franklin Institute, I've been remembering those days of early childhood, and just the shear wonder of everything.

All areas of science have made leaps and bounds in the 20 some years I wasn't really paying attention. Now, hanging out with Matthew, I get to catch up to all the stuff I missed out on AND stay on the cutting edge (Matthew's totally cutting edge. This kid is a natural born quantum physicist. Talk to him about Time Travel. Seriously.)

So now I'm filling in my gaps, devoting my rainy days to Carl Sagan, Kenneth W. Ford, and the Reluctant Mr. Darwin instead of my usual gin and ink and A Perfect Circle records. 

And, in the immortal words of Bill Nye, "Science Rules!"

I Love...

Waking up alone, at dawn in a strange apartment. Watching the light move. The smell of green tea and sandalwood. 

There is no where I have to be, nothing I need to do for hours. It is early April morning, but the city hums with summer: air conditioning and sprinklers. 

I stretch and turn over onto my stomach. I bury my face in the scent of someone else's sheets. I hear kids at a distance. The aching part of the year when it feels like summer but still, there is school. I remember. The countdown days. I am outside of all that now. 

Stretch again and flip again. Reach down and pull on my jeans. I have the intention of going out, for coffee, for juice, for sunshine, but the light moves so softly on the other side of these blinds, illuminates the room inch by soft pink inch, so I lie back down, pull my headphones on, press play, fill my head with sounds.

The Roots and other summer music. K-OS, bouncy hip-hop that makes you think of stacked girls in tank-tops. City walking rhythms. The light reaches me. 

One more stretch and I'm on my feet, wash my face with headphones still on, wash some dishes, make some coffee. Take two shots of last nights rum and I'm open like a morning glory.

Today could turn into anything at all.

Missing the Sun

Each day, the light lasts a little longer. 

The ground has thawed and is trying to dry. Midgy has her tulips and her daffodils in an impatient line, waiting for the weather to be right so she can get them in the ground.

We want things to grow. We want colors again, and sunshine pouring in. We want to open the windows. 

I'm watching out for Robins. I've heard rumors of them, but I haven't seen anything grace our backyard yet, besides the occasional cagey squirrel. I'm waiting for the embers of their red breasts in the grass, bringing bits of the sun down to warm things up and chase away the winter.

When they come back, I will ask them for a bit of sun-fire. I will take it to his house, and plant it with some orange and red tulips in his front yard.  Maybe the sun will help his heart thaw. 

maybe then we can grow.

Don't You Take That Train to Negative Town!

For a while, there was sweetness. He's always thinking about me. 

Sex in the morning, Valentine's candy. 

Red roses blooming in the Bluecoat bottle. 

Could I be one of these people? 

Grow into love like a crocus through the snow.

For a moment, I think it. 

But oh! 

All the girls, their long legs in stockings, 

high-heeled shoes, lingerie shopping, 

long dark curls across white hotel pillows. 

Men with worn hands 

and wide, boyish smiles, 

door holding at grocery stores 

long looks across Christmas lit parties. 

Musicians I'm always crushing on, 

the one it's not impossible 

will one day kiss me under fireworks. 

long fingers tracing my iliac crests.

Twenty-two year-olds with close-shaved heads 

The faces they make to look sexy in pictures. 

Boys and the smoke, the bars and the drugs, 

Trains, and crashing in anyone's bed, 

kissing a stranger for the poetry of it, 

going to sleep alone, and happy.

All this beauty and potential 

build a river between us

I cannot bridge,

he will not swim across.

The Great Dumpling Disgruntlement of March, 2009

"Oooohh, I have dumplings!"

"Uh, you have A dumpling. One."

"Oh. But, but I want two!"

"I know. But it was all I could do to only eat one."

"Dangit."

Winter Marches Mercilessly On

Snow is inconvenient. Cold without snow is stupid. I miss California.

Piled under blankets, wrapped around a mug of tea, watching the pearly grey light strain against my kitchen windows. Watching the plants in the kitchen strain starving towards the light. 

If I close my eyes, I can see Cali, the impossibly tall Palms arched across the radiant sky. A softer winter sky, without the scrubbing summer dust. The magenta bougainvillea leaves trailing in the pool, lazy lounging hearts. Thick date clusters hanging over the garden wall and the oleander in the corners, around the rocks where the lizards sun themselves. I can see Cali, but I can't smell it. This house just smells cold, plaster and snow, and the cigarette smoke in my hair from the night before. 

Bears would take one breath and know it was still time to sleep, curled up under piles of leaves and layers of fat and fur. Bears would wait for spring to wake them. Why are humans so intent on staying the same all year round? If I could sleep with the season, I'd be far less grumpy. I would dream of Cali and Mexico, and the hot basking sun of Rome. I would taste the desert sun in my sleep and wake up hungry for summer. 

I wonder what bears dream? Probably honey. 

I would dream of honey too. Sweet sticky ribbons of sunlight, and the summer hum of a billion bees. 

Bees also sleep in the cold. They also know. And who can even guess what bees dream? Bougainvillea and Star Jasmine and Purple Clover and bears.

And I dream of bears and bees chasing me. Laughing. 

I Miss You Most Mornings

I take my coffee and cigarette alone, watching the snow, breathing the cold. It's beautiful and still and white, and it is early and I have lots of time.

These are the things I wanted to tell you.

The smell of roasting pumpkin seeds

Girls in bright dresses, splashing in puddles

A room where you can make a huge mess

Jackets with red lining

A host of sparrows taking flight

birds against a winter sky

white sugar on a wet strawberry

maps

the hollow between shoulder blades

January morning light caught on the curve of a white porclein teacup

rings turned inward on wrinkled fingers

Little kids in grown-up shoes

Remembering why you fell in love

Men in white dress shirts with freshly starched collars

Minty fresh smiles

Cuddling a puppy under a fuzzy electric blanket when the wind is vicious outside and the cold seems to come from everywhere

Dressing for a first date

Lemongrass soup

Boys with frowny smiles who mutter under their breath that they miss you

The women in church with fabulous hats

Red curry in a yellow dish

Knowing that January is finally over.

Carbuncle

...is a really fun word for a really gross nasty thing.

You should probably prepare yourself, because I'm about to tell you the grossest story I ever told. Its chock full of pain, embarrassment, blood, pus, and well, it's damn funny.

Shortly after Christmas, I noticed a curious pain in my tailbone. Like a deep sort of achy pain, like when you fall on the ice, or if someone wacks you in the ass with a cast iron pan and misses the fleshy bit. But I didn't have a bruise, so I shrugged it off.

Then a couple a days after that, the pain was getting worse and worse, and I discovered a little tiny pimple-like lump, right at the tipity top of my ass crack. Which is a most inconvenient place for a pimple to be, but I think we've all been there. Shrug and apricot scrub and sit more carefully. No big deal.

Except it was about to become a big deal. Like, a Great Masher Marble sized big deal. 

And I thought what any interesting person would think, "OMG I am sprouting a tail!"

Suddenly, weird body quirks and years of odd medical ailments all made sense! My hyper-developed sense of smell, the chronic insomnia, my allergy to silver, my outrageous arm-hair, the lump in my ass-crack! Nothing was wrong with me at all! It was just really really slow-onset lycanthropy! 

I was about to become a werewolf! With all the crazy demonic superpowers that that entailed! (Oh yeah, that pun was totally on purpose!) At least my dreams of super-villainy were about to be realized.

But then the lump was the size of a golf ball, and sitting was excruciating, and still no tail or fangs or anything! And then I had to do the worst thing that anybody ever had to do. I had to ask my mother (who is a nurse) for and Ass Inspection.

Oh, it was humiliating. And the one painful lump was becoming SEVERAL painful lumps, and who ever heard of a werewolf with like, 4 tails? That is completely unnecessary. 

Well by new years eve, I couldn't sit at all without my legs tucked all up under me (it was a good thing we saw the Tale of Despereaux. Could you imagine me trying to get through Benjamin Button?) And so my mom took a look and she got all very serious and she said, "You need to see a doctor." And she told me some scary stuff about infections and traveling to the spine and yeah. 

But I don't have health care and I'm kinda low on cash, so first we looked it up in a book and that's where we came up with the handy and catchy word "Carbuncle." 

A Carbuncle is a painful circumscribed inflammation of the subcutaneous tissue, resulting in suppuration and sloughing, and having a tendency to spread somewhat like a boil, but more serious in its effects.

Which is a snooty way of saying an infection in my ass crack that would swell to the size of my fist, keep me couch-ridden on my stomach for the better part of a week, until finally it swelled so much, the skin split, upon which would follow days upon painful days of oozing bloody puss from the unmentionables, accompanied by high fever, body aches and general degradation and humiliation.

Which is exactly what happened. I DID wind up going to the doctor, after the first ones split and the new ones started sprouting and the prospect of another week in agony was too much to face. They put me on the wickedest and also expensivest antibiotics imaginable, and various friends doled out the percocets and hydrocodones for the pain. (Thanks ladies!)

Fortunately, I am finally on the mend. Yesterday, my fever broke, and I could finally sit on my own butt again! And as of this morning all oozing seems to have mercifully ceased.

And the next time I feel like I am at the height of degradation and misery, I will think of my mother, driving me to the doctor, saying, "I just, I just don't know how you got this. You weren't- were you... fooling around with somebody... back there?"

And I will laugh and laugh.

I'm still kinda bummed tho. About the tail.