Zugunruhe

I mixed cinnamon and honey

in my coffee this morning.

I wanted to hold

the desert in my mouth again.

I miss the hot wind

and the promise

of the lonely unexpected.

I miss a sky the color of

all the voices of God.

My cigarette does not taste enough

of the fires of California.

The Nor'Easter outside does not

contain the spices of

the Santa Anas.

I have been too long from the road.

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.