Hauled Up Notebooks

Weird Awkward Poets, Tattoos ,and Why I Haven't Been Blogging

2006-12-10T05:43:00.000-08:00

On Sunday morning, you watch the sun glint through the window. I pretend that I'm not lonely or tired. I don't feel particularly bad or good. I wonder what I am going to scrape up from Christmas. I do usually write a Christmas poem of some sort. Last night, I went dancing. Damn, it felt wonderful to be free of a lot of the nonsense that can get into a poet's life. Or anyone's life for that matter. I danced to a song "Absolutely Fabulous" that a friend who has since passed loved so much.

When life has you at the despair point, something seems to snap me out of this funk. The song definitely got me to thinking how we are not really alone. While my conception of heaven or an afterlife is definitely vague, I just know we are not abandoned by those who have loved us---really loved us---in our lives. OK.

I know I am insecure; but lately so much more. I get to the point where I'd like to retreat a while to the comfort of my house after work. I don't like feeling so anti-social and not wanting to be around people. I was never good with small talk. When I went dancing, the language is your body. It's so much easier to not always have to open your mouth and say something. Anything.

I am going to give myself the Christmas present of a tattoo. I will probably get a peony;or a small image from a Marc Chagall painting. I need something permanent to remind me, yes, I am alive.

Weird introvert poets, mmm. Yes, I earn the title. Well, that title and the fact I can't clean my car. My car is like a person with clogged arteries...even if you tell them to stop eating, they still keep throwing junk inside.

I am one of the most awkward people in the world. The best form of communication for me is always the poem. When I step out of the poem, I have a difficult time not fumbling around trying to sound intelligent and remotely together. Don't get me wrong. I am a better communicator then I used to be. I was a failure at it.

I tend to get frusterated because as I read the literary magazines, it can be discouraging. Your voice gets lost even in the company of those you respect. It's all six degrees of separation; I am convinced. Talent is definitely a major part. You just have to run into the right person who respects the talent and will help you.
The latter half of the sentence is always the more difficult part.

I am sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I finished up teaching school. School is an experience. Teaching freshman composition makes one very humble indeed. Since I am finished teaching, I pray I'll be able to spend more time writing and reading again. Doesn't that sound ironic? As a teacher, it's difficult to get much past your work with your students.

I do feel restless . There are two more weeks until the days start getting longer. Today will not put on the cliche of gray.

I am tired from dancing;but I'd like to thank the DJ of the universe for playing that song. I needed a reminder I am not without friends---even if they are now the notes of a Pet Shop Boys anthem.

Amen to small miracles.

Greek Is Not Easy To Learn

2006-11-01T04:46:00.000-08:00

I found out that someone I studied with has bone cancer. I often feel guilty when I hear about other's struggle with cancer. It just breaks me. Since I don't have a family, I still have my doubts why I was spared. The news of her illness was dropped like an anecdote in a curriculum meeting for our new MFA program.

I was a student representative sitting in. Our professor said that "She lost an arm...she has a baby...she has cancer." I am not saying people didn't feel bad; but there is that uncomfortable silence and then back to business. I didn't want to talk about it myself; and I had it. Cancer puts you right in the bullseye of the cold earth. But, the one thing that I often think would have helped me is being able to talk about death and not have to deny the pain I was going through. Sometimes, the pain is not only physical.

After I was well, I had a breakdown because I had to deal with the emotions and fear of death, no one, not even my family wanted to discuss. When I think about what it is I should be doing, I often believe I should be working with cancer patients. No one need be afraid of talking about what they are afraid of, their pain, their heartache, their feeling alone.

I'll post poem later today....

Are Pointed Heels A Cure For Sorrow?

2006-10-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

TEST PATTERN OCTOBER 27th Rock N Roll Poetry of James Crane. Plus Halloween costumes. It should be a kick ass night of poetry and spoken word. This reading is long overdue for James.

I got my second rejection letter from Slipstream. I must start to work to get more writing out in circulation. I have been using school as an excuse; but I shouldn't. I do have time to get my work together.

I am working through some things right now. I am trying to figure out where I belong. I have thought about moving so long I have thought myself out of it. In the summer, I'd like to take a week long class at Naropa and check out Colorado. If I don't make the decision to leave, and do what it takes, I'll be damn fifty. I just can't see moving without a practical job or life situation. No one runs away from their problems by moving. That is for sure.

I might adopt the title of this as a personal adage. I bought a pair of pointed heels at a vintage store today. They are black alligator and are not me. I am more than contemplating the tattoo. I believe I am going to chop my hair very short. These could all be reactions to John and I pretty much being finished.

I don't know. A friend of mine, Liz's birthday is today. We haven't talked in a while. Loss doesn't happen when someone dies. It happens when a guy who might have asked you out has his engagement picture in the paper, you aren't talking to a friend who you miss terribly but are afraid to call back, fearing she might ream you out.
And, then, you lose your friend/"lover" in a stupid fight when he wouldn't stay the night.

I am sick of losing people. I am tired of the emptiness of loss. Grief doesn't start when someone stops breathing. I believe it's all around us. The alone of sitting here typing into cyberspace proves my belief in the fact that we don't just mourn the dead. At times, lately, my pulse is moving, my body is going through the motions of work, but I am grieving people I love who are still here, and can't contemplate my heart is out of synch. Who will belong to my skipped beats?

Thinking About Fast Car, Traveling And Being Almost 35

2006-10-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

I had the song Fast Car by Tracy Chapman on my mind today. That song talks about getting out of a difficult situation. "I thought I belonged...." I listen to traveling stories. A few friends went to P-town for the Norman Mailer conference.
I spoke to a good friend in California who doesn't think twice about traveling. He tells me if I don't go soon I probably never will. I'm almost 35 and I haven't really seen the world at all.

I've witnessed a small part of it. I so want to hop a million planes and go around this big earth. Isn't it funny? Now, I have such a deep desire to travel and it seems so unreal. I don't have the means to go and be free now. Something or someone is always holding me back or maybe that's what I keep telling myself.

The character in Fast Car struggles with the same notion. Wanting to escape and realizing there's no way more wise I can do what I want. I'm starting to get tired; so I am going to bed. The world is too much with me..

Two For The Price Of One

2006-10-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

Two for the price of one---

I usually don’t write like this, but now I have two poems.

Octoberfest And All The Existential Truths Of Tasting Beer

At the Brewery’s Octoberfest,
We didn’t intend to drink so much.
Who does?
We were going to hear the cover band
and have one, maybe two glasses.
But we talk. We talk and sing and laugh and smile
And you tell me about girls you hit on and I say
They’re young for you but then again I am young for you
And people are dressed like Bavarians and are carrying around beer steins.
There is pork barbeque and kielbasa,
The Polka band played last night.
You protect me from a man who
asks me if I play dominoes and
I know breathing is
not to be taken for granted.

You are close and happiness
Is singing as the band covers ACDC.
Even though hair metal didn’t exist
For nerds like us, who were more into the Talking Heads
Than Twisted Sister’s bleach blond debauchery.
Oh, hops and barley, the sweet indulgences
of this hard working life.
Would that all days be this honest and frank
The beer could use more head
And I would like to use so much less of mine.
In Berlin, there’s more purity to the taste.
The Germans drink a pint with breakfast.
Americans hide the taste
with tons of preservatives.

You talk about your mom, and make plans for us,
To visit a museum in Phila, a Chili Peppers concert,
And fantasize a bit longer
Here on the macadam of a beer distillery,
In the center of a crowd, surrounded by indecisive trees and people
Who can’t decide what color to wear
before they say goodbye.
We dance and shout, and I forgive you
Even when you give me the left-handed compliment
About looking like Teresa Soldana, the lunatic
Who killed Warhol and is up for parole.

In the bar for one more nightcap,
We play darts and I sometimes miss the board,
Staggering around to Van Morrison’s Into The Mystic
Oh, ocean, you are here, in the waves of the game
That won’t last, in the sharp edge of the dart,
We point and throw.
We throw and miss.
Take three at a time
and see how many hit the middle, you say,
Only one lands
straight for the bullseye.

Martyrdom, American Style

2006-10-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

I am trying to be poetic without working so hard....I don't know how this works.

Martyrdom, American Style

There should be Wink Martindale with his pearly white smile.
Instead, Bach calls from the alarm.
I never asked for classical music before work.
I never asked for any thing fancy or too overdone.
Nothing can sound like literature. Nothing ever does.
Everything is Dick and Jane, the Cat in the Hat.
Simple, dignified and without question.

Now and at the hour of my death.

The night is shoelaces without a double knot,
needing so much to be replaced.

One watches the end of a movie, dazing into space.
The other attempts to kiss, and hopes her tongue will make the difference.

Our Father, who art in heaven,

world peace takes so long, what makes this cushion any difference.
The two sides will retreat and fight and then retreat again
To the opposite ends of furniture so tired of life in this room.

The world will spin on the blue of the ocean and the tilted axis God prepared.

The movie is on the screen and she just needs him to look at her
Granted she’s not Lolita, or Lola from the bar,
or Louise his neighbor down the street
He helped her with a computer and she abandoned him,
He cut down the poison ivy but no one noticed,
He planted birches and they’re starting to get leaves.

As it was in the beginning, now and ever shall be...

No wonder he won’t look. The film is too riveting.
A young girl. An older man.
They will have this complex movie transformation. .
They will do something crazy, make dinner.
Hop in the shower together,
Watch the beads of water flick off skin. One by one.

All this in a film.
In the meantime, she knows there are mice crawling in these walls.
There’s dirty dishes on the table from three days ago.
She still gets naked and performs. She does more
than his month or two hired help would do.
She sticks out her tongue and licks.

Oh, St. Anthony, please come around,
something's lost and it must be found.

But, what can one expect, to live as a martyr,
one must endure some suffering.
It was so easy in the age of the Romans.
Just suppose you’re a Christian
and the lions will take care of you.
They’ll rip part by part until not even
The bone is left. The crowd will cheer.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Here, there are no lions waiting.
There are only black and sometimes gray hearses
picking up the dead from the hospital across the street.
The heavy violence of death mauling us toward our final hours.

Gethesemade,
the garden will stop growing sometime, and still we plant and make
a place to reflect in,
while they cart the body out
in the black bag and hope
lack of oxygen won’t kill the sunflowers,
won’t destroy our rendevous of mauling the parts no one cares to eat any more
only on special occasions, Christmas, New Years and
Friday turning into Saturdays demanding seconds of touch and one day without
the corpse collector coming to take away life as we part
the curtains and let the sun in...

My God, My God why have you abandoned me?

Good morning, honey, sleep well?

Dodge Poetry Festival

2006-10-03T16:32:00.001-07:00

I went to the Dodge Poetry Festival over the weekend. Here I am again, delaying the correcting of papers that goes along with teaching. I regret the time I don't have to write anymore. I feel like I am stealing time away like you steal precious jewelry from a Tiffany's vault.

Anyway, the Dodge was cool. The infusion of language and people has my head spinning. I like the fact so many poetry lovers still breath on this earth. There were the usual poets that I love: Mark Doty, Jim Daniels and Laure Anne Bosselaar, Lucille Clifton. But the biggest surprise was falling in "love" ok--so everyone uses this term loosely---with the poetry of Anne Waldman.

Yes, she was a friend of Ginsberg and named the MFA Program the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. But, something struck me about the passion with which she took the stage. There was no apology for the way she performed. She read a piece called Stereo which is from her book called Marriage. She rocked the house with her performance. ROCK N ROLL. Those beats must have been nothing short of hell raisers. And, as if that wasn't enough, she followed it up by "Rogue State", an anti war anti Bush poem.

She gives power in the feminine. The title of the pieces the poets were reading about is "How is Truth to Be Told". Well, she did address the war, but she also addressed how we get along in our everyday lives with "Stereo". So many times I think people believe poets to be so far removed for the circumstances of the minutes of the days. The simple things. I am glad I heard poets that give me faith that poetry is not an art for a certain few. (Like they would sometimes make us in the trenches poets believe)

GO ANNE WALDMAN!!! She used a lot of breath technique and what she learned from Buddhist mediation to shout her barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world!!!! I am so empowered to want to read and have that kind of hope in the words I am writing.

Not only Anne Waldman, but also Joe Weil, Jack Wiler, and B.J Ward, Gretna Wilkinson, tsmalltown New Jersey poets, give me hope for the future. I am a smalltown chick and these folks speak like they know the neighborhood. These are the factory workers, the cheap beer drinkers, the folks struggling to find love in a world so consumed to swallow us. This weekend gives me strength to know literature is not for the chosen few who make it into the literature hall of fame.

Oh, do I detect outrage. I got my second rejection for Slipstream. This weekend I plan to send out two more sets of poems. The mailings have been slow because I feel bogged down with school. The semester is only one month in and already I want to be finished. I suppose that is not the mark of a truly motivated teacher. I wonder if I am a teacher; I wonder even more if I am a writer. I don't know if I even have what it takes to make a small press open their eyes. I am not the most confident in my art lately. I miss the support from the MA program. Thank God for my weekly writing group or I don't know what I'd do.

There are times when I desire to quit. But, there's this nagging voice inside that won't let the craziness stop spouting from the head to the page.

Comment away on the poem. I need the help. I still do want to post some famous and infamous poets...Jane Kenyon for the first I think....next time...

U Haul It Away, It's Yours

It's all about the auction couch,
one hundred dollars
and the ten U Haul calls, it took
to get the Viola's couch inside the door.
We lift one side in
then the other, so nothing is damaged.

Yes, I answer your
long drive in the car posed question
someday I do want kids.
I crave the poetry of baseball practices
of going over spelling and phonics,
of a man
who helps the blue collar day
become less sad.

The thing
that happens after
the radio's turned off
and we find lakes and countryside so beautiful
they should be illegal, or
at least give
our eyes a citation and a warning
not to glance again at the scenic overpass.

These weekends are like Norman Rockwell paintings
pleasant to look at, but something
I'm afraid won't stay
on my wall.

Oh, every one plays The American Bandstand of Companionship.
I give that friend a 78 but I really don't like
the last comment on my blog.
I can't be happy
with only mohair couches and
country rides and the patience
of the
"I would like more but I don't know" smiles.

After the auction,
I can't drive in the rain.
I was never good with water,
showers,
and long downpours just block the vision.

Those pellets of hydrogen and oxygen
bring flowers, bring babies
but no one ever
leaves a cradle outside
without an umbrella, or a mature adult.
I won't disappear like the moldy old couch smell.
I will stay around long after
the cargo van gets returned
and all my chairs are put back
in their place.

I glow in the virtue
of contemplating temptation
and settling for the etiquette of salons
where we sit on sofas
and discuss politics and history
Edwardian or Victorian art.

Some art has to have
a person's first name
to make the paint legitimate.
Sir and Madam Upper Crusted
sipping apertifs with
our white dresses and white suits,
Gatsby and Daisy lookalikes
no one can tell we're not new money

we're barely middle class.

We are lost socialists
who could have been Paris
who could have been Berlin
or any romantic version
early 20th Bohemians
who didn't know
they had a right to kiss during wartime.

We move my new purchase home.
We keep a ring and kids lit
in the candles we burn
on our coffee tables,

Those wax angels
flap flames every night
and keep us hot.
They're tired of
working the guardian all night shift
blowing the fire out
before we do.

I Take Solace in Poems

2006-09-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

Relatively new poem. I am delaying correcting papers for school.
I think I am going to start posting one of my favorite poems during the week
instead of just my own work.

Dodge Poetry Festival is this weekend. I can't wait!!! I am fending off what I think could be depression again. I take solace in Kenyon and the fact life is not as bad as I see it through my jet black glasses. I wish I had a brighter outlook; or at least happy enough to not make some days seem like Sisyphus trudging up that eternal hill.

I find more comfort in a poem than prayer most days. I am glad that poetry lives. It's as close as I'll ever get to God.

Party Talk, After The Potato Chips Are Stale

On Rocky Horror movie night

there has to be

etiquette

for relaying information like

she's damn broke.

Front porches ask for more

than sophisticated recipes

for the Time Warp Weiners and Beans.

Plastic chairs are uncomfortable

on necks and legs and asses

without a cushion.

"And what did

that recent hospital stay entail?"

She drinks wine

from a martini glass.

The world swirls

in a circle along

the crystal

an earth she holds

in her hand.

Her Tropic of Capricorn where

merlot ends and the brutal heat

of the third world begins.

She rocks in the glider,

back and forth and

back and forth

and back

and forth

until the creak is

always the same.

Her marriage is over.

Her mom has that dreaded C word

the two syllable disaster

no one pronounces

because saying something aloud

in a smalltown makes

the statement fact.

Soon, the woman who

gave her birth

will go away

not on a thousand dollar

retirement trip to Ireland

but into a fourth world

poorer than India

but rich in twilight's grace.

Purple, pink, yellow, orange rays

a young Mother Teresa

gone wild

belly dancing across

the horizon alone.

I Heard You're Getting Married

2006-09-21T22:38:00.000-07:00

I live in Scranton, PA. By this time in my existence, I should have three kids and be folding laundry. I should be sharing a bed. Instead, I live in my grandmother's old house and sleep in a daybed. I watch foreign movies, think about feminism, write and read at local open mics, struggle to pay bills, have a sometimes man who I love, and dream of a life behind the antique couch hovering like a mother in my living room.

I am always at odds with the fact I can't deny I am a thinker. Someone at work commented they are bored with their relationship because it is too comfortable. I have all the "comfortable" things in my life. A TV. A VCR. A computer. I can instant message you from across the world. I can't seem to hold a lover in my arms more than a night, though. The keys on this board aren't quite the companions they claim to be. I do have a good man in my life. We won't be together, though.

There's an age difference. There are difference of opinions. He respects my intelligence but sometimes the kisses don't come like they should. I keep waiting.

I do get them sometimes. When I do, they are electric. They make me long for the next time so much more. There is not enough certainty moving with the electric current. It's like the good old movies. They are rare and magical; but elusive in their beauty. They don't exist any more. I steal these moments like Casablanca. Ingrid would leave Bogie. You will probably leave me. But, there are times when Sam plays and I think for sure, this will be it.

I can't understand why someone wouldn't cherish this comfort level with another human being. A person who totally understands every aspect of you. The man who knows you so intimately--he can brush you and it makes you think of the rolled down covers, the rolling around, the way he positions himself into you and you are one. One. Not two, but one. The way he knows exactly what you like in your meatloaf, what blanket is your favorite, how to stroke your hair before sleep.

Did you ever notice how many people online brag about their relationships...

My Space will ask you your "status" as a human being. I am starting to feel sometimes that everything I do is based on the fact I don't have a steady lover or boyfriend.

This never really bothered me before. In the past year or so, though, I can't help escaping the thought the emptiness in my heart does bother me. It's different in your 20's. Then, the race to get married or have a significant other is based on some unspoken competition between women.

Now, I realize I could die by myself.

I saw a movie called Water today that sobered me up quite a bit. It talked about the place of widows in the Hindu culture. Even today, women who are widows are not looked upon with disdain if they decide to get married again or live their own life.

I suppose I don't have it that badly.

Here, in this area, the focus on getting married is such a prime, almost overtaking thing. Girls prepare for years to plan their wedding, from flowers to bridesmaids to the perfect music. I can never compare my suffering to the widows. There is, however, this unspoken silence by others who wonder what the hell you're story is or is in their eyes.

I am 33 years old. I am not been married. My boyfriend passed and it's been 5 years. I "date" a man who can take me or leave me. At least he makes me believe that. He could love me. If I'm asking the question, it's probably not a very good thing.

I want at least a commitment of living together; but, he says he will go for work and leave you behind. Some think I am gay, some say I just can't get it together, some think I resign yourself to be a spinster forever, or some think you are just a whore contented to pull up the covers to leave before the morning shows more than the outline of his face.

In other's eyes, I am all these things and nothing at all. There will always be another to judge or condemn in silence. I wonder why I proclaim myself feminist. I should be quiet. Sometimes, I wish I was a missionary or a nun. Then, I could have traveled. I so long to see other places, but it's always credit card bills or school loans. The only thing I'd carry on my back would be my silence, my celibacy and a backpack ready to take me to the next destination. Oh, and maybe a habit, but haven't those things gone out of favor since the 60's.

Nuns are liberated. Women around here, slightly less so.

There is nothing I'd like more than to live with the man I love. He has proclaimed me too "independent". Yet, he can come and go and I am left on a Saturday night sounding like a girl who has nothing else to do but wash her hair. I don't need the fancy white wedding, the bridesmaids with the updos, but I would like nothing more than to share my everyday with a man who is willing to do the same.

I suppose this sounds like one long bad personal ad. I am not sure if my want for children or a family drives me to write this terrible complaining treatise. I don't know that you can have that "independence" and have a man at the same time. It may be very hypocritical to think so.

Can I have everything I'd like as a woman? I have made many compromises so far. I am tired of them. I desire a life where desire is not looked upon with disdain. Single does not mean virgin until death. I like sex. I love sex in fact; but I don't always need the gold band to long for the touch of a man who isn't afraid a kiss means seventeen kids and a SUV. I'll settle for the peck on the lips. I'll settle for the bowl of cereal the next morning.

I'll settle for the smile that lets me know when the phone rings, I won't have to hope it's you. I will know. It's you. Thanks for leaving a message and thinking of me, even days after....

Insomnia Seems Like A Logical Reason To Give You A Poem

2006-09-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

I haven't been the most diligent in keeping up with this blog. I promise one or two poems a week...plus some of my crazy random thoughts.

I am teaching a class right now. The kids seem so disinterested. I am trying to put my heart and soul into it but the "heart and soul" doesn't make you "Oh Captain, My Captain" from Dead Poets Society. I'm believe those days of winning overstudents and making an impression are gone. If you can get them interested and at least trying to learn what you've taught, then you've done your job.

Teaching is damn difficult. I give a hand out to teachers who give their lives to education. I don't know if I am cut out for it. Education is tough work.

A poem for you all. I'll let you know my thoughts on poetry and other crazy and more than random ramblings next time.

Earth To Mars Is Only A Planet Away

Come one, come all for the continuing daytime saga
The cheap couch erotica you've tuned in so eagerly to hear.
If you seek fulfillment, the meaning of life,
Or a Coney Island funhouse thrill, turn the dial
To our special dime store drama.

Where The Kama Sutra couldn't
conceive of these loveseat positions.

On this episode,
Salvation Army furniture will not consider
The practical implications of what happens
When the he and she of said story
Can't move the hand of one
Against the private lower extremities
of the other.

The only way to squirm out of arms
Is to say
I have to go to the bathroom
And wait for next week's sterling conclusion.

What happens when
the dashing leading hubbie to be
Can't abide
By the proper etiquette of getting close.
She screams no and yes and maybe
All at the same time?
This is radio.
We must suspend our disbelief
For a moment, perhaps?

Serial soap opera stuck
Between Calgon
And the hope of 99/44 Ivory purity.
Next week, these companions travel to Mars.

A bad B movie trapped after
World War II
And before FM.

I am the maiden courted by Martians
Bettie Page's pre Playboy squealing sirens.

Those green guys get
A glimpse at my chest---
As I gleefully save the universe.
Only as close
as the 50's imagination
permits.

Most listeners settle for attempts
At Science Fiction.
An audio peep show
Those sinister villains with wide neon tentacles
And all exposing X-Ray vision.

Martians
Who speak English,
Have tattoos of earth,
And haven't seen breasts, ever.
These tired of all the craters chicks
Aren't gifted with
Earth's overabundance
of prominent mammary glands.
(Silicone and God-given racks included)

Trust me.

Those red planet inhabitants wait for us
To take our vinyl moonsuits off
And surrender
Wanna be astronauts always need helmets.
We don't know how
to be naked
and safe
in the company of stars.

Among the stars.

Cheers

If You're Looking For The Answer to the Mystery of the Universe, Don't Look Here

2006-08-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting in two months.

I am still protesting about Pluto's status as a dwarf planet?
What will all the science fair project participants do now?
If there isn't nine planets, then where will the extra
stryofoam ball hang?

It just goes to show you nothing is static; even the place
of a planet in our universe.

I am going to try to post once or twice a week again. I started
teaching a undergraduate class in writing skills. We'll see how
it goes. What else?

I am starting a new job. Congratulations to Test Pattern on
two years of poetry readings. Andrea Talarico, you rock.

Next week, I am getting my poetry on the road, as they say,
and going to read at City Espresso, thanks to Craig Czury.
He's got a reading for Wilkes Masters of Arts Students
in Writing or Alumni.

I can't believe they actually trust me to teach a course at Marywood.
I don't know about teaching. My writing will probably
go by the wayside.

I have been down lately. It's my little bit of depression,
my moments with melancholy, that I fight on and off. Writing
does keep me sane and somewhat solid.

I have a new poem for you all. I also got my first rejection
letter from the Southern Poetry Review. I have work out
to Slipstream. I sent it out almost two months ago and
I haven't heard anything yet. We shall see what happens.

My philosophy seems to be lacking tonight....

So, no epiphanies in this post.

Work, God, Family
The Pure Vocation For A Single Son

Take them to the bathroom.
Bathe the parents before bed.

He lets his father's garden grow.
despite the need to prune
and fix every tiger lily.

The late summer stragglers
find a place along the sidewalk,
what can you expect
from wild and weary orange nomads.

He lets his mother's kitchen
sleep in pigs in a blanket.
The cabbage wraps the meat
and the polkas wrap the air
even as he plays NPR
and read the New York Times.

Now, mom and dad eat pureed ham
and smile occasionally.
You look for the almost smile
tired from
changing diapers and tucking in
turning out the light and turning
the bulb back on.

In fall, the sun isn't right up in the morning.
This company house is best made for immigrants
but not made for the hippie son of immigrants.
who backpacked in Europe, lived in Colorado
and drove a U-Haul back to dump out commodes
and water the plants and jerk off
in his teenage room when he's done
wiping down the bathroom
with antiseptic and covering his face
from ammonia, the closest he'll gets to perfume
and that's not counting Mother's White Shoulders.

The peanut butter and jelly stain
from his mother's red polyester shirt
is the signature
of we're your son and daughter now.
Forget your early morning dream sequence newborn
swaddled in a hospital crib
after Emma Thompson
in a Playboy bunny costume
sucking on a lollipop
reciting Ophelia in between licks
floppy tail bouncing
in the excitement of all that
iambic pentameter can't stress.

The digital alarm is punishing;
all those straight lines of numbers
waking him up.

We are seven odd pounds, dear boy,
we are seventy odd years
and we live in a bed with rails.
We look up and then look down
a glance with nothing but color
in the irises,
blue for dad, hazel green for mom.

When all we can do is sleep,
the one consolation
is the attempt at color
under closed lids.

Every family has to preserve keepsakes
whether they are photographs or cellulitis
reminders parents have
to be turned
when they can't turn themselves.

The dutiful son looks out the window
while he can
he will die with the hospice aide rolling
his body from one side to the other
he will roll over and roll back
with a stranger chewing gum
positioning him for
another stationary day.

The youngest progeny
rubs Balmex on his father.
Those bedsores
admitting secrets
that can't be touched.

He turn on the news because
he can't listen to the breakdown
of sores, those tender marks

black inked mortgages and green backyard and brownbag lunches
dress factories and GI Bills and World War II veteran parades
fishing and cooking and church picnics
young polish folks stealing a tongue into a lip

before three kids woke for
Sunday Mass in Slovak
the comfort of caretaking, taken
care of,
slathered in
thick white cream
open and raw.

Mr Y Chromosome....

2006-06-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

This is a new poem everyone...

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus

For Mr Y Chromosome III Diagnosed
With Ted Hughes Syndrome

Yeah, Ted Hughes is someone to idolize.
He worshipped nature
And the Queen and the British citizens
Admired his bloody smashing looks
And literary flair.

Sylvia died
in those cold rooms
One long English winter
With little heat from the thermostat
Or Ted’s hands?

She couldn’t handle the kids.
She was crazy, you might say,
But if you had two kids
And your partner
Played Poet Laureate
and bedded other
intellectual clits….

I might do the same too.

I might contemplate
The sex change
To manhood but
Most male writers
Abandon the wife
In lieu of space
In the literary canon,
So I couldn’t
even carry
A cute trophy wife
on my arm
for very long.

She pleases me
And never knows
How my skin is just a woman
Inside out---
my electric pulses
As genuine as a robot
Built to complete
The simplest of tasks.

All the power in that organ—
A waste of 50,000 bucks
And the plastic surgeon’s
valuable time.

I’ll hold Sir Y Chromosome
In my fingers instead
A pen
in my hands
Happy
language does last
Before the ink dries.

Mr Hughes, nature guru,
Understood
Mating involves
one quick thrust
Of penetrating what
Never involves the heart.

Mr X Chromosome III mates
with Y on occasion
But
This female gene knows
how to control
whre the line breaks.

I build my own mythology
Filled with well-mannered children
Who say please and thank you.
Mr Diskin wears
My maiden name
And wouldn’t complain
About sleeping
On the right side
of the bed.

Here
I am witness
To the strength
Of his left side where....

I listen to
The aorta’s quiet cottage
settling on tissue
And muscle foundation
living for
almost a century.

This is the little home
Sylvia couldn’t bear.
The throttle of letters,
The tight fist
Of such
A handsome alphabet
Hurts,
Long before
The first punch.

Resurrection Blues

2006-06-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

I am resurrecting myself from the vortex of not writing on this blog. Right now,
I'm at my residency for school. I can't believe that I will soon be finishing my writing program at Wilkes.

I have a lot of doubt about where it goes next?

Resurrecting yourself into something new has its consequences. I want more. I don't often do necessarily what I should be doing to make that happen.

Maybe Jesus thought that when he pulled himself off the cross. He checked out St. Thomas, said hello to Mary Magdeline, and then said, what now? He must have had the inevitable letdown of wondering: what the hell did I go saving the world for.... This can't be worth all the trouble.

If anything the writing program has done for me, the possibility of something happening with my work is now there.

I believe hope is.

I've got the resurrection blues. The cure isn't heaven. Christ might feel the same way.

Trying to Fend Off This Depression

2006-05-08T14:47:00.000-07:00

I was keeping up with the posts and then nothing. I have had the feeling that a bad depression has been finding its way to me lately. Sigh. I hate this sorrow; it's like a bad hangover that just doesn't go away.

I also don't like the way my thoughts work. They are pretty low and read like the lines of a poem for Plath's Ariel. Plus, when I get this low, the writing's difficult. Heartsick about that.

I saw this coming for about a month now. I've had pretty bad anxiety lately; couple that with a very love/hate relationship with a friend/boyfriend,-or whatever you want to call it, money problems, graduation, a less than great job, and I just am low.

I don't even want to think about medicine. My thesis is due in two weeks and I am avoiding it like the plague. My head hurts and my heart hurts. I believe it is possible to hear the heart as it snaps and breaks.

I just pray I can work my way through this without total collapse. A few years ago I wasn't so lucky with this. I pray the peonies bloom soon. The lilacs are almost over, but it's always the peonies that make me believe in hope.

Sister Colette

2006-05-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

This poem was promised to a friend...it's the name of a finger puppet nun one of my professors gave me. It is a good luck charm of sorts after a very scary landing in Philadelphia after a trip to Austin. I feel like as sometimes anti religion as I can be..it was almost like a cross or a statue. As far as you roam from your faith, it definitely comes back to find you.

Thanks, Sr. Colette.

Why Finger Puppet Nuns Are Best To Clutch During Emergency Landings

About 20 miles outside of Philadelphia,
The pilot comes on the speaker.
We don’t have turning gear.
We will be landing quickly.
Don’t be alarmed by fire engines.
Make sure there’s nothing under your feet.
Secure your seat belt, please.

In my purse
A finger puppet nun
With lips pursued for the stereotypical nun singing
God’s chorus
And she didn’t even sing offkey.

She was not baptized.
How can she die
When she had no anointing
With holy water
And salvation of a name

I baptize you, Sister What?
What is the best nomenclature
for a finger puppet nun?
She’ll only be asked to answer once
before the plane descends

Is this what having a child is like?
This constant need to reassure
To make a place even when this claustrophic airplane
Might explode into eternal with one pouf.

Mary, too predictable.
Mabel, too 1950’s
I use the letter M as my frame of reference, perhaps.
It’s the Catholic tradition of every sister
attaching the virgin Mary as a prefix
to what her mother gave her
after the drugs wore off

I think she should be Colette,

dichotomy of naming
the Colette, baudy French writer fame
or St. Colette, founder of the Poor Clares,
friend of St. Francis

I choose Colette's banned novel
rather than
Alphabetically Cataloged Saints.

Who wants to read about a perfect life, anyway?

All this talk of names
as our plane pummels
toward earth at light speed.
This newly professed
may be the closest
I get to a kid
my unknown entity
floating through space.

So, I should baptize with care.

She’s not St. Christopher, the male protector.

A litany for you, caretaker, Sr. Colette.

of the lowly Madonna drag queens pray for us
Of the longing to what God intended to be trannies pray for us
Of the strippers who reveal more than T and A pray for us
Of the in the closet feminists pray for us
Of all those in the closet pray for us

Of the newly divorced forgive us
Of the civilly united forgive us
Of the married and not unhappy forgive us
Of the adulterers forgive us

Of the skaters, punks, nerds and Goths save us
Of the all the kids that got pushed into lock save us
Of the smalltown worker making less than hour save us

Of the starving redeem us

Of those dying in credit card mortality miserere nobis
Of the beautifully old or beautifully odd miserere nobis
Of the weekend drinkers and brown bag winos miserere nobis

Of the survivors of AIDS dona nobis pacem
Of the loveandlust seekers dona nobis pacem
Of the always alone dona nobis pacem

Of the unknown writers pray
redeem
save
forgive
have mercy
grant us peace

We have landed safe.
Please remain seated
with your seat belts fastened
until the plane makes a complete stop.

Baptized Sister (Mary) Colette,
returned wayward travelers
to sacred earth.
Thank you,
finger puppet nun of faith,
for blessing this day
with more than
the word survival.

Tuesday Night

2006-05-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

At least it's not Monday. Longing still comes on the second day of the work week.

What can you do?

Smile and pretend you're not dreaming.

Test Pattern Rocks the House--Yet Again

2006-05-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

On Friday, April 28, Test Pattern on Adams Ave. in Scranton rocked and rolled. This continues to be such a soulful space filled with the energy of language. Andrea Talarico is the cool and calm host: keeping 15 or so poets controlled. (We all know this is not an easy task)

Leslie Clapp had an awesome featured reading!!!! She also gave homage to Raymond Carver reading his poetry to close out the night.

I am going to find one of those poems to post here.

Congratulations to the up and coming stars of the night:Mike Ambrose and Charlotte Lewis.Charlotte Lewis and Mike Ambrose. You all must keep the poetry going when my generation is carrying their canes.

Sabrina McLaughlin, Erin Delaney, Keith Hubbard, Jim Warner, were the usual stellar "regulars".

Test Pattern brings me back to Prufrocks, the old art space. It has the same crazy wonderful life of Prufrock's.

I can't wait for next month. Erin Delaney will be recording a reading and making a CD. Very cool indeed. The proceeds will go to Test Pattern.

I thought I'd get back to the roots of this blog and start talking more about writing and upcoming readings.

Cheers....

Exhaustion Par Excellence

2006-04-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt much like blogging or even approaching the computer lately. This is difficult considering I am supposed to be finished my masters project. I have been extremely overwhelmed and tired. The kind of tired that doesn't seem to go away no matter how much sleep you get.

I want to get back to the 365 project. I am never good with things that have to be done with consistency.
I hope I'm not depressed. I am very stressed. Very stressed indeed.

Laurel, I pray your migranes have eased.

Rashidah Ismaili Abubakr, my professor, had me visit her house and go through my work. Strong intense work session on Saturday. I got to see Langston Hughe's hangouts in Harlem. I like New York. Rashidah is lovely and is from Nigeria originally. She is very strong because she was exiled from her village when she would not marry the man she was arranged to marry.

I love women who live feminism even before the word was spoken. Rashidah is definitely one of them.

A poem for the few troopers who still hang out here.

Blue Note

Crickets scat after-hours jazz.

August’s last standards
record live in air.

Green leaves fight the sucker punch
of violent orange
and always Stormy Weather--

Lena Horne scorns rain.

The sleeping woman
is comforted
by her snores;
not her smile.

She tempts death

with short pauses

in between breath

when joy rests
under closed eyes.

Tie Purses, Non-Workable Flash Drives, and Job Hunting

2006-04-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

Little things make me happy. Yes, the proverbial cliche.
A friend of mine, Leslie,
who is also an awesome poet, makes tie purses.
I now have one. I am very pleased.
It doesn't take much for me.
I'm so much like a kid it's not even funny.

I borrowed my friend Liz's flash drive only to have it fuck up some how. Please excuse the language. I can't believe even when I try to do something simple; like take two documents and send them to my email, I fail miserably. Thank goodness she has back up documents. I am so good at screwing up everything. If there was a job where your main purpose was to make mistakes....now I'd be your perfect girl.

Yes, even job hunting has been nil. The other GA I work with in my office at Wilkes is so uber organized I can't fathom it. Her resume is perfect in every way, shape and form. I fumble at the most practical of things.

Poets are the poorest and the least recognized people in America. It figures that it is what I am best at doing.

Lowly adjunct comp jobs, come hither. I am ready, willing, and able to take you on with all the lousy pay and hard work you can provide. I am going to every college in driving distance to seek out these prized positions . I hope I get to teach comp or creative writing. Maybe clean the classrooms of comp and writing classes?

Do I sound discouraged?

I know hope is the thing with feathers...but I can't help feeling like nobody. Even Emily Dickinson contradicted herself sometimes.

Til next time. Sayonara. Adios. Slainte.

Stay Tuned

2006-04-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

I may actually start up the 365 project again.

I am the official procrastinator.

Blogging as a Full Time Job

2006-04-06T17:36:00.000-07:00

I wish I could make this my full time job or find a way to incorporate this blogging stuff into my regular life. I like working on this blog...reading it. I often wonder if Shakespeare or his contemporaries would have used this means as a way of getting out their work.

It certainly would be cool to do this full time. My social life must be collapsing as I know it because I spend a lot of time checking my email and surfing the internet when I am not working. Sad, isn't it?

I've thought about doing the whole E Harmony thing. I need to have men who don't need their space and who aren't involved with someone else. I go out to readings and such, but I've been pretty isolated working on my thesis and working (and mulling) about getting a job.

The capstone is fast approaching. I wish I didn't rush through. I only have to face the inevitable---What on God's green earth am I going to do with myself now?

I am hoping some teaching positions open in the local colleges. Any adjunct composition or creative writing position. I would love to teach. I feel that if I don't teach, that my connection to the writing life will be so insular again. I like the connection I have at Wilkes to other writers. I've been motivated to want to take the time with my work; to see it as a job and as a way of life.

Sigh. I have to get going soon. I am starting work on the second set of poems/prose pieces in my book. Finally, I am glad I settled on a title "Wear White and Grieve". I have divided the sections into the old Victorian Wedding Adage
"Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue."

Laurel, I owe you three or four poems for that poetry project. When I'm told to write a poem, keep to a schedule, I fail miserably at the attempt. I shouldn't be such a slacker with things sometimes. Between the thesis and the job situation, I am preoccupied. But those are just my lame ass excuses.

I do need to get back to both the poem project and the 365 project. Yes, Jennifer and Dan I still want to finish that---although I may be seventy five years old when I'm done.

Hopefully going to Binghamton for an open mic reading at the Lost Dog Cafe. We shall see what tomorrow brings. I am excited Barbara DeCesare is coming to Wilkes Barre at the Arts Universe on April 21. I love her work and liked her reading and workshop a year or so ago in Kingston.

Keep up the poetry Scranton/Wilkes Barre, Wilkes Barre/Scranton. We have talent and life and hard working souls here.

Visitation

2006-04-03T18:37:00.000-07:00

God's tired of holding in his anger
much longer

He can't abide by those
who don't visit him

and stop to talk.

He's not a forgotten relative
in a nursing home.
Damn it, he reminds me
the oxygen is not shut off.

He's tired of the green jello
and although he takes naps
he never sleeps much

and complains of insomnia often.

Test Pattern Rock N Roll

2006-04-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all the poetry lovers who keep this poetry scene as cool and full of life as anything in a big city.

100 folks for over 2 hours for poetry!!!

Thanks to Jim Warner for giving an awesome reading.

Poetry is alive and well and continuing. Thanks also to Andrea Talarico for your dual reading with Jim and being a great open mic host.

I love all you guys. Poetry is my greatest joy and love. Friday night was a testament that the joy runs through more than just my veins.

Keep believing in the words...

Daily Poetry Project

2006-04-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

Wedding Song

I marry a poem in April.
I give him a ring
and a country ride in Tunkhannock.
He won't tell me he needs space
right on the arrival
of forsythia and crocuses.

Now is not the time for disappointment.

I wear red on the special day.
I save white for another occasion.
Words are cool boyfriends.
He lasts forever
unless the paper rips.

I choose the alphabet, all 26 letters,
all infinite possibilities, all negative
capabilities wake in
this prince. "I do"
bundles in a bridal bouquet.

No language holds commitment
on lowercase shoulders.

New Poem

2006-03-23T17:56:00.000-08:00

I am posting a new poem....hope you all like. Also, hope there aren't any die hard Disney fans reading.

Blue Dot Tattoos Versus Tinkerbell Fairies

The kind of tattoo I got
no one gave me a choice about
no tattoo parlor
thunder-cracked hearts
where the break happens
right in the middle

Come on…

What bullshit to believe
the aorta severs
at the exact point of juncture

of connection

I know how the cut can happen, though.

A lego constructed muscle
lacking the novelty of other shades
beside red---

maybe an azure blue for arteries and veins.
but doctors lack imagination
and could never picture
a body who
could smack my chest
and believe in the beat
under the breast.

No instructions for rebuilding my organ
not meant to hold together
with Elmer’s glue of Donor X’s platelets
tubed through veins.

Light and breath and night:
a rattle snake all
coiled safe under skin.

My tattoo is a blue dot marked by a radiologist
who didn’t pull out a book
full of demons and daisies
and Santa Claus pictures.

I didn’t get to choose the impish fairy
a cool homage to the mysteries
of my Celtic heritage.

The Druid secrets carried on wings.

I didn’t pick the tribal images
the latest ink
everybody was getting.

Oh I'd die to have wings.
Aluminum foil wings
glitzed in the spray paint
of God's attempt to make
us think we can fly.
I'd relish the fabled garb
of cherubims and seraphims
combined.

I didn’t choose the parlor
the table I’d lay on…

The haloed body part marked
the perfectly placed rose.
Curled crimson petals unfurling
along the top of my shoulder
or my boyfriend’s name
printed in bright pink calligraphy
along my calve
or the Japanese character
I checked the online dictionary
to find what the script means

Peace
Tranquility
Joy
All three combined?

Those zen diatribes must be
inscribed on the small of the back
and then meditated on
with some chilled white wine
to be understood.

I do almost anything
for a real life tattoo
from the bearded bald buy
who wears Cleopatra as his master
along his arm.
instead of a long sleeve
of polyester
covering the queen
carrying her hourglass figure
along his bicep.

He never misses a moment to
let the muscles talk and soothes away
her troubles of running
a whole Egyptian kingdom.

No, I didn’t get Tinkerbell
like the waifs in the gym
Peter Pan’s tiny fuck buddy
penciled above
where their gray sweat pants
are rolled down.

Tinker's nimble body flittering
along numb skeletons
who used Dad’s credit card
and now are the runway
for flying animated pixies
(and pixie dust)
taxing across over-exercised
undersize thighs.

I got my tattoo finished
on a hard table
and not the sweet hard hurt
of a man inside, but
filled with the needling pinch
he leaves after he pulls out
and shrivels up.

Yes, I still wonder why
I couldn’t plant blue delphiniums
perinneals opening across
the folds of a stomach

not prepared for spring.