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.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

2006-03-20T18:51:00.000-08:00

I went to a cool reading yesterday in NY. Lately, the world traveler. It won't last I know. I feel like I am asleep in this dream of life where I eventually will wake up. Nothing lasts.

Nothing gold can stay...Frost had it right.

My friend, Jim Warner, read at a Gathering of the Tribes. He is making his way as a poet. He read well. Also, heard Chavisa Woods, Amy Ouzoonian, and Eve Packer. I was very impressed by all three.

I am in awe of New York; or any big city for that matter. It is definitely the smalltown girl in me.

I've thought now about my thesis. It will be called Wear White and Grieve.

I want it to deal with feminist/issues of sexuality. Maybe during this time of war, not the most potent subjects. But it's what is on my mind and in my heart this past year.

I will get back to the 365 project. My head has been in a million different places right now. I am worried about getting a half way decent full time job, getting my poetry out there for publication. It is all very daunting. I am worried about the what happens next. Worrying doesn't solve much. Action solves a hell of a lot more.

I had a good weekend. New York and travels in Tunkhannock on Saturday. I will get into my day with John in another entry.

Sleepy here. Dreaming of spring in this cold snap before the crocuses announce their arrival with purple charm.

Back from Austin---Thankful for Meeting Mark Doty, Tales of Finger Puppet Nuns and Emergency Landings

2006-03-16T15:33:00.000-08:00

Alas. Life has a way of putting things in perspective. I was in Austin, TX for the AWP writing conference. Cool. We got to read for our MA Program in Writing from Wilkes University.

Austin is a fun city. A blue dot in a red state. Lots of great jazz and blues music. I also got to meet and work with my mentor, Nancy McKinley, who is an awesome person and teacher. Thanks, again for letting me find my voice and not being limited to speak what I want and need to say.

I also talked to Mark Doty in the Austin airport. That was cool indeed. More than any words can say.

Thanks also to Dr. Lennon who is a strong teacher and another supporter of my work.
Good luck to you with the archives of Norman Mailer.

To end the trip, though, we almost didn't make it back. We lost the turning gear on our plane and the pilot had to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia. To say the least, scared is not the word. More like petrified.

The pilot did an amazing job. I made the joke that none of us could die because none of us had one the national book award yet.

In the title of the essay, I mention finger puppet nuns. When I went through my manuscript with Nancy, she gave me a singing finger puppet nun. Much of my writing, directly, or indirectly, has to do with matters of faith. Funny, my work is layered with the exact opposite of faith (or at least that's what the priests will tell you) sexuality.

As we were descending, I started to think about prayer. About what constitutes prayer. I'd be a damn hypocrite if I wanted to pray the Hail Mary or Our Father right before we landed. It's kind of like asking for the bluelight special five minutes after it's already over. I haven't been much of a catholic or a Christian for that matter lately. I joked away my fear. I don't believe to call up God at the last minute and ask him for all forgiveness.

The nun's name will probably be the patron saint of flying or traveling. Although maybe she will be named after Joan of Arc because she was a kick ass strong woman of the church. I want a bunch of raging feminists like Joan of Arc to take hold of the Catholic Church and let women have a say. Although the nun's not exactly tomboyish looking. She has this combination of piety and sensuality that makes me realize the two ideas of faith/belief need not be abandoned when one considers themselves a sexual being.

Oh, me going off on that nun. I want her to have a good name. After all, when I was in grade school, I had a nun (Sr.Jacqueline) who was a missionary. I had her 5th grade. She worked in Lima, Peru. She does stand out as one of the most independent Immaculate Hearts of Mary I've ever known. Maybe her independence made me attracted to a vocation. Even into high school, I seriously considered a vocation as a sister. Scary thought. When I discovered sex, though, the thought of a vocation disappeared into the night. If they let women be priests and changed the rule on celibacy, I might consider.

Now, that I have the Catholics and Christians in an uproar, I will go soon. Thankful I am breathing and alive and writing here....far from emergency landings.

Love
the violent crazy elegance of this life
every minute

Wear White and Grieve

2006-03-02T17:03:00.001-08:00

I got a new cell phone
with a Sex and The City ring
a kitzchy melody
I won’t switch
for Pachelbel’s Canon.

We like hip and trendy.
and drink in pop culture
like cheap beer on draft.

Sometimes,
I long for classic novels
where gentle men
pulled out chairs
until the ladies
found a comfortable place.

Couples held hands
and dare not move
to the stroke
of said hand up arm
to crevices we
shall not
speak of here.

Now, nothing is memory.
Obituaries are
printed online
the dead deleted
in one swift click.

We worry about losing car keys.
We have intercourse at lunch.
We work fifty hours with no break.
We revisit the quickie
for one minute
because two minutes
makes the moment pop less
and no fun to gossip about.

How then
does the post modern couple
document hope?

I can’t archive your voice
once we’re finished.
I can’t retrieve
the creak
floorboards make

when you reach for your pants.

The cracking static of widowers
who’ve never been
married
but recite the vows
their whole lives.

Any critique would be helpful. I am working on this poem...

The Heart Is Only a Muscle

2006-03-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I started back to the 365 project. This weekend I have to work at a furious pace with my poems for the thesis. Right now, thoughts of what is going to happen after graduation weigh heavy on my mind and heart.

I don't think it is going to be that easy to find a teaching position. I didn't have this notion I'd have this magically perfect job once I received my masters.

But I see the job prospects lining up and they are grim indeed.

So, please pray for a million dollar book deal..or a 100 copy chapbook deal...

I'd be happy with the chapbook. Believe me. I have to get my work out there. I am so damn afraid of rejections. Why? Well, since grade school, my life is littered with disappointment and rejections stacked against me.

I know you can't take them personally. But, you looking at probably one of the most ultra sensitive people in the world. While at times the world may look at this as an attribute, I often see it as a real weakness.

I believe people can see my heart beating, the pulse resounding...even though that muscle is caught under all those layers of skin.

Keeping Up

2006-03-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

For all the 365 folks,

I do intend to post again. Probably today. Thank you Jennifer for getting me going and not letting me give up the 365 post. I wish I could be more constant with things. Even with the thing I love, writing, I am not as constant as I should be or would like to be.

I've been doubting myself lately. The whole job search starts soon. I want to teach at the college level. I've worked hard to prepare myself for the next time in my life.

I hope I don't get stuck or allow myself to get stuck in a rut of low paying jobs.

Procrastination Medal of Honor

2006-02-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

I am struggling to keep up with the 40 x365 project. I am such a terrible procrastinator. During my whole life, I've always been this way. I leave everything until the last minute. It will get done. It will get done.

I did get my taxes completed today. Cheers to that. I never have them finished this early. But when you need the refund, you get motivated. I guess.

I wanted to use this post to pull together an idea I have my the title of my thesis. I've been tossing around 7th and Providence for a central poem. However, it is difficult when that poem, or a line from that poem is floating somewhere
out in space.

I procrastinate even if it is my writing. I am redrafting my masters project and it is taking forever. Part of me wants to keep putting it off. By taking a poem here and there and reworking, I think I am getting closer to the real meaning of the word revision. Of course, don't get me going on revision. I have a difficult time figuring out when revision is necessary or how much exactly needs to be done.

There is much more going on in my heart than I will ever let on in this page. I do edit sometimes. Editing my heart away. Checking it at the coat check door. Leaving it there for someone to brush the lint off and see.

Joe

2006-02-16T20:12:00.000-08:00

Joe strung Christmas lights like Monet. He swirled KMart bulbs like watercolors. He concocted mean strawberry daiquiris and maintained an addiction to dancing.
Joe showed me his Kaposi's sarcoma and still smiled. Pistachios stained
his face when we found him. Sleeping.

The Twelve Steps of Blogging or Post Your Blog As Soon As You Are Done Writing

2006-02-14T12:49:00.000-08:00

Blogging has become my slight addiction. It could be worse I suppose. Although I haven't been blogging myself, I still read others blogs. I don't know if I am weird or may have a slight voyeuristic side to me. I am not the best person with connecting. I find it hard to really get to know others.

I know that is why I love poems. They get at the person. No holes barred.

Well, I had a much longer post, but I screwed up with the computer somehow.

Someone should invent a twelve step program for bloggers. As well as finding a higher power, it should include finding a
rockin lover---one you could call on any time and they would come---ready to find romance or hold you---whatever the situation intended. If more twelve step programs came with this step, I'm sure many more people would be willing to stop drinking and using drugs.

My mind is in weird places. I need to work on my thesis. If my teacher doesn't see some work, she's going to think I put the pen up and took up needlework.

I hate revising. It needs to be done. But when is too much. I am the crazy madwoman of editing. It will pull things together better. I'm tossing around a few titles: 7th and Providence, Patchwork, or Putting Down Roots. Don't know yet. I have to get some work out to my professor before she thinks I quit.

Plus, it keeps me from writing new poems. I have a short story about a girl with an Elvis obsession on the back burner. There is more to it, but...too much to get into here. I will have to post a section here.

Miss my friends. Erin is hiking the trail next March. She has such a cool adventurous spirit. She should have been hanging out with Kerouac and Ginsberg. The Diane Diprima of our time.

I will leave with a poem. Happy Valentine's Day.

No roses here. Only very sketchy slightly man hating poetry. Not too man hating. I'd still like a wedding without orthopedic shoes and hanging skin, thank you.

Experimental

I dream alchemy.
The scientist
dares to change
my skin to gold.

I dance for him
in pastel
delivering the perfect ballet
of pink, purple, blue.

Making love, love-
making
requires mixing pheromones:
a most unbalanced equation.

I fold into
the wooden chair near
the bed.

My body hides
under a ratty white blanket
of curiosity.
I curl in a fetal position
and ignite.
.

When will there be time?

2006-01-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

I mourn the fact I don't often have time to sit and journal as much as I'd like. I am always stealing away time to write. Makes me sad. Every poem that I write or short piece is often like winning the gold medal at the Olympics. I contemplate the fact I will again have to put my writing life aside after graduation to work and make a living. I know I need to make money; but I wonder if being an artist is always the thing I will have to put on the back burner.

I lost a lot when I was supposed to be only partying and not mulling about consequences. I found death in my 20's and I know that makes me more than jaded. Joe's anniversary makes me worrying if I still go through life as half a person. He is on my mind.

I am going ahead. Or so I say.

I watch others connect. And I know I am not as demonstrative or outgoing. So, there in lies a big part of my problem.

I will turn 33 next week. I lost my 20's and now I don't want to see my 30's going in the same direction. The theme of loss weaves through almost every thing I do.

And me, still here. Still smalltown lady, girl, woman...middle aged.

Restless. Looking for time on a watch moving ahead

whether or not I wind it and make it go forward.

The Joy of Small Good Days

2006-01-22T15:10:00.000-08:00

Was thinking of the piece by Carver about Small Good Things. How the baker in the grocery store had nothing to give a couple who lost their son but a slice of three day old birthday cake. How strange the link between people and how small, often awkward encounters, give comfort. All connections in life are not clear cut and easily defined.

Arts Universe had their reading on Friday night in Wilkes Barre. Jen Kaucher and Dan Waber are such good supporters of poetry and all things literary here. I like them because they don't allow their ego to get in the way of writing.
Thanks for being supportive, Jen and Dan. The readings are always the 3rd Friday of the month at 7 PM.

I believe there is a delicate balance between writing and allowing your head to get swelled up.
Also, went to Donahue's Tavern for their 14th anniversary. I have a soft spot for Donahue's because I started reading there over 10 years when I first turned 21 years old. It's in this old, dank room in Wilkes Barre. It was always the gutsy, blue collar reading where people didn't give a shit and read from their heart and soul. Yeah, the poetry was imperfect. But the constant to need to write the perfect poem often takes the life out of writing anyway. At least I believe that to be true.

What makes a poem perfect or imperfect. I can't abide by a poem that doesn't live on the page for me. A piece that doesn't have heart and soul and heart and guts and that could be gasping for life but still breathes. If all poems were perfectly placed lines and phrases, there is an emptiness about the perfection of the unwavering line that troubles me. I am not saying no one should take into account form, but the beauty of all literature is how it shows us our imperfections and how we struggle with them.

Congratulations to Andrea Balise who had her directorial debut in Beat the Air, a student production at the University of the Arts. You rock Andrea. The movie was an Alfred Hitchcockesque thriller. You will definitely surpass me; and I hope you take advantage of every opportunity that you get from such a school.

Had a good time touring around Philadelphia with my friend John, going to Andrea's movie, drinking beer and talking to the locals at Penns Landing, eating Thai food before midnight. Yesterday was one of the days, each moment, I like to bottle up and save when I am especially depressed. It is funny how as I get older, I begin to realize I have to take happiness where I can find it. The moments of contentment don't happen in succession. They are often like the one excellent cup of coffee I get every week or two from the donut shop. You don't get it everyday, but oh how sweet when you do.

I am thankful for my friendship with John. Yesterday, was that good cup of coffee, that once in a blue moon beautiful vintage of wine. I hold the times we have together as rare and lovely moments... Maybe having too many moments like yesterday makes us value them less. And won't that be a shame. These out of the ordinary warm Saturdays are why we keep plunging into our long weeks and dive in.

For the hope of another one of these days, these hours, these minutes....

Even though they are fleeting, but often all we have to call our own.

How can we deny the gems of sun cracking into the winter-gray that so wants to be spring?

This poem is for a friend who passed away a few years ago this month. I miss you. Respect every minute.

Acquired Immune Defiency Syndrome

He curls into the fetal position
on the bed’s left corner.
Saliva freezes on open lips.
No more tying red ribbons
on coats anymore.

Pastachio shells in the sheets
Magenta from the last
meal on his mouth
before the undertaker comes
and wipes the food off
and shoves you into plastic body bags
as blood stops being red.

He draw nothing but
blue blood now and
blood is blue with no oxygen.

A light blue matching
the winter sky.

In Vino Veritas

2006-01-16T18:27:00.000-08:00

I sip the longing that can't be removed from the dry cleaners
or even a dash of cold water.

I don't know if any one or thing moves beyond the page...into fingers
that don't need to be typewritten or re-created in the space
between the white blank space.

Oh, alcohol eases what aches in the spaces between my heart and mind.

It never takes away the stain of the loss.

There is such truth here.
Between the first and second glass, I find peace.

Never Expose More than Above the Knee

2006-01-16T07:04:00.000-08:00

The residency week is over. It is a letdown of sorts; being around writers all week and then going back to the "life as we know it."

But, I had the chance to read in front of my peers and other writers and agents from NYC. I love performing my work. When someone is hearing your work, it gives you so much more impetus to want to write.

I'd like to get more connected with the bloggers who are poets and writers here. Almost think this like the diary no one reads.

The weather got deadly cold and raw and the wind reminded us it's definitely winter. Like a guy that keeps coming back for more; despite the fact you just want him to go away.

I go between this real struggle between wanting to be noticed and wanting to hide in the corner of the room. I have decided to start sending work out; and there in lies the chance of rejection. Also, the chance to be noticed. The double edged sword.

I do believe too, though, that when I get the work out there though reading, I am affecting people emotionally. I am getting at the heart of why I have to keep writing. To get my feelings out to others.

One of the writers at the residency said I become my real self when I read aloud. It scares me to think this. I don't let my feelings out there unless there on the page. And to some extent, it probably remains true here as well. I remain very guarded most of the time, because it's damn easy to get burned.

I live a lot in my head and in poetry. It's no wonder that's that where the gut of me lies. I am displayed like a store mannequin, naked, needing to have the store be full of hungry and happy and sorrowing men and women. Coming alive because they can see what's underneath all those bulky clothes.

Why do I have the desire to get dressed then, to cover up what always remains hidden?

I have to let the words do the disrobing, I suppose...

Compromises

2006-01-13T07:01:00.000-08:00

How often my life has been wrought with the tone of this word. I have made many sacrifices and they don't seem to get me very far. It is like a an acrobat who twists and turns in a million directions but doesn't finish the routine.

I wonder when I will have to stop making compromises.

When I will be first, without having to apologize to make right what was never wrong in the first place.

I wish someone would listen beyond the line breaks of a poem.

I am sorry I've been so sad lately. It's a sunny spring morning.

January thawing. Hope is alive in the sky; even though it is shaken in my heart.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

2006-01-12T08:29:00.000-08:00

I have been fighting an extremely bad cold. I fight off going to the doctor because of being sick and having to go all the time. I avoid them like the plague. But, lately, I know a visit is in order since I just can't get rid of this awful cold I have.

I get run down so easily. Maybe it working 40-50 hours between two jobs. I wished sometimes I had kept my old job as a case manager. Yeah, I hated it, but I think now I am running around a lot more than I was before.

I don't know what my future holds after graduation. It scares me a great deal.
There is no poetic way to describe the genuine fear I have.

Maybe the better word is dread. I wish I could apply to a PHD program. It kills me that money holds me back from everything I want to do. I am mulling over the idea of applying to English as Second Language programs overseas.

At least I'd be able to travel and teach.

If I stay, I am going to have to hope for some adjunct positions at Marywood, the U, LCCC, Keystone, or maybe one of the Penn States.

I know that this is a good time to do something drastic. There isn't much in the way of relationships here for me so the time to move forward is calling me.

I love home. I have no ill feelings against my smalltown, but I am getting restless.

Oh, to be longing on this January day where the sun is screaming spring.

Crocuses, can you be far away?

The Irish Are Supposed to Have Oral Tradition in their Genes

2006-01-10T21:30:00.000-08:00

I wish that sometimes I could tell people how bad my short term memory is. I know song lyrics so well, and yet, when someone asks me to remember a poem, my mind draws a blank so large.
I am digging for even a phrase and I can't remember.
I don't forget everything; but ever since I was sick it is so hard to bring up any of my words/poems in my head.
Tonight, I was out for a drink after our residency for school. Someone asked me to recite and a drew a total blank. I don't know why I can't get at my own phrases; the things that I have made and brought to this world.
It makes me feel like I lost a child somehow. I miscarried the language from my mind to my mouth. And the bleeding keeps going on. The poems I make are probably the closest thing I will ever have to making children. At least at the rate I am going.
I always feel like an idiot. I mean, maybe I need to set my poems to music and then the poems would come easier.
I mourn the loss of making poems.
I have nothing to defend them against their death.

My Heartfelt Apologies to Yeats and Dylan Thomas

I must say I am heartily sorry
for having offended
the oral Celtic tradition
by not remember how
to go gentle into the good night
or lead Leda and the Swan
toward home.

Please
forgive a poor Irish lass
far from the sea
maybe I miss the waves
courting rocky shores
water recalling
what I always seem to forget.

Getting Noticed

2006-01-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes no matter what you do, you're never be good enough.

P.S. Goodbye, Test Pattern

2005-12-31T13:24:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot to mention. Goodbye, Test Pattern. A year and one half of Art and Poetry and Music and Theatre on the 300 block of Adams Avenue in an old store front is gone. Prufrocks, Cafe Del Sol, Test Pattern.

Thank you Conor McGuigan for believing in the artists that struggle and create in Scranton, PA.

New Year's Surprise

2005-12-31T13:05:00.000-08:00

Snow bound and hoping it will be alright to get the proverbial bottle of champagne before the stores close at 6. Our snow showers turned into a few inches of the white stuff.

It wasn't supposed to snow like this.

But it did. And it does.

I prayed for my beta fish Pablo who died only two days after I got him for Christmas. I named him Pablo because he looked like the colors of The Old
Guitarist in Picasso's painting.

Nothing like gray to make sorrow seem sweeter. Or at least a tad bit more legitimate.

Thanks, Laurel for the recommendation about Jane Kenyon. I do know the poem Having It Out With Melancholy. Jane Kenyon is one of my favorite poets, indeed. She has a quiet way of making images come alive. Also, because I have had my problems with depression; she writes about her struggle in a real way.

I hate people, sometimes, when they will say snap out of it.

But the depression gives me a way of looking at the world I would not trade for anything. A way of digging deeper and seeing life at the core.

Next year, I'll be the age Christ was when he died. I guess in the scheme of the world that doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot. But maybe it gets me to thinking about where I am in my whole life.

Christ carried a cross and I can barely carry my master's classes. He had a plan and I can't seem to find the answer to the plan despite my depression and struggles with illness.

A male friend of mine gave me an angel whose wings regrettably fell off. Kind of symbolic of our relationship. Anyway, a few days later, another guy gave me combat boots. I thought, angels and combat boots. Thus, the idea stemmed for this poem. I know it's kind of crazy, but I like the piece. The writing is more positive than most of the words that trip off my lips.

A Happy New Year's toast to poets and writers everywhere!!! Have a glass of Dom Perignon for me.

The Angels Are Sick of Typecasting

When the sisters told me about my guardian
angel, I don’t think those Immaculate Hearts
only included the kind with flowing robes

When you leave me, again,
the angel looks something like what
the nuns described Gabriel who dropped

by Mary’s house must have looked like
pale skin, green robe with painted on stars,
glued on gold wings. What else can

a Christmas tree but a figure that
screams perfection. The ethereal
made real. A gift for a live evergreen,

only. I get this present
with a book on Hollywood starlets,
and then somehow the angel loses

her place among the gossip of how
Joan Crawford was fired by MGM.
She wasn’t pretty anymore.

Maybe I’m not either. Approaching middle
age wishing men would stop bringing me
gifts. My other “guy” friend, who can’t

decide how he can say he appreciates
our little talks, gives me combat boots
from a girl in France. I must

combine the two: seek out an angel
who wears Doc Martens, or imitations.
Who isn’t the stereotypical Caucasian

epheremal being. A Haloed
feminist who doesn’t mind the plastic
combat knockoffs. God’s messenger

bearing butterfly, Celtic and biker tattoos.
A drag queen or king who isn’t afraid
of any large dalmation barking at the door.

Yes, bring me this angel
and I follow him and or her
to the local

I am looking for the Lord
at the bottom
of my beer establishment

where I can scuff
my polished boots
and break ‘em right in.

The Night After Christmas

2005-12-25T21:49:00.000-08:00

And all through the house...

The heat was on 65 on the thermostat and still a bit chilly. Thank God for my parents and my brother and sisters. It was a quiet holiday, but nonetheless, one for memory. Sometimes, things don't have to be explosive or over the top to be good.I have given up on the whole magical expectations, and then the ordinary takes on almost a mystical quality.

I have a new beta fish, given to me by my sister. I need a name for him...

Thank God also for Liz and Mike who share Renwood and Blue Moon and cool conversations about poetry and the whole of life, artistic and every thing in between.

I don't know about John. We had dinner the other night together and it was lovely. Roses on the table, fabulous lobster dinner, and then the conversation gets heated and I end up getting very sick from a bad virus. I barely made it to the bathroom. You get the picture. I see him open up to me in glimpses. Such small cracks of the mirror that are barely visible anymore.

I want things to be like the dinner before the argument. John playing the piano while I was sick on the couch. The morning jazz easing the tension and making the longing go away for a while. And yet, the arguments, the getting sick, the strange tumbling into and out of each other continues.

I wonder. Am I looking for someone? Or looking for constant drama? Or are these temporary connections enough?

If I had the answers, I wouldn't be asking the questions.

I see my family making their own lives. I can't answer why I keep choosing solitude. Because in a way, my solitude is my own choice. I suppose I could find asafe man to settle down with. But I like the ones, who have traveled to Africa, and lived in Europe, and play jazz, who want to be Elvis or Miles Davis and who are restless and passionate and also alone by their own choosing.

The trouble is they don't like a woman who may want to stay past the night.

Some fear holds them back. Some craziness attracts me to that fear.

I may not need a commitment as much as I say. I find their travels and lives so much more illuminating than mine that I settle for glimpses. Flashes of light and maybe one or two images caught on my throwaway camera. Of course, always, the men alone. And me taking the picture.

Oh, my melancholy ramblings.

Merry Christmas!

In the Mood

The grandfather clocks sways back and forth. An old woman creaks in a wooden rocker. She threads a needle to mend the button of her husband’s sweater. Dark brown, it’ll be easy to find a match for that color. Not wanting to remember how much she patched up the many runners in her nylon stockings with clear nail polish.
Those nylons, the kind of nail polish you bought when the peanuts were fresh roasted and the coffee wasn’t instant. They’re dated right after World War II. The great hero’s war. The boys in the Pacific. She couldn’t wait until their duty was done.
She got married.
The clock ticks. And should be dead. Maybe she should be too. To the Lighthouse in the bookcase read and reread. The pages want to be devoured but it’s past their bedtime.
Before sleep, a glass of warm milk and a tattered Bible filled with Mass Cards of those died before she was born. Here, on the oak table, recitations run through her head.
The Scriptures stared in the face and she stared back. She’s not afraid to face the long
ruler that cracked strength to understand. The clocks runs quickly and without thought.
Her rod iron curlers can’t be broken and the bouncy curls in the morning wake the birds and the mailman who whispers “Hello”. Translated to leave me alone.
When the marriage was proclaimed.—Til death to us part. Did he tell a lie? Everyone’s entitled to bend the truth now and then.
Her husband shuffles downstairs. His matted black hair too angry to be combed.
and flannel pajamas crumple after indulging in fun with the close sheets underneath.
11:00. Time chuckles and walks to reach its destination. Important things to do. He must prepare a day spent with drinking innocent. After showering, he splashing spices rivaling the Orient. He dons his baseball cap and elderly attire-you know the kind- new blue denims and white tennis shoes.
She puts on water for tea. Her husband grabs a powdered donut and eats it on long hall’s pilgrimage to the front door. White traces cover the half-smiling lines of his lips. No kiss.
She goes back into the house. The water whistles and boils.

The Word Sad and or Sadness

2005-12-19T16:50:00.000-08:00

I wish I had a dollar for every time I used sad. Seems like it's pervaded my thoughts lately.

Can I leave you all with a poem?

A birthday of a mentor of mine...Happy Birthday Barbara. You are the reason I write.

Clearing My Throat

She shake the rattle
in my throat
and clears what clogs
the passage
to the heart.

Then, she straightens her wig
and reads from
the green church bulletin.

She is probably drinking tea.

I've already worn a wig
to cover the hair that fell out
and grew back in again.

I have read countless church bulletins
about ham and cabbage dinners
and masses to save the damaged
in purgatory.

I will leave the shop
precisely after I get
my medium with cream and sugar.

She Pencils in:
Mass at the Sacred Heart.
Holds out for a handshake from
the nice young seminarian
then feasts on a medium well done
hamburger with onion
at Boscov's luncheonette.
And always, finishes her day
with afternoon tea and a glazed krueller
in the donut shop on the square.

Then, she'll go home and feed the mutt.
Watch some CNN.
Pull down the covers and close the shades.

But, not before
she wipes the sugar from her mouth,
and gives me half a smile.

I know
she'll keep the seat warm,
until I arrive
and join her.

---very rough poem indeed. I will post a revision when I begin to edit this.

The Sadness of One Sunday Before Christmas

2005-12-18T08:50:00.000-08:00

Been two weeks. I was working on my thesis for school. Rough draft is finally completed. I went to a cool event last night at the old Stegmeier mansion. Jen Kaucher and the ArtsUniverse is doing some cool work indeed. Poetry readings and experimental music all in that old mansion. Wonderful. If you are in Northeastern PA, check out the writing scene. Maybe it sounds like I am just bragging because I am from here. But this truly is an evolving, involving art scene.

James Crane, excellent job at the reading. He combines hip hop tracks behind his own spoken word. He works with a guy called DJ Haze out of Phila.

Jim Warner, sorry I could not be there to hear you and Cindy. The combination of the violin and poetry. But driving home from Harrisburg for my brother's graduation at the same time all this was happening.

Sabrina, I love your work lately. Your narrative style and the way you weave stories into poetry is beautiful. You know I like Daughters of Our Thought. I liked the last poem about water. If you could send me a copy sometime...

The regular open mic is every third Friday of the month at the Stegmeier Mansion on South Franklin Street in Wilkes Barre.

Test Pattern is closing on December 31. I am sad that Scranton will again be without readings. It will be a sad, nostalgic reading on Friday, December 30. Thanks Conor for the space and the revival of art and poetry and music here.

I am waxing nostaglic this trip. It must be because this is the time of year for bold, unashamed sentiment. I realized that a man who liked me is now on is way to getting married. There is no going back for him. Alas.

I hate this part of the year because it revives my own loneliness and my insecurities about spending yet another year of my life alone. It's not been the easiest financially, either. I guess when you connect everything together, no wonder I am waiting for Christmas to pass. I must like Scrooge or very bitter, but tis true. I think of Joe's Christmas tree, the large almost 7 foot tree, laying on the side of the road outside our apartment. The undecorated beautiful green, going to be taken away. I remember that tree and the gut sorrow I have when the image of the tree comes into my head.

I miss you. One week before Christmas.

Seven days from sadness and sentiment.

Re visiting

2005-12-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

Seems like at times I want to write a ream of stuff and then other times I am quiet. Life's been busy, gearing up for getting a rough draft of my thesis done.
And I am still searching for my "phantom lover", as one of my professors at school called the theme of my manuscript. I still am planning to get the manuscript to Amy Ouzoonian. I need to send it to her. I don't know if she's still going to want the work. It's taking me longer to pull it together than I thought.
I don't know if I should post a poem. I think I am going to put a revision of the last piece online.
It's funny because I never used to like being at home but now I can't wait for a good glass of wine and a candle and the chance to sit down at the computer and write.
Or fall into the couch and watch a good movie....

The Less Than Five Minute Vacation

First: I take Breakfast in Vienna
also known as
espresso beans.

Then:
(the slightly indefinite part of the process)
proceed by placing beans
into the container above
the glass pot.

Breakfast in Vienna
tastes best if I prepare
the mix as espresso
is meant to be made,
a buzz and shock
poured into a demitasse and drunk.

Because I live alone,
I pretend it's strong coffee.
watch water blanket
every last bean,
saturating Vienna's landscape
with the comfort of water
dripping down into the pot.

A sort of European downpour
almost steady
not quite enough
to step in
or make puddles.

Now, eggs and toast
are accompanied
by a postcard of Europe
saying:

“Having a blast visiting Mozart's birthplace."

The truth is
I won't travel
beyond the kitchen
the thought of postcards
and exotic roasts
just that
scribbles on the back
of a cheap message.

And me, the sender and receiver,
writing to find taste along
the edge.

Getting Profound Gives Me Headaches...

2005-11-25T23:40:00.000-08:00

I wonder where I belong in this world, this place. I need to edit the last poem out quite a bit. I am glad I do post. It does help to see where the poem needs crutches or maybe salvation before it breathes it's last.

Sometimes, writing makes you remember what we forget. And this is a vocation I don't always like to call mine. I'd like to abandon this constant need to get at things:

The grocery list or the trail of bills is more appealing than dealing with the tickertape of thoughts trickling out and spitting out more than I can every handle.

I am thinking that I fall through the cracks somewhere. That I am this coffee drinking chick who kind of stumbles her way through as a quote unquote writer.

By the way, I want to say a thousand thanks to my family: For putting up with this crazy off beat often unreliable poet and maybe slacker.

To Liz, Mike, Sabrina, Erin, Helene, Carla, Michele B., Michele S, Alex, who believe in the power of art.
The power of language to get at the heart of what we can't always say in everyday conversation.

Giving thanks a day late,
but thanks always---

me

Poem, First

2005-11-25T02:07:00.000-08:00

I decided I will save my commments for later and just post a poem.

To prepare coffee in an espresso machine.

First: I take Breakfast in Vienna
also known as
espresso beans.

Then: (the slightly indefinite part of the process)
proceed by placing the beans
into the container above
the glass pot.

Breakfast in Vienna
tastes best if I prepare
the mix as espresso is meant
to be made, a caffiene shock
poured into a demitasse and drunk.

But, because I live alone,
I pretend it's strong coffee.
I watch water blanket
every last bean,
saturating Vienna's landscape
with the comfort of rain, dripping down.

Now, breakfast is a postcard of Europe
saying:

"Wish you could visit Mozart's birthplace."

I collapse
under a spoon's weight
no amount of sugar can hide
tne espresso impostor
staking refuge here.

Not even sugar
covers moments this somber.

I won't travel here any longer.
Not beyond the kitchen,
the thought of postcards
and exotic coffees
just that--
scribbles on the
back of a 19 cent message

And me, the sender and the receiver,
writing to find taste
along the edge or at
the bottom of a cup
that only wants to hold coffee.

Never exotic blends only
Water and Maxwell House
and nothing but...

Posting Yet Again:What's the Matter Today

2005-11-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

Forgot to mention. I went to a reading hosted by Jen Kaucher and Paper Kite Press on Friday. It was an open mic as well as had a featured reading by the fabulous Mischelle Anthony. Mischelle is a resident scholar on Puritan literature at Wilkes University and a great poet. She's been published in Calyx and a few other literary journals. She writes a lot about growing up in Oklahoma. She is very good and should be published and have a book of her own!!
Also, congratulations to my friend Jim Warner for his chance to read at Gathering of the Tribes in NYC with Edwin Torres and Marty McConnell on Saturday.
Alas, yes, Sabrina, the Brownings had to wait fifteen years for each other. Much like Penelope and Odysseus I suppose...
I going to post a poem in honor of most of my long standing relationships.

One Minute Stand

Two computers away,
I can’t see your eyes,
I can see the irises,
the painted liars.
The truth’s told
in the pupil,
The black dot in the middle
that sees.

How can I bait
you into the belief
I do write
A decent poem or two?
You plop black shoes
on the desk.
I walk into
what I want to picture.

Far from the
instant message trance,
I sit in your kitchen.
You glance across the table.
I sip myself into that first coffee.

Watch you untangle
your brown hair then
wash your hands
and bite into a peach.
Until the juice drips until
vowels and consonants
cook without burning.

In web-bed space
We tangle in talk
of Neruda’s sonnets.
Initiate each key
Stroke as if tango dips
in 12 point type.

How easy I squeeze
into red stilettos
when the spike points
straight at the screen.

Time is the Longest Distance

2005-11-21T13:46:00.000-08:00

Ah, been a while. As Tennessee Williams says, "Time is the longest distance between two places." Lately, I've been a lot less diligent than I should be at keeping this thing going. I like the idea of keeping the blog because it is supposed to make you more disciplined. Less of a slacker. I need to get caught up with my schoolwork. I was such a nerd. But now, struggle with the title nerd and wonder if lazy writer isn't a better description of my writing life right now.
However, that doesn't seem to be the case for me lately. I've been really struggling to keep myself going. More or less, I have. Paying bills and moving through the motions of the everyday that are necessary. I applied for PA Council of the Arts. We'll see what happens. It'd cool to be able to share my love for poetry in such an amazing way, by teaching kids about it. I think the teaching aspect of writing takes it out of being so much about me. Just about selfish interests.
Love has a way of evading me. Receiving some good poetry for a friend whose now studying at the University of Vermont. He's so far away. Also, met a cool guy who teaches at the University of Ottawa when we went to the Mailer conference in Provincetown. I sent him some poetry. I also saw an old boyfriend this weekend and it was a little strange indeed. I don't know. Like Wolfe says, you can't go back home again. I suppose this is the same for old love/lust filled relationships. You can never go back to something you wanted to be real.
I want my love life to be like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. Those guys wrote back and forth for fiveteen years before any thing every happened between them. They proved the adage "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." That's not always the case two centuries after the art of letter-writing, though.
I loved being at the Cape. There was losing my purse and the usual craziness, but I still can't get enough of being near the water. I am going to apply for the P-town Arts Fellowship just so that I can spend seven months near the ocean. Who can beat a 7 month scholarship where you get a place to stay and hang out and write?
Now, we have the computer. I don't know if that makes us more closer to everyone in the world or if this machine just isolates us all the more.

Poetry, What Art Thou?

2005-10-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

I get to thinking how much of our lives is not the poem. I often have this dream/fantasy of whating to live in the words (the quote unquote reality) of poetry. Maybe this is because my life with it's broken down cars and lack of money doesn't seem highly romantic right now. Maybe the poem allows you to create a little of your own reality. A sense of control. The power to form and shape language is probably the most important thing I do with my life.
Ah, philosophy. It's a gloomy Saturday, the house is dark and melancholy. I believe I do have the beginnings of a Gothic novel. Laughing. I could never match the spell of Wuthering Heights. Romance is at the bottom of the list right now. I come and go alone; the so called strong independent woman of the poetry readings.
I can't live without poetry. I like the Wilkes program because I am around writing all the time. And on the weekends, the Borders writing group is so supportive of me. At school, we've been talking about the power of compression. Getting the "meat and potatoes" of the poem.
I workshopped some poetry and I suppose I have way too much gravy with the meal. I know I need to trim my work down; be ruthless with the editing. I believe there is a strong balance between finding what needs to be on the plate and what can be left off the recipe. Forgive the metaphor.
I don't know if I am doing well drawing the line. Right now, I feel like I am compressing my words way too much. It's a little distressing to me. The push is good; because it forces me to look at my work more closely. But I don't want to cut out some much that my voice becomes totally muted. I'm still looking for the balance.
There is a new reading series in Wilkes Barre in the Old Stegmeier mansion. Hosted by Jennifer Kaucher. She is a strong poet in her own right and she does an awesome job at promoting the local poets in this area. She also has her own press: Paper Kite. For such a small place, this area does have so many good writers.
The reading last night was awesome. Richard Aston, a former science professor, was feature. He recites all of his work. I've tried that and can only remember two or three poems. He said a powerful thing about all art is the search for truth and beauty. Or sometimes both. He has an amazing way to get your attention. He uses his voice well and there is no static monotone towith how he presents. He must have made science interesting for his students.
There was also Jack Evans, a local actor who played music. Edgy folk music is the best descritption. Anti-war and love songs, mostly. When he played with his voice, he sounded a lot like Jeff Buckley.
The usuals were there. Every one read well. We read on the steps on the mansion.Jim Warner's writing is getting very sophisticated and tight. No wasted words. Carla Reck read her beautiful piece about passing people in cars and the impressions you get by seeing someone pass for just a moment. Jim read Field Hands, a poem about a dream he had about his dad die. Pretty powerful. Disappointed Andrea Talarico didn't read. I love her writing. I wish I could have been writing half as well at age 24.
Ended up at Sidel's. Found out Chris is getting married. Alas, I am the "in between" woman. After the Halloween party, I don't want to go there anymore. I'm way off the literary topics now. I think I am going to read from F. Scott Fitzgerald for the Dead Poets reading at Test Pattern. I will have to research Zelda Fitzgerald's work. I will also look for some poets writing at the time since I will be dressed as a flapper. I would like just to go to the reading, but everyone's going to Sidels after. I like Halloween. I think the idea of being someone else appeals so much to me because I feel so damn uncomfortable in my own skin.
...I believe that is why I like to write so much. Or ramble so much, whatever way you look at it.
I will include some more poetry on this blog. I promise. It's a strong way to get me writing and editing with more continunity.
Good day for homemade soup, lots of candles, and the Unbearable Lightness of Being. Both in the book by Kundera and everyday of life. How crazy and wonderful the everyday is.

Patchwork

A country road unravels
as if the attempt to cross

the meridian will shatter
the road a part.

This trip’s a quilt we didn’t
plan on making or unmaking

like the never-tried dye
for gray church ladies

quilting together
fabric of one

day to the next.
All good

sewing frays in a single
cross stitch.

On the way home,
we talk about lovers

who passed away
or walked away.

Our voices mend each sentence
together, because nothing

brings back the dead.
We thread one

hand over the other
and always leave a hole.

Craving Mercy

2005-10-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

Erin Delaney had a cool benefit on Saturday for the Red Cross at Coco Lounge in Wilkes Barre. It featured the Swims and the Drama Club. And yours truly reading after a hard core band. Was interesting, to say the least. The music was sweet, indeed. Especially the Thunderbirds, a hip hop group out of Philadelphia. James Crane, Erin's boyfriend, read before the Thunderbirds. He gave me a lesson about what reading with true f'in passion is all about. Jame's poetry comes straight from the heart and the gut. He writes and reads with honesty and integrity. It isn't about the show. It's about what's inside. Sometimes, I think I have been reading way too long and seem to forget that along the way. I like hanging out with Erin and James and Sabrina. They all have an honesty to their writing that isn't going to go away no matter where they travel or how much recognition they receive. I don't want to forget these good friends and the small towns of Scranton and Wilkes Barre that I never thought I would say -- love.
I was struck by the sun's glow off the leaves on the trees. This soft light only happens in fall. I shouldn't knock autumn down so much.
It was cool today to read about Ed Sanders in the Writer's Chronicle. He is billed as the Poet Laureate of Woodstock. Also, Mark Doty had an article in the magazine about memoir writing. His father disowned him after his second memoir, Firebird, talked about his mom's severe alcoholism. I believe a writer who is willing to pay this kind of price has to have such tremendous faith in the power and value of words.
I count myself an 150 percent Mark Doty fan. Wishing I could run into him in P-town for the Conference in November.
Showing my age. I scored some cool 80's CDs at the Sally's. Not everything here can be literary.
It definitely is not filled with lust and tales of romance...
I am trapped in New Wave and the sensual writing of Jeannette Winterson. Does any one have a secretary available to organize my poetry? I don't know where I will find a soul to hire, when the only payment could be Haagen Daz and a bottle of Renwood Red Zinfindel.
Thinking of my friend Joe lately. Almost five years since he's gone....

Trying to Post on Almost Thursday Morning

2005-09-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

Thank you for letting me know about the reading at Incognito in Binghamton, Sabrina.
Susan Deer Cloud was the host. She is a Native American, an activist and a feminist poet. She hosted the reading. Three wonderful Latino poets featured. One was a storyteller who told stories using only one letter of the alphabet. The other, Opfelia (yes, spelled with an f) was a scholteacher in NYC and had read in the Hollywood Bowl of poetry, the Nuyorican. She used a lot of movement and read totally with her corazon in the poem. Everyone was welcoming.
There wasn't negativity of any kind. Getting to a strong reading as well as hearing bagpipers in an Irish bar was also a plus. Last Saturday...I haven't written in a while.
Sabrina, you were lucky to study with Joe Weil. I remember how he rocked the house a few years ago at the Dodge Festival. I have to post a poem or two of his here. Cool stuff, indeed. Perhaps that is not the most eloquent description of his work. But, his poetry is the real thing. About everyday. No glossed over with 1.00 words or academic propoganda. He write about working in a factory, his family's fight against being poor, unrequited love for the perpetually love lost. He got a standard ovation at the Dodge that was more than well deserved.
I still think about Gary and Wendy... the loss of connections in my life that I fill up with more busyness so I don't have to deal with being alone or thinking about the grief of others. I know that this constant state of "forgetting" will soon catch up with me.

Tuesday Morning, Actually Tuesday Late Afternoon

2005-09-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking about the awesome Pogues song Tuesday morning. What an inventive idea to use Tuesday as a day for love. I have to find the lyrics online and post them. God, I haven't thought of that song in a long time. Went to a cool reading in Binghamton with my friend Sabrina. Actually, listening to David Gray's Flesh the past few days. I was glad to hear that everything with Gary and Wendy were ok. At least for now. I will talk about the reading later or tomorrow. Time to post a poem here again. Fall is here in two days. Reminder of winter's fast approach.

Blue

2005-09-17T16:05:00.001-07:00

I was trying to keep this blog as just a place for poetry. And for poetry readings, etc.
But life has a funny way of telling you maybe you just need this space for some slight ranting.
I had a pretty lousy Friday. I should have gone to Wordhorde, the reading at the Back Mountain Library; instead I ended up at the Arena with wanna be Jack Keroua. Alas, why? Your mind always tells you one thing and your heart seems to twist you in the opposite direction.
It seemed like the night was going alright. We were talking. But he lives this life whe emulates Kerouac so much he is him. In some many ways. Or in as many ways as one can be Kerouac living in Wilkes Barre. Kerouac did die in Lowell, though. Lowell wasn't probably much different than Scranton, Wilkes Barre I suppose.
Thank you for dinner last week, and two years of melodrama that in my eyes is over. I identify way too much with Marilyn. The beautiful soul who men put on a pedestal, than stepped on . Tis ok. I almost got into an accident. I can't keep letting my heart shatter over and over. It's like throwing the pieces of an already broken wine against the wall.
You only feel the satisfaction of shattering glass once. After that, you just get cut.
Then, I come home to a phone call. My good friend Josh's mom and dad are in critical condition from a car accident. His family has so many problems ....why this? Jessie, I mourn yhour parents losses, how kind your mom and dad have been to me. Sad. So sad. I felt absurdmulling over my loss of John when this news came. I have always had such an attachment to your family. I guess I was afraid of getting to close because of the drugs and the overwhelming sorrow in the house. I remember your mom's garden. How lovely. Paradise in the Hill Section. Those perfect dahlias. The tulips we stole one crazy Saturday night. If God exists, show some mercy on them.... Yesterday was the culmination of despair in a million different ways. Death isn't always literal. The end of breathing. Walking through life losing hope is a kind of dying everyday. Mark Doty's quote says it best, "Whoever said joy is some slight thing."

The Joy of Insomnia

2005-09-12T02:35:00.000-07:00

I must fix the clock on the blog. Alas, I can't sleep. I seem to keep going through these patterns of sleeplessness lately. I believe it's the anxiety over finding work when I finally graduate from Wilkes.
I wish I could live in the poem and not in the harshness of the everyday.
To sleep, perchance to dream. Shakespeare, please help me find REM sleep soon.

Monday, Monday

2005-09-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

I am up way past my bedtime. Seven o clock arrives early. Or should I say six o clock. I am trying to resurrect the blog again. I changed the template around and I like the simpler design. I read at the Woodstock second Saturday along with my friends Sabrina and Erin. We had an awesome time there. Such an electricity at Woodstock that you don't find here. Plus everyone is ready to impeach George Bush, which is more than fine in my book.
I heard Carolyn Forche read last night. Eloquent. It makes me want to get outside myself more and write about the world around me. Not just my own insular universe. She is very humble as well. I think my biggest fear about writing is letting the ego seize me. I don't even want to think about that. I'll escape here with a small poem.
If there is one thing I learned this weekend, it is not to judge someone before you know that ache that strangles the heart. While love doesn't arrive for me, now I understand why. Thanks to Erin and Sabrina for the feckin great day at Woodstock. You are my poetry compadres. Next, we'll visit Yaskur's farm so that Erin can have her picture taken where Janis once belted her southern fiery soul out. Insomnia has seized me again.
Good night...with a poem.

Blue Note

Dawn waits as dark exalts
the tenderness of still
air. Crickets sing the last
standards of August.
Late night melodies improvise for sky,
maybe stars.

Leaves do change, though.
Love, she remembers, is the sigh
between seasons
when his fingers brush
her hands, right before sleep.
She doesn't want to go, and hesitates
as she opens the kitchen door.

Ah, the wonders of being up much too late. Sayonara.

Learning the Right Way to Post

2005-07-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

I learned that you can't indent on a blog or else you text is lest to look like my last entry.
Thanks to Brian for making the cool CDS. Especially Joss Stone. She rocks. I guess since I haven't been much of a poet lately, I will attempt a poem here. At least now I know that you can't indent or do too much with the way the page is laid out. God, I am on the second day of my school assistantship at Wilkes and already I wish I could work there. I love Kirby Hall. The beauty of an old building. It's like the building becomes a character in and of itself. I hope that I will be able to teach someday. Dr. Lennon came in to check his email and I so envy the whole academic life. I've always loved learning. I think the assistantship and job is leading me in the right direction. I worry about only getting adjunct jobs, and never really finding a full time gig. It's hard to be in your early 30's and not even see the prospect of a job or a house in your near future. I get scared when I think about what my future will be in the next few years. Working a lot. I am starting to believe I am more disconnected from others than I realize. My difficulties in connecting vexes me a lot. Although Mischelle tried to connect, to go out thrifting. But at Helene's party, I felt that disconnection. I have to work all that much harder even to get noticed. Or maybe it's just my own insane insecurity and fear of being hurt that stops me from getting close. My own Berlin wall that hasn't been chipped away by Communism or even the slightest break of break to find the rock underneath. I am not the most positive person, am I? Alas. I know the frusteration has much to do with relationships that never seem to move past sex. Past just the physical that gets tired and like a bad sitcom th plot of man meets woman man has sex with women just keeps repeating itself. Until I just keepdreaming of the day where my life will take the shape of a Neruda love sonnet, perfect and just dripping in the lust. But also the hit of love dangling underneath. As if love and lust can find a way to be connected. Although my old professor used to say there's no such thing as love, only lust. Can our sex drive be the only thing that drives us to another's arms? Or is it something deeper? I long for that spiritual connection of Lady Chatterly. But is the idea of blood consciousness, just that, a concept caught in a book no one's required to read any more.
Maybe I'll stick a Neruda sonnet or a passage from Lady Chatterly in here soon. I am going to give you the poem. Quarter moon and the July air is stagnant, gasping for life.

Memorial Day for Mice

What will happen to me?
No trips to Paris to visit famous cemeteries.
No premium health insurance
to cover the facial
dancing along my toes.
No one to watch me
take off my clothes
before I go into the shower.
Except for the mouse that crawls
right up from the drain.

My answer to his need
for a quickie, or at least a look,
is a swift hit with the back
of a shovel. I grabbed
the steel handles from the cellar,
because every girl has to protect herself
from unwanted visitors.
Forgetting the only reason
to use a shovel is to dig snow
and burrow holes for corpses
once they're already dead.

Too bad, we shared such intimacy.
He wanted to jerk off
by crawling on my toes
and well I just had
to punish him for that.

See, he saw the cellulite
on my thighs. The stretch marks
expanding along my stomach
a Route 66 of skin
that drives past Calfornia
swims through the Pacific Ocean
and lands in an igloo in Anarctica.

He seems naked.
Even for a male rodent
He knows how getting close kills.
His foot fetish is almost attractive.
The slight brush of tail
against foot lets me know
he'll never tell.
Where I'm ugly
where the stubble on the back
of my knee
congregates like teenagers
at a mall--
who never go home

why I always sing
in the shower
even though he can't listen

But the blood on the handle is enough.
Lady Macbeth trying to scrub off my secret
antibacterial soap for my hands
and I want to wash his wounds
but then I think about the germs
and wonder what's the proper way
to depose of the body
lying in state on the linoleum floor

Reason For Being

2005-07-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know. Perhaps that is not the most original title for a blog entry.
But such is life. I am loving the quiet that the time right before bed brings.
Either that, or I am putting off working on a poem. I don't even have the radio
blaring. Even with the mostly folk music I play I just need the quiet tonight.
I worked thirteen hours, give or take today. I'm completely exhausted. I love
having an assistantship, getting school paid for. But still, tis a difficult ordeal. I am
lonely. Having broken up, or having been broken up, with the man (if you can give him
that much credit). I long for a time when life will be more settled, less all over
the place. I wonder if this place exists, or if I'll always be chasing after my sister
whose already married and is going for her PHD. I can't work these two jobs.
I haven't felt this uncreative and disjointed in a long time. At least John gave me
some raison d etre. Reason for being. Or maybe it was the illusion I made in
my mind for him. After all, some one you compare to Lady Chatterly's Lover is hardly
someone to put up on a pedestal, I suppose. But I am 32 and I get so tired on
men who only want women who fulfill some kind of dumb stereotype.
I guess maybe guys would say "She's just ugly, so of course, she wants someone
to fall madly in lust or love with her for her intelligence." In some sense, though, I do
live my life in hauled up notebooks. I think of the beauty of the letters of Emily Dickinson
and Virginia Woolf. Was the love of a man enough? Or were they looking for a love
that could only be satisfied through language. And then, there's always Anais Nin. She
definitely was the French Catholic school girl who had every thing but the plaid
skirt to prove her want. Although I test boundaries with language at times, I don't ever
think I could be that free.
My good friend Mischelle wrote an amazing poem that talked about the hope that
desire brings and how it always leaves her longing. I can't help but to hold this idea.
That I always believe in the possibility of a new relationship. But, there's always doubt
lurking somewhere underneath the hope. Hope is not always the thing with feathers.
Do men want intelligent women? Or is it the ugliness of my own heart that scares men away? I can't seem to figure it out. Always just cutting out my thoughts and trying to put
them together so they form one complete sentence. But even the best poem lacks that one
sentence that would make the world burn like these candles. Steady and always ready to give light.

Hauled Up Notebooks

2005-04-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Hello world.
This is my new venture.
Title of blog comes from a quote from the Anne Sexton poem
45 Mercy Street.
The focus here will be poetry, maybe love, and of course,
music.
Welcome to Jennifer's little space in the pages
of internet's vast discourse.

---Check out Anne Sexton if you don't know her.
Great poet who broke women out of the milk and cookies mood
of creating literature.