Bookmark

"Don't say i said not to say that."
A little line that made you laugh
I abused it often
To make you smile

I miss you
And your 12 pairs of Birkenstocks
In every conceivable color
So Bohemian of you for a woman in her fifties
You were practical like that

Intimacy on screen
That makes most people uncomfortable
Made you happy and laugh
I'd tell you to stop
But you'd only laugh more

I miss your strange freedom
Peculiarly placed
But touchable

You adored simple things
Goodness in people
Books, plants, British t.v., turtles
You loved to laugh and fill a room
One could get drunk on it
So contagious were your sounds
You would have hated to be called 'unique'
But you were

You've held a place in the world
Like an immovable bookmark
Marking a page, a travel, a life
Glued to the spine for good

So i think of you when i move my bookmark
And hesitate slightly
Before flipping the page -

In Passing

I've only thought about her in passing.

Between work and busy store aisles, soft cat bellies and cinema-scope.

A sip of Chardonnay might bring her to mind, or lazy moments stretched on the couch, sock-clad with book in hand -

This her I haven't met yet. I don't think about her all that much to be honest...

Approaching mid life is a funny time to start over, but these things aren't planned like one writes a list for the store or takes out the garbage.

Still, in those passing moments I can almost see her, but the picture is always fuzzy. Someone articulate yet silly, passionate but reserved. Fun and spontaneous but dedicated and focused.

We joke a lot. Humor is key. She doesn't take herself too seriously but views the world as a beautiful and complex mystery – damaged but resilient. She doesn't have strict guidelines, and understands we are all shades of gray in continued definition. She questions and reads and analyzes life too much, like me. She reads into, between, over and through blatant facts given. We laugh about the details and other times work them over like a rubik's cube.

She says random sweet things like, “Your hair reminds me of an autumn day.” and “Puddles are tears of joy made for jumping in.” Her scent always pulls me in and reminds me of her bold uniqueness. Her gifts aren't flowers but silly special things that are very 'me' – a used trinket at a thrift store, or a rock shaped like a question mark. I save them all and love them like gold.

She likes quirky things like playing frisbee in the park, hunting for agates in the river bed with rolled up pant-legs, crossword puzzles in bed and hazy discoveries over a shared bottle of Merlot. She's kind of a nerd, but her smile is so contagious I often get giddy despite myself. She knows when to walk away and when to dig her heels in. She isn't butch or Femme or anything else with a firm title, she's just Her. I am utterly drawn to the person she is and the magic she projects just by breathing.

I miss her when she's not around but it's understood and appreciated that we have separate lives and are complete people on our own with overlapping colors. Her hands are noble but delicate like intricate maps or bisque fired pottery. They've worked hard and created beauty in the world and I want to slip into them and wear them around.

Her history doesn't fully define her, but she doesn't forget it. She wants me in a way I can give and vice versa.

Sometimes I feel like she is a mythical heroine who doesn't exist. She is simply all of the favorite character's I've read in books rolled into one unique, but fictional blur.

But, I don't think about her all that much...

No.

Just

In

Passing...

Slothengale

Fellow victims of the slothengale
The temperate buldge which does not budge
The gin-soaked, fat innocent
With eyes stapled shut
To the world's woes-
White picket fences keep it all out
(Until the lumber for those pickets go up)
We lounge in our t.v. tarnished - tan backed chairs
Toting tolerance with a yawn
As we accumulate gadgets
And mow lush lawn inside our cages of safe suburbia.

Alice

Ms. Walker reminds me in prose
to pause.
After a hard fought battle
Or desperate journey
Pause.

For in that unclaimed space
We can turn tides
Anxiety, depletion, exhilaration, desperation
All taxing, heavy batons-

The instant you feel you cannot,
Do. Pause. Hold. On.
To that space ill defined but present
That holds nothing, Everything.
Fill it with your breath another moment
And
Wait -

5 Seconds

(A true story from many moons ago)

We were shopping. 5:40 on a Tuesday evening, nothing out of the ordinary at all. A calm, temperate day just like any other, except this:

We exited the grocery store together, Lori and I - me with the joyous task of pushing the huge, metal shopping cart of groceries over to the car, Lori walking slightly ahead.

I saw them in my peripheral vision – off to the left walking the same direction as us. A man, and a woman who appeared in their late teens, early twenties. He was of stalky build but not that short, a bit taller than I at 5’6. She was a bit taller than I but not much. He had a dark angry face at a glance and her face was turned and I couldn’t see it. I made brief mental note of them like you’d pass any stranger on the street. Then I saw a quick action because quick actions grab one’s eye. Actions like this define themselves purely, without excuse.

He pulled his fist back and punched his companion with a full box. I say ‘box’ because that is what it reminded me of. A boxing ring with a hard meant TKO, on the arm. No playful intent on his face, for it spoke volumes and clarified any confusion. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to register this. Her reaction astounded me. She simply walked on. Her body jolted by the force, but other than that she seemed totally unsurprised. The whole time she was positioned so that I never did see her face. 5 Seconds tops.

They darted then right behind us as we walked to the car. He was obviously agitated and she lagged behind. By the time I translated the whole event with clarity, everything was over and we started to drive off. I glanced back to the car they had gotten into. His head bobbed in animation– a heated argument inside the walls of an automobile. We left before they ever started their car- A small black Honda Civic. Too close of quarters for the woman. We drove off and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I DID NOTHING.

What could I do? When I asked Lori if she had seen what transpired she said no. I recalled glancing over across the lot to a woman who had turned and looked right when the man hit her. She quickly turned away. I had done the same. I remembered his face – the vile anger in it when he made his blow, relentless and severe. The faceless woman’s walk, pausing slightly only to stumble before walking quickly to the car. I couldn’t pick that woman out in a lineup if I had too, nor the man.

I wished at the very least I had said something. But what do you say when you’ve surpassed the point of words? I had no weapon to defend her or me with. I had only the flimsy shopping cart. I told myself later that if I had a cell phone on me I could have called the police, but the sad fact was that woman didn’t want help. She didn’t want someone to intervene. Her reaction wrote the whole story. She was use to this and this event was no different than any other she was use to.

5 seconds to you or I would mean nothing. To someone abused it could mean the difference between life or death, hope or surrender – 5 seconds to act can mean everything.

In truth, I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to beat him with a bat until my arms grew tired. I’m not a violent person , But I wanted to beat him into a submission I realized he’d never TRULY feel. One battering wouldn’t define what it was like to live a lifetime of walking on faceless with no expression. I KNOW that punch hurt- I felt it from where I stood, it was sudden and hard and I witnessed it close-up. It was also over in seconds and she played the keeper of secrets to a T.

Sadness crept over me on that ride home. A grief hard to explain, for the world of faceless women that kept on walking everyday, scarred, jaded, hopeless. I want to infuse them with self -worth but realize also I can’t. That is one walk they must make alone.

One can’t answer the question of violence with a solution of violence, but when fists are raised, reason vanishes, words halt and souls disappear. If the faceless woman had reacted differently – been upset, cursed or struck him back, I wouldn’t have felt so haunted. The scene still would have angered me, but there would have been some understanding between them of the wrong-doing that had just occurred. It was that absence that trailed me home.

I turned away like the woman across the lot. I’m sure she saw it. We both carry the faceless woman’s prayer; Maybe it won’t happen tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe she will leave? Unfortunately, we’ve all heard the statistics on that –

The hard truth is this; This happens everyday, every second in homes, work, even parking lots, and often someone witnesses it. Someone is left to carry the guilt of what they could have/should have done. Isn’t something always better than nothing? What if saying/doing something would have made it worse for her?

Violence can be so sudden you hardly have time to adorn your shit-kickers with a cell phone handy, and then what?? We hope with all we have that victims cease to see themselves as one long enough to ACT, to HOPE, to LEAVE, to LIVE. You try to have faith that people in particular (and the world in general too) will always be shocked by these events so that they are not perceived as the NORM. And most importantly, to finally give a face to the millions of women who usually walk on faceless in the shadows as just another statistic.

So…..I do.

Stained

I'm stained in the ways of the world
Black and white borders of propriety
Blatant billboards
Subliminal afterthoughts
Mixed signals pointing both ways -

Let me dip my quill in colors undiscovered
Half shades of Heaven and Hell
Leave me teetering on my Talons....

With only the most delicate, random gust
To blow me in the direction I should go.

Fever

Oh! but let me tell you about the Fever....

It's a delicate whisper of a thing.. a brevity really, like passing through a faded, dense fog quickly - it tickles your senses, and vanishes like a naughty winged-one whisping by your ear. The fever is a punctuation, a sharp brilliance moving with haste. Have you had the fever? If you had you would know because words won't do it justice.. it's a tingle of intimacy, a jolt of sunshine, a shivering sliver of sadness through your bones, IT is half a blink in a bottomless-blinking world... the fever captures us in a moment and then lets go....

It will leave you with a watery eye, a distant, morose look, a racing heartbeat or dumbstruck in the middle of a too-bright store aisle. Lost and found. The fever leaves it's haunting fingerprint, light enough to dissipate over time, but clear and distinct enough to feel ever so profoundly......

What will you do with your fever I wonder? will you blink it by like an afterthought (like most) or pour your instinct into the unknown...A coin toss really. With the world on either side. You flip that coin and decide your fate. Walk the road of easy, lit path and common fragrant flowers or the unsure, dark abyss of muffled sounds and unknown mystery. How much stock does one put in a question mark? And how much do you believe in the dark, the fever?

Fade to Fiction

Warm regards amount to nil

Keep them for a rainy day...

Give me something real instead

That won't predictably fall away

But you couldn't and I shouldn't

So i won't cross your doorway again

Connections fade to fiction

Stiff lip and a quivering chin -

Unpretty

Apologies
feel
like consolation prizes,
An
empty
box
With a
pretty
bow.

Details

The clock's hands are moving too fast for my head. More time. More time. Not enough to say it all, get it all in...never enough time to say what's really important. No one wants the unabridged version of life. We have slid into a world of efficiency - go go go. Cell phones and cliff notes...now, faster, better, easier. We text our vocabulary down to abbreviations. We have Go-Gurt (yogurt on the run, because that's important) We have Ipods and Blackberries and Kindle's so that we can perform all our tasks at once and as quickly as possible. Tick tick tick....
But i pause for a breath... i don't want it - this hurried, skim milk version of what life has become. I want the full played out scene, the footnotes, and the time it takes to notice the details. Yes, the details. When did we all decide in our techno-craze of faster-bigger-better-more that the details of life were an afterthought??
I want to notice the sunlight hitting her hair, the change of expression in an instant and what that entails. I want to be witness to subtlety and all its glory. I want to always notice the pauses and linger in the delicate silence between epiphany.
Keep your hands off my landline, my paper and pen, my actual physical B o o k, and all the beautiful things that take T I M E. Yes, the clock is ticking..and until they have changed that i will revel in the fact of being able to hear it and know that i can sit here and wait for one more second to pass doing absolutely nothing efficient or fast.
I can't say and do it all in the time allotted. I don't want to. I want to bask instead in the details of what a person, a place, a situation holds. If those fine facts aren't important, than i don't know what is.

Green

Why do i like green so much? Color analysts would perhaps say it is the color of money, or nature.. I like the nature part. Money is nice (duh), but it is merely an exchange, a means or status...It holds nothing truly substantial on its own, or for me.

I wish i could buy a crayola box full of 100 shades of green - it would make me happy. The Chardonnay in my glass right now with a dark light behind it looks to be a pale green - lovely.

Green makes me feel safe and warm- it can be bright enough to be happy but not over-indulgent. Neon green isn't a color - Neon anything is a myth. Those shades are a grotesque exaggeration of a good thing....it's like those fun house mirrors where all the images are distorted and you never really know what you're seeing.

I think Oregon is a good home for Green. Perhaps I'm securely placed? I can do without my crayola box...i just need look out the window to feel safe and warm.

Halos and Pedestals

I think you'd like me more...
Since I knocked you down a peg
It's not that your Halo was tarnished
I just realized you never had one -
Halos and Pedestals aren't for the living
Or the dead
We're all a bit broken and flawed...
Perhaps its the cracks in us
That let in the light?

Biscotti and Cocoa

Anne Sexton once said,
"A woman who writes feels too much."
And then she went mad -

I wish i could sit down with her once
Biscotti and Cocoa -
We'd sit under an elm tree on a brisk day

I'd memorize her sadness recording it with my eyes
I'd smile often and hope to say something poignant
I wouldn't reach her at all
But i would try.

I think I'd see resignation and strength
Under heavy mascara and darting unsure eyes
I think i would leave disappointed in both of us.

I would carry the faint taste of
Melancholy
Biscotti
Cocoa
and brilliance.

When Words Don't Win

When words don't win it can breed feelings of failure - especially if one prides them self on the power they hold and ability to convey. If only you could have said it better, if only your palate had more colors.

Reality is often a hard surface to hit. Sometimes the right words really won't matter. I could scribble into the wee hours with Merlot at hand and the whispy breath of inspiration on the air- stain the page left and right until my hand aches. But, when the words don't win it all doesn't matter.

Perhaps another day, maybe when the wind is at my back and the leaves start to fall faster, maybe if i get a better pen or a more expensive bottle of booze. Maybe if I had, were, did - could of, would have, should of... Maybe my words will win tomorrow.

My Diaree - by Pixie kat

Pixie’s diaree.

day: won

Tuday not veree eventful cuz mi brothur kep runing bak frum the big wite poole that flushus an liking mi fase. I didunt lyke it to mutch cuz hes alwayz duin that kinda stuf an its gros. Momz said I hav a gyant anus, I think thas gud cuz they smyle wen thay say it. The udder cat at the dore is meen. Hees a boy an that meens he neads too nowe hiz plase. Thatz knot heere!! Momz lyke mee bestist.

Day: too

Eye gott serial withh xtraw milkk todaye. Momz skratched mi but fore awile wile I atte. Meen kat on the portch gott in an momz wur maad! Yu shud uf herd the shorte won yel at him. My furr is nicur then his. Sides I git to cum in and hes stoopid so he dusnt. Ha ha.

Day: Thre

Sur wish day wud playy cow wit me. itz una string..I havn gut cow in along tyme. I duno wye. Thay usta pley wit mee moor an nowe its gaga over tha dum kat on da porch. Eyem guna git him wen hes aslep and remine him hoos the bos!

Day: fore

I klawd him gud! Dum kat on da porch didun cee me cumin an I gott em gud! Teech him too sitt on mi porch alll daye lyke a no gud lazey kat! Eyem laffin all da waye to da banck! Ha ha lazey kat! I’m guna plan sumpthin els ta git him gud. Dumbel.

Day: fiv

I gut cow! I gut cow! Momz plaid kow wit mee fur alon tyme! An dumbel outsyde didunt git cow!

Day: sicks

Momz gave mee a lap an I did foot lots cuz it felt gud. I pured and pured. Eye cot thre bugz outsyde an dat stopid dumbel juz sat ther jelus cuz he waznt fast enuf. Lazee boy. Eye wasint bout to shair. Eye did all the work! Sides he smelt lots like poo. He needs to lik himself more but eye aint guna help him with that ether. Stinkee Dumbel is on his own.

Day: sevean

I slep lotz today. Hole weeks made me tyred. Its been lots o fun writn in hear. Dumbell cud never figire out how to do that. I suspekt I’m prety smart. For instence momz onlee hav to kall me wonce to kome in!! just wonce! My whiny brudder needs atlest too times, mabe morr!! An dumbel well you alredy no he cant kome in ever! Ha ha dumbel. He sleeps in the raine were he belongs! Hes stopid. Momz tell me to be nise so ok I will tri : its not his falt hes a dum boy. There.

Da end.

Pixie

Messy Thoughts

I just mumbled a rhyme!

Almost forgotten in time...

I can not place a pen,

With blood in vein,

I eagerly drain,

Upon my page to den,

And if I drip upon the rug

I’ll clean up when I’m done...

The words can’t wait,

For the unfound bait,

Of a pen in hand to be won-

The F word

It would be easy to hate me. I'm the thing you cling to before you preen with false bravado. I am the sweat on your skin before a big exam and the rustle in your feathers before any extra ordinary decision. I will sit invisible on your pillow at night holding your eyelids up until i can't anymore -

I have the power to multiply in you like a breeding miracle and overcome your being - I have occupied your past, consumed your present and cling fervently to your future. Never underestimate my power for in that decision, you will unknowingly write your own tomorrow (or lack there of)

I am not all bad however - it's all about perspective. I can also make you a better person and test your duration and strength. I can make you achieve things you wouldn't have otherwise. I am a necessary part of your design and as essential to your genetic disposition as the color of your eyes. you need me to thrive. You need me.

It is I who bows at the crippling cry of a child lost in a dark room, at the loss of a job, a house, a hope...but i am equally present before an important speech, reunion or birth. It is I who tiptoes between the first spoken 'I love you's' ....

I encompass you inside and out. But never forget this dear friend: (because yes, i can be) I am only as powerful a part in your life as you allow me to be.

Roots

I hate getting my hair cut. I don’t know why. It seems like one of those really personal things like going to the dentist or the doctor. A stranger you’ve known for all of 5 minutes is touching you , making critique silently or not. Plus, as weird as it sounds, all three of those professions involve holding sharp objects to your person. A doctor has an array of medical equipment to poke and prod one with, a dentist has drills and picks and a Beautician has scissors aimed at your scalp. I probably need not relate that I don’t just put off getting a hair cut.

So, because I am not only a procrastinator but also a cheap procrastinator, I decided on a whim to go to one of those quick salon’s where there is only two kinds of Beauticians; Young, bubble gum chewing women with too much product in their hair, or mature women with Old lady Perms who frequently sing along to the country music playing in the background. Soon, my name was called by a woman of about 55 with a large blonde Bouffant hairdo, breasts that beat her to any destination and a makeup job that rivaled all previous or current cast members of the Broadway musical ‘CATS’. She attempted to make chit-chat while I steadied myself in the swivel chair awaiting sharp objects. I explained briefly what I wanted as a spray bottle came out discharging a shower of tiny drops all around me. Ms. Bouffant then plunged her fingers into my hair like pudding, squeezing and wiggling her hand around as if to loosen my uptight mane from its lazy slumber. I was told I had ‘lovely body’ to my hair – to which I awkwardly smiled and thanked her for. I commented then how my thick hair often got unruly which often led me to using gobs of gel. I was advised that I might think about ‘curling and blow-drying the ends up to add a flip’. I smiled in reply which was a kinder retort than ‘good god no. I hate that girly shit.’ But it wasn’t Ms. Bouffant’s fault, she didn’t know me. Suddenly I got an image of her at my age – in her thirties with a bit more hair, painstakingly curled and sprayed, teased and fretted over. I tried to clear the image of my head and commented on my early graying which had been present in my hair for at least the last 8 years. She said, “Oh well did members of your family grey early?” and I hesitated before answering “yes”. My thoughts jumbled but rested on Mom who didn’t gray early, and Dad who also didn’t. But, my birth Mother did so I always pause on those kinds of questions. Later, while trimming my hair, Ms. Bouffant asked, “Did your mom and Dad both have thick curly hair?” and I paused again uncomfortably before saying ‘yes’ quietly. My Mom and Dad had thin straight hair. I felt like a liar. But, how can one answer these kinds of questions in a brief encounter at a hair salon and not sound crazy? I wasn’t about to tell her that the woman I called my ‘B.M’ did indeed have hair exactly like mine- thick, streaked with gray, wavy and identical. I wasn’t going to say how Pa might or might not have my hair, that I didn’t know because technically I was just another ‘bastard’ that didn’t know who her father was. I was told he could be one of several men. But my ‘B.M’ was a fraud on many levels and wasn’t a parent at all. She gave me my hair and I owned up to that sitting in this swivel chair with no escape. I wanted to take my answers back but I couldn’t. I had said them and they stuck in the air like stale grease. Yes, I was her biological daughter and my hair would always give me away.

I suddenly wanted to tear my hair out at the roots. Start over. I wanted to tell Ms. Bouffant she could have all my ‘lovely body’ if she could help me grow in straight thin hair like Mom’s. I swallowed all of this instead but still wished I had answered differently. If she could make my hair like my mother’s – like the woman who raised, loved me and then died too soon, maybe my answers wouldn’t come with a pause.

He Promised

He promised he’d stretch out his hand and meet me in the middle of nowhere….and I took four trains and a taxi to get there. Another no-show. I brought my purple party hats, my loaded gun of glee. I only found the space that waited with a disappointed me.

I crawled across four continents of Kleenex to get there. I summoned my Towanda and the fairies from the backyard to accompany me. I wasn’t alone. Not really. My hands were cracked from the wind and stung like the sun trying to get in without my consent. I left the station.

I requested my scars wait by the phone for a call. The silence broke the room in half.

I pawed the Kodak in hand reflecting me and tell her not to release the floods, not now. Don’t crack like your dry hands. Save it for a he that shows up.

Towanda said I’m better off. I wish I had her courage. I’m going to write her name fifty times in the sand until I believe her. (The fairies hinted that purple crayon works best).

I tried to water my smiles so they’d grow, but the dirt knew the difference - and the smiles wouldn’t take. Mother earth is no fool.

I will plant a flower in his memory. Something to stick in the ground and stay. I will purposefully not water it. I will watch it die and let myself release the floods. Only then will I mourn.

Something will pop up in its place. A gangly weed - with thorns, obtrusive and ugly as reminder. It always does.

This weed comes back kicking every year. Prickly and sharp to the touch, drawing blood as usual, leaving a mark, a pain, a stain - as weeds do.

The weed beckons with its need, But my hand is not outstretched to meet it. The purple party hats were long thrown away- perhaps my scars were bored with being scars. I find few tears in its place. A simple melancholy has resided….calm in its slumber.

Towanda has discouraged the rebellious hatred that once felt so fitting to wear. She says I look better with steel-toed boots and glitter in my hair.

I will rise to the occasion yet again in the future of finding his thorns present. I will attempt to take the pain at face value and let the blood run its course and leave. I will not crawl across continents of Kleenex or wade through rivers of shit to find only my desolate expectations and a transparent grin. I will make strength stay. I will woo her into my garden and cut a deal. She can borrow my boots in exchange for her brawn. Then watch out weeds – you’ll be picked raw from the soil until my fingers bleed. Mother Earth won’t want you back. The dirt will be cleansed. My fresh plate/slate will leave no trace of an empty station, a quiet phone or a sizeable void.

I will take out my biggest cardboard box and package up every cruelty, every disappointment, every Kleenex stained with his failing and send them back to their rightful owner marked ‘Return to Sender’. I will wrap it tight with a purple ribbon.

Today I will weed the yard in strength and glitter. I will summon the fairies to help me and we shall plant our smile bulbs and drink tea until dawn. His promises don't make me sad because I've learned now how to see everything else left in the void he made. Clover patches are growing in where the weeds once were and even a stray daisy which makes me smile. The dirt has done right by me and i will in turn choose life, fairies, glitter and daisies.

An Epitaph For Clete

My favorite story had no covers at all
He was skinny and curious
His bunny feet small..
His chapters were gifts
Every word a surprise
Every written adventure
Found in his eyes-
My Bestseller boy
Your stories in me
An out of print First Edition
You'll always be -

Funeral

I Drowned inside the last lone word
The last lone word had I

Curled into the fetal pose
Left inconsolably dry

Hollowed head i rectify you!
Demand you to return

Why do you cash me in of late?
A futile crash and burn -

I denounce this slate that draws a blank
And verbiage that fatally walks the plank

Conclusion draws a fiery fear
That heeds no curve or bend

The dastardly finality
Of a story's End.

A Year

The summer wanes in retirement

Screaming its refusal in various subtleties

Daylight lasting far beyond expectancy

Muggy nights accompany the cricket symphony

The last of the Dahlias holding on like veterans

Gravity pulling at nature but not winning entirely

The sun has had its hoopla –

But fall and its splendor!

The luscious colors of calm

Temperate weather and falling leaves

Jack o’ lantern grins and candy promises

The moderate days spoil us

But wait! Don’t forget your umbrella…

Winter that chills and thrills

A blanket of beauty that covers a town

Chained tires and cocoa grins

Heavy coats, snowmen, and sleds galore

Chattering teeth miss the season before –

And who could forgo spring in the air?

The bright thriving flowers

Chirping birds everywhere

Rain claiming its space

Smiles etched into place

A year in completion…..

Gems not for sale