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?