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At:

“Pain prowls like a cat through my fingers”
by the words, by god,
I am clubbed; stunned and reeling
eyes pinwheeling and mesmerized
breath falls short of the payoff
bar-bar-cherry and clarity slips off axis
my consciousness
is a finwrecked and landed fish
slap-gasping in poison euphoria
it’s always this way
breaking the membrane, spilling
the water down a new life’s legs
though each time gets a little tighter
deep drama comes in closer waves
bringing change on the crest
cold air stings this new, wet flesh

and you – what of you?

will you protect the pinkness of me
will I sleep there with you
in your citytemplelimousine
curled and curling closer still into you

surprised at what you’ve made, will you
circle me in frozen fire as
we lie in the ashes of unimaginable history
turn pink to amber
hide me in your coat
like a bottle of whiskey

[Spring Fever or Fever Of The Motivating Force]
 
Every Spring, I fall: over a
curb, out of my car, onto a
secret.  Like clickwork – April
clocks by, or May I stumble
into an awkward position or
circumstance.
It appears to be lunar.  I lose the
largest bits of skin to hungry asphalt
when the moon is round and
seemingly full.  Apparently not
too full for dessert on my
knee flesh or toe leather.  Spring
has a most inconvenient appetite.
When June arrives (not a moment
too soon), I’m bejeweled in Band Aids; my
practical nephews advise against
bathing, saying it hurts.  I tell them
I’ll muddle through.  Still, I wish
that Spring could really hang me up
the most, like the song says.  Hang me
up on a spindle with the coats or
even throw me into a cubby with
rubber boots and stray mittens. I
can do without the constant challenge
to my containment.

The man behind me is
wearing too much cologne. I’m
afraid to turn around
certain that I’ll give him The Look.
(My glare helps me to see if they’re stupid
or at least let them know that I think they are.)
Did his lover splash Cardin onto their
drum-taut chests after a
post-shower a.m. romp: no time…
kiss and a gentle tug at the groceries
turns into something that will lava lamp
through inopportune moments of their day.
I think I might ask.
I turn to see his eyes half closed; the shiny-happy
look of freshly-fucked on his face.

In front of me is Cinderelly.
But it’s way past the dance and midnight
and little transparent pumps. Even farther still
from self-sufficient and creative and dreaming.
She boards at the southwest corner of
her Kingdom. Riding out of concern for everything
since nothing much matters now. Not the
beautiful carriage or her castle.
Not the kingsize bed or the Montessori monsters
begat from it. All allegory.
Her hair is tighter than a librarian (such a delicate
bibliophile), and just as quiet. Shoes, not glass
but expensive and sensible.
She commits to twenty hours a week at the shelter.
She’ll bathe and loofah after every shift.
In the water, she’ll masturbate herself back to
some sense of wonder or pulse or grace, then be
ashamed.

I wonder if she can smell Cardin Man.

You are a hand in every picture of me
a hand of cool cream and paper
of efficient red workings and blue peace

a hand of little knowledge, but some
peculiar understanding all its own
of weeping and loss and redemption

a cautious hand ready to notice
to help, or to protect from
so certain were you of some

indefinable malevolence
that might take me or spoil our dream
of deserted islands with

just us, our sub-atomic tribe, away
from those who can’t breathe our
strange little picture world.

You’re waiting for us.  With your hand
just on the edge of our sight line
darting into the frame before

the shutter snaps on our everyday
now comprised of waiting
for a hand to catch us as we fall.

Our friend set becomes a bit more stable as we approach 50, but there are always the fashionably late drop-ins.  The main set understands my life in the same way they understand photosynthesis and Japanese auto mechanics: there’s a handshake understanding of the principles, but no one spends much time wondering about the details.  It simply Is.  Then the occasional newbie stumbles in and things need to be explained.  No one undamaged can still be unmarried at age 47.  The simple fact that you’re unmarried is its own damage.  So far, I’ve led the kind of life that has never much cared for convention.  I’ve not spent more than five or six minutes a year thinking about white dresses and custom-died shoes (or all that devoted hair-pulling that comes afterward), and the marriage prep work needs to be a near full-time endeavor for us girls from a young age.   

In order to be a Married Woman, you have to be on the platform by the time you’re about 17.  Not that you’re going to catch a marriage train, per se.  No, you have to catch one of the many trains that will take you to a marriageable state: the 3:15 to Naïve.  The 3:45 to Easily Charmed.  You stand there without getting on board, waiting for a state less humiliating: The 4:10 to Quixotic.  There’s the bullet train to The Maternal Clock, but whatever you do don’t confuse it with the 4:25 to Maternally Pressured.  There are no cushions on the seats and you spend half the trip shoveling coal to convince her that you’re serious.  Then there’s the 4:30 to Oops, but who knows where that one ends up.  There are those who think to stow away on Oops, but they’ve really only caught the 4:45 to Desperate.  No ticket needed for that one. 

A few of us board the 4:45 to Why Buy The Cow, knowing it’s just an over-priced dinner train that goes in a big circle.  At 6:30, it dumps you back out onto the platform, raccoon eyes and panties in hand, to find you’ve missed both the 5:10 and the 5:25 express to Practical, as well as the 5:50 to Finally Ready.  So you open your Jane Austen compendium, queue up the Out of Africa soundtrack on the iPod and settle in to wait for the 8:05 to Grateful.  But the Grateful brakeman is getting a knob job from a rider who wanted an upgrade to Blissfully Ignorant and he misses your stop.

Well, tomorrow’s another day.  You stroll the grounds of Pemberly and fly low over the savannah.  You live a full and generous life while protecting your freedom like some new age Paul Revere.  A few friends may find their way back from Quixotic after extended stays in Disenchanted or Abused.  They’ll sit with you on the platform with their vodka stingers and their cigarettes, making cruel sport of the 17-year-olds swanning around; an army of wry smiles minding the timetables for you without being too obvious about it.  You hop freights to Proud, Interesting, Fearless, and Independent, but those don’t seem to be good marriage states, either.  The trains go in big circles just like the free milk one.  Soon, you’re back with the cacklers ordering another stinger. 

And one day you realize that this is good.  You are the fat and happy god of your own little universe, and what you’ve made is lovely.  There’s not one grain of sand on your planet or crinkle near your eye that you’d trade for wedded bliss.  This is your train and anyone is welcome to take it for a ride or even stay aboard for a while, whichever they prefer, and that’s good, too.  No one here is waiting; there are no tickets to be punched.  What is is what you’ve made and it is good.

Tending the garden of noise
where I grow the traffic
and church bell sanctity
neighborhood boys are weedy
streethockey kickball barkingboombox
in a window box that
gets the light

Police whistle spills yellow
over the edge
and tangled-thumb piano scales
are greedy for
space clarity nourishment
in the firmament that
sprouts sound

The Jesus Shouters lend
righteous purple glory but
a mile-away tunnel is train torn
and overruns my work
the tracks are worn and sore
it’s vine rattles across my floor and
blooms in my bones

I can smell Texas on my coat, in my hair
The smell of you under my nails, a strange

and sticky counterpoint to dust.  The sage
brush of me wedged itself under your wheel

so there can be no blame for the crushing.
And when the time came to dislodge, I saw

it coming as surely as the one day of rain
that happens in November. Dark and desperate

it and I, for the water. Finding that I am not
a weed after all.  Surprised and not, rushing

back toward the ocean like the river that I am.
Like the river that I am.

If only it were possible to create the ideal relationship entirely from scratch. Perhaps from a patchwork of other known successes. He’d have my first boyfriend’s hands and lips, my Dad’s sense of humor and innate, practical intelligence, my brother-in-law’s unabashed joy, and my best friend’s sense of curiosity and appreciation of Beauty. He’ll know when to hold me like a dove or a harlot. He’ll have the ability to make me laugh when I’m sure I can’t. He’ll challenge me without knowing it, inspiring more than teaching. He will pull off the road to watch a particularly nice sunset/rise, even when I’m not in the car, and will be left breathless by a low-slung moon in the trees. Read more

And with a sickening syncopation the
heart changes address to the back of your throat
three girls are running nowhere through
your blood.  What you call random, they
call inevitable and the green paint is a bitter
pooling at the fingertips of gravity

One kiss away from being dangerous
Johnny Rocket stalled and fell to earth

lily-livered corporate enabler with
little wingspan and even less stamina

he went too high and the wax melted
strings were cut; limbs akimbo, he pitched

and rolled out of Babylon’s bed
ditching his plane in an overgrown patch of

Aw shucks, ma’am.  Report to Human Resources
for your exit barbecue.

Bring us round the bottle.  He’s got a
headful of quandary and a mighty thirst.

Go ahead and pour it on him. There’s
not enough heat left to raise a hiss.

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