--I'VE GOT MYSELF IN A BAD PATCH LATELY, CAN'T SEEM TO GET MUCH SLEEP

….I wrote this yesterday:

                                                                      Southern Comfort

            Christmas Eve my Dad shoots an arrow through the kitchen window as a constellation of glass explodes across the countertops and unwashed dishes.  Sister screams.  My older brother chuckles.  Mom runs.

            She locks herself in the bedroom but Dad bangs on the door with his boot and fists and when nothing comes of it he starts shooting arrows into the door, some zinging off the tarnished knob, others piercing the wood and spitting slivers in the air.  Our trailer shakes each time Dad’s weight shifts.  The air is spiced with cigarette smoke, axle grease and the faintest trace of cinnamon.  When Dad starts to wail, Blue, our basset hound, mewls outside and I can hear the dog straining against his chain as metal scrapes metal.

            Sister squeezes my arm.  She tells me, “Please.  Please.  Please.” 

            If the police come again, we’ll be broken for good.  My older brother knows this as do I, so we stand and wait and watch.

            Dad takes swigs from the Southern Comfort bottle, swaying in front of the door like a woozy totem pole, his shadow a confused stage light on the linoleum floor.  When he leans forward his belt is visible, the belt with tooled deer and rabbits, the same belt he’s used on us plenty of times.

            He rights himself and lists down the hall, knocking me out of the way, going through the door, and I think we’re saved for now, he’s leaving, but then he’s back with a crowbar, working the bedroom door jamb.

            Sister squeezes my arm harder, going, “Please.  Please.  Please.”  I can feel my heartbeat through my eyelids.  The air is hot and heavy, a forest fire on its way.

            I take a knife from the drawer, the one we butcher chickens with.  When I tell my Dad I’ll use it on him if he doesn’t stop, he spits on the floor and cackles.  He calls me a wimp, a coward, a puny little bastard, and puffs out his chest, saying, “Do it.  Go on.”

            I raise the knife and out of the corner of my eye I see Older Brother, his mouth open.

            Dad yells but the words are slurred gibberish.  He pounds his chest like a drugged gorilla.           

            In my mind I make a hacking motion through the air and the knife lands where Dad’s black heart would be.  In my mind he topples and we cheer and Mom comes out of the bedroom and hugs me and we go to the other end of the trailer where there’s an actual tree with presents under it.

            But then the door does open and it’s Mom and she says she’s sorry, she says put down the knife, give it to me, she says, you kids go out and play, and when we turn to do as told, I hear Dad make a wet, gurgling noise before he falls, and I grab Sis so she can’t see, tell Brother, let’s go, it’s finished, even though I know this is only partially true.

--I WILL DO IT FOR YOU

…It just finished hailing and snowing and raining like mad.  Kind of cool to watch and listen to.

…I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that your waistline is a little tighter.  That’s how it should be after Turkey Day.

…Here are some things I like on a Monday:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver

"Relish your family and friends.  Go to ballgames.  Whatever you like to do, do it--and cherish those moments." Michael Weiner

"There are many ways to measure success; not the least of which is the way your child describes you when talking to a friend."  M. Whitacre

Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see." William Clark

"You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"" George Bernard Shaw

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. –Maya Angelou

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau

"The past is never dead.  It's not even past." Faulkner

Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn

--FEELING DRIED UP AND TONGUE-TIED

                                                        You Kiss Just Like a Girl

            After all the carnage he’d left in the school parking lot, my brother, Denny, still had enough nerve to ask if he could go to the party.  Mom sat at the kitchen table, her hair stacked up lopsided like the dishes in our sink, smoking Tareyton’s down to the bud, tapping her nails on the Formica table and staring at Denny as if he was some kind of baby killer. 

“You figure out how to pay for all those windshields yet?  Huh?” she asked.  She threw a fork but Denny ducked in time and the tines clattered off the window, hitting, Gilligan, our big blind cat.  “I don’t want to hear another word from you,” Mother said, testing out her tough guy suit, unaccustomed to all this recent madness.  “Do you understand me?  Not a peep.”

            In all, fronts and backs included, Denny popped nineteen windshields.  Used the very bat Dad had taught us how to hit with. Denny was already popular enough, but because these were all faculty cars, he became a hero to fellow students.  The teachers would have pressed charges if Dad hadn’t served a seven year stint as principal before taking off on a fling with the anorexic lady who taught first year Spanish. 

            The party was at Vickie Hewitt’s house.  Vickie had a full figure, not fat, just a lot of woman for a junior.  And she dyed her hair Marilyn Monroe white.  Plus she always had a lot of black friends over, which meant the music jammed and the party would be better because in the seventies black people were the only ones who knew how to dance.

            I’m not sure what compelled me to show up.  I was Denny’s look-alike brother, but shy and younger by a year.  He had a motorcycle and a pierced ear.  I had my paperbacks.  About the only thing we had in common was a blood line and the shared hatred of our father.

            When Vickie answered the door, my hair puffed back from so much blasting bass.  Her older sister, Christy slid around the hinge and gave me gave me a squishy hug, smothering me in her waterbed breasts.  At first it felt like one of Grandma’s hugs but then Vickie pressed in from behind me and then it wasn’t anything like Grand.  I pulled away too hard, staggered off balance and slipped into a puddle of beer or urine, or both.

            “Take it easy, Peach Fuzz,” Christy said, “That’s just us loving on you.”

            “But I couldn’t breathe,” I said, realizing at once how idiotic those words sounded.

            The music was Soul Train splendid, loud, thumping through the floorboards and walls and furniture, everything moving whether it wanted to or not.  Couples were bumping on the couch and kitchen table, grinding against appliances or the Hewitt’s incandescent fish tank which was so large it consumed an entire wall.

            I knew every person at the party, but not one was a friend.  Now they beamed when they saw me.  They gave me skin and arm bumps and back slaps and offers of free, under-the-counter, stimulants.  Mostly people wanted to know why Denny didn’t come and every time I declined drugs or drink, they asked if I was sick.

            “Nah, he’s not sick,” Vickie said, curling her lip in a snicker.  “He’s the good one.  Gonna be a pastor.  Aren’t you?”

            In that moment of mimicry, I saw Vickie’s fear as clearly as the monster pimple thrumming on my cheek.  Strange as it was, Vickie and I had a lot in common.  We were both younger siblings, both blonde (me a real one) and we were both terrified not so much of the future, but of what was happening in our worlds today, and what would happen tomorrow after the party ended, when it was just another flat weekend with nothing to do.             

I don’t know why, but I took her hand and did not let go.  I led her through the crowd and then up the stairs and said, “Which one?” and she pointed at the farthest down the hall, so I turned into the room and shut the door and kissed her at once.

            She made a little electrical noise and then I realized it was just Vickie’s leather pants squawking from the pressure of my knee on them.

            We ended up on the bed.  Sitting on the edge of it.  The dresser top had doilies all over it, along with perfume bottles and different framed photographs.  “You’re a little old-fashioned,” I said.  “That’s okay.  I am, too.”

            Vickie slapped my thigh.  “You retard.  This is my folk’s room.  You picked the wrong one.”

            “Folks?  But I thought your Mom left you guys.”

It came out as blunt as that--a chainsaw to the throat.  It came out the same way I pictured my own situation--raw and serrated.  

Vickie’s eyes watered.  “Hey,” I said.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean it like that.”

            She didn’t leave or slap me or curse.  Instead she leaned into my chest, her whole body warm and damp now, shuddering, sobbing.

            When she came up for air, Vickie’s makeup was so tragically smeared that it looked like she’d been beaten with a black licorice whip. 

I gave her tissues but she shredded them.  She told me how miserable she was, that she thought about killing herself as often as boys thought about sex.

“I’m a bad person,” she told me.

I told her she wasn’t.  People loved her.  She was popular.  “Look at that crowd downstairs.”

“Those are my sister’s friends.”

“But still, you know some of them.

She blew her nose on the corner of a pillow case and asked, “Are you really going to be a pastor when you grow up?”

            I kissed her again.  It was easier now, which helped, because anytime a person brought up me being a pastor, it forced momentum down a certain direction.

            When she pulled back, she said, “You know I’m Denny’s girl, right?”

            She must have really thought I was stupid.  “Of course,” I said.  “No duh.”

            As I got up, I half-expected her to stop me, but she didn’t.  Instead she only asked, “You are gay, aren’t you?  Denny says you are.”

            I bit my lip, feeling my face flood with blood.  “Why is it if you’re shy, people always think you’re gay?”

            “Hey, relax.  I don’t care if you are.”

            “Thanks.”

            “But, so you know,” she said, her eyes narrowing in seriousness, “you do kiss just like a girl.”

            I closed the door behind me and stepped out into the hall where a fire engine alarm was coming up from a stereo as The Ohio Players took on, “Fire.”

            Downstairs I found the utilities closet.  I broke a broom in half, and then a mop.  I took the sticks into the kitchen.  They felt light yet prodigious enough for the job.  They made a windy whistle whenever I whirlwinded them, which I did.

The windows exploded easily, almost self-combusting, as if they’d been waiting for this moment all along.  Pearls and husks of glass showered the air as I smashed the liquor bottles.  Ash trays.  Dishes and water glasses.  The huge television set.  Lamps.  Wall clock.  Chandelier.  And then the finale, the fish tank.

A small ocean poured forth and I thought of sailors, The Titanic, Noah.  Several slug-gray salamander-looking guppies squiggled near my toes, making it seem as if the entire shag rug were moving, scratching itself.  I apologized to the fish, but did not otherwise move save a solitary one.  I took out two lava lamps and a family portrait.

            By the time the cops arrived, I had stopped swinging.  My arms felt strapped with sand bags and my shoulders burned.

They used a blow horn, threatening tear gas.  For just a moment, I thought how easy it would be to provoke one or more of the officers into shooting me, but instead I stood where I was, hands at my sides. 

“We’re coming in!” they screamed.

Which was fine.  I’d done what I’d come to do.  I’d made my own mark.

--I CAN CARRY YOUR BAGS IF YOU WANT ME TO

…In light of the 50^th anniversary of JFK assignation, I thought these things were interesting:

Approximate number of public schools named after:

John Kennedy: 101

Dwight Eisenhower: 78

George Washington: 52

Abraham Lincoln: 43

Harry Truman: 38

Highest first approval ratings post-inauguration Day:

Kennedy: 72%

Carter: 66%

Obama: 64%

Nixon: 60%

Clinton: 58%

…Yesterday I wrote these three poems for a new publication site called The Rainbow Journal:

Hope In Rainbows

I found him hanging onto to the end of a rainbow

outside a bus terminal

where trash and insect husks had gathered at his feet.

No one else was watching,

not the saints or hecklers,

not even the sulking winter sun.

Gusting winds kept threating to break his hold but

this one was a fighter,

cackling as he battled back.

And when I asked why he wouldn’t let go,

he turned and gave me a toothless grin, saying,

“I still believe.”

Anniversary Rainbow

She gives me her half of the rainbow.

“To borrow,” she says.

She’s loaned me other things—

false promises,

barbwire kisses,

a life in purgatory—

and I’ve been stung enough times to know

she aims low and never misses.

It’ll be three years tomorrow

but I don’t want another day,

so I tell her to keep her rainbow.

walking out of the house,

leaving without a plan,

happy to finally be free.

The Girl Who Once Loved Rainbows

My daughter paints rainbows on her fingernails,

thinly striped but bright as crayons.

While she waits for them to dry I ask about her new boyfriend,

the one named Axle with a silver hoop through his lip

and two big fists.

She says he’s fine, he’s good, he’s looking for work, why am I always asking about Axle?

My daughter doesn’t know I’ve seen her bruises,

that wearing a turtleneck in summer calls attention.

I look at her face, trying to find the little girl who once squealed over seeing a double rainbow.

I search and I search,

but her sky is clear.

--I WONDER IF WE STILL FIT

…How was your weekend?  Did you spend it with people who make you happy?

…I like this story (There was a really sweet photo of the homeless man hugging the hotel manager that I couldn’t get):

            Joel Hartman was homeless, hungry and dumpster diving for food when he came across what could have been an easy payday, a tourist's wallet with her identification and credit card. 

Hartman, who admitted to HLN affiliate WSB that he's has done bad deeds in the past due to drinking and doing drugs, decided to take the high road and find the wallet's owner. 

Hartman, 36, walked the streets of downtown Atlanta going to four different hotels before discovering the owner was staying at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center.

Surveillance videos captured Hartman turning in the wallet to hotel security guards. He gave them a fake name, "Josh Crabber," figuring they didn't need to know who he was since he was doing the right thing.

Scott Stuckey, the managing director of the hotel, found out that the wallet belonged to a French tourist in town for a conference. The woman had reported to Atlanta police that her wallet had been stolen on November 7 and now thanks to Hartman's perseverance, she had it back.

Stuckey knew it was his turn to do the tracking.

"When you're looking through food in the garbage can, it's probably one of the toughest times of his life. But when you find somebody's wallet and you do the right thing, I think we'd like to do the right thing by this person," Stuckey told WSB. 

Stuckey and members of his staff hit the streets talking to homeless people looking for their wallet hero. On November 22 after hearing through word of mouth that he was being sought, Hartman showed up at the Omni, where Stuckey and hotel staff wanted to reward him in a big way. 

The hotel put the homeless man up in a luxury room through the Thanksgiving holiday. The hotel also treated Hartman to room service and gave him $500. Hartman was speechless at the gesture. All he could do was sweep Stuckey into a big hug and say thank you. 

"It's just for doing the right thing. Maybe someone will see this, totally drugged out and stuff, like that ugly guy can do something about it. Maybe I can too," Hartman said. 

Hartman told WSB that he's been homeless since March, when his longtime girlfriend died. Recently, he'd been sleeping in the woods in an Atlanta suburb. After he leaves the Omni, Hartman said he'll get on a freight train and head to Alaska.

Hartman said he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and he has a hard time holding down a steady job, but he does odd jobs. 

--I THINK OF YOU EVERY DAY

          Song of Infinity

            Fat.  Fattie.  Fattie Mattie.  That’s what she calls herself, what her mother calls her, too.  One says it out loud and the other writes it on her thigh with the metal tooth of a hair brush. 

For Mattie’s birthday she gets to pick the cake flavor but someone has misspelled Happy and her name, so Mattie’s mother makes a joke, says that money can’t buy happiness but it should at least be able to afford Happy.

            That night Mattie dreams of porcupines.  She wakes and remembers two porcupines having sex and thinks to herself, how clever that neither one gets hurt in the process.

            Her next dream is about Uncle Ernesto, his fang teeth and yellow eyes.  He smells like venom and spits peanut shells in her ear.  His whiskers are prickly against her skin, same as a porcupine.

            In the morning, as a diversion, Mattie takes up singing.  Instead of speaking or communicating she sings.  All the time, there is a song on her lips.  Now she no longer stutters.

            On the bus there are 18 x’s 2 places to sit.  Mattie takes the entire back row.  Everyone leaves her alone.  She’s already ruled out suicide but just to see what it might be like she stabs a butcher knife through the vinyl seat, the blade nicking her nylons.  Nacho-tinged laughter rattles around the bus cab like lost hubcaps down the street.  Next, someone tosses a condom water balloon, and when it bursts perfectly in Mattie’s lap, there’s a tornado of squeals and giggles.  It doesn’t matter now, so Mattie presses her palm into her pelvis, where a squiggling baby would be if she were pregnant.  She uses so much pressure that pee shoots through her skirt and down her ankles and into her shoes, and even though no one’s watching or listening she takes up an aria by the great Malena Ernman.

When she’s at the pool that weekend Mattie closes her eyes and studies the muffled blanket noises of people spending their lives.  What she hears seems impossible to her, so she hums a tune, but humming is not the same as singing, just as living is not the same as filling out the moments of a life.

Mattie stands up and arches her back.  She hears her mother’s voice warning her about posture, about getting osteoporosis and how it’s more slimming if you don’t hunch your shoulders. 

People stare and jeer and jab fingers in the air at her.  Mattie doesn’t care.  She sings a song, the one about the silken feel of a lover’s skin and his lips tasting like candied roses. 

She walks to the diving board, the high dive, steps across the plank and sits on the edge, and when the ones on the ladder behind her start to scream for her to jump, Mattie removes the knife from her suit bottoms and holds it like a torch, same as Lady Liberty.

            They scream for her, “Don’t do it!”  Some scream that she should.  Some beg, “Please, please, do it!”

            No one’s ever wanted anything from her that Mattie can remember and so she obliges, jams the blade all the way through her thigh, and it would still be stuck to the diving board but the tip breaks off as Mattie’s weigh crumbles like a mountain, heaving forward.

She somersaults.  She smiles.  The pain is electric and overwhelming.  Mattie hadn’t thought it would hurt so much, or even, that such a thing was possible.  The gusting air is a chorus of screams gift-wrapped as a song.

The last thing she sees is the little girl with the pink snow cone standing under a shade umbrella.  Their eyes meet.  The girl holds the cone skyward, a proud statue saluting, and opens her mouth to sing.

--I BURIED MY HEART AND SOUL IN THE FLOORBOARDS OF A SHIPWRECK

…I saw “This Is Forty” the other day.  What a funny film.  I was smiling throughout.  Great acting, a bit vulgar, but totally fun.

I also saw “Blue Valentine” again.  Watching that is like getting your heart shredded by a woodchipper.  Oh my.  Both Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are amazing, and it makes one wonder what a person has to do to get nominated for an Oscar.

Here are some things I like:

"We all have dreams. And we all get disappointed. We all have heartache and we suffer and work to get through it. It’s just the human condition. ...So I stand here today so proud. I’m so proud of my team and I’m so proud of myself." Diana Nyad, who at age 64 swam 103 miles from Cuba to Florida

"The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities, and to make the most of one's resources." Luc de Clapiers

"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it, generation after generation." Pearl S. Buck

"How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world." Shakespeare

"You're a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from stardust, what do you have to be scared of?" William Gibson

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it." Chinese proverb

"The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - We must step up the stairs." Vance

"You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read and you just keep doing your work because you have to. Because it's your calling." -- Patti Smith

"Choice of attention, to pay attention to this and ignore that, is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer." W. H. Auden

"Life leaps like a geyser for those willing to drill through the rock of inertia." Alexis Carrel