--IT’S GOING TO LAST FOREVER, OR IT’S GOING TO GO DOWN IN FLAMES

Ways to Remember Birmingham

  

She gives her pets

street names—

 Hunter and Red Mountain,

   Oak, Valley, Tuscaloosa.

The gold fish are 1^st through 9^th Avenue.

She has the city tattooed across her chest so she can see

the campus in the mirror when she’s on top,

but the truth is

it’s been a long time,

and the fish are floating belly up

and the dog has diarrhea

and the embryo inside her has grown bad boy hair by now,

his hands and feet itching

to make their way into the world

with or without you,

you bastard.

The Rain in Birmingham

is wet luggage

that smells like hot bread

slathered with salty slabs of butter

that dribble bitter as your lips.

Your dad said he saw you

in a stole and shoulder-duster earrings.

I was wondering when you started liking ballet

instead of Birmingham

and boys like me,

born bearded and black-holed

so that rain shoots out ear-to-ear.

If you were here

you probably couldn’t stand the splatter

of all this inky oil that’s pooling

in my lap now,

taking the form of a head,

a face quite

similar to yours.

Molted

  

I keep leaving pieces of myself

in different rooms.

At first I think they are socks or candy wrappers

but one’s a finger and one’s a thumb,

and then there’s the issue of an eye in the sink,

two toes afloat in Dad’s old beer stein.

Wolfgang wails through the speakers

and I think he’s found my foot but instead it’s

in our Labrador’s drooling mouth.

I feel for my crotch and sigh because we’re still good there,

but then you walk through the door with a Chanel handbag

made of alligator and eel

and I recognize their color and stain,

the distinctive scars and skins of

your last boyfriends.

--I JUST WANTED TO KNOW IF IT WAS A CHOICE

                                                               Flight Risk

I am six and I am sad and I am on an airplane by myself because Mother has sent me away again, this time to Uncle Daryl’s farm in North Dakota where there are more cows than people and where Uncle Daryl will make me cut my hair, put on overalls and tell me, Toughen up, Little Shit, even though I am six and a girl.

The lady, Susan, with the blue uniform and name tag seems nice and I want to ask her if she’s a mother and if she ever sends her children away whenever she bring a man over for a long stay, but I’m too shy and nervous and my stomach is growling like the mean black lab the neighbors have and I’m worried the fat-bellied man next to me will hear.  I don’t want him to notice my stomach sounds or me at all but he keeps stealing looks at me whenever I open up my Anne of Green Gables book.  I don’t know much but I know it’s best to stay away from men because a lot of them are bad men who want things they shouldn’t.  The fat-bellied man is so large his thick, hairy forearms are almost over in my seat, same as his gut which is pushing hard against his shirt buttons.  If he touches me for real or even says anything I am going to scream until the lady, Susan, comes.

I have seventy-five dollars rolled up inside my knee highs.  Ten of it came from Mother and the rest from Pop Pop, my granddad who likes to call me Fruit Loop and pat my bottom.  I’ve never had so much money in my life and it makes me nervous though I am rich now and should be feeling on top of the world.

From my window seat I can see the land below so flat and neatly scarred up, laying there like the stretched out animal hides Mother’s last boyfriend had hanging in the basement where all the crates of puppies were lined up one after the other, cute puppies mewling like they wanted out in a hurry, which I couldn’t blame them. 

I don’t understand how airplanes work, all these people on board, all this weight lifted up into the sky, but then I don’t understand a lot of things like why I haven’t started first grade or why Mother calls me “special” then laughs and laughs, especially when she’s drunk, which is most of the time.

The lady, Susan, comes down the aisle and asks if everything’s all right, so I nod and try to make my lips grin, though I’m not sure if it works.  She says we’re going to land soon, which makes me even more nervous.

I look out the little door window again and find a cloud that looks like a floating elephant.  I give it the special power of granting wishes and I cheat and make it grant me one and so now I know it’s okay to get a cab at the airport instead of calling Uncle Daryl as I’ve been instructed to do.  I’ll be strong and sure for once and tell the cabbie to take me to a place where they treat little girls nice.  I’ll give him a big tip if he does.  Then when I get there I’ll show the kind people some of my scars.  I’ll tell how I got them.  I’ll tell them all the other stuff, too, even if it makes me cry.  Then I’ll say, “I’m not ever going back,” and I’ll really mean it this time.

--TELL ME THERE’S MORE THAN THIS

…Here are some things I’ve learned so far this week:

Mark Zuckerberg announced is going to give 99% of his person Facebook stock to charity.  It is currently valued at $45 billion.

In Chicago through yesterday, there have been 429 murders and 2,221 shootings.

There’s a new victim of identity fraud every two seconds.

On average, people check their smart phone 134 times each day.  Yikes.

Before composing, Beethoven would dunk his head in a bucket of cold water to get inspired.

Whenever Van Gogh was depressed he would drink yellow paint in hopes of cheering himself up.

Albert Einstein didn’t know his own phone number, claiming he didn’t want to use up his brain space with such useless information.

The original manuscript of “Of Mice and Men” was eaten by a dog.

  

It takes a pistachio tree four to five years before it finally starts producing nuts.

Over 22 million trees have died due to bark beetle infestation brought on by the drought.

There are over 100,000 different types of trees in the world.

The words—frugal, majestic and blanket—were all invented by Shakespeare.

Among 325,142 global participants in last year’s National Novel Writing Month, 58,917 reached their 50,000 word goal by November 30^th.

Each person can make a minimum of 10,000 facial expressions.

--I HAVE TO TRUST SOMEONE AND IT MIGHT AS WELL BE YOU

  

The Sweater

I am the black

Sweater

You left behind

On the love seat

Love no longer an option

My yarn is tight

Fine Egyptian cotton

Mercerized

Top stitched and fully-fashioned.

Your skin

It used to sit or swish

Inside of me

Against my limbs and lengths

My sleeves and being

You took me places

Folded me

Kept me clean

Now I am a heap of yarn

Dead threads

Smelling of your perfume

But mostly

Reeking rust and

Regret

Recluse

The water hums

White and chalky like a mummy

Needing to strangle or smother someone,

Maybe you.

Butterscotch sun is a bored voyeur.

Eagles shop for fish or a dense duckling.

The wounded are all out for a swim

But you know better,

Or think you do.

Glass and beams separate

The outside air the earth the real world.

Inside you’ve designed another planet.

With a regal crown

While wearing your bathroom gown

You suck down dust and plankton

Diaphanous food.

Your lips twist, burning like an oven coil.

All this ugliness suits you.

God is the boy with the sharp sixth grade kiss.

Dancing is for fools.

Scent of cauliflower and death

Wear shadows on the wall

And no one would have it any other way

Least of all you.

--YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT BUTTONS NOT TO TOUCH


…I’m not a super huge Adele fan but in this day and age—when people don’t buy music at all, or choose to steal it—this is quite a feat:
Billboard reports that the singer’s new album, “25”, sold a record-shattering 3.38 million copies in the United States through its first week, according to Nielsen Music. That’s nearly a million more than the previous high mark for first-week sales — ’N Sync sold 2.4 million copies of “No Strings Attached” in 2000 — and makes “25” the first-ever release to sell three million copies in a week since Nielsen (and previously SoundScan) began tallying hard sales data in 1991.

…An eagle just flew by my window with a fish squirming in its talons.  Kind of cool, but I feel bad for that fish.

…It looks like it snowed across the lake but really that’s just two inches of frost on every roof and lawn.  I’m on the sunny side of the water, so much so that I have two window shades pulled so I’m not blinded.

…It’s Sunday and I don’t usually blog on Sundays, but I needed a break.
Here are some things to ponder before a new week:

-“Because I think I’m making progress.”  Legendary cellist, Pablo Callist when asked why he continues to make music at age 90.

-“When you play, play hard.  When you work, don’t play at all.” Theodore Roosevelt

-"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."  Mary Oliver

-“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein

-“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretsky

-"My idea of the modern stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking." Nassim Taleb

-"The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it." Moliere

-"I praise loudly; I blame softly." Catherine the Second (1729 - 1796),Russian Empress

-"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." Sir Winston Churchill

--ONLY A FOOL GOES FOR A WALK IN A MINEFIELD TWICE

           

                                                   The Sound of the Cars on the Bridge

Overhead, vehicles cross the great bridge at astonishing speeds, race car fast.  Their collective echo shrieks like audible horror trapped in a jar, the noise bouncing between girders.  The concrete joists shudder as if the bridge itself is suffering a seizure, convulsing weak-kneed.

He’s late but not really.  He’s been watching her for half an hour from the west end while his conscience battles a flight impulse, a survivor reflex.

He’s not a brave man and he knows it.

She’s as pretty as in newspaper photographs.  Her hair is wavy, marmalade-orange, same as her brother’s.  She’s been sitting near the river’s edge, oblivious to the sound of the cars on the bridge.  She’s hunched over, clutching her knees like a shivering child, a nervous date.  She stares at the pockets of light hitting the green water and wafting away.  He can imagine some of the things she’s thinking but not all of them, of course.

He stumbles down the slope of the riverbank.  Stumbles, not staggers.  There is a difference.

The ground is filled with tall scratchy weeds.  They’re brittle and toast-colored and the earth is uneven and soft from recent rains and his shoes get sucked down and he thinks of quicksand and rescue scenes from old Tarzan movies he’d watched when he was a boy and not yet a murderer.

She hears the soupy sound his shoes make and turns, using a hand to shield her eyes from the glare breaking across his shoulders.

“You came.”

He nods.  There’s a fist stuck in his throat and it’s knuckles ram his neck bones and he gags and swallows with a combustive cough.

They shake hands and exchange names, his fictitious.

She pats the ground.  “Sit.” 

She has her brother’s heart-shaped face, his eyes.

“This is where his car landed after he swerved,” she says.

That night is a blur.  He’s tried to recall details but he can only get as far as the edge of a memory.

“The other driver was going a hundred in the wrong lane, Sean’s lane.”

He nods again.  It’s easier this way but he realizes he’ll have to come clean soon and he wonders what that will feel like.

“Our parents were killed by drunk drivers, too,” she says.

He tries to steady his eyes.  His mouth tastes like bleach.  “I know,” he says.  “There was a story on the news.”

Again he recalls being a boy: his first drink at age thirteen, Uncle Roy egging him on, claiming it would free him, make him a man, and so he drank and when it didn’t deliver he took another and another, but all these years later he’s still searching for that release, the freedom Uncle Roy had promised, only what he feels now is ensnared and shackled, taken to the same damp cell, night after night, even when it’s day, the cave barren of sun, void of any tactile reference save for the gassy fumes of whiskey and sound of the cars on the bridge screaming hostilities.

She tosses a twig.  It wobbles in the air, landing shoreline.  Together they watch it swivel and sway against the foamy skirt of a jutting boulder before it sinks and disappears.

“Anyone you know ever get killed?”

He shakes his head.

“Good for you.”

When she begins to study his face and take in his features, he turns away.

“It was impossible after Mom and Dad died, so I don’t know how I’m going to be able to survive this.”

He wants to say, “You will.”  It seems appropriate and necessary, but he can’t.

“Sean wasn’t just my brother, he was my best friend.”

He feels his mouth shaping a supportive smile, showing no teeth, his lips on fire.

“I never dated.  Sean did--now and then anyway--but he was moody and sucked as a conversationalist.”  Her laugh is frail, breathy and without lilt.  “Whenever one of his dates would find out about our parents and the accident, she’d split.  It was as if they thought death could be, you know, contagious.  Does that make any sense?”

Nod of the head again.

“Not that it mattered terribly, because I was always there for him.  We had each other.  And the cool thing was, lately Sean seemed to be making progress, as if he’d found a way to put some of the sadness behind him.”

She uses the tip of her worn boot to loosen a stone from the soil, and once it’s freed she bats it back and forth soccer style.  She watches him watching her and stops.

“So, you said you had some information about the accident.”

He reads her mind.  She’s thinking: stalker, maybe psycho. 

His conscience falters for a moment.  He thinks: I have options.  I can lie.  I can run.  She doesn’t know my name, doesn’t have my number.

As he stands and pats the back of his pants, a shredded ghost-pattern of dust slides into a slanted breeze and dissipates.  He takes the stone from between her boots and rubs it clean.  It’s as flat as a cookie, so he side-arms hard and the rock skips one…two…three…four…

“Hey,” she says.  “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but this meeting was your idea.  If you don’t have any information, then stop screwing around and say so.”

He listens to the final plops of the skipping stone.  It takes a second for him to realize that—however briefly—he has successfully drowned out the sound of the cars on the bridge.

He turns to the girl, facing her sorrow flush.  “I do,” he says.“  I do have something to tell you.”

In the distance the sun is a flame of infinity.

 

           

  

--THINGS CAN GET BETTER.  WE CAN MAKE THEM BETTER

     Rainbow Poems

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 threatening 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.