Posts for 2020 (page 68)

I needed more time to conjure your memory
since you’ve been gone 30 years now. 
We teased how you pronounced certainly.

Daddy’s girl was spoiled by the purple 
swirling dress sprinkled with diamond raindrops 
and umbrellas that mama said cost too much
but you didn’t care for my 6 th.

Thanks to you we always had a family dog.
Fritz was the schnauzer rescued from
the crowded pet shop after Christmas 
when no one claimed him. You said
he was mine.

Library visits every two weeks
were a treat with ice cream
after. Both of us with a bedside stack.

Never treated us girls different towards
career choice, you tried to make me
an engineer like you but math was
my downfall. We argued over liberal
arts and as a joke Rick and Dave
scattered some of your ashes at the
College of Liberal Arts  during 
halftime at your beloved Penn State
alma mater football game and laid
the rest at the College of Engineering.

I was the middle of five kids but you
always found 1:1 time. I cherish that
time but also enjoyed big family 
get togethers that followed us into 
adulthood with the grandkids.

You had a vision to bring our
scattered  family of four states together 
with the timeshares in Gatlinburg
back in ’85.

Since Mom passed in 2003, I have
kept that dream alive by paying 
the maintenance fees and getting 
my family there about every 
other year.

Your legacy lives on…

Beethoven dumped ice water
over his head when composing, his living room
covered with asphalt to keep
water from seeping through. Deaf, hopeless
& bedridden he left the world shaking
his dying blue fist at a thunderstorm while invoking
Augustus: Applaud my friends the comedy
is over.  Stravinsky stood

on his head for 15 minutes every morning
because it rests the head & clears
the brain. Gertrude Stein
preferred writing with a cow
in plain sight. With Alice, she’d recklessly
drive country roads in their early model Ford
until she sensed the just right spot,
where she mused on a stool —  if the cow didn’t fit
the mood, they’d drive to the next cow. After
The Waste Land, Eliot wore pale green
face powder. No one knows why he did it,
but his biographer suggests it made him
look the poet rather than bank official.

In college, I swooned to Satie’s hypnotic
Gymnopédie No. 1. On snowy days I’d
wrap myself in a violet afghan, part the long
linen drapes & behold the delicate
falling. For 27 years, it’s said, not one soul
entered Satie’s shabby room. After he died
from cirrhosis they found 100 umbrellas,
84 handkerchiefs & piles of letters stuffed
into his concert, grand, most written
to himself & then there were those wacky
ditties like Authentic Flabby Preludes
(For a Dog) & Desiccated Embryos.

When he was 21 there was Suzanne,
his one great love. Satie bestowed her
with necklaces made of sausages,
while she made her own corsages
from carrots.  In oil, they painted portraits
of each other, sailed toy boats
on a duck pond together. After six months
she left & for 30 years he showered her
with letters of abiding love.  No one knows why
he donned grey velvet suits exclusively
& ate only white food — coconut, rice
& shredded bones. I have a good appetite,
but never talk when eating for fear
of strangling myself, he exclaimed. We should
have a music of our own — if possible —
without any sauerkraut.

running from the soft, the scared, the lonely.

these inhibitions turned into these lines so these
hard men and women could—so

you might understand.

sweetness i feel soft and scared, and
nothing but trouble to you.

i crane my neck, feel the soft spot, the scale!—
pulled back from my dragon’s side,

and jump! a lone arrow from the heart of
you brings my demise.

then, in danger of shedding all my pride, and
crushed, because he’s not enough

when you say you love my mind,
i hide, openly, in between these lines.

running running from the soft, the scared, the lonely.

Something to wave
in other people’s faces? Or
is it more of a flag
to pack away
only for yourself?

Could it be what your heart
was made to do?
Or what you are bound to dread?

Do you select something
others will be proud of?
Something to bring home
the bacon, or a cause for
extra stress?

How many chances
do you get? And how long
until you know if you were right?

Pine Mountain Cemetery XXII
        Romeo and Juliet

Nodding over his Shakespeare, straying
Eyes glazed, earflaps secure so nothing
Slipped in, the boy missed the warning.

It was right there two kids flaunting rules
And tradition, reaching for sweet fruit not
Yet ripe in spite of all they knew was right.

Marrying young was almost the rule where
This one grew and played and finally strayed
Into territory not open for one white like him.

Oh, she was pretty, not doubt of that, amber
Skin, soft brown eyes, smile from there to here.
Music seemed as much apart of her as air.

Fell head over heels he did and only a kid
She did too, a bit older, but not enough. Families
Shocked, hurt, screamed at both. The day

Of brown and white entwined forbidden by every
Side. If they had read their Shakespeare and
Taken it to heart this lot would hold no stone.

Yet, not demands, an accident ends the dream,
Closed windows, cold night, warm car and sleep,
The long unintended sleep of mere children.

We don’t tell it much these days, story best
Untold in our modern climes, but strange
To say Shakespeare still holds so little sway.

The slightest difference, feud, or tongue
Splits apart not just families but kingdoms
Too. Five hundred years may change hearts

And minds of man. We will wait and see
Under stones much like these with stories 
Told of us who made the same mistakes.

there are days
that I don’t know
why
I try so hard
to get something 
out
pulling from
belly button
leaving a 
deep purple hurt
at the center 
of the chest

but I keep going
unwinding
digging
and confused
as to why 
I’m not going
numb

no one told you, did they?
that it was all over
that the fat lady had sung
that there was no post-credits scene

no one showed you, did they?
those signs and wonders
those weekend  forecasts
those unsurprised pundits

no one listened, did they?
these songs you sang
these Bible verses you recited
these warnings of good and evil

no one, but one
that one
was me–
a no one

for six years,
you bought the same
milk and sugar–
the organic kind
the doctor recommended
to fight the disease–
you still buy it,
even thought she’s dead

even now,
you still spend five dollars
for a half gallon of milk
and i see it as an ode to her–
an “in memory” of sorts
or maybe it’s a safeguard
so you don’t lose us
like you lost her

our relationship
is tense–both of us
anxious and scared
of the other’s reaction
my memory
of you consists of
strung together moments:

waking up with a cough,
the fireplace roaring from
the living room and i
can hear you moving about
since my coughing woke you
already and you bringing me
a small, clay mug filled
with piping hot black tea
sweetened with clover honey

snacking at a Wendy’s
corner booth with the
sunset clearing away
on the horizon
and you dip your hot
fries into your chocolate
Frosty and i snarl
have you tried it?
and i reluctantly did–
indulging on the salty sweetness

i see you as a mourning
father–every breath
step, and action a
forward motion in grieving
and maybe that’s how we cope?

living our lives,
grieving in tandem
our souls solemnly separate
in a lonely mantra

Blossoms in the sun
a magenta monochrome
floral beauties shine

Scorched with sunlights touch
pirouettes upon the wind
roots found on the farm

I remember sitting by mother’s canvas
watching as her hand etched worlds into the void
banishing catastrophe with color,
facing doubt with determination.

She’d play jazz over the stereo
Listen to bold brass
accompanied by brushstrokes.
I wonder whether the flowers she painted
were concealed in the cacophony?

Her easel has borne the weight
of an abandoned child for years now,
wooden arms weary, determined not
to disappoint. Father’s work holds strong.
Perhaps it’s time for the both of us
to nourish our crafts anew.