Today I breathe caffeine and good dirt.
Yesterday was all vacuum and humidity.
The heavy weight of headache hanging
upside down and drying out like a deer
carcass in the front of my skull reminds
me not to look too closely.
Can’t squeeze any more
rom the Shakespearean rag,
it’s all felt and funny and dry
and I am none of those things.
Short-cutting realism, I am striding
from signifier to sign, stringing up
Xmas ornaments made from last week’s trash.
They’re setting up the big tent
for the revival this weekend
in backroad Kentucky
where my work occasionally takes me,
those beautiful tree-lined byways
that turn this way and that,
drop down to run beside
crystal flowing creek beds,
and halve the furred fields
where the sheaves are bound
and drying beneath the sun.
They’ll be sweating
beneath that wedding white canvas,
a scorcher of a June day predicted,
ideal conditions
for a fire and brimstone message —
I suppose that’ll be okay
with the true blue believers
who traveled so far on faith
to be there. They’ll frighten the dark
out of the night
with their amens and hallelujahs.
The state of the world today,
my mother wasting away,
my faith in the big G god
is weaker than the lemonade
the parishioners will sip after
the word’s come alive.
Yet I’m not so far gone
that I won’t say
a prayer to Christopher,
Hermes, Mercury, all
the saints and little gods
of the long and rambling road,
please, get me safely home.
on Bernini’s colonnade
muses on sainthood and tourism
and the impermanence of stone.
Below her talons
the saint
is silent.
These great-columned arms
have embraced the impermanence
of human folly,
war and triumph–
and one solitary pope,
in a time of pandemic,
walking in silent rainfall
to pray.
The splash of the fountains
calls her back to the sea.
I catch sight of a rust-hued heap,
small, furred blur on the shoulder.
No run-of-the-mill roadkill,
it makes my gut churn, head turn,
eyes track back until they alight
on the white spots of a stricken fawn.
Nature’s dapples, camouflage
for the young, never fathomed
danger shaped like a speeding car.
I say, I wish I hadn’t seen that,
but I don’t believe me. It hurts
to look, but someone should
notice this gentle waste
of a pretty face, long-lashed
eyelids like windows
shuttered for eternal sleep,
her one shy crime to wander
greenly, happen by mistake
upon this harsh, fast place
we paved in the name of progress.
I say let hope go,
let it sink
the world turns upside down
& everyone surrenders
no one goes to hell
carnival rides for everyone
jagged rocks shatter
silly ideas turn into driftwood
I am not choking on lies
I am not at war
I dance with fog now
nothing to cling to, embrace
I say let hope go,
let it sink
after surrender: snow cones,
purple tulips on my white flag
no one goes to hell
carnival rides for everyone
smiles of infants reach up
ready for merry-go-round
we are not choking on lies
we are not at war
I am a writer from black and white Polaroid conjured flashes of a heavily verbalized social initiation
I am a writer from memories in dreams, a pregnant dimension full of conscious and unconscious visual impressions
I am a writer from deep emotions molded like clay in the hands of a painter’s sexual abuse
I am a writer from fragility, afraid to admit vulnerability folded into a starched wimple and double masked to show the tough side that doesn’t ever scab
I am a writer from water ballerinas, long distance swimmers and high dive jumpers
I am a writer from exclusion, witnessing from the other side trying too hard to be loved in spaces and places I had no business ever entering
I am a writer from the mind of a young panchoed girl curiously caught in the winds and whirls of hitchhiking across the U.S. in the Summer of Love
I am a writer from an innocent soul who ventured into a skid row alley cockroach infested tenement and was greeted by an old woman in a wheelchair who blankly stared and asked, “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”
I am a writer from dancing on the dark side looking for love in the strangest and scariest places
I am a writer from a history of cheating death and a lineage of healers, seers, and Nona Stregas
I am a writer who finally saw through gin & tonic, long island ice tea, & hurricanes in the French Quarter
I am a writer from strong women on an island in the Mediterranean who could foresee and foretell what happened times before and times yet to come
I am a writer from women who breathed on a malady, saw through skin, and healed dis-ease with a touch
I am a writer from time to listen and transcribe automatic channeled messages
I am a writer that sees through a billionaire’s pity-full penetrating penal rocket and the greedy pharmaceutical monsters’ ploys to opiate genius
I am a writer with a generous pen that can heal, sting or stun with a simple dash
I am a writer from a bloodline of strong women who weren’t afraid to use their voices and they did!
The Doctor said he suffered
from Civil War. Personally,
my dad thought it was just normal life.
In his head, the soldiers
of every bright idea retired
to a couch to whittle
their automatic rifles.
I remember finding, many years
ago. Some paperwork
from a psych eval by the VA
where he admitted to wanting
to hurt the people around him.
Your family? It said, He checked YES.
In an honest world, the warriors
we create would be deprogrammed
the way we reset old laptops
to some pristine, empty condition
and give them to the young.
But we treat these people like poison
territory, and refuse to dwell in their presence.
Like local drinking water, we turn our nose
and decline. They stand, knowingly, at ease.
It didn’t surprise me. When I read it.
I wanted to hurt him too.
Many years later, I wanted to hurt him
again. Debated punching my father
in the face. On Christmas eve.
While he stared at me, daring me.
30 years separated us. I could have
killed him.
After he died, I cleaned
his truck. Three handguns
and about 140 rounds.
He had not fired a shot
in 10 years but was fearful
of the idea of having to admit
he ever made a mistake.
I have made many, many mistakes.
He is at least a hundred of them.
It is past midnight,
one minute and I have the thought
that I should write a long poem about
of all people,
Robert Gipe.
Robert Gipe asked me if I ever felt guilty
about the things I did for the government.
I told him that the very thought of
doing those things again
fills me with anticipation,
my feelings hone for flight or fight.
Robert wanted to know how I could
go to Columbia, Brazil, Germany,
other places I tell him about
in my other life of secrets
that I would not tell my students about
in a Kentucky classroom.
I do not tell him I have a reputation
in my rural community, agricultural,
impoverished. One man calls me
a local legend while others assume
I am a good educator, a good man,
an honest man, dishonest in my own words,
but a family man, a father loved by his children.
Robert wanted to know if I justified
what I did because I felt as though
what I did was done because my
President asked me to go out
into the world and help him
make a difference.
I tell Robert that the Man trusted me.
I don’t tell Robert that I never betrayed
that trust.
Robert wanted to know if I was a Republican.
I tell him not to hold it against me.
He said he did not,
Robert told me how much better
my wild story would be
if I were a Democrat
working for a Republican President.
I toyed with that plot line,
Robert being the author that he was.
Instead, I begin to write a poem
about Ange, a woman whose beauty
has not given in to life’s pull–=
has not given up the elasticity
in her neck, a woman whose legs,
legs of a runner have not lost their rhythm,
have not lost their toned calves…
Robert has gone to his room to sleep
at 32 minutes past midnight.
I begin to write Ange across the page
and down.
My hope is that she will read the words
after drinking two vodka and cranberry
on ice to relieve her stress…
