daunted

haunted in a new place lots of space to face with room to pace leaving no trace just in case

I wonder what learning about colors will teach me about words

winter white fog gray
wood snaps in the stove reminding me of the tethers
leaving home is always inconvenient

blues hidden no rain, or wind we are thankful for that mostly way asinfuckin' windshy and windburned river taking a backseat altoghether

brunch hiatus
with chosen friends intimate with gaps neighbors with fences and property lines cross generational cross values in sickness and in health for richer for poorer

god it all starts over again and it's Thursday, a silly day to notice beginnings--yesterday, a factory default, didn't count and the ill-fated cougars lost the rose bowl--tomorrow I go back to work as if nothing's gone on, this accidental holiday an accidental hiatus a california-manifested needed to not be there my heart was not in it breather will go unnoticed by most but I've been to pluto and back...almost, brought presence (too clever) & I have no idea what the next shapes will look like what the medium will be but I am ready bring it on

we're creatures of habit as impatient and inflexible as cats wantingneedingdemanding the morning's pork buns&latte donuts&coffee yogurt eggs over easy & milk; notsomindless anchors without which we are cast asunder and left cranky

on the back end the days are getting longer and I got to the flats today with sunlight leftover and the longview to the west in its spare winter garb on fittin' display just in time to hear perfectly open sky music--there was room between the notes, no really--on the classical radio station...and dang if that wasn't Barbara Stanwyck riding off into the bigskycountry sunset

I can't believe I've started drawing&painting forgodsake, hope it's not a gumption-trap...but back to what I wondered I'd learn about words from colors, ha!--sitting in the grass, the top of it at eyelevel drawing the curve of the beach and the hillside younder and realized I'd lost the point of view...couldn't tell where the seer was...hmm

and there it was...his looking to see if I'd written anything about the family...which of course is allaboutme...though it could sound like it's allaboutthem...but anyway you looked at/for it there is room for disagreement about whosestoryisit anyway

it's all so circular, so lifelike, so damned if you do damned if you didn't...but as she said the still waters of narcissim run deep and as I said yes they do tyvm dovra, we both fo(t)c lol...the real crux of it though is the recycling the resurfacing of issues already laid to rest as if that were a truth a possibility...I was simply annoyed at how superficial my sense of resolve&comfort was about the right to tell my story the story any damn story...and how quickly it all gets stirred up again, oy

I was thinking of silly reasons I don't do stuff, like too embarrassing...not knowing how to do something passably...
including properclothes make the man situations...ah I remember why I started down this path-- not recognizing who might be on the other end of the telephone when I call someone and/or not wanting to deal with the luck of the draw as in talking (atall) to whomsoever answers...must be a surfing-rule that covers some of this fool cool shit cause on the other end I'll wear my hair in a goofy pony-tail and grin synkinetically any old time

miss thing 2

so in the meantime she'd sent my tumor poems--Tender Tresspass--to her neurosurgeon and he was moved&wise enough to ask permission to read them to his patients, which of course was absolutely the point and at first blush unequivocally terrific...but ain't I miss thing waking up inthemiddleofthedamnnight in a snit daring him not to photocopy them because

and it just drops off, like what...I want $3.00 (Canadian!) for each copy or even 10 or in a morebiggergrander way I want people to know they're mine or...I just love how I trip walkin my walk

...pretty as porcelain and as smooth and unholdable--you break you pay--which is not to say I didn't pick it up, and look at it everywhichway but I'm more...now that I think about it, raku--to follow the metaphor--and in a nutbowl it was just a twain that never met...but dang it sure as heck was pretty and I was riveted looking for the warmth--I was all fired up and

she was so white so translucent so wu dang without lid or bottom...but I guess that's the thing about porcelain--it's just so dang cool

tag ends 1

so, maybe it's about a day job thing--about quitting my day job if I was properly discovered which wouldn't happen if he just willynilly xeroxed my poems and handed them out like confetti and maybe the real question being asked when people ask are you published is are you discovered yet...star search queen for a day all over again

and he said after I said it's all my stuff, it's all our stuff...yes indeed, and ain't that a sign of good writing it getting everyone's each his own stuff into a full blown roar-up

Two things

very much feel I must wouldlike to write something for about to honor to remember rosemary a relentless poetwillowsoul who in spite of it all because of it all in the face of it all just kept on hearing banging making music to and with her own drum--she died alone but not unnoticed down and out but not undone and not unsung

& need to figure out how it is and when it is that I'm primed to have Isajoke climb right up my ass and irritate the hell out of me as if I'm so damn easy

I got up, met paul who had just gotten home we talked he drank champagne and had his usual afterwork snack, I showered and got dressed gathered my stuff and got in the car and drove down the street and around the corner and ran smack into a downed tree across the road...just wasn't sure you know--cause I had put so far out there that it seemed like it would be really nice to be able to stay home...that it was real, that I hadn't just rustled up this perfect mirage. He wouldn't come look with me

lessons&nubbins

gads...this 100word discipline is a nubbin fest about kernels and less chaff damn if I'm not clearer in my first drafts, say more quickly more directly more visually what I have in mind ohmygod...now it's about pictures morphing into feelings rather than feelings giving way to pictures ohmygod

and...I was remembering how I'd copied the lines of a drawing to another piece of paper so I could use the water colors and it was shit because... in thinking about it I realized I'd transferred only the lines and left the life the passion...the intention... behind

tricks&treats: wordsmanship

brinksmanship was all he could come up with and after that I needed no more words didn't even need the story...we (occupationally for better&worse) use different language for that...testing limits or crossing boundaries and once I even got about gerrymandering–but his is the most human the most universal the most we all stand equal at the brink and each must pay the price for our next move

women at the brink, women--just finding their way--at the brink...as in no one is going to treat me that way anymore and overgeneralizing...are particulary noisome

so I'm pleased that of a sudden he's interested in my poetry he was chagrined I hadn't sent it offered it sooner I reflected I'd not wanted to crowd him and here we are he said
I don't remember him being so open so available but he got it the nuances the choices the copy-rights the intrinsic no bigdeal the intention of my telling it

and now the story has changed & everyone's going to be so damn disappointed
or not is the beauty of it

fact that I get loud&clear is he's looking forward to telling his damn story too

circles

driving through the sky pinks&blues sweptgrays sloughedpurples listening to lucia de lamamour thinking about passions I marveled at how glad I am we're in touch how through the years it hadn't been sullied by marriage&divorce or its own rancor how it had burned clean leaving simply the residue of knowing how important how much how he'd justplain touched me and that it was importantgooddamnfine we were in touch again & I wondered how crazy it would be to go see him wondering for the life of me about how close I felt to him for reasons I still don't understand

bucks

I realized yesterday...one of those good to be an elder days...it wasn't her up my butt but she'd been the perfect stand-in yes& one of the gigs she's working hard to be rid of--the goat as in get my & scape (of the same ilk? )--anyway the goat that was up for grabs that was summarily got that I realized had nothing to do with her was my having said I can't do--don't have time--to do that and being treated responded to patronized by TheOther as if I couldn't know and hadn't just said that

more circles

ode to a wood stove oh'd to a wood stove owed to a wood stove oh to a wooed stove
up&down stairs
ash buckets emptying and filling
checkbook balancing
to market to market home again home again my fat hen
laundry
talking to calvin
rights&responsibilities

the medicine is working! I feel better today she said her smile beatific...not taking the medicine she said is like god saying it's time to go home...like a near death experience she said you know when I don't take my medicine I hear god's voice and now sister I feel better

in search of a cup of coffee I meandered today knowing that neither the cafeteria nor the café in the major metropolitan hospital I work in would be open until after my shift started since the Monday-fridays suits weren't there...it always amuses me how the tout is it's a 24/7 operation and of course it is except on sat and sun and after hours anyway I'd left early because of the fog and had plenty of time to see just how much of the world caters to default settings and I ain't even talking age or sexual preferences yet

self-awareness

it's galling that I could have gone to sleep without putting goo in my eye a fundamental irresponsibility a scary lapse...it should be built-in not left to the whimsy of remembering because all the excuses notwithstanding my eye ofcourse is crusty and dry this morning...then again in a rush I still put the telephone up to my right ear as if I would hear a damn thing

it's not such a far stretch after all to the women we care for who in full-blown labor the baby about to crown can only muster a bit of restlessness

nowhere else

whitewater-coach yesterday everything came together in its own time in stillness perfectly magical it was effortless--notafight--it was toodamncool
I realize I finally went in, in silence, the image coalesced
the chatter stopped
the water was sweet the red&white tip of the board was the absolute end of the world and I stood and rode not once not twice but a multitude of times from here to there in mindfulness of the minute & I was nowhere else

and I got yesterday theNod from other surfers (smile) either for experience equal to my age or for the guts...

the last rule

he'd said something about adding another rule, after he'd listened to my fully stoked nattering about the chattering having stopped...and how I'd been so perfectly only on my board so coalesced so not watching but being...so not struggling so not culturally-bound to coolness so simply in the water in the ocean knocked on my ass straight away and upended not upset...and coming up for air grinning and then riding&riding&riding& more riding maybe he said having thought I'd be fraught not having been in for so long...we ought to add mindfulness as a rule...

interesting things outer-edges, extents, brinks & their tending...I remember gary positing that the skirmish takes place at the line and I think of how personally not-personal it is and how it's so dependent on perspective & lay of the land & timbre of the minute's feelings as to whether it'll give way or fulminate and how--like being cold--it's easy to be imginative about whose gig whose story whose inconvenience and more importantly whose lee it is whose prerogative it is to flex...and so

maintaining my not-even-if guns, is now a matter of the same course, as brushing my teeth

quiet days in-between the chatter insensible and beaming grins popping out as if I were responding to internal-stimuli (aswesay) which of course I am...it's a visceral pleasure a satiety a willingness an ableness and on the other end is that gas grin--a poem in limbo everything just right but the end which peters or falters or drifts which cheats...the images--shot glasses and scarves, or obsidian and sunlight, or all my women friends or gravel and willow--are sound but they're adrift

I waffle not knowing if I mean the last images to be about her or me...

where there's a will...a-way

impatience expectation pushing rivers not willow falling over oak and on the back end gumption and not giving in to the whims of delicate the whiles hmm wiles of woman-ness...I waver quaver I'm annoyed at how long it's taking for a variety of the best reasons but it's not good enough--out of the gate this time but next time I will negotiate different agreements proffer different contracts proffer different accountability ahh no each paying her own price for choices--not showingup is fine but we don't won't necessarily not go on without you

pick-up lines & other greetings

he called as if we'd spoken the other day as if we were married and not divorced which is backwards and said as if there'd been no mix-up no water under the bridge no milk spilt no twain long agothat never met...I'm having an eidetic memory and need you to put words to it...pretty damn good thanks I said and you...it's nice having you on the other end of the line from time to time...

I only vaguely remembered the scene he vividly described wanting language to nail it down-–more curious was why that one

early morning indigo giving way fog obscuring clear blues to follow it will be a sunny day stevie rae singing some tin pan alley blues and my consummate tabby begging a lap ride...it was a lousy sleep (w)restless or (w)restful depending on how you figure it...memories conversations dreams not enough to contain them toohot toocold quilts too heavy too many cats in the wrong places cold feet pillow the wrong shape...ginger lemon tea trees standing vigil waves triple overhead

yesterday was a good day to be an elder and I remembered why I am a witchnursehealerteacherwisewomanfoe

somewhere else

tag ends coming back to roost how long is ago or too or a scent not worth two...why the one intrusive or out of tune and the other in fact as if for all the water under the bridge the twain circles back around...the clouds wind aloft are wafting akimbo and of a sudden gray muggy glum gives way to mid-winter spring blue...ah! he knows some of my truths, knew them held them until I could would did come for them...and of a thrumming sudden thetruth has changed...a chapter&verse a somewhere else added

pacing around looking...to look rather than seeing...not knowing shit about translating three dimensions to the flat page...knowing just the same I dreamt about him saw his damn face straight-on and their kids & went smack up to him even touched him he muttered as if I'd reached from somewhere else...he'd been dreaming of his wife and their twain...even I know it's a blessing and a prayer a kaddish for us all

the sun is out&warm I've trimmed the rampant chrysanthemum that's really a marigold the mallow the roses to the quick and the camelias
are blooming

tithes&tethers

like bach or even handel--I'm thinking of his keyboard suites--and scarlatti & cats--especially sir woodrow of the moment--the damnblessed fire demands possesses that same perfectly relentless perfectly insistent though not exacting need for attending-to worship prayer mindfulness and like cats and other intimacies you reap in return a compound portion of your tithe

and like scarlatti or bach or handel but not so much paganini the day-in dayout upstairs-downstairs woodstacking ash-emptying stoking rearranging hotter not so hot wind down the chimney smoke in the house is like any fine intimacy or good wine a damn nuisance

we got yesterday to the heart of it...to why he as a new psychiatricnurse and I are meeting...and though it came up last time I'd missed its import its moment until the drive home...he'd said I don't know what we do if we don't give medicine...and that's it...someone new to our field the business-craft-art of nursing whatever ilk whatever brand gets sidetracked by the tasks and misses the nub of it which as my psychiatric nursing instructor said lo those almost thirty years ago is love

what we give patients he'd said is not medicine but love...

tithe&tethers part2

funny how in that context love has become a dirty word as if patronizing demeaning infantalizing or unprofessional godloveus, ah the cultural ins&outs of not so much words but language so of course I changed it not even to compassion but to the not so overburdened person-to-person (obvious but stated just the same for the not so obvious component) contact because of course and obviously all illness but especially mental malady is an inter personal dis ease and what we offer is our person as a substrate as a platform and the tithe that's compounded is...liberty&justice for all