it's an odd job we do easy and impossible and like the flood beyond imagining even in the middle of it and like surfing it's the anxiety...no, it's anxiety that makes or breaks you...it's the pitfall of imagining and the foul of the measurement the disgrace of separation and when you're on it's a skate and a damn good day to be a nurse and when you're off when you're elsewhere or mired in your own shit you're as easy a mark as a single parent of teenagers taking every damn thing personal when none of it is

it's an odd job we do taking care of people who are (most) often hospitalized against their will (72 hours for observation because they've been assessed to be at risk for harm to self; harm to others or unable to provide food clothing and shelter as a result of a mental disorder (california LPS act) and for upto 14 days after that if they've been deemed at the court hearing to still be at risk; & who may have been deemed at yet another judicial proceeding as incompetent to refuse medicine

andfactis yesterday was a good day to be a nurse

and in the meantime in the midst of california's high-stake budget madness brought to us by yet another axis of evil we're happily (excitedly?hopefully?) looking at winnebagoes with the aspiration of joining the ever-expanding ranks of on the road again or not trailertrash...ah the downgrading of effete intellectual snobs...but it may all be moot...yesterday, the same yesterday it was good to be a nurse when S. brought the meal-trays up and ofcourse was talking about the challenger explosion she said without (a 2nd) thought damnstraight it was a terrorist-thang because there uh was a person from israel...

weatherman'swhimsy

so today's a good day to be a writer redriver review accepted another of my poems talk about trippin walkin my walk...trees hiding in fog it promises to be another perfectlyfaux spring day seducing one to garden--without an abiding glance to warnings of frost yeah like right ah the weatherman's whimsy--and to muck out closets...black&white polkadot dress from winnipeg blue dress from my brother's wedding pink suede jacket from when I wore suchathing royal plunging neck blue funeral dress 2inch spike snazzy heels...but not don's heftysturdywholething blackleatherjacket or his
69 letterjacket, nope not yet

so may be love is a cutekitten trick or like truth elusive the closer up on it you get or maybe like the vicarious trill one gets looking for gossip in hisher best friend's poetry and
in the nonce
the shenanigans playingout over&over&over and the whining buzzkeen response playingout over&over&over it plays out over&over&over as if it were true love and not some vicarious trill one got reading hisher best friend's poetry looking for truelove

and for all of it I still thrill to the shill of the embrace & am beholden, but beholden only exacts so many pounds of flesh

missthing ongoing
at the risk of imagining you care or thought about it or have time for it none of this being as melodramatic as it sounds or apologetic or pitiful i confess to wondering&musing being amused with ha being fucking flabbergasted by the notion (I'm too funny and ain't-i-just-missthing) that not only was i pissed at you but just maybe you scared me--(& therefore deign to ask)--is that do you think that's probable? and if so then on the missthing front grinning the charliehorse grin I'd have to say well ain't that just the last laugh on me

between lovers & other conceits

legs arms and hair akimbo soft skin to hot lying in the aftermath apres le petit mort in the rumpled bed the everpresent dog nuzzling the late afternoon light shining through the shutter's slats bringing its purple haze to the off-white room so sultry&damp she said i have nothing to give...you now

signalling what he wondered not having a contextual clue to the direction this was going reeling between what the fuck, this again, and nice try, he settled on nice try and rolled over licking her ass as he got out of bed chortling

the conceit

the thing is it's so easily misunderstood as not participating not happy not caring and as if not living up to some expectation as if some new thing new hurdle new trick has been demanded it's so clearly unclear but at the same time so heavy deep and real and so distracting a perfect mid-afternoon mid-stride gambit one of those excellent provocations that gets the applecart on a cobblestone roll down the sisyphus hill as in make no mistake what goes down...cause it's none of those things and just so love me don't need me imperfectly stated

marking twain (dang!)

... how can you know though the lay of the land unless you range finding the stakes bent over and rusted but still there to limn the edge and thing is knowing enough by default means you know even better the stepsister too much and like any good explorer ain't ya gonna make damn sure and drop the line again&again so you don't have to come out this way again risking shoals and the raggedy wind to mark the twain...and ain't the irony just all this schlepping is more givin' than there was in the 1st damnplace

we went to town yesterday to the mall--not The City nor The Pueblo just across the river but to Town where we get those things us-small-town-folks can't get closer to home--to find shoes for his plantar tenderness he having miles to walk before he sleeps and it was noisy and crowded and stuffy and dark...though there weren't really that many people and there was lots of light and air and it wasn't even that we didn't find any shoes...it was just so you got to be kidding so it sucked the life right out of you

finethanks

so the hens come home to roost just the same, limits are limits, not arbitrarily imposed, hard won tested railed against but in place nevertheless and like the nothing left to give gig to talk about if I/you do that there will be consequences is as if to suggest a new order as if there would not be a price to pay a prize to win but by default by definition there is consequence there is aftermath...the short (justthefactsma'am) version is I crossed the line and now I'm tired&cranky and all the good reasons don't matter a whit

up a creek

no not quite right it is not the tired and cranky or the headache that's the whine which is the lie the distraction the trick it's the netherland the ah past the prime as in now the pump needs to be primed as in the resevoir is depleted and it's that that I revile...no this emptyness masquerades as sadness comes with a sense of loss no with a soupcon of disappointment ah the melancholy of listlessness ah the absense of passion the witch without a broom and even so I'd not have enough lift to fly

the rain has come back and maybe that's all it is, the weather defining giving definition to the temper [Middle English temperen, Old English temprian, Latin temperâre, variant of tempus, tempor-, time, season.] to the prevailing torpor...gentle but pervasive relentless though forgiving and not even out of place but I suffer nevertheless an irritability an impatience an out of sorts an undefined dismay a languid pout were it only not so the imperfect runner-up but instead dressed up as a fine tantrum

I will go lay a fire make some tea and balance the books...maybe before the war

hell with that
so instead I went and got my haircut and coming up over the hill into green valley there was a huge rainbow and just below it in the tree sat a great hawk with wings spread catching the air the better to dry them and I smiled and thought of bluegrass and opera and the stalwart who in spite of great winds have left their trees standing mocking them who dared not

and here's spit in your eye

and now having run and left balance&tea for another day I will drink scotch neat and read magazines reclining

he proffers a ball and wants to play now, with his ball, his rules just cause and here it is for sure another one of those circles closing back around but it feels like a pumpkin shell there to be kept verywell not like continuity open season or opportunity backwards and full of tricks rather than possibility yet The Game will be good and it's true I Love Him but god knows just the same it ain't enough and I stumble on the notforward though damn am I Flattered and Tempted and my gut mybeentheredonethat wisdom forewarns...

but I'm snagged

it's the nothing like it that's the spoil the foil the mote in the eye and living just the same with the everafterfee for this special deal chance of a lifetime not taken and then godhelpus the mounting surcharges the black smudge on your soul the red letter on your forehead and the indelible whiff of a fouled trajectory cause you know for certain when it's good and you're in its sweet embrace lorda'mercy on your father's grave there ain't nothin' like it...

but it's the trick of any seduction (synonym conquest–did you know that) it's all smoke and mirrors

spit in whose eye

so? what? why all the toil and trouble why the angst why not just a simple no thankyou ahHA! sitting hoisted on my own bloody petard--and it ain't my perspective that's mangled--and all it takes to climb down is a simple no thankyou well ain't that just easy as pie...you ever--chinthrust--make a damn pie cause if you had you wouldn't say it was so friggin' easy--oh dearme--facts are

I can whole heartedly appreciate the elegance of no thank you...&
just can't imagine what I had stuck up my ass

interesting that I hadn't been able to find the first time I felt different more easily, that it took me 10 years to come up with my father having killed himself--wow how not fitting in is that--karen maceacheran prancy assing away from the new urban jewish kid from canada with brown eyes and brown hair in a sea of blonde and blue in rural anglosaxon college-white US on a Monday in December was easy compared to that...though it was more in the moment embarrassing I mean there was no debate about whether it happened that's for sure

how many are the ways we affiliate how many the ways we recognize who we are how many the ways we measure good enough different from what I never stopped to wonder even the first time I heard the question but listening to watching someone wrestle with the answer I realized how much belonging to is assumed and at first he simply had we moved every six months I was a loner to say and only incidently as he was amblingrambling mentioned that he hadn't known he was part choctaw until 35 when his father who lay dying told him

closer to home it always comes out the same how am I going to respond what am I going to do what do I want to do what are my choices in the abstract it is too easily misconstrued as effete & vicarious
speechifying barnstorming soapboxing all somebody's job but it is gratuitous marketing...fact is for all my thinking I would not get involved I was for all intents first man in and in the end got the job done by gettin' mad fuck even and would have kicked the asshole in the nuts had it gotten down to it

by anyother name

politics is a way of participating is a cultural attribute a hotpotato subset occupational-hazard wherein to not be there and counted to not be heard is to be not so much demeaned as wiped out languaging it is another tender altogether but make no mistake every damn thing outsourced from supper prepared and on the table every night to garbage hauled away to water out of the faucet to iceburg instead of arugula is political and while not knowing anything about it counts for nothing bullies either side of the talking fence are bullies just the same

jacked up by end of the day at the last minute back to back shake rattle and rolls over the edge it was not the 1st time he'd attacked the other believing he was going to be killed and so notQ&I swooped in not so much mother hens as ohforchrissake over the line monitors to his room sent before the reinforcements arrived and then returning the favor we were called to make clear we mean what we say about enough is enough you've reached the end of the line...but dang being a buck ain't for the goody two shoes

isajoke & I were talking on how hard fridays are why whitecoatman wanted to know and I'm thinking cause the days hold shape no matter that as the days go Friday is my Thursday and Wednesday stands in for Monday and Saturday as it goes is my Friday and cause it's another of those default settings the bynow inbred sense that it's the end of the workweek and time to be out-the-door&on-your-way even for our patients who have no choice no say in the matter no where to go

not to mention all the captured divas their work not yet done

whoshebe
so hoosh la bouche is sliding down the precipice of mortality withering declining aging but more so succumbing to masses...it surely don't seem fair & there ain't no barter...but for now she's just the same trotting inexorably forward sitting in front of her bowl its bottom showing or usurping yet another free-standing glass of ice water as though of course it was especially prepared for her and bapping gus & woodrow nottomention the hudubitch sashaying by just because that's what she's always done she the almond joy mostly sweet on the outside totally nuts on the inside tortoiseshell tripster

pisces underway pluto overhead to a direct saturn armed moreso with labradorite opal mother of pearl wits and good humor I await a run for my money...somehow and without a second thought we've torn up the master bedroom and habits and rhythms and trails have just that quickly been torn asunder the hooks the laundry basket the catdoors a connecting bath the local jewelry box the underwear drawer feng shui amuck our feet pointing the same direction notwithstanding even the cats are vying for their own spots

but that is how possibility is wrought nevermind how the cookie crumbles

closer to home

...and she gave me a right upper cut just like that. Premeditated. Well from my perspective. From hers it was more like breathe in breathe out what goes up must come down for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Pre ordained. She was calm.
I was dumb
struck.
And she was calm. And done. For her it was done. No hard feelings.
Like hello how are you I'm fine thank you bap go on to the next thing no hard feelings.

Oh honey, wasn't even about hard feelings lemme tell you. Well, at first...

more prevaricatin

so it is about not being bullied in the face of another's knowing and certainty and retaining ones yesplease nothankyou bailiwick and standing willow not oak it's about truth being found or discerned in the spaces in the cracks and we must assume must act as if all versions are equally genuine boy don't that change things

we've come from them saying that is part of the job to their believing we can and their committment to reducing the risk and the episodes of violence...we must all participate in as in be responsible for holding this line

it's an impossible job we do odd and easy just the same thing is you can't grab hold of it each minute brings the terror and the innocence of the first time andyet without doubt the widsom is in the satchel of experience the valor in continuity and still being willing&enthusiastic compassionate but not stupid about the task at hand...Violence "If human beings are to survive in a nuclear age, committing acts of violence may eventually have to become as embarrassing as urinating or defecating in public are today."...
Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, ch. 3