Old Poems

She runs away swiftly


I watch the Appaloosa paw the ground,
dust coming out of her nostrils,
muscles rippling suggestively
as if she will run and never return

I want to tame her,
as I could not you
and this she knows as she
stares me down

as you did the day you told me (without tears)
you were leaving for Washington
to work on your parents' farm instead of ours
leaving me

in this damned corral
to win your horse's trust by moving slow as I can--
I raise my hand to her nose and she
runs away swiftly

to the far fence, where she eyes me
whites showing, nostrils flaring
so I whistle, calling her name softly
and she comes

shyly, her head nodding as if to say
"Yes, I will be yours"
like you said once
many springs ago

I try to touch her (touch you)
but she recoils (you turn away)
and she runs away
swiftly

She came to the gate, they said, as if looking for me
but I am tired.
They said she nickered softly, but when they tried
to approach her

she runs away swiftly
It is night now and the animals
"slumber in peace" (Richard Wilbur wrote knowingly)
but I will not sleep. Since you left,
I do not sleep.

--1992/rev. 1998: this was an assignment in my first creative writing class at UF. We had to take a line from a poem we were studying and write a poem using it.


Someone you love

candlelight sparkles on the ceiling

the sound of the key in the lock
turning
turning

into the shimmering darkness
a pathway of light
the hope triggering my heart
beat  beat  beat  beat

Are you here to stay?
I ask.

You whisper
I could not go with her.
I do not love her.

I say to your open face
My love is not chains.
It will not shackle you to me.
You are free to live your life, to be yourself.
I want to be someone,
someone you love.

My love is not perfect, nor neat
you say
But it is for you, and for you only.
I want to live my life in your life.

I open my arms
Come to me
I will love you always.

We stand close
our arms encircling one another
the understanding between us
a whole new light

shimmering within our hearts.

--1994



[untitled]

I watch the crimson
    bleed
onto the plaster,
and I think--
not long ago I wished to bleed
as the pain bleeds,
covering all the white,
all the pain.
I lived as though the light of day
did not reach my soul...
my heart sings as the mockingbird sings--
different notes
as I think of you.

--1998



She watches the Moon rise

she watches the Moon rise.
it starts out small,
and grows bigger by the minute--
          no, by the second.

she smiles to herself,
the Moon's light bathes her face
          all Silvery cobwebs on
nose, eyelids, lips.

he sees
          the Moonrise caress her.
he watches the Quicksilver touch her hair, skin.
he wishes he were the Moonlight.

--1998

[untitled]
 

Ramses as a young child

would watch the snails
recede and return with the tide of the Nile at Waset
while he practiced on papyrus
the writings of his father's priests;
usually, though, instead of imitating,
he would make his own symbols--
for instance, a great heron standing above her nest
became an ankh,
and his new symbol
(which made Seti very proud of his son)
began appearing everywhere--
tombs' walls, wax seals, even gold plates:
but what European translator would have guessed
that this symbol of life was thought up by a boy
who liked to daydream?

--1992: this was another assignment from that long-ago creative writing class. I don't remember the prompt. 

Mouse house

Bleached white by the unforgiving sun,
her skull,
sunken on one side,
lay discarded in the sands of the dune.

She is found by biologists
investigating not death--
but how a small mouse can live on this island,
with the air so salty and no fresh water available.
The mouse challenges all beliefs.
Her skull has become a mouse house.

The door, an eye socket.
It once held an eye
a beautiful gray iris surrounded by flecks of gold.
The head cavity, where an intelligent brain had been,

is stuffed with dried dune grasses.
The jaw, in its permanent toothy smile,
holds tiny berries that form at the roots of the grasses:
succulent gray green globes, that when popped between two fingers,
are full of fresh sweet water.

--2004

 

Musings on Sunday

So my husband asked me today, as we passed a full church parking lot, why I thought people attended church. He asked this because we happened to be stopped at a light, and listened as a goateed guy raised his voice at a woman, telling her that he didn't want the little boy playing with an alien blow-up toy to pop it or hit the other little boy with it. 

My immediate answer was, "I think people attend church so that they can feel better about themselves since they're generally shitty on the inside." He said he thinks people go to church to network. I allowed him that, citing the example of a big Baptist church on the "rich" side of town where a lot of well-known/semi-famous people go. 

I also said that there are people who honestly get something out of going to church, who center their lives on believing in God. Those people I admire. I admire someone who lives their life according to their principals, who lives the "Christian life" as well as they can.

I think churches are beautiful, especially Catholic and Episcopal churches. I would like to visit the great cathedrals and chapels in Europe one day. My parents recently took a trip to

Canterbury Cathedral

England and were lucky enough to attend a service at Canterbury Cathedral. When my father was telling the story, he had tears in his eyes. He's the most religious man I know, and he lives his life according to his beliefs. This doesn't mean that he's never snarky or mean, because he is; and he's not in church on every Sunday. I like to think that when he's out in the yard, feeding the birds, planting seedlings, spreading compost, or simply walking around, he's in his own church. He finds God in nature and in that respect, he and I are not all that different.

Kwan Yin

In class this semester, we've talked about Emerson, Whitman, and Stevens, who shared the common belief that religion, and God for that matter, didn't exist in the traditional way. He could be found in nature, in the earth, and in all of us. And while I don't call my belief "God," I do believe the divine is found in nature. I'm more comfortable with the idea of divinity as many beings--gods and goddesses. When I'm not feeling well, I send a few words out into the universe to Kwan Yin, my patroness. I think that positive energy and thoughts return the fastest to you and in ten-fold. I think, if you're into labels, that this is called "eclectic" in the pagan community.

Sometimes I wish I could have a circle of like-minded people here, but I'm not into celebrating the sabbats and other holy days. My path is a solitary one and it's comforting to me.

Right now I can hear the birds singing outside. They're enjoying the seed my husband put out for them yesterday. There are chickadees, cardinals, Carolina wrens and squirrels in the yard. That to me is the god and goddess made real. Just two steps outside my door.

Ritual

Another year has passed. Another psuedo-Christian holiday has gone by (before you disagree with me, please read here and learn for yourself). When I was a child, Christmas took years and years to come! Santa! Presents! Cold weather! Grandma and Grandpa visiting! Now, as I approach forty years upon this earth, the commercialized season of gift-giving shows up all too quickly, and every year it gets here faster and faster.

I drive a different way to work now since my office was absorbed by a new state agency and we moved to a different building, so I pass by St. John's Episcopal Church each morning. I was raised in the Episcopal church, with all its associated dogma and prayer books and rituals. Because of my childhood Sundays spent in church, kneeling and reciting and accepting Communion, any other type of religious service (with the exception of a Catholic service) seems off-kilter. I won't say wrong, because any kind of religious worship is not wrong; non-Episcopalian services are simply different.

The Thursday before December 25th, I was driving to work, barely awake as I had no caffeine coursing through my veins, and I noticed a sign outside of St. John's advertising the Christmas service times. I felt a sharp yearning, deep within--I suppose a religious person might say the pull was in my soul--for the comfort of a proper Episcopalian Christmas Day service. It surprised me. I haven't felt that type of longing in a while. I wanted to call my dad and talk about it with him. I wanted to call my friend Holley and discuss it with her. I made neither call. I simply filed the emotion away to ruminate upon and write about when I was ready.

As I examine my reaction to thinking about attending a church service, I realize that it's not so much about the religious service itself I'm attracted to, but the ritual of that service. The priest, dressed in vestments that glow with gilt threads against stark white robes; the church alight with candles hanging from iron candlabras; the wood altar lain with clean, starched linens and the chalice veil that matched the priest's vestments; the Common Prayer Book full of formal language and thees and thous.

When I remember the Christmas services I attended with both my parents (unless my mom was working that year) and my brother--there were at least sixteen--the feeling I remember most is a sense of expectant wonder. I always felt like something more should happen at the end of the service, like fireworks or balloons and noisemakers. Instead, the congregation would exchange handshakes and hugs and then walk out into the cool-for-Florida weather, heading home for either sleep (if we'd attended midnight mass) or Christmas dinner.
 
I don't know if I missed the sameness of the church service or if I missed the coming together of people with shared beliefs. I think about the everyday rituals I have now, how comforting they are to me. They include:

• weekday morning: wake up with alarm, take pills with full glass of water, shower, brush teeth, blowdry hair, style hair, apply make-up, get dressed, pack breakfast and/or lunch, drive to work.
• weekday afternoon: let dogs out, visit bathroom, let dogs in, turn on tv/computer/both, think about dinner.
• bedtime: brush teeth, put on pajamas, pet cat until I fall asleep to the sound of her purring.
• weekend morning: wake up when I'm ready, take pills with a full glass of water, turn on tv/computer/both, think about lunch.

My rituals are comforting in their sameness, but I don't stress out if they differ in some ways. For the new year, I think I'd like to work on changing them up a little. Maybe something like this:

• weekday morning: wake up with alarm, kiss husband, grimace from morning breath, take pills with full glass of water, meditate for twenty minutes, shower, brush teeth, blowdry hair, style hair, apply make-up, get dressed, pack breakfast and/or lunch, drive to work.
• weekday afternoon: think about dinner on drive home, let dogs out, visit bathroom, let dogs in, cook dinner, read
• bedtime: brush teeth, put on pajamas, meditate for twenty minutes, pet cat until I fall asleep to the sound of her purring.
• weekend morning: Nahhh, wouldn't change a thing.

I remember my Pagan friends and the rituals we performed at holidays. Our coming together was a celebration of the changing of the seasons. The rituals involved candles, prayers, and a book, too. Not so different from a traditional church service.

I didn't want to make any resolutions this year because--well, because I'm lazy and I don't follow through. But I think I will make one this year: to seek out other people whose beliefs are similar to mine and celebrate our like-mindedness together. This, along with school and the busyness of my job, will make my life richer and more whole.

Happy New Year!

So happy!

Tonight after class I stayed to talk to L, my teacher. She is awesome. I want to be her when I grow up! (Although I don't know how that would work since I'm 99% sure she is younger than me.)

The purpose of our meeting was for her to give me some feedback on the writing assignments we've handed in so far. She calls them Polished Writing Exercises and I'll be frank--some of the kids in my class don't write very polishedly (yes, I made that word up just now). Creatively speaking, they have good ideas, but their writing skills need some work. I'm not being mean or petty, but I will admit to a certain thrill when I realized that my writing, even before I talked with L, was of a higher caliber, skill-wise, then most of my classmates'.

[As an aside, I think that people who read voraciously make good writers. You see how published authors sell their books, you learn how stories are put together, your vocabulary evolves, and in my case, I think about how I might make something work better if it's awkward or hard to understand.]

So anyway, after not saying a word in class AGAIN, I walked up to L's desk (yet another shy thing I do--sit in the back of the class. This has more to do with the fact that I want to sweat in relative peace--after walking the 1/2 mile up the damned hill from the metered, dirt-and-gravel parking lot where I park my own car like a real grown-up, I am sweating profusely and want to do it in the back of the room where hopefully not many people will notice me fanning myself with a handy file folder containing the class syllabus and wiping the sweat off my face and neck) and she pinned me with her gaze. "We're meeting, yes?" I noticed that she has a teensy diamond nose ring!  I want one too! So dainty and sparkly and unexpected! I nodded enthusiastically (maybe too enthusiastically? Does she know I practically idolize her?) and we went outside.

The stale, baked-concrete-scented, hot outside.

I felt like I had just stopped sweating two minutes before class ended.

I began to sweat again. Not only because it was still warm  from the 90-degree day, but also because L was reading and critiquing and writing on my printed stories. AAAAAAGH!

And she looked up at me and said, "You write well. There's some good stuff here."

This from a published author (at least in literary journals--not sure if she's been published in books yet), a grad student who's presenting her own book-slash-dissertation in November, who's been writing for years and is earning a Doctorate in Creative Writing.  She said I write well!

She gave me some things to think about, and I understood immediately that they are all things I totally agree with, especially after reading the last couple chapters on characterization in our technique book and discussing the short stories she's assigned.

This is exactly why I'm in school. So I can evolve and learn and stay passionate about writing. I hope my professors are all as good as L is!

I have 16 children.*

I was behind a mini-van Thursday on my way to school. This van had the family stickers, you know where each person and pet is represented by a little character of some sort. This time it was the Disney ones with the Mickey Mouse ears. There were the mom and dad, and then five kids.

Five kids.

FIVE kids.

What is wrong with people today that they think five children are okay to bring into this world? One or two I get, maybe three, but five? Do you live on a farm and you need the extra hands? Are you Catholic and don't believe in birth control? Do you not know how getting pregnant happens?

Five?

You may think that because I have no children I am heartless, un-American, godless, selfish. I am none of those except maybe selfish--because one of the reasons I didn't have kids was because I didn't want to be someone's mother for the rest of my life. (For other reasons, scroll down--I have listed them towards the bottom.) I think my friends' kids are wonderful, adorable little people, who are creative and funny and super-cute. [As long as they're well-behaved.] I am all for people having children as long as it's not an "oops." As long as they plan for it and understand that their entire worlds are going to change and from then on, they're not going to have much extra money and their entire focuses (foci?) will be the kid(s). Sure, have one or two or maybe three!

Just don't expect me to baby-sit.

For people to be having that many kids today is simply wrong. The earth cannot support this many people for much longer. Not to mention it is freaking scary to think of how bad teenagers have it now. I admit, I was naive growing up and didn't realize that there were drugs in my high school, but think about how it is now with meth everywhere and movies like "Get Him to the Greek" saying that drugs are hilarious! (Don't think I'm preaching about drug use because drugs are cool--but you have to make up your own mind and know the risks before using them.Therefore, the people who should use drugs should be adults.)

So here are my reasons for not having children:

1. I didn't want to be somebody's mother for the rest of my life.
2. I didn't want to be poor.
3. I didn't want to chance passing on Crohn's Disease to another generation.
4. I didn't know if I'd be good at it.
5. With my medical history and all the drugs I'd been on (and used recreationally), I didn't know what that might do to my offspring.
6. I didn't know what a pregnancy would do to my 12-inch vertical tummy scar.
7. Pregnancy scares the shit out of me.
8. Giving birth is disgusting and scares the shit out of me.
9. My husband was on the fence and said it was okay either way.
10. My mother-in-law is a smothering person and I couldn't imagine having her around 24/7 after having a kid.
11. [This is perhaps the most important.] I wasn't sure if I wanted a kid.

That being said, I am a mother after all: to our *three dogs, one cat, rescued gecko, and eleven tarantulas. I am a care-giver to my husband and friends. I am nurturing, loving, encouraging, and giving. I love my life and job and friends.

I have sometimes wondered what it would have been like to have a baby. To have a life growing inside me that was a product of my love for my husband. To have a tiny person running around.

But those thoughts end really quickly when a kid screams in the grocery store or has a tantrum in a restaurant. Then I celebrate my childlessness and rejoice in the quiet solace of my life.

The silent treatment

I love my class. Let me just say that straight away.

I am not usually characterized as shy. I have taken an informal poll of my friends and everyone laughed when I asked them if they thought of me as shy. Then they realized I was serious and said "Hell to the no!"

But I cannot talk in my class. Even though I have the answer that L is looking for. Even though I have opinions that deserve to be heard. Even though I love my class, love learning my craft, and am not normally shy.

Each day, I psyche myself up on the drive to campus. The minute I walk through the classroom door (114!) I am rendered mute.

Tonight was the third class. I have yet to utter a word other than "Here" or make a sound besides giggling (and even that is uncharacteristically quiet). I marveled tonight at a girl who stood in the front of class and read her story out loud. She defended her writing against an informal critique by some of our classmates (but not me! I didn't say anything!). She and I walked the same way by chance after class, and I so badly wanted to tell her that I enjoyed her story. I got her first paragraph even when L said she was confused by it. I wanted to tell her that her intended point of view was not entirely what she'd thought it was, but something like that is easily fixed. So we walked together but apart and there was nothing but silence.

First day of school!

After the debacle of my summer attempt at becoming a university student, which involved crying to a very understanding girl in the registrar's office (you're the best, Meg!), reapplying to school and being reaccepted (is that even a word?) by the College of English, my first day of Creative Fiction Technique was yesterday. It was awesome! Well, after being very stressful and embarrassing--which is my lot in life.

I couldn't remember the professor's name so I checked out my class schedule during lunch. Noted: class starts at 5:15. I then peeked at her reviews on ratemyprofessor.com (a website with which a grain of salt should always be taken) and was pleased with her raves. Yay! I was excited to meet her and get going with my degree work!

My husband drove me to class. I'm spoiled, yes I am, but I didn't want to have to fight with parking (especially since I don't have my parking decal yet) and worry with traffic and finding my way around the massive campus. He dropped me off behind the building at 4:50 and it was then I realized I didn't know where my class was. I knew which building (duhh, the College of English's building), but not which room. I was confident I would find someone who would direct me. Aww, I'm so cute and naive in this portion of the story!

I found my way into the ginormous building. There were children everywhere. By children I mean kids, from freshman to seniors, milling around, lounging in front of closed classrooms, sitting on the wide windowsills. And everybody was on their phone. I of course have a cheap husband who won't pay for a data plan for my phone. I called said cheap husband and asked him to log into my class schedule with his data plan and check which room I needed to be in. He called me back a minute later (5:01)--he could not navigate the university's website via his phone. By this time I had approached a friendly-looking young girl and she couldn't help me either, other than directing me to the advisors' offices to have them look up my schedule. I made my way to the second floor and walked around. Again, I approached a friendly-looking, bookish young man wearing glasses and told him I didn't know where my class (CRW 3110) was and he directed me to the third floor. I had to tell him my class was 3110, not my room number. He shrugged and I left him to find an office with a computer or an advisor or something more helpful.

At 5:05, I stumbled into a writing lab with online computers! I could have wept! The cute, shaggy-headed, bearded hipster who greeted me laughed as I told him my tale. He explained away my stupidity by saying, "It's the first week of class, no big deal."  I logged on, got my schedule and room number (114!) and made my way back downstairs.

I promptly found the room. It was 5:09. Plenty of time! There was a moment of confusion as there were two rooms, back to back, and I saw only one sign in between them that said 114. But there is a wall separating them, I thought they can't be the same room; and then the door covering up the second room's sign was moved. Ah. Taking a deep breath, I attempted to open the door. And it was locked.

Rather than making an ass of myself in front of all the children already seated at their chosen desks, I looked wildly around for another door to the room that wasn't locked. Just then, a woman--yay, my age!--materialized next to me. Before I could say "It's locked!" she pushed open the door, saying, "The doors here just push open--most of them in the building do." I followed her inside and she went to the front of her room and put her things down. On the teacher's desk.

Yes, she is my professor.

At least I wasn't late to class (it was only 5:12)!

I quietly took a seat in the far right corner, near a handy windowsill on which to place my very heavy bag o'books and my illegal water (No Food or Drinks in Classrooms! all the signs said). She introduced herself as I looked around the class. Just as I had suspected--all children. All 20, or maybe 21. I sighed and tried to relax and concentrate on what the professor was saying. She was going to take roll. Ack! Roll! People would know my name!

I was the 4th to be called, thanks to my last name. All my life I have been near the front of the line, the beginning of the list. And horror of all horrors: I realized she had our student IDs to look at along with our names and personal histories, all displayed neatly on the classroom computer. She knew exactly where I was sitting--I couldn't hide--and as she called my name, she said "Yes, you were struggling with the door." I laughed along with a couple other students and it was okay. I was okay.

Class ended up being great. I consider myself to be a pretty good judge of character, and I think L is going to be a great professor. I look forward to learning a lot and working hard for that knowledge. I am so excited!

I'm a great student!

Today I logged onto Blackboard to see when my class starts. I think it's mid July or maybe even the last week in July.

It started yesterday. That would be June 27th. I am an idiot. What a great student I am.

I am mad!

Watch this, then pass it on.

"English teacher harassed for being an erotica writer"

Why are people so ignorant? This boy said it all. Now I'm going to buy some of Judy's works and make her her some money so that when the stupid school board fires her (which hopefully they won't, but apparently in this country, stupidity and fear win all the time), she'll be ok financially.

Good ear worm

Recently, I've been listening to the album Wish by The Cure. It's the only disc in my car right now. I know all the songs by heart and can sing along with them, but for some reason, "A Letter to Elise" struck me deeply this time. Maybe it's because of all the lyrical poetry and story lines I have running through my head as I mentally prepare myself for my upcoming writing classes. This song snagged my ears not because I'm living through heartache right now--far from it--but because of its sheer poetic quality. Robert Smith knows how to convey the heartbreak of love through his lyrics.

The part of the song that made me say "Oh!" in its magical portrayal of the futility of trying to hold on to feelings that just aren't there was this one:
"And every time I try to pick it up / Like falling sand / As fast as I pick it up / It runs away through my clutching hands..."

Simply beautiful. I see a man holding thousands of tiny glass hearts in his hands, and they slip through his fingers even as he tries to hold on to them.

Looking through The Cure's website, specifically the section called Words, I am reminded that much of Robert Smith's songbook is poetry that happens to be set to music. I suppose that songs are, in their simplest form, just that, but something about The Cure's discography speaks to me through imagery and word-magic.

I've been listening to them since the summer of '87. My cousin Shellie and I would drive to the beach everyday in her light blue convertible VW bug with the top down and The Cure's album Standing on the Beach/Staring at the Sea: Singles blasting. For me, that is their iconic songbook--"Boys Don't Cry," "10:15 on a Saturday Night," "Killing an Arab," "The Lovecats"...Shellie and I would sing our hearts out as we drove on SR 46 to New Smyrna Beach, Cape Canaveral National Seashore to be exact. This memory brings back other memories of when we were wee girls, and our families stayed at the beach in Flo and Ernie's house in New Smyrna before the feds bought that part of the beach. Back then it was just "the beach" to us. My dad, Shellie's dad (my dad's brother), and their sister and all the spouses and kids would hole up in the airy house with cedar siding and a loft that was reached by a ladder-stair--not quite a ladder, but not quite stairs, either--all summer and play in the ocean all day and have crab and shrimp boils at night. The parents would stay up late, drinking and smoking (everybody smoked back then) and playing pinochle until early the next morning. Us kids would wake up as soon as the sun hit the horizon and was just beginning to turn the sky creamy peach and run screaming in our still-damp bathing suits down the rickety wooden stairs over the dune to the surf. One unfortunate parent (I think now they had to have drawn straws) would wake up and come down to the beach to make sure none of us drowned. My cousins and I would sit on innertubes and float out as far as we dared--and sometimes that was miles it seemed away from the beach--and then use our hands as paddles and "row" back in to shore, and do it all over again. We wore zinc oxide on our noses but no other sunscreen and we would all burn to little kid-crisps--my family is of Scotch-Irish-German descent with a little Cherokee thrown in for good measure, and nobody gave any thought to the future skin cancers we would all get.

Good times.

Anyway, here are the lyrics for "A Letter to Elise." 



Oh Elise it doesn't matter what you say
I just can't stay here every yesterday
Like keep on acting out the same
The way we act out
Every way to smile
Forget
And make-believe we never needed
Any more than this
Any more than this
Oh Elise it doesn't matter what you do
I know I'll never really get inside of you
To make your eyes catch fire
The way they should
The way the blue could pull me in
If they only would
If they only would
At least I'd lose this sense of sensing something else
That hides away
From me and you
There're worlds to part
With aching looks and breaking hearts
And all the prayers your hands can make
Oh I just take as much as you can throw
And then throw it all away
Oh I throw it all away
Like throwing faces at the sky
Like throwing arms round
Yesterday
I stood and stared
Wide-eyed in front of you
And the face I saw looked back
The way I wanted to
But I just can't hold my tears away
The way you do
Elise believe I never wanted this
I thought this time I'd keep all of my promises
I thought you were the girl I always dreamed about
But I let the dream go
And the promises broke
And the make-believe ran out...
So Elise
It doesn't matter what you say
I just can't stay here every yesterday
Like keep on acting out the same
The way we act out
Every way to smile
Forget
And make-believe we never needed
Any more than this
Any more than this
And every time I try to pick it up
Like falling sand
As fast as I pick it up
It runs away through my clutching hands
But there's nothing else I can really do
There's nothing else I can really do
There's nothing else
I can really do
At all...