Insomniac in a Strange Bed

i.

There’s me,
and there’s sleep,
and then there’s the something
in the way.

ii.

Sheep
do not enter the picture.

iii.

This morning at five am he called to me
“Mommy!”
I pushed up onto my elbow
rolled out and onto my feet
half angry half scared
(why in the world would he be awake now?)
except he wasn’t.
I charged into his room
towering over him, heart pounding,
and found him
sunk deep into sleep, open-mouthed.
Whatever I’d heard had come from me.

iv.

I case strange rooms like a burglar.
What will I take with me?A mental map of the carpet design,
a new pillow-turning technique,
memorized cable channel numbers,
the sound of the clock numbers flipping.
The bed that kicked me out at home
seems generous in comparison to this.
I sit at the desk and write notes
to myself on hotel stationery,
something to do when cast adrift.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration,
and to Jaxter, for letting me "lift" a title.)

Easy Monthly Installments

Easy Monthly Installments


Today I heard a mayor say
that we lose thirty citizens
a day to gun violence.
Every day.

Are we so shot-through
with fast-cut smooth-talking
bite-sized-for-easy-consumption
everything

that we've lost the ability
(or is it the desire?)
to remember the wild possibilities,
the as-yet-unwritten splendor of
every life?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here I am standing in line
at the company store
again,
wondering who signed us up
for this devil's bargain
payable only in blood and heartbreak,
borrowed against our souls.
What will I say to my son
when he asks me
what's for dinner?
The choices aren't choices,
and they never seem to change.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.
I am letting myself feel this sadness.
I taped up a few copies of my poem – it's meant to be one poem w/ two parts –
in my school today. My heart was pounding. It felt very transgressive.
I gave Anonymous the credit, because I didn't want it to be about me.
And I left a few blank versions with just "Go ahead. Write a poem." on them
(Dana's idea). You can see one of the blank ones a little further down
the hallway in the photo below.)

Brothers

Brothers

If I held my breath
I could hear the steady engine of theirs
as they fearlessly slept their way to day,
my tormentors and protectors,
who taught me the power
of a dead worm in the face
but who also let the other boys know
that taunts aimed at me would never fly true
as long as they were there.

As I grew older I gave them up
or imagined I did, but yesterday,
as the rocks flew at my tent,
I reached into my drawer of brothers
scrabbling through the slingshots and jack knivesto get to my bobble-headed yes boys,
remembering the feeling of rock-muscled safety
conferred by this grafted branch of my family tree,
these brothers I never had.

(Many thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration,
and special thanks to Jill and Megan
for letting me "lift" their lines!)

This Blanket

This Blanket

This is your other wedding present.
It is not a quilt. It is not
fancy. It is the plainest
cotton blanket I could find.
It is a blanket to be
thrown into the car at the last minute,
tossed over a sleeping visitor,
spread out on the grass,
soft on the dampening ground
at a concert under the stars.
It is not a blanket to worry about.
With holes, snags, and stains,
it will still be for nights
when the chill comes up quickly
but you want to stay
just as you are,
where you are,
together.

(The prompt this week over at Poetry Thursday
involves folks donating lines to the cause...
I'm offering up "when the chill comes up quickly,"
and I may try to write a piece for Thursday
using a line someone else has offered up.)

Siren Song

Francesco Clemente's "Journey"

Siren Song

You need more sleep.
Today as you drove
your too-big-for-you car
to your small-for-you house
I had a gift for you.
The thrum of tires
and the warm spring sun...
I tried. But you refused.

So now, eating your rice,
you are too weary to enjoy it.
Too busy. But there is
such sweetness in the long descent
into sleep, such luxury!
Tonight I lie here remembering
the smell of just-cut limes
and the way sea turtles seem to smile.

You are still cleaning, working.
I lie in wait for you,
softly singing the old songs,
humming through forgotten verses.
Now you come upstairs,
undress and slip into bed,
propped up on one elbow
reading this poem.

Only when you stop –
almost done now,
hear the slow surf of heartbeats
crashing in your ear? –
will I sleep,
my head on a pillow of sky.
So come, busy stranger, sleep.
Set no alarm.

(Thank you to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.
I have been fortunate enough to see two exhibits of
Francesco Clemente's work, and its staying power
in my heart has also been an inspiration to me.)

Reading the Signs

Reading the Signs

The first time I applied
for my driver's license,
I failed.
Rolling stop,
the official said,
and I could tell from the way
he put his pen down
that it was over.

On Canal Road, where everyone
has been detoured now that
South Middlebush is under construction
again, the road is slick with runoff
and narrow at the curves;
even the most harried and hurried
are forced to slow down.
It feels dangerous.

And there's this one
stop sign with a message
taped to the back of it.
Endless war is wrong.
It's true. But we forget.
And it's easier
to keep rolling
than to stop.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.)

Is/Was

Here is
the end
of the day
and the start
of a new season.
The house is quiet.
It is past our bedtime.
But she is not home yet.
There is wax in my left ear.
Sleeping alone is a challenge.
Staying in the present is hard, too.
My library book is back at the library.
But the last thing I want is to complain.
Now the snow that we waited so long for is
melting and in its place we are left with – what?

Where is the poetry in this? This is listening.

Nowadays, none of my close friends lives
within easy walking distance, but there
was a time when that was the case.
We would sometimes, after dark,
start talking and then think we
were almost done, so offer to
walk the other one home,
but then find there was
more to say, and so
walk on back again,
and keep on like
that until finally
we came to a
good place
to stop.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.
I managed to teeter-totter up and down
on the "is" fulcrum for the first stanza.
After that, the past felt like a luxury.
Thanks, too, to old friends.)

Ides - Poetry Thursday

The Ides

Beware this day.
On this day, halfway point,
the pointlessness of turning back
will be stark and unavoidable.

The moon's light
will be beautiful, cold, and merciless;
so bright that you can't
keep yourself from reading the signs.

And though you sit
protectively
pulling your knees to your chest
in a quest for smallness, stillness,

your drumming heart
will rock you
leaving you no choice
but to be aware.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.
The ides have been a part of my language
since Julius Caesar, but I never knew
what they really meant. The image above of the moon
is how it will appear tonight, not as it would have appeared (full)
under the old Roman calendar.)

Bonus poetry: here are some lines that I have loved for over half my life (Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II):

BRUTUS
Cassius,
Be not deceived: if I have veil'd my look,
I turn the trouble of my countenance
Merely upon myself. Vexed I am
Of late with passions of some difference,
Conceptions only proper to myself,
Which give some soil perhaps to my behaviors;
But let not therefore my good friends be grieved--
Among which number, Cassius, be you one--
Nor construe any further my neglect,
Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men.

Red-Blooded

At the last ultrasound we delighted
in the clarity with which we could see
tiny fingers. And the miraculous spine,
with its successively smaller bones,
each in its place, lined up in perfect formation.
Dizzy with relief and anticipation,
we decided to go ahead and hear the news
and the news was, "It's a boy."
My next thought was less a thought
than a seizure, a rearranging at the cellular level:
someone will want to send him to fight.
It was a kind of crossing over.

Our sons are four and five now,
we mothers who nursed with our backs
to the television, trying in vain
to keep those towers upright
through an act of willful denial.
We used to listen to the news
on the kitchen radio in the morning,
but now, if we have it on at all, we hover,
ready to spin that dial down to zero
as the telltale phrases begin:
Today in Fallujah. This morning on the outskirts
of Najaf. Yesterday, in the northern city of Mosul...
Roadside. Suicide. The bombs are everywhere.
Only our quick wrists save us.

No escape is possible, of course.
A friend's ex gives her boy camouflage pajamas.
My boy wants to save his money to buy a toy
that transforms into a battle station.
They thunder overhead, our red-blooded
American boys, feeling the pull of power.
We mothers sit downstairs and talk,
all the while keeping an ear out
for the moment when the game goes awry.
When the cry of real pain comes,
you may experience shortness of breath,
or a tightening in the chest.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.
I don't always participate in the Poetry Thursday prompt,
but when I do, I am often an early contributor. Not so today.)

Poetry Thursday - the body knows

Body of Knowledge

I.

At the bend of my wrist
two faint blue-grey dots
memorialize some fifth-grade
school bus tomfoolery:
the tip of a number two pencil
went in and out, twice,
and on the way out,
drew. The eraser wouldn't fit.

II.

At the edge of my hand,
a small raised island
marks the day I learned
just how cleanly glass can cut.
The fortune tellers hesitate
over the spot every time,
but will never divulge
which line it is I cut short.

III.

In the flat pale valley
between my breasts,
a chicken pox scar
from the one scab I let myself
peel away.
Such exquisite relief!
and I was sure I'd chosen a spot
that no one would ever see.

IV.

After the crash,
my head and the car spinning,
the doctor on duty in the ER
dashed upstairs for a tray of finer silks.
He babied me until a gunshot wound rolled in,
so you'd have to be pretty closeto see, just above my left orbital bone,
a tiny section of track.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.
Not to mention the good folks at Thing-A-Day.)

You (Collage)

You were the one who took care of me while my mother worked. You taught me how to draw clouds and swimming swans. You held me on your lap. You came home from the hospital when I was three. You held the towel as I stepped dripping from the tub. You said, "Why bless your little heart." You called me on the phone and talked to me as if I mattered. You were not interested in learning secret codes with me. You were older, and there was something about your silver hair that set me thrumming. You never sang. You said once that you were leaving something in God's hands, and seemed so calm about it. You studied for the algebra exam with me and then finally gave up, skipping rocks down by the creek. You left the top two buttons of your shirts undone. You were sent away to school and wrote me letters. You helped me learn to ski, remember that day when we kept almost sitting down on the t-bar? You betrayed me and confessed and cried and cried. You had a beautiful singing voice and drove us all crazy by seeming not to care. You were the one I wanted to kiss. You thought that I would never learn to cook. You met me our first year in college. You took the art class that I was the nude model for. You sat at my table even though I was eating through a straw. You were the one who loved and left me. You were my roommate during the "you can if you want to" year. You warned me. You could hardly walk, towards the end.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
and the folks over at the Creative Act/ Create-A-Thing-A-Day project
for their continuing inspiration.)

Poetry Thursday - Proof

Word Problem

Let X stand alone as a reminder
of the words that wanted to be written
but weren't.

Let Y hold the place
of apologies that were offered
but then negated with a following
qualifier.

Imagine, then, that a train
travelling through a range
of snow-dazzled mountains
increases its speed by a factor of Q
as the conductor longs
to put her feet up by a fire
and finish that book she's in the middle of.

Given that time is a non-renewable resource,
that everyone looks back on something
with a sense of bitterness and regret,
and that we creatures crave comfort,

solve for X.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday,
and to my poetry sister KD,
for their continuing inspiration.)

Cliché - Poetry Thursday

Time Heals All Wounds

In your hour of need,
do you want to reach out
and literally stop people's mouths
before those words come out
again?

I imagine the shock of it
your small warm fingers
gently but firmly
pressed against their lips
as their cheeks flush pink.

What are we left with,
between what you don't need to hear
and what we don't know how to say?

I'm sorry
doesn't work in English,
this messy language
that conflates apology with empathy.

Even how are you
seems fraught, with the "you"
in your life suddenly stripped down
to the singular.

Words fail me.
Again and again.
Yet here I lurk,
your friend and vampire,
ready to swoop in
at the first sign of trouble.

So that I can feel useful.
Needed. Helpful. Important.
So that I can stand close
and silent this time, maybe,
letting the words run through my head
like a prayer.

Let her find peace.
Let her feel hope.
Let her stay strong.
Let her heal. In time.

(Thank you to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration. This week
they asked participants to consider breathing life
into a cliché or two. (How many did you spot?)
It was an interesting challenge.)

Insatiable

(D and his best friend JT have been playing together in the livingroom almost nonstop for about six hours.)

Insatiable

Let's play pretend,
that game where you start
by saying let's pretend,
and then you keep going,
and anytime you stop,
the other person can say
let's pretend and get it going again.

Let's pretend
that I
have the powers of Lord Voldemort
and you
have the powers of Darth Vader.
Together
we will be so bad.

Let's pretend
that this broom on the rug
is actually flying through the air
and that chair is a dragon
and we both have wands
but sometimes our spells
don't work right.

Then let's ask if we can
take our shirts off
so we can be pirates.
When we get thirsty
we can go into the kitchen
and ask for chocolate milk
except we'll call it rum.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.)

The Ghanzi-Kang Road

For years
for lifetimes
the government of my country
has been trying to push me
out of my homeland.

Only one game reserve in the world
is larger than ours
here in the Central Kalahari desert.
Surely there is room enough
for hyenas, wildebeest, lions, gemsbok
and the San – my people –
in addition to the diamonds
everyone cares so much about.

Yesterday, in a courtroom,
we won the right to return.
Do you know that feeling,
washing off the dust
of Deception Valley
but still so happy
to have walked in it?

I'm heading for the Ghanzi-Kang road,
and from there my tracks are my own.
I am going home. I am going home.
It will be a fine story.
I am going home.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration. And to
the San, whose victory yesterday inspired this poem.)

(Click here for the story of the San's victory.)

San Bushmen Botswana indigenous PoetryThursday

Poetry Thursday: Blue Walls

Blue Walls

The last thing we did
before he was born
was to cut down a huge tree
that was in decline.
Old life making way
for new.
The room burst wide
with sunshine.

When he was born
sleep became a dance.
He led; we followed.
We tried having him sleep
in the room with us,
but I woke with
every hiccup, every movement,
So across the hall he went.

My back still remembers
the leaning in,
the careful laying down
of our small bundle of boy in his crib.
We brushed the blue walls of his room
with a yellow night light
and delighted in the new lullabye
of his deep steady breaths.

--------------~

One day when I was seven
I suddenly noticed
that my bedroom walls
were pink. The next day
we went to the paint store.
Maybe someday soon
he’ll notice that his walls
are blue.

We’ll explain that we chose
blue not for boy
but for wide open sky,
for a view newly freed
of an old growth tree.
But he might ask
to head off to the paint store
anyway.

(Many thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.)

Poetry Thursday - ee cummings

the moon looked into my window
it touched me with its small hands
and with curling infantile
fingers it understood my eyes cheeks mouth
its hands(slipping)felt of my necktie wandered
against my shirt and into my body
the sharp things fingered tinily my heart life

the little hands withdrew, jerkily, themselves

quietly they began playing with a button
the moon smiled she
let go my vest and crept
throught the window
she did not fall
she went creeping along the air

over houses
roofs

And out of the east toward
her a fragile light bent gatheringly

ee cummings

Cummings was the first poet whose work I remember following. And I mean that more literally than figuratively. We read some of his poems in an anthology (in high school, this was), and for the first time I went to the library in search of more. I remember being shocked at how thick the collected works were. And then equally shocked to realize that cummings had almost lived until I was born. I had missed him, but only just. Poets could be alive. This changed everything.

Twenty some-odd years later, I stood stock-still on Commercial Street in Provincetown, suddenly remembering that there was a cummings poem that started with one of the names on our list of "possibles" for the baby who would be joining our family soon.

I'm looking forward to someday telling our son all the reasons his name is his. Poetry can be alive. And can change everything.

(More musings on time and poetry are here.)
And tips o' the hat to Auntie Nish and SarahJ for setting me to thinking of cummings again.

Poetry Thursday - Beloved Books

Treasure Island

Comes a little lady, a book in hand,
A light in her eyes that I understand,
And her cheeks aglow from the faery breeze
That sweeps across the uncharted seas.
She gives me the book, and her word of praise
A ton of critical thought outweighs.
"I've finished it, daddie!" – a sigh thereat.
"Are there any more books in the world like that?"

No, little lady. I grieve to say
That of all the books in the world today
There's not another that's quite the same
As this magic book with the magic name.
Volumes there be that are pure delight,
Ancient and yellowed or new and bright;
But – little and thin, or big and fat –
There are no more books in the world like that.

And what, little lady, would I not give
For the wonderful world in which you live!
What have I garnered one-half as true
As the tales Titania whispers you.
Ah, late we learn that the only truth
Was that which we found in the Book of Youth.
Profitless others, and stale, and flat; –
There are no other books in the world like that.

~ Bert Leston Taylor, in Lifelines, Niall MacMonagle, editor

My partner has just started reading a version of Treasure Island to D during evening storytime. His eyes have never seemed quite so wide. I have loved libraries for as long as I remember, and can still re-live the thrill I felt when I got my very first library card. Some of the books I loved as a child were books that everyone loved, and some of them were books that I felt sure no one else had every truly read. And then, when I went back to them, they were sometimes just not the way I remembered. (E.g. Search for the Crescent Moon, by Eth Clifford. Bet you've never heard of it.) The version I lovingly held in my head was MUCH better than the one written down by Ms. Clifford. Sometimes I went back looking for a book but couldn't find it (my hometown library reorganized their entire children's section once I grew up, with some disastrous effects to my shelf-location-based memories of books I'd loved). In my early thirties, while traveling in Canada on business, I suddenly re-discovered the Enid Blighton Adventure series, and bought the entire set on the spot, heart pounding with joy. The owner of the shop smiled at my sheepishness and said, "This happens about once a week."

I'd love to hear a story about the stories that shaped you...

For more poetry, visit Poetry Thursday!

Poetry Thursday - Lyrics

Next weekend we'll be treating ourselves to dinner at Serrano followed by a show upstairs at the Tin Angel. Alice Peacock, who sings this song:

I'll Start With Me
Kristen Hall, Alice Peacock, Emily Saliers (!)

"Well, we do okay with the things God gave us,
But, will it be enough when it's time to save us.
One in three can't read, so many mouths to feed,
We just sit and wait like a loaded gun,
We cloak ourselves in the great tradition,
The United States of acquisition.

Every man for himself, it's just me and no one else,
Will we ever learn there's a price to pay.

America the free, wake up from your fantasy,
Is the nation so divided we can't see.
That there's work to be done, somethin' there for everyone,
I know - I'll start with me.

Six o'clock it's another story, gunman down in a blaze of glory,
Only ten years old, makes my blood run cold,
And the press descends like birds of prey.

Politicians stay in office, far too long to vote their conscience,
Lobbied, bought and sold, trading votes for gold,
They've forgotten that they work for us.

America the free, wake up from your fantasy,
Is the nation so divided we can't see.
That there's work to be done, somethin' there for everyone,
I know - I'll start with me.

For the beast to stay alive, it has to feed,
That's why in times of peace, they create an enemy,
What we called the big, red scare is just my neighbor over there,
With hopes and dreams, the same as me.

America the free, wake up from your fantasy,
Is the nation so divided we can't see
That there's work to be done, somethin' there for everyone,
I know - I'll start with me."

I try not to live in the land of anticipation, but then again, sometimes it's just a good place to be.

Poetry Thursday - Doors

Doors


The carpenter came
this week.
She finished the two small jobs
we had asked of her.
She told me the solid wooden door
I had found on the street
for my room
would fit just fine –
and it did.

Downstairs
she took the back door
from its hinges
planed the edges and
aligned it right,
hung it plumb
so the bolts slide
into the strike plate,
flush.
Now the lock turns
easily.

I can go out to the garden, now.
Sweet smelling curls of wood
have fallen among the purple violets.
I can close the door to my room
lie in the patch of east sun
that laps across the floor.

And I wonder,
that I never thought how all the while
what I needed was so simply
this:
a door, to the outside
that opens
a door, to the inside
that shuts.

~ Becky Birtha

This poem by my friend Becky Birtha is one that I come back to again and again. I hope you find something in it for you as well.