ARTIST, WRITER, CREATIVE OUTLET FINDER
She’s a blonde in real life
Under that blood moon semi-permanent red hair dye
There’s something about her
Beyond what looks like a rent-evading, chemically aged alcohol-drinking catastrophe
Someone deserving of their intrigue being figured out
I was in Asia staying with newfound friends
It was the future – soft light warmed everything
Sounds and sites of vegetables simmering in pots were everywhere
I shaved part of my head making it easier to wear wigs and put on disguises
Wearing this bizarre 1970s motorcycle helmet, white with red racing stripes
The stress of being in these new surroundings was so exciting it made me vomit
A cute calico befriended me, always looking like they were going to speak – they never did of course, just kept purring, following me, or were they guiding me?
I found you in a scrapped-out airstream, told you I loved you being my best friend
We cried a little, it wasn’t sad, just being there with each other was good – for the first time in a long while I felt like myself
It took a dream, waking from sleep on the couch in pain, being transported to feel like me, if even for a moment again.
Sitting on the balcony of our hotel room,
A still morning greets us, looking out over the water
Drinking French press Kona
The oils from the freshly plunged coffee mingled with the smell of morning dew
Surrounded by sail boats and the view of Tijuana
You discovering the bliss of lox on an everything bagel
The day was crisp
Wrapped in cozy sweaters
Watching the gulls catch air, floating effortlessly by
One of my favorite memories
Captured in the amber of my mind
Stretch, feel skin cracking from beneath Winter’s permafrost.
Ache at the bones snapping into place after the yawn of cold morning shrinks in the Spring sun.
Pull off scratching socks that heated you through the night, cold toes be gone.
Smooth oil over this organ, this canvas that’s been painted black with the loudness of heartbreak and righteous discontent.
Robbed of the season’s stolen time.
Not a single bit of goodness fits through the strainer you’ve ripped gaping holes in.
There were things to celebrate.
Yet they shared the same room as the shattered pieces of heart.
Feeling like an awkward lanky teen yearning to burst from anxiety into their prime.
Selfish in these feelings. In this push through, in the same house fighting through the awful and the sublime.
Spring arrived lacking anything that sniffs of newness.
Pull the curtains shut, put a sweater on, pull the hood over your head.
Lay down in the unmade bed. Sheets needing to be washed that still smell like her.
Refuse, just one more day to rot in the love of stolen kisses.
Stuck in the ordeal of perpetual eventide.
Every single memory tied up in her hair, in her ashes.
A smooth red wooden box embellished with her name.
The urn, the lingering frankincense clinging to the drawstring silver bag.
Her hand pressed into clay for remembrance.
Plant the rosemary, plant the wildflowers.
Hang the chime.
Place a sleeping statue in her favorite napping sun.
Mourn her.
Celebrate her.
Move tomorrow, embrace Spring slowly with fresh legs.
Hang on tight while racing downhill, helmet on, the motorcycle thrills
Hadn’t thought of that memory in so many years, a happy recollection of a father-daughter time
Hanging in the space of her mind, held precious, playing frame by frame
Her thoughts become music, his hero’s welcome song
Blind man’s zoo has come to town, wearing silver jeweled crowns
Each holding a painted blackened rose, to open thoughts their minds won’t close
And on their sight this autumn night, let blindness from you go
Where thoughts are free and children see that blindness is a travesty
With open hands the invite stands, the day to seize is yours
When thought is free, the blind can see, it opens every door
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here’s how it happened–
It was Homecoming, 1992.
I was never popular, never going to be part of the Homecoming crowd.
In fact, I had already graduated the summer before, and found out from friends that everyone could be in the Homecoming Parade.
What?
You heard right, anyone could be in the Homecoming parade, as long as one of us was still in High School.
Welp, that was it. I was going to get a gang of the coolest art girls in town to be in the parade.
It was a small town, still is. One of those one light places with a church on each corner of the intersection, a single bank, and a lonely gas station.
We decided to name ourselves “Blind Man’s Zoo” for the parade, hence the poem for our little charade.
I had just been to a 10,000 Maniacs show, was in love with Natalie Merchant and that album – it seemed to perfectly fit.
We each carried black rose bouquets, donned our best vintage gear, and dyed our hair black – which said on the box was temporary.
We wore handmade silver crowns with giant gems and copious amounts of glitter to really set off the occasion.
Accompanying us was a massive tie-dyed sign spray-painted with our name across it. Two of our buddies walked in front of us with it, their heads held magnificently high.
The best part was having an antique car club offer to drive us in the parade.
We each rode in a convertible corvette that night. My sister’s ride I was especially fond of, it had the sexiest billiard ball gear shift.
So down our one-light town, we rode — with the Homecoming Court and the State Championship-winning football team.
Onto the track, circling the football field, all of us waving with our black roses and silver-painted Burger King crowns, the Friday night lights working for us.
Our friends kept holding the banner high, champions of the night. We parked while the marching band blasted their teen spirit behind us.
It was a perfect night, one I won’t forget, and that black henna hair dye didn’t wash out.
Knock on your door.
You’re not interested.
How could you be?
Why would you ever want to talk to me?
The idea of changing your thoughts with a knock on your door feels like a high comedy.
Knock on your door.
You pushed me.
What gave you the right to lay hands on me?
The idea of a stranger touching me because of a knock-on your door feels like insanity.
Knock on your door.
You’re not listening.
Why would you bend your ear to the honeyed words of a girl dressed like a virgin on Sunday?
The idea an innocent saying anything of real weighted merit feels like an exercise in stupidity.
Knock on your door.
You’re not answering.
Why would you answer to a stranger knocking?
The idea of expecting anyone to was becoming obvious in its intrusive vulgar absurdity.
Knock on your door.
You’re not welcoming.
What is the message all these unanswered doors were sending?
The idea that this act was no longer something I would participate in willingly.
Knock on my door.
I am answering.
Why did it take so long to stop believing?
The idea of calculating all the time lost on this choice everyone made for me was infuriating.
Knocking that was awakening.
I answered the door with a rush of possibility.
What will my new life of no longer knocking bring to me?
The idea that everything is now on my terms healing my callused knuckles soothing the pain of knocking.
Talk about love
Talk about violence
Talk about failure
Unable to love
Unable to hold back violence
Unable to cover up failure
The story about love
The story about violence
The story about whitewashing failure
Change your love
Change your violence
Change your failure
Become someone worthy of love
Become someone behaving without violence
Become someone worthy of success after failure
Love is not to be used as currency
Violence is not to be used as currency
Failure is not to be used as currency
Talk about how love can change
Talk about how violence is the lever
Talk about how failure doesn’t ruin
Love will break the curse
Violence will be the curse
Failure will flourish until love conquers the curse
Until then talk of love is empty
Until then violence feeds the void love abandoned
Until then failure conquers love and violence completely
Did Sammy ever tell you about the time he called begging me not to marry you? It was out of concern for me, our engagement, the call was a warning.
“Yes, he’s my best friend. Yes, you both appear awesome together – please don’t marry him. You are not like him in the ways you think you are. He’s not marriage material, end things, try to stay friends.”
I really did love you, just to be clear. You were a wonderful human being, creative, funny, kind, a friend to so many. Why would I doubt your love came in any form but sincere? Still, there was a whispering ever-present in my head, and then he called, pulling my head from the sand.
Sammy dropped the hammer on my dreams, but I needed his unsolicited sobering. The kind of message that can be delivered only out of friendship, nevermind the brutality. What sucked was knowing he wasn’t wrong. Listening to him explain his worries confirmed the suspicions I’d had all along.
I loved being with you, the time that we’d spend. Driving to Orlando, hanging out with our group of friends. But you, my wayward artist, and misguided man were going to drain the life out of me honing your potential, in a process that would never end.
You were going to turn me into that nagging bitch of a wife, and Sammy knew it from experience, he’d watched happen before. “He is going to ruin you. You’re not a bitter, angry person, don’t let him change you into something that you aren’t.
He thanked me for the letters I wrote since he moved away, talked about his wedding that was coming, and ended our call with an apology. “I know that wasn’t easy to hear. If I hadn’t called you, hadn’t said anything, I couldn’t live with myself, I’m truly sorry my dear.”
All those things that he told me, things that I didn’t want to admit to myself, I needed that phone call, that lifeline, but I wanted to hear you say them myself.
Your honesty was a curious thing, I found it liberating, heartbreaking, and infuriating. Our relationship had been a fool’s errand, one that I ended after asking all of the questions. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me? Why did it take me feeling like something was wrong and asking a million questions, like some inquisition to find out being together isn’t where we belong?”
“Because I love you. Because I need you. Because you are the one that is strong. I don’t have what it takes to match you, it’s scary that you’re everything, what I’m lacking, I should have told you, it shouldn’t have taken this long.” You started babbling about making amends, working on us, what breaking up would do to the life we had planned. It was white noise, and there was no appetite to accept your ardent pleas.
“You really would have used me like that? Put everything on me without attempting to give anything back? That isn’t loving, that’s selfish and indolent, hearing your answers cause me pain. You would have hated me for it, and I would have hated you.” At that moment, that intractable moment, our future vanished, even from the realm of friends. The past two years vanished, my heart sank, then hardened, nothing you could say would soften or charge it to care.
“This doesn’t have to be where it ends. Couples bounce back from things like these, it’s not like I was cheating. I want you to marry me. You’re the best thing that’s been in my life, and I can’t let anyone else have what you’re capable of offering.”
When you said those words, I could only think: “Thank god for Sammy calling me. Thank god I had the good sense to listen to him and my inner whispering.” I hung up the phone with a simple goodbye, paired with a long, exasperated soul recovering sigh, “Yeah? I know with one hundred percent certainty that is never happening.”
Bubble, or bubbles, I can never remember how many there would be. I do however remember you always meeting me.
Tiny square tab, suggesting an invite on my tongue, a long release from the bothers of life around me all precariously hung.
That’s exactly what I needed, and to see you meant my journey had begun.
Before I’d present myself to you, I’d lay my hands on the ground.
Like a ceremonial procedure that became natural, a dark recess. Surfaces would start rolling gently, kissing on my palms.
There. That was the feeling. How I knew it would feel, ready to come to you, my small secret escape. A delicate animation from what my brain recalls.
You always sat there, just below the faucet. Hovering above the drain, knees were drawn up to your chest.
Your voice never realized words, just made the shape of a bubble, keeping time with the water droplets, popping silently landing on my fingers.
Translucent, heliotrope, with a yellow glowing aura. Turning slowly into an incandescent tan.
Somehow you brought me comfort, this gentle fragile feminine thing. Small and secret, just those bubbles, or was it a singular bubble? After working through it, I simply can’t recall.
I just know it was something to be kept between us, my conjured, bubbling djinn.
Open the patio doors, it’s breezy and gray, palm leaves swing in the late afternoon of a lazy October day.
Thinking that I need to rest, unburden myself from the worry packed in my chest.
The breeze turns to winds, as though they sense in me the need to push it all forward, propelling my limbs.
It’s an active gust now, pushing out and pulling in, as the planes fly overhead, making noise high above the branches as they bend.
There is light forcing itself through the gray, reminding me that the relief I seek is needed, not selfish, as it churns its way through the late afternoon, the remnants of a Sunday.
Move with the swells in the breeze. Lean into the air, feel it’s intent pushing through the leaves.
Close the doors behind me as I leave, the burden in my chest has lifted, blown away, freed from the gray, feeling my spirit has shifted.
It’s the year of the cicada, it is deafening.
Their voices rise from the ground like a million corpses resurrecting.
They usher in the cast of characters changing the global scenery.
A blood-curdling fevered pitch of waking violence, sickness, and death.
Death of how we used to live.
Death of comforts taken for granted.
Death of mankind that choke our hope.
They usher in the cry of change.
The blood-curdling fevered pitch that wakes collective consciousness.
Rebirth of how we now will live.
Rebirth of comfort found in Mother Nature’s ingenuity.
Rebirth of mankind embarking on newfound paths.
They mark the year that found the world on fire, waking growth like a forest after burning wild.
It’s the year of the cicada, it is deafening.
A cigarette is trapped in her crinkled, pursed up lips.
Smoke twists away in curls of gray from her face.
She knows better, but there’s self-loathing woven in with her love.
Better off now than she ever was her mind tugs.
Neat and tidy in everyone’s view, a taunting string threatens her with unraveling.
Pulling it would mean destroying things in the pattern she designed.
Not an easy fix, pushing the thoughts back in with the string now stuck in the needle.
While no one’s watching she’s busy sewing, stitching herself back together.
Careful not to expose the secrets of her stuffing, hidden behind this bespoke version.
There’s a pause between these thoughts of hers, lingering in the ashtray.
Slow ashes are still burning from her cigarette put out too early, searing off the string.
There’s purpose in your whisper, yet it’s annoying, like peeling skin from a sunburned blister.
In another time we could have been friends, hell, even sisters, yet we’ve turned out very differently, feeling more like sworn enemies.
Still, you have your moments when you aren’t worthless, and there is love in you, you can feel it.
Just like that late summer sunburn that torments but leaves glowing new skin behind.
