Filed under: poetry
his room of escape cowers dollhouse small
in this tiny tudor house.
his mother’s before him,
the yellow tiled kitchen
is tradition
more than a room.
the dried flowers placed on the wall
by his mother’s delicate hand decades ago
are crumbling.
a memory suspended by a nail,
the ghosts of roses long ago pulled
from the ground and tied with a pink ribbon.
this is now his room,
his place.
longing to be a zen buddhist
my father stands at the sink, staring out
the window, squinting against the sun.
washing dishes, water is calming.
he says he sees enlightenment.
the floorboards groan beneath his feet.
they are worn almost through,
and the gleam of the laundry room shines up.
bob dylan whines from the stereo,
carefully tuned and turned
up to rattle the purple and green wine glasses
suspended by their feet
above the stove.
he becomes lost in the music,
a tantric hypnosis, the melody his mantra
bringing him summers 20 years past.
summers of love and freedom,
he remembers feeling real.
he turns his attention back to the dirty dishes,
sighing while singing with dylan.
peace can be found in unlikely places -
nirvana at the sink.
Filed under: nostalgia
a simple, ugly root was at the heart of a quest i had last week. i sought horseradish. for three days and four supermarkets, i bravely hunted. i was misguided, led astray by seemingly friendly produce managers and left empty-handed among the kumquats and ginger. but i waged on. i needed to have horseradish.
sure, i could have caved and bought the pre-made, jarred kind. i could have made far less work for myself. i could have skipped the mission, the peeling of the tough skin, the chopping of the tough flesh, the watering eyes as i prepared the pungent root. but, when it comes to cooking, i am a purist. and real, home made, painful horseradish on easter sunday goes beyond being a recipe – it’s a tradition.
it’s hard to explain why it is so important to me, why i put irrational stress on myself over a simple condiment. nobody else wanted or expected it, i was not following through on a promise or the whim of another. the desire, the need, was all mine. i don’t ask anyone else to understand it, i only ask those i celebrate with to enjoy it. (although, this year’s batch is more potent than usual, so enjoying it may be a lot to ask!)
my love of the bitter, burning herb must be in my blood. it’s been served at every family easter i can remember, and i proved myself capable of handling such delicious pain at an early age. it feels like home, tastes like family. it is an unusual and powerful connection i have, deeply rooted in the love from which i grew.
the horseradish is merely a symbol. it burns, makes me red, makes me cry. but every tear it brings to my eye brings me back to every easter of my youth. back to the red faces of my father and grandfather, piling obscene amounts of horseradish onto hard-boiled eggs, daring each other to go further, eyes streaming with tears. i remember the warmth of childhood easter, the new dresses and the hunt for the plastic eggs filled with treasure. i feel the grass between my toes, jelly shoes slipped off in haste, while i blow bubbles and spin in the sunshine with my sister. i smell my grandmother, feel the mix of smoke and estee lauder perfume in my throat. i relive every beautiful moment.
now, more than ever, it is important to me to feel that connection. it’s been almost two years since i moved 300 miles from my family, and getting together for the holidays doesn’t always work out. i miss my family, i miss visits to new york, i miss home. i do what i can to bring myself closer to the ones i love, to keep my memories fresh and the spirit of familial love alive. i take what i have learned and am passing it on, proud of where i have come from, using it all to spread the love.
i have been so lucky to have such great people, here in my new home state, with which to share my strange traditions and abundance of holiday food. we have had a few fun, filling, and memorable holidays, complete with silly stories of collapsing tables and plenty of beers. and there will be many more holidays, and more traditions of our own, as we grow and have our own families.
it’s the small things that keep us connected, that tie us together. i’ll always have horseradish in my heart.
Filed under: poetry
wandering towards the river on a gray day
that could get no grayer,
i could vanish on these slushy streets.
my boots leave temporary marks in the shifting snow,
puddles that fill in as I step away
as if they were never there.
holding tight to my muse, i struggle to complete
myself against the falling clouds.
i fold and unfold myself
between the pages of tomes
and creases on roadmaps,
the lines along the highway
and the walls along the edge.
i fade into the landscape,
a tired gray tree above the frozen mud,
dead leaves piled at my feet.
locked in, frozen, stuck
i’m blanketed in cold but
the thaw must always come.
the earth takes herself back and grows,
echoing hope inside my head -
we shall have our colors again.
Filed under: poetry
The tale says that angels have no memory of the past. They cannot even remember that they are angels.
‘I guess that explains it,’ he says through bloodshot eyes. And, for the first time, I understand. I understand who I am, what I was meant to do, why I’ve always had vague feelings of displacement in this flat and material world. I belong in the world of shadows, the world of the nebulous ideal. I belong anywhere but here.
And I’m so scared that he may find out, that e may realize the secret I never even knew I kept. Although aliens may understand our breed, I am not even sure he wants to know, that it is time to reveal myself to the prince from Pluto. I don’t even think he understands what it is he has figured out, or what the consequences could be.
But he has touched on a part of me that had sunk below the soul, hidden within the layers of problems and arguments. He had realized that some of us do walk among the many, not even knowing where we are headed, barely remembering our purpose, never knowing our magic.
Maybe that why so many of us end up here on earth, with only slight knowledge of other-worldly powers. We forget our wings and learn to trust our instincts. None of us can remember what our orders were, why we were sent to this place, why we must feel so deeply and strongly for so many, why we must try to understand them all. We can only go where our crystal hearts lead, trying shyly to recognize others of our kind, but we are too scared to even ask.
So we blend. We try to fit ourselves into the selfish world, try to stop feeling, forget our missions. The ideal slips away, lost until we stop to think. We will do what we were sent to do, but it will be much easier without the map. We do not know our direction, we never realize what the scars mean.
We wonder why we can’t find our keys. We misunderstand, interpret the facts, try to be a friend. We get on the wrong roads, turn left at the wrong places, close our eyes at the wrong times.
We search our memories for some clue of who we are, knowing we did not really come from those dusty suburban houses/ We only know that we are not real, we do not belong. We touch, long to be touched, but know we will never truly be. Until we find others of our kind, others who forgot who they were and what their mission was, we will wander your world.
Filed under: twitter
it comes up in conversation, usually with the question ‘what the hell is twitter, anyway?’ and, oddly, for something that i enjoy so much and know so well, i always find the question difficult to answer. i end up being even wordier than usual, trying to explain all the details and what it all means to me.
i usually give up and sum it up as ‘mini blogging’. tweetpeeps know it is so much more than that, but it can be hard to explain to someone who is mostly just annoyed by excessive text messaging, or sick of hearing sentences that start out with ‘one of my twitter friends . . .’
i know it’s just a website. or a social networking tool. but somehow, twitter has become part of my life. i enjoy it’s simplicity, it’s power and it’s humor. i love getting a sense of other places – random thoughts from new york, comments on weather in arizona, traffic reports from england. twitter brings me thoughts from across the globe and advice from the next state over. it is the world, neatly packed into my crappy old pc.
i tweet for the same reason i write poetry and take pictures. there are so many moments worth capturing. that is all i strive to do with my art – catch a moment in a net, and hold on to it, share it, relish in it’s beauty, or its horror, or its humor. if i can share it with people, i feel i have done my duty. if i can send some sunshine, some gathered wisdom, beauty or laughs, i have made the world a little better. and that’s all each of us can do, right?
in addition to being a creative outlet, twitter gives me comfort, company, confidance, and truly caring people. it is an amazing outlet, with an amazing network of fascinating individuals.
my twitter friends soothed me when i was nervous about having surgery.
they encourage me whenever i mention a new project, and they read and commented on my blog within minutes of me posting the first entry.
i find new music, books, and websites through the suggestions of my twitter buds.
twitter is a resource for random information, with friends always willing to help. i think i got about a dozen direct messages when i asked the name of the cocoa puffs bird a few weeks ago. (it’s sonny) (thanks again, guys!)
it sometimes feels like twitter is an underground network for the truly smart, helpful, encouraging, and loving. it is a place for expression, empathy, encouragement. it is comfortable, yet always different. it is strange, funny, sad, and beautiful.
and it makes me think in 140 characters or less.
Filed under: poetry
A weekend of self abuse ends with sleeting snow on a Sunday night. The body has another four days to recover before the Thursday night binge ensues. These weekends are ruled by the family, substituting for the ones that should really be, but the bloodtypes and surnames take a backseat to a hug that is not forced./And the good times come in small doses, happiness is the last cigarettes, our songs on the radio of a beat up car, nachos for dinner on a Wednesday night. But the bloodlines keep us going, with spikes of pleasure along the way. The pen flows, the books are read. We do what we can. We get by./ And maybe we feel good behind a glass, the aging process of the brew becomes a hand held, a kiss to the soft spot on the neck. The binge becomes us. Cigarettes are enough to keep us warm on nights like these. We do not need heat, passion. We need family, alien brothers and whorehouse sisters, blind uncles and jumper-cable fathers. This is where the peace lives, as our novels sit unread in milkcrates and our left hands get stiff, with words stuck in our fingers. Inspiration lives in a bottle, exists in a stoned word in the snow. / Reruns run and run, letting us have some ghostly torch of our past. Identify, know, experience, become. The snow piles up to the window, blocking and holding. Embraced in cold, we will not leave.
Filed under: poetry
this version of me is standing
somewhere in that space between
existence and being,
staring into the sunset
from the banks of the hudson river.
the heavy air is warm and smells like dirt,
she blows bubbles into the breeze
until it is too dark to see them shine.
a woven blanket lies beneath
her long and wispy cotton skirt and
her boots, so tough they feel dangerous.
she slides it from under and
lies back to connect with earth.
with grass to her cheek
and joint to her lips,
she dreams upstream
and waits for it to come.
Filed under: poetry
arose with a jolting start this morning,
coaxed myself together, wandered out the door.
the air was cold and the sky flat grey,
the lung that inspires new england.
deep breath, board the train, pay the fare -
stretch out and watch
the graffiti go by on ancient freighters.
rain between the rails, tiny seas,
parallel puddles mirror the sun,
poking her nose into the day.
the clouds glow in thin white lines
spanning the gravel sky.
the train trudges on beneath.
this is the way i like it,
i can almost believe i’m at home
in this extralocal world.
this landscape embraced me long before
i embraced it, it held me
until i came back.
here i am to claim my kingdom
throw open the doors
and let me have hope.
march 2007
it’s chilly and clear, and tonight i’m alone in the snow. i’m closing my eyes, moving around the table, the monopoly board, the campfire, the circle of kids holding hands and giving the gypsy a quarter because she loves them. i hold my arms out and spin around in the gazebo, through heaven and hell, at the edges of theater balconies and woods overlooking the twin towers. smoke fills my lungs and beer fills my belly, i lose, i win, i connect. i hear the songs, feel the embrace, smell the ocean. i think of warm summer nights, fueled by coffee and lit by the stars. i think of my youth.
there has been magic. i have shared moments – unexplainable, unspeakable, beautiful moments. i have been in a room that was glowing with love. i have laughed until it felt dangerous and i have cried someone else’s tears. there have been nights of connection and primal understanding. i have been understood, truly and wholly. i have answered the questions right, slid down the slide, swum naked. there have been misses and what ifs, mistakes and mayhem, foibles and fables. i’ve been medicated and sliced open, inked and scarred. life has stolen my crown, but i’ve always had an army to fight with me and get it back. i have known true friendship.
i have been blessed with amazing people to love. the miles stretch the strings, but my heart is strong and the knots are tightly tied. the hands are reaching out to mine, seeking my touch as i seek theirs. time flows but does not erode. this is the family we choose, this is the love we celebrate, this is forever.
Filed under: nostalgia
‘wildlife treasury cards’ came up in conversation today.
http://www.atlaspicturecards.com/Wildlife_Treasury_Cards.html
remember those? chances are, most 25-35 year olds (or so) recall the green plastic box and the animal photo-and-info cards that came in the mail – a bundle wrapped in plastic that i always wished was larger – every month or so. they were fascinating to me, the geek child. i read the cards and studied the pictures, absorbing the information like an antsy child in need of distraction. ohwait. . .
so, i reached out to a few friends, to question them about their recollection of these cards. brian had a second-hand set, and clearly remembers keeping gumby in the box, for reasons unknown. adam said he used to keep his stash of random and stale cigarettes in that box when he was 13 (he’s smoke them out the window in the attic when he thought nobody would notice). my sister, kate, and james all recalled them. we all had clear memories of the cards, the box, the packaging. i realized i had struck on something important.
the things that are said to define generations are major, traumatic, important. global. the sort of things that you don’t really understand until you grow up and look back — wars, presidents, headline news — it’s all above a head that’s only three feet off the ground. being aware of a world outside of our immediate lives doesn’t come early or easily. but the the things that imprint themselves in our minds are not what the magazines and textbooks remember.
what defines us, what unites us and keeps us laughing, even over beers in our late 20’s, are the smallest things. the cereal commercials, the trendy clothes, the stuffed animals. the magazine subscriptions and the lunchtime snacks. we are what we lived, our memories lie locked within juice boxes and toy chests. we recall the warmth of innocence in bright plastic colors, in blocks that always fit together and dolls with perfect figures. a simple shared happy memory of a toy or a fast food commercial speaks volumes and oozes with comfort. we are the collected details of the lives we’ve lived, a sum of the bits and the way we each see the world.
i guess it’s all about perspective. at what point did politics become important to you? when did you notice and care about career success, environmental issues, war? is it any wonder that the stuff that really matters gets discussed at bars at two a.m.?
‘hey, man, remember the snorks?’
