ETERNAL INFINITY
IS:
THE
STRUGGLE
TO BE
AND
BELIEVE
WHAT
I
BELIEVE
TO BE
Where does it come from, this self esteem thing?
Is it genetic?
Are some peoples of the earth just born with it?
Does it come after birth;
a placenta you get to keep?
Do some people loose theirs,
or is it sociologically taken from them
due their location?
This must be what location, location, location really means:
where is my brain, not where is my body.
Is it possible to walk out of Ghetto
and leave low self esteem there?
Or does it hang on to your heels,
some sinister blood hound,
following, howling, growling.
Is Ghetto like meals on wheels,
commanding you to eat
the shadow you cannot loose?
Does Ghetto loom around you and in you,
waiting,waiting,
precipitating your next move,
undermining your chance to choose
a new destiny that will set you free?
One wrong word,
one innuendo slurred,
one reference to your mother, overheard,
and your brain coughs up tapeworm memories
tunneling through your gut,
just waiting for a chance to obtain a better hold.
Then back to Ghetto you go.
What is self esteem?
Can you loose it in your sleep
due to one bad dream?
It would seem
so.
Ghetto is not a street, city block, or building.
Ghetto is a human being
with ideals and thoughts
you may or may not want.
The location might be bulldozed,
but Ghetto will come and go
throughout all your living days.
You can work for Ghetto,
make sex to Ghetto,
sleep in the same room with Ghetto,
but the day you begin to see,
looking without or within
yourself, them, or me
and call Ghetto Ghetto,
you will build that long sought spirit bridge;
the causeway for your get-a-way.
Sometimes a brain must build its own back door
out of the shards of nightmares and lost dreams.
These writing will expose me as a weak and vulnerable person
easily trapped into the next cage.
But such is life.
I have a dear friend who always says "Seize the Day".
Some days are just better than others.
Poems are the ever changing rhythms of our lives that rhyme.
Poems must always be read a-loud
"Who are you?" I asked my vicarious verification.
"A villain perhaps successfully calling you "me"
so I can abide the character you choose to be.
My multiple personality is engaged in solitary group therapy.
Bare my soul to you
some reader I never knew.
Pull up a chair
so I might stare
at the reflections of myselves in you.
I'll pull feelings from dusty shelves
and air my days turned into years.
Give me your time.
Read me wind down the passages
of rhyme past your ears.
My Dear Charlotte,
What is a poet, anyway?
What is a writer of any kind, anyway?
My God, it was lovely and heart wrenching to read Mia Angelou this morning, bright and early. I am so thankful for this woman. Between her and Gwendlyn Brooks I wonder why I, a very white woman, even bother attempting to write. I write the meager day to day rituals of life struggling to have meaning. Then, upon finding some meaning, work it out in meaningless things and places.
Few writers are born with the capability to stir the human soul with the power of these two women. These two women scratch a furrow along the spine of mankind and plant strength into the fresh turned flesh. They take the two most important days in a human, the day of his birth and the day of his death and force the numbered days in between to bring forth the dignity of self worth, friendship, comradery, purpose and hope to every atom of existence; be it born, flourishing or dead; be it human or the dirt from which we all emerged. I love these two women. Thank you for my morning cup of coffee with you.
I love you Charlotte, and thank you for the addition you are in my life. In God's name, may you forever be that light that calls me forward, pushing me to write. Thank you, Gaylee
Gaylee: I loved what you wrote about Angelou...see, you are one white woman that can write. Love, Charlotte.
"What do you wait on, Gaylee, why do you cry?"
he asked me one beautiful leaf-watching day.
I wait on the Star Ship
that will prove to the humans
that we are more than the sum of our boundaries,
our wars,
our wall streets,
our scars.
Some
wait on
Jesus
Some
Buddha
Some The New Jerusalem or The Fifth World
Some wait on Mohammed
Some
One God
Some
No God
No Thing
No Place
No Name
Some
Wait
For
Nothing.
I wait for the Star Ship
to show us that we are the sum of each other.
We are a cosmic commune
sailing through space
without time
without maps.
Perhaps
we are the Star Ship.
The me I see when I am really me.
The me who stands in the bathroom
more naked than I am
refusing to wear the clothes
of my choosing.
The me who stands in a crowded room
just the same as me does in the bath,
who leans against the wall and laughs,
knowing I am just as out of place as me is.
Myself thinks Me is easy to live with,
and I can easy be,
when myself is really peaceful
and alone:
then
at last
I'm really Me.
Easy living pounds on me:
that is what I see.
The reflections
of confections
taken in so tastily.
Now, nastily,
I scale new pounds on me,
hastily.
At first it was a pound.
"That’s not much," I said.
The next day it was two.
Then I knew
there was a person growing up inside
setting out to hide
the body that my mirror knew
for a certainty
was not a pregnancy.
I find that now
there is not much that I have
that doesn't need firming up.
Medically speaking,
the layer of fat covering the organs
is called an apron.
Mine is floor length with ruffles.
JANUARY'S RESOLUTION
DECEMBER’S POUNDS
Puff, puff
dragging out the miles;
slow and hard they come.
I’ve lost the ground I had gained,
due to winter’s pounds maintained.
I used to pluck my eyebrows,
now I pluck my chin.
Yesterday I bought a bra
to put my titties in:
form fitted from Debbie’s Foundations,
form fitted just for me.
Why does it look like something
worn by Aunt Bee?
I came home with all my purchases
designed to fight the inevitable,
grabbed the mail from the box
and pitched it onto the table.
There it lay, this very same day,
my membership eligibility
to A.A.R.P.
plus a ten year subscription
to Modern Maturity.
Today I buried my goldfish, Samson. He was almost six years old and spent his entire circular fish life in an antique water pitcher placed beside my kitchen sink. Samson and I always began mornings together. Each evening as I washed up the last of the day’s late night snacks, put away peanut butter, jelly, cheese, and crackers, Samson would wait for the bun warmer my grandmother embroidered seventy years prior to be placed over the glass tea pitcher she passed around on lazy hot East Texas afternoons.
Easter morning he did not look so good. Around eight o’clock he turned his belly up and began his final resurrection struggle for oxygen. The struggle lasted until three that afternoon.
My oldest son, filled with Vulcan logic, came into the kitchen and found me with my hand in Samson’s bowl, stroking his fins and adding ice to the water for shock treatments. Seeing that nothing worked, he offered to put Samson out of his misery; down the commode. I didn’t even consider flushing years of attentive fish affection. I placed the tea pitcher on my desk, concealed Samson with the bun warmer, now turned pall. For two days I left him undisturbed.
I mourned.
That afternoon I carried the pitcher around the yard looking for a suitable place to rest Samson. Finding an evergreen tree, I dug a deep hole and laid Samson under the remains of my Easter corsage. Placing a large rock atop the grave to secure it from area feline grave robbers; I walked away to put up the fish food, clean the tea pitcher, and washed the bun warmer.
Less than five hours later, my dog got hit by a car, and I was back out in the yard burying another friend. The vet’s words rang in my ears, "We’ll be glad to dispose of it for you." It? She was no longer "her" to any one but me.
Flush Samson? Dispose of Nicki?
Who will THEY be?
What will THEY do with me?
Will I also become "it"?
I gave the large rock an extra push
into the freshly turned, cool spring earth
and breathed my second "good-by" for the day.
Who would breathe "good-by" over me?
My car just won't do.
I use it for a garbage can;
and clean it every year or two.
The paint is pealing off the hood,
The doors don't shut or open good,
I still smile when I get inside;
all 240,000 miles are mine,
for eleven years my faithful ride.
I carry every thing I just might need,
I never know when I might leave
for the bay, the mountains, some river cove,
or the city of DC.
I love my old and faithful car,
but it will never do:
certainly never impress you.
Looking at my faded turbo;
you'll know I'm always on the go;
not particular about my wheels:
at least until today I thought so.
I am particular about how I make you feel,
and my blue eyes will distracted you,
but you will know I got a rent car.
You will wonder what I hide:
but the blue eyes will distract you
when I will take you for a ride.
I will let you see my old and faithful Mazda,
soon,
but not this day.
Just look into my blue eyes,
for I am lost in yours.
Let us kiss the night away.
I planted violets in my bongo drums:
the skins grew brittle and flaked away
My yellow tambourine became an advent wreath,
appearing just before Christmas Day.
How to keep and use the things my heart remembers.
How to give the green piano something else to do.
How to find a place to store the heaps of things
that remind me of my life, my children, and you.
How to live only for today.
How to give the heap away.
I began the task in January,
soon to be December.
The tambourine will reappear
and I will start the process over
once again next year.
I could build a second shed instead.
Or perhaps just plant the sign--
"YARD SALE":
everything must go:
including me this time.
I do not know about the entire transition,
but I do know this part,
how ever long it lasts,
you must walk this walk without me
and savor every bit of pain,
suffering,
sadness
and hurt,
for this is what has hit:
the rogue wave
has risen up behind you,
designed to overwhelm.
Right between the eyes
our decisions come to lite.
We must look them in the face,
decide this is my place
this long, dark lonely night:
this 40 miles of bad road.
This is difficult for me,
for I long to hold you close,
sweetly kiss your mouth passionately;
and brush away the tears of endings.
But that is not my place.
For angels have that job,
and surely do it better.
They will give you to me,
along with their joy to both of us.
They will wipe away the happy tears
of our soon to be beginnings;
and I shall save them, everyone.
Because I love you.