4/25/13

Rewrite for Deathbed

I'd never seen a deathbed before.

It looked like any other kind of bed, I guess,

except for the sterile green hospital sheets.

I'd seen plenty of them, too - just none with

my grandmother on top, laying on her left side

because the shattered remains of her right hip

couldn't support her weight. 

she was a bag of broken glass and whispers,

When we talked, I had to kneel down right

next to her face -

her ribs had punctured her lungs, and it made it hard to speak;

She fell trying to change the channel on the television,

never could figure out that damn remote -  her old

bones had simply said: "enough."

At First we laughed about it, she said "Baby bear,

I told you, that TV is evil!"  Then, her laughing

turned to fits of coughing, her face got dark red

and stern and she said "I'm sick."

I said "I know, Grandma."

  

and she said, "Be true, it's worth it."

I said "what?"

and she said "I love you."

I'll be damned if I ever really knew what those words meant

before they were her last utterances to me.

and I'll be damned if I ever really meant those words before

I echoed them back to her.

she closed her eyes, lay back,

her brow smoothing like ripples dissipating

in a pond, and that was it.

I didn't know it, but she'd never speak again. 

and as I left the hospital room, I wasn't thinking of her broken body,

no.  Her words began to weave themselves into melody, the melody rhythmically telling me

things I should have already known.

If it takes death to release these feelings then something's gotta give - so it might as well be me to interpret the words my grandmother deserves to have spoken, her half broken body forgotten when you're lost in the sounds.

C'mon now people got to live for the moment can't you speak every word like it was your last breath.

C'mon now people got to live for the moment can't you speak every word like it was your last breath.

and what would you say if you knew your time was

limited to simply minutes

would you spit a few definitive sentences

or begin some sentimental sentiments full of derivative bullshhhhhhhhhh

or would you just lie silent, and pass on

or pass on

truth, knowledge, history, religion, tales, hell just say something

cause I got the ghosts of million people behind me who have never been heard... some were

never given voices but of those that were: 

nobody listened. But my grandmother christened me permissively with her last words

passwords into my soul where they live as legacy egging me on & making me stronger

with every poem.

See this is an oral tradition, these words keep us from being alone,

I will join voices with my grandmother and those singing from the marrow in our bones 

standing on roof tops shouting down the unknown, 

I will grow my own garden from the seeds she has sewn

My lungs are her instrument, this chest is her home:

So we say:

Come on now people got to live for the moment cant you speak every word like it was your last breath

Carousel

We took the long way home from preschool
that day.  She had been uncharacteristically
quiet when I arrived, her fingerpainting
wilted in her hands, her little brow
furrowed as she waved away my
overcompensating cheery falsetto
questions: "How was your day? Did you
learn anything new today?" 
Nothing.


I watched her from the rear-view
mirror,  her gaze lost in the undulations
of the power lines passing by
outside her window.
when she finally spoke,
her voice was tired and heavy, the words iron anvils
and railroad ties:
"Daddy, do you think everyone is pretty?"
I stuttered a response as best I could:
"I think everyone is beautiful in their own way, sweetheart."
Hopeful butterflies fluttered from her mouth:
"But what about me, Daddy?
Do you think I'm beautiful?


Childhood wraps our sons and daughters
in layers of innocence like halloween costumes
they are princesses and astronauts
and we can only watch as the world
slowly and carelessly unravels them,
threadbare and exposed.
I wasn't halfway prepared for this
on a Tuesday afternoon navigating
the backroads of the Oakland hills
My daughter's friends had ranked
each other on the basis of perceived
beauty and Isla:  my mermaid queen,
my unfettered star child - resplendent and dazzling
was at the end of the line.


I told her that she was the most beautiful thing
I had ever seen, that sometimes I had to look
away just to stop my heart from bursting from
her magnificence, but mine were practiced words,
shiny and brittle, and her schoolyard friends
had exposed their cracks and the rust underneath
looked a little too dangerous.
She didn't believe me.


I did the only thing I could - took
a detour to the park for dinner ruining
ice cream and a ride on the carousel.
These were attempts to rebuild
that childhood chrysalis around her.


Shiny distractions.  I asked her
which animal she would like to saddle -
"I don't know, daddy.  The prettiest one there."


The carousel was packed.  When we
stood on the weathered platform
there were two choices left - and
she could not decide between

the unicorn or the frog.

One, standing stiff-necked,
left leg cocked in a false march.

Its saddle festooned with red beads, mane full of ribbons and glitter.

The other, oblate and knotty -
paint chipped and peeling.

One sad eye the only handle.
She hesitated at the proud beast,
absently stroked its bright flank,
t hen slid onto the back of

its squat neighbor, like an easeful

coat. She whispered low words,

her cheek pressed against its

faded green head. It must have sounded like music,
for they danced and spun, those two, like mythical creatures.
Like golden threads respooled.

This town

Edit of "This Town"

This town stands on aged and ruined legs,
calling its beauty out through pursed wrinkled lips;
prickly pear tongues purring empty pink moment promises.
this Ojai Oasis, such a beautiful place to go to die.

These mountains, they loom like overprotective parents,
holding chloroform palms over young mouths,
Sunny southern California blindfolds -
who cares if the kids are hurting
soiled fingers stuck in ears anticipating something dirty
Hear no evil
See no evil
Speak nothing if you're under thirty

know your place,
shut your face,
pull your pants up
turn that shit down
why you always gotta be so loud?
button that up
button it to the neck
tighter, I can still hear you breathing.
In fact, shouldn't you be leaving?
don't you have some white dragons to chase
some shattered dreams to freebase?
we already locked up the purest, so
rather have you poppin pills since you're just
obstructing the view of elderly Los Angeles tourists.
Sweep you under the rug, make it easier to step on the poorest

But I'm calling bullshit on this false paradise
searching for a pulse in veins drier than the Ventura River
a breath of life in this ghost town surviving on antique shops, rookie cops and celebrity sightings.

But it's here, this faint heart beat - here in this candlelit cafeteria,
surrounded by the black and white faces of the past we have the future right in front of us.

when I sit at the table with these kids
these Monday Misfits,
Shangri-Lost young people
struggling to find a purpose in a town
designed for retirees and weekend money,
My heart staggers and lurches;  a bit off time, but loud enough to echo in my ears.

When they speak, through voices shoved back down their throats by
people they've trusted the most, I hear lightning bolts and steamrollers;
pain ripped from the lowest parts of their chest and held out gingerly like a mended wing
they read from smashed phones and iPod screens, crumpled papers and shaking hands.

All I can say is hold on. 
Your voice is all you have; it's your lifeboat in this sea of indifference,
your battle-axe; your backbone; your fucking Obi-Wan Lightsaber
Hold on.
Stand firmly in place; shout to dislodge the hearing aids

We are not this Southern California doldrum,
this Ojai 
 We are not these palm tree wooden stakes in hearts
These arcade arch cages
Hold on
and Dream louder than your surroundings,
dream further than this county
Dream till your feet touch down where they were meant to be,
where your life feels like yours, your voice sounds like yours,
echoing off walls that feel like home, not prison.

Hold on,
This town does not own you
This town does not define you
It only holds you for a moment,
it will let go -
so will you. 
When you do,
please enjoy the fall.
I still haven't landed -
I'll let you know when I do.

There is half a spider on my desk. Encased in resin.  Right next to a picture of my grandmother.  Somehow this feel inappropriate.  It's macabre and terrible, the chambers of its abdomen laid bare like some unlocked diary.  I am ashamed every time I look at it. 

It talks to me: "This is your fault,"  it says.  "I'd be skittering about a desert floor somewhere, smashin' crickets and spinnin webs like spider man, cuz I'm a spider, man." 
"You're kinda corny"  I tell it.  "Corny?" It retorts, "You have me here, flayed on your countertop, my heart leeching into this plastic dome... for what?  To hold down this paper?   Why don't you just let me go?"

Of course it doesn't say this, but half of its eight eyes accusingly stare it right into my brain.  Sometimes I daydream about hurling it into the ocean, but that's no place for half a spider.  Sometimes I think about burying it in the backyard, but that feels so formal, and we've gone way past formality at this point.

The truth is, there is no spider inside that resin dome.  There is exoskeleton and bristles, that is all.  The spider is sitting on a faded bench on a cliff somewhere, watching the ocean with my grandmother. She is wearing white sweatpants and a crocheted sweater with a scottish terrier on it. The spider is holding her hand while the sun slides into the water like a goodnight kiss. It is so appropriate.  It is so alive.

10/30 2016

With the back of one hand
he wipes saliva & Icehouse
from his lips, spits into the dirt
and contemplates the quarter
he's about to toss toward the
cement curb.  "This mother
fucker right here,"  he mumbles
to no one in particular, "is
my god damn salvation." 
Then, with a flick of his thumb,
the silver disc flies through the
air, arcing like the hands of fucking
God or a ballistic missile,
flipping end over end and glinting
with each stuttering grab at the sun.

9/30 2016

the dust has been washed
away in rivulets down the
windscreen of a car.  Probably
from the 90's, probably a
Honda or Toyota - missing
half a fender, trunk held closed
with wire and duct tape.
inside, a woman waits out
the weather among the detritus
of decades; only the driver's
seat is not piled with wax
paper wrappers, empty cups,
things that used to contain.
Her cigarette droops nearly to
her chest, unlit.  There is no
power in this car, the battery
died three nights before.
She contemplates a droplet,
staggering its way down
the window, changing direction
with abandon.  She reaches for the
handle, rotates, and breathes in
the damp air.  

8/30 2016

The last evening he was alive
was warmer than the night
before.  I sat outside with my
mother on white plastic chairs,
drinking wine from stemless
cups. I had said goodbye
many times in the days before,
sitting bedside, watching his
bird body cave in on itself,
not violently though - more of
a soft curl, like a child's ringlet.
His voice, when it came, was
muffled and hushed; a sheet
pulled over the ears on June
nights when the still air is too
hot for sleep.  When his voice
ceased and his breathing became
rote, we spoke with our palms,
rested on his forehead like
promises or prayers - soon
his hands relaxed their instensity,
lay open, books waiting to be read.

Dylan Thomas told me one should
rage against the gentility of death,
and I loved that.  Imagining a sparring
partner that dodged and wheeled
trying to pull me into the the good night.
The truth is, a gentle death is beautiful -
the night is velvety and delicate,
I want to ease into it like a hot spring,
with a warmth, a whoosh, and a sigh.

7/30 2016

Sometimes I wonder if he's in there,
somewhere, 5th of Teacher's Gin
halfway gone, way past the point
of tonic and lime.  Sitting on a
couch in cut off jean shorts,
too-tanned legs spread enough
to make everyone uncomfortably
aware he's sans briefs. Telling a
story too loudly, interrupted by
snorts that could be laughter or
blunted cough, peppering references
to his intellectual prowess and
life's constant unfair raining of
shit onto his shoulders.  Running
like a fucking marathon racer,
from anything that might actually
depend on him being himself.

I wonder if my hand will
lay heavy like his on the back of
some child's neck, the comfort
intended lost when it feels like
a pythons constriction.  Will
I understand the stage so well
that I can't ever leave it, will
the boards grow into my feet,
the characters inhabit every
sinew in my body, the words
I say scripted and flat.  I wonder
if I am strong enough to accept
what I do have, and to celebrate
what I do not.  

6/30 2016

Five foot assassin

ever notice how
headphone jacks look almost like
insulin needles

5/30 2016

Triolet


I know it's true we all will die
our bodies fail, our stories fade
Upon these bones we cannot rely
I know it's true we all will die
so stomp feet and shout " I defy!"
or shuck through life like a charade
I know it's true we all will die
our bodies fail, our stories fade.

4/30 2016

Spring cleaning dusts off
remembrances of betrayal
and new beginnings.
Fifteen old paper ream boxes
bulging with the words of
so many children who trusted
I would keep them forever.
Maybe I will, maybe these
scribbled lines and typed
pages sitting in my garage
will animate, maybe they already
have - each graphite mark
elongating and escaping it's
cardboard tomb, stretching
like some horror movie parasite,
writhing into my veins as I slept,
slowly twisting and dissolving;
double helix ballerinas, maybe they
wake me at night sometimes.
Maybe the voices calling from
those boxes are Korotkoff sounds,
the urgent tap of arterial blood,
the whoosh and click of pulse
as it propels abandonedly forward
through this network of meat
and nerve and bone and brain.
I am mostly made up of those
words I have assigned to others,
but don't we know that every story
has been told already?
Don't we know our blood sounds
like the whispers of ghosts?

3/30 2016

Awash in spring heat,
the town nearly sweat itself
into a nap.  Streams
of ill prepared tourists
bent glistening necks
like Chinatown ducks
toward expensive baubles
hanging in windows.
A man, middle aged,
hiked his paints up above
his ponderous waist,
commenting on a painting
in a gallery window.
His wife, under a wide
brimmed straw hat
turned her oversized
sunglasses toward him
and sneered something ugly
at him. He lumbered on,
as she lingered near the
multifaceted light reflecting
from a windchime, transfixed.

2/30 2016

It was the sound that did it,
the dry twig snap -
somehow louder than the
voices shouting in the yard

Her face, blanched with shock
upturned as she rocked
with the movement of the
webbing on that trampoline

My chest rending with
each caught breath in
her own, each tear an
elevator shaft down

She never weighed much,
my little bird, but she seemed
only air and sobs as I
carried her to the car

She held her arm close
to her heart, I could see
in the rear view - as if to say
you can be careful, dad

you can be by my side
even, holding hands even
and I will still break,
these are my bones

this is my heart.

1/30 2016

If I could carve her bust,
I would etch every wrinkle
as they lie. The tiny furrows
at the corner of each eye
would be last, beautiful
spiderwebs, they deserve
the steadiest hand,
the lightest touch.

If I could paint her countenance
I would adorn her hair with
each gray streak. Every
heathered runnel will be
defined.  Cinereous and slate;
the shade must be exact,
these have been earned
they will not be subdued.

Renew.

Riverbottom

The huge oak is still there;
broken ladder nailed to its trunk,
remnants of rungs littered like spent
casings round its base.  Someone
has placed a doorless refrigerator
there now too, filled with wayward
leaves and a half-full 40oz bottle.
Somehow this feels like an affront,
the whole thing an act of violence
against childhood itself.  I snatch
the cheap bottle from its perch,
fully intent on hurling it against a
rock, when blithe laughter halts my arm. 
My own children, too small to climb
the tree to the platform, swing from a
suspended rope, taking turns leaping
over an imagined lake of fire.  
In an instant, I realize there is no
savagery here, only creation. 
I pour the liquid slowly onto the ground, in remembrance of youth - 
its foul odor whisked away by the
breeze, almost skipping down the
dusty path.