Words from my notepad/last 2 weeks

roasted raspberry chipotle sauce
mordant
purple-leaved European Beauty
negated words
whywaitforbooks
Valdosta to Naples (5 hours/49 minutes)
line busy
Rm 366
Blade Runner
sylph
Wednesday instruments
needs CPR
setting poles and digging holes
no shoes in his size
one river three times in West Virginia
busy signal
peripatetic
Cheat Lake
64 to 79 jogs N & E but sometimes dips down south and veers west
help with residents
elegiac
no positive correlate

HOW IT WILL HAPPEN, WHEN

There you are, exhausted from a night of crying, curled up on the couch,
the floor, at the foot of the bed, anywhere you fall you fall down crying,
half amazed at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry
anymore. And there they are, his socks, his shirt, your underwear
and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile next to the bathroom door,
and you fall down again. Someday, years from now, things will be
different, the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows
shining, sun coming in easily now, sliding across the high shine of wax
on the wood floor. You'll be peeling an orange or watching a bird
spring from the edge of the rooftop next door, noticing how,
for an instant, its body is stopped on the air, only a moment before
gathering the will to fly into the ruff at its wings and then doing it:
flying. You'll be reading, and for a moment there will be a word
you don't understand, a simple word like now or what or is
and you'll ponder over it like a child discovering language.
Is you'll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that's
when you'll say it, for the first time, out loud: He's dead. He's not
coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.


DEATH COMES TO ME AGAIN, A GIRL

Death comes to me again, a girl
in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.
It's not so terrible she tells me,
not like you think, all darkness
and silence. There are windchimes
and the smell of lemons, some days
it rains, but more often the air is dry
and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase
built from hair and bone and listen
to the voices of the living. I like it,
she says, shaking the dust from her hair,
especially when they fight, and when they sing.

Dorianne Laux

Five or six wild turkeys


crossed in front of me last week.
Can't remember what day but am thinking it was Thursday,
the same day a homeless man lost his life.

The back road I drive to work in the morning runs parallel
to the railroad tracks for roughly 2-3 miles. The same day
I saw the turkeys, a homeless man was killed trying to jump
the train or jump off the train. I can imagine he may have even
been there in the bushes waiting for a train as I was driving to work.

This morning's paper has a picture of him and an article requesting
information. The police have identified him because he was arrested
for trespassing in July, but they can find no one who seems to know
who he is or if the name he gave them was his real name.

The official records have no next of kin listed. The man simply wrote:
"I have nobody."

Shifting the Sun

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

Diana Der-Hovanessian

Didn't even go near a computer yesterday.

Slept late, had breakfast, went to the post office
to mail my niece a late 16th birthday gift (a cookbook I created
for her--she loves her Auntie M's cooking), loaded up
my recycling and took it to the recycling center (that word
doesn't look right), spent a few hours visiting my father-in-law
at the long term care facility the hospital sent him to (he didn't
do as well as they hoped so he went from rehab floor to
long-term care--not looking like he'll be going home any
time soon), then to Lowe's to get the rest of my tile
for my kitchen countertops and some things my mother
needed, then to Mom's house for a few hours, and then
finally back home. So. I didn't get to my flowers, but it's
raining this morning. A nice steady rain. So needed! I also
didn't get to my homework or laundry, so after I do the crossword
puzzle and read some of the Maria Callas biography I've been
reading (finished Heart of Darkness yesterday--dark, yes),
I will try to get my stats homework done and some laundry
(nothing clean to wear, or I should say nothing clean that I want
to wear or nothing clean that I can fit into at the moment).
Closet full of cool clothes, but the middle-age spread has made
it impossible for me to get into them(maybe it's all the alcohol
I consume on a fairly regular basis).

A poem for today (actually just an excerpt from:

Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
William Carlos Williams


If a man die
it is because death
has first
possessed his imagination.
But if he refuse death--
no greater evil
can befall him
unless it be the death of love
meet him
in full career.
Then indeed
for him
the light has gone out.
But love and the imagination
are of a piece,
swift as the light
to avoid destruction.
So we come to watch time's flight
as we might watch
summer lightning
or fireflies, secure,
by grace of the imagination,
safe in its care.

Matilde Urrutia, wife of poet Pablo Neruda, died, uttering, "I'm happy. At last I'm going to be with my Pablo . . . "



Matilde Urrutia, I'm leaving you here
all I had, all I didn't have,
all I am, all I am not.
My love is a child crying,
reluctant to leave your arms,
I leave it to you forever--
you are my chosen one.

You are my chosen one,
more tempered by winds
than thin trees in the south,
a hazel in August;
for me you are as delicious
as a great bakery.
You have an earth heart
but your hands are from heaven.

You are red and spicy,
you are white and salty
like pickled onions,
you are a laughing piano
with every human note;
and music runs over me
from your eyelashes and your hair.
I wallow in your gold shadow,
I'm enchanted by your ears
as though I had seen them before
in underwater coral.
In the sea for your nails' sake,
I took on terrifying fish . . . .

Sometime when we've stopped being,
stopped coming and going,
under seven blankets of dust
and the dry feet of death,
we'll be close again, love,
curious and puzzled.
Our different feathers,
our bumbling eyes,
our feet which didn't meet
and our printed kisses,
all will be back together,
but what good will it do us,
the closeness of a grave?
Let life not separate us:
and who cares about death?

Pablo Neruda

Are these sensible shoes on my feet? I wear my shades
so our eyes don't meet/I'm scared every fuckin day/
I wear my headphones so I can't hear what you say

Can I run...

What was that L7 song called? Maybe it was called
Can I run. It's been going through my head all morning.

I'll have to Google it. Here it is:

Can I run, L7

Are these sensible shoes on my feet
I wear my shades so our eyes don't meet
I'm scared every fuckin' day
I wear my headphones so i can't hear what you say
Can i run
Switch to paranoid from having fun
Will he use his hands, knife, or a gun
Knuckles are white, wrapped around my mace
Comes from living in a terrorist state
Can i run
When he's following me
He's not my brother, he's my enemy
Is he behind the door or in back of the tree
Is he under the bed, is he in the back street
Can i run


Don't know why it's going through my head.
Guess because I feel like running...
running away
hiding