I'm drunk

and when is the last time you can remember
that you didn't try to get drunk?

I can't remember.

What is drunk? Who is an alcoholic?

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Once upon a time there was a girl. Beautiful
but unfit. She didn't fit in anywhere.

She wore hiphuggers and ....
what were those tops called? They were only
a small piece of fabric wrapped around the neck
and across the back. No bra. Halters? Maybe?

************************************

Once upon a time there was a girl.
She wore hiphuggers and halters.
The boys whistled at her from thier cars
and drove slowly down the streets
as she walked on. Her beauty became
the thorn in the proverbial paw.

I am confusing characters now. The mouse
aided the mighty king of beasts by removing
the proverbial thorn. There was no mention
of a lioness. But I am digresssssssssssing,
I fear.

Back to the garden. The garden I found
in my mother's closet. Adam and Eve
leaves to cover the beauty. Leaves to cover.
Leaves that fall every year and cover
beauty. Leaves that are beautiful.

But I digress again. My mother's closet.
My father's death. My inability to stay
sober long enough to think things through.

Through is just a word. Through is not
always through. It may be a passage.
It may be a destination.

It may be simply and all alone
just a word.

I am not through. I am somewhere in between
through and though. R dropped and justly
so. I am though. And drunk. And the keys
don't care and my fingers can still play

and tonight there are meteor showers
I planned to watch and may still, though
I may be out there to lose the spirits,
my face intently leaning toward the ground.

Through it all, however, I think I shall
still be asking why am I and am I.

Back from Chicago

My daughter and I just spent 4 days there.

It was 4 degrees outside the first night,
but we managed to make the block or so
walk out to eat and back again without
too much trouble (had to keep our scarves
over our mouths when we were walking
so we could breathe, otherwise the wind and cold
just took your breath away!).

Have to recommend Gaylord's on Clark...
great Indian food...nice atmosphere...moderately priced


Singha Thai Restaurant on Clark is another wonderful
place to eat...loved the food
and the faux seating...way cool! Looks like you're going
to be sitting on the floor but you actually aren't (you
get the luxury of keeping your feet on the floor
or tucking them underneath you!)

A Tapas place on Superior (need to look up the name)
did not disappoint either. Spanish food, good location,
good atmosphere.

And a Chicago pizza place on Superior was downright yummy.

We hung out with about 60 drunken Santa Claus's Saturday
night...now that was an experience!

So warm here tonight. 60 when we got home. Still about
55 and rainy. What a change.

My mother was a worrier. No. She was more than that.
She was a "this is going to kill you" kind of person.

So, I guess in some ways I was the lightest burden.

I didn't get strep throat. I didn't get a severe ear infection.

I didn't have measles and pneumonia at the same time.

I didn't have curvature of the spine.

No. Not me. I was a tomboy. I was tough and up
to the challenge.

Which may have made me the greatest burden.

Falling out of the pine tree in the backyard. My foot
caught in the spokes of Mary's wheels. My arm
cut and bleeding profusely from the coke bottle
that broke in my bike basket.

I was the run-to-the-ER kid. For stitches
and such.

It was easier for her to comfort the children
who had no choice in their discomfort.

I fought hard to not be my mom when I had
my own children.

Broken wrist.

"It's ok, honey, the doctor is going to take care
of it."

Stitches in the chin. Papoose to hold down a crying,
arms-flailing child.

"Baby, listen to Mommy. I am right
here and the doctor is going to take good care of you."

So steady and inquisitive and concerned (but not worried)
when the baseball bat hit one of them in the head
and knocked them out and we end up in ER for X-rays.

Fighting always to not be like her. The worrier. The guilty
one. The blameless filled with blame.

*************************************

The Ninth Elegy

Why, when this span of life might be passed
as a laurel, slightly darker than everything else
green, with tiny waves on the edges
of each leaf (like the wind's smile)--: why then
have to be human--and, fleeing destiny,
long for destiny?...

Oh, not for some dream of happiness,
that premature profit of an imminent loss,
Not out of curiosity, not to give practice to the heart,
which would also pulse with laurel....

But because life here compels us, and because everything here
seemes to need us, all this fleetingness
that strangely entreats us. Us, the most fleeting...
Once for each thing, only once. Once and no more. And we, too,
only once. Never again. But to have been
once, even though only once:
this having been earthly seems lasting, beyond repeal.

And so we press on and try to achieve it,
try to contain it in our simple hands,
in our brimming eyes, our voiceless heart.
Try to become it. Try to give it--to whom? Best of all,
to hold on to it all forever...Ah, but what can one carry across
into that other relation? Not the art of seeing,
learned so slowly here, and no event that transpired here. Not one.
The pain, then. Above all, the hard labor of living,
the long experience of love,--all the purely
unsayable things. But later on,
among the stars, what then: there the unsayable reigns.
The traveler doesn't bring from the mountain slope
into the valley some handful of sod, around which all stand mute,
but a word he's gained, a pure word, the yellow and blue
gentian. What if we're here just for saying: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree, window,--
at most: column, tower....but for saying, understand,
oh for such saying as things themselves
never hoped so intensely to be. Isn't this the sly purpose
of the taciturn earth, when it urges lovers on:
that in their passion each single thing should find ecstasy?
O Threshold: what must it mean for two lovers
to have their own older threshold and be wearing down so lightly
the ancient sill--, they too, after the many before,
before the many to come.....

Here is the time for the sayable, here is its home.
Speak and attest. More than ever
the things we can live with are falling away,
and ousting them, filling their place: a will with no image.
Will beneath crusts which readily crack
whenever the act inside swells and seeks new borders.
Between the hammers our heart
lives on, as the tongue,
even between the teeth, remains
unceasing in praise.

Praise the world to the Angel, not what's unsayable.
You can't impress him with lofty emotions; in the cosmos
that shapes his feelings, you're a mere novice. Therefore show him
some simple object, formed from generation to generation
until it's truly our own, dwelling near our hands and in our eyes.
Tell him of things. He'll stand more amazed; as you stood
beside the ropemaker in Rome or by the potter along the Nile.

Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even sorrow's lament resolves upon form,
serves as a thing or dies into a thing--, and in that blissful beyond
is unmoved even by the violin. --And these things
that keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient,
they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue.
They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts,
into--O endlessly--us! Whoever, finally, we may be.

Earth, isn't that what you want: to arise
in us invisibly? Isn't it your dream
to be invisible someday? Earth! Invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your urgent charge?
Earth, my darling, I will! Believe me, you need
no more of your springtimes to win me--, one,
just a single one, is already too much for my blood.
Nameless now, I am betrothed to you forever.
You've always been right, and your most sacred tenet
is Death the intimate Friend.

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
lessens.....Superabundant existence
wells in my heart.


Rainer Maria Rilke
(from the Duino Elegies)

Had a meltdown tonight

Dad

on my way to Owensboro...to Criminology class

I was thinking about your hands...about the last
time I put my hand in yours (when you were alive
and then when you were dead).

Your old hand, your rough, weathered old hand.

I remember vigorously rubbing lotion on your hands
and your wrists. The restraints had rubbed your skin raw.

But, I kept thinking, you needed to be restrained lest
you pull out all those lines keeping you alive.

And I just wanted to put my hand in your hand.

Alive or dead.

I was thinking about the last night I held your hand, dead.
It was still warm. You were still warm. I cried over your body...
you know I did. I said over and over breathe Dad, breathe
Breathe breathe breathe.

They left that damed resuscitation tube in your throat.

It was awkward to try to kiss you again.

So, I held your hand and I rubbed your arms and your legs
and I tried so hard to remember where the tattoes were...but
I can't remember. Was the cowgirl on your left arm or your right?

I know where the birds were. Or do I?

On your right calf
or on your left?


I had to keep driving, Dad, so I had to stop the tears. I could not see.

And the road is winding and long and hilly and unforgiving.

I miss you so much. I

never got to ask you if you had a dog. If you liked Christmas
or any other holiday. Who your best friend was

what you really loved to do.

I know you liked Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour.

You read books about the Navy Seals and espionage.
I'd ask Mom the name of the author of a favorite series
of books you read so I could find you
a new book for Christmas

but I never could think when I was out shopping

what those books were called. I don't know to this
day what thte titles of those books were and who the author
was. I don't know.

So I bought you things like WWII Veteran license
frames and Yorktown caps and jackets.

I couldn't know how much you really wanted to let
all of that go.

Oh Daddy....wherever you are, I hope you're with your
friends and your family and you are well.

I miss you. I don't like this at all.

I can see your smile. That keeps me going.

You were such a passive, forgiving, easy-to-please
human being.

Just last week when I was cleaning up some things
in the basement, I came across the branch-cutter
you used to borrow to get to those high branches.

I thought about your hands and your determination
to keep going and I don;t know if you were sick a long
time or just a short time but I know I can't believe
you are gone.

What does anything matter? Where are you?

If there is nothing after this life then how do people
keep living?

I want to see you again and I want to see Granny
and I want to see Charley.

I can't be an atheist nor can I be an agnostic.

And I can't be a Christian. So what am I?

I am a terribly, terribly sad daughter.

Anybody here seen my old friend


Belinda, Cathy, Mary, David....

I am thinking about my old Virginia Beach friends.
And the times I made the effort to find them. And the times
I called them and how they never called back.

They mattered to me. Why didn't I matter?

David sent an email last fall after the F4 tornado hit here.
He wanted to make sure I was ok (my family too).

That's it.

I'm a transplant to this town. The town my father left when
he joined the Navy in 1941. The town he and my mom decided we'd
move back to when I was 13.

I have never felt at home anywhere. Never.

I fight this rootlessness. I think there must be something
good in being rooted. But I can't figure out what it is.

I feel so alone.

I have 30+ numbers saved in my cell
phone and can't think of one number I would dial at this
moment and feel there was someone at the other end
who would understand where I am.

I think that is the great cost this generation (mine
and my children's) will know. For all the reasons
knowing your neighbor and sitting on the porch
at night became passe, there are so many reasons
for mourning the end of "life as we knew it" when people
sat on their porches and talked to the people going
by and asked, with meaning, "How are you
Ms. Dubois? Why you've got the prettiest flowers
in all of Meridian!"

Progress. Yes, we;ve progressed. Into what?

Damn I'm drunk.

Elemental

Come winter. Bring with you
your cold winds and white blankets,
your no nonsense attitude, your complete
disregard for a body's need for warmth.

Come on. I've readied myself. Brought
in wood for the fire, added insulation
to the rafters, dragged out the fur-
lined boots and downy comforters,

filled the cupboards with soups and the labors
of the summer garden. Come on.

Come December. Quickly. I need to be held
in your frigid arms. How can you disappoint
me when their is no expectation of warmth,
no hope for the cold, which has settled in the marrow

of mourning, to leave me? I like that about you--
that you rarely disappoint. Come soon white roads
and icy limbs. You too, grey skies and pelting sleet.

Bring along your friend, the bitter wind. I like the way
he makes my lungs hurt with each labored

breath I take on my morning walk. The way
I start to taste my own blood as my heart
empties and fills and empties and fills. The way
that only losing myself completely to the elements

affirms that I am not dying at all but very much
alive. He humbles me and brings me reason
to come home to you, to put the kettle on

for one more cup of tea, to watch again the slow
way you bring the cracked porcelain to your lips.

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