Amberwood Ambrosia

Adlestrop

2008-10-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

by Edward Thomas

Yes, I remember Adlestrop --

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop -- only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire

Spelling

2008-09-10T14:09:00.001-07:00

-Margaret Atwood

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

The Power of Suicide

2008-08-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

by Muriel Rukeyser, 1968
(on the departure of Sylvia Plath)

"The potflower on the windowsill says to me
In words that are green-edged red leaves:
Flower flower flower flower
Today for the sake of all the dead Burst into flower."

Vexed

2008-07-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

If I be vexed

Let my soul sing all the more,

Lost in a place of unknowing

When the stage around

Looses voice.

Reflections of Eternity

2008-06-06T14:32:00.001-07:00

In breezy thought I remember—  

Remember that you are gone

But will remain,

Though seasons call you hence,

Our spirits stay the same.

In love’s ardor glance,

A silent glimpse is seen—

A view from heaven,

Passions filled,

A glimpse of cries sustained.

Knowledge sweeps over me then—

That in the spring of heaven’s

Kiss comes ageless wonder—

The freedom of innocent days

Long since taken somehow

Regained.

No remorse then,

Or even pain.

In such loss comes heavenly gain—

And I know it will not be

Long standing—

No, eternity is at our feet

And reality in our hearts.

This time, this place,

This sight

Is nothing but seeking air,

For upon that day we shall rise

And greet the dawn.

Kindness

2008-06-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

by: Sylvia Plath

Kindness glides about my house.
Dame Kindness, she is so nice!
The blue and red jewels of her rings smoke
In the windows, the mirrors
Are filling with smiles.

What is so real as the cry of a child?
A rabbit's cry may be wilder
But it has no soul.
Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says.
Sugar is a necessary fluid,

Its crystals a little poultice.
O kindness, kindness
Sweetly picking up pieces!
My Japanese silks, desperate butterflies,
May be pinned any minute, anesthetized.

And here you come, with a cup of tea
Wreathed in steam.
The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.
You hand me two children, two roses.

Rash Promises

2008-04-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

In that moment I shattered,

Broken in a way beyond repair—

Your lies breaking through like a

Mangling sun, arms reaching out to strangle,

The timelessness of your tongue

Etched and engraved cruelly in my mind

And body—

Forever graphed through a union

Now false.

The fever comes through the lies you’ve implanted,

This shell now empty of the life it has lost.

Yet for this do I die?
For this my fire is snuffed in the cauldron of betrayal?

For this I am denied, the curse of compassion

Reclaiming it’s ridiculous rights over me?

You imprison me, keeping me still so that

You may inflict mercilessly the same stabbing wounds

Over and over,

Your poison dart erect—

That arrow of duplicity, that

Fickle part of you beyond all trust,

Becoming increasingly repulsive.

You want to conquer—you want to claim,

Yet such irony cannot be quenched

By your limitless desires.

Again I am shattered—

That broken vase you found years ago

Who you so cruelly pieced back together.

And why?

Why do you reconstruct what is doomed to fracture?
Would that I take these pieces and sever such pain,

Remove the life from its host,

The lies set within.

Would that I sever all things unholy, unwonted—

I’d rather be replaced

In the case

From which I came.

In isolate wings holds the key to severance,

The protection needed to escape your tyranny,

Your deceitful tongue—

You who pledges and swears with a black heart,

You, the epitome of all that I loathe.

You came to me—you come

Over and over,

With deceit and ignorant protest,

Mocking my unawareness,

Scorning my inquisitions which bring you shame.

And it’s at this moment—

I hate you.

And how to learn to un-hate you?

Or do I even dare—

Leaving myself open to naïve

Love which sears and scars

More than hatred ever could.

And why must I sacrifice myself in order

To serve your gluttonous urges?

Why should I abandon all that you once

Held in high favor—now nothing but

Fractured shadows of something greater.

To the depraved mirror your eyes

Cement—longing for what

You already possess.

But your ignorance is your greatest folly,

So easily thwarted by another’s caress.

And for this I am put back together?
Such cruelty.

Save me no more

And let me whither,

You covetous bastard.

Do not mourn the barbered flower

Without observing the shears in your

Stained hand.

Ghost House

2008-04-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

--Robert Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me--
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

Promises

2008-02-29T13:16:00.000-08:00

We are lying here together

Like time knitting a sweater—

A transparent overcoat, threadbare

And comfortable like 7-yr old pj’s.

You turn to me and smile,

Making some raw, rare noise that

Erupts in me a snide remark;

Your chatter becomes loose and

Familiar, knitted and bound

To our vessels.

Explosive laughter becomes the

Night’s familiar,

Teeth bare and skinless.

We don’t pretend here—

Only become the silences and the gap

Of the others’ limitations.

We just are and have only to be

Ourselves

And each other.

Merrily you turn to my still body,

Eyes sparkling in a way that only you can

Decode or wield,

Saying softly now,

Very softly—

“You’re so beautiful…”

Like the words are as new to you as the image—

Saying it in a tone I nearly find

Convincing—not because

You are false, but that I

Am the Vesuvius of doubt and self-loathing,

The mirror always altered, the

Painting always smudged.

Still—

The excessive curves of my colorless body

Excites you, becoming all you’ve treasured

No matter how I shudder at

Identical sight:

And as we erode, I

Wonder of nightfall promises,

The continuances of such words, actions,

And pledges by the moonside.

As the sweater removes itself,

Unwrapping its coils like a charmed boa,

We no longer care.

A Rock, A River, A Tree

2007-12-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

by Maya Angelou

Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot ...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

My Poetry

2007-11-13T21:24:00.001-08:00

She is up and ready! Here's a screen shot from my publisher's home page for ordering information for my book,
Echoes of a Distant Muse: A Collection of Poetry.
If you're interested in checking out my book,
please feel free to do so!
I welcome any feedback, of course.

You can access the link HERE.

i have found what you are like

2007-11-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

e.e. cummings

i have found what you are like
the rain,

      (Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of green thrilling light
                            with thinned

newfragile yellows

                lurch and.press

-in the woods
           which
                stutter
                       and

                          sing

And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
             your kiss

A Man Said to the Universe

2007-10-22T18:01:00.001-07:00


A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

--Stephen Crane

Mirror

2007-09-13T21:50:00.000-07:00

by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Dulce et Decorum Est

2007-09-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. -
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

2007-08-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

by Randall Jarrell (c.1945)

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flack and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

The Dance

2007-08-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

Dance with me, dance with me, my love.

Forgive my lack of poetry—

The heart speaks on its own,

I try to capture the language as it goes by.

Dance with me, let our souls intertwine

In the starlight of silenced time.

What words need we have?

What more is there to say—

Than I love you, my treasured flower,

I love you.

Dance with me in the garden of our youth,

In the kingly placed divine.

Inside our Eden, treasure me—

Treasure me, envelop me.

Dance with me under the stars,

Under the trees, let us be one.

The fruit of passion,

The seeds that grace has bore,

Give sight, give hope,

Give life again

To troubled hearts,

To fractured souls sought to mend.

This glimpse of eternity

Found in your eyes,

Silences my mind—brings peace.

Dance with me, my love,

My One.

My husband, cherished dear.

Dance with me, my love,

Let us silence the night

And envelope the dawn.

Muse

2007-07-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

All is well.

Life is not found in compensation's kiss.

Your breath does not, in me, implant oxygen

However sweet.

It does not serve a fountain of plenty

I can nowhere else find.

A muse you are, you've come to be

To join the many before you.

But muses die and whither with boredom

Where no uniqueness lie.

A fond heart will oft turn to shame

For love is selfish gain.

We pick players who complement our colors best.

And when their willingness does not bend

Your fondness you begin to rue.

For a shameful heart oft turns to hate

With the love of selfish gain.

The heat withholds the power to murder or create

The tyranny of coexistence.

Copyright © 2002 by Melanie Faith

The Seal of Song

2007-06-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

Upon my soul rests the seal of song--
of dignity, equaled trinity.
The key of my heart trends blessed few
but yet still resigns
The remorse of doing, the fate of time.
Cerebrum renders time immovable,
Unshakable, impenetrable--
Unconquerable, unquenchable.
We resemble the life around us--
The decoded colors of songs reflected
through starlight's gaze
And beyond the scope of the real.
Now is the time to grow.
Now is the time to sing.

Recompense

2007-05-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

O, that this dark cloud would release me! With the gloom of financial woes in conjunction with Vacaville idleness, throw in the sadness of a mother’s heart, a woman’s loneliness, and a human’s solitude, and you have me. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” says the Proverb that all too well describes me at this moment. Yet I remember my own response to someone else who had been low enough to claim this: “For a dream comes through much activity.” Hmm… for some reason this doesn’t sound too promising anymore. The ingredient of activity is null in my life.

I’m going to read some works by William Blake today when I get home. How ignorant I feel that I, too, like Blake, thought that Nobody was spouting seemingly empty Native proverbs. How naive I am that I even studied him in my literature class and only faintly recognized the name, disowning that he was actually a writer.

I want to know why all of my friends leave. I want to know why everyone I care about and love either moves physically or is moved from me emotionally. I want to know why this happens. No one seems to have an answer for this. It just happens. It’s inevitable, like the great gushing geyser; you know it’s spring-loaded; it’s going to come back up. I want to be one of those people-magnet people. You know, those dark, brooding got-it-togethers who are strangely irresistible to a crowd. “I want to be a good person,” chimes an angel-face Gilbert after asked the question, “And you? What do you want?” I want to be a different person. It seems impossible. I don’t even know what the problem is in the first place.

This place is crawling under my skin today. I want to walk out the back door and leave this place in distant memory. I’m so tired of my “life” here; it’s not really living. Through it all, I wonder if he is waiting for me--the one. If I die, would it ripple into his life? If I were to choose that way, would he ever know? Would it matter? If I were his true half, now withered and dead, would his half do so as well? Or realign itself with another? I only feel verified in this life when I write. It is my only pulse. When I am wordless—story-less—I am nothing but in despair. “Some are born to endless night…”

I’m lonely. Debbie’s absence has doused the fire of others’ company. Ken is far from me for his own reasons. Ce la vi, let him go. Tyler is distant for his own reasons. La amour, adieu. Helen is moving far, far from me in more ways than one. Nämaríe mellyanna.

I went for a walk at break time around the slums that is the Vallejo residency. Some houses made me lightheaded; these are generally the ones that are poverty-kissed or decayed with time. Still, there really isn’t a code to crack, it hits when it wants. I walked through the run-down neighborhood, calling in mind Blake’s passage through Machine.

An overweight child mother bends down to get her sweaty infant from the dusty Buick. She is still in her waitress uniform. Down the street from them is old pain-chipped white house with a little white cabinet on the carport. The cabinet has Goodwill toys on the shelves. Three little girls emerge from the screen door into the hot sun. Their clothes are faded and their hair is matted. Down the street from the white house is a two-story house with a square porch at the head of the staircase. A gaggle of Mexicans sat aimlessly, drinking beer and whistling for my attention. On the street, some tall teen asks me if I have a DVD player and offers to sell a copy of Miyasaki’s Spirited Away that he just happens to have with him. I turn the corner and there is a two-story house that seems entirely misplaced on the corner of Alabama. There is a patio with nice hunter green furniture and a plethora of wind chimes dancing over the rosebushes. Across the street, in the small quarter house, a woman screams in profane Ebonics; a man answers her in equal response. There are cute two story duplexes with inward facing doors that I immediately think cozy until a woman screams harshly at a ten year old kid who is sliding out from the door.

The Eternal Sky

2007-05-04T23:07:00.000-07:00

Am I so unlikable, am I so mean? It is a torturing self-mutilating day today, splitting myself into light and dark fractions, causing my brain to swirl with worldly nothingness—
nonsense of the modern-day generation. “Here, please look at these pictures of my kids,” she says, going to everyone in the room but me. Ouch, I think to myself, very blatantly cold.. So, the question stands. Why do people look at me straight-faced and hateful when I bid them good morning? Is it because they can hear the strain in my voice to try to appease? Do they here the laced woes of my boredom-struck heart crying for release out of its chained mediocrity?
I’ve only ever wanted to be different. The social airs and graces of aristocracy have always suited my taste much better than suburbia suffocation. But here I am, dressed in my house-wife costume of pearls and taffeta, ready to embrace “wifedom” and all its submissive glory. Adieu, adieu, my sweet career, my much longed for diploma, my only chance at the lights I’ve always thought myself destined for. Become a writer/editor? Really? When and how would that be accomplished, say you, now that you have complicated your life with normal things...

Normal things? When have you ever been about the normal things? Once I took great pride and definition in being the antithesis of the astute “normal.” Such things I once beheld for myself. Can I really embrace this future with passion? The zeal, if ever there to begin with, surely is not flowing now. Not on this darkened day when storm clouds hover o’er top the sunny skies and the warmth of the now is blanketed by the cold of the eternal.

…But, do I really believe such nonsense? I have no idea what I believe; I am a splintered, fractured image of what I have believe of me for twenty years. You see, I am still nothing more than that pitiful child of yore; nothing past a solemn, tainted, soiled mind, a heart too confused to claim identity. All she knows is what she wants, what she needs—what she clings to in desperation of soul. But who is she? Does anyone know? For now, all I know is that she is unlikable and mean.

Motivation has died.

The eternal sky has seen so much of the same things

What is new? It seems so new when the heart is restless

But it seems so slow when the passion dies

Life drags its heels and crawls rigidly as one suffocates to find their way

But how it must speed itself when things are bright—

I gather so, I must say

I really have no new words here

Just a garbled mess of regurgitated words

Recycled feelings

One can choose their fate of by it be chosen

But it seems that there are multiple paths

That bring about the chosen

And whose to say which is wrong

Until the door slams softly behind them.

A Complex Tapestry

2007-05-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

At times I miss the impression left upon time’s tapestry.

The gentle kiss you’ve planted now long past,

Still sweet in memory’s reserve.

But the beat of your existence is foreign and vast.

Our beings never did coincide—save farcically.
You were my heaven once
When angels deceived.
You were my father once
When no one else relieved.
And how to harness emotions lost?
Or simply misplaced—still confusing—
It’s not that I think ill of you; quite the opposite.
But my experience cannot relate to yours,
Our pain cannot coexist.
Yet you have not dropped your leash.
You pat me on the head and praise me when I obey
While affection is absent and passion, temperamental.
I tried to please you in every action,
Every fraction of my soul was branded.
A silent whisper breathed life into us,
Always at uneven lengths
And how her oxygen sustained me!
While you were distracted by the complexity of our bond
But never consumed
Never compensated.
I do not doubt your admiration;
Or your fondness—these seem true.
A friend with faithful benefits is generally ideal.
An open expression, an open woman,
A flavored kiss without responsibility.
I am to you an inexhaustible resource,
A tarnished but adequate resource for your innocence to justify.
When in this life could I mimic the sanctity you’ve engineered?
With your pity eyes, you gaze on what you believe makes you verified,
Justified, released from guilt.
The fractured vase upon the shelf, less than half a whole
What, then, do you owe?
What, then, could you rob?
A friend with faithful benefits is ideal—
In you compensation stilled is the lack of fabric,
The absence of peace.
Your wing once housed my fragile pieces
Until uneasiness urged to be made of more
Than a distant eagle’s shadow.
A silent whisper breathed death into us, breathed death into paralysis.
The fellowship between dark and darker yet;
An exponent of the other’s core.
Fragile was the embryo cradled in absence of light.
At times I miss the laughter in the night,
The communion between two wounded minds, painting the canvas of stars.
Sometimes the tapestry seems bland without your shadow.

Yet never real…

A Rainy Day's Dreams

2007-04-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

I know my greatest struggles: the ones I have wrestled now for years beyond comparison. I know the deepest pain and sorrow that plagues me endlessly; it is well recognized. The lonely aroma of silence is heavy and thick; the magazine-frenzy aspirations and unreachable dreams… together unite in me an uncanny misery, an unbelievable weight upon me. The demons of past living I’ve grown accustomed to and have been able to bear—it is this new test that overwhelms me: this possible new direction and the embrace of a seemingly impossible future. So where to go next? What steps to properly take? It is a delicate matter, is it not? Or is fate easier that what it seems? It requires meetings I wish not to have, sacrifices I am too afraid to give… aye, me. Aye dios mio…

Life is odd. The people passing by me are muddled, preoccupied with death. We are vessels with our own tales, storybooks bumping each other on the street, rarely ever flipping our pages for one another. Human eyes see flesh and blood in symbols and signs—never as stories and experiences too valuable to go by unshared. When will we learn to appreciate each other? Our minds are filled with cell phones and computers, flashy cars and the stock market—we care nothing about the privileges of existence. The privileges of existence… privileges but complete pointlessness at the same time. There is no point to this life, no permanence. All returns to the dust that once formed it; our efforts are in vain though we refuse to see it. So why be consumed with the aroma of suburbia? What profit does it really bring save the brainwashing of a population? The cycle of life is so short, so sporadic. The animal kingdom is wiser than ours will ever be. They are enrolled in the school of phaseology—the transition from one phase to another; humans are so grounded in permanence.

Bus Station

2007-04-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

I parked that green Mustang in front of the bus station. Without hesitating, I went to the Greyhound ticket counter and bought a one-way fare to California. The bus ride through Indiana went rather quickly; my mind was full. No landscape out the window or idle conversation taking place around me could numb me enough to forget the image I had mistakenly walked in on. Really—Gun and Jo? When did this happen? How long have I been unaware? Why? What was I lacking? What does this mean? A thousand and one questions soared through my brain, rattling it painfully with a paramount of juxtaposed thoughts. Had I done something wrong? Was it right for me to leave? Would it be right for me to come back?

The power surge that I had felt in the house, the adrenaline high that gave birth to my near murderous vindictiveness, had well been subsided by the time those bus wheels crossed the state line. My sensation of independence had been diminished by the time and distance placed between my husband and I. Really, the whole trip was absurd, now that I grasp the clarity and stability of retrospect, but the greatest irony is that was the one steadfast destination in me; I never doubted it. I doubted who I was running away from but I never doubted who I was running to.

When we reached Illinois soil, the second layover was not far behind. It was early morning on the second day; I had been awake all night, just barely falling asleep an hour or so before we stopped at the Grayhound terminal. From its next stop the bus would be heading north. Extreme north.

But, alas, I didn’t wake up at the terminal, and this Canada-bound bus was taking me hostage. I noticed this somewhere in Madison, Wisconsin, when the landscape became interestingly unfamiliar and nothing at all like I had pictured the plains of Oklahoma—byway of the original route—to be.

“Your attention, please. We will be reaching Rochester in approximately three hours. All passengers destined for Saskatchewan, this will be your final and only bus. For those of you going on to Milwaukee, your bus will be ready for loading at the terminal.”

I couldn’t believe it. What was this bus driver talking about? We were going the wrong way! Saskatchewan? –As in the province?

“Excuse me,” I turned to the girl in front of me, a ginger-haired beauty with a beige cap on her head and brilliant yellow headphones around her neck. Some rock band—possibly The Cure—was wailing through the Walkman even though she had removed the set from her ears. “Did he just say that this bus was headed for Saskatchewan?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” she said nonchalantly, round eyes glistening in the morning sun. “Three hours to Rochester.”

I sighed emphatically, my hand sweeping my forehead. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh…”

“Why, where you headed?” the stranger said.

“I thought this bus was going to Tulsa! It was supposed to go to Tulsa—I’m supposed to be heading west not north!” By this time, I was gripping the soft cloth seat in front of me in aggravating panic.

She squinted her eyes as if in silent calculation. “Did you get on the wrong bus or something?”

“No! I’ve been on this bus since I left home—Ohio.” I pulled the creased ticket stub from my pocket, “Look, see?”

The girl took the stub and read it quietly, mouthing it softly, the curves of her petite lips rounding over the
vowels. “Well, says here you were supposed to transfer in Illinois. That’s where I got on, you know.”

“Where are we now?”

“Wisconsin.” She handed the ticket back to me with a slight shrug. “You’re going to have to get on another bus in Minnesota.”

“Oh, man, I can’t believe this!”

“You in a hurry?”

I stopped blinking, looking up at her curiously. It was then that I realized I was not slave to a time-crunched schedule. Why was I concerned about this detour? No one was expecting me except Rowland, and I wasn’t going back.

I smiled suddenly. “No, no I’m not, actually.”

She smiled back at me. “I’m Natalie—or Kit.” She extended her left hand in a kind gesture.

Smiling in curiosity, I shook it gently. “Mae—just Mae.”

“Well, Mae looks like you have a few hours to kill. Company?” Kit patted the empty seat next to her.

I happily relocated, being starved of verbal human contact over the long absent hours of interstate travel.

“What about you? Where you going?”

“All the way to the great Eugene, Oregon,” she laughed, her voice trumpeting in mock grandeur.

Perplexed by her reaction, I commented, “You seem less than thrilled.”

“They say you always return to your beginnings, eh?”

I smiled and muttered under my breath, “Hopefully not.”

“I swore when I left that place I would never come back. I swore Manhattan would be it—the place for me… I was never going to set foot on the west coast again.”

“Yeah?” I said, glancing around the bus. “What happened?”

“Well,” she paused introspectively and then gave a soft chuckle. “I guess I’m not good at being alone.” Her bright face beamed. “My boyfriend—I left him after five years. He wanted to get married—I wasn’t ready to be tied down. So I left. I wanted to be on Broadway. More than anything I wanted to be on Broadway. Been a dream of mine since I was a little girl.”

“Did you make it there?”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “Yeah, I made it there… but dreams don’t typically come true for people like us, Mae. I made it to New York and I made it to my first audition after ten months… I was the best damn New York waitress you’ve ever seen.” Natalie paused dreamily. “But Danny—he’s still waiting for me back in Eugene…”

“What did you mean just then—‘people like us?’ ” I decided to challenge, a look of perplexity plastered on my face.

She looked startled, as if she was worried if I had offended her. “I mean, you know, dreamers. I hope you find who you’re looking for, Mae. You’d be incredibly lucky.”

I was becoming bleaker by the second. Was there something to this girl’s loss? Was she right?

“If it’s fate you won’t be traveling back this way. No, you’ll be staying in those golden hills. Your ticket— ” she pointed to my pocket where the ticket lay slumbering.

I looked down to my pocket, “Oh,” I muttered. But she said who. She had been under the impression that I was staying.

I looked up at her once again. There was a trailing silence where neither of us really knew what to say. She was still smiling—it seemed to never stop. She was looking at the window as if she recognized the trail, as if she had embarked down this path previously.

“Do you love him?” I softly asked.

She inhaled deeply, still smiling, earnestly fastening her eyes to the Wisconsin hills. “Yeah.” Her eyes seemed to sparkle with some hidden information; like she had the key to some great treasure that I didn’t even know existed.

Naturally, I was fascinated, but I couldn’t bring myself to question her any further. She seemed so content with her answer, so content with her passage home in spite of her mourning of intrepid dreams lost, that I could not bring myself to further question it nor trivialize her tranquility.

“Do you love him?” Kit asked me.

I had let myself slip into a temporary state of disorientation. “Pardon me?”

“Do you love him? The one you’re leaving?”

“How did you…?” I was startled but once again decided not to fight it. “Yes.” I shrugged nonchalantly. “But I guess he doesn’t love me.”

“Another girl?”

“Best friend.”

“Ouch,” Kit said, nodding her head as if she had experienced a similar experience. “What about the one you’re going to now? Does he love you?”

I flashed my head suddenly to look at her, eyes large, and mouth bustling. Who was this girl? How did she know these things? I laughed suddenly for it was the only suitable thing I could think of to do. The anomaly of my answer was too bizarre even for me once I heard it spoken aloud, “I’ve never met him.”

Judging by Kit’s expression, this is the one reply she hadn’t been savvy to. There was an instant where she looked confounded but it quickly erased from her gentle face.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s a long way to travel for a blind date.”

I smiled. “He doesn’t know I’m coming.”

“A surprise visit to the man you’ve never met? This is interesting,” she grinned mischievously as if she were reading a steamy quarter paperback.

I sighed, a slight smirk on my face. “He doesn’t even know who I am.”

We stopped somewhere outside of Omaha at a cheap truck-stop. The driver, a husky fellow in an under-washed uniform, was grunting obscure directions to the disgruntled, restless passengers.

“I firmly believe in the hereafter—if you’re not here at this bus in fifteen minutes, count on catching the next bus here after.”

Very few murmurs of acknowledgment came—very few people were listening to the large man who had already found his way down the bus’s jaws, choking the railing as he made his descent.

Being in the back of the bus, I had to yield most irritatingly to the hosts of stale people ahead of me. It was two o’clock in the morning but these people needed their Subway meatball sandwiches and Big Gulps. I just wanted to get to the bathroom—the Greyhound atrocity was a lost resort. After a cross-country bus ride, ones’ appreciation of a stationary bathroom with fixed plumbing cannot be measured or translated in the English language.

Nesh was fussing with Tyrone’s bulging jacket. Why he needed a jacket in this delightfully and unusually warm weather was beyond me—but no matter how she naively pushed this child on me, I was not his mother, so what could I say about jackets and such things? I had no children, I didn’t know any better. I was a child myself.

She held him outstretched with both hands like some bizarre adolescent offering. I took him gently in my arms, making strange auntie faces that would have scared the roughest of souls.

“You want anything?” I asked, continuing to recite the baby language to this adorable creature.

“Just some water,” she said in her thick Ghanaian accent. “Are you hungry?” She called behind me as I escorted Tyrone off the steel monster, the engine sounding in the night like a gaggle of deep-throated bullfrogs.

“I could really go for some Redvines,” I said nonchalantly—you must realize that it is never too early in the morning, or too late for that matter, to enjoy a whole box of luscious red licorice straws.

Nesh took Tyrone from me at the foot of the steel stairs, handing me the suitcase diaper bag in his place. I proceeded to strangle my shoulder with the white strap.

We found our way into the fern-filled restroom, Kenny G. crooning nauseously in the background.

“Here,” she said, handing the little human back to me. After he was in my arms and she was halfway in the cubicle she asked, “Do you mind holding him while I go?”

I did so willingly, of course, as I had been doing the last twelve hours since my introduction to this strange woman not because she had already walked away from me but because I felt strangely obligated to assist her.

The stall door closed and zippers were played like xylophones. And then came the god-awful silence where Kenny G. reigned and Tyrone’s hungry pleas uncomfortably resounded off the eggshell walls.

Occasionally a woman or two would walk in and glance at me—a pure product of an Irish marriage bed—holding this Ghanaian child in the middle of a truck stop bathroom, completely still and unresponsive to a child that clearly was eager for dinner.

A look was given and I sighed slightly, diverting my eyes to the face of the stall where rustling sounds reverberated—the longest bathroom occupancy of all time was taking place. The toilet had been flushed—what was the delay? I felt entirely too involved with this. My mind, a polluted result of maturity, left me paranoid in this place where every face was a strangers’, even the one whom had served as some ironical counterpart—she was still an alien to me. Would she leave me here? Never coming out of that stall and forcing me to take Tyrone under my own wing, the two of us traveling to rest stop to rest stop on Greyhound busses for the rest of our lives?

“Are you alright in there?” I asked uncomfortably. What if she had had enough? Decided to end her life right there in that bathroom stall in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska? A sweeping sense of aloneness washed over me as I held this strange child in my arms.

Or perhaps, perhaps we would miss the bus, the three of us. Perhaps because of her long-winded bathroom adventure, we would be stuck in this Subway food mart until the next bus passed through town in a few days. At this point this seemed to be the more immediate danger. My only possessions were on that bus. That steel dog was my torpedo to future hopes and dreams and I could not afford to miss it.

More rustling. “Yes, I’m fine,” Nesh called as the rustling continued. “It’s these dang—”

I never did figure out what she was talking about. Shortly after, she came out of the cubicle’s mouth and made her way to the diaper bag. Taking out a can of powdered Similac, she began to make Tyrone’s next three meals while he squirmed anxiously in my arms.

By now the clock was taunting me. I began to make for the door slowly and insinuatingly. I was highly tense as the hands on the clock drew closer to the “hereafter.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Nesh called out in the distance, fumbling with the bottles.

I watched her, most interested, beaming a brilliant smile. For she had burrowed her way into my heart, you see. This woman who seemed undeniably and achingly alone, without anyone at all besides the company of a wordless child—I felt strangely protective over them both, even though she was alluringly independent.

“We really have to get to the bus,” I pleaded mildly as I peaked out the bathroom door to see the bus driver placing his Tasty Cakes and 32oz. Mountain Dew on the counter. “That guy won’t have any qualms about ditching us.”

We finally made our exodus from the bathroom when Nesh turned left to the cooler instead of straight to the exit. “I just need to get some water first,” she said. “And your Twizzlers?”

“Redvines,” I said insistently and impatient. “We don’t have time, Nesh, we’ve got to go.”

“Nonsense. If he can’t wait for two women with a baby then he has no heart.”

I glanced back at the man at the counter and shrugged, unimpressed by the likelihood that he would, indeed, have one.

She gathered and paid for the items in what seemed like an eternity. But we were right behind the driver on our descent from the store. Walking at an unusually quickened pace, he allowed the glass door of the gas station to shut in place of chivalrously holding it for us, being that our hands were completely full.

Before I could blink, he was manning the bus door—a seemingly full bus—but I was convinced that this tubby man had every intention on making examples of us.

Nesh was far behind me, fumbling with God-knows-what this time; I jogged earnestly with little Tyrone bouncing on my hip.

“Hold the door!” I demanded as the driver gripped the lever lustfully.

The man and I exchanged annoyed glances. Could he possibly argue that we weren’t at the bus in time? I was right below the bottom step. And there was no way he was going to drive off without Nesh while I was standing there with her son on my hip.

The door swung closed swiftly, a marriage of glass and rubber, as we made our way down the throat of the wheeled ship and reclaimed our cluttered, cramped seats. The engines roared like a lioness in heat, idling long enough for me and several others in the back of the bus to catch a glimpse of a man running in great determination.

I recognized the man. He sat a few rows ahead of me, an elderly Japanese man named Aki Miyasuki. I glanced at his empty seat and then again to the window. Startled by a sudden grinding sound as the bus driver threw the clutch into gear, I swung a glance to the port of the bus. Several commuters continued to intercede for the delayed passenger.

“Wait! Wait!” they cried. “Someone’s left behind!”

“Well,” the oafish man began, “that’s just too bad. Fair warning.”

I stood up swiftly in protest, “What? You can’t do that!”

I could see his eyes reflected in the large rectangular mirror above his head. They were fiery strong. There was a sudden jerk as the wheels were awakened and began to roll under the command of its master’s foot. I began to make my way to the head of the bus where the driver smugly sat, clearly enjoying this.

“You can’t leave him here! He’s just a poor old man! Look, he’s having trouble walking!”

But still he ignored me.

“Pull over!” I screamed, gripping the back of his chair as the turn threw my balance off center.

He flashed his head to face me, “Back off, lady!”

“No! You’ve got to stop the bus!”

“If you don’t sit down you’ll be joining him, do you understand?”

“Pull over or I’ll report you,” I said firmly.

We were approaching the stop sign, the gate barring the freeway. After this point, all hope would be lost for the poor man who was still desperately trying to catch up. Something in the driver’s reserve was shattered with the challenge. Perhaps the endeavor had lost any form of reward. Perhaps he was bored. Perhaps he was intimated by me—something I could not fathom because it was such a foreign occurrence. His moved his hand in defeat to the door lever, pulling it back harshly, causing the doors to fling open with the trademark sound. Aki was a few paces off yet but catching up nicely for a man with a walking disability.

When he set foot on the steps, a chorus of clapping resounded through the spine of the bus. Shyly, he found his way back to his seat, his posture bowed in submission and what I’m sure was great embarrassment. Two o’clock in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. Not a sight for miles, save the sandwich-filled truck stop.

Resurrection of Past Hauntings

2007-04-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there is a resurrection of past hauntings. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the memory of a forgotten face. I wonder how the darkness fares—or the light? Perhaps I remain to be and always will be a silly girl—a silly, loveless girl, motivated by longing. Perhaps my neediness will never give way to a greater reality. Eros, turannos. I am helpless, constant, and eternal.

Swelling life seems so utterly useless. It is all void of true vision—timeless, ageless impression—all breath is but a mere blinking pleasure—pain—complete impermanence. For what great gain do we live here? Or breathe? Or sigh? Some say that life is beautiful and some say that life is a precious gift, but the inconsistency of it seems—to me—to outweigh the blinking fascinations. We love, we all love. We love those who do not love us—those who do not know us and those who know us but do not care. And then there are the few whom we love and love in return—those lovers who are rare and come closest to relevance—but those, they, the lovers, they all fade, or die, or melt away with a selfish lie. No earth-bound heart is true or pure; we all breathe the same tainted air, the same mass-marketed deceptions. And though all living—the politics of it—seems so timely and insurmountable, an implantation of thoughtfulness is engrained in us all. There seems to be a higher order in our institute of time, of mortality. Yes, breathing is redundant and repetitive—there is nothing new under the sun or the Son, but what is this great seed in me that pleads to go on with this cumbersome, tiring journey? What is it that leads me here?

Music is immortality. Melodies and harmonies, flashes of retrospect well captured in vibrant color. Music is the search for purity in the living and the dead. Heartbreaks and first loves, death and resurrection all captured, summoned by the bellowing of belated bells and horns, symphonic sweetness. How complete living would be if it consisted of musical residency.

How many times I have prayed that I do not succumb to the same content mediocrity as others I have known. I fail to see the expectation of wanting to forge myself into a dull and dreary society. Marry, bare children, work for that 401K, and pray to God your marriage of 41 years doesn’t leave you a widow, regardless of what number husband you’re on. And your kids—you hope to God that they don’t get shot down in their 8^th grade biology class by a 14 year-old with an automatic. Meanwhile, everyone in superb suburbia has matching sport utility vehicles and matching cell phones so everyone can cross-communicate on their way home from their 9-to-5 in the daily gridlock over the hills that once were pastures for cows. But there aren’t any more cows—they’re something you see in illustrative books, full of paintings of things long expired. All dairy and beef is now manufactured with chemicals and beakers and test tubes in a factory in some smoggy city.

We’ll continue to honor our sport icons and our movie starlets over those nameless, faceless people who are trying to preserve the farce of human goodness. We do not make ourselves good. We cannot have good in us as an uncomplimentary source.

Living equals medication. All urges are to medicate: medicate with sex, with money, with greed—this false paradigm of love, this false world. But no one knows how to truly be okay with their ailment, to resist the urge to medicate. How much stronger those people must be—if they exist. I medicate. We all do. And that is why life is useless, for good is something we fail to recognize within ourselves.

What do the dead have to say about the living? Not the dead in the ground or in fancy vases, but the dead in jars—bell jars—while everyone else walks right past them, oblivious to the fact that there are dead people all around them. These dead people in their cylindrical glass jars, sitting quietly, yet restlessly waiting for their status to change. Some urge for life while others are perplexed that death does not equal finality—where to go now? Now that I am dead? Dead and bored, a spectacle for the aimless; yet I get to be a spectator as well…

The living walk by with their Starbucks latte in one hand and their Wallstreet Journal in the other; they pass by all the bell jars, brimful with soul (yes, the dead still have these), on their way to work, oblivious. They wonder what traffic will be like on the way home, that beautiful new home they bought with the green lawn that looks like a retired cow pasture, where they will sit down to watch primetime TV—ER or West Wing—which one to choose? They wonder how their new BMW is doing in its automotive playpen, while walking down the granite street to the quickest coffee shop, hoping that all the other flashy cars are playing nice. The living walk on green—always—motivated by its stench, consumed lustfully by its shape and color, while our poor players pant and sigh noiselessly, our poor bell-jarred players—some born dead, some dead by suffocation of the living, some clueless to their death and that there is a contrast between the two. They are as oblivious as the living.

It is a risky business, the politics of humanity. However risky or trivial, it is pointless. There are office politics that I do not understand. Politics between the sexes, so softly uttered that it is beyond the eardrum’s capability. How much easier life would be if it were void of deceptive politics, but we have built nations upon this principle.

Breath is utterly void of meaning—tasteless, suffocating. I rather like my place in my transparent apartment. I have gotten used to the passerbys. Sometimes one will stop and show me the time and I am mesmerized by the gold Rolex on his bony wrist. Sometimes I am even pacified by glittering things, shiny, flashy nuances, but I remember the sacrifices made. I go on feigning breath by consuming my lungs with placebo oxygen and it soothes my core. I go on. I go on. I go on in my bell jar. I go on, I go on. Something greater must drive me. Perhaps it is because there is nowhere else to go after death.

Some say that I am dark, deep—depressing and darker still. Some say I am hard to consume but I say, No Matter. No Matter to you, No Matter what you refuse yourself. No Matter what you smugly say about my honesty. I am sorry I’ve upset you—No Matter. Apologies are window-dressing. A deceitful person always apologizes; apologizes excessively. No Matter. I’m sorry.

What is darkness? Would it look so black if lacking contrast? Or would it stand on its own, its own separate entity? No Matter. It would still exist. Darkness fluxuates with the light, they are one.