Out and Back

The Coney Island Effect

This city envelopes me like the warm embrace of a long-lost friend.
The kind of friend who knows me so well that we can speak in our own kind of shorthand, replacing
words with gestures and forming entire paragraphs with just our eyes.

That feeling of "everything is going to be OK" that usually comes and goes so quickly
or never comes at all
seems to last longer when I am here, in the arms of this place.

Foreign and familiar at the same time.  Lovely and thrilling,
with the slightest hint of something dangerous,
like a line I am afraid to cross and yet cannot help but dream of crossing.

Maybe next time.

Migraine

You are the tension in my jaw,
the ache in my lungs,
the dizzy, feverish feeling I get when I stand up.
You are the urge to start smoking again,
the swelling of my eyelids,
the visual-field disturbances,
the fog in my brain.
Everything up until now was just a little too easy,
so I guess that must mean you're the hard part.

Asbury Park

If Coney Island is home, then
Asbury Park is where my relatives live,
hiding in piles of sand and rubble,
swinging from construction cranes
and juggling hard hats.
I run between the great monoliths
that bookend the sea.
The boardwalk is my road map,
my bookmark,
keeping my place between ocean and sky.

4-inch heels

A few stray lines of poetry that came to me today:

How tall are you?  I forget. 
But I bet in these shoes
I could look you right in the eye.

I get inspired by the wackiest things.  This morning it was my black (butter soft) leather Manolo Blahnik pumps with the 4-inch heels.

(Well, I guess that's not so wacky.)

After Linda Gregg

All the things I will never be.

I can almost believe in
my powers of persuasion but
I'm not that manipulative, sorry.

The energy I am expending
to hope is taking too much
out of me and I cannot
love myself anymore --
instead,
when I look in the mirror
now, all I see is what
I am not and
all the things I will
never be.

1.)

Yours.

-2000

Insomnia

Thick night, tasting of Marlboro and Rolling Rock,
and I'm staring down the garish evening glare
with a severe case of one-track mind.
High altitudes at the sound of your
voice and my 3 a.m. amateur philosophy sessions
with my head on the pillow and no one listening
in.
I write my way through two or three glasses
of wine and close my eyes to a world I'm
too comfortable inhabiting,
and there is only one sense left behind.
Someone told me once I'd sleep better if I
wrote down all the things that don't leave my head
after sundown but I don't like to take the time anymore
since everything goes on its own now
(even my violent desire to get rid of that green carpet).
Everything but this quiet euphoria of
a confirmed existence that somehow
substantiates my own.

-1999

Budweiser and Buddy Guy

Another one from the vault... written March 20, 1998.

Budweiser and Buddy Guy

So tell me something I don't know...
How long has it been for you?
Do you believe in this?  Believe in what?
You know... this.
I woke up on a Saturday morning in my bed,
but it didn't feel like my bed.  So strange,
but nothing a pack of smokes and some good, loud
driving music won't cure.
I have to pull myself away and forget about you for awhile
otherwise there's nothing to gain
when my phone rings at six a.m.
and I am once again drawn in.
He's not you, and I'm not her
so.... OK
I think we'll do in a pinch.

Siskiyous Song

This poem literally came to me while I was driving north on I-5 in California, in the vicinity of Lake Shasta.  I was 23 years old, cruising through the California sun on a hot August day in my '98 Honda Civic with no air conditioning, smoking Marlboro reds and listening to Greg Brown on the tape deck (yes, the tape deck) and this poem slammed into me harder than a "semi with smokin' wheels" (to quote a Greg Brown song.)

There were no exits in the vicinity.  I was driving 70 miles per hour, and my book and pen were beside me on the passenger seat.  I couldn't stop to write it down, so I repeated it to myself over and over again, line by line, staring at the mountains ahead of me as they filled up the windshield, so I wouldn't forget it.

I stopped at a rest area near Weed and wrote it down.  I was overtired, dehydrated, and shaky, and I still had hours of driving ahead of me (my destination that day was Eugene, Oregon.)  My physical destination, that is.  Spiritually, a part of me was left behind... twisting on the side of the road off of highway 99 in California's central valley.  I think that part of me might still be there, but I've never gone back to check.  Here's the poem:

Siskiyous Song

I-5 north, somewhere between
San Francisco and the rest of the world...
my mountain rises in the distance,
urging me forward to climb to its
cloud-glazed summit,
but the crossroads won't leave my mind.
Must keep going, Modesto always
at my back,
the only image an empty house
and sprinklers hydrating somebody's
mom's flowers.
My mountain keeps calling me as I
resist -- for the thousandth time, it seems --
the urge to punch a number I know by heart
into the phone.
My voice carries into the chasms
of freeways and towns just on the
big side of small
(Rotarians and Lions, don't you know?)
where an auto mechanic and a coffee
shop waitress live out one more
little romance, unaware of this predicament
as teardrops pour a libation to the sky.

August 13, 1999

 

Clear Below 12,000 Feet

This is a poem I wrote on June 3, 1999.  It is still one of my favorites.

Clear Below 12,000 Feet

Eleven days since the last morning.
And I don't feel so bad, either.
My hair's dark red and trimmed up nice and curling
in the humidity of oncoming rainstorms.
I think I'm losing weight.  At any rate
I'm eating less junk.
Monday was overcast and I liked it that way
for a change.
There will be enough "dog days" this summer,
enough days when the heat's so bad it pushes us
into a cold bath and a long, inconvenient, expensive
stretch
before the air conditioner.
So why not rain?
Why not a day just chilly enough
to make a cup of hot coffee and a cigarette
among friends at the Red sound appealing?
Why not a drizzly night with just me and the TV,
tuning in to the latest "docu-drama" because
I'm bored with the drama of "real life,"
if you want to call it that.
Why not a moment when I pull my blanket
over me and don't notice that it still smells
like you?
I'm watching the weather channel and I came
to a conclusion two days ago that I don't miss you.
I don't.

Widow

Black suit and white pearls,

big sunglasses,

emergency cigarettes.

Grieving a loss no one can know about.

Tears on the dashboard,

broken diamonds

whispering truth.

Coney Island mist

This photograph, taken by my father-in-law, inspired me to write.  Here it is, folks.  The first poem I've written in five years:

Curiosities from around the world collected in one spot
Horses, real and mechanical, stretching from Stillwell to Brighton Beach
A famous hot dog born beside the sand and sea
Simultaneous screams of terror and delight, unearthly rumblings
Electric lights drowning out the stars, blazes of glory illuminating the way
for the scores of the faithful.

Mid-week poetry break

I am in a bit of time crunch today, so this post will be brief.  I was rooting around in a file of old poetry the other night and found this one.  I almost forgot I had written it.  We have had some unseasonably warm weather (and some thunderstorms) this week, so this one seemed appropriate.  Enjoy.

The Other Way

Met part of you going the other way, and I was
sweltering in my black t-shirt, waiting
for the first summer rainstorm.
Lightning, yellow and green in the maples
and poplars and thunder violating
the backs of my knees.
I rolled the car window down and sang along
with the radio like they do in the movies.
Barefoot on the pavement, my smoldering
cigarette leaving a trail for you to follow.
Smoke signal? Yeah.
My pals left at midnight
and I had a beer.
Nights like this and I realize
exactly how not here you really are.
And I just keep going
the other way.

 
(Summer 1999)