(this is only temporary)
I was going to do Confession Tuesday a day late today (synopsis: I am a procrastinator, a braggart, and a hypocrite, not necessarily in that order), but I wound up napping and writing a wedding poem with Dana instead. Such is life.
Also, heads up on the new RWP prompt by Carolee for next week… get set to write some hot ‘n’ nasty stuff! (Wait, I’m not saying it right. Read her post instead.)
Collaborative poetry stimulates the pleasure region of my brain.
1
I’ve taken a job at Bally’s. Our weight room is dimly lit and musky. A client comes in and talks to the manager while I stand nearby. The client, a petite blonde, explains that it’s her boyfriend’s fantasy to have sex in a public exercise area. She asks if we’d be OK with cleaning the place up (sanitizing it, I think she says) and securing the premises for a short while. My manager loves this idea. I try to warn her that it might not be the most responsible thing to do, but she shrugs off my advice. I loathe the idea of preparing the place of my work for a romantic rendezvous, and the idea of cleaning up after the event is even worse. Plus I know something no one else does: that this client isn’t planning a creepy but well-intentioned surprise for her boyfriend, but that she wants to bring him there to get his hopes up, but will save all her acrobatic, aerobic moves for someone waiting in the shadows.
2
I sink into the clawfoot tub and let its warm water hold my bones. My feet press against the white porcelain and my right elbow props up my hand holding the lit cigar against the old basin’s lip. I glance out the door of our rough-hewn bathroom. I see the quilt and the still form wrapped in it. I think of my mother’s hair inside the quilt, her hair and her blood. I soak and and I think of what will happen, how I will pull up some of the floorboards and leave her there, how I will flee the place of my birth, how the uniformed men will find her, and then probably me, how no matter what I tell them, they will never understand the things she did to me—things a mother should never do to a son.
3
I’m at work, and as the day plows into hot, humid afternoon, I grow faint with hunger, as is often the case. Hot sweat stings the back of my neck. I feel like I’m plummeting from a sugar high, but I can’t remember the last time I ate anything. I start to laugh at the absurdity of it, how hungry I feel, and how senseless it is. People realize there is something wrong. I’m dizzy. I start tipping backward, and there are hands below me, breaking my fall. I hear them saying something about getting me crackers from the break room, but i know I won’t eat them. I love this buzzing, burning, not-here feeling too much.
I either A) have a friend who asked me about this poem, or, more likely B) had a dream where said friend asked me about this poem. Either way, I realized I haven’t posted it here yet, and I always post this poem. Makes current blog feel like home. Here ya go.
.
Apology in Second Person
While dinner cooked, I watched the twilight play
Through the catalpa, turning leaf by leaf,
Finally to be trapped in the dark mass of
The maples, night’s secret. What little splayed
In fingers on the lawn fell over furrows,
Grassy striae, signatures, the hundred
contrails of the mower where I left them,
Still unraked and broken only by
My path home and some hummocks of clogged grass,
Formed where the mower coughed in thicker growth:
Burial grounds of guilt for things not done.
Anyhow, I stood thinking of something
I was reminded of about that calm,
And presently dinner was ready. Of course I knew
That later I would clean up, do the bills,
Read to the children, draw all those pages down
And work at them past midnight. Like mowing,
Some of this holds the whole tilled world shapely
A short while. Only a little, like striking
The children’s mystery sheltered in the maples,
Remakes the world; those chores one ought to do
Remain undone, change into waiting. I had
No time to do the raking. Nor do you.
– Anonymous
I ran off to the grocery store this afternoon and put together an I’m-way-too-crampy-to-enjoy-this-Sunday-afternoon care package for myself: Pom pomegranate blackberry tea, a book off the cheap “Bestseller” shelf near the magazine racks, and some freshly baked, dark chocolate, two-bite brownies. (OK, more than a few, but they came packaged that way.)
After lounging a bit this afternoon (and taking some Midol), I felt rejuvenated enough for a bike ride and walk with the dogs. The world was golden and smelled pretty sexy, too. I came home, showered, and was getting dressed for a dinner date with an old friend, when she called and canceled (due to anxiety issues, which meant as bummed as I was for me, I felt even worse for her).
But it’s all good; I’m watching Mr Bourdain on the Travel Channel, the kitty is asleep in my lap, and I’ve still got a lot of brownies left to munch on.
Things I want to write on soon: dreams, work/job/purpose-hunting, more on the aftermath of the same-sex crush, and (not to be written on, but simply written:) poetry!
– think vermicelli thoughts! you have no knees for the next 60 seconds!
– let your head be the cork popping off the bottle
– is everyone cracking their walnut between their cheeks? between your lower cheeks. use the uppers for smiling.
– heads up—always, heads up! remember who you are, my royal ballerinas.
– repeat until your body is more aware than your mind, then dance.
– hips, hips, hips!
– your competition is always with yourself, never with your neighbor. no one knows you like you do.
– now tenderly, gingerly, release from the stretch cautiously, because your body is a temple—it is the most expensive thing you own.
– everything stretches up from your hips, except your shoulder blades. let those shoulder blades slide down your back.
– hold… hold… and release… now do the novocaine wiggle!
– now bring both hands together… superwoman pose!
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