childhood

today i laid upon a lawn chair upside-
down after a lunch of peanut butter,
jelly, and string cheese, feet to the sun,
and looked inside a gentle blue sky.

i saw a tiny cloud, the size of one
small child, traveling so so fast
then dissipating before my eyes
under the urgency of the wind.

now the sky is thunder, angry, pouring
water from her side and breasts,
and i think i finally understand
what it was you were running from. 

free therapy session

today i turned the interview
into an innerview of all
my thoughts and fears.
i should not have let her in
so far behind my tailored suit;
she was just so darn nice.

sexual squash education

today i learned about the birds and the bees
for the plants and the trees and the squash
blossom. yesterday i thought all flowers were
girls, yellow and star-faced and turned
to the sun. i harvested men secure in their beauty,
and widowed their women, green bellies swelling.


Apparently you can eat squash blossoms!  What a wonderful world!

over breakfast

gaping, maddening hole

where the idol plank got plucked. 

i was eating eggs.

in the family room

today my mother danced
while singing "hula hands"
after a song I sang about
tomorrow's plans.
we took time to laugh
at our dog, Bamboo,
and Katie gave me a list
of her chores to do.
(Because I was too lazy
to buy her birthday things,
I made her coupons
for indentured servanting)
some evenings are pleasant
as presents can be,
wrapped in disguise
of the ordinary.

This one a day thing is harder than I thought.  I guess it is good to be forced to write something off the cuff....depending on what this blog is for which I haven't really figured out yet, but for now, this is what I've got!  I really am grateful for my family.  It feels like one of the only places in my life right now not up in the air.  

clock work

today i heard the bridesmaids

arrived forty five minutes late.

stepped in, looked around,

shrugged and took their place.

the mexican culture seems so 

happy, she said, and so i thought 

about the nature of time until i 

looked at the clock and realized i 

had to go. (there’s an anxious white

rabbit inside my heart wearing

a waistcoat and running the show.)

My sister is getting married soonish, and there is a lot of anxiety around everything being "perfect."  Not necessarily for my sister, but there's a nervous energy around the whole event for a lot of people in white, suburban culture that she is surrounded by in this process from the florist to the bridal shop.  Everything must be run, well, like clockwork.  Sometimes there is a sigh at the end of a wedding day, not in joy, but in relief that nothing went wrong.   I could probably take a couple pages out of another culture's book.  It's such a different mindset from my own, but it's really wonderful.  Actually my sister is probably way better at this than I am.  I just don't care about wedding decor.  (By the way, the story is from an actual wedding today, not even the rehearsal!)

self-conscious

I thought 

      someone heard and 

            turned on all the lights

  but it was just the sun

       come out 

            and shining

        through the stained

                glass eye of God

                      as I played the broken 

                  piano and sang

                        on the top

                                 of all our lungs.

I think I will set a goal to capture one moment every day for 12 days.  Yesterday was day one.