Prodigal Aspersions

Three Films

2011-11-07T13:07:00.001-06:00

The Wizard of Oz (1939), Victor Fleming, director

This film speaks volumes about my upbringing. I don't mean the theme of valuing home and family. I am not referring to the parallel of a little girl out wandering the countryside with animals for her only companions. It's not even Dorothy's fears, although there is certainly something there.

The Wizard of Oz points out how integral church was in my life. Yep. Church.

I lived right behind Keeling Baptist Church. I could roll out my front door and wind up at the bottom of the hill up against the church's back wall. We were church-going peeople...well, my mother and siblings and I were. My father wasn't a churchgoer. His membership was recorded at the Cypress Hut, a beer joint down in the Hatchie bottoms. But we kids went to church. Oh, yes.  Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday prayer meeting. And we didn't miss for anything.

Well, there was one thing. Sometimes. Every once in a while there was The Wizard of Oz.

Once a year, the local tv station would show Dorothy and her pals on a Sunday night. As soon as we heard the promo, we would beg to be allowed to stay home to watch. Julie got the privelige way before I did. My mother felt I was too little to tolerate the Wicked Witch without nightmares. When I was old enough to stay, Julie still poked fun at me about hiding my eyes during the scary parts.

Who killed my sister?   It terrified me. I inevitably had trouble sleeping. And yet, I couldn't wait to watch it again the next year.

Funny how the real life terrors never got that much attention.

My father was a terror. He delighted especially in scaring Julie on the way back from the outhouse. Our little house on the hill wasn't equipped with a flush toilet. We used the outhouse at the back of the church property until I was in second grade. She used to ask me to go with her. I wasn't as afraid of the dark as she was, even though I was four years younger. With Daddy out there to torment her, who can blame her? He was tall, well over 6 feet and Ichabod Crane thin back then.

He would alternately pound on the walls of the stinking shithole or lay in wait for her on the way back. Sometimes he would say, "Something is gonna get you out there," with a gleeful grin on his gaunt face. And then, he wouldn't do a thing. The trip to the toilet would be full of anticipatory fear and nothing would happen. He was clever about his terror tactics.

Dorothy walked a scary road with her companions too. The witch was always there in their minds, with her threats hanging in the air like fog. I'll get you, Pretty, and your little dog too.

Sometimes the wait for the Wicked Witch to pop up was worse than the reality of her appearance in a cloud of hellish smoke. Same for Daddy.

Dorothy left Oz. I left Tennessee.

There ends the parallel, though. When Dorothy went back to Kansas she found her truth: There's no place like home. When I left Tennessee, I prayed there would never be.

~~~

All three of my films are The Wizard of Oz. I first viewed Dorothy's story as a way to learn to take my eyes down from my face and see my fears without letting terror control me. This was a handy skill to have. I wasn't done facing the dangers of the road when Daddy left my life. It's a lot easier to fight a witch when you can see where she is and find a big pot of water.

Next, The Wizard of Oz became something else for me, as I focused on Oz, the Great and Powerful. Oz, it turns out, is just a man and not even a very accomplished or erudite one. He did what he could with the Emerald City and they benefitted from it, even after he flew away on a balloon. I have tried to do that along the way...leave a little something behind.

Finally, TheWizard of Oz is for me a story of home and how to make home with those you find along the way. It's embracing the misfits of life and finding that they have your back and will go right into the witch's castle to rescue you. It's looking back on that life later and saying it was a good one. It's appreciating how a life's story can turn out.

All those other Sunday morning and nights were filled with stories. They provided a kind of map of the road. Turns out all that church attendance was useful. I would hide out there and the other local church to escape from what was at home. Church saved me, and not just in the usual sense of the word. It was a place of sanctuary for me. It modeled a safe haven that I used later to create family. My road would have been much longer without it.

Thanks for meeting me at this place on the road.

And you were there. And you, and you...

Story Books

2011-10-30T17:34:00.001-05:00

Four books.

This is impossible. So I will give you four stories about books.

***

Book Story One. Baptist Hymnal.

Today, Kyndall gave us a sermon at Covenant with the topic of All Saints Day. As a part of the service, we could go up and light a candle in honor of someone who has died that embodied Christ's presence for us. For Baptists, this is pretty unfamiliar territory. We aren't the standard brand of Baptists.

Just before and during the candle lighting, we sang a capella "Be Still My Soul." This is one of the old traditional high church hymns that I find particularly meaningful. I love the melody and hearing the congregation sing the various parts. Singing it makes my mouth, my heart, and my head feel in right relationship.

After lighting my candle for Granddaddy, I went to the back door to look out at the green growing things. All I know about the land and animals I learned from Jim Thompson, Sr. While the rest of the congregation sang the last verses, I just listened.

It occurred to me that I was hearing the song I want the ones I love to hear when I am remembered after I die. That is very appropriate for the day.

Book Story Two. Bible.

Specifically, 1 John 3:1-3. "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are."

And that is what we are. My granddaddy was a loving man. He would allow me to give him a manicure on his gnarled arthritic fingers. I could brush his lush white hair and put a bow in it. He could run a farm and keep everyone fed. He never made me afraid. Jim Thompson, Sr. is the reason that I can hear the word Father in connection with God without throwing up. Jimmy Junior did not ever give me one minute of the calm, ordered presence that Jim Senior did. That, my friends, is the embodied presence of God in a work shirt.

***

Book Story Three. The Book of My Life.

People show up in the scenes of my life for a while. I have lived a long time and moved a lot, living all over the world. Marriage to a military man has made my book of life one of short chapters, with characters popping up for too brief appearances.

Liz and Jason, and now little Sarah Rose, are two of those people. They came here because Liz was stationed with the Air Force as a Psychiatrist at Wilford Hall at Lackland Air Force Base. Liz is a Christian. Jason is Jewish. Sarah Rose has the religion of preciousness, and I hope she learns more of that as her life's story progresses. Covenant is one of the places that the family lived out their respective faith traditions while here in San Antonio.

Liz has completed her active duty. They are moving to Virginia to work and grow in that place. It is a great move for them, but it means that they are no longer going to be available for cameo appearances in my life. I was sad about that today. We all were.

We sang the song we always sing for them, putting hands on their shoulders, standing very close.

Traveling Mercies --

...take bread for the journey and strength for the fight

comfort to sleep through the night

the wisdom to choose at the fork in the road

and a heart that knows the way home

And for the faithful, and for the weary, and for the hopeless, here is our prayer:

go in peace live in grace

trust in the arms that will hold you

go in peace live in grace

trust God’s love.

You can hear a bit of it here as recorded by Billy Crockett.

***

Book Four. A Thousand Wonders.

I am writing a book. It has become something more than just the words I use to create sentences and move plot. It is becoming one of those things that defines a life. I don't have enough time to work on it and keep up with my work for grad school. I manage to combine the two in a fiction writing workshop this semester.

I am learning things from myself as I write the stories that make up the larger work. It is doing things for me that I am grateful to experience. I want to write in support of this work all the time.

You might wonder why I am writing about four books for a blog meme when I have papers to write and the book is calling me.

I wonder too. My only answer is that I promised I would do this every week. I have already fallen one week behind once in the ten assignments. I don't often miss a deadline. Hardly ever. And I find something in this writing too. It has opened me up to write publicly since 2007. It is part of the way I spend my life.

This is my Sunday. Remembering Saints. Singing songs for my own funeral. Saying farewell. Writing. Always writing.

Food Moves Me

2011-10-25T11:40:00.000-05:00

I'm late for dinner. I should have posted this last Monday. It's past time to blog about five foods. I have read some of my other friends' work. They make me hungry and make me think. I think I will refer you to my other blog, A Thousand Wonders, for this week. A Thousand Wonders is the place where I am blogging my writing process as I craft some stories into a novel. This week's prompt here goes well with my last post about going home while thinking about the food of that place.

Here's a bit, with way more than five foods:

Pecan and chess pie for holidays. Homecoming meant pimento-cheese sandwiches, fried chicken, potato salad, and deviled eggs. Every time someone set down a platter or dish, the wood would sag a bit. I always worried for the food. Brunswick stew cooked up in a big iron cauldron over a wood fire under my tree. Grandy stroking and stirring and scraping with a boat paddle he used just for stew. People would come from all around on a Brunswick stew day, bringing Mason jars and appetites. Nobody ever went hungry at Grandy and Memma’s house. Bourne, back then, saw too many hungry people though.

To read more you can visit A Thousand Wonders - Food Takes You Back. To start at the beginning of my writing process, go here instead and read up.

Places of Me

2011-10-11T12:15:00.000-05:00

Six Places of Me

back of my neck - your mouth

left ring finger - Lyngby, Denmark

tummy stretch marks - Sacramento, California

nerve fiber network - The Web

amygdala - Keeling, Tennessee

feet - here, here, here

A Good Breakfast - a documentary poem

2011-10-05T13:46:00.000-05:00

I am studying documentary poetry as written by Muriel Rukeyser, Richard Wright, and Charles Reznikoff. I remembered a documentary poem I wrote two years ago. Here is a second look.

A Good Breakfast

Whole Wheat Pancakes with Turkey Bacon
Chunky Cinnamon Applesauce
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

I remember their faces
eyebrows raised
eyes a little sunk-in
they took the milk cartons
and went to a table

they ate lunch
we all do
except those who don't have any
and this is so large a thing
that the tray could not contain
the sheer weight of the fact that
this would be their only meal

for so many, that was true
and you could smell it on them
as you could smell the wood smoke
from the fire that was their only warmth

Scrambled Eggs with Whole Wheat Toast
Pineapple Tidbits
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

it would have been Brownsville Tennessee 1972 when I
passed out the milk cartons to those little ones
big girl of thirteen, who had seen her own share
of unhealthy circumstances but I always had a meal

I looked at them in the mornings as they floated
onto the bus like the wood smoke from those fires
and later as they hovered over their chairs like
dead little angel children waiting for that first meal

most of the hands that took those milk cartons
were brown or black, but not all, some were like me
the hungriest among them did not refuse the milk
could not imagine doing so, just give it to someone
who wants it, someone wants it, I would say

Yoghurt and Granola
Assorted Whole Grain Cereal
Banana
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

there was no free breakfast in my day
and 11:30 can come too late for some
not able to grasp the intricasies of math
or english, too busy with the studies of their own
social problems, like the ache in the stomach
or the hair that is falling out, not to mention
the loose teeth

I made a point to go to Ariane's school
Montgomery Alabama in 1995
and watch the children eat breakfast
tears fall down my face now as they did that day
as I watched impish brown boys and bouncing blonde girls
tease each other with orange peels in their mouths
bright orange smiles hiding solid teeth
and they spit them out quickly and slurped up the milk
and went off to memorize poems or study the rainforest

so my vote for the best invention of my lifetime is not
the computer that kids use to investigate life in Kenya
or the microwave or the cell phone
it is free school lunch and breakfast
a little grain,
a little protein,
some fruit and milk
in a full belly

The menus are from a USDA website

The Ups to the Blue Hole

2011-10-03T12:51:00.000-05:00

Today is supposed to be the day I write about Seven Wants with my online writing group--Write, Eat, Post, Bathe, named for our priorities as writers. I had a lot of time this past weekend at Laity Lodge for the High Calling Writer's Retreat to think about desires and to reconsider what I want. I always have had a kind of running bucket list in my head. Get a degree. I add them, check them off, and add more. Get two degrees. Some have stayed on the list a long time. Hike the Grand Canyon. I thought I might do that when I was older but still fit enough. It seemed like a good activity for my fifties. I'm 51. Strength and the ability to push through to a goal have always defined how I saw myself.

2010 knocked me for a loop. I was cut down with an acute onset of Rheumatoid Autoimmune Disease. My joints were badly affected. From February, where I had a few unexplained pains in my legs, to March, where I was in constant pain all over my body, unable to walk without a cane, howling into my pillow at night on the couch so I wouldn't wake Adrian. It wasn't pretty. My normally strong body had become this bag of glass shards, gouging holes in itself, tearing out my strength, sapping my will, leaving me vulnerable. I had to have help to the toilet. I had to turn to classmates to tie my shoes.

Classmates. I was in college trying to finish that degree on my bucket list. It was the last semester of my senior year. I was looking so forward to walking that stage with all my young classmates for my diploma. All of a sudden, it appeared that I wouldn't walk, and I might not even be able to finish the required classes. Suddenly, keeping a 4.0 didn't seem so important.

There were low points. I had to borrow a wheelchair one weekend in order to get around the house to finish a paper.

I spent our 28th anniversary in the hospital bed writing more papers.

But I did graduate--summa cum laude with that 4.0-- from Texas Lutheran University and went on to grad school at U. Texas at San Antonio.

And I got my diagnosis, which led to medications that make me able to walk without the cane. With intense physical therapy this summer, I got my range of motion back and started rebuilding my strength. I have been walking for exercise, trying to shed the prednisone pounds and get myself back to some kind of new normal.

I haven't hiked the Grand Canyon yet. But I did make it to the Blue Hole this weekend.

Laity Lodge is a wonderful retreat center provided by the Foundation for Laity Renewal of the H. E. Butt Foundation. It's in the Frio Canyon on some gorgeous acreage. It's a magical place where each ringing of a bell means something wonderful is about to happen. You can hear great speakers like Madeleine L'Engle, Eugene Peterson, and Frederick Dale Bruner talk in a great hall overlooking the river. Food, delicious food like you dream of, just appears without any work or thought on your part. A concert might be held down in the Cody Center. Talk with the newest members of your extended family. You invariably adopt other retreatants. Or it might be time to relax in one of the hammocks and dream of your best years ahead.
I have long been a retreatant at Laity Lodge and have held many poetry workshops for the participants. During the dark times of my illness, I didn't get up there, but I did hold a workshop in April of 2011, on our 29th wedding anniversary. It was a strange year since that hospital anniversary. I still used my cane some in April, so I didn't hike any. In past years, I didn't often get to go out for a hike since leisure time is when I teach workshops. I had always intended to go to the Blue Hole, a pristine clear deep swimming hole. It's only 20 minutes away. In April 2011, I looked out from the Great Hall balcony over the river toward blue hole and wondered if I would every be strong enough to get there.

I hiked to the Blue Hole this weekend.

It wasn't a pretty thing to behold, my walking. Only my wonderful husband Adrian was there to see the worst of it. After crossing under the dam and a short flat walk by the river, you round the bend near where the road goes up around a new Family Camp that is under construction.

And it goes up.

And up.

And even more ups that don't show up in a picture. I had to concentrate on walking, not snapping pictures.

But I got there--we got there--and climbed down the stone steps into the river area of Blue Hole.

We got back the same way we came. Only it was mostly downhill, which sounds like a better deal. It isn't. The pressure on my legs is even greater going downhill than up. New goal. Not to have to ask Adrian to go get the car and come back for me.

We made it back and crossed under the dam and climbed more steps and enjoyed more of our weekend. I did some homework. We all ate a great deal. There was a concert. I didn't write much at the Writer's Retreat. But I rested and considered my life.

Here are seven things I want:

1. Keep walking.

2. Keep walking with Adrian.

3. Finish graduate school.

4. Help more people to walk the stage to graduate from college.

5. Finish the book of short stories I am writing.

6. Return often to Laity Lodge.

7. Write a story about how I hiked the Grand Canyon.

A Poem for Today's Mood

2011-09-26T11:17:00.001-05:00

South Bound Poet
For David Ray Vance

I want to be a Penguin poet,
name on list, followed by several titles:

.............CYN HUDDLESTON
.............The Domicile of the Guardian
.............Prepare Yourself for Rape Poems

Workshop tonight, but I long to write.
I jot poems on bits of paper
and large green sticky notes,
perfect for plastering the poem on my back
to see if it can drum up a following.

I am regimented, organized, habitual, and yet—
tonight I want to blow off workshop,
toss my poems in a knapsack
and head south.

Write Post Eat Bathe: High Anxiety..

2011-09-26T00:51:00.002-05:00

First Secrets, now Fears

Fears? So this Monday is gonna be one of those Mondays...

8 Fears, in no particular order, with commentary in some instances and not in others, for no particular reason:

I fear being in large public venues with lots of people. Or small public venues with a moderate amount of strangers. I am not afraid of public speaking in these places--do it all the time. And I get along remarkably well for someone with this fear.
Going down. I found this out when I was at the top of a tower in Darmstadt, Germany and had to go back down the stone steps. I had climbed them without noticing anything other than the view. Now, going down, I saw that they were circular, narrow at the central point, heavily worn down from all the feet that had climbed over the centuries, and that there were People in front of and behind me, touching me. This fear now extends to all down staircases and water slides. However, I am not afraid of heights.
Running out of food.
I used to be afraid of Tennessee. It was recent enought that I still get sick sometimes when I go there. I go there.
Leaving my house. Driving. I do both.
I used to be afraid of spiders. Screamy afraid. And I am not a screamer. Then in therapy, I figured out I was displacing fears onto spiders. Poor little mites. Turns out they are not a bad bunch. I kinda have a soft spot for them now since I stepped on so many.
Anyone who would hurt my child. No. Scratch that. I am afraid FOR them if I catch them. Different thing.
Turns out I am not very afraid after all.

What Makes My Dress Fly Up...

2011-09-19T10:48:00.000-05:00

Nine loves. Easy.

9. I love being able to walk again without crouching down like a crone or holding onto a cane. I love being able to sleep. I love being able to attend to the important things in life without worrying if I can stand up without help or get off the toilet. There are still issues. But these things are pretty nice. (Update: Hiked for the first time since getting sick.)

8. I love having a daughter. I wouldn't have minded a son. I just have no experience. But a daughter. It's so good I have no words for it. I don't want to jinx perfection.

7. I love being married to someone who does not give me reason to worry that he will drink up my earnings, bring sluts into my yard, beat me with a bone-in ham, shoot at my children in a thunderstorm, take my daughter to beer joints and a) take her into the place so that drunks can paw her or b) leave her in the car to worry that someone will see her and paw her, talk one way to strangers and a whole other way his family so that strangers think his family got a real smart guy for a daddy when he was a bum who couldn't keep a job, or, and this is key, make me lose a minutes sleep worrying that he would do something heinous to my daughter. You don't, in my experience, often find a man who is that "lacking" and Adrian deserves my loyalty and undying gratitude.

6. I love that I am weird and yet still have people who are willing to be in my life.

5. I love cats.

4. I love my brain.

3. I love being 51. (I have loved all my years since around 30, but not so much before that.)

2. I love psychotherapy and good friends.

1. And lastly, I love writing. How else would you know all these keen things about me?

If you tell someone...

2011-09-12T08:43:00.000-05:00

Each Monday some of us at Write, Eat, Post, Bathe writing group are going to post one of these little lists. Ten secrets. Am I writing down ten secrets? Huh. Your government trusted me with secrets. I never told them and don't intend to.

I have three secrets I never tell a soul. I don't even say them out loud. The nature of a secret is this: if you tell one person, it is no longer a secret. And I can, as we have established, keep a secret. So the best you can hope for is 10 little-known facts. Here they are:

10. I love purses. I have way more than you can imagine. I also hate cleaning them out. Too time-consuming. So I have little bags of stuff that I can grab and put into the new purse. Presto chango.

9. You were hoping for some real dish. Sorry. I told you I am good at keeping secrets. Let's see... Number Nine.... I used to really hate the look of my big toes. I don't now. The toes still look the same as before, so I think something inside my head changed.

8. I have Asperger's Syndrome. Not a secret. I just might not have told you. I have it in a very mild form. Don't let that make you think I don't have problems with it. I am 51 and have great coping skills. What you don't know is that I like having it despite the problems. There are things, not the least of which is the ability to hold gigantic amounts of stuff in my head at the same time and manipulate all that to my benefit, that are downright cool. The wanting to run away and hide in most public situations is not so much cool. I work on that.

7. I used to spend a lot of time up in trees when I was a kid. I would take a bag of non-perishable food and books and stay and stay.

6. I like to look at small things, like the pattern that some bees and wasps make in the dirt or a drop of water on the tip of a leaf, stuff like that. I like to hide in small places. I wish I was very small sometimes so that I could secret myself into a nook and stay and stay.

5. I was a virgin way longer than you would believe, so I won't bother telling you. No, really. I don't care what you heard.

4. I actually say the things that people say they wish they had said or would have said to people who are abusing children in public. I have called the law on one occasion too.

3. I count how many times I talk out loud during a class session so that I won't talk too much. You will not, if you are in class with me, believe this since I still talk a lot. You can ask my early college professors before I adopted this tactic. I wouldn't shut up. See 8 above for an clue to this phenomenon.

2. I am racked by guilt.

1. I want to write a reasonably-well-received book of stories.

Now, I have 2 secrets that I have never told a soul.

Psalm 911

2011-09-09T09:19:00.000-05:00

A Psalm for New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania

I cry out to you with a sound torn from my soul;
a sound of metal tearing;
a sound of innocence dying.
How terrible is this thing which has been thrust into the heart of the many.

Evil has risen up from its nursery and arrived full grown to destroy us;
those who pervert your very name;
who bow to false gods of hate;
who breed in the desperate a desire for destruction.

Their instrument of death is a cruel one;
they have used our own selves as a kind of cancer.
My body has been hurled against my body;
sister torn from the sky to rain destruction on brother.

And hell erupted in the sky;
And hell erupted in the sky;
And hell was thrown against the five sides of our strength;
And, yet, hell was cheated the fourth time.

Our words rained down on us like an evil snow;
like a parade held in honor of our enemy's victories.

Humans fell from the sky; Humanity fell from grace.

High places were made low;
crushed to dust that blows at our feet.
Our mighty have been struck a cleaving blow;
warriors defeated without a battle cry.

Images of horror enter my every waking moment;
burning into my eyes.
I sleep and dream, not in pictures, but in tears that do not wash,
tears that do not cool.
I awake and the sun is blocked by the smoke of a fire which burns my soul.

I have looked to the heavens and seen a terror.
I have cried to the hills and heard no relief.
I have called to the warrior and he is quiet.
I have screamed to my Lord.
I have screamed to my Lord.
I have screamed for relief.
I have screamed for vengeance.

"Sing praises to the Lord, enthroned in Zion; proclaim among the nations what He has done. For He who avenges blood remembers;
He does not ignore the cry of the afflicted."
Psalm 9:11.12 NIV

I cry out to you with a sound tom from my soul;
a whimper;
a sob;
a groan originating in the earth.

I cried out to the Lord
and I have seen him.

The Lord is with us in the rubble.
God has come to us in the body of the man who lifts a stone and clears a path.

The Lord is with us in the fires.
God has come to us in the hands of those who spray a healing, cooling stream.

The Lord is with us in the places of healing.
God has come to us in the mind of she who closes the wounds.

The Lord is with us in the streets.
God has come to us on the feet of the child who brings food to the grief-stricken.

The Lord is with us in the houses of worship.
God has come to us in the arms that gather us up.

The Lord is with us in our homes.
God has come to us in the lips of our loved ones who kiss us through our pain.

The Lord is with us in the places of power.
God has come to us in those whose hearts bum for justice
tempered with judgment.

I cried out to the Lord and the Lord joined me in my cry.

Cyn Huddleston 09/12/2001

***

I wrote this on the day after the attacks, when watching the images had burned them into my retinas. I needed some way to think about it. I started to write like the old psalms, in the cadence of those poets. About halfway through, at the place where you see it, I decided to see what the Psalm was at 9:11. It says those words in the version I read. My psalm had to change. It was now a psalm of 9/12. Any more violence done would cause there to be more afflicted. I looked around to see how we were coping. I saw response to violence with help and comfort. I prayed we would have more of that and less of violence.

I still am praying.

In 2001, I read this in church to a group of battered folks and one state trooper who just walked in late and stood in the back, ready to go.

This Sunday, we will have our New Beginnings Sunday. It's what we have always called our first day of the new sunday school year. It's Kyndall Rothaus Renfro's first day to preach to us as our pastor.

Here's to new beginnings for us all.

I need some time at Laity Lodge to remember the important things

2011-08-26T16:39:00.000-05:00

You've heard me talk about holding the poetry workshops in a Texas Hill Country retreat center.

It's called Laity Lodge.

Adrian and I have been going there for a while.

It's a great place to be inspired, relax...

reconnect with yourself or your lover or your God.

You hear great speakers, like Dale Bruner.

But you can catch a little personal time.

The Frio River Canyon is the perfect setting

for being in nature on a grand scale...

or a tiny one.

Most of the time when I go there, I am part of the weekend staff.

The poetry workshops are a way to share with others what I love

about writing in a place that calms and nourishes me.

I give and fill up at the same time. It's a good balance.

I want to go back soon to Laity Lodge.

After starting my last year of grad school--with papers to write, the endless reading, and the business of getting prepared to pass exams and graduate so that I can teach my own college classes--I don't want to forget

the important things.

I have a chance to win a free retreat for writers at the

Laity Lodge Writers Retreat 29 September to 2 October.

I'd like to work on my thesis book of short stories, but who am I kidding? It will be mid-term around that time, and I will probably be researching Chaucer or T. S. Eliot. Mostly, I want to breathe fresh air, talk writing, eat delicious food, and catch my husband staring at me adoringly.

It's one of the perks of the place.

If you are a writer, why not join us. Make a reservation here. Or choose another date. Any time is a good time for a break at Laity Lodge.

My Name is Cyn, and I am a Cleanaholic

2011-08-17T11:59:00.001-05:00

I have a tiny mop-wielding monkey on my back.

This morning, with grad school starting next week, and having no appointments, I decided to give my back a rest and not do any chores.

I didn't make it past my shower. First, I tidied all the towels that were hanging in the bathroom. And of course, I squeegee the shower walls and glass every day. Hard water spots are deadly here in San Antonio. Not too bad. Just a taste. Then, I made my bed. Well, that's just polite. My husband has to get into that bed tonight and the covers will be all straight. But then, I fluffed and placed the decorative pillows. I know. Decorative pillows are a gateway chore. You straighten up those pillows and give them the nice HGTV touch and pretty soon, you are wiping down the mirrors in the bathroom. God help me.

I'm a clean freak. It's true. I've been called the local Martha Stewart, and not in a good way.

After the pillow situation, I decided to get dressed and just keep my hands busy. Problem there. This house is known far and wide as the place that young missionaries with tracts and quotas can always find the lady home, so I can't just put on a pair of fresh pajamas. Of course that also means a bra. (Have you seen me? Seriously, me without a bra could cause an embarrassing situation amongst the white-shirt-wearing priesthood holders on my porch.) So, I put on a pair of jean shorts and a sleeveless top, with matching jewelry. I'm not a hobo! Then, I put the jammies from last night into the hamper. That's the last thing I remember before I found myself in the laundry room, Stain Sticking a pair of shorts with one hand while rubbing a little Vivid into a shirt with the other. I stared down at my sticky fingers and knew I needed help.

I admit I am powerless over the idea that if I have mildew on the inside of my overflow drain in one bathroom sink then some child will die of cholera in a third world nation. Yes, I clean those overflow thingies that most people don't even see. If you don't know what an overflow thingie is, see here.

I heard on a commercial the other day that if you want a clean commode you should use their product or you could clean after every flush, some 380,000 times a year. They asked, "Who does that?" -- like it was a bad thing to clean your toilet every time you flush. Heck, I even toilet trained my cat so that I would have a tidier house. If I could train her to run a dust mop, I'd be in heaven.

I have pretty much always been this way. If it's hereditary, it's recessive. My grandmother Tommie was no housekeeper. She had maids for many years and never got the knack. Then she got me and didn't need a maid. I think I learned to clean as a response to her lack of housekeeping, that and the way she cooed over my ability to clean a bathroom.

"Oooh. Cindy's so smart. She can clean a bathroom better than I can." Lord, she was such a mess that the chicken coop was neater. Of course I could clean better. And dust, and vaccuum, and run an Old English oil cloth over the hardwood floors. She taught me how to clean out of necessity and for quarters. I do love a good payday, too.

My other grandmother Callie was a bit of a germophobe. You couldn't touch her food or her spoon or pretty much anything to do with food unless it was safely on your own plate. I don't think that's wrong at all. My mom was a normal cleaner. You couldn't catch a disease at her house, but she was ok with the magazines being haphazardly piled on the coffee table. (Shudder.)

I will now stop to say that I will not discuss my daughter's cleaning habits in a public forum. She is beautiful, kind, witty, talented, and has a genius-level IQ. She is also a bit devious, a thing she inherits from me, so I don't want to be on her bad side. Hey, Sweetie.

I don't want to make people dislike me. But if you are a cleaner, you hear it.

"She is just so....tidy."

"Yeah, it's pathetic the way she recaulks her shower three times a year. I mean, who does that?"

"She even has a toothbrush just for cleaning the parts of the toilet that no one can see. I mean there is a limit to what I'm willing to tolerate. I think she needs an intervention."

"Or an exorcist."

"Or a good kick in the ass."

But there are no 12-step groups for the likes of me. And if there were, we'd just all run around wiping up coffee drips from the refreshment table or fight over who gets to descale the pot this week. It's hopeless, really.

So, yes. I am Cyn, and I am an over-cleaner. I accept myself for what I am, and I promise not to clean your house when I visit. I take medication for that now, and I hardly ever do it any more.

Unretouched photo of my Junk Drawer.

How Cyn Got Her Move Back

2011-08-12T15:46:00.000-05:00

I can walk.

Sure, it sounds simple. But last year around Valentine's Day, I started having weird bouts of pain and disability that would pop up in different parts of my body. By St. Patrick's Day, I was hobbling and in near constant pain. Doctors were stumped. My family practice doc checked my blood for everything. I gave more blood in the lab in one week than you do in a blood drive. The list of results takes up pages. I had none of the things she tested me for. She sent me to a rheumatologist, who sent me to a neurologist. He sent me to another neurologist who, I kid you not, put needles deep into my muscles and ran current through them. I was told I had some symptoms for several things but not enough symptoms for any one thing. I wasn't sick enough to diagnose, but I couldn't walk.

I won't go through the emotional details of this whole thing or talk at length about how I still graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English from Texas Lutheran University that spring around Mother's Day. You could ask the folks who saw me grimace how that looked. Don't ask my husband. Watching all this took a toll on him that I wouldn't like to repeat.

There have been medication scares and adjustments and additions. I finally got a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis, which some of you right now are confusing with the arthritis your grandma has in her left forefinger. It's not like that. You could look it up. I have some other stuff going on with my spine, but I am not going to be paralyzed like my neurologist feared the day he called me andtold me to have my husband very safely and carefully drive me to the ER and not leave until the neurosurgeon confirmed I was not about to become a quadraplegic. I spent our 28th anniversary on April 29, 2010 in the hospital in order to confirm that I will have control of all four of my limbs to some degree for the foreseeable future.

Good times.

The meds are working pretty good. I am not using the cane that was my constant companion for a year and a half. Do you know how hard it is to negotiate the halls of a large university to get your master's degree with a cane in one hand, a bag of books and a computer on the other shoulder, and a cup of coffee to shove in there somewhere? That cane is not going to be missed.

I am not getting rid of it. It folds, and I keep it in my car. I will always have Rheumatoid Arithritis, and I will have flare ups that will temporarily send me back to the cane. Hopefully, not to the one that has four little tips on it for the really bad days or the wheelchair that I used for one weekend last April.

Just before my military rheumatologist was reassigned, I asked her to send me to physical therapy to regain my range of motion and my strength. I used to be the person last standing in any physical endeavor. Now, I cheer when I can climb stairs.

And I can climb them. I am working my way around the room at PT, kicking ass on the equipment, although leg lifts holding a ball between my knees is not a fun thing. Trust me. Yesterday, the PT was especially hard, but I still rocked that room even though I was crying like a baby.

So, I can walk. I am not running, but I never ran before the RA. I can paint my own toenails. Yesterday, I even replaced the faucet in my kitchen, to include all the climbing under the sink and everything. It was grand. My muscles ached last night. It wasn't from joint damage but rather the PT and the plumbing. Today, I am taking a holiday from everything but writing. I am grateful.

I can walk.

A Poem of Natures: Write, Eat, Post, Bathe writing group

2011-08-07T11:43:00.000-05:00

god of my yard

garden kitty, not mine, but adoring of my deck
for cover and comfy cushions

I filled a feeder for cardinals but attracted also
mourning doves, too portly for the perches

kitty skulks under the deck
dove gleans dropped black sunflower seeds

a sunflower sprung from some lost seed
will mark her end — that and a bit of wing

Write, Eat, Post, Bathe writing group Prompt: Things That Delight Me

2011-07-30T19:37:00.000-05:00

When my daughter Ariane was small, she studied gymnastics. One of the positions she learned on the balance beam was the scale--on one foot, the other leg back out behind, arms like wings of an airplane. She had such balance.

Ariane is 26. She can still do a very nice scale, and she can stand in the statue of liberty pose like she used to do at the top of the pyramid as a cheerleader. I wouldn't like to see her up there now, mind you. She takes her chances these days on children with tough home situations and at love. It all balances out.

Ariane delights me. Sassy, bold, generous, messy, beautiful...so many wonderful things, that Ari.

Today, after a barbecued chicken lunch with Ariane, Adam and Adrian, we discussed siblings and childhood shenanigans. We all had the latter; Ariane was the only one without the former. We also watched as she demonstrated her ability to still perform a perfect scale and a liberty with her feet on the ground. I love to see that and remember her fearlessness up in the air.

This was supposed to be about how I can balance on one foot in physical therapy, about how I can do all the exercises, seeking to exceed expectations. This essay was to be about how I went from being unable to walk last spring to being able to run a bit this summer. But I got lost watching as Ariane demonstrated her scale, duplicating with precision my clumsy one, making it impossible not to write about the most delightful part of my life. Walking is nice, but momming is better. On balance, Ari wins.

Stepping on Graves

2011-07-24T14:10:00.001-05:00

I painted my toenails acid green for summer.

After slogging through the the 19th Century American Literature in June, I couldn't wait for a little rest, a little fun. And what could be more fun than acid green toenails?

And they did cheer me up. Every time I looked at them, I giggled a bit. My neurologist joked that I must be doing better if I could reach my toes to paint them green. He said he knew I had painted them because no one else would have done it to me. I don't know. They looked kind of spiffy. I was intending to take a picture to show you and write about that.

I didn't get the picture taken and now they are really needing to be redone.

See, I went home to Tennessee for a few days to see the old home place that got out of my family for a few years, something like 30 years, really. My sister bought it last month, and we were all tickled to see the place back in the family. So I went home to inspect it and to bring my mom back here in San Antonio for a visit. She's here now. It wasn't her home place but the other side of the family--my paternal grandmother's home. Lots of history there in that old ramshackle house by the pond. I lived many years across the road from the farmland part of that piece of land. Not such good memories for me there. I have exercised demons from some other family land on previous trips home and by signing some of it over to a church for land for the kids to play. I hoped for a positive experience last week.

Sherry couldn't wait to show me the place, so we went there on the way back from the airport. I was wearing my brown flip flops and sporting my green toenails. Not exactly good farm shoes. A good neighbor farmer had cleared us a place to drive right up to the pond. Getting out, we took some pictures and walked the place. The old home where my grandmother was born had been moved by a previous owner to the back of the property for use as a shed for hay and feed for cows. It was surrounded by a little woods that was thick with poison ivy. Sherry is allergic; I'm not. I blazed the trail, so I spent a lot of time looking at the ground and at my feet picking their way through to find a safe path for her. Payback for many times when my big sister did the same for me with people much more nefarious (although just as toxic) as poison ivy. I learned early to watch my step. Snakes, rotten boards, sharp sapling stumps, bad relatives--pretty much the same. Our Uncle Tuck killled himself in the room that had been turned into a shed for the cows to escape a storm. No floor, three walls down, just a shed. The 80-some-year-old man who bought the farm once fell through the roof putting up tin and was laid out with broken bones for hours until he finally crawled to the road for help. Sometimes, it can be a long road.

My mom did come home with me for a visit to San Antonio. She is 82 and has whipped lymphoma but has weakened considerably. She has a bad back with more metal than bone holding it all together. All this meant she needed a wheelchair assist through the airport. You'd think with all the security complications that a wheelchair would add to the headaches of air travel. Surprisingly, the skycaps, the fast lane for wheelchairs, and the early boarding made it easier to travel with a wheelchair-bound mommy than without one. Sometimes, it all evens out.

So here we are in San Antonio. I am a little later than I had hoped writing from my "Write, Eat, Post, Bathe" group's prompt about feet.

I thought about feet all week--in the airport, with green toenails, dusty with ancestor dirt, up on the footrests of a wheelchair in the Memphis airport. I also thought about some other feet. One other day when we were in Tennessee, I did some research for a book of short stories I am writing and for some genealogy I am doing. My flip-flop-shod feet walked over the bones of the Thompson family members who came in a group from Alamance County, North Carolina to Dancyville, Tennessee around 1850. They spread out and married and had children. One of the grandchildren of that bunch, James Rawlin Thompson, married the woman who was born in that house up by a pond, Emma Sue Bourne. They had my daddy, who, with a little help from Mom, had me. He held on to me in more ways than one for many years after I had crossed an ocean to make a new life for myself. My feet have carried me all the way and walked the floor with a daughter of my own. It's almost too much to take in for a little posting on a blog.

Now, I am listening to my husband and my mother talk about the TV program they are watching on the Hallmark Channel about pioneers. I just want to hit the "publish post" button and go change my toenail color to shocking blue. I am having fun this summer. And I am getting somewhere.

I hope your feet take you to interesting places as well.

Write, Eat, Post, Bathe: Cyn's Words

2011-07-13T09:45:00.005-05:00

Over the last year, with all the diagnoses and not being able to walk and all, I have let myself go.

Yes, I gained weight, but that was mostly the "not being able to walk" and the prednisone. Physical therapy will take care of that. I am not worried about my physical presence. I will push through all that like I pressed through the pain.

I have let myself go in a different way. Maybe more than one.

I have let myself go when I write for school and put extraordinary effort and attention into it. I am bold enough to say that I write very well for school. I could show you some papers that would make you weep with joy, if reading about Faulkner, Beowulf, or Fleckenstein is your thing. I have made it my thing. I write and research and read.

There, now. That's another thing. I read you and don't write me. I wrote a poem about that once. Now, I just read other people's poems and write lovely papers about them. And it makes me sad sometimes. I love school, and as I always say, I am there on purpose. But I miss writing for me.

So, I am letting myself go in a different way. I am writing for me, too. I am giving just as much weight to the things that come only from the prompting inside my head as I give to school assignments.

And if that means that I need someone to be waiting for the work to help me along, then I have that as well. I am making myself accountable to my writing group. We are a group of friends who have been together online for so many years I can't quite remember. Some of these women I know so intimately that I can't imagine we haven't ever met in person. Some, I know only tangentially, a kind of over-the-shoulder relationship with the friendship they have with each other.

We are called Write, Eat, Post, Bathe. That's all I am going to have time for when school starts back, and I am writing that book of short stories, and I am still going to physical therapy.

So, I am keeping up with this blog for personal stuff like this post. And I still have Dead Daddy for the recovery poetry. But now, I am getting together another one. (Can you stand it?) And you shall have writing, my friends, from inside my own head.

Let's go.

2011-07-13T09:42:00.001-05:00

Test

A Reminder of the Important Things in Life

2011-01-02T20:17:00.000-06:00

Where He Put Things

2010-10-22T12:47:00.004-05:00

He put his hand over my mouth,
assuring me with shushes, “Relax, you’ll like it.”

................................I didn’t, any more than you enjoy reading this.

He put bruises on my thighs,
my underwear down around my knees.

................................Bear [witness] with me here.

He put his penis inside me,
along with quite a few abrasions.

................................Breathe through the lines, don’t panic.

He put my arms up over my head, pinning me,
so skilled he must have had practice.

................................Stay with me.

He put fear in my gut, terrors in my nights,
and post-traumatic fugues in the mess he left of me.

................................Attend to my words.

By extension, he put pills down my throat,
cuts on my arms, and me in bed all day.

................................Softly. Gently. Unwrap the pain.

He put trust out of my reach until
he sat me on the psychiatrist’s couch.

................................Sit beside me. Listen.

He put me into training class to advocate for others,
strangely, leading me to college and grad school.

................................There are more of us here who can’t speak.

He put words in my mouth.
“Hold on.” “It’s not your fault.” “It gets better.”

with apologies to Mindy

2010-09-27T13:44:00.002-05:00

I blamed Mindy for the mess on the floor at her house.

"I think Mindy got a bit messy with the crafting this weekend and is blaming everything on the pets. Minnnndy."

This is how the universe responded:

diesseell

The cat's name is Diesel.

a poem after the style of D. A. Powell

2010-09-27T11:20:00.001-05:00

[reading poetry leads: to writing. often enough this]

reading poetry leads: to writing. often enough this
is not true, pretentious poets being what they are

and they cannot help it, I know. so I take the cue
promptly and run with it. David Sedaris’ new book

the one about the animals—naughty, what else?—is on
my mind: gay men comprising the theme today. loving

that so much, I can’t swallow the coffee for the humming
and the reading out loud and the anticipation. (Dave not hitting

the Kindle ‘til tomorrow; fuck, right there in the middle.) oh hell
with the gerunds. hitting. loving. not taking the ing out of humming

bird, I don’t care what. humbird. humbug.

So I am writing today, a poem, not reading
the other three articles for tonight. response due: today at 5

more things I should be doing. enjoying it so much,
so fuck-in-the-middle much, that I am swallowing. If you love it

that much. swallow, hummingbird, just swallow.
I am writing, today, poetry: I should say so

A Morning's Work

2010-09-16T18:43:00.002-05:00

Laundry

Kleenex

Survivor Statement

2010-09-10T12:37:00.002-05:00

The mother in me
would remove your lungs
by teaspoons over
a number of months,
watching your breath
grow precious.

She would have you
live long years,
seeing those
whom you have loved
die in your eyes,
waking you often
to view reruns.

The woman who
put her child to sleep
brushing circles
with her cheek on
a tiny head of baby hair
would hood you
and beat you on bare feet with
bouquets of barbed wire.

The sensible liberal
who is carrying my purse,
containing a card for
the ACLU and a copy of
the New Testament (NRSV),
petitions nightly to God
to deny you entrance to Hell,
sentencing you to a lonely
oblivion, conscious of your loss.

We dream of these and other
gruesome punishments for you,
often shocking the little
girl in me who had her own
nightmare offender, but we shush
her protests. She is not a mother.
The only thing that might
make it any bit better
is to never have been born—
you or I—it hardly matters which.

Error in Syntax

2010-09-08T17:28:00.000-05:00

roses
having no noses
do not smell

I Don't Want to Die Right Now

2010-09-06T21:28:00.001-05:00

I heard it said on TV
flashed back to times when
that wasn't true

I am so glad to have failed
at least twice
at least that many times

failure teaches they say
and saves your life
saves your life

I'm Back to the Blog - a poem to celebrate

2010-09-05T17:06:00.003-05:00

beautician baby

her hair, blonde in the way only a toddler's can be
escaped barrettes and blew across blue eyes

long hair, daddies like and mommies brush
to remove the tangles left by dreams

this hair, she poked out her bottom lip
to direct a blast of baby breath against it

and it fluttered up, blonde hair, caught the light
to settle back on cheek as sure as eyes are blue

I think I am over blogging...

2009-06-20T20:54:00.002-05:00

I used to go to my blog several times a day to check to see if anyone I follow had posted. I do that at facebook now. I have been writing most of what I write outside of cyberspace for a while. You can't really expect to publish anything that has been posted on a blog. That counts as "published in any media" in the fine print.

So I guess I am going to slow this down to a trickle. Most of the folk I follow are facebooking and I get their updates to their blogs that way. If you want to friend me, just go to Cynthia Huddleston and send a request.

If I write any poetry that needs to see the light of day, I will still put it here.

Thanks,

Cynthia

Something in My Dreams of Him

2009-05-01T16:28:00.005-05:00

I dreamed my father sat struggling for breath
looking up at me asking for something
in the look in his eyes.

I gave him something.

I don't know what he wanted. I'm not sure what I gave.
But I did give it. And for once he was not my nightmare.

Encased In Silence

2009-04-30T11:48:00.004-05:00

It's a nice church,
they sing nice hymns,
there's usually a good sermon
and the seats are comfortable.

Stolen, lock stock and phrase from Gabriel Byrne on 4/30/2009
Fresh Air with Terry Gross

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103651864

H1N1

2009-04-30T08:59:00.004-05:00

Here is my last poem for April. I posted one (unedited, wow, some of those need work) poem every day. It was fun and gives me hope for more daily poems. Now, I stop typing this and go right into whatever hits the brain...now...

H1N1

Swine oh nine-
Bird dee enn ay, some pig, too.
What do we call you?

defining the cut

2009-04-29T06:52:00.003-05:00

I keep the blades sharp
antiseptic handy
It is control I am after
I cut

dilute or adulterate the pain with pain
refuse to recognize it socially
absent myself from attendance to it

I stop
halt the running, but not the bleeding

then I edit by omitting parts
detach as if with sharp instruments
separate from the main body; lop off

make or fashion it into a jewel exquisite
produce a pattern by grinding
intersect. cross.

Happy Blogaversary to Me!

2009-04-29T06:49:00.001-05:00

I'se jus free years olt an I kin wite my name.

Send Happy Thoughts

2009-04-28T18:56:00.002-05:00

I want to be able to do my senior thesis next year as a Creative Writing Thesis at my college. I don't even know if they will let me. I am just asking now and just thought of it yesterday. If you are a praying person, would you be in prayer for such a thing. And if you are a think happy thoughts person, would you do that? And if you don't like me, would you sleep late tomorrow and not send any bad ju ju my way?

'preciate it,
Cynthia

One Happy Fellow

2009-04-28T09:00:00.001-05:00

Mockingbird
sings his entire repertoire.
It rained in Texas.

Caution. Loose Rocks.

2009-04-27T09:21:00.003-05:00

The doctor says I have calcium carbonate crystals
deep in my inner ear, which, when functioning
normally, respond to the movement of my body,
keeping me oriented in the world, balanced.

They have gotten loose. I am dizzy.

I have this boyfriend whose quirky smile connects
deep in the left ventricle of my heart, causing
me to catch my breath when I see him, and
when he is near, I find myself losing my upsides.

He is smiling at me now. I am dizzy.

I don't know if the doctor is right about my crystals.
He seems to know these things, but I suspect it's just
the boy that's doing this. The doctor says I have loose
crystals. My girlfriends say I have rocks in my head.

My First Book of Poems

2009-04-26T22:14:00.003-05:00

it will be about you
because of you
your violence
your disdain
the way you drove
all of us into the night
shooting at us
my first book of poems
will be your book
your story
and the way
you wrote the words
into my flesh
and seared the scenes
into my eyes
giving me life
should have given
you place in mine
but you are
limited to the page
and the burning
in my eyes

Essay, Dear Poem

2009-04-25T21:01:00.003-05:00

will never be you

may take my time
coming between us

secretly, I count meter
every so often
and sneak a little of you
into him

that's a little dirty,
and a little hot

Angels at the Point

2009-04-24T15:22:00.005-05:00

angels dancing on the head
concerns the philosophers
and the mathematicians, I suppose
theologians
census takers

I wonder about those at the point
skewered to some lapel
like a living corsage
or mounted on a display board
with a little label, curator angelus

how many have stopped dancing?
still alive like immortals must be
never to tango or twist or tarantella
I wonder that they were caught,
perhaps with eyes closed in ecstasy

trapped by demons who never dance
colateral damage in the wars for souls

poema en español

2009-04-23T16:04:00.003-05:00

En la celebración de la terminación de mi examinación oral en español hoy...

me encanto una lengua
en cuál vienen los adjetivos por último
permitir que los sustantivos eviten sus ojos
evitar el desconcierto o la vergüenza

Mi comprensión del español es rudimentaria.
Lo siento para los errores.

So You've Killed Yourself

2009-04-22T08:36:00.003-05:00

pain all gone
you are still
I am alone

still all alone
you are gone
I am pain

He Couldn't Have Done It

2009-04-21T09:02:00.004-05:00

When someone is arrested for a horrible crime, the wife or fiance is left as the person who must wipe up the mess.

He Couldn't Have Done It

Like a glass of milk
teetering on the edge of a table
her life is liquid potential.

She has kissed this man,
he has run his hand under her shirt,
catching her breath for her
and holding it in his grip.

And the milk is gathering
for a rush to the far side of the glass,
taking with it the fragile container.

It looks like him in the picture
and he called her at the moment
depicted on that security tape
and told her he loved her, see her soon.

And the inevitable weight of it
takes the whole thing over
and she is puddled on the floor
crying over what has been spilt.

a haiku for today

2009-04-20T08:54:00.000-05:00

warm breeze blows
the sweet scent of new mown hay
as hungry cows bawl

Where is the poem today?

2009-04-19T13:12:00.002-05:00

Where is the poem?
Did he leave in the night
without waking me?
Perhaps he kissed me
fondly on the neck,
turning to shake his head,
a wry smile on his lips,
before leaving my room.

Was there business to attend to,
or could this be a getaway
to places I am not prepared
to visit or even know about?
He will pull up his collar and
dig his hands down into his pockets
and hop rails to camps by rivers.

What made the poem leave?
Did we quarrel, poem and I,
and perhaps I have repressed
the pain? I am left just the same.
Is he gone of his own accord
or did I send him packing?

Manifest Desitiny

2009-04-18T12:23:00.003-05:00

Manifest Desitiny

there is a tiny tyrant in the house
the condition of his bottom
is of prime concern

no one can sleep when master
wishes an audience
with two inferiors in his thrall

he has conquered the frontier
of spare room, den or office
that land where adults ruled

he has pushed them to the limits
and then to the reservation
of a steaming shower, where they cry

Lord, help them when he is hungry
or unhappy or bored or sees his shadow
forbid it, that he get diaper rash

they will search the cabinets and bags
that mark their former happy land
in search of Desitin, a peace offering

those he conquers will never be the same

Jesus Saved Her

2009-04-17T06:40:00.002-05:00

(I know someone who fits this a bit, but it is not me. My husband never raised his hand except to wipe tears of laughter from his eyes. And no one would think me a fundamentalist.)

When he stopped beating her
he got down on his knees
and he begged forgiveness.
He's been on his knees ever since.

One of those rare people
for whom the treatment works,
he gave it all to God and
never went back for it.

So don't you tell her that
her fundamentalist faith
is not scholarly or deep
that she is taking the Bible

too literally.

Because Jesus saved her
and her kids and
she is grateful for the miracle
and her reborn marriage

and her life.

Memo to My Government

2009-04-16T17:40:00.002-05:00

Re: Gonzales Memo 10/23/2009 page 24.

"First Amendment speech and press rights may
also be subordinated to the overriding need to
wage war successfully."

Due to the fundamental nature of free speech
and my right to write, I consider that it would be
an act of patriotism to disobey any agent of my
government when faced with that agent's
attempt to curtail those rights.

If I can't type,
I will tap my toes
a diddy bop
of freedom.

If you tape my mouth,
I will sign with my hands
and it will be my banner
of freedom.

If no one will take my cause
I will walk with the ghost
of Thomas Paine, a companion
to freedom.

If professional journalists
do not call to account
the militia will blog and tweet
in freedom.

Due to the fundamental nature
of free speech to the maintenance
of any government of the people,
I write.

The OhNo-mance Genre of Films

2009-04-15T15:17:00.003-05:00

You've heard of Romance Comedies and Bromance Comedies. Now get this...

I have decided on a name for those films where there is a quirky, unhandsome man and he wins an absurdly beautiful woman (like Knocked Up)...

OhNo-mance.

As in...she tells her girlfriends and they say, "Oh, no!" Or, to be fair, he says he's getting married and his appalled bros spit Bud Light all over the foosball table. "Dude, Oh No!"

These films seems to have a place in our lives and the sitcom has been of this genre for a long time. King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. As long as Seth Rogan still makes films, (and please, God, let it always be so, for I love them) then we need a name for this thing.

Please feel free to spread this world-wide so I can be famous for something really important, seeing as how this poetry thing is not making me a million.

Need!

2009-04-15T07:43:00.000-05:00

There is no such thing as comfort.

Macaroni and cheese or chicken soup
are the foods we eat when we need it
and we need it
because we don’t have it,
brothers and sisters.

I tell you that we all try
to cling to a thing
or grab for someone
or return to a place
seeking that which is
not possible.

Just as soon as we get, we begin
to chafe against the wool of the sweater
or get gas from the banana pudding
or see nose hairs in his gaping nostrils
‘til we just want to plug up the holes
with our fingers and try to get a little
peace inside.

Am I Poisoning Me?

2009-04-14T09:05:00.005-05:00

Do the streams of thought
that I produce
leech toxins into my body?

Have I sprayed my fields
with defoliant
so that there is nothing
left to turn sunlight into life?

What I produce in my head
has come downstream to
taint the well. Manufacturer
of my own undoing.

I feel so unwell
because I feel so bad.

Consequences

2009-04-13T08:07:00.003-05:00

Written from a prompt, and not my own life. I don’t smoke.

Consequences

Cancer doesn’t scare me nearly
as much as Aunt Lola,
who always thought I would
break the snow globes or
drop the babies or
make the cakes fall.

It’s not the long-term consequences
that are perfectly laid out
for me in a satin-lined casket
on the other side of this very wall
that keep me jumpy.

It’s the drooping lines that will form
at the corners of Lola’s mouth
and that tiny sound,
most writers say is “Tsk, tsk,”
but I know is “sick, sick,”
that will slip through her
two gappy front teeth
whe she sees me here,
cigarette hidden in my cupped fist,
hiding from the consequences.

Let's Make ATP

2009-04-12T12:00:00.003-05:00

you are the eukaryotic cell
and I am the mitochondria

in some stage of evolution
you ingested me whole
but did not consume me

now I survive, in endosymbiotic
relation to you, the host

anerobic before I joined you,
I am your emotional powerhouse

in the presence of oxygen
the love we make provides
energy for the both of us

People Who Like Sushi

2009-04-11T07:59:00.002-05:00

all of my favorite shows get cancelled
for lack of audience

I ask for non-standard condiments on a sandwich
horseradish, not mayo

if I like it
most don’t

it’s no wonder I sit alone at lunch
peerless at 50 in a college of coeds
and enjoy it

I am not like you
or if I am, you are sitting alone right now
reading
perfectly happy
wishing for a Vienna sausage sandwich

Poems, Like My Panties

2009-04-10T08:37:00.000-05:00

You will never see most of what I write.

Like Top Secrets, and my panties, they are Eyes Only
and the eyes meant to read them
do not need the words on a page.

Love poems
in code
written in my all over my face.

Dreams, Too Sweet

2009-04-09T11:41:00.004-05:00

no feathers in my mattress
don't cradle me
let the swing be still
and the sheep graze
earthbound and uncounted

may the hammock come unknotted
the pillow stay unfluffed
no high threadcount sheets
no down over me
my comfort unkept

espresso shots for my nightcap
horror shows, my bedtime tale
spice and tension and restless legs
and all manner of things that
no good mother would wish her babe

I don't crave sleep
that pharoah's tomb
daring to enter, I am blessed
with dreams that are sweet
then full-waking sorrow of truth

I forgo the treasure, and thus avoid the curse.

Conflagrare

2009-04-08T08:53:00.005-05:00

I want to be burned
consumed by a thing for once
all in and no holds

I crave vaporization
and refinement down to
the rarified essence of me

I yearn to be stirred up
and sifted through so that
no part of me is hidden

I seek to be prayed over
and have all lips murmur
perfect intentions and blessings

I desire to be flung
into recesses of earth that
want nothing more than to consume me

I want to burn

A Good Breakfast

2009-04-07T08:28:00.005-05:00

Whole Wheat Pancakes with Turkey Bacon
Chunky Cinnamon Applesauce
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

I remember their faces
eyebrows raised
eyes a little sunk-in
they took the milk cartons
and went to a table

they ate lunch
we all do
except those who don't have any
and this is so large a thing
that the tray could not contain
the sheer weight of the fact that
this would be their only meal

for so many, that was true
and you could smell it on them
as you could smell the wood smoke
from the fire that was their only warmth

Scrambled Eggs with Whole Wheat Toast
Pineapple Tidbits
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

it would have been Brownsville Tennessee 1972 when I
passed out the milk cartons to those little ones
big girl of thirteen, who had seen her own share
of unhealthy circumstances but I always had a meal

I looked at them in the mornings as they floated
onto the bus like the wood smoke from those fires
and later as they hovered over their chairs like
dead little angel children waiting for that first meal

most of the hands that took those milk cartons
were brown or black, but not all, some were like me
the hungriest among them did not refuse the milk
could not imagine doing so, just give it to someone
who wants it, someone wants it, I would say

Yoghurt and Granola
Assorted Whole Grain Cereal
Banana
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

there was no free breakfast in my day
and 11:30 can come too late for some
not able to grasp the intricasies of math
or english, too busy with the studies of their own
social problems, like the ache in the stomach
or the hair that is falling out, not to mention
the loose teeth

I made a point to go to Ariane's school
Montgomery Alabama in 1995
and watch the children eat breakfast
tears fall down my face now as they did that day
watching impish brown boys and bouncing blonde girls
tease each other with orange peels in their mouths
bright orange smiles hiding solid teeth
and they spit them out quickly and slurped up the milk
and went off to memorize poems or study the rainforest

so my vote for the best invention of my lifetime is not
the computer that kids use to investigate life in Kenya
or the microwave or the cell phone
it is free school lunch and breakfast
a little grain,
a little protein,
some fruit and milk
in a full belly

The menus are from a USDA website

Mrs. Hay

2009-04-06T08:33:00.008-05:00

I remember Mrs. Hay
had gray hair
and I was in fourth grade
and she told me that
purple does not go
with yellow for spring flowers
and she gave me a C.

I have loved pansies ever since.

Print and color your own. Go ahead. You should. Any color you like.

Equals Husband

2009-04-05T15:09:00.004-05:00

It takes at least 3 of you
to equal my husband.
He is without guile.

It takes more than 12 of me
to equal my husband.
I have plenty of guile.

This may be the truest thing I've ever written.

Neurotransmitter

2009-04-04T23:13:00.003-05:00

It was not the particular song,
but the music of the time,
the way the synthesized
beats carried the smooth voice,
that made a trap door in a closet
open up into the attic where I found
remnants of my time in Germany.

I caught the smell of air fresh
from the wild swing of the jet stream
down from Nordic lands even though
I just today wiped Texas sweat.

Thishappens more and more.

Just the other day, I heard a certain
kind of jazz and thought of days
when I was not old enough for school
and spent my time wiping dark
furniture with Old English Oil for
my grandmother or vacuuming the
rug for quarters. I could smell that, too.

There is a portal in my brain from
music to smell which nostalgia yanks
open.

I am falling through to yesterday.

Church Days

2009-04-03T08:30:00.005-05:00

inspired by Rach

I was a church-goin' girl.
Wednesday night and twice on Sunday
was pious enough for most.

I was a Saturday church girl.
Screamin' and throwin' things
made the quiet a balm.

I was a Tuesday mornin' pulpit girl.
Dragging a chair to see over.
Delivering a sermon to the dust motes.

I was a Thursday afternoon under the pew girl.
Old tile cool to the face, imagining the legs and feet,
wandering in my mind.

I was a summer day altar girl.
Do this in remembrance of the intended you
and for who you will become.

Breakfast

2009-04-02T15:55:00.004-05:00

I learned to drink coffee
from Granddaddy.
He made it early
4am
on a wood stove
in a perk pot without a cord
or a clock.
He wore no watch.
Just sat up in bed
knowing the time
and went about making biscuits
and coffee
both of which aged until we got up
with Tommie,
our grandmother,
and drank the coffee strong
and ate the biscuits toasted in a pan,
mine with sorghum molasses.

We thought ourselves civilized
for the late hour of eight.

Cancer of Memory

2009-04-01T08:03:00.013-05:00

When I am forty-nine
my cells don't regenerate
fast enough on my face
or my arms or any place
I want my love to see.

It is as though my face
wants to stay the face that
broke a smile the first
time I saw him, so that
he won't fail to see me.

When I am forty-nine
my cells regenerate at
lightning speed in places
deep within that I am
hiding from everyone.

Memories race to replicate
against forgetting, invading
places where they have
no business, causing havoc
no one could ignore.

I pray for amnesia by fifty.

Napalm Girl

2007-03-29T07:46:00.000-05:00

See the Photograph

"Too hot, too hot."

Did you think to find traitors
burrowed into my muscles
like so many parasitic worms?

Should my small size seem somehow sinister?
Even smaller than you,
who are small enough.
Fit to tunnel
in the walls of your tunnels,
to pop out,
surprise!

Are we a wee army?

Do we lay in wait for you,
marbles in hand,
to pelt you with questions
which slay you?

Kim Phuc, the napalm girl, lives in Canada now, having survived the napalm attack by a South Vietnamese pilot. She was assisted in receiving medical care by South Vietnamese photographer, Nick Ut, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo. Here is a BBC News article about the incident in the words of Nick Ut.

Magniloquent Miscarriage

2006-10-18T14:44:00.000-05:00

I am giving birth to poetry in the night now.
These babies born, not so much in words,
as in scent and intuition.
They suckle me in those night hours.
In the gloaming, I draw sustenance from them, too.
They snuggle to me and I curve them into my arms.
We are a happy family in the eventide.

As morning tide comes in,
I am swept into a verbal amniotic sea.
Weary, spent, the poems squall for me.
Casting indicting eyes my way.
I don’t love them in the wee small hours.
Last night the verses fed my amour propre.
As day breaks, I wish to drown them
in the same bloody flood that brought them forth.

What Old Melodies and New Media Bring From Me

2006-10-16T22:24:00.000-05:00

So I watched Sting as he played a lute,
as he sang of golden fields
as they rustled in the wind.
In my mind I wrote a scene
where two would-be lovers lay side by side.
She says, “I love you, you know.”
“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah,” says he, as his eyes
roll slightly back behind his lowered lids,
seeing in his mind who knows what,
“and I love you too.”
“This is the worst best thing.”
And she will turn to him and smile,
And she will raise from him and cry.
And he will whisper into her neck from behind her back,
just before she leaves him,
“You. Oh, my God, yes, you.”

An Upside Down Poem (# 4)

2006-10-06T09:11:00.000-05:00

They are sleeping together now.
I don’t know what I expected,
but this wasn’t it.

She settles down next to him,
kisses him,
fits into the space where he is not.
And he lets her.

What do they do
when I am not looking?
I really wonder.

Did they start this when
I was working long hours?
They never let on at night.
I was totally clueless.

Maybe they needed me to be here.
I am here a lot now.
Lord knows I love them both
and if they love each other now,
I am ok with that.

My Cat and My Dog Fall in Love?

This is a followup to another upside down poem here.

Body of Work

2006-10-05T09:54:00.000-05:00

I threw out my back.
It wasn’t much good anyway.

While I was at it,
I put my feet on notice.

What naughty part will be next?
That tongue has been a bit sharp lately.

My hands will do whatever I say.
They are very shaky.

Psalm 911

2006-09-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

A Psalm for New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania

I cry out to you with a sound torn from my soul;
a sound of metal tearing;
a sound of innocence dying.
How terrible is this thing which has been thrust into the heart of the many.

Evil has risen up from its nursery and arrived full grown to destroy us;
those who pervert your very name;
who bow to false gods of hate;
who breed in the desperate a desire for destruction.

Their instrument of death is a cruel one;
they have used our own selves as a kind of cancer.
My body has been hurled against my body;
sister torn from the sky to rain destruction on brother.

And hell erupted in the sky;
And hell erupted in the sky;
And hell was thrown against the five sides of our strength;
And, yet, hell was cheated the fourth time.

Our words rained down on us like an evil snow;
like a parade held in honor of our enemy's victories.

Humans fell from the sky; Humanity fell from grace.

High places were made low;
crushed to dust that blows at our feet.
Our mighty have been struck a cleaving blow;
warriors defeated without a battle cry.

Images of horror enter my every waking moment;
burning into my eyes.
I sleep and dream, not in pictures, but in tears that do not wash,
tears that do not cool.
I awake and the sun is blocked by the smoke of a fire which burns my soul.

I have looked to the heavens and seen a terror.
I have cried to the hills and heard no relief.
I have called to the warrior and he is quiet.
I have screamed to my Lord.
I have screamed to my Lord.
I have screamed for relief.
I have screamed for vengeance.

Sing praises to the Lord, enthroned in Zion; proclaim among the nations what He has done. For He who avenges blood remembers;
He does not ignore the cry of the afflicted. Psalm 9:11-12 NIV

I cry out to you with a sound torn from my soul;
a whimper;
a sob;
a groan originating in the earth.

I cried out to the Lord
and I have seen him.

The Lord is with us in the rubble.
God has come to us in the body of the man who lifts a stone and clears a path.
The Lord is with us in the fires.
God has come to us in the hands of those who spray a healing, cooling stream.
The Lord is with us in the places of healing.
God has come to us in the mind of she who closes the wounds.
The Lord is with us in the streets.
God has come to us on the feet of the child who brings food to the grief-stricken.
The Lord is with us in the houses of worship.
God has come to us in the arms that gather us up.
The Lord is with us in our homes.
God has come to us in the lips of our loved ones who kiss us through our pain.
The Lord is with us in the places of power.
God has come to us in those whose hearts burn for justice
tempered with judgment.

I cried out to the Lord and the Lord joined me in my cry.

c 2001 Cynthia E. Huddleston 15 Sep 01

Miss Martha

2006-09-06T19:38:00.000-05:00

Miss Martha’s blue water jug is no Samaritan Well
she is Ghanain and a woman of fine repute
bringing drinks of hope to other women
leaving each face happier than she found it

moving about on a blue motorbike
spreading drops of joy to water each life
farming for a crop of female success stories
to rival her own accomplishments

Miss Martha is headed to University
an upgrade from her wish for Polytechnic
miracle at the hand of “Grandma”
who daily lifts up those who need elevation

I have a tiny conduit to the life of Miss Martha
in the person of one Nancy Schaefer
a miracle worker in her own right
Mother and Grandmother and in His service

I wanted you to have a peek at an angel
on her blue motorbike, with her blue water jug
I have seen her dance in my mind
look closely, her feet barely touch the ground

In Pink Ink

2006-07-13T11:19:00.000-05:00

When the music is faster and violins repeat the same phrase and melancholia slips around my body pinning my arms to my side and my psyche to the ceiling of my skull. It clinging there like a frightened cat that thinks, "Oh, shit. Now look what I've done. Won't someone get me out of this thing I have gotten into...I'm slipping...nails slipping!" When the very cells of my body scream, "We know this feeling, have felt it, loathe it. Save us!" When the smell of coffee and pumpkin bread doesn't comfort, but instead taunts that I will never feel that feeling again. When the pen in my hand, pink ink, doesn't brighten the words I wrote --
I wrote
Iwroteanyway.
It's all I ever knew and
what I ever do and
I will never stop
because just like that cat
I'm clinging and the words are my claws
and the page is my ceiling
and sometimes I don't really know
how I got there,
but I know the words hold me there.
And eventually, someone will come along
with a telescoping ladder
and rescue me
or, more likely,
I will take a deep, whiskered, meowing breath
and just let go.
So far --
I always land on my feet.

Life Story

2006-07-04T22:37:00.000-05:00

I write with water on the tip of my finger
On wall board which will make the walls of my home
The story is old
The home is new

I write with scotch on the tip of my thumb
On my mouth which burns with unsaid words
The lament is deep
The kiss is light

I write with juice of strawberries on the tip of my tongue
On the side of your cheek which stains with each stroke
The meaning is tart
The taste is sweet

I write with tears on a lock of my hair
On the back of my hand which holds no hope
The traces are faint
The impression is strong

I write with ink on the tip of my pen
On the paper that makes it so which binds my word
The lines are short
The intent is long

The Fabric of My Life

2006-06-08T20:36:00.000-05:00

As a child, there were wrinkles in my dresses.
Laundry was starched, kept damp, ironed.
Made for a much tidier presentation.

As soon as the heat from the iron dissipated,
The wrinkles were on their way back.
It was pretty obvious that I was unkempt.

You can never really keep a dress neat.
If it is cotton, and mine were, it will crease.
Creases don’t come out easily.

Starch it, sprinkle it, iron it.
No matter what, not crisp.
I was a rumpled child.

I remember when perma-press came along.
Amazing substance. No starching needed.
Dry it, wear it. It seemed like a cheat to me.

My mom loved perma-press.
She was overworked and under-helped.
Perma-press smoothed over a lot of things.

I like cotton. I like it just the way it comes.
Doesn’t need dye to be pretty.
If it wrinkles, I am plain ok with that.

My wrinkles are not only on dresses.
I show them on my face.
They highlight my eyes and my mouth

My husband loves my mouth
And I love my eyes.
There is truth to be seen in both.

I often wear a rumpled white shirt.
I love the feel of the cotton close to me.
The wrinkles just feel familiar and comfy.

I Once Knew Something

2006-06-08T20:21:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of me, I was a clean sheet.
No words, no doodles, no marks.
I knew things then that I have lost.
They went the way of my illiteracy.
Tidied up and swept away.
I created poems and canvases and a child.
I took on a man and a vocation and a life.
Now clean sheets are where I wrap my babe,
where I make love to my man,
the place where I dream of my tomorrow and tomorrow.
Nothing showed on me back then,
not like now.
Scars and worry lines and smoker's wrinkles around my mouth.
I haven't smoked in 20 years, but there they are.
I wish I could remember what I came here knowing.
I feel it, like the piece of food between my teeth.
Tease at it, tease at it, suck on it.
But it just won't come.
And I can never leave a clean sheet lie.
I must fill it with doodles and words and my man and my life.

Breakfast Buffet Bananas

2006-05-29T15:32:00.000-05:00

I had banana pancakes off the menu
luscious little nuggets of warm banana smoosh
in a whole wheat pancake.

While two Jersey guys in power suits
analyzed the abilities of that fuckin’ Johnson
to keep his end up.

While two Queens gals in knock-off Prada
went back to the buffet to stuff their purses
with boxed cereal and apples
and bananas still stitched up
in their skins.

While the bald maitre d’ I will call Raoul
catered to me
and smiled at me
and the Czech waiter brought me
extra bacon.

I loved the warm maple syrup,
the chewy whole wheatness
the warm smoosh,
but I couldn’t finish all the pancakes.

Too
much
bananas.

Special Sauce

2006-05-28T12:12:00.000-05:00

the airport snack bar table bore coffee rings.
it rocked and bobbled like a dog’s head in the back window
of a Chevy.

she clung to it with her knees
lost her grip
kept losing her grip.

blink
blink blink
swallow

hamburger no fries
Coke

automat movements
lift the burger
lower the burger

blink
blink blink
swallow

no napkin
no straw
on her own

tears sliding down her cheeks
past her nose

blink
blink blink
swallow

Going Back

2006-05-20T14:35:00.000-05:00

There was no time to gather up clothes or toys
There were never many of either anyway

when we left

Many times there was a pistol
Usually there were bruises
Often it was night
Once in a storm

It was chaos when we left
from the outside looking in
but we knew our cues

time to go

Right after the fists
just before the gunshots
during the screaming

then we left

Mostly to Tommie’s house
Sometimes to Sherry’s house
Once to Doris Sartain’s house
in a storm

after we left

Morning would come
Breakfast was had
Coffee was poured
Nothing was said
The ground would dry up
Daddy would show up

we'd go back

Cross my fingers
pray to God
plead to stay
come the day
we’d go back

There was no time to gather up joy or hope
There was never much of either anyway.

Why I Nap Now

2006-05-17T23:10:00.000-05:00

I’ve begun talking to you when you are not there.
In fact, this is just a continuation of the conversation we had
last night in my dreams.

You are so compassionate and careful with me.
You know my heart and value my soul.
I can’t tell you how much that means, how it makes me feel.

We ate some kind of fruit last night, you and I.
Sticky sweet fingers licked by one and then the other.

It was bright and sunny, but not hot. I like that.
Breezes blowing and my hair getting caught in my mouth
as I tried to eat.

We laughed and shook our heads at those who would not
see what you and I see.
How could they stand it? Don’t they feel the empty spots.

I do. I wake and you slip from my mind past my lashes.
There is too much room inside of me when you go.

I’ve finally started napping. I miss you so.

Texas

2006-05-16T17:30:00.000-05:00

drought dry land
morning clouds tease the sky
never share a drop

Upside-down Poem #3 (No peeking!)

2006-05-11T09:59:00.000-05:00

I am cheating on him.

He loves me without end,
and I am being unfaithful.

It happened Christmas Eve.
Ironically, I was shopping for a present for him.
The perfect thing;
something to show him how much I care for him;
how much I appreciate what he feels for me, does for me.

He is faithful.

I feel terrible, but I feel wonderful.

She was there in the store,
where I was absolutely not looking for her.
But, her eyes
her eyes
my favorite shade of green.
Softest hair, scented like herbs.

Zelda. Her name is Zelda.
One look, I knew I was gone.

I brought her home.
I couldn’t do anything else.

My friends sniff at her.

He looks so hurt when she is close to him.

I’m am sorry, but have no regret.

How It Went When My Dog Got a Cat for Christmas

Zelda

Patches

In the Presence of Greatness

2006-05-09T14:31:00.000-05:00

Sigmund Freud is on my wall.
I lie here on the couch in fading light and see him,
dark suit, watch chain,
head tilted slightly to his right,
head resting on his hand,
fingers splayed,
arm at ninety degree bend.

There is nothing unusual about a picture of Sigmund Freud,
except, if I turn on the light,
the picture will be Hydrangeas in a Vase.

So, with a man of such renown,
not wanting to waste opportunity,
I tell him things,
a one-sided therapy--
he never speaks,
just nods a little,
flexes his fingers,
raises an eyebrow,
or two.

Perfect analyst.
No disturbing questions.
No probing.
Just quiet listening,
allowing me my own breakthroughs.

Tomorrow, I hope to get the light just right,
because, if I squint, he looks like Ulysses S. Grant,
and I want to talk War and Politics.

Verbalassault

2006-05-06T11:23:00.000-05:00

Therearehints

Thewayyourfeetarehoveringjustabovethefloor.

Theodorofburntdreamsclingingtoyourhair.

Theflinchflinchtheflinch.

Somedonotseethem,
donotwanttotheydon’t.

Thesecrimesnotmandatorytoreport.

Thesestrikesagainstyouwillneveradduptothree.

Itdoesn’tcountitdoesn’t.

Smallyouaresmalllittlewomangettingsmaller.

Soonhewillhavewhittledawaywhatlittleisleft.

Broken Bones Black Eyes

It’seasytoseewhyyourcrygoesunnoticed.

Rape Enchiridion

2006-05-06T11:09:00.000-05:00

Never let me know you are looking.
Don’t ask too much.
Be around, not too close.
If you see the inside of me, don’t mention it.
Don’t take notes.
If something appalling should fall out of my head,
don't pick it up.
Ignore the inconsistencies.
Speak clearly.
Don’t speak.
Look for the mist of breath between my words.
If I hold my breath, hold my breath.
Don’t trace the scars.
Sometimes I like to take off my clothes and look at my naked skin,
just checking.
The hairs on the back of my neck are kept clipped short, never shaved.
My dog stands guard over me as I sleep.
I will not talk about it.
I won’t shut up.
I have a foul mouth.
When I lick my lips, I am not tasting victory.

How to Impress Chicks

2006-05-05T10:29:00.000-05:00

He wanted to be called Jazz,
because he thought it sounded cool.
Hell, he knew it did.

But everyone just called him Leonard,
not Lenny or Len or Leo.
The cool guys at school didn’t even call him ‘Nard,
although they did amongst themselves.
The cool guys didn’t speak to him at all.

He played Jazz at Granmother’s house.
On the old turntable
listening to Parker and Mingus and Powell.
On the radio
tuning in a distant NPR program
when he could pick it up.

Hunting through dusty junk stores
to find a Doc Cheatham recording.

He wanted to blow horn or play piano,
but he was no good.
But Jazz had rhythm.
But yes. He did.

He banged out the rhythms.

Since he was little, beat was in his head.
Chickens…peck…peck peck peck…peck.
Leaky faucets…drip drip…drip.
The old lawnmover…rooom, chugga, pop pop pop, chugga pop.
Mixing bowl…whap whap whap, sliiiiip, whap whap whap.

He never played his rhythms for anyone,
just the chickens,
‘cause they called him Jazz.

Storyteller

2006-05-04T18:46:00.000-05:00

The tales he tells are not his,
but a rehashing of old stories from a hundred lifetimes ago.
He plucks them up and sucks them up and chews them well and
leaves them to digest, nourishing his creativity,
hoping to bring from them a fresh telling.

He smacks lines against the stone walls in a kind of verbal practice drill and
sometimes they bounce back true and
sometimes they flop on the floor and
sometimes they zing around the space
bouncing off stone and beams
threatening the glass with their very clarity and diamond sharpness.

He mulls ideas and sleeps on them and
jumps up excited and sits down dejected.
He chooses his words, picks them over,
and he polishes them, always polishes them 'til they are shiny bright –
or comfy worn –
sometimes both.

And he weaves quite a tale
and he delivers -
eyes riveted on him,
words flicking from his tongue
and snapping in the air
and landing a sometimes stinging
blow.

Or maybe soft phrases curling from his mouth to pad across the floor and circle 'round and 'round your ankles and beg to be let on your lap.

And there are the times when the tale is so true
it has a kind of aching sweetness,
like the soft puffs of air from your just-born sleeping baby.
They beg to be kept and saved for another day and cannot.
The life of them is of the moment and for the moment and in the moment and later we will wonder if we heard what we heard or just dreamed the words,
or wished the words
or they were whispered to us
by a Spirit that stood among us for a time.

Written for Gordon in celebration of 10 years of good storytelling.

Another Upside-down Poem

2006-05-01T20:08:00.001-05:00

Somewhere you are.
Making love to some auslander mouth, probably.
Cruising, making port of call with every sailor in the Mediterranean.
Puta! coming for everyone but me.

My tongue probing for just the right French kiss.
Yearning for that certain something.
Wait, pretending not to.

I know things, lots of things,
But not the thing.
What does it take to get to you?

Making me feel less.
Smaller.
Size must matter.
I just can’t get it up for you.

When “Je ne sais quoi” Is the Term You Are Searching For

An upside-down poem

2006-04-30T14:19:00.000-05:00

Unbalanced.
World spinning, feet frantic, I must get to you.
The need frightens me.
I am nearly undone.

Dangerous.
Oh, you are that.
Lovely, lovely to me and awful.
Touch you, hold you.

Transparent.
What I will do for you, the smell of you,
The blood racing through my veins for you,
Carrying bits of you to bits of me…
Melding.

Some laugh, some shake heads and pity.

It makes me not one bit less enamored of you.

Thanks to you I am getting nowhere.
I am getting there fast.

Man on Bicycle in the Cold Lighting a Cigarette

Perspective

2006-04-29T01:15:00.000-05:00

Prodigal - Rashly or wastefully extravagant; a prodigal life.
Aspersions - An unfavorable or damaging remark; slander.

Everything is a matter of perspective. A ten-year-old’s summer in the cotton country of West Tennessee was ninety repetitions of the same day. Days stretched the length of the hot blacktop highway from Keeling to Brownsville where all of my friends lived. Friends I talked to on the phone and tried to conjure up like the shimmering mirages that danced on the same hot asphalt. Ninety days is a long time when you have lived 3650.

I have lived 16,940 days now. Ninety is small, oh, so very tiny. Why, I’ve probably spent the equivalent of ninety days plucking my eyebrows. One day, I put my daughter’s new first grade picture in a frame with twelve spaces. That afternoon it was filled and she was off to Austin to college. In about ninety days she will graduate and begin grad school soon after to make a good life from her own perspective.

Prodigal - Giving or given in abundance; lavish or profuse.
Aspersions - A sprinkling, especially with holy water.

Sometimes time brings a different perspective, a second look, an alternate meaning.

Lavish blessings on you and yours.
OldPoet