Framed

Left to its own devices,
My pen will drool and dribble.

The ink soaks the sheet like
Sea disappearing into the beach.

I can dig a moat around my sandy turrets
But the water still caves it all in.

When I need a buttress,
When I look forward and I see nothing but

Empty space, I find the focal point:
Adjust the shutter speed

For the cloudy-bright afternoon, then
Press and hold the button halfway.

Take focus off the inner grind.
Inside the machine, one-sixtieth of a second

Snaps, a dog gulping jerky treat,
And I capture one vision of time.

Full, the frame restrains my view;
My eyes gorge themselves on pixilated detail.

I built the fence, and I grow inside it.
I box myself into the digitized borders,

Muscles cramping over a single verb
A seed buried in a container in direct sun.

The pen lifts: it holds itself, hovering
There’s time, and no need to bleed.

Inside the frame, light cuts into slivers
Boxes and slats dividing the space again.

Ink carves the emptiness like a river.

My Old Porch

In that song, Lyle told me about a
Steaming, greasy plate of enchiladas

With lots of cheese and onions.
Singing that song about his old porch.

I couldn’t think of my old porch that way.
My old porch hung off the house

Like a dead weight, that tongue of cement
Lolling in the front yard.

My old porch cowered like an old dog
Under—well—a porch, in the heat of the day.

It sagged, sighing in puffs of air,
That slatted swing a-barely twitching.

In the storms, my porch huddled in the against the brick
A schoolchild practicing a tornado drill.

But, at night, when the sun advanced and hid behind
The house across the street, then, finally, ran off home,

My old porch dropped its hunched shoulders
The slats of the swing undulating in the

Evening breaths. I’d perch on one step, leaning into
The softening wood post. My old porch held me

Like an old familiar hand.

Late

I wanted to be there early, to that sorority of women who push evolution along. I wanted to be there on time. I wanted to be there when everyone else was arriving.

I wanted to blend in, to move with the bodies that were moving already. I wanted to press my body into that one body, already making itself. Then I would not be noticed for my individuality.

I wanted to make it easy. A life made easy. One small life. That’s all I wanted.

I had a friend. She got it all so easy. Oops and she arrived, first time, even after all that coke and pot and those drink-filled nights. So easy, and they drew back the velvet rope and let her slide right in.

I didn’t want to lose it. Or if I had to lose it, I didn’t want to have it, anyway, in the first place. Something—or someone—laughed, I think, coming along, letting me peek inside, then and ripping it all out of me. Take it out, flush it, clots, down the toilet. Barred again.

I make cookies. I make paper airplanes. I make piles of rumpled, dirty clothes and I make them clean and folded. I even make the African violet bloom, sometimes.

That is, when I don’t forget. When I am not late with the things it needs. When I am not off doing whatever I did to let it all go to hell.

I am not late. I am in hell.

I wanted to be there early, but I couldn’t find the door. I couldn’t find the man who would open it.

Now I am not late. I am not late, isn’t that good?

No. I am so far behind that I have not even arrived yet.

Or maybe I’m just in the queue, the line of vacuous losers, who are never let in.

I want to be myself-plus, expanded. I want to be lush, to be flushed, and ripe.

Instead, I am gutted, rutting against the alarm, the tick-tick-tick of the calendar clock.

It’s night now, and I can push it all down in to darkness, what little darkness there is on this solstice evening.

I was young, but everyday now I am reminded that I wasted it.

I wanted to be early, to be on time. To have it. To hold.

It’s too late for that now.

A Face to Love

I saw this man on the Tube. If Colin were with me, he wouldn't have wanted me to take this photo. But he wasn't with me.

I love this face. I am not laughing or teasing. I love this man's face, his enormous glasses and drooping jowls. I think, "You know, this guy probably, maybe, doesn't like what he sees in the mirror much." Or he just sighs and doesn't think about it. But I do. I thought about the entire train journey.

What made his face fall like this? What does he do? He is dressed like a regular Brit, but is he far from his home? What does this face look like, smiling?

I wanted to be in the shop with him when he bought those frames, when he tried them on, looked in the mirror, squinting through the faux lenses, then nodding.

I want to know what he likes to read, and whether he drinks tea or coffee, or both.

One of the great joys of my life is imagining people. My life soars inside the imagined lives of people I see and don't meet.

Inside every face is a world worth knowing, worth loving. 

Promises

My friend Bobbi wanted to know why I gave things up for Lent.

"Is it a spiritual thing, or more for discipline?"

I stumbled over my answer, something about sacrifice and wanting to spend that time thinking about what choices I am making everyday.

Lent is gone now and I have a whole selection of candy around the house. I can eat it whenever I like. And I do.

Bobbi is Jewish. She celebrated Passover during the first days of Holy Week. She told me, when we were at dinner last night, that she just spent the whole week not eating bread. I realized I don't know anything about Passover. I remember the angel passing over the houses that had the blood of the lamb on the doorstep. I remember that story. But I don't know much about the holy day itself, and how Jews celebrate it.

My in-laws are lapsed Jews. The Phillips family came from the Mendoza family, a settlement of Spanish-Portugese Jews in London. My husband and his father and brother look Jewish. But they aren't anymore.

I stopped into the Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge last week, during Holy Week. It was Holy Thursday. That's the day that Jesus washed the feet of his followers. As it says in the mass it is "the night he was betrayed." The figures of all the saints were shrouded in purple drapes. It was afternoon. A few people, women and men, old and young, were kneeling, here and there, praying. They were alone in their thoughts, but together in their prayer. One woman was saying the rosary in front of a shrouded bulk that was Mary, hidden.

I lit a candle. I prayed too, for my family: my old family and my new one. And for my future family, that I want to have. I thought of each person, individually. And I prayed thoughts for my grandparents, who Mom tells me are always looking out for me. I wondered where they are now, now that Purgatory doesn't exist any more.

I don't think 40 days and 40 nights are enough, but I can make do with that for one small promise.

Sawin' on a Driver and playing it HOT!

Someday I'll be heralded a genius. It will be that day when we all learn the truth about Phil Mickelson.

My husband wants to know why I think he is the devil. "Yeah, he's pure evil," Colin says. "Like when he ran off the course to be with his wife when she was giving birth. Eeee-viill!"

My friend Chris's response was "Maybe he reminds you of some bad person from your childhood."

Maybe. Or maybe HE IS the bad person from my childhood. Maybe he drove that ice cream truck by a little too slowly, the tinkle-tinkly music a backwards, sped-up version of Satanic text. Those orange push-up rocket sherberty things always tasted a little too much like baby aspirin if you ask me.

And the green jacket? The white-white teeth? The perfect family? The happy-go-lucky, aw-shucky-ness of his devil-may-care attitude. The devil may care... a little too much.

Yes, I don't know a thing about Phil Mickelson, except what vibe I get. It's all just a little too perfect. Too good to be true. Give me big boy John Daly anyday. Or Payne Stewart in his awful ugly clothes. Or Miguel Angel Jimenez and his puffy red ponytail.

Now those are some guys I can trust. Phil? Well, he may not have sold any certain part of his eternal-wear to a flame-dancing, pitch-fork-carrying, eternal entity, but according the song, the Devil did go down to Georgia and he was looking for a soul to steal.

Funny Bone

 
When you are hungry in Paris, what do you do???

You eat, well.

This we did, a weekend ago, in the Marais district, at "Le Coude Fou." I don't speak French, and Colin doesn't either. So I asked Babelfish what "Le Coude Fou" means. It means, according to Babelfish: The Insane Elbow.

Now Babelfish isn't perfect. For example. I just put that last paragraph into Babel fish, translated it into French, then that French back into English. Here's what I got:

"This us, one weekend ago, in the zone of Marsh, at "the Insane Elbow." I do not speak French, and Hake not either. Thus I requested from Babelfish what "wants to say the Insane Elbow". It average, according to Babelfish: The Alienated Elbow."

Well, that's close. I have great fun with this, with my friend, Daniela, who is German. She's goes to school in Nurenburg, and speaks perfect English, of course. But I like to surprise here with my excellent German. So I drop great things in occasionally that have been translated from Babelfish.

Come to think of it, she never replies to those emails. She must be very busy at school.

Anyway, I loved The Alienated Elbow very muchly, especially the American couple sitting under the painting (above). They were wearing the Americans-traveling-in-Europe uniform (loafers and khakis) and discussing the Moussaoui trial.

Oh, and at the table next to us: a table of Indian (dot Indian, not feather Indian) Brits, one of whom, I think, had very recently snorted cocaine. She spoke good French though.

Definitely better than Babelfish. But then, what do I know?

Where am I...

... In this city of
Brown and grey blocks
Averted eyes
Frigidaire days into weeks,
Into months; and those
Fetid greens that we
Never eat unless
Mushy
Mushy?

... In this couple of
Vow takers, dressed up
Trussed up, on a May Day
Then left in knots
A tangled heap shipped away
Unfamiliar, unknown to other,
Dumped into the North Atlantic abyss?

... In this set of
Assembled body parts
Woman machinery, shuttered for years,
Plumbing shut off, plugged up
With the PILLs, so long;
A cycle squints to recognize the
Tick-tock-tocking time
In the unbroken English season?

...In this binding of
Books, bound themselves to
A sentence,
Like a judge waiting, to speak himself;
He's Tapping his pen,
Looking over the room,
Giving his promise, his word:
All those words.

Where am I?

Is this a competition?

Who are all these riotous people around me?

I love my camera-phone. To the unsuspecting world, it LOOKS like a phone. But I can catch you! I might just try.

I love dogs. Dogs don't care if you have a harelip. They don't care if you have simple chronic halitosis (they have the complex version anyway). They don't care if you launched rotten eggs farts all through grade school.

I also like snails, but I don't know why.

I love these people. What else do you need, if you have something as close as this?

Women go inside homes and do small things everyday. The small things are so big, there is no room to name them or list them.

I like feather pillows.