Monday, April 27, 2009

Scraps

Thoughts at the end of April:

Trying to take yoga classes during the day. Mostly feel overwhelmed by the very fit, very buff crowd of hong kong Tai-Tais (housewives). Twice my age and they could easily bench-press me in between manicures and luncheon. While we are trying to relax with downward dogs and Warrior Is, I look at the mirrors, all I can think of is "SPARTANS ~ Hoohaa... For Tonight we shall dine in HELL... I brought more soldiers than you Arcadian... What Does a man want of his queen?" And then whatever zen I had been seeking is permanently lost.

But it is rather awe-inspiring, and I guess it's an effective way to keep status and husband.

---

I can't believe it is already the beginning of may.

Friday, April 24, 2009

contrast

what is love. I have heard many things. A man says to his grandson, regretfully, it was softness. she was softness, bu-duh-ruh-wuh.
"But then it is too simple to say that you love someone. It hides a list of things. Tangles of things… the way I could forgive him, and he has been forgiven.
If I lost him and he were a ghost, he would be the first thing I’d call for, the imprint of his shoulder in my bed, the touch of his hand on my waist, the fights, the games. sight, touch, taste… and then… the bond of what we’ve seen and promised never to tell."


Poem


Sole Survivor
He walks away
No surveying
the catastrophe
Of covers and torn sheets
An open diary of past mistakes to fill.
He puts on his clothes quickly and doesn’t turn to see
Her lying
hand outstretched -
Doesn’t turn to check if she’s breathing .
His hand lingers on the door
Where hers will be
When she shuts it in the morning.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Hole in the sky

It always comes as news. The news that I heard today... as though phones are still only the styrofoam cups with strings - hello hello. over.
the sadness of a small town spreads across the world. prayers.
and hope becomes something smeared across the glass-
or just a hole in the sky for the stars to pour through.

It seems silly because it's been years, and the memories I have are those of a child, dream shadows, laced with giggles and whispers and deteriorated by time.
catching ahold of what is left. candy hearts I remember, spun sugar, greased hair and shaky valentines.

a boy with elvis curls and a wide grin.

screaming around the playground - 2nd graders enacting our version of romance, love as war, girls against boys, stolen kisses and laughter, the swinging of ponytails, plastic barrettes and jump rope.
paused
as you screamed that a girl should not kick a boy 'there'
even if it was for a kisser team war and the odds were tight.

middle school tag as the sun sets in the church garden, stomachs full - pigs in blankets, baked beans and chili cheese, cinnamon apples. Ran past the grey statues and warnings of ghosts or after-dark wanderers. a game of tag in the dark turns to accidental hide and seek, screaming until the statues echo back, admitting the night time terror of being alone.

basketball game in the afternoon - laughing mouths open, back and forth.
braiding hair. moving past ocean water.

not all was kind: games became more cruel, chasing a wasp til a girl cried, charades of heartbreak and flirting, the sketches of naked women with bodies like vases, women with legs splayed, posing in impossible ways - posted on the windows of the church van. alcohol and detergent.
but still you laughed. everyone laughed. reckless and proud, youth and beauty.

and then childhood and memory were put away, folded and tucked, left and abandoned to shadowland.
---
i don't know how the story got so much worse.

It shouldn't have been written. It wasn't meant to be written that way. A cruel game? A joke, where somewhere the string pulls and it all comes apart, and we are all left laughing. Hope for that.
But it seems too much has gone for that now. Maybe in another life, in another place. It is wishful.

Or maybe
it's like we are all running in the dark, looking for that hole in the sky, and you found the stars first.