I Need My Words

Need to see words hand written,

Need words typed in neat clean letters

Words born disappear like a sunrise mist

Gone by midmorning

Daily a fight ensues to restore my words to memory

Words stain my brain like berries stain my fingertips

Faces and names get easier than specific word recall

Lose track of adjectives, verbs, and adverbs

Nouns and verbs stream by my consciousness steamed by battle

Articles circumvent examination, addled

Words flee from my lips

Escaping interjections and prepositions

Frustration when words get away,

Write words down, use pen and microsoft

Pray to revive lost words,

absorption in proper punctuation, grammar,

Avariciously use pen, paper, and computer

Develop vocabulary, learn pronunciation

Ravenously, like a wolf, write words, devour words,

Believe words, hoard words are me,

Words deliver, create lust; rousts self-criticism, spreads similar views,

Words are abused and used

Words create desires; produce peace and love,

Words are seeds; words flower they flourish,

Grow out of control

Write words carefully, choose words 

Ardently respect word power

Words race around my mind
surround me like vagabonds searching warmth and nourishment

Contemplate obscure, little known meanings

Scrutinize each word’s effect

Each word opens spaces, new places

Each word provides sensitivity to pain and pleasure,

Stretches mental capacity

Words read and said exist, disappear like wind at sunset

Words written, never read, disintegrate like carapace

Write words, fear I’ll lose them if I don’t write and say them

Read written words aloud, hear their sounds

Word clouds form above my head like Lil’ Abner

Greedily read words, lap words up from books and cyberspace

Over passing seasons

Words capture a moment in eternity

Missouri Review mentioned me as a great woman writer to read!

Writers are especially sensitive creatures even if we do wear tough armour to protect ourselves. I'm no different than most of us writers in that way. My ego also comes into play on occasion, so recently when I checked to see where I'd been mentioned lately on Google, I was not only flabbergasted, but honored, to be listed in the article below by Alison Balaskovits. Something like this makes all my effort seem worth it. Thank you to the Missouri Review, and to Ms. Balaskovits, for noticing and mentioning me. 

I've Got The Blues For Paper

I’ve got the blues about paper today. I walk around my house examining notes, short stories, papers from high school written in long hand, looking through papers to throw away, thinking about days long gone when we learned to write script.

My mind jumps ahead: future generations where no one will know how to write script. Writing by hand will disappear except for a few who carry on. Handwriting will become a fine transcribed art that no one teaches and that no one knows how to do anymore.

Later, my cabdriver explains how now-a-days, children do their assignments online on the computer so they don’t write anything down at all anymore not like we did back in the day. He said they barely learn print, they type everything on the computer.

Columbia forced me to buy a typewriter in 1978. They said hand written assignments get get lower grades. Hasn’t anyone explained this to you before? I mean I ‘m sorry to break it down to you like this and feel bad no one told you before that at Columbia. Miz. Leftow, you already lost one grade this term by handing in hand-written homework. You would have gotten a B+ but because it was hand written you only are due a C+. Sorry…

When I explained how poor I was, she said, “You’re smart, you’re here at Columbia so you’ll figure out a way to survive.”

Back then all I had was two pairs of jeans a skirt a few blouses and one sweater from the $10 store. I had no money to spend but needed that typewriter. Back then I couldn’t conceive a typewriter had a memory so you wouldn’t have to typewrite the whole page if you made a mistake.

My cabbies' conversation brings me back. He’s telling me how hard it is to get by with four children, two are teenagers. The only way they get by is because his wife lies and says he doesn’t live there so she can get food stamps Medicaid and section 8, he said as he drove his Lincoln Town Car working paying for High-Class radio service trying to make a buck. It ain’t easy out here and that rent we pay would cost us 2100 instead of the 900 we pay and in this way, we get by he confided.

Four children and us and two cats. I show the vet our Medicaid card he continued and then we don’t pay. Medicaid for cats is good he said. We’re doing the best we can to get by and she works on the side too. My wife’s a certified home health nursing aide and she gets work a few days a week at a hospital up in the Bronx. After they take out the taxes it’s about 50 bucks for a 12-hour day then she got to make sure it doesn’t get in the way of watching out for our children so thank God she doesn’t work every day.

It gives her time off to cook and clean the house and watch over our teens and younger children. We pay for catholic school – and they have to go to college. There’s no jobs out there you know. We try to get by – but it’s hard to qualify. That’s why she wants to work too. She works off the books. There’s just too many bills to pay. You know growing children need clothes and shoes - those are expensive.

It’s a different world out there. My cabby alerts me that the ride and story have come to an end.

They don’t do things the way they used to. My cabbie is a young man. He’s only 42. His radio comes alive. A voice asks his location in Spanish.

It’s a lot to chew on. I think about all the finagling I did to get by twenty-two years working professionally to help our young – a noble job made harder by the huge bureaucracy I functioned in.

I enter my apartment and look around me again at all the paper I’d been trying to separate earlier into throw away and keep. Notes and each piece of paper seem to have so much meaning I don’t know how to throw them out.

In Washington Heights where I live most of the people survive on a lie because otherwise, they’d be too poor, unable to survive, pay their rent, to take care of their children’s needs plus pay medical expenses. In order to qualify for government programs, my cabbie’s wife promises government agencies to sue him for child support if he can be found. He lives with her and pays for the children to attend Catholic School. They lie to get by or go live on the street. Life has become a double whammy, like Yossarian in Catch 22, where no matter what you do, you fight a losing battle.

Uh uh, I worked hard for that money, and can’t get me no, no, no, no – satisfaction!


Note:* 
This story was re-edited & rewritten because the original format was half poetry, half narrative. I tried to make it all fit as one piece. If anyone has read the other piece or cares to search for it, I'd appreciate any comments as to which piece you prefer.

For Nina Simone

I wish I could say I knew how it feels to be free

I wish I could fly till tired – and like a bird, settle in a tree

I wish I could say my tits are so big because I breastfed too long

Two and a half years pulling stretches tits out

Maybe so big from eating chickens force-fed hormones,

I think my problem is memory rot, because I have trouble focusing

I need a friend to stick with me through thick and thin

Literally, physically, emotionally, mentally, lean and leaner

both metaphorically and literally,

A special friend who will give me what I need

Who will be there when need

When I do deeds that make me feel alone

Who will be there for me as we agreed?

Someone to stand beside me when I succeed

Someone to be near when I fail but tried

Stand there with me while I wish they’d chosen me

But realize when it was time to pick

They didn’t pick me

I stood there under their watchful gaze, hoping,
yet knowing they won’t choose me

I’m not who you think I am,

The one you see with bright smiling gaze, nothing fazes her,

Turns her back fearlessly on hazing, moving in stride

I go it alone day after day

Like I’m in another time zone in the artic zone

I want a friend to see me through thick and thin

So please look the other way

Don’t say what you think you see because you can’t see me

Turning stones with my last breath I cry out friend!

There you are

Stand there beside me

I want a friend to see me through thick and thin

To understand my moans, use me

to help me chase away the blues that plague me –

Chase those blues away with surety like night fades to day –

I want a friend to see me through thick and thin

A friend who can give and take

Take generosity turns

I need a friend to be there when I let go, 

when I can’t hit high notes that sing songs to my heart

Need to play to know better days ahead

When your lips speak lies, I'll hold my head high

I need a friend to heal my blues – chase them away

Help me see sunny days, forget mud slinging out of tune

Songs that have no rhythm or rhyme to my heart of gold

Take this heart of gold and make it mine

I want a friend to see me through thick and thin

Make a shrine to this golden heart of mine

Poetry, Porno and Chess

Do all while listening to Bach, Maclemore and Jill Scott

Who could ask for anything more than poetic thought and porno

Oooo baby that’s so hot

A challenging chess game

accompanying a good soundtrack

No skin to skin, no one’s emotions to think about

A fantasy in place of human energy

Oooo ahhh uh - huh, that’s the way, uh - huh, I like it

Ponder my next move while analyzing

where my online opponent’s queen goes

Before calling checkmate

Not sure if it’s fate that each day awaits

I take the bait and make the same old moves

Listen to music asleep and awake,

Headphones like body parts,

rids me of my soul aches

Play chess hours on end till finally forget how many

games I’ve played, maybe a hundred and twenty

Listen to hip-hop, rock and roll, soul

Day after day sit on my ass –

Write a few lines of poetry, scroll through porno videos,

Play chess till it comes out my ass

I’m a bit morass, but dig it, I’ve got class

Twenty - four - seven, play this round till I fall out or die

Whichever comes first,

before my next prescribed pill high

It’s my life and I’ll live how I want to

Live how I want to

Do what I want to do

Write poetry, watch wacked out shockingly violent porno

Listen to the Stones and Les Misérables

Contemplate my next strategic move

Poetry, chess and Porno

Life is so – so good!