COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

Over the last three years,
three women tried to steal my sperm
one was true, she really loved me
she wanted to birth my baby,
I agreed cause I loved her

The other two said
they were on the pill
They just lied
I’m tellin’ you this
cause I know you’re concerned
you’re my very best friend
and I have to get it off my chest

And I’ll tell you right now:
I forbid you to put this in a poem,
I have dominant genes
for some recessive disease,
that although I don’t have it
my children will

Almost all the men in my family
are blinded by this malady
It’s a plague that eats away their sight
It starts in mid to late thirties
they’re stoned blind by fifty

So when Renee, the love of my life
says she wants to have my babies
I had a feeling I never had before:
that overwhelming primal urge
to shoot my sperm within her loins

and watch it swell into a baby
but when we tried
the seed failed to fertilize
And I discovered I was sterile

GOD HELP ME, I WAS DESPONDENT
EITHER WAY, I COULDN’T WIN GENETICALLY

Now I’m brokenhearted
Renee I loved and would’ve married
But she returned to her former lover
and implored him
to seed her female garden

Since then Renee begged me
to remain her friend
and I did because I
didn’t want her to think
I wasn’t man enough to do that
And to this day
I still love her

Now, I’ve got three to take her place
But don’t worry,
Let me set your mind at ease
I can’t be tricked into
being a blind progenitor
and I mean that both ways

I know I should be grateful
But none of them excite me
And although it’s satisfying,
I’m very lonely
for the woman of my dreams

I Sing The Blues For You Today ~ FIRST BLUETRY

I want to do poetry like Billy Holiday singing the blues
I want to do poetry like Ella Fitzgerald
I want to be me singing my holiday blues
Billie’s songs are poetry so fine it makes me think I’m her doing rhyme
Thoughts about Billie make me go off line, hook line & sinker; she puts me back in time
I sing to my lover, I want to make your poetry mine because you spout rhymes
Observing my life become an unending grocery list of things to get done
Your life or mine, yours is on my mind - the list of to dos keeps growing exponentially
Number 1, try out a mattress, 2, buy it, 3, buy new locks to keep someone out number 4, find someone to install it, make 10 million calls. Keep writing lists. What did you say? How many sessions, any lessons in storage? Will the Divine power of intervention help?
I don’t want to bore you with the details and derail you from my song.
Damn, wonder if I’ll ever see Willa Dean again– oh man, you know the women I mean
Kept her head wrapped up like an African Queen with her creamy coffee looking self.
Willa said the secret to good potato salad is to go heavy on the mayo
Willa Dean days, they’re all in a haze now. I was so high back then.
The memory lingers, listening & watching while she told stories. She’d whisper, her voice barely a breeze, tell me about her lovers, say, “I’m gonna get me some.” … I’d get confused & asked, did she mean her husband or lover. Willa’d have dinner waiting when her husband got tired of driving a cab & came home to rest. She’d show me wilted lettuce and bring it back to life telling me about her lovers, drugs, & children while making potato salad.
I thought - she’s a woman of many talents, a stoned cold junkie and a working mom combined
The nose that knows, her preference was coke, good moist coke at a good right price too on the upper - upper west side in Washington Heights, 162nd street to be exact
Willa was friends with a famous New York jazzman and his wife, a New York City teacher. Willa had class & style combined; she took me to dress models at the Ritz one time. Got paid for it too. It was such a pleasure to do. I even got a pair of designer gloves out of it.
People accepted Willa everywhere we went –
We were at jazzman’s apartment, small tight crowded living room upper west side 90’s.
Willa’s friend sat across from me staring at my big breasts. I can see how tight your muscles are.
Let me massage you she said aggressively
hurting me so bad physically we had an argument instead.
Passing through hundreds of lives so many colors
Let me take you back to what we share - strivings for love – wanting to go somewhere –
Wanting to discover who we really are ~
see ourselves through the eyes of others and – finally see who we really are.
Extend this power to the umpteenth degree. We still wonder who they think we are ~
Uncover recover to turn to return to who we want to be
Dreams are reality - stop thinking, dreams are the color of my true love’s hair
Beyond the color of my true love’s hair, his dreads caress my bare hands
A whole-years grocery list pressed into a foggy mist of autumn red
turns bright chartreuse before bleakly the list dissolves before my eyes
True colors make my heart sneeze amidst a perpetual mist of violet-blues
a dream more real than a memory

The Furrier and Me

Tuesday I wore that small and pretty feathered hat
Kathy and later Judy asked, where did you
buy that hat? It was oblong, covering only
the top of my head in a thick four inch band
that curved cylindrically down to my ears

Rightly it seemed they should've asked, when
did you buy that hat, because it was nearly twenty
years ago and although I knew very clearly where
I had bought it, I didn't tell them. That store doesn't
even exist today, and I'm sure the old man
who sold it to me is no longer alive anymore
... I thought about all this and never said it

The old man must've been in his seventies, back then
Tall and slender, bent by time and hunched
he made an impression on me and helped
me realize seventy year old men
are as lecherous as young ones.

It was a small furrier shop on 27th Street
near Broadway in the New York furrier's district
The store looked deceptively small from the outside
with a plate glass window through which
I stared at the display of beautiful, furry things
inside that I wanted, such as big, red bushy
fox fur ear muffs so I rang the bell
resting near the lock on the iron gate

He buzzed me in and came out
of a metal cage to greet me
Over his left shoulder the view opened
to show a space - big, wide open, and deep
Everything fur you could imagine
coats, jackets, stoles, of all sizes
shapes and colors, and he told me how

now-a-days he sold some new furs
not so many as years gone by, now he
traded old for new, sold used and antique
He did a booming storage business

He asked how he could help me and when I
said I came in for the bushy red ear muffs,
he offered them for cheap or free if I
would only let him touch me, so I bought
a small ratty old sable stole for 15 dollars and paid
10 dollars more for the ear muffs and at that moment

I spied that golden auburn feathered cap
and put it on and it was mine
It fit so well, styled for another age
but looked as though it were made for me
which even the old man could see
He said you can have that for 10 dollars more
So I took that hat with me and have
worn it specially several times a year

That hat is the bargain of my lifetime
I'll use it, re-use it till one of us goes off -
I thought about that shop often but never
went inside again although I wanted to
and even passed by occasionally
but still I never did go in again
Now he's dead so long ago
I've lost my chance to ever get those
marvelous irreplaceable
bargains I'm sure I'll never see again

Now I'm sorry I didn't go back, take a
chance to see that crazy old coot again,
to bargain with him, put him in his place
... I know I didn't answer your question
- So in case you're still wondering -
... I never - ever - let him touch me

philosophical meanderings

Psychological warfare inside my head
Yeah I heard it before
Been there before - done that Mary Lou says I’m not interested
Sorry to admit I am, I’m not you I do my shit a different way
Interested or not what difference does it make if you brag to me you been down this road before and it didn’t get you anywhere

My option or yours
This road - that one - you have your choice I'll make mine
One road or another - not as much overhead as you suppose
You run a risk here or there
That fork in the road I finally get it’s not so much about you or what I do, in the end it’s about the struggle the good fight the light at the end of the tunnel

Don’t fuck with my feelings
I didn’t commit murder
I’m not meandering about your tender feelings

People keep telling me retirement is bliss
I’m thinking it’s same-o - same-o – day-to-day shit - can I get a witness - it's just different this shit than the before the day before this shit -
See! a new philosophy
Living means having problems

15 Minutes of Fame

A moment opens to eternity

Fastidious & attached to passing moments
I live in Warhol days
An open heart mends wounds
Are you for or against them?
What’s your political game?
Everyone's got his15-minutes of fame
Are you on their side or mine?
Is it them or is it us
Is there an us anymore
Who is us anymore anyway
Anywhere I’m supposed to know?
Did you know …
My headache keeps me awake to cover the worldwide news
An open wound
Nightly sound of the evening news
A bleeding ulcer seeking to be healed
Closer to home news too,
All news is bad news
Except the rescued puppy thrown in to control you
A news-forecast makes everything worse –
Ignore the news a week or two
Say your regards to Pluto
Ignore my bleak forecast of doom
All of us are doomed
As we all are doomed anyway
The more you do - the more gets done
When you stop doing there’s no more to get done
Another open wound
Always the dream remains of
Another go-round
Take care
Hope …
To see you there
If & when there is another go-round

GLIMMERS OF RAIN

A rainy evening, darkness dropping
like a black and heavy velvet curtain
on a theatre stage. Scents of mildew
fill the air. Seated safely behind
a glass pane window sipping coffee

Evening settling, rain changing
from a thick wet sheet
to a soft and fragrant mist
Green, lush rolling hills
wet and soft, magical

Bright and dark all at once
Leaves soaked and matted, rotting on
the red earthen floor, dead limbs mixed
with living. A mirror image of reality
Woods, wet and musty with life

From still reflected sun shining
through the incandescent veneer of rain
Diamonds glimmering
making brown earth red
and dead leaves gold

Dead and living, combined reflections of reality
Compare life to sitting watching woods
its smell so sweet, unsurpassed
Followed by a taste of bitter
Having both to share

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

I need to be needed. The more you need me the more I need you. It’s how we got to be from the start.
Let me help you she said, it’s so hard on you. I can relieve you from your pain. I need you to need me.
Why I can’t say.
I can’t help being me.
Is it because on some deeper lever you are the more attentive father I longed for and for you I represent the good mom you desire with parts of the bad & crazy mom you had. This time Mom meets your needs.
It’s not so simply absurd as that our subconscious feeds layer upon layer worse than the onion that makes your eyes smart.
Your need for me makes me see, makes me need you more the more you need me. Your need fills up my space my energy. Your need feeds my need.
You explain it to me then, I know you know as much as I know.
Your need for me provides solace and grace in a place I never saw before with glimpses of insanity mixed with lust say trust me I want to hear
Your need for me provides a human express train ride to & from sanity & hell I can be manipulated to grow, I need you to watch with me while flowers grow
I need you to affirm my sanity
I need you because stars set and rise above your head
Not like a god but because you need me I need you
It’s not a space or a place it’s a space inside myself where
If I only let myself when you need me loneliness abates

Go ahead – now say it!
Put that confessional shit to rest and get on with the list of to do’s
so many things to do I can’t rest
gotta keep doing till the doing gets done

I wont shan’t cant let you get away that fast – true there’s hospitals or a prison forms within me when you’re there I’m there when you need me

I’ll rest a minute then save the rest of the world, maybe the universe – I’m a hero

A child’s glory restored in the wilderness ahead about reminiscence never had

mind body medicine

Two years ago this coming January, I participated in a conference for mind body medicine training in New Orleans to help with the healing & rebuilding of New Orleans. All monies earned from the conference went to help with rebuilding. The leader of our group of 10 women called me "co-facilitator" because of my skills in helping the group progress. This poem was the result of my urging and was one of the rituals we used in ending our group besides a very big party where all the groups came together to celebrate the night before we left.

OUR POEM

I am a woman of heart, of mind
A woman with desire
Unafraid of secrets

I am a woman of inner wisdom and knowing
I see the light in pain

I am a woman full of love
A woman of color and vitality

I am a woman who will be this woman
As long as I am a woman

I am a woman who does
not let fear hold me back

I am a woman brimming with possibility
Greater than I know

I am a woman of wholeness and joy

I am a woman to be honored

I am you

I am the earth, the moon, the stars
Gaia, Stella and Luna

By Toni, Joy, Tracee, Amy, Shawna,
Denise, Marin, Susan, Carolyn, Rita & Sandra

Changes

A year ago I wouldn't have believed it if someone told me what I'd be doing now. Time keeps passing whether you stay where you are or keep moving. I had a general 5 year plan that I'd been faithfully following and for some part that stayed in place. The part that stayed in place included keeping up my retirement annuity and leaving my job. I didn't plan on the following things:
loving DubbleX & finding out he's crazy & staying with him
leaving my husband in spite of loving him
plus having other reasons to leave my husband & preferring not to be with him
adopting out Mocha, a rescued Siamese I'd had 5 years
Keeping 2 of Starr's babies
Losing 40 pounds without trying to & joining a gym
Spending $40,000 of my retirement money on various things and spending more money to pay off old debts
Living on my pension
Losing half of our combined savings from our marriage because of the economy & being more poor than I've been in years
being this active on facebook
keeping up blogs for 2

Wow!


P.S. Dubble-wow reading this again a year later and I'm glad to seem time and myself moving on - still trying to be and do the best that I can!!!!

A MARRIAGE OF SORTS

He lives with his x wife and he hasn’t got a life
He’s lonely, he’s hurt, on the edge of despair
waiting for love on the brink of nowhere
his x wife sleeps in the room next to his
she’s a survivor, a mother, his x lover, his cover

They lived apart for over ten years
Symbiosis renewed through dependency and fear
He’s scared she’ll die from the
breast cancer she survived
So he suffers her abuse, pays all the bills,

And claims he’s very fond of her
She eats his guilt like a gourmet queen
And she don’t think she’s being mean
He’s promised he’ll never leave her
between a stone and a hard rock

They are their parents reborn,
drowning in self defeating,
narcissistic attitudes
Their daughter left home a long time ago
gave up waiting for the promised abode

when mom moved in to dad’s home
claiming she wasn’t staying too long
It’s a marriage of sorts, you would agree
In spite of their self imposed celibacy
existing in the wastelands of mediocrity

Nourished by chronic dissatisfaction and
occasional knock down, drag out fights
where they they put each other down
But he still craves companionship,
a friend to share things with

Someone to reciprocate
Poor man’s worried it’s just too late
He tells me he’s lonely, he’s blue
he doesn’t know what he should do
He’s the man without a life who lives

With the woman who’s now his x wife
And his life collects nothing but strife
Disaster breathes down his neck
like spastic storm creating wreck
He’s imprisoned by guilt tying him
to obligations of household drudgery

Imprisoned by fear about being alone
he wants someone to hold, to put his arms around
Someone to see a movie and eat dinner with ...
And that’s not all, ... he told me to ask you
Are there any takers here for my friend
the man who hasn’t got a life?
Or better yet, just take his x-wife!