Day Three Without Nicotine...

…and I feel like a cinderblock is tied to my brainstem. I guess to say *no nicotine* is a half-truth because I *am* wearing a replacement-therapy patch, but it is not the same. My thoughts are the consistency of mashed potatoes; a perma-frown shrouds my face; my right knee bounces to 1/64 time, and I’m rattling the bones of this old house. Perhaps I will gather them in both hands and toss them down; see if they can tell me anything about the future.

Because, right now, my future seems uncertain at best.

Why is it that we are all defined by the jobs we hold? Have you ever been to a party or met someone for the first time and the first question asked of you is: “What do you do?” Now, I know what the person is really asking, but I’ve always wanted to answer, “Well, I do a lot of things. First and foremost, I wake up, go to the bathroom, brew a pot of coffee, and take the dog out to pee. Most importantly, however, I dream. What is it that you do?”

I want to tell people that I am a professional purveyor of all things beautiful, that I pay attention to a walnut when it falls from the tree in my backyard, that I know some things die so that others may live. And I know this is true when, days later, I watch a squirrel, perched high in the hemlock, carefully peel away the walnut’s thick, green skin. I want to tell people that I think in line breaks and stanzas, that I agonize over the words “a” and “the,” that I dream in metaphor and simile, that these things feed me even though they don’t put food on my table or pay my student loans.

I am looking for a job, one that will pay me an hourly wage or a salary, but I already have an occupation.

And so I leave you with another poem.

**************************************

Gourd

What you see is reflection:
dry and brown, skin pattern
in riverbeds, dead of thirst,
mottled and marred, old sores
from a careless discard
between the neighbor’s railroad
ties and the old woodpile’s
long left side.

Battle scars raised
with rot, we are
razed to ruins.
Of course,

it is ornamental;
it is unfulfilled;
it’s the inconclusive
dream of what could be

a squirrel feeder
or a fine bird home.
But it hangs alone,
so fragile, hollow, spent—
dependant on the cool wind,
its whim, its shift.

A Few of My Poems...

Tracks

…but I’ve made homes in the screams

of fast passing trains…

i. The Summer, 1982

A wonder, really, how the Maggodee

Creek held the weight of that train

on her slim back bank, how the rumble

of them both never broke the thin-paned

windows of the parsonage, how they swallowed

the cries that, in spite of the narrow space

beneath the twin bed, I failed to hide.

A wonder, too, how that old willow

still weeps, its yellow-green leaves a tithe,

an August offering, my deliverance

from distrust and the trickery

of fingers I once thought holy.

ii. Early Spring, 1995

Wise Avenue, one block up

from the projects, a house so settled

the floors slanted and the tops

of doors were shaven near the hinges

just so they could close, it was his joy

that he could beat me dreamless,

and after, I’d lie in wait for the roar

of a late-night train. Land’s flat

in Southeast, and that means speed.

Whistle’s pierce, the bold echo of steel

against steel, lifted me, carried me away.

iii. The Fall of 2002

I look toward Tinker Mountain,

more than a mound of rock and damp

earth that beacons light (from my left)

and sound waves, invisible to my opened eyes.

I amble through gray swirls of night’s

last cigarette and wonder if my boys are staying

warm, if they hear the chapel bells chime two

like I do. They are safe from any real crossing.

I have been drawn to the other side.

And I know they don’t welcome this rush,

train’s blunt force, the simple transport

sought in a low, bone-rattling hum.

**************************

Not Happiness, But the Pursuit Thereof

I’m taking a right, switch-

back onto the horseshoe bend

like I was flying, non-stop, to the top

of Buffalo Mountain. And I rise

by way of going on the down-low,

where let down does not mean defeated,

no traction, no grip of thick rubber and spinning

aluminum to bone-dry asphalt.

Nothing’s holding.

I feel faults, fractures pushing hard

against the inside of my summer

skin. I pull out the splinters like boiled

bird bones, sew them to the outside—

exposed. And when there is no more road,

I take off through the woods;

red stems of bittersweet

taunt the soles of my feet, and with this speed,

dogbane paints the forest floor

periwinkle blue. This is a land of

cattle farms and communes, a one-stoplight-

life with faint pulse. Breathless, I pause,

let hearts of honeysuckle beat on my tongue.

**********************************

Mid-Winter

and unclothed, splayed open,

exposed, Virginia is odd and cold.

Low clouds, barometric rise

and fall. All movement is measured,

radical but in hundredths of inches.

Little is relative here, save for slow-

passing bruises. Somewhere,

a woman drowns in blue, thick

contusion, night’s ink—see

how it bleeds between sallow flesh

and the atmosphere of deep sleep,

the truths refused, in waking, to be seen.

Mid-January

and even the birds have broken down.

Eyes open—every streak of her

iris is an open fault line or infinite

ravine, mark of the lost, or stripped

limbs, black as blame.

This is a poem for the spirit-

dead, a frameless grave to hold

the bones of the lonely, the nameless.

This is a eulogy for the loss of perspective.

Midnight Musings (After the Writers Conference...)

It's one of those nights when my mind won't shut down, and I have to force it like a heavy door against a persistent draft.

Perhaps it's the dinner of pintos, raw onions, and corn muffins that my boyfriend made while I was out mingling with the Intellectuals. Or it could be the cup of reheated coffee I drank several hours ago. Maybe erratic biorhythms are to blame. More likely, however, it's the fact that I spent all day in seminars regarding the craft of writing, and that always does it.

It happens like this; my stomach twists and turns; chest muscles tighten. I start to sweat and to think and think, and I think I cannot stop.

A couple of these seminars discussed social media, and it hit me like a ripe walnut falling from the naked branch. I have been cataloguing my life intermittently on the internet for eight years. From the pithy, angst-ridden rant to full-blown dis-ease of the mouth, mind, and heart. The affair began in 2002 with Diaryland and morphed into Livejournal. Then, there was a pregnant pause, dictated by a divorce, the subsequent deep depression, perpetual drunkenness, and poverty. My laptop's motherboard died. And if I couldn't afford internet service, I certainly couldn't afford a new computer. When I attempted to write through all that pain and the vodka tonics, I couldn't read the illegible and fractured thoughts the next morning. The scribblings embarrassed me. I have lost some of the most important years of my life.

Recently, this life has been resurrected on Facebook, and I do love my Facebook, but I have been delicately pondering the shape of this blog since October 2009. What do I want to say? How do I say it? To whom am I speaking? I know that I have no fewer than ten thousand stories to tell, but are they even relevant? Who would even care, really? But we all, as humans living lives, have stories to tell, and sometimes, if just one small part of one small life reaches out to touch or brush up against some small part of someone else's life, then one good deed has been done for the day. So...

I'm just going to plant this blog like a tiny mystery seed I found, dried up and setting on my grandmother's windowsill. And who knows? It may sprout a stalk of divorce, a tiny, but consequential, leaf of alcoholism, a bright bud of recovery clustered by the baby's breath of self-discovery. Who knows what this will be?

Together, we will watch it grow.