Day Thirty: Endings and Beginnings

GROWING TOO FAST
 
The three year old boy moved
from the toddler room, where
he had spent almost all of his life,
to the preschool room, where the kids
were bigger and tougher.
They tripped him and pinched him,
called him a baby,
and snatched food from his plate at snack time.
Barely out of diapers, he had to wait
in long lines of obscenely squirming bodies
for a chance at the toilet,
which all of them forgot to flush.
At nap time, he cried quietly,
but the teachers were rubbing the backs
of the children who made the most fuss,
leaving him to fend for himself.
Sometimes he looked out the back door
at his old companions in the toddler yard,
climbing on a small, friendly play structure
with rubber mats securely fastened to the bottom,
and he longed to return there,
to laugh with his friends
and eat Goldfish from tiny paper cups.
He felt certain he could go
if he could just figure out a way
to ask nicely enough--
but the teacher always said,
“No. You can't ever go back.”

Day Twenty-Nine: Flying

GOODBYE FROM TEN THOUSAND FEET

I'm flying high,

but you remain on the ground,

getting progressively smaller.

You dance in circles,

and wave your shirt wildly

so I can see you,

but I settle back in my seat,

hit the recline button,

and wait for the attendant

to bring me a chilled beverage.

It won't be long until you're

two thousand miles away,

where you belong.

Day Twenty-Eight: My Greatest Fear

PAUPER

My greatest fear is that I'll outlive

my ability to earn an income,

and will want to die faster, simply

because living is too expensive.

Millions of people are already old,

but they have an established system,

whether it's SSI or a juicy 401K,

and I was always too lazy to fill out forms.

It's sheer luck that I'm alive now,

or perhaps it's because I'm always

demanding to speak to the supervisor.

Life will become more difficult, and

my survival skills are as insufficient

as paper plates in a rainstorm,

while the clouds of impending age gather.

I suppose it's handy

that I've always had a skill for

talking myself out of trouble,

but it's impossible to say how long that will last.

In the meantime, each morning

I'm a little bit older,

and as I climb out of bed again, I realize

that it's not death I fear, it's aging.

Day Twenty-Seven: Short Dresses

YES, IT SELLS


“Why don't you show off
your body more?” my boyfriends asked me
when I was young, and wore
baggy hippie dresses that fell past my knees
with heavy, high-necked sweaters.
A roommate said,
“You should apply at Playboy.
All you have to do is wear a bathing suit
with bunny ears and a tail,
and you'd make a thousand bucks a week,
those girls are all rich.”
I didn't make enough money
for my hundred dollar rent, and struggled
at terrible retail jobs and fourth rate restaurants
rather than show my breasts and legs
to drunken businessmen looking to cop a feel.
If I had it to do all over again,
I think I'd let them--
in fact, I'd sit directly in their laps,
and say,
“That will be two hundred dollars.
Cash or check?”

Day Twenty-Six: Digging in the Dirt

SPECIAL DELIVERY

As a child, I was not allowed
to dig in the dirt of our back yard
and so I took to the streets with Ricky and Joey,
the two boys who lived down the block from me.
All three of us possessed a passion for excavation.
Through parental suppression
this had mutated into a sordid desire
to discover what lay beneath the sewer lids
in the alleyway sidewalks
next to the brick apartment buildings
that stiffly lined Roscoe Street
like huge,dirty cereal boxes.
We pried the metal lids open
with butter knives, and watched the sewage
rush underneath us like a thick brown river.
On top of the sewage were glossy fat bugs
that seemed vaguely cockroach-like,
only larger,
and we scooped these up in plastic cups--
freeing them temporarily
from the bondage of the sewer,
reveling in our roles as insect liberators--
at least until Joey stomped on them.
Strange liquid squirted from the heads
of the demolished beetles,
and Joey's favorite trick was to carefully
scoop up the bodies, place them in envelopes
and insert the envelopes into the mailbox
of a particularly vile old woman who lived
in the bottom floor apartment of their building.
She had dirty shades
drawn permanently across her windows,
and we assumed she couldn't see us,
but one afternoon, she stuck her head out of her door
and threatened to tell our parents.
We were terrified for days,
but she never snitched on us,
probably because
this would have required her to actually
leave her apartment.
I eventually moved out of the neighborhood,
and I wonder sometimes what happened to Joey
whether he ever found an outlet for his anger--
or if he's still squashing things
and then running away furtively
while looking over his shoulder,
making sure that no one is following him.

Day Twenty-Five: Stress

For today's topic, I decided to write a poem using the cut up system popularized by William Burroughs. I cut words and phrases from magazines, paying special attention to ones that hinted at stress. It was a funny medium because news tends to be stressful, and yet the act of cutting words from paper was so relaxing.

For those of you who can't make out the lettering, here's the poem:

Face it.
Nasty girls killing American style on the fiery truth,
voracious award in the unrestricted power of the afraid.
Bites of the stiff private island
dancing on a somewhat tarnished scarecrow.
Just one more lie.
All out attack coming to the
Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress.
Warning, this is salvation.
Sorry.

Day Twenty-Four: Leaving Home

 COMING OF AGE

When I was seventeen I started to count the days

until I could move out of the house.

I planned to leave on the exact day

I turned eighteen, no matter that it was the Midwest

in January, and a record cold snap blizzard

had been raging for nearly a week.

The cold just made my parents crazier,

trapped as we were in a drafty farmhouse

a mile and a half outside of Greenview, Illinois-

a town so small that it had one school

that ran from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Three days before my birthday,

I walked onto a snowy rural highway and stuck out my thumb,

was picked up by a couple of local drunks

and rode in the back of their long-bed pickup

to the nearby town of Petersburg, where my only friend Rod

lived in a huge Victorian house that he had mysteriously

bought, even though he was only twenty.

Rod wasn't there, so I opened a window

and climbed in, made myself at home for three days

amidst the dusty antiques and photos

of Rod's long-dead relatives, and waited anxiously

for Rod to arrive. When he did, he was stunned

and nervous, because he had just come home

to check his mail, then he had to go back

to his parents' house in Peoria, where he would soon go to court

for writing bad checks.

Rod owned a failed laundromat in town and had a lot of debt,

but he was the only person in town I could talk to.

Suddenly, this was no longer true,

and Rod dragged me with him to Peoria

and onto the doorstep of his parents' house.

His fundamentalist parents were already upset

about the bad checks, and I met with a chilly reception.

After asking to see my ID to prove it was

my 18th birthday, they told Rod I would have to go,

they would drive me to the Peoria rescue mission, and drop me off there.

Rod asked if he could please do something with me

for my birthday, but only for a little while.

He promised his parents that we would return shortly.

We went to Farrell's for birthday cake,

and I sat with Rod at the dingy Formica table,

feeling terrified and depressed, as the bubbling waitress

skipped over with my cake slice, eighteen candles blazing,

and said, “Well! Leah's eighteen! And she's here

with her only friend in the world, celebrating her birthday

here at Farrell's. “ She set the cake down triumphantly

in front of me, stood to the side and smirked

as I blew out the candles, and of course it took me

more than one try, because it always did.

There was no reason yet to believe

that life was ever going to be different from this.

Day Twenty-Three: Drive-Ins

MOONSCAPE

Nothing in the world

makes me sadder

than an empty drive-in theater screen,

in a field full of weeds

that will never re-open,

and yet it is weirdly beautiful,

like a roadside shrine,

and filled with the same holiness.

If I pull my car over now,

I can let it wash over me

for an hour or two,

and then leave,

baptized.

Day Twenty-Two: Monsters

 SHANTYTOWN

there isn't any place

on the planet

that doesn't have

several monsters,

and you learn

to avoid them,

but only after they've eaten

a few of your limbs.

you learn to trust the ones

who look like the others,

and yet

are somehow different,

and better,

though you

will never understand why.

living in a dangerous neighborhood

might be

all you can afford,

but the monsters

go with the territory,

and you'd better accept it.

Day Twenty-One: Family Dinners

CRIME REPORT


My schizophrenic brother came home for the holidays
and it wasn't a long-awaited reunion-
not for my mother, who had long since rejected him
and wouldn't accept his collect calls
or for my uptight sister, or my youngest brother, Josh.
I had ditched Danny many times,
but he always found his way back to me, because
I was the only person who would open the door for him.
It was the first Christmas the five of us had spent together
in more years than we could count,
none of us knew how to pretend that we were happy,
so everyone was hostile, it was our default setting.
Danny had spent most of the last ten years in prison,
mostly for petty thefts and fighting in public.
He never won fights, but he was always fighting anyway,
people just liked to punch him on general principle.
Josh was three years younger, good looking and sullen
with a laconic sense of humor borne of deep misery.
He'd submitted often to his brother's bullying over the years,
while my mother drank and had sex in the next room,
and couldn't attend to his needs, not that she wanted to.
In prison, Danny had developed a fondness
for antisemitism, an irrational hatred born of his punishment
at the hands of my mother, the mental health system, and the courts.
Since he was schizophrenic, his arguments
were punctuated by odd appearances from Satan
and other evil deities, and he talked non-stop,
sometimes pausing to look in the mirror and laugh at himself.
But Josh still nursed a grudge, he looked directly at Danny
and said, “Well, you know, we're part Jewish.”
Danny went completely berserk, his face contorted,
and he lunged directly at Josh, throwing a punch between his eyes
but Josh looked bored, like it barely fazed him.
With almost no effort, he contorted his fingers into a thick fist,
and punched Danny in the nose as hard as he could.
Danny's face was like a broken fire hydrant,
with more blood than I thought a nose possessed.
He let out a loud shriek, and Josh just smiled and said,
“Don't ever fuck with me again, or I'll kill you.”
My mother finally stuck her head around the door jamb of her room
and peered at the small pool of Danny's blood on the floor.
She said, “Goddammit, make sure you clean up that mess”
and disappeared again, leaving the tidying job for me,
even though I was no longer her daughter, but just a guest.
I wasn't sure what to do, so I made a pile of quesadillas,
and a weird calm descended over the kitchen
because everyone was hungry after all that fighting.

Day Twenty: Resurrection

MORTALITY

Getting out of bed every day

is an act of resurrection.

The morning opens before me like a set of jaws,

with signs that point to the left and right,

but the letters are shadowy, so

I cannot read them without glasses.

I'm not sure if I forgot my glasses,

or was too stubborn to acquire them

in the first place, but every rising

becomes a little more difficult,

as if, with each new morning

I am a tiny bit closer

to being unable to get out of bed at all.

Day Nineteen: Wild Animals

DARWINISM


Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
was my favorite television program
for a brief time during my childhood
I loved watching lions attacking antelope
and bringing the carcasses home to their families
and my parents always said,
“That's the way it is in the wild.
Eat or be eaten.” This made sense,
but I dreaded the commercials,
which suggested that death could come to us
as well, at any time,
leaving our loved ones without any security.
Many years later,
I still have no insurance,
and my loved ones have no security.
That's the way it is in the wild.

Day Eighteen--Concerts

TOO YOUNG TO ROCK AND ROLL

My father called me one spring,

and told me he wanted to take me to a rock concert.

I was eleven, and he was nearly fifty--

a neatly attired businessman of southern European ancestry

who always wore a suit, or a sweater with slacks,

and had never been to a rock concert in his life.

Neither had I, so as a consolation prize

for visiting with me so infrequently

he promised I could attend any concert I wanted.

Jack read a long list of band names

to me over the telephone,

hinting strongly that he wanted me to choose the Carpenters,

but I thought them insipid, and opted instead

for Creedence Clearwater Revival.

I felt certain that their folksy sound

would be less disturbing to him than the Rolling Stones,

whose zippered album cover was making a sensation

in all the respectable newspapers--

and he reluctantly agreed, sounding fearful.

On the day of the concert, we took a cab

to an enormous concrete structure on the edge of the city.

We emerged from the cab and entered the fray,

amidst throngs of pot-smoking hippies

and the loudest music I had ever heard.

After begging my father for Coca-Cola,

he agreed to buy one for me,

under the condition that I listen to a lecture first

about proper dental care, and

I listened as we stood in line

behind a bemused guy with a beard

and a hairy chest with love beads

whom I am certain was eavesdropping.

After some grumbling about prices,

my father and I entered the amphitheater

and were instantly pummeled by music

that was so ear-splitting that it almost knocked us backward,

but both of us struggled bravely to our seats.

Without a doubt, we were the only

eleven and fifty year old people in the place,

the only father-daughter combo of any kind,

and this made me nervous,

but I wasn't sure why, exactly.

I soon realized that it was because

it was impossible to sit still for either of us

because the music made us physically uncomfortable

as if a catastrophe of some kind was about to happen.

The weirdest thing was that Creedence

wasn't playing their usual tunes, the ones

I always sang along to on WLS radio,

but instead a bunch of songs I had never heard before,

and didn't particularly like.

A man named Bo Diddley played a couple of numbers,

and this made the crowd weirdly ecstatic,

but then more head-pounding music ensued,

with lyrics I couldn't understand--

except for one song that began:

“Shut up, woman. Shut up and sit down.”

The audience laughed loudly at the delivery of this line,

though I failed to see why it was so funny.

During the intermission, my father asked

if I was willing to go home early,

and I assured him that I was happy to leave

and return to the comfort of his Chicago apartment.

It was the first time

we had agreed on anything that evening,

and it felt perfect, so without further discussion

we left the building, got into another cab, and went home.

After that, my father never took me to another concert,

and this was fine with me, because

we always had much better luck when we went fishing.

        

Day Seventeen--Losing

A SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF WESTERN WASHINGTON

The Love Family sprang directly

from the moist soil of Washington state

during the 60's—a quirky combo

of Jesus-freak idealism

mixed with anti-materialistic fervor.

They did more than straddle the fence

of lunacy, they just hopped right over

and made themselves at home in western Washington--

eschewing their birth names

and taking on new ones

that espoused their most evident virtues,

names such as “Patience” and “Serious.”

Their leader was a charismatic spirituality salesman

named Paul, who changed his name to “Love”

and the family adopted the surname of “Israel.”

They settled together, began breeding in earnest

and spread from a house in Queen Anne

to the surrounding neighborhood,

assimilating properties at a speed that was astonishing

for a cult which once swore it wouldn't touch money.

The Love Family grew larger

and Love himself more powerful,

while happily exercising the most important privileges

of a male cult leader--

bedding the family women,

and keeping the money for himself.

Eventually, Paul Allen's son, “Logic” Israel

used his most potent virtue to figure

that he was being screwed out of his inheritance

and led a revolt, in which the main financial backer,

a man whom Love had affectionately named “Richness”

abruptly demanded most of his money back.

The coke-addled Love was unable to defend himself,

and lost a large portion of his money,

a commodity he had once despised so much

that he wouldn't even handle it with gloves--

but he just bounced back up

like a child's clown-faced punching bag

and declared to the remaining members

that they were through with the city,

and would move to a large compound in the woods

north of Seattle, near the town of Arlington.

The group bought acreage and built several homes

with Love's mansion as the centerpiece

and began producing events,

the hallmark of which was the Garlic Festival,

an annual August celebration of beer, sex and garlic,

inexplicably mixed with Christian music

played on string instruments by white-clad women

who never smiled.

There were rock bands, as well,

and sensitive singer-songwriters,

hoping for a piece of the action,

and usually receiving it with no questions asked, nor quarter given.

The official statement from the cult was

“The Love Family can really throw a party.”

Unfortunately,the one thing they could not do

was pay taxes on their property,

and as the debts mounted, the festivals disappeared,

except for the Garlic one, which continued

until they were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Two months before the county took the property

the Love family held the last festival,

They pathetically attempted to raise money

in whatever manner they possibly could--

charging three dollars to tour their wildflower gardens

while regaling contributors with an edited version

of the Love Family Story--

an offer that netted them about a hundred dollars.

Meanwhile, the female cult members

made a lot of the vendors very happy,

wandering freely through the booths

buying expensive handmade guitars and velvet dresses,

spending as if price was no object--

and it occurred to me that they still

felt guilty about handling money

and secretly wanted to fail

to punish themselves for their wanton materialism;

they were just a bunch of Jesus freak hippies, after all.

And fail they did,

the county took the land on Halloween,

and the few remaining family members

moved into tents on the bank of a nearby river.

Love was in his early sixties by then,

a time when most people are desirous of more comfort,

rather than being suddenly stripped of all material security,

but he merely said, “well, it's interesting,

I guess we've just gone back to our roots.”

It's hard not to admire such grace,

even from a man who had been the duplicitous leader

of what was once dubbed “the Teflon cult”

because no matter what he did, he never got into trouble.

He just settled back into his tent on a rainy November day

as if it was the natural order of things--

inwardly thumbing his nose at all his detractors

and silently proving to every person

who had ever challenged him over the years

that losing is a matter of perspective,

just a temporary way station until you can swing a new deal.

Day Sixteen: Virginity

SEVEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT VIRGINITY

1). A glass of milk sits on the table, untouched. Nobody wants to be the first to claim it, though everyone is thirsty. The milk is a big deal, but no one can explain why.

2). The young woman walks down the street a couple of blocks from her home,clutching books to her chest. A carload of men drives by and honks. She is ashamed of herself, even though they are the ones who are behaving like louts. She keeps her eyes on the road ahead of her, but she knows they'll just drive around the block and return. Next time, they'll be more insistent.

3). I always thought the whole concept of virginity was devoted to penis-worship. If you never had a penis inserted in your vagina, you were a virgin, even if you'd had orgasms from oral sex, even if someone had inserted his finger in there numerous times, even if you had rubbed against someone so hard that your entire body convulsed. But stick a penis in a vagina, suddenly it was a major deal.

4). The man moves towards the woman. She opens instantly. It's one of those rare moments when both people want the same thing, and aren't afraid to show it. Then they both wake up.

5). I have a dream in which I am a virgin again. I decide I don't need sex to be happy, and that I will go through life as an artist who lives alone, My only contact with men will be through postal letters. I will have an endless parade of postal lovers, who will regale me with propositions that I will never accept, and this will secretly be a relief for them. I keep the letters in a box in the closet.

6). A man went searching in the forest for his virginity. It had been eaten by animals a long time beforehand. One of the lions told him it was delicious. The man smiled, since he had been unaware of this.

7). I didn't lose my virginity. I gave it up voluntarily, and I don't want it back. If you try to return it to me, not only will there not be a reward, but I'll never speak to you again. Go find someone else's virginity. They've probably been searching for it since they were born, or they never lost it in the first place.

Day Fifteen: Taxes

TAX DAY

I don't want to live off the grid
with a bunch of livestock
in a tar paper shack with solar panels
and so I pay the price.
I wish there was a place I loved
so much that cost was no object,
but all of it is just drudgery,
receiving with one hand,
and then giving everything away
willingly, like a good citizen.
Anger is useless,
anger is being their bitch
sickening yourself
so you end up having to ask them for help--
but they'll find you eventually
even if you hide on a dirt road in the woods,
and they'll only work you over harder
if you protest.

Day Fourteen: Giving Birth

GROWNUPS

Giving birth

was much more difficult for me

than pregnancy, because

it meant I would actually have to care for a human

who was separate from myself.

My first pregnancy was easy because

I was young and underweight,

but my second was so difficult that

I collapsed in line at a drug store

on a hot August afternoon

while buying vitamins.

An aged woman in front of me

was counting out pennies for the cashier

in that laborious way that the elderly have,

and I grew dizzy, then finally

my legs gave way like soggy matchsticks.

Since I weighed 225 pounds by then

and was eight months pregnant,

this created a sensation,

even though I merely sat down suddenly

and with a decided lack of grace,

and then landed on my well-padded ass.

I've never in my life, before or since

received faster service than I did that afternoon.

The manager brought me a cup of water

and asked if I had been receiving prenatal care.

I assured her that I would call my doctor,

and that I was fine to walk home

and they watched me leave with skepticism

and concern, mixed with an odd hostility,

as if they resented me for not being helpless.

That labor was only twenty-four hours long,

half the time I spent giving birth to my son

who I swear was holding on to my intestines

to keep from emerging into a world

that was dry and unforgiving--

but my daughter was backwards

and rubbing against my spine like the edge of a comb,

wanting to leave, but going about it the wrong way.

I'd planned for natural childbirth, but

in both cases, medical science intervened

and provided me with drugs, to which I surrendered

gratefully, thinking to myself

that drugs had helped me

through so many other periods of my life,

and why should childbirth be any different?

In the end, the method was secondary

to the result, and I have two children

who have miraculously grown tall

and have learned not to ask me for help--

but in my dreams, they are still young

and need my guidance--

I guess that part of me wishes

they depended on me as much as they used to-

but the other, larger part is glad

to be able to open the door

and go outside

without wondering if it's safe to leave them for a moment.

Day Thirteen: Heartbreak

 SEPTEMBER

We sit at a table in the Midwestern sun
ninety degrees at two in the afternoon
prolonging my drive back to Illinois.
In two hours, you will be a blur
on the sidewalk, standing exactly where I left you,
but everything else will be moving,
and we'll both be swallowed up by bodies.
The desperate sex of the previous evening
still lies on the table before us,
and we stare at it as if it were a patient.
I can no longer touch you,
I can only run in the opposite direction--
and so I rise from the table,
tell you that it's time for me to go.
We walk to my car,
I hug you tight underneath the trees
while a sleeping bum snores in the weeds nearby.
We break apart eventually
and stare directly at each other
and I say “I love you”
but I am already starting not to mean it.

Day Twelve Theme: Eating Out

A SANDWICH I COULDN'T REFUSE

When I was a teenager in Tuscola, Illinois

eating out meant getting Italian beef sandwiches

from Liga's, a garish restaurant

on Route 36 at the edge of town.

It was one of those places with cherry red booths

and checkered tablecloths,

and a large neon sign featuring the Leaning Tower,

but my mother refused to eat there.

She claimed this was because the one time we did,

we were surrounded by ominous clusters of men

in shiny, expensive suits,

talking furtively amongst themselves,

which meant that Liga's was a front for the Mafia.

I never noticed, since I was

eagerly masticating shredded beef and soggy French bread

as I clutched a plastic glass filled with icy Coca Cola,

as close to nirvana as I ever got in those terrible days.

My mother's principles

were not sufficient enough for her to stop patronizing Liga's,

they only extended to her refusal to actually dine there,

and were probably influenced by her parsimony

her extreme reluctance to leave a tip.

Instead, she sent my stepfather to drive the five blocks,

and he always returned a few minutes later

with a bulging, greasy shopping bag

filled with sandwiches wrapped in shiny foil.

This continued for years, until one day

I bit into a piece of ground glass.

That unnerving crunch

was one of the most terrifying sounds of my adolescence.

A trip to the doctor met with scorn--

the doctor said, “there isn't anything wrong with her stomach”

after placing a stethoscope on it in a bored manner.

I was instructed to go home,

and only call him again if my stomach began to hurt

or I started to pee blood.

Nothing happened,

but I never ate a sandwich from Liga's again.

I wonder sometimes what happened to their family,

if they stayed in downstate Illinois,

or had an offer somewhere else they couldn't refuse—

the restaurant closed some time during the 80's,

and hasn't re-opened in another location, as far as I know.

I'm still sad about those sandwiches,

they proved to me

that you don't need many options to be happy,

just one thing that you like enough to have over and over.