Airport Song
I have a carry-on with a singing noise
that goes wherever I go.
Wherever I go,
it goes eeee-eeyah!
I’m waiting to board
so I can get back home,
waiting in the airport
with a toothbrush and a comb.
It goes boop boop, boop da dee doop!
There’s a man next to me
reading a newspaper;
someone's sitting next to him,
but he doesn't want to face her.
It goes oh oh, bodie doh!
She’s wearing a shirt
stenciled with Marilyn Monroe,
but whatever girlfriend’s feeling
she doesn’t want it to show.
It goes donna wap wappa woedie!
"Ticketholders are now boarding
in aisles one through 18,"
I’m over 21 and I still can’t think
what I’m going to do in that empty apartment.
It goes rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr!
I'll get in the car and drive back home,
I'll wash up, eat something, and check the telephone
that never goes eeee-eeyah!
It goes blah blah bloddie blah.
I have a carry-on with a singing noise
that goes wherever I go.
Wherever I go,
it goes eeee-eeyah!
Monday, March 29, 2004
Friday, March 26, 2004
Saturday, March 20, 2004
"knowledge is only a step between two questions"
from code blue at the Genome Zoo by Barbara Damashek
"...information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning."
from Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee
On the Road to Paradise
Spring swept into the house, a pile of white blossoms
from trees outside getting ready for the next big push,
a pile of white blossoms dispensed before leaf-making
as a poem arrives in my email box with its own root-making
story, an evening of diaphanous beings, him and I,
root displaying its credits on damask sheets
as lucky dog licks juicy thigh to make a performance piece
counting how well he did, awards, even the way
an encore performance can send him further than night.
It's all good, what almost happened last night, my love,
but get real. I want to know who you are, and how you feel.
from code blue at the Genome Zoo by Barbara Damashek
"...information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning."
from Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee
On the Road to Paradise
Spring swept into the house, a pile of white blossoms
from trees outside getting ready for the next big push,
a pile of white blossoms dispensed before leaf-making
as a poem arrives in my email box with its own root-making
story, an evening of diaphanous beings, him and I,
root displaying its credits on damask sheets
as lucky dog licks juicy thigh to make a performance piece
counting how well he did, awards, even the way
an encore performance can send him further than night.
It's all good, what almost happened last night, my love,
but get real. I want to know who you are, and how you feel.
Friday, March 12, 2004
This online thing in between getting ready to go to Tahoe for a ski weekend before the snow melts. Five girls together in one car. It should be interesting. Let's hope all the girls have CD players, otherwise we're gonna be fighting about listening to what kind of music, hip-hop or trance. I'm sprouting my own corkscrew wings to celebrate a second year of living dangerously. In this whirl of random online dating hits it feels like the sperm and egg are colliding in an electronic soup of the Internet, not the strongest, but the ones most likely to connect. And what about the world today, where teachers are now being labelled as terrorists, so that Bush miscreants can seed the airwaves to disassemble the teachers union and public education as we know it. A prayer for John Kerry. May he continue to speak the truth of a Vietnam veteran.
Monday, February 02, 2004
The Way I Cut Up
A muzzled dog guards Buffalo Exchange in Berkeley while the Hare Krishna Society marches up Telegraph Avenue with thumbnail cymbals. Looking for Anne Waldman in Moe’s Bookstore and thinking of getting my hair done in Chicago. I hear a tribute to Billy Strayhorn on KPFA. Bicycle riders model Spandex in broad daylight. Cute tushies.
Wind is an advertisement for every place it touches.
The in-word at this year’s Seybold Conference is taxonomy. The speaker has a Microsoft 95 tattoo that needs to be upgraded every two years. The information model is the ultimate content management tool. No consistent suite. Way of the stickiness. Young people with continuous partial attention phenomena drive semi-trucks
Where rivers run no fresher than a trickle of saliva.
A muzzled dog guards Buffalo Exchange in Berkeley while the Hare Krishna Society marches up Telegraph Avenue with thumbnail cymbals. Looking for Anne Waldman in Moe’s Bookstore and thinking of getting my hair done in Chicago. I hear a tribute to Billy Strayhorn on KPFA. Bicycle riders model Spandex in broad daylight. Cute tushies.
Wind is an advertisement for every place it touches.
The in-word at this year’s Seybold Conference is taxonomy. The speaker has a Microsoft 95 tattoo that needs to be upgraded every two years. The information model is the ultimate content management tool. No consistent suite. Way of the stickiness. Young people with continuous partial attention phenomena drive semi-trucks
Where rivers run no fresher than a trickle of saliva.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Elvis Isn't Taking Any Calls
Harold Pulhug gives a presentation in the California Room of the Hilton Hotel at One Hegenberger Road in Oakland. Elvis Presley is his dummy account. Harold uses Elvis to demonstrate the 7969 telephone, a new IP PBX system, which means you can set its properties through a web interface. “Why don’t you take a break. You can refresh your coffee, check your email, and then we’ll start the demonstration,” he says.
He says this several times, at key interludes, between frames. This is the only signal we need to stroll to the back of the room and graze the remainders of the fruit and pastry trays. We’re back. Harold is small-taking at the edge of the projection screen about voice conferencing and data collaboration and about a gateway in Sacramento so the system in question will not hit public service cuts. “Some customers will see that all they want is long distance with pri’s coming in, and that’s definitely doable.” Two guys in the front row nod.
Now we’re back to discussing the 7969. Harold rings Elvis’ phone to demonstrate a pixilated screen that can display content for disability instruction, warnings (this phone is loaded), and application hints. He presses soft keys on the console and alludes to a rocker key that can scroll between services. Now we’re cooking. Harold talks about a directory that can keep track of missed, placed, and received calls with room to grow a corporate directory that’s LDAPted. This web phone doesn’t require twisted cables. Potential cost savings right there.
He’s in the home stretch. Speed soft keys say select. Harold explains the line appearance away and VLAN access as well as digital feed and video conferencing via a Tandberg unit, but then moves from the visual back to the digital, showing how you can drag and drop calls into the web interface after you’ve authenticated the network and can use a batch administration utility primarily for set up purposes. He rings Elvis’ phone again and points to its attendant icon, which shows us that Elvis is idle.
Harold Pulhug gives a presentation in the California Room of the Hilton Hotel at One Hegenberger Road in Oakland. Elvis Presley is his dummy account. Harold uses Elvis to demonstrate the 7969 telephone, a new IP PBX system, which means you can set its properties through a web interface. “Why don’t you take a break. You can refresh your coffee, check your email, and then we’ll start the demonstration,” he says.
He says this several times, at key interludes, between frames. This is the only signal we need to stroll to the back of the room and graze the remainders of the fruit and pastry trays. We’re back. Harold is small-taking at the edge of the projection screen about voice conferencing and data collaboration and about a gateway in Sacramento so the system in question will not hit public service cuts. “Some customers will see that all they want is long distance with pri’s coming in, and that’s definitely doable.” Two guys in the front row nod.
Now we’re back to discussing the 7969. Harold rings Elvis’ phone to demonstrate a pixilated screen that can display content for disability instruction, warnings (this phone is loaded), and application hints. He presses soft keys on the console and alludes to a rocker key that can scroll between services. Now we’re cooking. Harold talks about a directory that can keep track of missed, placed, and received calls with room to grow a corporate directory that’s LDAPted. This web phone doesn’t require twisted cables. Potential cost savings right there.
He’s in the home stretch. Speed soft keys say select. Harold explains the line appearance away and VLAN access as well as digital feed and video conferencing via a Tandberg unit, but then moves from the visual back to the digital, showing how you can drag and drop calls into the web interface after you’ve authenticated the network and can use a batch administration utility primarily for set up purposes. He rings Elvis’ phone again and points to its attendant icon, which shows us that Elvis is idle.
Monday, January 19, 2004
On Martin Luther King Day
I was dark, the swarthy girl
had brown eyes with kindling inside them,
my hips were as round as a Spaldeen ball
we hit against the side of a wall,
for winners walked around the block
past a fire station to the deli on the corner
with a news rack and magazines of movie stars,
each stack was anchored by a chunky iron bar
so papers couldn’t assimilate into street
without anybody first reading the sports section.
Why be blonde and blue eyed, when I could be
fast and dangerous and stand on shale pavement?
But how that iron bar made me feel defeat
when I wanted to fly on my feet.
I was dark, the swarthy girl
had brown eyes with kindling inside them,
my hips were as round as a Spaldeen ball
we hit against the side of a wall,
for winners walked around the block
past a fire station to the deli on the corner
with a news rack and magazines of movie stars,
each stack was anchored by a chunky iron bar
so papers couldn’t assimilate into street
without anybody first reading the sports section.
Why be blonde and blue eyed, when I could be
fast and dangerous and stand on shale pavement?
But how that iron bar made me feel defeat
when I wanted to fly on my feet.
Saturday, January 10, 2004
Tech Notes
1
Light is the breath of my parents who watch over me.
Green caterpillars stop crawling on a 15-inch screen of leaves. Everything on my laptop computer goes black. It happens as I sit on the rug reading the poems I've been writing about my deceased parents. No more lights flashing on the keyboard.
The laptop rests on the burgundy carpet and is ensnared in a hopeless tangle of adaptor and modem wires; the kill has been made and the predator is still in the neighborhood. I guard the carcass.
Tomorrow I want the computer to turn on, hope its aberrant behavior is due to my failure to pay it sufficient attention. This has happened before. For the moment, I ignore its lifeless screen.
But in the morning after my daughter has left for work and school, the laptop does not go on. I have e-mails to read, clients to contact, Internet sites to research. Then there are the poems.
Why’d you have to get sick and leave
when I was too young to know how much
I’d miss you; birthdays, holidays, your touch,
even in my dreams you drop by infrequently.
Sometimes I think I hear you breathe
by the seashore, in a gully near the rushes,
walking together picking several bunches
of flowers near the entrance to the beach.
Even, if by chance I saw you materialize,
would you recognize your daughter,
back then, a young girl who fantasized
about living opposite from the way you taught her,
what part of me would you recognize,
my feet, my eyes, my hands cupped with water?
2
I turn the page in my notebook to several toll-free technical support numbers.
I retrieve my daughter's mobile phone from downstairs and dial. Ten minutes into the wait queue, Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony is interrupted by the voice of the tech.
"Hello, my name is Pat. May I help you?"
I verify my name, address, phone, and e-mail address to help her validate my account. Now the tech begins to identify the proper verse and chapter from her troubleshooting book.
"I've got it. Step one. Unplug the power source from the computer."
We get as far as the battery. The tech advises, "Turn the computer over and remove the battery which is near the media and data source." She doesn't know what that means either.
I whine, "But I don't know where the battery is."
The tech provides me with its latitude and longitude.
I see two latches that are supposed to flip some kind of trap door at the bottom of my computer, but I cannot identify anything to pull. I voice my confusion.
The tech doesn't listen and drones on like a real estate agent about location.
Juggling latches, I accidentally disconnect the phone.
I wish we could sit and talk
after all these years, have that exit interview
you wouldn’t allow. Everyone knew
it was cancer. Marty cranked up in a bed, chalk-
white; Olga, flying around unable to renew
her liver. Maybe you didn’t want us to boo-hoo,
while you were being stalked.
In any case, you couldn’t hear
over the IV dripping. We asked each other why
this was happening, days smeared
together any amount of head banging or cries
wouldn’t dissolve my orphan fears.
It was time to whisper good-bye.
3
Before I call back, I return to the trap doors. I realize that the molded plastic rises at the bottom of the computer are the very handles I've been looking for. I press the latch open and grab the handle. Something slides out and it is, indeed, the battery.
I call back. I wait in the queue. Another tech gets on the phone and validates my account. We do the name, address, phone number, and e-mail thing, and start over.
This new tech has the annoying habit of reading the "Next" prompt that appears at the bottom of the screen as he pages through the troubleshooting guide. "Next, Next, Next,” he says. I think, all we have is now and maybe if we're lucky, next. He intercedes. "Let's go to the training guide. That's where all the really good stuff is. Next, Next, Next," he reads.
Next I am to remove the hard drive, but need one of those itty-bitty screwdrivers and I'm not sure I have one, and even if I do, I don't know where they are. The tech gallantly waits while I open all the drawers in the house and do a quick scan of the basement.
I get back to the phone and report, "I can't find one."
"I'm sorry you'll have to call back after you can find one so we can run through the tests. We also have to remove the memory chips."
He can't tell me what size screwdriver I need, but suggests, "Why don't you just take the unit with you to the hardware store?" Next.
I'm out of the house carrying the computer, which at this point, is minus its battery and DVD unit, its underside exposed. I drive up to the hardware store and find a small screwdriver that will open the single screw that keeps the hard drive barricaded from me.
I call back. I wait in the queue. Another tech gets on the phone. Validates my account.
The new tech tells me that we need to start from the beginning. She explains that since I wasn't able to remove all the components, the previous techs were unable to properly log my actions.
Now I must prepare for surgery. It's time to remove memory chips.
I unscrew the proper trap door. Beneath it are the memory chips, probably about a half-inch wide which dazzle me with their green brilliance, small veins of silverish thread are traced inside each one. A river flowing to eternity. There are two boards. One contains four chips that are stacked vertically, the second contains two chips that are stacked horizontally. Then I am commanded by the tech to remove them.
The services over, it became apparent
you were quietly gone away from me,
never to come home and put up a pot of coffee;
suddenly I became my own parent,
the one who knows all the ways to stare at
four walls and strip them to beams,
to clear out obstacles or move them with dreams;
look at the future and become clairvoyant.
For years, I walked around in stealth
mode, kept my eyes focused straight ahead.
My goal wasn’t to accumulate wealth.
I wanted to know how a person can be dead.
I learned how to watch out for myself.
Everyone said I was a tough kid.
4
I see two shiny metal things that look like the rounded edge of a fat paper clip, maybe a safety pin. I describe them to her.
"Why don't you try to press them?" she encourages me.
I do, press the metal heads, and the chip is released from its hold to the board, rising to my fingertips that I use as a pair of tweezers. Now I slip the chips gently out.
I can sense that I'm getting close. The tech directs me to place the door to the computer chips over the board, and to turn the computer right side up. I turn on the power and carefully listen for some sound of life stirring inside the shell of my desecrated computer.
Nothing. The autopsy is complete.
She orders a technician to come to my house to replace the motherboard. I may hear from him within a day.
That’s it. I hang up.
I am bathed in a warm light that falls through the window, and makes a circle around me on the burgundy rug. I am encased in a glow. I’ve gotten through my own uncertainty with guides along the way. Somewhere I hear a gentle whirring and it is at this precise moment I know that light is the breath of my parents.
Today I saw you near the BART station
where Chinatown’s elderly practice aikido
everyone dressed in jeans and loose shirts, on tip-toe
dissecting the air into equal rations.
But where did you come from? Former patients
in hospital gowns, maybe on tour from a distant do-jo
facing each other, repeating each form in slo-mo
without the help of medication.
I couldn’t believe it, there under the blue sky
tumbling on the plaza like two kids
who’ve never needed to stop and ask why
life bounces us back and forth in a fine sieve
grinding our edges until we give;
I saw you so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to cry.
1
Light is the breath of my parents who watch over me.
Green caterpillars stop crawling on a 15-inch screen of leaves. Everything on my laptop computer goes black. It happens as I sit on the rug reading the poems I've been writing about my deceased parents. No more lights flashing on the keyboard.
The laptop rests on the burgundy carpet and is ensnared in a hopeless tangle of adaptor and modem wires; the kill has been made and the predator is still in the neighborhood. I guard the carcass.
Tomorrow I want the computer to turn on, hope its aberrant behavior is due to my failure to pay it sufficient attention. This has happened before. For the moment, I ignore its lifeless screen.
But in the morning after my daughter has left for work and school, the laptop does not go on. I have e-mails to read, clients to contact, Internet sites to research. Then there are the poems.
Why’d you have to get sick and leave
when I was too young to know how much
I’d miss you; birthdays, holidays, your touch,
even in my dreams you drop by infrequently.
Sometimes I think I hear you breathe
by the seashore, in a gully near the rushes,
walking together picking several bunches
of flowers near the entrance to the beach.
Even, if by chance I saw you materialize,
would you recognize your daughter,
back then, a young girl who fantasized
about living opposite from the way you taught her,
what part of me would you recognize,
my feet, my eyes, my hands cupped with water?
2
I turn the page in my notebook to several toll-free technical support numbers.
I retrieve my daughter's mobile phone from downstairs and dial. Ten minutes into the wait queue, Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony is interrupted by the voice of the tech.
"Hello, my name is Pat. May I help you?"
I verify my name, address, phone, and e-mail address to help her validate my account. Now the tech begins to identify the proper verse and chapter from her troubleshooting book.
"I've got it. Step one. Unplug the power source from the computer."
We get as far as the battery. The tech advises, "Turn the computer over and remove the battery which is near the media and data source." She doesn't know what that means either.
I whine, "But I don't know where the battery is."
The tech provides me with its latitude and longitude.
I see two latches that are supposed to flip some kind of trap door at the bottom of my computer, but I cannot identify anything to pull. I voice my confusion.
The tech doesn't listen and drones on like a real estate agent about location.
Juggling latches, I accidentally disconnect the phone.
I wish we could sit and talk
after all these years, have that exit interview
you wouldn’t allow. Everyone knew
it was cancer. Marty cranked up in a bed, chalk-
white; Olga, flying around unable to renew
her liver. Maybe you didn’t want us to boo-hoo,
while you were being stalked.
In any case, you couldn’t hear
over the IV dripping. We asked each other why
this was happening, days smeared
together any amount of head banging or cries
wouldn’t dissolve my orphan fears.
It was time to whisper good-bye.
3
Before I call back, I return to the trap doors. I realize that the molded plastic rises at the bottom of the computer are the very handles I've been looking for. I press the latch open and grab the handle. Something slides out and it is, indeed, the battery.
I call back. I wait in the queue. Another tech gets on the phone and validates my account. We do the name, address, phone number, and e-mail thing, and start over.
This new tech has the annoying habit of reading the "Next" prompt that appears at the bottom of the screen as he pages through the troubleshooting guide. "Next, Next, Next,” he says. I think, all we have is now and maybe if we're lucky, next. He intercedes. "Let's go to the training guide. That's where all the really good stuff is. Next, Next, Next," he reads.
Next I am to remove the hard drive, but need one of those itty-bitty screwdrivers and I'm not sure I have one, and even if I do, I don't know where they are. The tech gallantly waits while I open all the drawers in the house and do a quick scan of the basement.
I get back to the phone and report, "I can't find one."
"I'm sorry you'll have to call back after you can find one so we can run through the tests. We also have to remove the memory chips."
He can't tell me what size screwdriver I need, but suggests, "Why don't you just take the unit with you to the hardware store?" Next.
I'm out of the house carrying the computer, which at this point, is minus its battery and DVD unit, its underside exposed. I drive up to the hardware store and find a small screwdriver that will open the single screw that keeps the hard drive barricaded from me.
I call back. I wait in the queue. Another tech gets on the phone. Validates my account.
The new tech tells me that we need to start from the beginning. She explains that since I wasn't able to remove all the components, the previous techs were unable to properly log my actions.
Now I must prepare for surgery. It's time to remove memory chips.
I unscrew the proper trap door. Beneath it are the memory chips, probably about a half-inch wide which dazzle me with their green brilliance, small veins of silverish thread are traced inside each one. A river flowing to eternity. There are two boards. One contains four chips that are stacked vertically, the second contains two chips that are stacked horizontally. Then I am commanded by the tech to remove them.
The services over, it became apparent
you were quietly gone away from me,
never to come home and put up a pot of coffee;
suddenly I became my own parent,
the one who knows all the ways to stare at
four walls and strip them to beams,
to clear out obstacles or move them with dreams;
look at the future and become clairvoyant.
For years, I walked around in stealth
mode, kept my eyes focused straight ahead.
My goal wasn’t to accumulate wealth.
I wanted to know how a person can be dead.
I learned how to watch out for myself.
Everyone said I was a tough kid.
4
I see two shiny metal things that look like the rounded edge of a fat paper clip, maybe a safety pin. I describe them to her.
"Why don't you try to press them?" she encourages me.
I do, press the metal heads, and the chip is released from its hold to the board, rising to my fingertips that I use as a pair of tweezers. Now I slip the chips gently out.
I can sense that I'm getting close. The tech directs me to place the door to the computer chips over the board, and to turn the computer right side up. I turn on the power and carefully listen for some sound of life stirring inside the shell of my desecrated computer.
Nothing. The autopsy is complete.
She orders a technician to come to my house to replace the motherboard. I may hear from him within a day.
That’s it. I hang up.
I am bathed in a warm light that falls through the window, and makes a circle around me on the burgundy rug. I am encased in a glow. I’ve gotten through my own uncertainty with guides along the way. Somewhere I hear a gentle whirring and it is at this precise moment I know that light is the breath of my parents.
Today I saw you near the BART station
where Chinatown’s elderly practice aikido
everyone dressed in jeans and loose shirts, on tip-toe
dissecting the air into equal rations.
But where did you come from? Former patients
in hospital gowns, maybe on tour from a distant do-jo
facing each other, repeating each form in slo-mo
without the help of medication.
I couldn’t believe it, there under the blue sky
tumbling on the plaza like two kids
who’ve never needed to stop and ask why
life bounces us back and forth in a fine sieve
grinding our edges until we give;
I saw you so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to cry.
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Sometimes
Sometimes I can see red buds on the Christmas cactus
beginning to open and know tomorrow's the day
when the entire world changes
Sometimes I hear
rain on sidewalk roof running down gutter
and feel everything's inside a giant washing machine on a binge
Sometimes I think about something I've always hated to think about,
and when I do, it seems less scary so I wonder where the scary part went,
but then I don't care
Sometimes a wad of sorrow rolls up to get me,
but then I blow my nose good,
because I can.
Sometimes I can see red buds on the Christmas cactus
beginning to open and know tomorrow's the day
when the entire world changes
Sometimes I hear
rain on sidewalk roof running down gutter
and feel everything's inside a giant washing machine on a binge
Sometimes I think about something I've always hated to think about,
and when I do, it seems less scary so I wonder where the scary part went,
but then I don't care
Sometimes a wad of sorrow rolls up to get me,
but then I blow my nose good,
because I can.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Return Cubicle
I'm moving next week to a new cubicle with an available wall that will allow me to stretch out away from my usual daily cramp. IT has been notified about the forthcoming move as has the telecommunications department of one person. I get to make new labels for my file folders, a fitting exercise for an approaching end-of-year turn.
Today was the Christmas Party on the seventh floor, a cozy game hen for each person with aluminum foil tubs of macaroni and cheese, collards, rolls, salad, and peach cobbler with ice-cream. Today also was the day I discovered that the Lemon Drop Cafe is a medical marijuana club, upstairs a bakery with a case of frosted three layer cakes from Santa Cruz.
To get to the basement a person has to show a medical card for admission. I wonder what the conversations are like, but this was early in the morning probably before the marijuana rush, after I did a quick grocery shopping and dropped off the perishables at home before heading to the cubicle, soon to be changed, ordered a coffee that came with a chocolate swirl stick, maybe to make up for its lack of a cover, which I managed to balance along San Pablo to Franklin Street without too many spills.
I'm moving next week to a new cubicle with an available wall that will allow me to stretch out away from my usual daily cramp. IT has been notified about the forthcoming move as has the telecommunications department of one person. I get to make new labels for my file folders, a fitting exercise for an approaching end-of-year turn.
Today was the Christmas Party on the seventh floor, a cozy game hen for each person with aluminum foil tubs of macaroni and cheese, collards, rolls, salad, and peach cobbler with ice-cream. Today also was the day I discovered that the Lemon Drop Cafe is a medical marijuana club, upstairs a bakery with a case of frosted three layer cakes from Santa Cruz.
To get to the basement a person has to show a medical card for admission. I wonder what the conversations are like, but this was early in the morning probably before the marijuana rush, after I did a quick grocery shopping and dropped off the perishables at home before heading to the cubicle, soon to be changed, ordered a coffee that came with a chocolate swirl stick, maybe to make up for its lack of a cover, which I managed to balance along San Pablo to Franklin Street without too many spills.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
Porosity
Passenger Svetlana Minchiker said she was talking on her cell phone as the blast went off — a bang that left her so disoriented she thought at first the phone had exploded. "At first I did not see anything except my hands," she said, holding up one hand still stained red. A trickle of dried blood marked her left cheek. -- Report of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem
We bleed into each other's cell phones in the supermarket, at the ticket office, in the toilet stall, on the bus I hear your life is following me your whole family and friends waiting for you to come home in an hour about all the people you're trying to escape the ones you never want to lose I hear about the heart attacks and the nervous breakdowns what he really should of done instead of opening his big mouth I know where you'd like to go if you could get an extra day off and still waiting to buy tickets for the 9pm show while you went shopping at a real steal with discount coupons you clipped from a newspaper the lines in front of the register tell me to remember to hold the date while you take two blue pills and how you stayed up all night like a wheel balanced on its rim sheer chrome shining a bus deadheading its way to the division yard for repairs, and I'm feeling you I'm feeling you right now
Passenger Svetlana Minchiker said she was talking on her cell phone as the blast went off — a bang that left her so disoriented she thought at first the phone had exploded. "At first I did not see anything except my hands," she said, holding up one hand still stained red. A trickle of dried blood marked her left cheek. -- Report of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem
We bleed into each other's cell phones in the supermarket, at the ticket office, in the toilet stall, on the bus I hear your life is following me your whole family and friends waiting for you to come home in an hour about all the people you're trying to escape the ones you never want to lose I hear about the heart attacks and the nervous breakdowns what he really should of done instead of opening his big mouth I know where you'd like to go if you could get an extra day off and still waiting to buy tickets for the 9pm show while you went shopping at a real steal with discount coupons you clipped from a newspaper the lines in front of the register tell me to remember to hold the date while you take two blue pills and how you stayed up all night like a wheel balanced on its rim sheer chrome shining a bus deadheading its way to the division yard for repairs, and I'm feeling you I'm feeling you right now
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Slipping
A new mattress was delivered to my house yesterday; the old one hauled off to the compressor. My friend's care package finally arrived with an assortment of sweaters, skirts, and jewelry. Whale-watching on the horizon, a visit to New York a possibility. Attending to AC Transit schedule changes on the Web site. Want to get more sleep. Want to do more writing. November is slipping away.
A new mattress was delivered to my house yesterday; the old one hauled off to the compressor. My friend's care package finally arrived with an assortment of sweaters, skirts, and jewelry. Whale-watching on the horizon, a visit to New York a possibility. Attending to AC Transit schedule changes on the Web site. Want to get more sleep. Want to do more writing. November is slipping away.
Saturday, November 08, 2003
Restoring Wetlands
A Great Egret,
regal in its plumage,
pokes through mud
the way I restore
the wetlands of my soul,
levee by levee.
A Great Egret,
regal in its plumage,
pokes through mud
the way I restore
the wetlands of my soul,
levee by levee.
Laptop Gypsy Lament
Will you bootleg my heart
and sell it for next to nothing
down by the waterfront
while I go around town
carrying the original,
beating a message
I don't get?
I thought you and I,
so many years ago,
were going to harness
wildness in our art,
make it sing
the way a twig still vibrates
with the song of a sparrow.
Will you bootleg my heart
and sell it for next to nothing
down by the waterfront
while I go around town
carrying the original,
beating a message
I don't get?
I thought you and I,
so many years ago,
were going to harness
wildness in our art,
make it sing
the way a twig still vibrates
with the song of a sparrow.
Online Dating Service
Of all the men online,
I love James113 the most,
him with his green eyes
staring right through me.
But no matter how many times
I look at his profile,
he never answers e-mail.
Tell me, what can I do?
It sounds like we have
so many mutual interests.
He watches the same
television programs,
even has a scar
like I do.
You think I'm a fool
to bookmark his picture?
I will have no other
on my desktop.
When the moon dangles
like a charm bracelet
between two hills,
my love will call to me
in the dance of my dreams.
Of all the men online,
I love James113 the most,
him with his green eyes
staring right through me.
But no matter how many times
I look at his profile,
he never answers e-mail.
Tell me, what can I do?
It sounds like we have
so many mutual interests.
He watches the same
television programs,
even has a scar
like I do.
You think I'm a fool
to bookmark his picture?
I will have no other
on my desktop.
When the moon dangles
like a charm bracelet
between two hills,
my love will call to me
in the dance of my dreams.
Friday, October 31, 2003
In Time With the Music
A single melody keeps playing in my head, time after time, by Miles Davis. Miles in my head, I recently succumbed to a promotion by the Jazz Heritage Society and ordered six new CDs. It’s time to sharpen my jazz chops.
My daughter is gone for two nights with scheduled check-in points along the way. She’s attending co-ed parties in the outer regions of Lafayette. We had our first real discussion about being intimate. She says she’s curious, but not ready. She left the house last night wearing a belt that my father made in the hospital before he died. She is the first person to wear that belt of loops. She found it in the back of my closet.
My boundaries will hold. Lawrence is back home. I’ve withdrawn from the circle. I pray that without a foil for his inability to take care of himself (me), he learns how to make decisions that embrace life. I go into the world on this Halloween day as Neo from the Matrix dressed in robes of red, black, and green.
A single melody keeps playing in my head, time after time, by Miles Davis. Miles in my head, I recently succumbed to a promotion by the Jazz Heritage Society and ordered six new CDs. It’s time to sharpen my jazz chops.
My daughter is gone for two nights with scheduled check-in points along the way. She’s attending co-ed parties in the outer regions of Lafayette. We had our first real discussion about being intimate. She says she’s curious, but not ready. She left the house last night wearing a belt that my father made in the hospital before he died. She is the first person to wear that belt of loops. She found it in the back of my closet.
My boundaries will hold. Lawrence is back home. I’ve withdrawn from the circle. I pray that without a foil for his inability to take care of himself (me), he learns how to make decisions that embrace life. I go into the world on this Halloween day as Neo from the Matrix dressed in robes of red, black, and green.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
Something to say when your daughter asks,
“Why can’t our family be like everyone else’s?”
Because the truth is there really is no everyone else,
only the two of us washing through the sieve of each day,
making sure we come out of it in one piece,
and beside, why think either one of us
come close to being like everyone else
when we’ve always been so much who we are,
you with your loud mouth and smart answers,
and me acting like I know what's best for everyone
when I've never chosen that for myself.
But the truth is, even though I've tried,
I could never be like everyone else.
My look-a-like never bore the slightest resemblance.
Plus, who knows, I might settle down
for a long sleep in a goose down bed,
turn out the lights, and never snap out of it,
not hear the speaker system,
with its volume cranked up to sky-high,
telling me to get out quick
unless I wanted to totally forget myself,
my deck of cards and pearl earrings
on the vacant lot of my origins,
pull a steel-toed boot way over my damp head.
“Why can’t our family be like everyone else’s?”
Because the truth is there really is no everyone else,
only the two of us washing through the sieve of each day,
making sure we come out of it in one piece,
and beside, why think either one of us
come close to being like everyone else
when we’ve always been so much who we are,
you with your loud mouth and smart answers,
and me acting like I know what's best for everyone
when I've never chosen that for myself.
But the truth is, even though I've tried,
I could never be like everyone else.
My look-a-like never bore the slightest resemblance.
Plus, who knows, I might settle down
for a long sleep in a goose down bed,
turn out the lights, and never snap out of it,
not hear the speaker system,
with its volume cranked up to sky-high,
telling me to get out quick
unless I wanted to totally forget myself,
my deck of cards and pearl earrings
on the vacant lot of my origins,
pull a steel-toed boot way over my damp head.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
I Cry Your Tears
Fire and fog on the morning commute, a car crash against the side wall with a police officer looking beneath the vehicle that was smoking from its hood and slowing down the usual sluggish morning crawl to a slower crawl, which sped up once drivers got an eyeful, until we hit a low bank of fog around Grand Avenue, which plopped over the Grand Lake Theater like a bowl of lumpy oatmeal. News of Faith Fancher's funeral service at Church of St. Leo the Great, a woman who went through life clearing a path with her heart. My friend Pele, in a rehabilitation center in Petaluma, is recovering from pneumonia dreaming of her prints and paintings. Lawrence is returning to his house tomorrow with insulin to inject. And I find myself slowly refilling the red balloon of my new life, sailing above the Mormon Temple over the hills again away.
Fire and fog on the morning commute, a car crash against the side wall with a police officer looking beneath the vehicle that was smoking from its hood and slowing down the usual sluggish morning crawl to a slower crawl, which sped up once drivers got an eyeful, until we hit a low bank of fog around Grand Avenue, which plopped over the Grand Lake Theater like a bowl of lumpy oatmeal. News of Faith Fancher's funeral service at Church of St. Leo the Great, a woman who went through life clearing a path with her heart. My friend Pele, in a rehabilitation center in Petaluma, is recovering from pneumonia dreaming of her prints and paintings. Lawrence is returning to his house tomorrow with insulin to inject. And I find myself slowly refilling the red balloon of my new life, sailing above the Mormon Temple over the hills again away.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Some kind of ice sculpture I've gotten myself into, which needs to be shattered with a pick-ax. What the heck is a pickax? According to bartleby.com:
A pick, especially with one end of the head pointed and the other end with a chisel edge for cutting through roots, with a certain etymology from Middle English picax, alteration (influenced by ax, ax) of picas, from Old French picois (from pic, pick) and from Medieval Latin pcsa, both probably from Latin picus, woodpecker
but it's also listed on the net as a college and as a Mesopotamian creation myth.
Either way, I need one.
A pick, especially with one end of the head pointed and the other end with a chisel edge for cutting through roots, with a certain etymology from Middle English picax, alteration (influenced by ax, ax) of picas, from Old French picois (from pic, pick) and from Medieval Latin pcsa, both probably from Latin picus, woodpecker
but it's also listed on the net as a college and as a Mesopotamian creation myth.
Either way, I need one.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Free Falling
I can take a breath after a marketing meeting where we actually agreed on a specific direction regarding the listserve; my strategy was to continue to add to a report until the accumulated information became its own best decision-maker, plus cold medicine served from my diagonal cube mate that helped me step out of a fog. Then on to San Francisco to do passenger counts on the east and westbound NL line at the TransBay terminal.
This last year I've been in goal-oriented mode, driven by the requirements of planning my daughter's bat mitzvah and then quickly shifting to separating from Lawrence; I'd almost checked off the next item on my agenda, the divorce, as if I were a rocket hurtling through space, going through three stages of flight.
But with Lawrence's hospitalization, I realize I'm not in control; probably never was, a sensation that has no gravitational pull, free falling.
My plans for moving on have dropped through the ozone. I cannot proceed with my to do list while Lawrence is so vulnerable, regardless of the quality of our life together. There is something I need to find out, something I don't know.
There is nothing for me to do anymore. My God, how can serve you?
I can take a breath after a marketing meeting where we actually agreed on a specific direction regarding the listserve; my strategy was to continue to add to a report until the accumulated information became its own best decision-maker, plus cold medicine served from my diagonal cube mate that helped me step out of a fog. Then on to San Francisco to do passenger counts on the east and westbound NL line at the TransBay terminal.
This last year I've been in goal-oriented mode, driven by the requirements of planning my daughter's bat mitzvah and then quickly shifting to separating from Lawrence; I'd almost checked off the next item on my agenda, the divorce, as if I were a rocket hurtling through space, going through three stages of flight.
But with Lawrence's hospitalization, I realize I'm not in control; probably never was, a sensation that has no gravitational pull, free falling.
My plans for moving on have dropped through the ozone. I cannot proceed with my to do list while Lawrence is so vulnerable, regardless of the quality of our life together. There is something I need to find out, something I don't know.
There is nothing for me to do anymore. My God, how can serve you?
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