Main Street

Chilly frigid afternoon so welcoming like your welcomes
This town is smaller than I remembered
when my tiny legs walked to the corner bakery
for jelly doughnuts and bear claws.
We’d watch the Christmas parade on Main Street
From your second floor office window
the front door is still red as it was 20 years ago
the river still cascades beside the red mill
where we trick-or-treated and fed the ducks
during some October along time ago.
Long enough ago to have my face painted
when I was small enough to sit on your lap
and too young to appreciate any of it.
Main street seems shorter this Christmas
when once it was a never ending path
I was never brave enough to venture alone
until today some decades later
when the wind is swirling my long blond hair
around its indifferent frigid fingers
ushering everyone into the warmth
of nearby antique shops and cafes
while the street is silent in my reflection.
Would he recognize his first granddaughter
standing at the red front door 20 years later
still blond and blue eyed and smiling
looking up at his second floor office
from a Main street I’ll always return to
in your memory.


In loving memory of Richard J. Wisniewski

From Autumn to Winter

There is a certain calm to be found in the seasonal decay of the earth. The cool season of autumn where the world around us slowly begins to die as it celebrates its own death in a festive macabre ritual of orange and red leaves. I find peace in the fading beauty, as it reminds me that nothing stays beautiful. No, it’s not me being a downer, its reality. Autumn is a reminder of all that which is good must pass. The shorter days and crisp crunch of leaves beneath our shoes is just an omen for the dark cold winter months a head. At least Mother Nature gives us warning of the dark times. At least we can rely on the ritual of the earth changing colors, changing temperature. Nothing else in life will give us such a guarantee.

Where I once mourned the lost days of spring where I was reborn, the endless days of summer where my childhood flourished, I solemnly accept the autumn as the inevitable passage into the adult world with new responsibilities. I know by winter I will have endured enough this year to be a withered old woman, tired, dried up and senile. However, when the New Year comes around and the trees begin their budding and the birds come north again, there will be a new infant waking inside of me, opening her arms to a year of experiences and adventure.

I knew perhaps 2010 would be a different year. The gradual evolution of our souls in accordance with nature puts our existence in harmony.

I’ve made mistakes and fell in love. I hurt others and gained new scars (tattoos of experience I call them). I traveled to distant lands and met people I’ll never see again but who I’ll always remember. I graduated college, started a new job, started graduate school, watched new shows, read new books, ate new food, made friends and lost friends. Winter is here and the year is almost over. I won’t wait until next year to promise myself I’ll be stronger.

The only revelation that pulls me through my days of weariness, through the icy façade of winter, is the reminder that though others have continued to hurt me and take advantage of my love, I still have the ability to love. I hope one day I can harness that ability to bring change to a world of constant darkness and sadness.

There are many things I am grateful for each day of this passing year. Once again, everything I have experienced this year has participated in the evolution of my being, whether good or bad. I’ll know better next time or I won’t make the same mistake again. Though the days of fading sunlight may shrivel my energy and my soul will hibernate in the warmth of my studio, I’m still blossoming inside.

Dualism

There is a Petrach and a Bukowski in my head.
One sees the world with rose colors in their eyes
The other degrades all my experiences into worthless trash.
One paints me in as a Mona Lisa of beauty and femininity
The other calls me an insatiable, neurotic whore.
One tells me to fall in love whenever possible
The other reminds me not to be so ignorant.
One wants dinner and flowers and chivalry
The other wants Jack Daniels and a night I can’t remember
The Romantic and the Realist cannot live together anymore.

Happiness

I’ve come to realize I’m happiest when I ask myself where I want to be and then I simply go there.

San Nicholas

we climbed higher and higher
leaving the world behind
you joked about my short legs
as they tread the cobblestone
upwards to anywhere and nowhere
you stopped at El Gato for la cerveza
and we rested in the sun to drink
strangers sharing a bottle until
it was time again to walk further
you stopped to ask an older waitress
for directions to San Nicholas
and told me everyone loved her
for all the right reasons
we sang our favorite song
and laughed, the sweat heavy
underneath my long hair
from more nervousness than heat
we reached the highest point
next to a tall white tower
and sat to admire the view before us
two souls reunited in space and time
ascended into our heaven
time stood still
and the universe rested

Granada Moon

Window looks north
almost a full moon
two buses and a dream
will take me there

but tonight isn't a dream
and we're alone in this city
ancient, like our souls
meant to meet and
be for the night
under a Granada moon.

The Storm

The box fan is about as useless as he is
as it blows around the sticky air in my room
filled with layers of dust from summers passed
needing to be cleaned
needing to be cleaned...

Too fucking hot to fall asleep
so I lay awake and wonder
where is the storm they called for
why are there flashes of lightening
but no thunder
or
rain

just the same ambiguous promises
and the smell of shit that curdles
the humidity of this hellhole.

Stripped down to nothing to stay cool
No clothes, no blankets and even
no dignity just darkness
heat and
betrayal.

I’m no fucking meteorologist
but I can predict a storm better than most
once lightening flashes
then you start counting
then you start counting…

Every

There is a coward behind every soldier
A rapist behind every priest
A savant behind every scholar
A criminal behind every officer
A bachelor behind every groom
A lie behind every promise
Bullshit behind every bouquet
Pornography behind every masterpiece
Tyranny behind every democracy
Blood behind every religion
A fist behind every handshake
A sword behind every pen
A boy behind every man
A coward behind every man
A rapist behind every man
A savant behind every man
A criminal behind every man
A bachelor behind every man
A liar behind every man…

$3.75

$3.75

I hate being the one serving you coffee
the pepper, bacon and American omelet
with white toast and a large orange juice.
The ketchup stain on my apron
and the sweat on my forehead
make me seem too pathetic to be
considered worthy of eye contact.


You sit there in your suit and tie
talking business, politics and gossip
from the last town council meeting,
and that woman refilling your cup
pocketing your $3.75 tip
will one day be the woman
who ruins your marriage
your mayoral legacy
and your political reputation.


I smile at this thought
refill your cup of coffee
and you think I’m smiling
at you.

Resolution

I'm not really going to hell after all. Somewhere between heaven and hell is a place for those of us who wander in a steady flow of illusion, wrong directions and uncertainty. That place is called life.

How wonderful it would be to carry out life on a reservation. Rather than a government issued plot of disparaged land rationed out of pity by the ignorant ancestors of those who stole it in the first place, I'm speaking metaphorically of course and of something far more grand. This reservation is purely a mental state, one that toes the line between reality and psychosis, guaranteeing an imaginary yet safe haven for the ill-fated acute consciousness of my existence. To pine away for the truly impossible is more logical to me than holding out for an unlikely probability. At least in the impossibility, there is no disappointment. There is only a constant hum of a never ending melody and a dream never awoken from.

You may brand me a rationalist, where knowledge is based upon pure reason alone, without any empirical evidence or experience needed for verification. Yet I am not claiming these mental sanctuaries offer any source of truth. They simply provide me with the ability to persist within the real world. Yet what is this "real world" I am speaking so nonchalantly of? I could pontificate tediously about theories of the empiricists and their theories of reality, attempting to reconcile Berkeley from Locke and Kant from Hume, yet I will spare my typical, intellectually elitist sermon as it serves no purpose to the current situation at hand. That situation being an intense realization that I feel more contentment inside my mind, my thoughts and my dreams than I do in the arms of another or in the presence of others. Should fate give me the brief exhilaration of experience, I would be a fool not to accept it. Yet such a gift is not enduring, as it is usually incompatible with the world if it should be fancied by my conscious. Soon enough, it fades back into the monotonous humdrum, visible only on some nights, yet always kept at arms length. Somehow I keep allowing it to visit and in my insanity, I keep expecting different results.

How much spite is necessary to abolish this madness before I wither into complete disgrace? An ounce, I suppose would give a stubborn being like myself enough will power to carry through with such resolution. And how comfortable it will be to find solidarity in the fictional creations of my mind, rather than allow real people to ruin my soul.