Tag Archives: kids

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who knows there are so many of them
trying to impress a dorky blend
compassion insight and the mere awareness

here it’s murky there is lots of black
occasional pashmina tight shirts walking skirts
and colored personal skin that’s very vague
and expletive with panty lines—sigh—
let’s all uncover it—
that one is pregnant and
two boys go by on roller shoes…

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Choking sensation in the solar plexus area. Driving sensation I interpret as a need to be alone. Desire for code, the secret code that expresses how and what I understand. My children are not fat and both are bald. That’s over that’s enough. Embedding secret line breaks in the work. Choking sensation in the lower throat. Anger’s like a cavity in the chest.

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Yes, the lies of training, the absolute corruption of conspiracy, my sons—they stabbed me in the heart and left, reverse Samaritans, walking on their own and I am alone and without sustenance. I miss my drive. I bought some pants and patience.

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Play with the baby. The gratitude, the relaxation of no baby. The brutality of babies here at home. And how will they travel? And how do they know when to come home? And when to fold their little wings and settle down and when to roam? And what day must it be for questions to make arbitrary sense? And what day must it be to clear the question buildup, do some dusting, and serve sandwiches?

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I want to be enlightened. I want to be enlightened. My aspirations are tender, have a tendency to wither in this sandy soil, drown in this rain. I want I won’t, I want I won’t. My tendencies plum blossoms, Blossom like the plum. Year of no blossoms. Blair ate plums and broccoli, his first nutritious meal in a long time.

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No, not working. The sense of distance, I am not there. I am paddling in the mud, pawing, clawing, mud between my toes. I have itching on my scalp, dry mouth, stomachache. I have to do my taxes. Vague sensation in the nipple of my left breast. Vague irritation in my rectum. Slight sensation of a single hair tickling my right cheek. Maybe there or maybe not. A welling up of anger that none of my co-workers are sitting in a library trying to clear their head with writing on a Saturday. A story. A gurgle in my guts. A restlessness in my legs—why am I sitting still? Sensation in my left buttock/hip, a sensation around the back of my left ear. Mother speaks sharply to her child. Ticking, periodic sound of wind—or is it air conditioning?

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Dirty wall in the ladies’ bathroom near the light switch. Childrens’ hands. Wondering if I should call my brother. Wondering too long is never good. Stomachache. The regular diary. The jotting. The tendency. Dependent origination. The chain. The wrangling. The striving and the letting go. The seeking a rhythm. Child’s voice behind me. Heater ticking. Draft consistent. Periodically there is a sound of wind.

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Ovoid aftermath
smug somethings of her afterbirth
no stories please
especially no photos
I can’t bear it
thinking of her
trying to breastfeed
little ones failing to thrive
on the diet of America
perpetuated
how could she rise above
how could she contemplate
the fingertips of
Else Lasker-Schüler

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There was no cultural bullshit yesterday—maybe just a little—the trendiness of “raw” food cost me $180. I have $1200 to pay to Stamford Hospital and $200+ to hand therapy and then I’m ready for the next emergency.

I have to follow up on Blair’s college loan acct and see if my prepayments posted.

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Someone needs to go out and buy thread. I feel the coils of my brain relaxing sometimes Sam’s presence just fosters such reaction, such aversion—I am not coping with it very well, or Stephen Batchelor’s pompous question How would I live my life if I acknowledged I was going to die and Dudley did die February 6. Let’s have some rice and stir-fried vegetables for dinner, except there is no rice, no tofu, and a minimum of greens. Ginger, Yes. Food is still a friend of mine. Last night, at pompous vegetarian Ahimsa fuck I can’t get over Eli’s bicycle and how impossible it is to fix this—how little I really want to talk to anybody

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I am really struggling with a lot of questions—

  • WRITING (I crave my eerie freedom)
  • Relationship—how much is too much
  • Dharma friendships (Batchelor)
  • The coffee doesn’t taste like coffee
  • America
    • and where to go from here

Maybe this is the tail end of my tenure working I am certainly chafing under all the structure I felt Linda closing the lid down on my dear chaos Friday and I wanted to cry especially since there was no way to explain EXPLAIN—

pressures pressures decompression after Eli’s birthday party yesterday my eyes my eyes my moon

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9 of swords (rev)

I am not raising kids anymore.

I can use Linda’s logistical skills and networking to make things easier.

When I feel in the grip of clutching fear or annoyance at work—I can take a walk. Take a breath.

I want to

  • Read Moby Dick
  • Ulysses
  • Gravity’s Rainbow

I want to

  • Sew again—some elegant drapey tops

I want to

  • Make meals in the crockpot

I want to

  • Be in the CSA

I want

  • a Buddhist teacher ? ? ?

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Next day at work, Linda, who likes to try to be my guardian angel, asks innocently—how was my drive home last night—I stare at her for moments, at an utter loss for inspiration as far as what to say—I don’t even know if my own mind how to say how my drive home has been or if I’ve even reached home yet or ever will and can’t begin to explain why I’m driven to do things like tour New York City in a car one-handed delivering warm clothing and unwanted poetry on thankless nights where no one’s looking almost not listening no stars no shining and no stop for meals. Lisa offers to go get some negra modelo, me and Josh say yes. He has a new job, he’s a kid, he’s going to work for Wiley in Hoboken, just starting out, I say Good night Good luck we walk off in opposite directions.

Next semester—Finnegan’s Wake, Gertrude Stein, and the Cantos, oh my god, I want to take that, I can’t help it, I can’t justify it, there is no explanation, but I’ve been broken down sufficiently okay it’s insane okay I’ll cooperate I don’t believe in vengeful angels but I’ve sustained enough damage from the New York School and San Francisco Renaissance that I dare not tread toward giants of literature like that. No I won’t be jounced by Joyce, stunned by Stein, or pounded on by Ezra anymore it’s over I’ll stay here in bed contented with my diary and my jottings, what intact bones are left, sipping supplemental vitamins and breath, applying gratitude medicinally and daring any New York angel poet student policeman to come find me here in this suburban garden of post post post avant avant fragmentariantude.

So there.

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So then last week was our last session—postponed until after Thanksgiving because so many in class were going out of own or otherwise couldn’t make it and it was my first day back at work in Jersey after the long weekend and the previous week’s hiatus because of surgery on my aching wrist I had to work from home. Huh—I was cutting everything pretty close, had some goods to drop off with Blair, not urgent, just his vest, his coat, his soap—well, what if he gets COLD, he’ll need this stuff, my drive to deliver it to him got the best of me and almost hyperventilating after leaving work at 4 pm under gloomy skies I drove with one hand down into Manhattan, 87 South from Westchester over the Third Ave Bridge, onto the FDR, 23rd Street exit just like usual and then I think I’ll turn on 7th Avenue and work my way back to Union Square along 16th Street—well I turned at 5:30 pm onto a street I shouldn’t have turned onto until 7—goddammit, do I really need such pointed reminders that somehow my timing in this life is really OFF?—red lights in my rearview mirror and I get two fucking summons, one for unsafe turn and one for not seeing a sign or something like that and my heart is pounding and I’m trying to hide my broken left arm because God knows the fines for driving with a broken wrist are probably more than Astronomical, but the policeman doesn’t really seem that interested in me anyway and this too hurts my feelings, thinking a different sort of poet would have engaged him, spurred an action, wriggled out of it, into some grace at the last minute, a reprieve, but no I limped away, now afraid to drive, delivered Blair his package, followed on to class and found a place to park in Queens and participated in the small group, just Josh and Lisa (and the cats) and shared some feeble poetry from the past and made it home and paid my fines plus surcharge within 15 days—$180.

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Here are my projects—

I write a series about rivers, it feels really forced, much less interior than I’m used to.

I’m doing book design, an anthology. I feel like curling up in shame for the uneven obstreperous (bluntly) badness of this poetry and get defensive at the awes of horror over awkward typographic dumbnesses in Duncan’s Selected oh yes it is a bad book and—well, mine probably is too.

I’m writing a gigantic Hallmark card to 365 of my closest friends, a project which I never once get brave enough to mention because it’s absolutely a faux pas in circles like this to write about real people in a dumb form like “50 words,” not to mention being 50 which is also a mistake too grave to mention, so I shut up even though I secretly admire myself, if only for the year-long discipline (its roots in stubbornness).

I have a blog. Lisa acknowledges my blog on hers, kind words; we mention it once in person, then this contact sinks again into the pool of anonymity, mutual lurking. I decide I want to put more energy into my blog, I have sort of a grip on it as an aesthetic project so I post something almost every day in November, although this is quite strenuous, and sometimes, it’s only photos/fragments.

Lisa’s interest in plants helps me acknowledge that I have a yard, a garden, even a sort of love for certain specimens. I bring two plants indoors for the winter—parsley, rosemary—and plant cilantro seeds. The sage survives outside. I think of bringing Lisa some sage bundled as a gift, maybe wrapped in some embroidery floss. No thyme at the moment.

Umm…can’t get there from here. Can’t go to Naropa, can’t spend lots of money on classes when I’m 50 and Blair’s in college, can’t generate a poetic community like the Beats or the New York School springing up from the wasted garden void around me, can’t make contact, can’t begin to get excited again about an online journal project, any opportunity to publish or be published, any sights set higher than retirement sooner hopefully rather than later after I finish paying for the college education of my favorite anarchist who would never rub elbows with an institution unless the term was paid for by a foolish parent (yup that’s me).

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End of October—I blurt out in an email that there’s a reading from In Pieces, an anthology of fragmentary literature by Impassio Press in the city on October 29th. I’ll be there (but not reading). Of course, no one from class shows up, it’s not that kind of group. I’m quite excited by this gathering—there’s Guy, and Jason, Audrey, Ellis, Mary, and lovely Roy, and afterwards, I collect signatures like a giddy child and drink wine and talk of fragments and connections. It’s a lovely gathering. Outside on the plaza, in a windstorm, I fall down and break my wrist.

I miss the next two classes. Halloween is just two days away, can’t really navigate, I stay home becalmed (uncalm) in an utter slump. Unable to celebrate in any way with Sam, a masked witch in a bad mood.

The next week, I’m in New York, but entertaining Geno and Michelle after the marathon. We’re eating at Pure Food and Wine, with Blair, and baby Harry. It’s a good time although I feel phenomenally stressed by the logistics of meeting people in the city and the baby and the driving and the wrist and the expense and the phone call saying I won’t be there at class and the what the hell of all of it. But I like Michelle. She tells Blair stories of the squats in London and Berlin. Geno wrangles Harry pretty well, and Sam takes him out for little walks into the rainy courtyard. We even stop for coffee (terrible) at a nondescript, nonrecommended deli (Greek joint). Returning to my car something like the sound of a loud gong, in the Gong Show, loud and deep and fatal—parking ticket, $65, I parked at 5:40 pm somewhere where I shouldn’t have parked until 6. Just suck it up.

I catch up with the next class. I think I’ve lost the thread of Duncan’s life completely. All I know is that I’m envious of his household, alive with art and poetry and avant friends, community with all its prices and its costs. I’m envious of his ego and his correspondents. Him. Levertov. How to come to terms with what is past. That was then, you see, and this is now.

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My shoulders have regressed since the injury. They are back up around my ears. I am waiting for a beating, another blow to fall.
I am waiting for the pain. I like to devalue, much more than most. I do not like children. I am an ana-pest.

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The train goes by. It’s lovely to ride the train at this time of day. Very quiet passengers, almost empty trains. We took a train from Amsterdam’s train station back to the airport at this time. Working people with staid composure. Kids in dark baggy clothing.

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I walked down the hill, the easement nobody owns. I thought there might be some kids there, drinking, fucking, smoking. There are some white plastic chairs back there, a trio of them, but they were empty. I thought about Al ruining his life, and how Blair rejected his friendship. I liked the stucco look of that garage. It reminds me of Italy, a place where kids hang out and ruin their lives as well, I guess.