Simple Tastes

Simple Tastes

A man recently told me he has simple tastes
and I wanted to pull him close to me
and tell him there is a big difference
in wanting less and expecting nothing
We are our expectations
and it's easy to forget as one day turns to another
as the leaves of fall are crushed under
winter snows and then somehow
disappear when spring approaches
it's so easy to forget who we are
and what we want
And we wait because polite people wait
we wait to hear what we need to hear
believing that want is selfish
like we wait for the tulips to push
and push and push
their arrival expected to help mark another season

And how to tell someone you love
someone you love ferociously
that they are supposed to expect more from the world
and not risk the insult
that if you leave want unwatched
that boiling pot will grow
to a mighty fire and all you will want to do
is scorch the earth

You will wake one day and want everyone
who ever uttered the words I love you
to notice that you haven't been the same
that your blue eye doesn't shine as bright
that you haven't been the same person for quite some time
and while the earth was revolving
inside you were evolving and aren't we we all?
and inside we turn and we twist
just to get to the problem trying to understand the gist
avoiding at all costs
that empty little hole right next to
the aortic valve

In that hole is a little piece of you waiting to hear
"I need you inside me"
waiting to kiss someone who isn't kissing you
to say hello or goodbye
where life is not so polite and so carefully planned
where chaos rules the day
and you can't quite taste the tip of your tongue
you're willing to bite off to avoid any moment of crisis
where wonky girls live to steal your heart
and take it on a picnic near the stream
where there are so many trout that they wave
as they swim by
wave to lovers on a blanket in the middle of a wednesday afternoon
when the whole world is working
pushing one paper into another

It's ok to want the sweetest wine
to run over that thirsty tongue
Our mothers arent watching
and the priest is sleeping
and all that is here is you and I
the gentle reader who steals into my day
to whisper thoughts I dreamed of in my garden
where you and I were having a conversation
years above you ever said hello in a whisper
in a library late at night
while I read you poetry
of a heart's desire



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and if you are wondering why taking what you want in the now is so important, something to remind you...

Mothers Day

Mothers Day was quiet here. Finally Spring was here and Richie was preparing for finals and graduation. My niece sent me a book, The Lady In The Water. When she was here visiting when I was ill, we watched the movie together. I love the movie, the story full of folklore and one of my favorites. She wrote me a card that made me cry. When people who aren't your children treat you as though you are a mothering figure it's quite touching and I love my nieces and nephews each of them as though they were a little of my own. Richie has friends he's had since he was a very young child and they are a little of mine also. Richie sent me a card and flowers and in the card he mentioned that he was sorry he wouldn't be home for the weekend because he was trying to tie everything up before we arrived in a few short days to watch him walk the stage. He tells me that May 15th is not only a celebration for him but for us. When he called it felt like he was close and I was happy he was finishing up there and starting yet another degree somewhere else, something else.

The following Saturday I was in the auditorium for his graduation and in the sea of people in graduation tassels I couldn't find him, not that my vision is all that great to start. I sent him a text, asking him to wave or stand up something so I could see him and he waves, Best Friend could find him, all is well. Then he sends me a text that he loves me and thanks me for all my support over the past few years. It was strange, technology, bringing him to the seat next to me whispering in my ear the way we've whispered since he was a little boy. "I wish dad was here." he sends me. I did too, not for me but to celebrate the day we both stood by as that creature made his appearance for the first time. "I know baby." I send back. On days likes this you want the impossible to be the possible. Yet I could feel his presence, smiling so broad, knowing our son fought for this, this great accomplishment. My family was there around me and I felt loved and I know Richie felt that this was important for all of us to drive and drive and drive.

So for now he's home. I'm not sure how I feel about it other than I do like living alone and have liked it a great deal. Even when the house feels oh so large I do like the space. The cats were kicked from the third floor and they are adjusting, wandering about looking for a new sleeping and hiding place. Leroy is taking up residency in the studio and I like knowing he's close. I am feeling better, stronger, but I think that's due to the garden. The yellow flowers on the tomatoes are already producing fruit. I have a poem in my heart I am working through and I have been playing the violin again. All seems well. I am working on a yard project with an old light that is broken and I am turning it into a bird feeder. When I am done, I will post some photos. I will also post some photos of the flower bed that's new this year. I thought blue and purple flowers seemed appropriate for a spring when the sky always looks like a bruise.

Take care for now..Carrie.

The Human Condition

The Human Condition



Last night it rained so hard
I thought for a moment my bed
had floated down the stairs and
out to the garden
I reached under my pillow
found the umbrella and read poetry
to the garden spiders
with the rain keeping time those poems
were songs of the poets who knew
so much of the human nature that they walked
into rivers
or blew off their heads in foreign hotel rooms
and just when I think it's such waste
I understand that maybe they knew they had written
all they could write
the world had taken all from them that they had
and rather than be JD Salinger
rather than drink and drink until their livers
looked like Bukowski's weathered face
they just ended it and forever they will be young
and beautiful
and talented
we all will have wished for more and read them
with the color of melancholy written on our souls
Tonight their tears fell and made the noises
when rain hits the leaves of the trees
and if I could I'd conjure Anne Sexton to sit with me
and have her tell me the story of the girl with one eye
and two eyes and of course three
I'd make her tea and drink from very old tea cups
and for a moment I'd carry the burden of her sadness
sometimes I bathe in sadness
when I read of lives lost in the struggle to be human
to have empathy of the condition that is life
and to understand how I fit into any part of it it all

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My poem of Anne Sexton is not nearly as wonderful as her own, of course.



Her poetry was madness and brilliant. She was a feminist and a mother and a wife. She reminds me of the movie, Revolutionary Road. She only wrote poetry after she was failed by therapy after an attempt at suicide. Later that attempt would bring her to another world. She won the Prize, she now dances with the Gods and we just well get to miss her.







It Is A Spring Afternoon



Everything here is yellow and green.
Listen to its throat, its earthskin,
the bone dry voices of the peepers
as they throb like advertisements.
The small animals of the woods
are carrying their deathmasks
into a narrow winter cave.
The scarecrow has plucked out
his two eyes like diamonds
and walked into the village.
The general and the postman
have taken off their packs.
This has all happened before
but nothing here is obsolete.
Everything here is possible.

Because of this
perhaps a young girl has laid down
her winter clothes and has casually
placed herself upon a tree limb
that hangs over a pool in the river.
She has been poured out onto the limb,
low above the houses of the fishes
as they swim in and out of her reflection
and up and down the stairs of her legs.
Her body carries clouds all the way home.
She is overlooking her watery face
in the river where blind men
come to bathe at midday.

Because of this
the ground, that winter nightmare,
has cured its sores and burst
with green birds and vitamins.
Because of this
the trees turn in their trenches
and hold up little rain cups
by their slender fingers.
Because of this
a woman stands by her stove
singing and cooking flowers.
Everything here is yellow and green.

Surely spring will allow
a girl without a stitch on
to turn softly in her sunlight
and not be afraid of her bed.
She has already counted seven
blossoms in her green green mirror.
Two rivers combine beneath her.
The face of the child wrinkles.
in the water and is gone forever.
The woman is all that can be seen
in her animal loveliness.
Her cherished and obstinate skin
lies deeply under the watery tree.
Everything is altogether possible
and the blind men can also see.

Anne Sexton

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Lessons in Hunger





'Do you like me?'
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Do you like me?
How absurd!
What's a question like that?
What's a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?

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When someone takes their own life there is a feeling of loss, helplessness, why didn't she call? Why didn't she find someone who loved her and ask them to save her? Maybe she tried, maybe she was afraid to try. Maybe just maybe all her efforts were in vain and all she was mean to be was a poetess. Maybe.