You Have to Appreciate JWs with a Fresh Approach

Her first question was, “Do you believe in mixing religion and politics?” which intrigued me because I couldn’t figure out exactly where she was going with that—exactly what her script said to expect and which way the conversation tree would fork should I answer yes or no. So, kudos to her for being brave and mysterious and believing what she believes enough to wander this rough and tumble neighborhood armed only with some pamphlets and a discount floral dress.

-M.

The Terrible Trivium Retires

In Norton Juster’s book, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Terrible Trivium is the demon of useless tasks and misspent energy. The Trivium lives at the base of the Mountains of Ignorance.

There was a time once when all
the bored little children came
to me first, and I taught them
how, with but one delicate
needle, they could chip away
at the face of Ignorance.
I taught them to move mountains.

I gave tweezers to humbugs
and taught them to move deserts
from here to here, grain by grain.
And drop by drop I watched as
the fearsome watch-dog drained my
swimming pool with a syringe,
only to fill it again.

In my home I have thousands
of boxes and bookshelves filled
with the precious remnants of
my former glory. There are
yellow number two pencils
sharpened to stubs, ten metric
tons of unbent paper clips,

doodle-work masterpieces,
and my personal favorite;
the literature. I have
volumes of nothing but notes
passed around classrooms, ideal
married names written over
and over and … But details,

details! That wasn’t my point.
What I wished to say was: I’ve
not added anything new
to my collection in years.
It seems that all the children
want for themselves now is sleep;
thoughtless, dreamless, ceaseless sleep.

Sleeping children weary me.
Likewise, their sluggish spirits
do not seek active vices.
I, the demon of “useless”
have become, myself, useless.
So, from this ever napping
generation, I retire.

                                Children, remember me when,
                                drunk with too much sleep, you lie
                                wide awake for hours, bored.


-M.

The Best Metaphor for Everything

It’s probably not smoking black cigarettes and reading poetry on your lunch break that makes you cool—that makes you a poet.

Some jackass “accidentally” set fire to his car in the parking lot of the WalMart where I work the other night—by playing with his cigarette lighter (he wasn’t even a smoker). The fire damaged two employees’ cars as well. The jackass doesn’t have insurance—of course—and, of course, WalMart won’t be held accountable either.

A guy from Channel 4 News called to find out how bad it really was. He was angry I wouldn’t let him talk to a manager, “Sir, I’m sure you can imagine, they’ve got their hands full at the moment” and he sounded disappointed that by the time he got to me, the fire had already been put out. When I told him it had damaged only employee cars, he hung up on me.

Smiley, who works in the freezer, was standing by the desk drumming his fingers on a DD boxed bra, waiting for me to get off the phone. When I was free he said, “Dear, would you mind getting on the walkie and telling the managers that R. in the dairy case is having a heart attack?”

I made the call and for a minute there was silence—I imagined a terrible dilemma—Sideburn Manager and Young Obama Manager drawing straws over who got to stay and wait for the hazmat team to clean up the toxic exploded car nonsense and who would attend the ailing dairyman. Sideburn Manager lost and went running to meet the gasping R. making his way with Smiley to meet the ambulance at the door.

The ambulance went to the wrong door.

It went to the door where the old folks go to get their four-dollar blood pressure meds instead of the door where the cool kids go to smoke and talk shit—the door where our twenty-two year old dairyman fell to his knees waiting for treatment—the door where Sideburn Manager stood waving his arms above his head and yelling “Wrong door! Wrong door!”

The ambulance went to the wrong door…isn’t that the best metaphor for everything?

R. was either all right, or needed his paycheck more than he needed recovery, because he showed up for work the next day, laughing it off and looking more than a little tired. The hazmat crew did an excellent job in the parking lot—unless you knew better, you’d swear there was no incident at all.

I know better, but at the moment couldn’t care less. My work week has ended and my ears are still ringing. I’ve been dreaming about flailing Sideburn Managers and piles of flaming jaded news reporters. I woke up this morning and noticed I’ve developed a slight limp.

So, for now…

The dairymen have gone.
The phone has stopped for a minute.
Fuck everybody!

-M.

note: I originally wrote this while doing my stint working as the fitting room mistress, lingerie wrangler and switchboard operator at a WalMart in Nashville, TN—a surprisingly inspiring job that me and my limp miss every day.

To the Boys Who Were Kind

Why must I always choose
the useless assholes? Is a
song, I suppose, that has been
sung by women for thousands
of years.

John was my first choice who,
two months in, told me he
believed—really believed women
were meant only for babies while
Angel, who I denied, hustled daily
out of his way to walk me to class,
often bringing fragrant little presents
and once, with his poor eyes, even
searched for hours through dusty crates
at Mad Platters to find a rare record from
the band I adored.

Then there was Billy who risked
mortal mocking to show up at our
blue collar job in a suit and hat
to bring me a dozen hybrid roses
and ask me out to a restaurant he
couldn’t afford. But I was already
committed to some charming dick,
so I declined and, I think, might
have damaged his pliable heart.

And all the rest, but Bill and Angel
especially—one day I will meet you
again in heaven. I will be perfumed
and wearing my best dress. I will
bear you some rare gift but mostly
                                               an apology.


-M.

Crisis Intervention

They warehoused the girls on the left side
of the third floor, behind robotic glass doors.
They took their pressures, calculated their
imbalances and stripped their running shoes
away. They provided them a shower with no
head, nontoxic soaps, rubber sheets, blankets
folded into pillowcases on which to lay their tired
brains, a stack of yellow-paged romance novels,
regular drugs, tabloid TV, a comfy brown couch
and popcorn with grape Kool-Aid at night.

They made them eat.

They made them walk in line like schoolchildren
to beg their cold nourishment three times daily,
no exceptions—meals splashed dismissive on the
plaintive trays they held in front of them, humbly,
between their bandaged arms.

Then back behind the glass doors, three times
daily, no exceptions, in single file, bellies still
half empty, shuffling and silent
                                    like dolls on tracks.


-M.

Nicotine Bitch

There was this dude at the movie theater today—

Let me explain, this little theater I’m talking about is nestled in the ghetto all funky and crumbly and local and cheap and uncrowded and scary and wonderful.

So there was this dude—handsome surfer type—flirting with the ticket girl as I came in to take my mom to see Dark Shadows for a belated Mother’s Day. (Sidebar: the serial killer waiter at Black Angus prevented us from going on our first attempt.) So this dude was there semi-flirting with the ticket girl while at the same time being a total douche making her call her boss to confirm that indeed he did get two free tickets to the show because he had his SAG card on him. Now, the thing is, if he were a little further from L.A., perhaps the ticket girl, myself, and all the other people he told in the theater about his SAG card and how he had met Johnny Depp and Laurence Fishburne on set and how they were odd, odd fellows—maybe if he were a little further away from L.A., that SAG card and his stories might have been more impressive, but he doesn’t live further from L.A. and, as any good So Cal-er knows, a SAG card is a fairly common article. You basically just have to sneeze in the general direction of a production—and pay your union dues—in order to get one, so, needless to say, no one was impressed. In fact the tension among the twenty or so theater goers was almost palpable as his boisterous posing got even more ridiculous with every single minute of the extra twenty minutes it took the reel-master to get the projector running and the sound right because, as I said, this is a funky little ghetto theater and shit like that happens.

So this dude—this preening, pompous, jackass dude—this friendly dude in front of me in line at the movies got two free tickets with his SAG card, turned around, smiled and handed one to me.

And all the heinous, evil thoughts I had about him after he showed me this kindness are the reason I bought cigarettes today and intend to start smoking them later. Listening to myself internally nicotine-fit-bitch about the shortcomings of this poor, kind, lonely man trying to break the ice with strangers by sharing with them his proudest achievement—makes me like myself less.

I like myself less—smokeless.

-M.

Paranoia II: When the Lights Go Out

Every time I walk into the bathroom the nightlight suddenly turns itself off. I’m beginning to think it’s been talking smack about me to the mouthwash.

-M.

Paranoia I: Angus Nefarious

I took my mom out to a lovely Mother’s Day lunch at a steakhouse yesterday and we had a waiter that was very soft spoken and handsome, yet somehow you just know is secretly a serial killer. And the last time I went there, we had a waiter that oddly had the exact same bearing and hand gestures as my good friend from high school, Donald.

Donald are you out there? Are you still alive? They aren’t killing people at Black Angus, are they, and stealing their mannerisms while sizzling up juicy meat and maniacally shooting mashed potatoes out of a pastry bag?

-M.

Gods Diverse and Innumerable

I believe that there is a single source through which all Divine power and physical creation has and continues to flow. I call that power Truth. I also believe there are beings, like ourselves, countless in number, who are at various stages of evolution toward that source. I believe there is a dynamic of ascended master to apprentice between us and those beings we revere as Gods, Guides and/or Angels and that they seek to interact with us in this life as teachers, companions and advocates.

These are the beings through which the various powers of Truth flow into our lives. For me, the power of righteous and empowering anger against those who have hurt the helpless flows through Mother Hera. For someone else, this same power may flow into their lives through Mother Kali, Brigid, or Christ. Although I believe their power all comes from the same source, I am beginning to realize that this does not mean all representations of that power necessarily come through a single being called by many names. Imagine, if you will, phone operators answering calls and concerns about abuse of the helpless where each call is routed directly to the being who best connects with the caller and most fluently speaks their language. I think the Romans, and I would guess all ancient Pagans had this idea, were absolutely right in their belief that their Gods were not the only Gods that everybody else just put different names on. They believed each nation, each people, each family and even each individual had their own unique Gods that served and protected them. They believed the heavens, the earth and the underworld were all populated with Gods just as diverse and innumerable as the worlds are populated with people.

This is a huge point in the development of my personal cosmology. I always felt it was somehow doing my Divine Family a disservice to even recognize the names of other deities without adding “also known as…”. I realize now that mindset was a vestige of my Judeo-Christian upbringing. Somehow I need to get it through my consciousness that my Gods are not jealous and do not teach that salvation for all comes only through them. (In fact, my Gods hardly ever use the word “salvation” at all.) My Divine Family, mostly of the Greco-Roman pantheon, are perfectly happy sharing space with the Gods of others. Just as a temple was erected in Gaul with Mercury grinningly sharing the sacred seat with Rosmerta, so the temple of my comprehension may be devoted to the Deities who know and love me best while being warm and welcoming to any and all other deities who happen to pass by.

-M.

Writer 29

Jesus was thirty before he did
anything with his life, so I guess I’m
golden for at least another six months.

I’m sitting on the front porch steps in a
nightgown at 7a.m., smoking and
sipping black coffee from Wil E. Coyote’s
terrified head. I spilled a full pan of cold,
soapy water on myself while making breakfast
and the way my belly makes me hunch when I sit,
I fear the heat of the sun won’t reach the soiled spot
on my chest. I fear the spot will never dry and I fear my
pale breasts may smell like gray dishwater forever.

Three elementary school busses go by, one
right after the other, and I worry that the
children will yell something out the windows
at the crazy lady in her nightgown, like I
used to do when I rode the bus. But they don’t.
They are subdued, probably half asleep or
madly finishing their math in the half block
they have left before they reach school. I miss
those worries and wonder how many packs a day
I’ll have to start smoking before I hit 30
so I’ll feel like a real adult.

I’ve got writing waiting for me in the cool
dark of the house. It scares the hell out of me.

I’ve got a total of 16 bucks in all 4
of my bank accounts combined and later
I’ve got an appointment with a kind old
government worker at Vocational
Rehab that will be the highlight of my day. 



My housemates have a silver coffee press full
of opium tea cooling on the counter, but
who am I to throw stones? I’ve got a half-eaten
bag of Doritos hidden behind my five inch
thick and useless-since-college Italian to
English dictionary. I’ve also got a
tattoo my mother doesn’t know about—
an eight pointed star between my shoulder blades—
and somewhere on my coffee table that’s cluttered
with fast food wrappers, half empty cans of Coke Zero
and about 25 empty cigarette packs,
I’ve got a ring my mom sent me—a silver
bow that came with a puppy card out of which
fell her kind words—you know I’m proud of you—
and a check of emergency relief funds
I had to ask for because I drug my feet
too long about selling my violin last month
and all my attempts at getting a real job
have failed.

I choose to believe the Universe is telling
me that I am meant to be a writer because
the only time I ever get called in for
an interview is when my resume is a
complete work of fiction.



The kind old government lady I’ll be seeing
later told me that the kind old government
might pay for me to finish college because
I was born albino and near blind.

Some days it’s lucky to be me.

One of my housemates put faux crab meat
in the pasta salad that was meant to be for
everybody. I bitched about it for an hour
over the phone to a busy friend because
it’s easier sometimes to bitch about
crab-flavored floor scrapings screwing up my
dinner plans than it is to write.

Sometimes I think I might be leading Howard
Hughes’ life backward—the crazy, white gloved,
Mormon-heavy, hairy, unbathed and phobic
part first—the legendary stuff, I hope,
later.



Nothing to be done about it. I’m a poet.
Fuck.

 Saying fuck a lot in my work
makes me feel like a big man. 



When I was 16 and at CalArts’ summer
art school, a fellow writer wrote a 30 line
poem using only the word fuck and
recited it to 75 teen angst
riddled writers in the same breathy
affectation used by the guy with the
perpetual sandals, plaid and bucket hat
when he described how his father’s skin
looked like chicken teriyaki.

I imagined Chris—that was the fuck poet’s name,
though mostly in my memory I refer
to him as The Fuck Poet—I imagined
him being inspired to write his opus in
the red-lit and angry graffitied CalArts film
and photography basement, perhaps sitting
with his zebra print notebook on the dusty
flecked linoleum at midnight under the
picture of a bleeding Jesus that had I hate
fuckin’ artsy fartsy misunderstood people
scrawled across his thorny forehead.

When I studied there, I imagined myself
sneaking down there one night too, while my RA,
Stoned Andy, dropped acid in his closet-sized,
cow print painted room and my two teen-writer
roommates giggled about the dancers’ eating
disorders while sitting on the floor in lotus
position and sucking peanut butter from
nacho cheese Doritos in a cloud of smoke.



I imagined myself sitting under the
weeping eyes of the red-lit and scrawled-on
bleeding Jesus, and, haunted by the angry
graffiti, composing my best work just like
The Fuck Poet. Just like Tim Burton, who had
studied in that basement in the 70’s
and whose anticlimactic graffito was
rumored to be somewhere near Jesus’ holy
right hand. I’d be just like the barefoot, fuck-spouting
bohemian I always wanted to be.

But I never did sneak down there that summer.
Mostly I just stayed in my room with my giggly
stoned teen-writer roommates, snagging the
occasional Dorito and enjoying
my contact high while consuming one shitty
ghost-written VC Andrews novel after
another, and thinking how I could have done
such a better job—my day’s worth of work—
a sad knockoff of The Fuck Poem—sitting
half-finished, half-crumpled and deeply
anonymous amongst the other clutter
of my unlit desk. 



But that was a million years ago. Fuck, I’m old. 



Fuck…fuck…fuck
(said slowly, deliberately, in disbelief)



Down to my last cigarette now. I’m sweating
and a surging line of ants has made it all
the way across the porch by way of the great
white barrier that is my naked foot.
I break the line, brush them off, accidentally
drop ash and burning paper on my bare skin.

Time to go inside.

Time to shower.



Time to write.

Time to be Howard Hughes,
backward.

Amen.


note: I originally wrote this poem some time ago. I have now lived the full miracle-span of Jesus’ life and find I am no less full of the same white-gloved angst that inspired this work. It never really goes away—and I’m at peace with that because one thing I have learned over the years is that my best work is often the work that is least wise.

-M.

Tarot Freud

The tarot reader
arches forward for effect
over her kitchen table
over her careful laid cross

and the way her breasts
disturb The Lovers

turn the Knights
to riding backwards

she reminds me
of mother.

-M.

Poet Problems I

So…roughly six glasses of cheap red wine in a dark bar, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the week, mixed with roughly five hours of challenging conversation sounds like it would be inspirational, but mostly just ends up in a nap.

I don’t know how Bukowski became a professional at this.

-M.

The Thing Is

you can never make the choice
to leave your body behind.
You can never just get over it.
She has been with you
     from the beginning.

And the same soft and youthful
lips that were kissed once and
many times inappropriately, now
aged and hardened with secrets,
are still expected to speak the sharp
and laboring truth that carries
your soul—that also you can’t just
get over—that also has been with you
     from the beginning.

-M.

Things That Seemed So Funny at the Time

and so important to remember how funny
—and so important to remember
how free we were to laugh:

The gold stroke of a Father’s
sun-worn hair
and easy white flash
of his teeth.
His plaid shirt.
His forearms all tanned.

The back of one of the children’s hands
wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.
Another one’s playful massaging
of the upturned strained edges
of his smile.

A mother’s muscles tensing
and holding pre-release
—and releasing in spasms
of her soft belly
resting forward against the table,
jingling the glasses and plates

The high and rounded notes both
of all their various laughing,
distant, blended,
muffled and aged
into a single
luring music.

-M.

In 1988 the Moon Birthed a Poet

In honor of tonight’s gorgeous super moon, I thought I’d share the first poem I ever wrote, completely unedited except I have kind of forgotten where the original line breaks were. I was in the fifth grade when that gorgeous silver satellite inspired me to write for the very first time. Here it is:

THE MOON

The moon is a jagged diamond
hanging and waiting in suspense
for someone, just one lonely traveler,
to pluck her from this mine of darkness
that holds her captive,
captive in a sea of stars
that no one dares enter
for fear they’d never return.


-M.

Super Moon Nightsun

There is a helicopter flying about outside—low and slow with its nightsun on—looking for super moon mischief I suppose. Either that or it’s taking advantage of the super moonlight to locate standard average mischief. How I do love living in the wilds of California’s Inland Empire with it’s nightsun night birds and gunshots echoing in the same greening hillsides where, as a child, sheep would come to graze in the Spring.

-M.

Upscale Couch and Sandwich Co.

Other people’s couches are
rarely your taste and often
smell of the last time
their owners used garlic.

Commercial couches belong
to a million other people and
are no exception—wrinkled blue
slipcovers and stained gold
pillows on a dangerous
wax floor. Their cushions
funked with overcooked coffee
and burnt herb garlic bread.

On Saturday afternoons the
overdressed sandwich eaters stream
from nouveau neighborhoods,
past the blue garlic couches,
holding their trays and polite
children in front of them—pink mouths
drooping with nouveau food
and overpriced quiet—halfway
in, halfway out.

-M.

Regarding Popular Fiction...

Me: (holding up the most recent page-turner my mom bought from the grocery store) See, I need to start writing books like this.
Her: What kind is that?
Me: You know, the kind people like to read…and pay money for.

Sigh.

-M.

Once Someone Has Kissed You Inappropriately...

…can they ever be trusted to kiss you “appropriately”? Would anyone even want an appropriate kiss? Have you ever looked back at something that happened years ago and found yourself feeling the physical heat of embarrassment all over again? Have you tried to comfort yourself by saying that you must be the only one who even remembers it? Have you felt un-comforted knowing that’s probably a lie? Should we, as writers and artists start keeping lists of the stories we tell over and over and the stories we have never told anyone? Is there value in excessive sharing and secret keeping both? Is that value similar? Does talking about it too much wear down the edges of something sharp the way secret keeping muddles and grays something either too light or too dark for our poor mundane perception?

-M.

Guiding Principles

The principles that guide my life and work are primarily based in Hellenism which is an everyday ethos in which the primary virtues are the search for, defense of, and dedication to Truth. In this vein, the gods of Hellas are representative of the indestructible, immutable and eternal ordering of things, which is to say, Truth--organized. Whether or not the gods are “real” is unimportant as interaction with, and devotion to, these principles should be the same regardless of corporeality and/or anthropomorphism. Some who share this ethos prefer to engage with it in a more abstract manner, whereas others, like myself, prefer to name the abstractions and understand them allegorically.

Both paths are virtuous. Both paths are worthy.

From the Delphic Maxims: "Long for wisdom. Consult the wise. Honor a benefaction. Test the character. Know what you have learned. Act when you know. Do what you mean to do. Finish the race without shrinking back. Teach a youngster. Struggle with glory. Respect yourself."

-M.