Thursday, April 16, 2009

Quit Daydreaming, or A Specific Monday, Not Unlike the Others


Leaving my room today I came across the scent of fresh cut grass

It was sweet and reminded me of summer, not one month away

And I kept tripping as I read Vonnegut down the street with cloudy eyes


Now I'm thinking I'll switch my pen, I bought two new ones just yesterday


See


I'll mail these letters, one thick, the other quite thin, get lunch and go to the library

Maybe I'll be able to think when I'm in halls full of books I may never read

But let me be positive today, it's the nicest day of the year thus far


Alright, 

Tuna fish on sourdough

I asked her if I could read her middle school poems

But she said no, and they weren't good enough, besides she threw them away

And at two o'clock I'll receive a picture of my kid sister at the Golden Gate Bridge


Oh and she also said

Your mother has a tiny grain of sand in her large breast

And it could really kill her, it could

And she said she had to leave soccer practice early

For family therapy 

She told me she wondered what the other girls thought


Which reminds me why I have cold feet on Mondays

And my shoes feel like mobile air conditioning units

Of the likes you've never seen

I bet my skin looks blue as blue ice under white cotton


I'm also thinking about my mad mind, which interjects

"Remember when we fought in braille over wires

And I wrote everything down in hopes I'd get it out of my head?" because

My frontal lobe was filling with custom license plates and addresses

To which I no longer remember their occupants

To which I can't quite place


I see myself walking into the Italian grocery store on infinite loop

An endless summer day with orange drinks and fresh bread, day old bread

My neck, the back specifically, draped in pulsing skin

Made red by far too many hours in cloudless daylight, masking the fade of my childhood


We played foolish games and lay in the serenade of comfortable shade

Never once doubting our teenage arrogance

Listening to who knows how many songs we'd never quite understand

Smoking who knows how many cigarettes we'd never quite filter

Camel lights at the time, or was it Camel Golds? 

Well now it's Pall Mall and now on the regular


And there was a girl

Yes I know you expected this, how wonderful, a romantic

She had great ideas, of safaris and shapeshifting and the female orgasm

I had no idea


This all led to me shaking her Father's clammy hand in mass

He had a continental spirit and a wandering brow, though a steady honest gaze

He was always having to protect himself from his weak kidney or something

Always leaving during the creed, it was just long enough

To check and return


I always imagined him leaving to avoid dedication


This is how I learned to avoid the doorbell, with consistent measure


And later that day (now), the day in which I had tuna fish

I envisioned her, another young woman

Falling gracefully from a ladder and mid sentence and mid air alerting me

Saying, "My God My God! Why Have You Forsaken Me?"


She went on

I've always wanted to be something other than...

An American

A Daughter

A Writer

An Artist

A Poet

The Town Idiot


She went on

I don't want to be any of those things!


She's always talking like this, most have learned to ignore her

So today I envisioned her falling off a ladder

Then draining her faucet eyes and asking for assistance

Her hand outstretched she wanted to lie down

I would ask her "Where?" as she already lay upon the ground


Because, she thinks she might have received a concussion

When her head hit historic tile floors like the Queens cymbals

And one of us would wrap her in a silver blanket and 

Carry her to the infirmary


Her questions unanswered

And I folded the ladder and checked twice my memory

To complete actual events 

And record necessary embellishments

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