....From The Tree Of...............Love & Family
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_______________________________________________________ Fortification Whether born in a bin, discarded in soiled towel swaddling clothes or left on a prong of barbed wire like a cotton boll caught on the wind baby beginnings matter. Those wanted, awaited- those loved have a much better chance of securing the world when it slips to the side or when two worlds collide, as they will. When the real world of body thrashed daily by time meets medicine ball of mid-life--there'd better be more than a mirror for company. One moment the body - supple enough when skin clung to its bones as a solid- falls loose with the draping of age, that rage must have something bigger than it or it's curtains from 45 on. And after the sag, the death, what of that? The creping of life begins with skin and the baby who bawls from within will either be stopped or not. Love is the only thing ever wins out, but it has to go way deep in. table thanks: a memory papa came and everyone serioused up -that white hat hardon with a mean green eye for shushing, truth be told, and mama baked us all some bundt cake " it's alright, it's alright children. god is watching. mind your tongues or sure as christmas, he will wrinch it out. so sweeten up, my dearies, papa brooks no backtalk--thankwelordforfoodandlove andeveryone--shhhhh!men." wuddna split lip round that table. thanks. Anybody's Story I'm reading a book about World War I, and a soldier's love and lust for his buddy's girl. And the soldier marries eventually. Has a son. His buddy dies in the war and he meets up with Julia, the figment from the foxhole. And hers- hers is the figment hole from which he never climbs out. He becomes bored at once with life and wife and guilty about his son, but still his heart- his heart left both of them the day that he met Julia. The book goes on. He is an old man. Man of eighty one. He has five or six secret names that are masturbatory companions. I'm sure that Julia is one and till he dies, he lies continually in his heart. His heart is the real killer with its secrets. That's what kills us in the end. Love is not all we need; it's not even separate from the rest. We rest in our lusts; those are the things that last- I will not finish it. I cannot read another line so stuck am I in sin. His -mine- the dark in all of us, we call such pretty names. Insight The sighted are easy prey to speculation about the way a different breast might press against them, while routine is welcome haven to a blind man. Touch is all he knows- and everywhere he goes- the one he loves goes with her fingertips tracing out her name upon his palm. I ought to love a blind man. The One Thing I Can Cook An apt term is 'stew' to talk about an anger, disappointment or frustration crawling underneath the breastbone. Army of bed bugs trooped into a spot while someone closed the lid and bid the other guy do his damndest, cop a feel of tensed up, turgid strangulation. Stir it. Smell the carrots cooking, orange and sharp. Carrots are good for the eyes but can be shaved down into weapons, stabbed inside. Love is like that too. Scarification Tabula rasa, there is no such thing beyond the womb. We are soft entities inscribed by our experience like a spider scares the pregnancy to mark the child with eight-legged roseate hieroglyph on cheek. We are a weak and warm wax surface, easily marred and scars are what we look like in the end. Tracked up with pain, individual in our tree bark skins, the gouge of old I love you's just a quarter of an inch deep in to where it matters. There Is No Meteorology Pounded by snow, great white heaps of cold oblivion, covering what is known until the car is a block of white and all the fence posts wear their hats. Wasn't predicted till tonight but why should weather be different- why that rare luxury of knowing what will happen. When, how much, when life delivers surprise in all arenas, so you cannot learn it's rhythms. I'd like to hear a heart predictor tell me when the worm would turn when love would fall out- tired at last, cry uncle and go wending round the bend. In All Kinds Of Weather Weather's taking a nasty turn today, a bit of ice, six inches deep of snow it's Valentine's Day- the heart can barely beat for all the sleeting and you worry that I'll be lonely if your car can't make it over -don't. Our hearts are always speaking to one another- over the strongest wind the loudest hail you're right where you belong, up close to my ears and whispering, Kay today I woke up still in love with you. Me too. Long after this front is gone I'll still be here. The weather's clear inside my eyes, and I see straight through back to our first February fourteenth when I spent my last spare fifty dollars on a card and a pewter jester/juggler who reminded me of you, who brings such movement grace and laughter to my life. Still do. Selective Nostalgia Tonight, I splashed some Old Spice in my eye. It was an accident and hurt like hell. Why Old Spice you might ask, a scent for beards and bull necks not sachet for breasts or pulse points on these slender wrists. Because my daddy wore it; because I miss the smell of printer's ink and Old Spice. I can bathe myself in the past yet skip the beer smell. Not a whiff of that. Clean I'm thinking of washing clothes- fluff and tumble dry the smell of clean, the symbolism of second chance a way to wipe out what went wrong to play the stumble backwards. Images of line-dried clothes exposed to sun, all stain washed away, and I remember that my father loved to wash. Something he attached to in his later years. Drink beer and wash clothes Saturdays. Proud of the way he'd got it to a science. Stuck a screw into the latch on the washer lid so it still spun with it open. Hose inside the drum, rinsing, rinsing over and above what Kenmore could do to get the dirt out. I wonder if he too felt cleaner. On To Page 2 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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