A good poem

A good poem is like a cocoon,

a secret hideout, a tree fort

where no one can slap you

as you’re drying dishes

or throw shoes at your back

as you’re running away.

There are never enough.

Good poems, that is.

Please gather a million

in an Easter basket

and bring me nothing but time

and coffee

and sweatpants

and chicken pot pie

and sleep to read them by.

Sometimes in dreams

Sometimes in dreams I’ll forget that she’s dead

and I’ll see her dancing on the wing of a plane

or waving good-bye from the back of a train.

Or laughing on a gurney, as if she’d never gone.

As if we’d never cried and laid her in the ground.

And if my dreams keep this up, how will I ever

know if I’m dead or alive when my time comes?

*************************************************

Me:    That’s about your grandmother.  What do you think?

She:  That’s not a poem.

Me:    What?

She:  It doesn’t even rhyme.

(Edit:  I should add this is my husband’s mom, she died 5 years ago at the age of 97.  She was 95 in this photo and Kelly 10 months old.)

The (dreaded) Guitar Lesson

The guitar lesson loomed but I wanted to eat chocolate cake

vacuum the cat hair off the green velvet sofa

find the perfect rhyme for “was”

organize my socks

and sleep

 —  anything but The Guitar Lesson.

Somehow I slumped my guitar and my body into the car

and something sucked me towards my guitar teacher’s house

    guitar teacher’s house

                 guitar teacher’s house.

I passed parks

passed signs hungry for dollars and votes

passed obscenely green palms

and merry fountains who didn’t have guitar lessons

                                                        they hadn’t practised for.

Passed a boy on a bicycle picking his nose

a homeless man wearing nothing but a skirt

restaurants and dens of probable ill repute.

I waited at ten red lights with my shoulders hunched,

bottom lip out like a kid who can’t have candy until after dinner.

At the final red light my migraine lifted a bit

and I thought of Noam Chomsy, 

then of Charles Bukowski

then of Jim Ignatowsky.

Soon I was outside my guitar teacher’s house

ten minutes early but still not too late to flee.

I grew more anxious,

told myself I’d lived through worse

hummed a new song, (one I might put bagpipes on)

turned off the motor

put the keys in my purse

went around to the other side

                                     got my guitar

— had a sudden urge to punch it in the face

locked the car

turned in slo-mo to my teacher’s door

rang the bell and readied a smile

‘Way Beyond

There are no new comments.

My eye is too big.

Paul hasn’t e-mailed.

Neither has Leonard Cohen.

Or Kurt Vonnegut Junior.

1994

We pulled the U-Haul into an Exxon

off Route 22,  both tired and hungry.  

And annoyed we’d have to shell out

$1.07 per gallon when we’d just passed

two stations with regular for only $1.04.