Caregiver

A friend commented recently that my work had been "political," and I was struck by the difference between her remark and the remark of a Unitarian pastor who had described me as more spiritual than political. I had turned toward "economics," but not toward politics. I had spent time unable to find paid work in my training and wishing I had majored in Economics and Spanish, wishing I had studied Yiddish and become a translator, wishing I had mastered a language such as Chinese, but these were the wish for respectability earned inside the paid "force." The Catholic men had called me a cunt, a bitch, and a whore. They had leveled threats. We were to get along in "work" environments such as these, where no one, regardless of intention, was entitled to survival, to continuance ... our acceptance of misogyny at its common root that we were all "of woman born"-- in women displayed as envy; in men as hate. The caregiver was a "whore" who earned $15,000 per year -- how men and women were phrasing it. The talk about her behind her back; the resentment at her having food, clothing, and shelter. The pretense that what she gave the invalid for room and board was "sex," not "love," to make up for a lack of knowing or caring, to deny her access to any economy, to enforce the suggestion that only children were worthy of care, that the sick were unneeded and unwanted, that to love them was unnatural. That there was this green crop we were all attending of "children" to replace us at 30.

There is an atmosphere of "hate" that counters our religious tradition to love our neighbor. If poetry loves, then it is poetry to love.

Dreams-in-progress

I noticed that on nicotine patch I dreamt of celebrities and sex. These were men who knew me in the dreams but not in life. All of them were extremely famous, except Dan Fogerty, who used to be more famous and who kissed me like a teenager. Redford came in a limo. With Dylan the embrace was of friendship for my real friend, Jack. A team of reggae journalists played and an unknown man came after work for me in a kilt.

Perhaps it's due to Wellbutrin -– who knows? -- that I dream now of celebrities I have met and who might argue against it, their fame, as a false claim, one that means (no one besides poets and students, colleagues and friends knows them) a familiarity related to but unlike widespread fame.

I walked into a party. Men I'd heard of were there and more than "heard of," whose intimate veiled thoughts revealed in pages of risky avant garde literature I had read. I was wearing new shoes that were a half size too small. My feet had grown from pounding the pavement looking for someone. The homelessness had broken open in me without interrupting shelteredness.

I had slept with a dry head in a soft bed, alone. It was as if I had always slept that way. I might have resorted to holding a stuffed animal. There was a reason for this celibacy but it was not religion or disease. It was society. I had exceeded a limit placed on all of us -- how many hands we are to hold before picking the hand we most wish to hold for life. I had thought it was a numeral but it was a resonance, one that happens early then recurs.

I hit upon it with a musician, a famous man married for decades, a soul already spoken for, enough. I was poor (despite my shelter) and I had learned that "poor" is different from "broke" which didn't apply to all poor people. "Broke” described the nouveau poor. And "clarity" I suggested we use when "enough" had been reached.

I dreamt in three dreams that we were at a poetry reading and at two AA meetings. In the second dream of the meetings the married musician suggested that I read seafaring novels to help the alcoholic I had next met. The alcoholic had rejected AA as brainwashing. Enough, enough, enough, but it wasn’t yet enough: clarity in action.

In the earlier dream about the meetings –- the rooms change –- I am bottomless under the table and must cross the room to find pants. My fat shows, fat that wasn’t there when he met me, vantage he would not have seen.

In the dream of the poet there is a wide sweeping lawn, and we flirt, but it is or is not the same thing, and we have no words for it: “legislation,” “negotiation,” “foundation.” I collide with him on a hill and knock him over. I recircle the hill to see him but by then he is busy.

Earlier, not ten years of it, I had walked into Keillor's bookstore, and the word "clarity" was written across a banner under the ceiling. Enough, I was thinking, but the furtive position of one seeking clarity or enough, quietly or alone, was barely enough when I couldn't see those brown eyes or pass a guess.

Dear John

I think it's pathetic, given my training in the short story, that I can't think of a story! I went to Soho today. Is that a story? I wanted to go inside Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Giorgio Armani, Eileen Fisher, the others, but Tony didn't care to shop or watch me shop. At Oilily he found the "man couch," so named by the woman who worked there, and sat down. It was a beautiful day after yesterday's cold rain. We took a cab to an Italian place named for two men. Jimmy was one. Danny and Jimmy's, something like that. I said to Tony, who avoids the internet and thinks Facebook is a suspect way to spend an hour, that I was trying to think of a story to tell you. Later, we were walking, and I thought we'd been pick pocketed while being trailed too closely by a young blind man -- I thought he wasn't really blind -- but I was happily mistaken -- though that doesn't make sense -- and then embarrassed because I had placed a blind person in such a light.

Poem by Linde Brocato

MEMORANDUM

Re: The thing that must be remembered
Date: September 11, 2001

Poetry wants to be written
it’s there in the web of things
the veins in the leaf
the metal frame
it will out, like a story
which wants to be told
set loose

Poetry works to be written
it hums within the day
energy waiting to be transformed
kinetic to potential
rhyme lifted into steel
stored stone by stone
that waits and sings

Those stones sing and wait
even if the wait ends in a fall
transformed again
doors and windows, bodies and stones
unbuilding themselves
steel unframed and flying

Then poetry aches to be written
tumbling stone and shard
uncounted things, uncountable pages
corresponding to the course of life
sing and sigh and sift to the ground
Things that must be remembered
things that must be done
because lives must be remembered
and deaths

Poetry wants to be written
Even in the black ink of loss
even that dark song
is there beneath the integral web
of things

(March 2002)

Blog Reader Appreciation Day

April 16, 2008


The Madonna Option: Write a post thanking your readers for putting up with your foibles, mistakes, and eccentricities (a list) and being loyal to you (your blog) no matter what.

Foibles, mistakes and eccentricities:

A. Always
B. Begging
C. Clarinet
D. Daring
E. Effort
F. Forgiveness
G. Gratitude
H. Wearing hats too much
I. Ingenuity
J. Jesus-talk
K. Kindness
L. Love
M. Miles without a map
N. Nuisance
O. Openness
P. Politics
Q. Quizzicalness
R. Remembering
S. Safety
T. Texas
U. University
V. Veils
W. Wax
X. Xenophoria
Y. Yes
Z. Zig zagging

Yet readers might enjoy reading it. Thanks to the reader!

En(gag)ed

Didn't less. Borrowed mute. Frank discoverer. Lead trumpet. Fingers tux. Car stole. Friends rounded. Simile pervaded. Song decanted. Seller broker. Boston number. Teal parrotlet. Frog queued. Rain ignited. Gray developer. Sand track. Imperial whiner. Father surface. Life feminine. Hooker streaming. Misogyny effects. Black castle. Swiss uncle. Storm shelter.

The housekeeper, Cheyenne, lost her son to a trainwreck, his lie. The housekeeper, Cheyenne, fishing for a rich man at Love Happens lost her son to a trainwreck, his lie. The mother, Cheyenne, fishing for a rich man at True.com lost her son to a trainwreck, a lie. The fishwife, Cheyenne, fishing for a rich man at a dating website lost her son to a trainwreck, a lie.

Tell the pastor the trouble is. 4/18. The trouble is the missing son. The man going missing is powerful -- he is powerful -- as powerful as sun -- sun strokes a tree just once in the early morning; he strokes the nieces' lives all day. "Just stroking me." Like Woody Allen, only kinder, marries his niece: which one? Sun strokes the same branch he sees her seeing. He marries Sheldon's grandniece. He marries Edward's niece. He marries Jack's daughter. The lesser niece steals cooking from the elder niece. Steals patronage. He sees his place in things. He is a Catholic grandheir. More powerful than sunlight on a young branch in lower Manhattan.

He would have her evicted, he tells Cheyenne, after inviting her here to be wed. He tells Cheyenne no niece of mine. Cheyenne says our sons died in wrecks. Let's marry. Cherry Blossoms frill the trees. He reaches for his glasses. Spitzer, he says. Bruno. Ha, ha, ha, Cheyenne says. Then -- moment, she hushes him, a sound from her family. Bring them with you, he says.

Cheyenne collides with Saint Ann, the bellwether, on the receiver. You're out, I'm in, Cheyenne warns her. Saint Ann tells herself, here comes a little chickadee to eat a husband. The chickadee eats the husband. The husband eats the Saint. The Saint vies to be let out of the husband's sunblock. The Saint holds nothing against birds. The Saint cherishes truffles au phon. The Saint's sister takes $20 to her dossier. This is her bouvier. The Saint's sister is mortal, Careen. The Saint says there's a car wreck in the story, just not that one; Careen counts the electronic cash. By me, she says distinctly when he calls, her sister the Saint in his belly, a health complaint. The chickadee au grave.