Rivers Rising

Flood waters rising all over the East, upstate NY, DC, Pennsylvania, Virginia...people being evacuated. Scary to see interstates under water and read about people being swept away in flash floods. One parent came in to work today and said to me "forty days and forty nights," shaking his head. So far here on L.I., some flooding and trees down, electricity out in places, but nothing too bad. Saw Mayor Bloomberg talking about evacuation plans for NYC, assuring audience that "people are not going to die here" in a pointed reference to New Orleans. My kids are away with their grandparents in North Carolina. Suddenly wish they were here.

The Flood
by Robert Frost

Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.
We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;
But power of blood itself releases blood.
It goes by might of being such a flood
Held high at so unnatural a level.
It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.
weapons of war and implements of peace
Are but the points at which it finds release.
And now it is once more the tidal wave
That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

White

The white cactus flowers
Press against the window pane
Strange like my heart
Against this glass
Monitor yearning
To be under a sun
Flashing off snow
That freezes
Down to the root.

M.J. Tenerelli

Musing

Been oh so emotional last few days. Not in a crazy way (i.e. the usual way), but in a good way. Music has been reaching me and moving me, and things that should make me cry (like news from Iraq) have been. Moments of clarity bolting out of nowhere too. If I don't figure out how to let go of the fear that has been my constant companion for as long as I've been on this planet, I am never going to be happy or achieve anything great. A waste of a life is one of the few things I believe to be a sin. I need to know who I am before I die.

The Beasts of Summer

Oh dear god, it is the first day of summer vacation and it is raining. The children are behaving like two predatory animals locked together in a cage. I have been trying to work, stupid me. Kate, who must be dragged kicking and screaming out of bed every morning before school woke me up at 6:30 am to see if she could turn on the TV. I have now sent them both in to clean their rooms. Jack is fake crying, Kate is doing god knows what, but they have a task and every time they make me insane I am going to make them clean something, and I am turning off the damn T.V. God save me from Animal Planet. Kate: I can't clean because you only gave me a granola bar and milk for breakfast. Jack: I can't clean because I have to take a shower. Kate is now eating cornflakes and under threat of imminent death if she either turns tv back on or does not return to room immediately upon finishing cornflakes. Jack is locked in room and threatened with painful hair pulling if he emerges with room untouched. I am going to end this post and do laundery. Later, bank and supermarket with the horror twins. Is it too early for a margarita?

Dark Side
by DeAnna Jones


I say I can't imagine it but I can,
otherwise it wouldn't be so horrible,
all those crimes against children,
mothers drowning their babies in bathwater,
strangling them with laundry wire,
driving off leaving them alone
trapped in a crib or hot vacant rooms,
left in closets or parked cars, windows
barely cracked, or not cracked at all.


I say I can't imagine it and what I mean is I do.
I sit on my couch after my son has fallen asleep
and think of driving to the store
just down the street, just to pick up
ice cream or bread.
I'd know how long he'd be asleep.
I could be back. I could be alone.
I could walk into that grocery air,
florescent light washing me out,
up and down through the aisles,
absent-minded, slow, biding my time
over vegetable cans, soup, pre-packaged
pasta dinners.


I might even stand in line
staring off into space until the teller says,
Miss,
and I hear,
Mommy,
a snag in the dream, tiny fingers pulling
at my shorts and slipping around my knee,
nothing there when I look but space.

There's an Air Conditioner on My Thighs

Monday night and just back from a two hour work orientation. And I'm back there again at 7:00 a.m. Jesus, I need another job. If I'm going to be at the place all the time at least I should be making a living wage. BFI (which stands for Big Fat Idiot or Big Fucking Idiot depending on my mood) claims to have sent 400 big ones to the court to be forwarded to me. Then he handed me a sob story about his impending eviction and how he'll have to take a low paying job somewhere. Oh how sad, you'll have to do something to support yourself, and your children by court order. After eight months of doing nothing. I swear to god, the guy is like an infection I contracted 15 years ago and will have to live with for another eight.

On a lighter note, on Sunday when Weezer jr. and I got the air conditioner, we rolled it out to my car on a dolly and then could not get it in the car. Jr. waves down a Home Depot clerk. Guy turns out to be a little slow. Insists air conditioner must be tied to top of my little car. I explain I am not going to drive on the Northern State with an air conditioner tied to the top of my car. He begins to talk about how hot it is, and keeps shaking his head. And repeating himself about the heat. Jr. says, lets take it out of box, then it will fit in car. Guy says, you can't, it will make a mess. I say, "You mean the packaging?!" I know now not to look at Jr. because she will make me laugh. Weezer assures man we will pick up any mess, and he begins to remark on the heat again. I get in car to pull air conditioner while it is being pushed in. The slow Home Depot man slides air conditioner up and then down on top of my legs. I am now pinned to backseat in reclining position. I am trying to remain calm as I call to Jr. to please get heavy electrical appliance off my legs. Jr.'s ability to help is impaired by the fact that she has been overcome by gales of laughter. Thankfully, they managed to unpin me before there was any permanent nerve damage to my thighs. Slightly hysterical edge to laughter as we exited parking lot may have had something to do with heat stroke.

NAMING
for Vanessa, Toshi, Krista, and Tamarin

I call my sisters to dress for the stomp dance
As all the little creatures hum and sing
in the thick grass around the grounds.
Lightning bugs are tiny stars
dancing in the river of dusk.
Our stomachs are full of meat and fry bread
and the talk of aunts and uncles.
Beautiful fire at the center of the dance
and the dusk has been lit.
We lace up our turtle shells so we
can dance into the circle.
And in this spirit world is the grocery
store over the hill, and all the houses,
the river, the sky, and the highway.
We have been here forever
say our mother, our father.
And this is the name we call ourselves
i tell my sisters,
this name that gives our legs the music
to shake the shells--
a name that is unspeakable
by those who disrespect us
--a name with power to thread us through
the dark to dawn
and leads us faithfully to the stars.

Joy Harjo

Yankee Dollar

Thursday evening, kids gone and I'm exhausted. On the news front, my rent has just been upped 125.00 by new landlord and the lease he gave me says two people occupancy and no pets, so there may be a few small problems here. Left work early to attend Kate's musical show celebrating America up at the school. The second graders were adoreable and sang and marched around to songs like Yankee Doodle and Your a Grand Old Flag. Happy to say I was not the only parent who was teary eyed. I have a new nephew named Nolan who was born on Monday and I have nothing much else interesting to say...

America


America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Allen Ginsberg

Say a Little Prayer

Just a quick post before dashing off to pay Cablevision. On June 10th, my good friend Johanna lost her mom Joan (pronounced Jo Ann). While Johanna is not religious, and neither was Joan at the end, I don't think a prayer sent out into the universe for one or both could possibly hurt. And if it helps in some way, they certainly both deserve it. Thanks.

Bossa Nova Saturday

Cool, gray Saturday morning and I'm listening to bossa nova music and having my first cup of coffee. Kids are with their father and will be back in a few hours at which point we will get ready to go to Brooklyn. My sister has a fun-filled weekend of horror movies and origami planned. As I am a complete spaz, I think the origami part is partially to provide extra entertainment for everyone as I fumble around making crumpled messes instead of elegant birds and butterflies. I will be the Charlie Brown of origami. This music is making me want to bossa nova into the kitchen for more coffee, if I knew how to bossa nova that is. Well, I will do my own approximation and be right back...good thing Kate is not here because she freaks out whenever her brother or I dance around in front of her. She yells that we are embarrassing her. Weird child. Sometimes Jack and I do especially goofy dance moves together just to get her going. Jack tells her he has a constitutional right to dance. She usually slugs him.

Have just been reading about bossa nova music and it is considered poetry set to music in Brazil. Poet Vinicius de Moraes collaborated with Tom Jobim to create some of the excellent stuff I am listening to right now. I'm always learning new things writing this blog. The man who wrote the lyrics to "The Girl From Ipanema" also wrote this:

Of God and Gold

As gold
Breeds
Misery

Misery
Breeds light

That makes
The stones
Glare

For the
Pauper's
Delight.

Light is but
The pauper's
Gold

Stones are
But rocks

That Pave
The way
Where run

God's
Miserable
Flocks

The world
Has many
Rocks

God has
Many flocks.

God's a
Shepard, I
Was told

God is made
Of gold.



Vinicius de Moraes
Rio de Janeiro, 1959

Drugs are My Friend

Off from work today and home with under the weather Jack. Got lots done, including call to Albany about renewing my teaching certificate. Bad news, I have to apply all over again as it has been too long since certificate expired. Many complicated steps, and a new test I have to take, but I suppose it is all doable. THEN I can go on to take courses to get the reading certificate which I was told is now called a Literacy Certificate. Also sent out some resumes for publishing jobs and worked on research for freelance story on beauty supplements. Oh and played Risk with Jack, called my smarmy ex-mother-in-law about her request to take children to North Carolina for two weeks this Summer, and left message for my lawyer. Seems Family Court judge has ruled in my favor but of course Ex has no intention of complying. Hopefully lawyer will at least advise me what to do from here. Anti-depressants obviously kicking in as there is no way I'd have done half of what I did today without them. God bless pharmacology.

Mouse ran through livingroom this morning causing Kate and I to scream, clutch each other and hop up on her bed. Mouse disappeared behind stove while lazy fat cats continued to loll around on the couch. Grabbed Audrey and ran her into the kitchen yelling "Get the mousy," but she just gave me a dirty look and stalked back to couch. Went to Home Depot and got poison packs to put out where ever there is evidence of repulsive rodents. Children called me a murderer. Damn straight.

Otherwise

by Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Lady Day Saturday

Listening to Billy Holiday. Such a gorgeous backdrop to the morning. It's early, 7:30, and I am wide awake due to new meds. I barely slept last night after falling out around 4:30 in the afternoon and waking up around 8:30. Looked up side effects of my lovely new drug, Lexapro, and I pretty much have all of them. They're supposed to go away in a week or two. Guess I'll wait it out as I already feel somewhat better emotionally. Had to wave the white flag and admit Chemical MJ is better than Regular MJ for all concerned. Kids especially. Can see them in therapy as adults, "My mother was a screaming, crying maniac...that's why I'm a drug fiend, mugger, murderer, woman or man hater, terrorist, hijacker, etc. etc." Now whatever goes wrong in their adult lives they can blame on their father!

Billy Holiday reminds me of my dad. He loved her, and the first time I heard her was in his car on a trip back into NYC. Poor Sonny was always having to drive me home after I'd come out for a visit to L.I. He had a cassette player in his Lincoln and Holiday was part of his tape collection along with lots of Sinatra, K.C. and the Sunshine Band and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. My dad was never like the other dads in the neighborhood. He was a Brooklyn tough, hated sports and the suburbs, was a killer dancer and charmed everybody he met...unless he didn't like them. Then he was scary. He wasn't a good husband, but he was a good father. He took me everywhere with him when I was a little girl...some places I shouldn't have been in retrospect. But I think he did the best he knew how for us kids, and we all knew he loved us a lot. What he showed me is that there was a life outside of the safe little neighborhood we lived in, and I will always love him for that. He adored Manhattan and passed that on to me. I miss him lately.

Me and Sonny, Jane Street, NYC, circa 1986

And I Say To Myself, What a Wonderful World

It is horribly, hideously hot here and I gave away our air conditioner because we were moving to England. People don't use air conditioners in the UK I was told. Too bad it's almost summer in New York and we live in it without an air conditioner. Or any other god damned electrical appliances we used to own...or beds or bedding or flatware or dishes or couches or dressers OR ANYTHING ELSE WE USED TO OWN. I am extremely crabby today. Work was a logistical nightmare beginning at 7:01 this morning. Then kids were not at babysitter's because their drooling idiot of a father decided to pick them up at school without informing me or the sitter. Small heart attack as sitter came out to meet me in beating heat to tell me the children were missing. Phone call to satanic fuck face ex let me know kids had not been abducted by slave market kidnappers enroute to sitter's house after all.

I will be taking off from work on Monday to go to family court to fill out new paperwork for new trial. Yes, the saga of the deadbeat dad who refuses to pay child support or get a job continues. I did have a lawyer who was supposed to be helping with this problem. The funny thing about lawyers, when you owe them money for work they did leading up to a trial that never happened, they won't help you anymore. I have a doctor's appt. in one hour to beg the good doctor Kalonaros to put me back on anti-depressants before I kill my ex-husband, my boss or myself. And isn't this a happy post!


Janie's Got A Gun
by Aerosmith

Dum, dum, dum, honey what have you done?
Dum, dum, dum it's the sound of my gun.
Dum, dum, dum, honey what have you done?
Dum, dum, dum it's the sound

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her whole world's come undone
From lookin' straight at the sun
What did her daddy do?
What did he put you through?
They said when Janie was arrested
they found him underneath a train
But man, he had it comin' Now that Janie's got a gun
she ain't never gonna be the same.

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Tell me now it's untrue.
What did her daddy do?
He jacked a little bitty baby
The man has got to be insane
They say the spell that he was under the lightning and the
thunder knew that someone had to stop the rain

Run away, run away from the pain yeah, yeah yeah yeah
Run away run away from the pain yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
What did her daddy do?
It's Janie's last I.O.U.
She had to take him down easy and put a bullet in his brain
She said 'cause nobody believes me. The man was such a sleeze.

He ain't never gonna be the same.

Run away, run away from the pain yeah, yeah
yeah yeah yeah
Run away run away from the pain yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Run away, run away, run, run away

Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Everybody is on the run

Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Because Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Janie's got a gun