Ramblings at 2:00 A.M.



Every time I hear the song Cisco Kid it makes me think of my friend Joyce.

I think the baby factory is finally closed for business. Brain fog has cleared.

I love the song "Dancing in the Moonlight" (It's such a fine and natural sight!)

Audrey Lickins is the cutest cat on the planet.

What if ghosts are dead people who are avoiding the light because its a a vacuum that going to pull them off the earth into nothingness?

Must not eat chocolate ice cream in freezer.

Cisco Kid

by War

The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
He drink whiskey, Poncho drink the wine
He drink whiskey, Poncho drink the wine

We met down on the fort of Rio Grande
We met down on the fort of Rio Grande
Eat the salted peanuts out of can
Eat the salted peanuts out the can

The outlaws had us pinned down at the fort
The outlaws had us pinned down at the fort
Cisco came in blastin', drinkin' port
Cisco came in blastin', drinkin' port

They rode the sunset, horse was made of steel
They rode the sunset, horse was made of steel
Chased a gringo last night through a field
Chased a gringo last night through a field

The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid he was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine

The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid he was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine

The Cisco Kid he was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid he was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid he was a friend of mine

Roots


High Street, Paisley, 1900


Mainstreet, Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, 1904

I have been researching my family on my mother's side and have discovered the following:

A great, great grandmother on my mother's side was named Grace Brogan. She was born in Ireland in about 1839. Her family migrated at some point to Scotland. By 1871 Grace was married to Bernard Rice who was also originally from Ireland. They lived in Old Monkland, Lanarkshire, Scotland. Census records seem to indicate that Bernard worked in a "lab". Not sure what that would mean in a place that made thread and textiles, and had iron foundries and coal mines. In 1872, My great grandmother, Bridget, was born. By 1881, Bernard no longer appears in the Census. Perhaps he died or ran away...Grace now lives with her brother John Brogan at 46, Close, Paisley, Scotland. Her children include my great grandmother Bridget and her siblings Bernard, Catherine, Ellen, James, Mary and Susan.

By 1891, Bridget is living with her sister Mary and Mary's Husband James Mclear at 176 Inkermans Rows in Paisley. She is a millworker. Also living in the house is Bridget's sister Ellen, and her nieces and nephews Mary, Patrick and Kate.

By 1901, Bridget was married to my great grandfather William Hamil. William was born in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire in 1871. They lived at 77 George Street in Paisley. William Hamil's occupation was brickfield Labourer. Family lore has him as a foreman in a textile factory who fell into a vat of dye and drowned. Hmmm..certainly more romantic than brickfield laborer. Bridget has three children at this point, my grandfather Michael who is four years old, William, aged 6, and Sarah, aged 8.

That is pretty much all the verified stuff I have. I do know that my grandfather Michael married my grandmother Frances Howe in Glamorgan, Wales. Family history has my grandmother living in a rooming house for miners run by her mother, where my grandfather was renting a room (or more probably a bed). After Frances and Michael married, my grandfather moved to Scranton, PA to work the coal mines there, followed a year later by my grandmother with my uncles Bill and Mike. My mother, Violet Sarah, was born in Scranton. Grandma Hamil's mother's name was Frances O'Leary before she married Albert Howe. Grandma Hamil was born in Bedminster, Bristol.

SO, seems we are Irish Irish Irish, although we have been brought up believing we are Scottish and Welsh as much as English and Irish. Rice, Brogan, and O'Leary, Irish families all! I look at my Kate and her face has "the map of Ireland" on it. BFI's mother is Irish, so of course that may have contributed...but I see my Brogan, Rice and O'Leary ancestors in that beautiful little face now!

I think this may be a somewhat boring read for non-family, but I'm hoping other "family" members doing geneology searches, might come across this post and connect. Off to look for photos to post!

363. Gloomy Winter’s Now Awa’

GLOOMY winter’s now awa’,
Saft the westlan’ breezes blaw,
’Mang the birks o’ Stanley-shaw
The mavis sings fu’ cheerie, O!
Sweet the crawflower’s early bell 5
Decks Gleniffer’s dewy dell,
Blooming like thy bonnie sel’,
My young, my artless dearie, O!

Come, my lassie, let us stray
O’er Glenkilloch’s sunny brae, 10
Blithely spend the gowden day
’Midst joys that never weary, O!
Towering o’er the Newton wuds,
Laverocks 1 fan the snaw-white cluds,
Siller saughs, 2 wi’ downy buds, 15
Adorn the banks sae briery, O!

Round the sylvan fairy nooks
Feath’ry breckans 3 fringe the rocks,
’Neath the brae the burnie jouks, 4
And ilka 5 thing is cheerie, O! 20
Trees may bud, and birds may sing,
Flowers may bloom, and verdure spring,
Joy to me they canna bring,
Unless wi’ thee, my dearie, O!

Note 1. Larks. [back]
Note 2. Silver willows. [back]
Note 3. Brakes. [back]
Note 4. Dodges. [back]
Note 5. Each. [back]

Robert Tannahill (1774–1810)

Everything Comes and Goes, Marked by Lovers and Styles of Clothes



This morning I plugged new speakers into the computer and they didn't work. Sick with wanting to hear music, I plugged speakers into The Boy's discman, and low and behold, Houston we've got music! I am listening to Court and Spark and I am as close to bliss as I get. "All the people at this party, they've got a lot of style, they've stamps of many countries, they've got passport smiles..." God bless Joni. "I told you when I met you, I was crazy...I feel like I'm sleeping, can you wake me?" Kids not here obviously, spending the day with BFI. Imagine how I'll go nuts when they're gone overnight again...scored a haircut appt. with my favorite stylist today, last minute and she can see me...AND I found the exact cut I want on the internet and the very tempermental printer spit it out after about 30 minutes. AND I got an email from the lovely Jogi in New Zealand. This is a red banner day!

Me and the kiddies all felled by a virus....girl child first, then The Boy and finally me, although I seemed to have gotten off easy with only one night of vomity grossness. Just checked time and gotta book to salon. Cut above is what I'm aiming at, followed by 50 pound weight loss.

Just Like This Train

Im always running behind the time
Just like this train
Shaking into town
With the brakes complaining

I used to count lovers like railroad cars
I counted them on my side
Lately I dont count on nothing
I just let things slide

The station masters shuffling cards
Boxcars are banging in the yards
Jealous iovinil make you crazy
If you cant find your goodness
cause you lost your heart

I went looking for a cause
Or a strong cat without claws
Or any reason to resume
And I found this empty seat
In this crowded waiting room
(everybody waiting)
Old man sleeping on his bags
Women with that teased up kind of hair
Kids with the jitters in their legs
And those wide, wide open stares
And the kids got cokes and chocolate bars
Theres a thin man smoking a fat cigar
Jealous lovinli make you crazy
If you cant find your goodness
cause youve lost your heart

What are you going to do now
Youve got no one
To give your love too...

Well Ive got this berth and this roll down blind
Ive got this fold up sink
And these rocks and these cactus going by
And a bottle of german wine to drink
Settle down into the clickety ciack
With the clouds and the stars to read
Dreaming of the pleasure Im going to have
Watching your hairline recede
(my vain darling)
Watching your hair and clouds and stars
Im rocking away in a sleeping car
This jealous lovins bound to make me
Crazy
I cant find my goodness
I lost my heart
Oh sour grapes
Because I lost my heart

Joni Mitchell

Everybody Do the Zombie Stomp



Here in Brooklyn with kids. Jr. is at work and Uncle Troy is out running. Going to a poetry meeting in Queens later regarding next year's New Years reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. I have agreed to be the "Mistress of Biographies." This means I hound all the performers for bios before event. Nice to be included in this and looking forward to hanging out with other poets for a few hours. Kids driving me BONKERS. Feeling trapped lately, like I can't get two minutes of free time away from them. Trip to poetry thing today should help. BFI has told kids he "may" keep them overnight next week. As he has no beds for them to sleep on and god knows he won't give up his own, I don't see how they will stay there. But miracles occasionally occur and maybe, just, maybe, I'll have a whole free weekend. I know this makes me a crappy mother, but so be it. I DON'T CARE.

In other, non-complaing news...last night was bad movie night (with Jack glued to my side...oops, sorry) and we saw The Horror of Party Beach. It was funny as hell and there was this band called "The Del-aires which was way groovy! Zombies walked like they were doing the twist and had fish heads for some inexplicable reason. The "blood" looked like smeared grease and the hairdos and outfits were excellent! I would highly recommend this one. A movie from 1982 called "Q" was also on the schedule. That one sucked eggs. Michael Moriarty overacting like crazy as some loser small time crook. It was like two separate bad movies at once; monster movie, bum on the skids movie. Neither was so bad they were good.

Think its time for my meds...

Brasilia

Will they occur,
These people with torso of steel
Winged elbows and eyeholes

Awaiting masses
Of cloud to give them expression,
These super-people! -
And my baby a nail
Driven, driven in.
He shrieks in his grease

Bones nosing for distance.
And I, nearly extinct,
His three teeth cutting

Themselves on my thumb -
And the star,
The old story.

In the lane I meet sheep and wagons,
Red earth, motherly blood.
O You who eat

People like light rays, leave
This one
Mirror safe, unredeemed

By the dove's annihilation,
The glory
The power, the glory.

Sylvia Plath

Poetry Morning


I would like to sit in the sun all day and read poems, make haiku attempts. Been reading the work of a poet named Lola Haskins who knocked me out. Have to attend to the humdrum now, dishes, food, blah.

How reluctantly
the bee emerges from deep
within the peony

Basho

In Honor of the Weather



My friend The Lovely Jogi suggested we try our hand at haikus and exchange them. Because the weather is icy and god's awful, I am posting my haiku. Writing inside a form is HARD.

Winter

No heat in the car.
My raw hands hurt on the wheel.
Slow slide across lanes.

M.J. Tenerelli

I Hear You Knocking...



I am freaked out this morning. Dreamt last night that I was pregnant with BFI's child and we were going to get back together again. THEN BFI shows up to get kids today and brings a book he thought I would like. WHAT THE FUCK. The devil is soliciting me in my dreams and coming to my home bearing gifts...I will not be tempted back into hell, no no no no. Especially interesting is that just before BFI knocked at the door I was watching Mick Jagger exhorting the crowd to love each other before singing Sympathy for the Devil and just before somebody got stabbed at Altamont.

Hail Mary full of grace...

The Evil Eye

It comes oozing
out of flowers at night,
it comes out of the rain
if a snake looks skyward,
it comes out of chairs and tables
if you don't point at them and say their names.
It comes into your mouth while you sleep,
pressing in like a washcloth.
Beware. Beware.

If you meet a cross-eyed person
you must plunge into the grass,
alongside the chilly ants,
fish through the green fingernails
and come up with the four-leaf clover
or your blood with congeal
like cold gravy.

If you run across a horseshoe,
passerby,
stop, take your hands out of your pockets
and count the nails
as you count your children
or your money.
Otherwise a sand flea will crawl in your ear
and fly into your brain
and the only way you'll keep from going mad
is to be hit with a hammer every hour.

If a hunchback is in the elevator with you
don't turn away,
immediately touch his hump
for his child will be born from his back tomorrow
and if he promptly bites the baby's nails off
(so it won't become a thief)
that child will be holy
and you, simple bird that you are,
may go on flying.

When you knock on wood,
and you do,
you knock on the Cross
and Jesus gives you a fragment of His body
and breaks an egg in your toilet,
giving up one life
for one life.

Anne Sexton

The Boy is in Trouble

Just got The Boy's report card in the mail. His grades have plummeted. No Honor Society for him. I am horrified; missing assignments and projects, latenesses, decline in effort. I should have been on top of him. This is a very big missed opportunity and I wasn't involved enough in his schoolwork. Well the tide has turned...starting this afternoon when he walks through the door. No more unrestricted T.V., no more unrestricted computer, no more unrestricted PSP until he can prove that he has consistently been doing his homework and projects. I guess the proof will be in next quarters report card. Oh and his youtube account is cancelled until further notice. His homework needs to be done by the time I walk through the door at 6:00 p.m. If its not, dinner, homework and bed.

Just got off phone with guidance counselor. Jack will be going to "homework help" three times a week after school. His teachers will also be signing his scheduler, where he writes down his homework, everyday after class. I will then compare the homework he has done with scheduler each night.

Too disgusted to look for poems or art.

Going to the Florist






Just read that fresh flowers have been scientifically proven to improve your mood. I will buy some for the apt. today.

The Silver Lily

The nights have grown cool again, like the nights
Of early spring, and quiet again. Will
Speech disturb you? We're
Alone now; we have no reason for silence.

Can you see, over the garden-the full moon rises.
I won't see the next full moon.

In spring, when the moon rose, it meant
Time was endless. Snowdrops
Opened and closed, the clustered
Seeds of the maples fell in pale drifts.
White over white, the moon rose over the birch tree.
And in the crook, where the tree divides,
Leaves of the first daffodils, in moonlight
Soft greenish-silver.

We have come too far together toward the end now
To fear the end. These nights, I am no longer even certain
I know what the end means. And you, who've been
With a man--

After the first cries,
Doesn't joy, like fear, make no sound?

Louise Glück

Wet Ceiling, Bad Walls, Pederast Poem



Saturday morning and all is quiet. Jack is asleep on the couch behind me as his side of the bedroom ceiling began sending showers of water down on Thursday. Plumber is supposedly coming today. Just checked on the girl whose bed has so far escaped soaking. She is sleeping surrounded by every stuffed animal she owns and a scattering of crayons.

Jr. has sold her bed stuy apt. to an acrobat! Weehawkin is now in my holiday future. Actually probably my more immediate future as Jr. has confessed the house pretty much needs to be condemned and she needs demolition help. How she thinks I am going to be able to swing a hammer hard enough to bring down a wall is beyond me. Apparently this house is so bad I am not allowed to view pictures of the inside of it. I have told Jr. I can hear our construction worker father cursing and yelling from the great beyond. Jr.'s determination to rewire the house herself has me extremely nervous.

In other me me me news, a local law office and big competitor of Blunder and Blunder has expressed interest at looking at my work for possible "work from home" appeal writing. And the child support enforcement bureau has begun to garnish BFI's checks. Doing the happy snoopy dance (come on Jr., dance along!)

Reading Alan Ginsberg's White Shroud this morning. Poem about boinking an 18 year old student pissed me off. If that was my kid, Professor Ginsberg, I would hunt you down and kill you. There was a poem called Brown Rice Quatrain that I was going to post for Jack, but after reading boinking poem, I have changed my mind. White Shroud is signed by Ginsberg, with date of reading held at St. Marks Church, and the word "AH" after a poetry quote on fly leaf. Wonder what I could get for it on Ebay?

My Little One

My little one whose tongue is dumb,
whose fingers cannot hold to things,
who is so mercilessly young,
he leaps upon the instant things,

I hold him not. Indeed, who could?
He runs into the burning wood.
Follow, follow if you can!
He will come out grown to a man

and not remember whom he kissed,
who caught him by the slender wrist
and bound him by a tender yoke
which, understanding not, he broke.


Tennessee Williams