Four Mondays

Welcome back

to work

during the holidays.

Today

is the fourth "Monday"

I've had in 

two weeks.

Oy.

Red Wine

They say 

red wine 

is good for you

that people who 

drink red wine

live longer and healthier lives

than those who don't.

Why?

My thoughts: 

Perhaps it isn't 

the wine

that helps people live longer.

Maybe red wine drinkers

have more friends

more family

with whom they break bread

enjoy meals.

Maybe 

it isn't 

the wine

but companionship.

Purple Socks

Purple socks purple socks

Hademade hand knit purple socks

I bought them at the Market

Wool and silk

Keep my feet soft and warm

and

soothe my soul

as I think of the person

who sat

and sat

and sat

patiently quietly

to make them

perhaps

in a meditative state.

The peace and calm 

that comes with each stitch

is transferred

to me

as I wear them.

Purple socks purple socks

Purple socks

Pickleball

Why do recall

the shots 

I've missed

and 

not

the shots

I've made?

Why is it

that now I am 

a better player,

that I feel 

worse about

how

I play?

Before, 

when I sucked,

I was happy

to get

my serve

in bounds.

Now, 

I die inside a little 

when I miss.

Belly of the Whale

If I had a bar

I'd call it "Belly of the Whale"

Where people could reach their nadir

The Bottom

The Pits

Despair.

Where people could come back to life

Rejoin the human race

with peace and dignity and serenity.

I have been in the belly of the whale

for much too long

Afraid

Angry

Annoyed

and now I am coming out 

Awakened

Alive

and 

Grateful.

Poem

Reading Ali Wong

The only sound I can hear

Is my own laughter

Knee Update in Poetry

Today is a day
For sensible shoes.

A Very Short Poem

There should be a different word
For shadows created
By the moon

thighs

i remember when your thighs

used to be all muscular

he tells me

i vacillate between

oh thats sweet 

and

fuck you

Bye, Bye, Baby Boy and 80s Music

I spend my days

Driving him

Places he doesn't want to go.

The Boy used to be a momma's boy. Today, he falls asleep in the front seat as I drive him around. I think of him as a toddler, with his head against the window.

My Aunt has two boys. They are grown now, but they are still her boys. She got divorced before the second was born, and they have doted on her every day of their lives. Sometimes one will be there, then the other. She tried to keep them at bay, at a distance, making sure they have their own lives and not only take care of her. They dote on her nonetheless.

"That's what I want," I said to my cousin when I saw his brother hug my Aunt. The Boy was probably one at the time.

"A momma's boy?" he said.

The Boy used to be nice to me. Now, he is thirteen, and in some serious rebellion. He doesn't want me around very much. At times, he thinks I am fine and interesting and nice when I programmed the radio in the RAV to an 80's station. He loves music from the 80's when bands were bands with guitars and drum kits, not a singer with a track. This I know, I am an expert, though I'd rather listen to current pop than music I heard in middle and high school. I listen anyway, knowing the names of the songs and artists. REM and It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine). Madonna and Lucky Star. 

The Boy will show me a silly YouTube video from SNL or show me pictures of airplanes on Instagram. Otherwise, he is plugged into his phone, listening to music, playing games and checking how many "likes" he has on social media.

The house is so quiet when he is around, the opposite of how it used to be. I wonder if he breathes when he looks at his phone. I remember checking him while he slept before we knew he had sleep apnea and had his tonsils out. I'd go in his room and I would hear nothing. Those were the times he wasn't breathing when he slept. When he looks at his phone, it sounds the same: the sound of nothing. I try to be there when he awakens from his electronic induced coma, but it is hard when he is grouchy. I have awoken a bear.

I know that part of being a teenager is to be unpleasant most of the time, to find and define himself outside of me. I'll wait. I know he will come back someday. I'll miss him in the meantime.

Tennis Shoes

My tennis shoes are making me jealous,

Reminding me of the game

I cannot play.

Fox: The Prodigal Dog -- A Haiku

Fox leaves the backyard.
The bad dog returns home, then
Expects a party.

Skiing this Weekend

We went skiing for the first time this winter on Sunday.  February 2 is a late start to the season out here.    I am a mediocre skier, but I enjoy spending time outside in the winter.  I am the slowest skier in my family by a lot.  When I am the first one to make it to the bottom of the hill, I am convinced someone in my family has crashed.  I am right 9 out of 10 times.  I should keep stats.

I am okay with my cautiousness.  I want to live to ski another day.  That, and my house is on a hill and we have twenty some odd steps to get to my front door.  If I broke or sprained anything along my spine or south of my bellybutton, I would be housebound for a long time.  Or, I could get a wheelchair accessible room at a nearby hotel and my family would have to fend for themselves for a few weeks with cooking, shopping, laundry, etc.  Hmmm.  That doesn't sound too bad, except for the injury part.

Here is a bit of anger poetry.

Snowboarders

Raping the slopes
And pillaging the powder,
You leave an icy trail
Like a snail leaves
Slime.
You can't see me
As your flat board
Irons the corduroy.

++++

I have this problem where I am in capable of saying bad things about people in public, even if it is a general group of people and not one person in particular.  My anger poetry makes me feel uncomfortable as I might offend someone.  I respect good snow boarders who go down the slopes with the top of their board pointing down the hill.  People who skid down with their board perpendicular to the lift drive me nuts.  I need some of that snow they are scraping off the mountain to cut my edges in so I can turn and not end up at the Silver Cloud Hotel for six weeks.

I also almost got knocked off a cliff by a snowboarder at Whistler.  I was taking the green way down a slope, which in the summer is a service road.  It is relatively flat, and has a steep incline on one side and a drop off on the other.  Flat parts are really hard for snowboarders as they don't have poles to push them along.  This one boarder was getting up with his back to the flow of traffic.  He jerked his board back about four feet.  I had a choice: get hit by this guy or fall off the cliff.  I was lucky to find the middle ground and avoid both.  The downside was I started swearing, not at him, but just in general.  The Canadians don't allow swearing on the mountain.  They are so polite.

Mood

I am reading "The Pure Gold Baby" by Margaret Dribble.  Here are a few fabulously depressing quotations from this book.  By fabulous I mean when you read then they make you smile a little like a Baudelaire poem because life really cannot be that bleak.

"He has resigned himself to a life of unproductive daily anguish."

"Steve's manta, which he once repeated to Jess, goes:
The day is agony
The night brings no reprieve."

"I feel anguish, and it is not of the body, so it must be of the spirit."

Here is a Baudelaire poem I love from college.  It is not that bleak and fatalistic as some of his others.  At times, don't we all feel like the albatross, where we soar in some environments and flail in others?  And what about those jerks on the boat who drag the bird down?  Don't you kind of wish they get washed overboard?

The Albatross

Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew
Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds
That indolently follow a ship
As it glides over the deep, briny sea.

Scarcely have they placed them on the deck
Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed,
Pathetically let their great white wings
Drag beside them like oars.

That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is,
So beautiful before, now comic and ugly!
One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe;
Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew!

The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky
Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman;
When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/200

I love this fabulously depressing poem from Harry Potter Puppet Pals video "Snape's Diary."

Button, oh button, oh where hath thou fled?
Did thou tarry too long between fabric and thread?
Did thee roll off my bosom and cease to exist?
How I wish I could follow thee into the mist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-a8USS84F4