mars ascendant

11.12.2003

With Mars ascendant everybody’s been bickering over small or larger things.

Even in October the summer heat would never end.
Then cold slammed in, relented a few days, returned & settled on us for good.

The full moon rose above the Sandias & was quickly eclipsed.
I stood in the street those few moments more chilled than awed.
Red world winks behind a wisp of cloud.
B-b-b-baby you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Dad reclines in his Lazyboy napping between life and death.
The piano wakes him, then lullabies him back.
At least the fear is gone, along with sense. Still we miss his voice singing along.
I know that one! We sang that one when!

Finally the leaves turn
now most are toast but many are butter
such a slow progression this year
trees holding their breath just as we are.

Our old soldiers look back to see their boy buddies waving grinning hanging out telling dirty jokes
in golden light they hover
before the shit and mud and blood.

Precious raindrops sputter rationed by stingy gods then gain momentum.
I am stingy with tears.

It feels like snow. Maybe we’ll wake up to the snow we knew as children
deeper than galoshes,
snow the way it used to be for our children a decade ago before this cycle of drought,
snow we’ll have to broom from branches of our bushes before they break.
B-b-b-baby
Maybe we’ll wake up.

Mom wants that particular photo found for the funeral card and ready to go.
Meanwhile
today she shops
which is better than sitting housebound by earshot
to confirm a heartbeat
a breath.

Meanwhile
I am condemned to excessive alliteration.

If you doubt that all life is precious watch a spider scramble frantic from your broom.


11.13.2003

It rained through the night
a BONifide rain Paul proclaimed.
It rained like there is no drought
like you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
And maybe it will snow tonight
snow like there is no drought
snow like the snow we knew when Dad scraped the sidewalk clear with a wide shovel and
retrieved two pieces of charcoal from his garage of mysteries for our snowman’s eyes

Meanwhile
it is hard work to look at ourselves at the us we’ve constructed
to look for ways to remodel
to look for ways to walk together again scattering the toast and butter on saturated ground
to walk because our dance has become problematic

Some nights the music is his partner, it’s a monogamous relationship, and I cannot tap in.
I’m invited along only if I can find some way to keep up
fill his body the way she fills his body become invisible
could be a blow-up doll
maybe better a blow-up doll than in this crowded embrace
and yet I return another night
to his arms
or someone else’s.

I don’t understand this attraction.
This is not my language not my time not my place or location and yet it binds me
beckons like chocolate
like the bad boy every girl knows she will be the one to save
we return return return again
needy for the pressing torso of someone we wouldn’t glance twice at on the street
and me a married woman!
and he a married man!
pressing body to body we would reclaim animus
bound by music we used to ridicule
by stories that are not our stories
by words and slang we can’t decipher
yet know well enough
that it’s some guy crying again because the whore he fell in love with is a whore
crying again because time passes
crying because time passes with or without us
crying for all the nights used up by this music by all those pressing bodies
while the warm body left at home grew cold

¡eres tan fria y solitaria, pero no siempre lloras, mi cariña, mi vida, mi corazón!
tout va bien la neige est belle la neige comme la neige de nos enfances


11.15.2003

Snow dusted the foothills
but none gifted the valley.
The ground become hard mud, the air gray with inversion, and the drought goes on.

The drug made me sleepy or maybe it’s the dying
or the den piled high with stuff to find places for before our Christmas Eve party,
the usual manufactured crisis, as if real ones are wanting.

Confused, at seven this evening Dad asked for coffee.
Since Paul was there in the morning when he dozed through breakfast;
his return in the evening was a cue to pick up where things left off.

Earlier, we danced one tango to Fresedo playing on this computer
a thin rendering of thin music of the 20’s with a thick beat.

Later, Fred’s Scott Joplin fell intermediating fire and tears, & every sense, shade & facet between them.
After, we ate chocolate.

Now, the cat passes under the iMac screen cobra-arching to fit in an out of the narrow places
then curls himself behind me on this chair
If I lean back to reflect he’ll eject from where I sit
hunched forward implying urgency where there is none

eat [chocolate] be merry
for tomorrow


In Memoriam, James John Reck, 1915-2003