I’ll never be a poet

websters

I didn’t always know how to use a dictionary.

You’d think I’d have learned earlier than I did. I always liked dictionaries. My mom’s tattered old American Heritage dictionary led me to a long flirtation with the brilliantly displayed Oxford American at the library. I can still picture that Oxford glowing under a spotlight on a wood pedestal almost too perfect to touch.

I had a few amazing English teachers in high school – one who loosed Randall Jarrell, Oddyseus, and Shakespeare on me in the same year; another who taught me how to frame an argument; and my favorite, who insisted on last names and demanded nothing less than my best work – but none of them made much of a deal about the dictionary. I left high school wanting to know more about words as much as I needed to.

At college, I studied English with a minor in writing. I felt passionate about words but I still didn’t own a dictionary. This was in the mid-90’s, before the Internet was a big thing and when books still came on paper. Like any 20-year old, I thought I knew myself.

Junior year I took a poetry-writing class that changed everything. My very favorite professor taught the class. She was older, maybe pushing 70 at the time, and a nun – if you recall, this was a Catholic women’s college. But my favorite professor was snappier than the usual nun, and she was smart, in the cool sense. For many years she taught English at a prison. She was bold yet down to earth.

When I began the poetry class, in late August, I was an expert on me. I had breezed through three years of college with almost straight A’s. Grades still mattered, a lot. The week before Thanksgiving, I missed a syllable in a metered piece that I read aloud in class. It was a careless mistake and a peek in my nonexistent dictionary would have prevented it. After class, my favorite professor told me I’d never be a poet. By the time I finished the class in mid-December, my voice abandoned me and I began to hate myself.

That mistake wreaked so much havoc on my life that I just have to laugh. I whole-heartedly blame the missing syllable for my first round of grad school rejections, since I foolishly asked my favorite professor to write a letter of recommendation. I sometimes hold onto relationships until long after they are dead. I hold the missing syllable accountable for my selective mutism when I finally did eke my way into a graduate program.

Still, it took another five years for me to land a job as an editor. It took five years of feeling like a fuck up until I stumbled into my new boss’s office and saw the dictionary sitting on her desk like the Bible. My boss led by example and was never the type to hold my hand. Instead she handed me a shiny new copy of Webster’s 11th and told me to go find myself in it. It wasn’t easy but I wanted to impress her, so I did it.

I’m still not a poet. But I am an editor.

Do it! Do it!

CB

nobody can save you but
yourself.
you will be put again and again
into nearly impossible
situations.
they will attempt again and again
through subterfuge, guise and
force
to make you submit, quit and /or die quietly
inside.

nobody can save you but
yourself
and it will be easy enough to fail
so very easily
but don’t, don’t, don’t.
just watch them.
listen to them.
do you want to be like that?
a faceless, mindless, heartless
being?
do you want to experience
death before death?

nobody can save you but
yourself
and you’re worth saving.
it’s a war not easily won
but if anything is worth winning then
this is it.

think about it.
think about saving your self.
your spiritual self.
your gut self.
your singing magical self and
your beautiful self.
save it.
don’t join the dead-in-spirit.

maintain your self
with humor and grace
and finally
if necessary
wager your self as you struggle,
damn the odds, damn
the price.

only you can save your
self.

do it! do it!

then you’ll know exactly what
I am talking about.

–Charles Bukowski

25 songs, 25 days

Well, I did it all in one day. Thanks, Twindaddy, this was fun!

Day 1: A song from childhood

I Write the Songs by Barry Manilow. I remember waking up very early to the sound of this one from the kitchen.

Day 2: A song that reminds you of your most recent ex-boyfriend

It’s been awhile, but These are Days by Natalie Merchant always takes me back to the summer after high school.

Day 3: A song that reminds you of your parents

For my mom, it’s You are my Sunshine, which she used to sing to me when I was a kid. I don’t have any songs for my dad.

Day 4: A song that calms you down

Hallelujah. I like all the versions, but Pandora plays me Jeff Buckley the most often.

Day 5: A song that is often stuck in your head

For a while there it was Let it Go. I’m glad the kids finally let it go.

Day 6: A song that reminds you of a best friend

Walk Like an Egyptian. If you can name the friend, then you know me really well.

Day 7: A song that reminds you of the past summer

Counting Stars by One Republic, so awesome until the kids found out about it.

Day 8: A song that reminds you of your “first love”

Everything I Do by Bryan Adams. Accent heavily on the quotes. Listening makes me hang my head in shame.

Day 9: A song that makes you hopeful

Tripping Billies by Dave Matthews. Do I really need to explain?

Day 10: A song by your favorite band

I don’t have a favorite band. There are too many good ones.

Day 11: A song on the soundtrack of your favorite movie

Son of a Preacher Man. Go ahead, name my favorite movie.

Day 12: The last song you heard

Does a Bach concerto count?

Day 13: A song that reminds you of a former friend

That’s What Friends are For, Dionne Warwick. Back in the days when I used to be obsessed with radio dedications and before a best friend of mine died young.

Day 14: A song that reminds you of your husband

Faithfully by Journey

Day 15: A song you love to sing along to

Here Comes the Sun

Day 16: A song that has made you cry

Fire and Rain by James Taylor. Actually it makes me cry every time.

Day 17: A song that makes you want to dance

Short Skirt, Long Jacket by Cake

Day 18: A song that you love but rarely listen to

Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam by Nirvana

Day 19: First song alphabetically on your iPod

ABC by the Jackson 5

Day 20: Last song alphabetically on your iPod

Numbers are coming up last, so I’ll give you 99 Luftballoons in German. There’s a Z in there somewhere.

Day 21: My favorite song

Lately, Pompeii by Bastille. But I have a long-term relationship with What a Good Boy by Barenaked Ladies.

Day 22: A song that someone has sung to you

Nightswimming by REM, 20 years ago at a duck pond in the rain.

Day 23: A song that you can’t stand to listen to

See day 22.

Day 24: A song that you have danced to with your best friend

In the Mood by Glenn Miller, first dance at my wedding.

Day 25: A song you could listen to all day without getting tired of.

Down to the River to Pray by Allison Krauss

Want to participate? The full list is at Melanie Jo Moore’s blog. Melanie, good luck rebuilding your playlist!

 

Fear is a wild ride

I went on a waterslide this weekend, several times and of my own free will. This is a big deal for me. I had an accident on a waterslide as a kid and I steered clear of them until the last year or so. For roughly the last 30 years, I’ve been too afraid to try watersliding again.

It took me watching Gabe, four years old at the time, to even consider setting foot in the waterslide line. My kids have lots of fears, but hurtling themselves down slippery slopes into water isn’t one of them. I’ve accompanied them, my heart pounding, nearly hyperventilating, and with my eyes closed. I’ve gone with my kids in the not-too-distant past, but I didn’t like it. I would say that I faced my fears, but I wouldn’t say that I had fun doing it.

This weekend, the waterslide was fun. I think it was a combination of a gentle descent, a good raft, and a spectacular kid who was thrilled to be doing it with me. I mean ME. We went to the water park just the two of us for his birthday celebration.

Something about this combination gave me permission to enjoy myself. I opened my eyes and looked around as we zipped around, the green tunnel walls wooshing by, and all I can say is I was really there.

I didn’t face all of my fears, just one. I didn’t walk a narrow alley at night, I didn’t travel alone to a Middle Eastern country. I didn’t survive cancer or reduce myself to dollars and cents. I didn’t do any of the big things, just a small one for a small boy. But I did figure something out about fear: Fear longs to be pushed, and when you give her what she wants, she yields to incredible joy.

Go ahead, give it a try. Hurtle yourself down a slippery slope, eyes open. I dare you.

Do you feel love?

Love isn’t

Small cool hands on your back
Arms wrapped around you from behind
Butterflies

Or

A smile on a train
That weightless promise of running

Sometimes it’s

A blank canvas
The strength of a line
The liquid grain in a wooden board

And

The reflection of sun on metal
Water pouring through your fingers
Friends in strange places

But more often it’s

The pavement’s thud
A check written to your name
A candy bar at the gas station at 2 a.m.

And

The word no
Dark secrets shared
The truth eked out in screams

I find mine where

Rope meets my flesh
Rocks lie in my belly

Everyone has a pit of fear

I’ll hold the rope
You jump in and pull
Tug it through
It’ll turn inside out

Sun in the dark

That’s love

 

 

 

Celibacy sucks

Let’s talk about my mom. It’s time, don’t you think? I’ve been putting this off for a while because, well, it’s hard for me to talk bad about my mom. But if you’re really going to know me, then you need to hear this. I’ve mentioned it once before, but my mom was a slut.

If you ever met my mom – you know who you are – you’re probably laughing right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Okay, okay, wipe the tears off your face and hear me out. It’s true, that doddering old lady you remember truly was a slut. I know, it’s not easy to comprehend. I probably sound insane to you.

Let me think. My mom grew up in the 50s, long before the women’s movement and the hippie years. She messed around in high school and barely began to explore her slutty tendencies before she married a jerk at nineteen. The jerk fucked around on her before he walked out and took their ten-year-old daughter – my sister – with him.

Now, if you’re still paying attention, this is when my mom made a break for the dark side. I wasn’t around yet, so I can’t give you the gritty details. All I really know, I learned from my sister on a gruesome night at the beach that began with an argument and ended with me lying awake on the floor of a scummy motel bedroom listening to the sounds of my sister fucking her girlfriend. So let’s take a detour.

Yes, the night began with a screaming fight. “You don’t know what it was like,” Kim screamed.

“What?” I asked. I was fifteen. I still trusted her.

“Mommy used to be different,” she always called her Mommy.

I stared at her in disbelief.

“She used to have men over every night,” Kim yelled. “I used to lay awake, listening to them. Yeah,” she screamed. “You have no idea. They used to come knocking at the back door late at night, calling her,” her voice was shrill. You know she enjoyed hurling those truths at me.

My sister hated me. It’s a truism and it’s beside the point. I mean, come on, if you watched your slut mom completely reinvent herself for your bratty little sister, if you watched her swear off men altogether, learn to put a dinner on the table every day, learn to keep a house, learn how to love for God’s sake, you would hate the object of her affection too.

My fifteen-year-old self had a lot of trouble handling the truth. See, my mom never fucked around while I lived at home. From when I was too little to remember until I went away to college, my mom was celibate. She threw the word around like a prayer. So from that night at the beach until I saw for myself how much men could destroy her, I denied the truth about my mom. I watched my sister walk out of our lives into the shady underworld of drugs and I was a little bit glad to see her go.

My mom clung to her celibacy until I left home. She avoided sex even while I didn’t, and as a parent I’ve got to admire that kind of dedication. But don’t you know that just about the minute I traded in my bedroom for a dorm room, she found a creep at Walmart and started fucking him? I was disappointed at first, and then it got worse. She found a – what do you call it – a sugar baby? Some black guy a good twenty years younger than her with a penchant for running up credit card bills and beating on old white ladies while he was fucking them. Yeah, great, I know. I kind of avoided home while that was going on. Then she found Mike the used-car salesman, and you know how that ended up.

So, you know, maybe I should love celibacy. Maybe I should be thanking my lucky stars. My mom’s celibacy gave me a normal life. I grew up thinking the best of my mom, never having to deal with the truth. But you know what? Celibacy just put a cork in my mom’s life, it didn’t solve any of her problems. In the end, my mom ended up dying for some guy she met in a phone sex chat room. Once a slut, always a slut. I hate self-denial.

Where I grew up

Where I grew up, there were dumpsters next to the parking lot out front. I grew up in gritty strip mall suburbia in a crummy apartment that wasn’t hideous but it wasn’t pretty either. There was an asphalt covered play lot with a metal merry-go-round and a set of monkey bars but no swings. There were concrete tunnels for us to hide out in and those dumpsters always smelled bad but not as bad as that grape candy smell from the McCormick’s plant down the road.

Where I grew up, everyone was poor but us kids never knew we were poor. We existed in some alternate plane where we were queens and kings ruling from the top of the monkey bars and meting out punishments in the concrete tunnel dungeons. We held trysts in our gardens: the forsythia-lined collection of air-conditioning units. We were mean to each other and nobody told us to stop.

Where I grew up, we hid behind a tree and watched a couple of thirteen-year olds make out behind the bushes and we liked it. I can still taste my shame, hear my laughter, and feel my legs stretching to get away when they noticed us watching. Nothing will ever feel that good again.

Where I grew up I used to be brave. I walked by myself to the store starting when I was seven and a friend’s big brother used to chase me every time. I always narrowly escaped.

Where I grew up we had lug our clothes to the communal laundry room. More than once my clothes were tattooed by the neighborhood badasses, and after that we hung out in the hot small room while the clothes dried. My mom wanted me to be a good girl.

Where I grew up the kids were mean to me. They called me French fry because I was a skinny white girl and they used to push on me and nobody ever stopped them. The kids were mean to me and I had to deal.

Where I grew up everybody was just getting by. There was a girl named Brandy whose dad was a drinker. She and I were fraught, like girls always are. We fought as much as we played. My mom sort of adopted her for awhile until I don’t know what happened but we didn’t see each other anymore. Brandy was cool. I don’t think she minded dropping out of school in ninth grade to take care of her dad. I saw her a couple years later on her way out of the Planned Parenthood by the mall, her hands on her big belly.

Where I grew up I couldn’t stand to go outside on summer days because of the grape smell but I never really minded the dumpsters until I got to high school and had to beg rides home from the cool kids who had cars. You know, the ones who never saw a dumpster before. Where I grew up, I learned to like ugliness.

Where I grew up, I found a story around every corner.

Thanks for the inspiration, Samara.

Let me tell you a story

Let me tell you a story about how I loved a boy once.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Let me tell you how I almost died before I even met the boy. How I fought my way back to life for him.

This story always comes back to death.

Let me tell you about how I loved a boy before I even knew how to speak. I gave him my first words.

My father scrawled this story in a notebook in a drunken stupor while I formed my love into a deep, dark question and hurled it at him.

This story is a puzzle.

I begged him to slip love around my neck like some heavy leather noose.

This story is my scar.

The only answer was my own echo.

Love is the reverberation of my own voice refused.

This story is infinite.

My son scrawled this story in the dirt on the elementary school playground.

Love is never heavy enough.

This story always snakes back on itself.

Let me tell you a story about a black belt in your hand.

This story ends with your voice in my ear.

Do you mind implication?

Somebody please tell me to shut up

There are some things about me that I can’t tell you.

I’m talking about speech, not secrets.

There are some things about me that I’m not capable of telling you because words ruin them.

I resisted my name for years. Until I was about five, I refused to say my name that is really my middle name, my second name, my mom’s afterthought. It’s only one of many names I’ve had, but knowing it leads you into a maze of incorrect assumptions. Did I know that at age three? Maybe. If I had been named like my preschool friend, Summer, maybe I wouldn’t have been so silent when the other kids asked my name.

I’m the shy kid swinging alone on the playground while the other kids play on the monkey bars.

At twelve, I must have misspoken to my best friend’s rabbi. “Are you Jewish?” he asked me as I sat by her at Hebrew school.

“Yes,” I said.

“What’s your name?” he asked, kind, hopeful.

His face fell when I told him. Confusion furrowed his brow, shock glimmered in his eye. “Don’t you know what that means?” he asked.

Yes, I did. Of course I do.

I’m a Jewish girl who can never say her name in a synagogue.

On my honeymoon, thrilled to be in Paris, I tried out my conversational skills at our first dinner. The waiter turned my question into a little joke, I’m pretty sure a pun at my expense. After that I stopped speaking except in emergencies, preferring to remain still and silent as much as possible. Silent, the waiters were much more polite.

I’m French, but only when I’m absolutely silent.

There have been more times when speech has betrayed me. It definitely did in grad school. There was a night long ago in a crummy motel room. Every time I’m driven to yell at my kids, speech stabs me in the gut.

Yes, it’s true, we’ll know each other better if I don’t speak. Silence never contradicts itself.

Note to my sister

I love you, I wrote.

I didn’t say I’m glad you’re alive, but I am.

I did not write about how I always thought this day would come.

I didn’t mention all the nights I’ve laid awake worrying about you.

I definitely didn’t bring up how much you scare me, or how angry you’ve made me over the years. I would never admit how, without even trying, you stole the fun out of my life. I didn’t mention the word trust but I also didn’t call you a thief.

Instead, let’s talk about how I’ve trained for this day, working out, strengthening my body and mind. I’m ready for you. I’m here for you. I love you.