From Trader Joe’s to at least 30,000 feet!

He was a handsome young artist, good face at the cash register,

but his expression was like the black and white screen 

still playing summer sitcom reruns from the 60s in an apartment 

complex behind the dumpsters of the empty Holiday Inn

miles from anything in the middle of Kansas and nobody on holiday.

( But hang on, this isn't over. )

The way you knew he was an artist was the faded-out haystack 

yellow T-shirt that said VAN GOGH on the front 

Fuck Thomas Kinkade on the back, 

and the other way I knew he was an artist was how he packed 

my grocery bag; blueberries and meat in juicy Rothko layers. 

He looked up and I looked right at him, 

young blue eyes meeting old blue eyes 

blissing out all the women in line so I said, 

I can see you’re an artist by the way you bag it all up. 

The composition of fruits and meats and sugar treats, 

all that wine and cheese straight off to the vanishing point. 

We could all see how my saying this affected him. 

He needed to hear it, I needed to say it, we both needed to believe it. 

(I had that job once, but at a Safeway, nothing happening. Yet.) 

He brightened up and lightened up, got straight up, sky-high!

Not drugged-out high, but drug-up high, way up there

riding one of those ridiculously high, fluffy clouds

way up HIGH, free and FLUFFY Ansel Adams clouds,

Ansel Adams along as his wingman, 

Georgia O’Keefe was there too, their wingwoman! 

I’m not on the payroll, but 

everything happens at Trader Joe’s. 

Cold towels, warming in the moonlight 

The sky was starry deep velvet blue last night 

and I couldn’t stop staring at it while I waited for 

the washing machine to stop with a beep,

my favorite towels going round and around in there!

The very towels I ran away from home with (I’d asked Santa for them) 

so many Christmas mornings ago, stealing them (and no family photos)

out from under the tree the Christmas Eve before, 

running off through the night in the snow leaving tracks, but running so fast! 

The machine stopped so I hung the towels out on the line 

in the wee hours—3o icy degrees or less—blowing softly and seductively 

in the moonlight, making me think of old romantic movies from the 40s,

home for the holidays in the movie, and a lot of soft-focus kissing!

But last night ... 

Outside on the line, under the wide blue midnight yonder, there they were, 

my strong, soft-piled towels blowing flagrantly, so fragrantly alluring 

in sage, the other one in the ethereal shade of Christopher Blue 

well known at Bloomingdale’s and Home Depot paint departments all over.

I couldn’t get enough, I would’ve been out there all night under the stars,

but the lights all went out in the house next door

making the moonlight glowing on my towels so much more pronounced.  

There were earthy, moist footsteps in the dark

furtive knocks on my festive front door

it was the Apache couple from next door, 

silvery-wise, wide-smile lovers, Just Married! both of them 

with beautiful brown eyes like warm acorns in low tallow candlelight. 

Their monthly checks hadn’t come in the mail, why the power went off,

it was dark, cold, scary in their place, and though they still looked real ready 

for some sort of soft focus something

they wondered if they could come in and use the bath? 

I ushered them in just like the usher which (of course) I used to be, 

pulled the red velvet curtains open to the screening room (front room) 

and suggested why not take showers in the morning because 

the best towels were outside, cold and wet, drying in the moonlight.

But yes, come in, I told them—we’ve got robes, popcorn, pillows, 

Prosecco, Pabst, and Perrier for one of us,

we can watch a great hopeful, romantic movie starring 

Bing Crosby and Emma Stone as poor people in love 

getting over on rich people

like they always do. Always ... in the end. 

 The Apaches hopped over the back of the couch, bounced high up

off the cushions, said: Oh yes, we've heard of that one, we're ready!

I got them in robes, stocking feet floating up by the fire, eyes shining 

in the flames and the movie screen—they melted into each other; 

after awhile, round red, green flannel bodies rolling off the couch, 

crawling, kissing, giggling, they rolled down the hall to the guest room. 

So Happy Honeymoon, anyway! 

This morning, pancakes and bacon and coffee, wide awake, smoking 

in the hot Lodge pan (yes, the coffee too!), the Apache lovers 

take a shower, together, of course, bright happy newlyweds, 

while outside the towels hang flapping in the breeze,

waiting for them

warm and fluffy in the morning sunlight. 

And, this morning, through my kitchen window, I can see their place, 

looks like an interesting cave; a dog just jumped in their bedroom window, 

a raven is perched on a bicycle seat on the front porch, I see cave paintings 

and I have boxes and boxes of tallow candles. 

Those fuckers can’t really turn off your power. 

The John Wayne Cowboy Hat 

I was back out west for keeps this time 

it was time to go get a cowboy hat 

so I went down to Guadalupe Street on a cold, windy, winter-blue morning 

where all the western wear was waiting wondering when 

I was going to come and get it.

Inside, I saw a pile of Stetsons and went right for the perfect one up on top,

but it was the John Wayne Model, so I put it right back up on top 

of the stack, no way was I going to wear the John Wayne Style Hat, 

but then it hit me, goddam it

of course I’ll wear the John Wayne Style Hat!

Because I like the way he swaggers around knocking over tables, 

which I do already, but not the way he does, bullying everybody 

knocking them over, especially the women and guys who got here first, 

but he’s him and I’m me, and I’ll show him: I’ll be the left-wing, uncombed, 

feminist, cheerful, tender version of that swagger and knock him over!

I looked in the Kowboyz store mirror and saw me!

Fuck off John Wayne, though I love you anyway. 

I’ll wear your hat like I am. 

But then ... I saw that here I am in my sixties 

and there’s a hint of my mother 

in my eyes and my smile—oh no; uh oh. 

I look like my mother and I’m wearing a John Wayne cowboy hat, 

both sworn enemies, now what the hell do I do? Who am I now?

They were watching me, maybe I was beginning to look like a shoplifter 

with all this suspicious indecision and sudden identity ennui,

but I’d been arrested by all of that before

and it hit me again—NO, no way! There’s an end to that, right now!

And in that moment I looked like a buyer. 

I put on the hat, bought it with no guilty conscience

cut off the price tag and the past

and swaggered out under the cold winter sun, hot to trot!

House of Blues 

I was trying at the very least to show off, at the most attract attention, 

at the outside get some love from my mother and sister—

so me and my lover took them down the Sunset Strip for both holidays.

That year Christmas and Hanukkah fell in bed together (calendar-wise)

so mother being of one, sister the other, I knew I’d make it to family hero status

getting everybody together at the House of Blues Sunday Gospel Show. 

But no. 

Us up in the creaky balcony stage left, soul and gospel singing below, 

champagne and music glittering all over us, Miss Blue Diamond stepped forth

in footlights, said if anybody wanted to get up on stage and sing, come on!

I swallowed bubbles, skipped stairs, got on stage, into Blue Diamond’s arms 

(she saw me coming), who then released me covered in some kind of a RED

perfume, singing—I knew all the words, someone pushed me 

with the pink-feathered pump of her foot

into the footlights, and I threw my hat into the crowd.

Minutes later, back up in the balcony, happy as all get-out, 

my lover told me behind their backs that mother and sister, 

during all that, were turned away from the stage

facing away, they were not going to look at nor enjoy me. 

That almost made me cry when I went to the bathroom 

as mother and sister asked for the check, parking validation, 

and if anyone had found my hat, but I didn’t. (Well, of course I cried.) 

Instead, I smiled. I mean, really smiled. At the me in the mirror. 

Those two turned away from me in the House of Blues in Hollywood,

just like they turned away from me from everywhere,

wherever I was, anywhere, and in that house of blues I grew up in. 

But so what? 

Who needs an audience, parking, or any other kind of validation 

to get up on (your own) stage?

I was, at last, as always—happy as all get-out. (I got out!)

                                                          

 

Like a red light on the dashboard 

My mother told me I was nothing and hopeless 

every day for years, before I could even drive,

every time I walked through one of our run of rooms. 

In that slum I felt like nothing and nobody,  

being in those little rooms proved it to me

and I believed her, about me, all the way down.

But when I got out there in the fresh air

all those other people smiled at me, 

so I felt a lot of hope, and I smiled back, triple! 

But, when I got back home into the TV dinner air, 

she wiped it off me when she told me they 

didn’t know me like she did, no one else ever would. 

She did that intentionally,

did her best, like a plan

to keep me close, friendless. 

That woman fucked me over. 

Because, now …

sometimes, years and rooms later

I see a red light on my dashboard

and sometimes, I still believe her. 

So, now … 

rather than turn up the radio, so 

I can’t hear the grinding of my engine 

or brain

I get out of the car

and walk out of there.