Quietly, I hang the down-puffed jacket

of my man

as if it were a son’s

on a cedar hanger

in the closet in the hall.

The era of the old white male is over.

We now tell the stories and piece the dreams.

Those on the sidelines know the most integral things.

I heard my mom cry mommy today.

Read it all; this is for her.

She described it as only daughters can.

Thin hands as blood drains away;

the sound of death on lips.

She knew, and yet it comes.

The dawn, I’d hope to think,

maybe we feel it as stitches:

It’s woven together in our sides,

It’s cloth or some such pulling thing,

Some corset of pain and sorrow; it pulls us together

As we fall apart.

Mi madre, maman, mommy:

How can you leave me

Does it all seem to sink?

Oh mom, my mom, my mother;

How can I act but those cubs over bodies

Push wake up push come back push help..!

My mother; it’s you- I grieve, but you grieve it all.

I wish so much I could make it all better;

I’m good at fantasies; I could help there.

But let’s not.

You’re hurting; no one can take that away.

No one else will write it or feel it but you.

It’s no one’s but yours.

I’m unsure how to feel this sort of pain anymore.

Maybe the anti-depressants have done good work and paid their rent in my satisfied mind.

I’m still on a comfortable walk from Where I’ve Been to Where I’m Going,

but today I sit on a fence between worlds.

I see her lay on the emergency room bed; my dear friend, so unlike herself.

I know what she’ll say before she says it.

I know the fears and dead ends she runs into in her mind.

But I can only sit on the fence and watch angry doctors and nurses, sick of such disease and malcontent, and push and lift, and stay then leave.

I come somehow, slowly alive on the fear; this hospital fear, it bubbles like the Tar Pits and no one thinks too hard about it except those who can feel the dull ache and constant itch that circulates a disease like this.

I know the truth, so I say it in every way. I cry, I hold back. I am equal parts nagging and commonplace; I’m the prop in this room. And I’m okay with that.

I know the end. I’ve seen it.

These ends? They’re always around the corner for me, too.

But now I watch her bitten fingers clamp around me and clamor for the wrong kind of love; the right kind we in the room give to her is still unheard.

I miss her. I miss her so very much. She isn’t there; I need to retreat to save myself. To save all the ones who have sat on the fence for me. To those who listened to my excuses and little thoughts. I can only sit and hold her hand and tell her again and again how she is loved; I don’t want her to die. She says she doesn’t want to, either.

But soon she is discharged and says her insides are failing. And we have that look I’ve given to others. When you live so entwined with your end, it’s only familiar. The unknown under our feet, swinging on the fence.

Watching the Ferris Wheel. We could have watched from above.

But here is where we are now. The fence is where I leave them, somewhere between floor one and two of the parking lot of Kaiser Permanente off Venice. Somewhere there.

For every ounce of hurt I have faced, he offered a sea of love and gratitude. I have now paid attention to how our connection shaped me. In its purest sense, I felt awakened, more compassionate, and purely at my truest self.

Does time go by this fast

I am a thing, human – strange,

My body is a thousand waving motions.

A million different particles that shift and work and move.

I undulate – I feel.

I weep, I breathe.

I’m constantly at work, all the tiny pieces of me.

I remember: a computer.

I smell, I dream.

I grow hair without asking to, and make up my own coloring.

I’ve been a tool of breathlessness, I’ve lived in others’ dreams;

But I’m a human, gross, alone –

moving through it all.

Tattooed by life and unexpectant,

amazing and alone, it seems.

One hot summer I went to Dana Hall summer camp something or other.

Lots of Lights-off and Pottery and Indoor Crafts.

With someone playing a guitar in what seemed to me a Music “Pit”: A Tiny Orpheum

or some such;

with handfuls of little girls

just being taught

the chorus to:

You Can’t Always Get What You Want.

I remember it like yesterday.

A girl named Sarah in white pants that got so dirty from throwing clay and the day;

no big Teachers;

little Kate covered in paint;

No AC and smocks still on.

It reverberated on white walls– and some young man

told us what to sing.

And our knees all pointed towards one anothers’; and there was a ceiling fan so high

you couldn’t hear it.

And it was the time for naps, the time of noon, the time Older People slipped away.

It smelled of chalk and paint and heat and a bit of clay from earlier.

And that young guy; he didn’t smile, he just played a chord and

told us about this Song and played it:

was it what he knew? last generation’s Wonderwall?

Another fan purred somewhere;

The amphitheater was small.

We were in a cone

of echo and future

and all we ever had to say

was

‘You can’t always get

what you want.’

you can’t always get what you want.

YOU CAN’T always get what you WANT.

You can’t ALWAYS get what you want.

you Can’t always get what You Want…

you Can’t always get what you want.

you can’t ever get what you want.

You can’t always get what you want –

But if you try sometimes..

“..we’ve gotta keep moving on

so grateful for the moments..”

i’m stuck like thunder

on an old tape recorder.

all the power; all the purpose gone.

recorded as a rumbling

an echo

an afterthought.

what are You then

when you’re unaware your might

is fleeting

and just a depression

on cellophane;

recorded as background noise

on someone else’s tape of life.