Oh God, Christmas

Orion's belt is tightening
and the men of earth gasp
at the frightening onset of winter.

The very stars themselves constrict
as we constipate in our anxiety.
Christmas be damned,

There isn't time.

Christmas. A short season of hope, poinsettias and pines. Why not rather oak? Or dried, gathered grasses? But pine have we, and plastic, and relatives in tight places, dried, bound in pews, watched over by the Christmas shepherd of souls. He would gather us into his arms with all the others if we would let him. But wayward sheep am I, leading my little flock astray, away from the one, away from Jerusalem, away from Rome, away from home, away to stay, alone. A religion of smiles, a showing of teeth, a hiding of hearts, unable to think, or breath, or pray. Church is the last place I want to be when I don't want to be anywhere with anyone, and Christmas Eve is worst. My back is deep into spasm on the oaken bench and all I want is a soft chair and a cold Christmas lager. The bells compete with the tumpets, the trumpets compete with the cantor, the cantor competes with the congregants, the congregants compete with the organ, and the organ crushes speech as it thunders from above the seats and drowns the mindless sheeping bleats and bares me to the bones.

"Merry Christmas," yes, but all I want for Christmas is to smash the fine Italian creche and set fire to the poinsettias. I stare longingly at Christ upon the cross, nails through feet and hands, and I feel his pain in chatter's dross that blares like marching bands as we reminisce with those we see all throughout the year. Why? Why today? Why here? Why now? Polka-dot dress, white Ostrich-feather hat-lady snaps me from thought as she leads us in prayer: "Lord, get us the hell out of here..." We miss the gift of Father's post-sabbatical homily as he confesses his middle-age doubts and anxieties because Dana is choking Blaise with his new Christmas tie and little Chase enters into a violent passion all his own, grimacing, squirming, begging to leave the pew, and for what? For his father in the cry-room with Carter? For poop? For his own kindergarten sabbatical? Oh, take me with you young man, I will follow where you lead, from the blessed gathering, here on Christmas Eve. I am dancing on the white-hot stage of heresy while God is stuck inside of me like old shrapnel that's lodged too close to my heart. It cannot be removed...

DATELINE: HARARE- 12/25/08- Maybe I'll just go sit in the slush and wait for hypothermia. I try to picture the church, the beautiful church, all riddled with bullets, her colorful panes laying in shards on the wrecked floor under a gaping hole in the roof where a bomb finally let the light in. The pews are all gone, ripped out for firewood, as is the altar, the heavy wooden doors, and the cross of Christ himself. In their place- a void, a tragic, unnecessary void, sprinkled with the scattered coughs of those crying out to the God of Zimbabwe as cholera ravages the faithful, awaiting a savior. Oily black clouds of burning lectern blow throw the sanctuary like shadows at dusk. It could happen. It did happen. It will happen

That Look

It was cold and gray as an old witch's tit in the wake of an ice storm, and I was on my way to City Hall for death certificates. Off to my right the Hudson churned southward in angry, muddy slabs, jostling and pushing their way to the sea as a squad of imperial crows waited in ambush just ahead. From their position in the upper branches of a small oak they squawked and threatened with unusual vigor even for their kind. Normally skittish by nature, they held their tree like a lynch mob as I cautiously approached on the footpath. There, little more than an arms length from my face, a very large Red Tail hawk glared down at me with a ferocity and hatred that can only come from fresh kill and hot blood. Powerful talons pinning a pigeon to the branch on which he hulked, the hawk had torn open the dove's belly and was feasting on its innards. Harassed mercilessly by the crows just over his head, he now had to contend with a human intruder from below. He was not happy with my face. There we stood, frozen, facing each other for a long moment in a surreal snapshot of Troy life, when the predator suddenly flew off across the river with his slaughtered prey. The tormenting crows dove at him the entire way before finally turning back on the far shore, satisfied to have driven him off into Green Island.

And then it hit me:

I'd seen that same look just an hour before, at my work, at my very cubicle! Seated at my desk, sipping coffee peacefully in the contentedness of government employment in winter, a younger co-worker had stopped by in a state of extreme agitation. Looming over me as she leaned on the low wall of my cube, I looked up innocently as she detailed the acute anxiety she'd been experiencing in the aftermath of a new migraine medication she was taking: "And so, I'm like standing in line at the post office, waiting to mail a letter, when all of a sudden I just get this monster panic attack! The sweat is just like pouring off of me, ya know, and I feel like everyone's just looking at me, angry because I'm like not shuffling forward fast enough or something. It was soooo random! So I go home and tell Tim, and you know what he says? You know what he says? 'Ah, you just need a good nipple-tweaking.' A nipple-tweaking! Can you believe it???"

You must understand, Tim is large. He's burly, a man's man. He drinks mid-level European imports for his beer. He renovates things. My God, he snowplows. What danger could he possibly be in! I, on the other hand, am just a bureaucrat approaching fifty, with a choice to make, a horrible, terrible choice to make. I wanted to back up slowly, as I thought to do later that morning, thinking all the while, "Just let me keep my face...," but I can't. The casters on my ergonomic chair bump up against a miniature file cabinet behind me, and there is no escape. I can feel my insides turning all soft and vulnerable, like moist Christmas date balls. Nature gets the better of me though, and I laugh. Out loud.

And then the look. That fearsome, ancient visage of furrowed brow over designer frames, a look that can only come from the deep bowels of tired young motherhood and misunderstood hormones. The exact, same look the great feathered hunter would later stab me with. The huntress stared down at me for a long moment, unspeaking, and then flew off to her own lonely place on the far side of our pod cluster. As for me, I breathed a large sigh of relief before heading for the urinal, thinking how brave Tim must be, extraordinarily grateful that I didn't say what immediately came to mind at the moment of impact: "Yeah, that IS crass. I would never have suggested such a thing as nipple-tweaking. Most times a woman just needs a little whack on the ass..."

Ski Vengeance

I think the mountain doesn't like to be skied.

She looms ominous in the distance, filling the dark horizon, lights glowing in the clouds this fateful night. Condos and timeshares nestle into the crevices at her bottom as long trails carve up her midsection. Electric lanterns and boomed snow-makers lurk condescendingly over her God-given snows as wretched clouds of pizza-scent drift along her untamed currents, drowning balsam and fir. She takes her vengeance the only way she can, breaking heads and legs, freezing fingers and toes, holding back her snow.

No, the mountain does not like to be skied,
and that is why I will remain in the lodge.

Of Mice and Men

We listen to the industrious scratching of mouse feet all through November.

We fret, threaten, and plan.

We purchase mouse traps in December and begin to kill the little bastards
with relish, throughout the holidays and beyond. It never ends.

By February we've grown tired of the killing-
bulging eyes, bloody limbs, the sounds of desperate struggle from the pantry's bowels.

The furry gray ones have begun to look so cute, and pathetic under the cruel snappers.

March brings rapprochement, an unspoken agreement to stop the killing...

until December.

Thanksgiving

I'm at the Five Rivers Environmental Center the day after Thanksgiving. I tend to be less thankful at Thanksgiving than at most other times. Maybe it's because there's always so much- so much food, so much drink, so much company, so much noise, so much work, preparations, clean-up, and leftovers. There's just so much of everything. I believe I'm more thankful on most other Thursdays of the year, actually. I'm not complaining, it just is what it is. But to be seated here at a picnic table, under an open-air pavilion overlooking a small pond skimmed with fresh ice, with the morning sun at my back illuminating the waiting page, in 40 degree weather, with a gentle breeze from the west rustling the dry cat tails and milkweed pods- why, who could be more thankful than I am right now? Jen's at home but she's okay with me here. She knows I get crazy. I dreamt last night that I was rubbing turkey grease on her breasts. I woke up at 3:00 am hoping it was real. She said, "I'm sick to my stomach and just threw up." Yeah, I went back to sleep. The only Wild Turkey Trail I'll be exploring is the one here at Five Rivers...

"I come here to find myself. It is so easy to get lost in the world." John Burroughs
(from a sign hung in the pavilion)

Wedgie

I've had a wedgie all day. I don't get wedgies. Oh I used to get the intentional, pre-pubescent variety in the school hallways of my youth. Violent tuggings by cackling toughs with yellow teeth and bad breath. But naturally occuring accretions of friendly underwear between the lobes of my ass? Never. Notice though, that within days of posting to this blog about panties and ass-cracks, what? I get a day-long wedgie that I just can't shake! It's like elastic- I pluck it out, forget about it for a minute, and then before I know it I'm right back to that squeamish feeling of something trying to gain entrance to my bung hole. My hygiene is good, I think, so it's not a matter of adhesion. And I've worn these particular briefs before, plenty of times. They know me, and they know what I like, and what I don't. Could my ass-dimensions be changing since the last wearing? Am I becoming more woman-like? They're plagued by wedgies, aren't they, if I'm not mistaken? But guys? No way. Ain't right. The label says they're 95% cotton and 5% spandex. Can spandex reproduce? Maybe they're dividing and multiplying, like a zygote, pushing aside the more liberal, freedom-loving cotton to get to a heightened, invasive state of awareness? Maybe someday the whole thing will be spandex, and then I'll have to call them speedo's?

Past Tense

A thick gray blanket
Frayed at the edge
From too many washings
Or too much use.

Hard use.

It used to be white, once
Many years ago.

A beautiful, warm
White blanket.
Now it hangs heavy over the city
Sooty, and worn
Full of the threat of rain.

Who cares.

Drizzle on, gray cloud.
Let it rain
Hard and savage.

I've got a raincoat.

A Miracle?

How in God's name did I end up with a bra in my hand? Whose is it, and where did it come from? No kidding, why in the hell is it draped from the fingers of my right hand as I go to hang the dog's leash back up in the pantry? I just walked two freakin' miles in November's cold drear with my dog and now I'm home. I open the back door, take off my coat, walk to the pantry with the leash in my hand, go to hang it up, ... and there it is, a set of dainty pink cups hanging from the fingers of my right hand, from absolutely nowhere! They're not the dog's, and they're not MINE! So how did they get there??? I'm seriously beginning to think MIRACLE here. Craziest thing I've ever seen...

And now perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever seen: while walking up at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) on my lunch hour yesterday, on yet another cold, gray November day, a group of young men are out on the common, hawking $2 shish-kabobs. A fundraiser of some sort. As I approach I hear some good-natured arguing about adding heat to the fire. One of the students, in an ardent and passionate move, bends down to HUG his hibachi to prove the point! Remember- RPI is a top-notch engineering school. They take only the best of the best from around the world. And yet, one of them sees skewered, sizzling meat come hot off the grill. He exchanges it for money with passersby... then bends low to hug his hibachi to make a point???

Yes, he burned his youthful face, and everyone laughed. Well, not me. I'm 47. I just shook my head and kept walking.

You've Got to be Flexible

Life isn't always what you want it to be. It takes you to some pretty strange places sometimes, and quite unexpectedly. Take last night for instance. I was really looking forward to doing some overtime at work today. But then I get a call from my mother at about 8 P.M. telling me that my uncle's memorial service was this morning, and I'll be there, right? "Godd...yup, absolutely." "Did you forget?" "Yup, absolutely." So $38/hour goes out the window to attend the memorial for a beloved man (and I do mean that) whose survivors include a widow and an ex-widow, who happen to be sisters. I guess no one counted on THAT ever happening. See? And it made for an awkward service, with a widow whose ideas for the memorial differed greatly from those of his surviving children, who happen to be the widow's neices and nephews. See? Once upon a time we were all on the same page, and everyone knew their place. Today we stood by a small wet urn in the cold rain of late autumn, two camps huddled under wind-tossed umbrellas, as the fading notes of TAPS drifted off into the gray, alone.

And what about the crack of your daughter's boyfriend's ass? Did you ever think you'd end up THERE on a tired Friday night? I did, and quite by accident. His accident, actually. Last week he fell down his stairs, riding his coccyx all the way to the bottom. He gutted it out all through the week, but when he got to my house he felt that things were getting out of hand. Something was oozing out of his bottom. My wife being a nurse could not resist, even though we were snuggled deep into bed in our jammies, waiting for sleep to take us away. But life had other ideas, and life this night took us to the northern edge of the boy's ass crack. And a good thing it did, too. He was oozing pus from a small hole that had been bored into him as infectious ass pressure sought a fissure. Jennifer alternately squeezed the cheeks of his ass and then spread them, collecting great gobs of putrefaction on white cotton balls wedged into his crack. Over and over and over. Thought I was gonna puke, but she handled it as only a nurse can, with good humor, a tender touch, and some antibiotics we'd been holding in reserve since last year's trip to Aruba.

You'll be happy to know that the young man is doing better today. Sometimes life takes you to some good places too...

Peace Protest

Two roads intersected many years ago, making four corners and a small town, charming and intimate, called Delmar. They have two pizza shops there, a Chinese restaurant, an eclectic book store, a market of the regular kind (before we became behemoths), a trendy coffee shop, a wellness clinic for after we became behemoths, and a peace store, Who would have ever thought we'd need a place to purchase peace. But we do, don't we.

There's also an island, of sorts, a tiny nook of land in the midst of the intersection, with park benches and a big clock, so that everyone can tell the times. And the times they are still a changin', for at 5:00 P.M. on every Monday afternoon since 2002, sandwhiched between the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, a group calling itself Bethlehem Neighbors For Peace meets here, at the concrete island and its outlaying corners, to demonstrate against war. They're mostly older men in beards, and older women in sunglasses. Mostly. They hold signs of the liberal kind, some of them encouraging rush-hour traffic, such as it can be in Delmar, to honk for peace. There was a lot of honking, for Delmar is a liberal town, and not without money or education. All told there may have been fifty peace-loving, well-educated Delmar liberals there.

Opposing them was a smaller group of maybe ten stalwart individuals, led by a former Marine biker of the Nomad clan, apparently. He was youngish, in his thirties I would guess, and wore a digital desert cammo scarf pulled tightly over his head and tied in back of his neck, in the fashion of pirates. I immediately loved him, for he was sunbeaten and weathered. Gritty. He walked with a hard edge of menace, very confident despite the superior numbers arrayed against him. I would most certainly want him with me in a firefight. He brought some fresh-faced, pimply boys with him, college Republican types. I would most certainly NOT want them with me. There were also a few grim faced older men holding flags proudly, glaring across the street at a group of smiling liberals holding their own flags. The flags all looked the same to me but the groups seemed to differ over the fate of "the troops." While both sides held placards admonishing the rest of us to support the troops, one side of the street thought it best to bring them home while the other side wanted to leave them where they were. It all got very muddled, as reflected by the conservatives' signs: "REALLY Support the Troops" - "We Did Pack Our Bags!" - We are NOT BNFP!" The lone woman in the war group proudly held a sign that said "I married a soldier." Now, I've thought long and hard on these things and I still can't tell what these folks actually wanted!

So... sixty people milled about for one hour out of twenty-four, one day out of seven, on a cute but insignificant corner in a politically insignificant town, with most everyone taking credit for the same-sounding car horns, all splashed about with the same Stars and Stripes cologne, probably enjoying the same pizza afterwards.... and this is a threat to whom? We know it's not stopped any wars, and we also know it probably hasn't started any new ones. So what is it?

Well, to a curious outsider, it looks a lot like group masturbation: feels good, but no reproduction.

I sipped my boutique coffee silently, watching all, and then walked slowly back to my car, whistling the Star Spangled Banner.

The War of the Panties

We argued about the panties. A scalding, vicious little engagement in the crosshairs of the Crossgates Mall. It had been simmering for some time by the time we got there, though when we got there we were happy. We shopped for jewelry armoires at J.C. Penny's. I even skipped overtime to be there, and it seemed a wise choice. At first.

It was I who remembered that we hadn't remembered them, so we drove back to where we'd started so happily just an hour before, went into the very same entrance, but everything looks different when you're hunting for panties, especially freebies. It was the wrong entrance, but that's okay. It won't hurt. We'll just take our time and stroll till we get there, arm in arm; foreplay. No rush, they're giving them away, for god's sake! But I tried one too many times to steer her my way- NO! She wriggles out from under my arm, and back to the car we go, for a closer, more appropriate entrance. But by now it was busy, and there was a misunderstanding. I'll let you out here, by the doors, and you meet me down there. Or so I thought. Parking far down the row I did what I always do when she gets mad at me while I wait for her panties: I read. It was a book about the war.

Twenty minutes went by. Can panties take so long? Surely not. Maybe she can't find me. Maybe she's wandering the aisles of cars even now, panties dangling from her hands, searching fruitlessly for me. I know- I'll give her a better target. I'll get out of the car and read on the back bumper, so she can see me. But I look up and there she stands, one hundred yards away, alone and forlorn. She hasn't moved. She has no panties, but I can see that she's packing an indelicate load of fierce anger, all of it directed at me. You see, I'd remembered the forgotten panties the first time, but forgot that I needed to be there with her to claim the prizes, to hand in that second postcard, which is silly, because surely they must know I won't be wearing them. It's beginning to look like I'll never see them again, either, these hastily grabbed undergarments. She tries to hand one to me as we queue, but I refuse with all the force I can muster from my suddenly queasy stomach: "I'm not holding them!" I do wait in line, however, the only man there but for the disinterested youth who processes our transaction. I can't help but wonder: does he wonder what she'll look like in them? I would.

We skulk back to the car in great silence. She takes the elevator, I take the stairs. I arrive before her and wait patiently, hoping that when the doors open she'll be gone, or at least changed. No luck. One would think that free panties would buy an awful lot of good will, but no. Not today. We argue rabidly in the car as I careen across the parking lot, each of us unloading our pent up hostility until finally I scream, and she rubs her forehead. "Take me home. I have a headache." That ends the conversation, such as it is. She probably puts the panties in the drawer.

We're going out with friends tonight. Maybe she'll put them on?

Maybe. But I damn sure won't ever find out...

The Blank Page

The Blank Page

The blank page, world waiting to be born, anew.
But different?
Wouldn’t you
Be different, given the chance?
Lust, allure, musk, romance
Askew?

September’s sun would shine as bright, no doubt
But rain
To dampen your bright redoubt,
Pain to feed the
Spotted brown trout in your streams,
Or fishless dreams would they be?

Would bulldozers mar your gentle hills
With swaths broad,
Reshape the land,
Add value with dirt fills here
Rather than there?
And

“beep beep beep”

In their plunder
Keeping us clear as they tear asunder
Clanking treads like dirty thunder

“beep beep beep.”

God as Author
Author as God

It does indeed make you wonder…