Category: Uncategorized

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“The people in the back seat were speechless. In fact they were afraid to complain: God knew what Dean would do, they thought, if they should ever complain. He balled right across the desert in this manner, demonstrating various ways of how not to drive, how his father used to drive jalopies, how great drivers made curves, how bad drivers hove over too far in the beginning and had to scramble at the curve’s end, and so on. It was a hot, sunny afternoon. Reno, Battle Mountain, Elko, all the towns along the Nevada road shot by one after another, and at dusk we were in the Salt Lake flats, twice showing, above and below the curve of the earth, one clear, one dim. I told Dean that the thing that bound us all together in this world was invisible, and to prove it pointed to long lines of telephone poles that curved off out of sight over the bend of a hundred miles of salt. His floppy bandage, all dirty now, shuddered in the air, his face was a light. ‘Oh yes, man, dear God, yes, yes!'”

( J a c k K e r o u a c • O n t h e R o a d )

Slow.

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I still feel like I did yesterday,
and the day before,
and years before that.
I’ve been searching for all these things,
all this time,
looking for tangibles and feelings that
I really, really am hoping exist.
But this place, it can make you so many things —
So happy, so tired, so low, and confined…
It’s the balance we seek and the tedium we find
Defined as
“why not”, where not, no;
We run to relieve, and relieve to
let go
Slow.
Slow.
Slow.

Tuneybell & Cruella

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TUNEYBELL AND CRUELLA PLAYED FAIR with the occasional tangle. They lived side by side, bed to bed, one closet all the same. The same Barbies, emanated from the same genes, eating from the same cauldron of macaroni and cheese. Their drawings hung parallel on the fridge, their hairs clung to the same bathroom sink. They rolled together—to the pool, the tee ball games, the Sunday service, in the back of the Plymouth Voyager. They prayed the same rosary with Marcella, shared hand me up’s and down’s, rainbow coveralls and plaid jumpers, squished Daddy Long Legs in the yard, bolted through the same sprinkler spray in hot July, chalked up the same sidewalks. Together they played Peter Pan, made mud pies, built forts, climbed evergreens, sold lemonade. Their tenor was boyish, unwieldy, quiet, chummy bedlam. It was them, like twins, though never much of a muchness; each with a distinct nature but nevertheless, as Tuneybell, size 8, would lank with her twigs, a sturdy Cruella, size 10, sulked not far beside. Together they lived, capered, and snored behind the same door, the one that said, mutually, ‘NO BOYS ALLOWED.’ And they meant it.
When all was fair and resolved, crying concluded, words said, and trees climbed, it was the two of them, Tuneybell and Cruella, soaking in the same stinky bathwater at the end of a fruitful day, rinsing themselves of it all.

Home Sweet No More

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Number 19

The minivan outpours,

Mom, Dad, three, four, five, six, seven

A catholic cluster of curls and frowns

Big as the little house

Little as a house for two.

This house loves,

Your scents, your screams, your Legos

Watermelons and overflowing closets

Drying the grass, plugging the toilet

Squishing into the breakfast nook.

With rooms filled,

Boys with boys, girls and toys deluge

Makeshift space and attic dwelling

Where to grow? Where to play?

Nineteen is brimming.

The choice was none,

Boxes filled and packed bags escaped

Goodbye to the family 19 raised

A catholic cluster of curls and frowns

Outpouring elsewhere.

(Originally posted on 11 Nov 2008.)

19 Shirley Court, No. 9 Crabapple Tree

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IT WAS ROOTED IN THE MOST COINCIDENTAL OF PLACES, the old crabapple tree that jutted from the ground just beyond the back porch. The tree’s burgeoning branches, thick with fruit, plunged to the patio with the breeze as the tiny apples created a land mine of prospective mess. The sappy, textured bark had segued to gray, skin that had seen decades pass preserving the tree’s entrails.

A horizontal plank fastened near the base suggested inhabitants, and several others above confirmed, the numerous punctures in the wood coinciding with frequent repositioning of each step. Branches — one on the left, the other on the right — served as buttresses, their disposition summoning climbers to curl an arm around each before pushing off from the loftiest step. With a quick thrust, one’s weight was unfurled upon the rickety floor of 19 Shirley Court, No. 9 Crabapple Tree.

Salvaged shreds of lumber from deconstructed fences formed an encasement barely big enough for two, with gaping holes that had the potential of doors or windows, though their intention was neither. Rusty nails and screws poked out of every plank, gesticulating a child’s inability to force them any further into the wood. Crooked coats of peeling lime green and periwinkle paint scoured the structure, colors chosen for their boisterous and welcoming nature that best suited the wood they concealed.

A discolored plastic roof suspended overhead, the leftovers of the old porch awning. It was a high rise, with a second, and third story, each consisting only of a petty board to sit on after a laboring afternoon among the branches. The leaves gave way to a cooling shade in gratitude for a job well done; scraps melded into a beautiful eyesore of decrepit wood and a child’s imagination, three stories high and growing…

…and life was well-constructed.