I Scare the Dead...Happy Halloween

I Scare the Dead

Back in the day when kids were kids

And we never saw the hate

We could walk for miles all night long

For four bags of chocolate

Big grocery store bags for sure

No danger and nicely cute

I remember the day it changed

Razors appeared in the fruit

The crazy old lady down the block

Cut little girls’ hair, the Bitch

But now, at last, I don’t need wigs

To look like an aged witch

I’m hunchbacked from MS and age

And terrify the dead men

Who haunt Facebook and the chat rooms

Looking for a younger hen

And if the ghosts and goblins come

I know to just tell them “Boo!”

They’ll run away from my candy door

And never again haunt Sue

Hollow Connections

Hollow connections, ringing through my eyes

Make the circuit with trembling fingertips.

No Prince Charming  No Damsel in Distress.

Just hordes of peasant beggars needing food.

If I see the same poster one more time….

I will Like it and not type any words.

You have been trampled and still don’t know it

I keep moving and leave you in the dust.

You can’t take stop looking at the Princess

And will die alone, dreaming of her smile.

The only song I have is from You Tube

With barely twenty three derisive hits.

I want to touch warmth and skin, not plastic.

I need the challenge of a strangers’ eyes.

Give me people fresh off the nine to five

With children and hobbies and screw the art.

I don’t want to see representations of

Silken flower petals and musky fur.

I want the real things, before they are gone.

Free, Blind and Limping Verse

Everything is tucked in place

And my dinghy is securely docked.

 

All that’s left is clean and rearrange

And nobody cares when it’s done.

 

I found an abandoned book

On English Literature in the basement.

 

Will read it if I ever remember

Where I put the damned thing.

 

The Navajo Spirit Guide told me

“Now….before it’s too late.”

 

I should have read that yesterday

Because now it’s hopelessly gone.

 

We’re here because we’re here

Because we’re here. Because we’re here.

 

Truer words were never spoken.

Sonnet VI

Sonnet VI

I spent my teenage years locked in my room

And did the same with all the men I loved.

I now face you alone outside the tomb.

As crippled, aging, weakened, and ungloved.

I have no adversary in this game,

Except myself and this shyer nature.

Dragging myself into minor small fame

Facing my life, trying not to say ‘grrrr.’

But that I am well, fat and once more writing

Proves that I have a will of pure hard steel.

I need be outside in the sun’s lighting.

Ready to hurt, think and to break the seal.

Of a life lost behind locked and closed doors.

And laugh as my newly freed spirit soars.

I Can Have My Bitchy Moments

Up to my pupik* with poems on sex

Drowning in sweat and hot lubricants.

Call me old fashioned, but I must demur

No one is hot to get into my pants.

All I can think as you rave about love

Somebody’s going to get hurt real bad.

And I’m not talking about the position

Or falling out of that harness doodad.

When you blow air on it, it will cool down

And in front of an audience? Come on!

Maybe it’s the American in me

Who doesn’t talk about who’s come and gone.

Twenty inches on inches and itches

Starts sounding a little too Show Bizzy.

Been there and done that, gotten all the shots

Juggled male models into a tizzy.

Strangely enough, only one thing haunts me

Holding the hand of the man I loved most.

The orgasms and ejaculations

Are not the things of which I want to boast.

And sitting in my rocking office chair

An old lady logged again onto Facebook.

Don’t judge your writings by my jealousy.

If you need write it, I’m happy to look.

*A Yiddish word meaning lady parts.

Poem, October 20, 2011

Band Aids, butter and vanilla

The high point of my day.

Forgot about the glass cleaner.

God damn me!

You cannot believe

What vanilla costs.

The rare and exotic bark

Of something.

It is seldom that I receive mail

All the bills are paid on line

Spell check rejects the word

“Seldomly.”

The trees are turning orange under

A blue sky with white clouds.

The smell of the air whispers

“California.”

I have to start thinking about

The play we’re reading next week

And forget about the inspiration

As he fades.

When I clean my apartment

For the seven actors arriving soon.

You have to remember the best way

Is move things.

You’d be surprised what’s hiding

Behind the couch or under the table.

I try to do the same thing with my writing:

Bare my soul.

Living in the Moment, no Fantasizing Allowed

It’s taken me 62 years to figure out that fantasizing is fatal. It kills your relationships and friendships. It distracts you from your career and your housekeeping. Everything in the daydream is a version of perfection. I say it’s a version of perfection because you lose every concept of what real and attainable perfection may be. I know. I started daydreaming at the age of four when I realized that I was being raised by lunatics. Don’t get me wrong, they had the best intentions but they had absolutely no idea how babies were made and thus ended up with two, which they were incapable of handling. The insanity got really bad when Mom was forced to go to work. She blamed my father for not providing enough but she was very clear that we cost too much money to feed and clothe. So I started dreaming about Roy Rogers rescuing me. Then Zorro and the Monkees. I only came out of my dream state when my Mother told me that I was crazy and the only future I had was as her caretaker, so I transferred to the farthest State College available. But I fantasized and married a man who didn’t love me and was probably Schizophrenic. I left college when they cancelled my major and started taking any job to take money and support the husband who, surprise, was not able to support two of us, just like my Father. Back on the East Coast, I left him and said “yes” to any man who asked for sex because I was daydreaming and fantasizing. I ended up in another live-in relationship with a man who did not love me and was also probably Schizophrenic. He ended up saving every can, box and bottle he ever used and finally the junk moved me out of the house and into relationships with married men and celibates which were never consummated or fulfilling. This pattern continued until lately, when I found myself fantasizing about a man who was…wait for it…destroying everything in HIS life by fantasizing. Relationships. Career. Future...because he fantasizes about the ideal woman, who is younger and prettier and naughtier than I could ever be even if I wasn’t sixty-two years old. I love you, Kid, but I don’t want to be your type because your type uses, abuses, and abandons you and I love you too much for that.

SO, ENOUGH!!!!!!! I put many of the fantasies on paper as plays, but it takes reality to get a play produced in this economy and I am running out of time. I have gotten my life under control and I am going to get this apartment under control and keep this disease under control. I’m old and fat. Perhaps that is a blessing because there is no fantasy that can come true now. Prince Charming would need a Clydesdale to carry me off and he probably doesn’t have a job to pay for a castle.

What’s a Chick Got to do to Get Service in This Joint? Canto 11

CANTO 11  October 16, 2011

I don’t know why I’ve been so reluctant to write about Philadelphia.

That’s where I started getting theatrical experience.

I took important classes in playwriting at the Philadelphia Company.

I directly, badly, a show at Philadelphia Company.

We finally moved out of our friends’ apartment on the Main Line

We rented a house in the Greater, Scary, Northeast

But had no furniture and after letting a sink overflow, were thrown out.

We found a place on Spruce Street with a little bit more furniture

Ethan found a job in a book store

And I went to work for the Institute for the Study of Civic Values

It was basically just a place to get grand money to study…civic values?

But it was enough income for me to pay the first month’s rent

On an apartment for E. and to move him out.

He tried deciding to love me just before this happened

But it was too late

So I had that big, empty apartment all to myself

I couldn’t afford it. I have absolutely no idea how I met

The woman who would be my roommate on South Street.

But there I was in the first floor bedroom of a two story apartment

In a neighborhood that had just started to gentrify

There were still winos and prostitutes and Head shops

It was wonderful and magical.

Unfortunately, it was also the place where I met my

Second Schizophrenic. But I didn’t know that at the time.

I first had a wonderful affair with a man who is now my oldest friend

And while we were not in love, he was a great teacher sexually.

We began cheating on each other on almost the same day

And were able to laugh when we said goodbye and remained friends.

The man I cheated with was genuinely psychotic, but I didn’t know

I tried to please him but I refused to cheat on him even as he cheated on me

Frank, the friend from Atlantic City hated him

But that’s a story for the next installment

And this one was hard enough.

I Wake To Find Myself in a Strange Apartment

I wake to find myself in a strange apartment

Full of my possessions.

I wake in panic over all my life’s problems

And can’t remember one.

I make a list of everything that needs doing

And just like that, it’s done.

The World is starting a brand new revolution

I am too weak to join.

I’m too fat and old to lose myself in romance

Addiction has lost steam.

The leaves are falling now, and the night air is chill

Why have I survived it?

Or is there a limit to the thrills Life can have?

No more saviors.

I haven’t got the strength to race for fame’s rewards

And face it, out of time.

Is that the secret connection that we share?

That we never did relax

But fought when we should have been carelessly laughing

Each day was life or death.

There is an art to being retired at last

Using all that free time

For more than “Look at me!” in Twitter and Facebook.

And being of some use.

One Free Verse and One New Sonnet

1. Two Beats

Noise in

My head

I can’t

I won’t

Nothing

To do.

Act two

I wrote

Not safe

Your life

Is yours

Too far

To help

Let go

Let God

I care

Too much

You don’t

Hear me

Old voices

Dead air

Bury

The dead

Move on.

2. Sonnet V.

The question has turned from how to why we

Bother to survive to breathe one more day.

There will be no house or children for me,

And the career has been tossed far away.

Existing to buy and use medicines,

To demand that doctors extend my life

Through testing and treating and vitamins.

I’m nobody’s mother and no one’s wife.

And yet here I am, living on the dole,

Writing sonnets to justify being,

Trying to ignore Old Age’s high toll,

The MS challenge of unplanned peeing.

I hope I just gave you a tiny laugh.

And found a way to pass an hour’s half.

Bad Sonnet Theater Presents A Foul and Rotten Mood

You know you’re in a foul and rotten mood

When you respond to Rumi with, “Bite me.”

Look around at our reality, Dude.

Times I think you’re happy just to spite me.

An orgasm ain’t going to pay the bills.

And the economy says “no” to dreams.

We rant and we march while the rich man chills.

Echo is the sole result of our screams.

But if we don’t choose death, then we must live.

And stop daydreaming of wine and of roses.

Forget our income and learn how to give.

Appreciate what’s under our noses.

What did Willie say about “petty pace”?

Maybe it’s time to slow down and to breathe.

And stop trying to win the human race.

And stop letting our anger boil and seethe.

And stop judging ourselves and finding fault.

Enjoying life before it reaches “halt.”

Why We Call Them Laugh Lines

Skin tags and cellulite. Little brown spots.

My days as a sex bomb are over.

 

And if I diet down to fighting weight,

The loose skin would lose you, lover.

 

I wish the inspiring words were true,

And the brain and Art reign supreme.

 

But no matter how old and drab men are,

They need to fulfill their wet dream.

 

She is young and firm with tits out to there

Never a Grandma with a limp.

 

Fulfilling your fantasies with a sigh

Sans the cane that screams “she’s a gimp.”

 

So, enjoy the hordes of extra women.

I pray that you find your honey.

 

Bring your witty wisdom but most of all,

Don’t forget to bring your money.

I'm Finding it Difficult to Write These Days

I’m finding it difficult to write these days. I’m frightened and angry at what’s going on in the world. I feel inadequate and disenfranchised. To get out from under the heels of the banks and corporations is going to take a huge and horrible effort that the comfortable don’t want to join in. I’m afraid that they will stand back and do nothing if the police and armies try to halt the voices of dissent. I hate to see that racism is alive and thriving and yet the other side seems not to know that they are racist. There is no honesty about it, which makes it slippery and hard to catch and kill.

Right now I really don’t care about anyone’s sexual pleasure, not even mine. Love, it turns out, does not cure everything and is not being embraced by vast numbers in the world. Frankly, I am tired of hearing every wet and sweaty detail of someone’s sex life which will turn to bitter odes of regret and anger when sweetie pie moves on to the next conquest.

Yes, I have my ducks in a row and I’m comfortable, but I never thought that in my retirement years that I would be considered an enemy who deserves any suffering that comes my way, but less so because I’m white. Gee, thanks, you Nazi, Ku Klux Klan reject. I want to enjoy my Golden Years, but that’s not going to happen when I am surrounded by the vultures of the corporate world, trying to think of every possible way to grab my last nickel and leave me in their wake.

It just seems indulgent to write about the personal and not about the revolution or the grief and anger that is feeding it. I thought that I would be gazing at my own naval and coming up with a song for all the abandoned women of America, whining about some man or men, but now, all I can think about is the children and the lost futures they are facing and I have to get my head out of my crotch for once.

Which is why I’m not writing much these days.

Two Poems and An Essay

I

Who gives a good flying shit

If you get laid or I am loved

In this God-damned mess of a world?

Now, there are children starving

Homelessness and illness rampant

The climate is becoming Hell.

We cannot be distracted

There is no more time to prepare

Lust and dependency must wait.

And if we’re both too old now

To have our demands satisfied

There’s a war that we have to win.

If future generations

Are ever going to have the chance

To have the joys we threw away.

II

Helpless

To save the world

And of no use

To you

And yet

Both entities

Are surviving

Somehow

III

Playwriting is a three dimensional art, but so is cooking or designing a building. The other thing that they have in common is that they expensive and will never be the same again. How do we adjust? Are we able to return to telling a tale by the firelight and enrapturing a hungry crowd? Are we able to make a simple meal from basic foods that is healthy and will feed a thousand? Is that the true metaphor of Jesus and the fish and wine? And can we learn to build a clean and sturdy house that has only the room we need, with the most efficient storage that any man can afford? That is powered by the wind and moved by the sun. If we can’t do any of these things, then our Civilization may actually be doomed.