would that be blasphem-be?

(is there a highest form of love?)
...she awoke to call me a
classical greek tao-rist!
that i fucked God in the mouth and i with my new headdress danced like conception.
i am the south wind. i am moving through you.
that is until i grew old as shadow, as a prayer of protection waltzing to the e.a.r.t.h.
bowing as a petition, limbs in the dirt.
And on the hour i sang songs i believed,
i slept and knew my new life had been a dream
every ex-seamstress followed me there and
fashioned me new existential caps
(THAT is why you keep your little lovers in your lap.)
i've put out your future fire with my tears.
And i was so happy sappy that i
tried out her math. tourists, heads of a feather with
all of the calculus and conics
and the knowledge of a futurist
made of machineries, we walked and embodied seas of melting topography.
our corpses were sworn to
youth and our warm witnesses left our centers in a burst, during the nomenclature
of an effigy.
i have two faces, a real trickster,
are you brave enough, want to lie with me?
i count your worth in bravery
in terms of the number of scars opposed to your burns.

01.04

Pardon me, anthro-apology,
you are the dirty culture growing on the inside of my mouth (!!)
[that which is now, is me rubbing my slippery gum against the blank space, rolling the back of my lips over your notion and wincing my face.]
and like an airplane turbine swallowing,hard the wind
blow through me like lungs or a schizophrenic on the street who shouts for you to free your sin!
"Hey, humanity the end is NEAR."
Listen to the man, who speaks of satellite performed laser lobotomies,
he has multiples degrees and a Ph.D and he is trying to help your witness be free and he watched me

float, toes pointed through the aisles and I saw the end. It looked like a wall...made of two way glass.
and in terms of reincarnation I felt my recyclable self pass,
away. I left for an aeon.

When I woke I was gray crushed velvet, with balloons on my head and pumps on my feet.
Never had never smelled so much like oranges.
I had seen your nebula and starstruck I was
forever and ever
I was feeling your bandwidth-frequency
inside of me.

You are my interesting words. You grow out of my belly and talk about a libertarian brick builder's simplicity. Like
chickens and sons.
I made a pie for you today and baked it from scratches of etchings of the shape of nothings
and we gave it a name.
We called it a Fond Memory and ate every last bite.

Showers

A Short Preface:

Early mornings in the cold and dark months are dictated by endless refills of piping hot coffee with sweet and low to go with canned peaches, toast and boysenberry jam to offset the morning’s many medications. Once they have full bellies all of the old ladies in my residence will fall back soundlessly in their chairs and wheelchairs to rest. In one’s golden years habit dictates everything; by a 90^th birthday most loved ones have died or become annoyed with age and all that comes with it. Retired for more than 30 years, the daily routine is all that can get someone out of bed in the morning, hoping that maybe, some morning after the passing of today they won’t have to get up, any morning, ever again. Seven thirty is a wake up call, nine is breakfast and unless it’s a person’s shower day, by ten they are sound asleep again.

(There were mornings where I would shower Helga and the world was losing its light.)

Helga Rube was, is and will be until-death-does-she-part, my Thursday morning shower.

I wait in the doorway of the white tile bathroom and watch her get undressed. She does so with the utmost care. Until recently, she would water-color likenesses of her most likeness worthy memories once a week. The rose petal still-lives would take her all afternoon, and fighting sleep she would wrench her eyes alert until the brushstrokes were complete. Her eyesight has since faded, though it’s painful to know her memories are clearer than she can now render them.

Her delicate hands now remove the strands from her shoulders of her off-white lace undershirt. The shirt has many holes in it, and through the backside you can see “Rube,” written black in childlike handwriting. Sometimes on Thursday mornings she will smile her off-white toothy smile and say “I think I need new undershirt, but hopefully Jesus will remember me soon and I won’t need one.” She then giggles wildly and I smile back at her while she falls onto the off-white plastic seat of the toilet. I usually take this opportunity of her off-balance laughs to slip off her slippers and socks. I always reply “Jesus is going to be here, he’s going to be here soon.” When she is reminded of her sweet savior, her eyes grow the width of her face, she looks blankly for miles and drawls “Oh, yes…yes he is.”

When finally Helga stands up she is less than five feet tall. Never tall in her day she is even more shrunken now. Her shoulders have collapsed and stolen inches from her. I touch her back with my right hand, and hold her right hand with my left. I gently lead the few slippery steps from the toilet seat to the seat in the shower. Her skin feels as soft ‘neath my fingertips as it does dry and cracked. Her face is always rosy with big smiles, especially when her daughters visit, but her body is as white as the surrounding bathroom tiles. She is mapped out with tiny vein-writings; they are scribbled all over her body. I never doubt that they are sacred verses from the bible written in God’s language noting important events that have taken place in Helga’s life. Someday, I hope to take photographs of them and decipher the red words. Maybe the lyrics on her back will say when Jesus is coming for her, and I can tell her so she can write it, in childlike handwriting on one of her calendar squares.

The shower head is a white bulb attached to a slinky white hose on the white tiled wall. It is as fickle as I, or I bet even Helga was as a girl. I say this because often when I bend in her ear to tell her I must wait for the water to warm up, she’ll laugh again and say “I used play kissing games with boys,” matter-of-factly.

I tell her “But you went to church!”

“Oh but we didn’t do anything bad,” she’ll reassure me.

I give Helga a hot pink wash cloth to cover her eyes with. When the water is done coughing up cold and hot spurts, I bring the coursing droplets to Helga’s feet. She wiggles her toes and laughs again. As I bring the water up the length of her body, shins to knees, to belly, she dances a little in her seat. Once I have reached her back with the warm water she lets out a relieved “Awwwwwww,” and sighs a deep sigh.

At this point, when I first started the Thursday shower routine, I felt as though I was violating this pious woman. She rocks back and forth in her chair slightly and repeats “That feels good, mmm yeah that feels good,” as I wash her. Orgasmic amounts of enjoyment flow out from her small wrinkled body as I wash away the week’s soil. The shower head in my hand can hardly keep up the stream of water to match the stream of vividly out-flowing happiness from Helga. I used to think thoughts like ‘When she was a wife and not a widower is this what she sounded like when she made love? Am I hearing faint recollections of bedroom encounters of 40 years ago?’ I would try and imagine her delicately hanging skin tighten up around her body. She was a firm little woman with perky breasts and a flat belly. Her husband was tall and dark haired and if I thought hard enough I could see the beads of sweat collecting on his brow as she wildly laughed and moved against him saying “Oh, yeah that feels good, mm yeah that feels good.” After months of Thursdays, I have matured in that I can happily give pleasure to her with the shower without feeling awkwardly sexual anymore.

When the house water plays jokes on us, Helga will yell “Too hot!” or “Too cold!” as I hurriedly fiddle with the lever to make the temperature comfortable again. When I do she lets me know, “Mm, that’s better. Yeah.”

I wash her hair as gently as I can. Her hair is whiter that the tiles in the bathroom. It is without pigment, nearly glowing. This is why I know, when Jesus does remember her, she will sprout pure white wings.

Helga cuts her own perfect bob. It looks like a French tress, especially when she wears her beret out to the library. Once recently, she trimmed her bangs; she was in the bathroom for almost an hour when she came out angrily and told me “They just kept getting shorter.” Even less than a quarter inch long, I still thought they framed her round face nicely. Still half angry she let herself chuckle and said “Oh hooey, it grows,” and allowed her walker lead her to her room as she trotted behind it.

I wash her pure white hair gently because I know she appreciates gentleness. My dog Truk that accompanies me to work will bark sharply at anyone who enters the front door. Helga’s shoulders jump, her gray eyeballs pop a little and she scurries off to her room for quiet. I believe if Truk only growled under his breath, she would approve and stay in her seat on the green sofa instead of departing. She is often the first one up in the morning and sits on the end of the couch nearest the window. She lays back and reads her church bulletin “Our Daily Bread,” and if she stays still, Truk will let himself up on the couch next to her. She laughs and says “Aren’t you cute?” and leans against him. I’m always relieved she forgives his loud guard-dog barks.

When all the white suds have made ribbons upon the white bathroom tiles, I bend down again and tell Helga in her ear “I’m turning the water off now.” She nods approvingly back. I pull out two over-sized hot pink towels wrapping one around her shoulders and one over her legs. She is swimming in a sea of hot pink. Every Thursday she pulls the towel over her head and pulls it back quickly whispering “Peekaboo…” and smiles. I kneel at her feet and dry them off reverently. As I slip on her slippers she will always reach one’“raisined’ hand down and touch my shoulder. She asks “Are you in love?”

The question, even though I know its coming fills me with butterflies.

Instead of saying it, I nod. Yes.

She smiles “I was in love; my husband was tall, we met in Missouri. I dream about dancing with him. He went off to war and when he came back *POP* came a baby! And then it happened twice more but he didn’t go off to war again. I have three nice girls. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

I nod again and reach across the floor for her underwear. “Yes a sister,” I sing back.

“Oh, a sister, that’s nice. My girls are good sisters. They love each other… I love youuuuu honey. You’re a nice girl.”

I stand up by now and from the bottom of my gut say “Helga, I love you too.” My light that flew away so fast before my shift has flooded back. She has pulled it out of parts of my heart I hadn’t yet found and put it in my hand. Now I am touching towels to her damp skin and drying her with all the light she has given me.

“Where you from?” she beams.

I have her pink buttonless robe clutched to my chest and I always tell her the same place, “St. Louis.”

“Oh!” she’ll acknowledge jubilantly. “Me too, I lived in Webster Groves, where you from?”

“I only lived there until I was three months old, I don’t remember. We moved to N.Y. that’s where I spent my childhood.”

“Oh! N.Y., scary. Thomas brought me there once, I hid in the hotel room!” She laughs as she brings her tattered off-white undershirt from the hanger back to her bare chest. Her breasts hang down and touch her belly. They are sleepy with feeding children and weary with years of lying dormant. I love them, worn breasts in general. I love them because I see them as special life giving power we bear as women. Helga is a great woman, beside all else, because she was a great mother that fed her girls from her breasts. Now, Helga’s nipples are barely pink and I can see through the surrounding skin. If they were smaller, I’m sure I could see right through to her heart.

“My father used to tell us kids when we get old we’re all butt and belly. Its true!” she always tells me as she ties her robe. Her belly is the rounded resting place for her breasts, and her butt matches. I suppose she’s right then.

“Can you believe I’m 96 years old? It was only yesterday I tried to learn how to swim in the Webster Groves pool and decided just to float! Me…96, ha!” She repeats this last phrase happily as she returns to her room.

I follow behind her quietly, and behind me following at my heels is Truk who has been waiting for us patiently outside the bathroom door the entire duration from dry, to wet, to dry. We are a parade down the small hallway, walker leading the way.

Helga’s room is decorated with family pictures and water-color paintings. Each painting is signed by her and each photograph has a story by her. Her favorite, she points to when I am following her into her room and says, “This was my grandson Eric’s wedding. Elizabeth his bride is beautiful isn’t she? See, see? I right there, see me?”

I now giggle a, “Yes.”

After we dress ever so carefully, Helga sits and I blow dry and style her pure white hair. The warm air feels good, I watch her as she closes her eyes and grins. After I comb it out I kneel in front of her again and touch her chin, “Bella!” I announce.

“What is that? Spanish?” she asks.

“No, Italian. It means beautiful, Helga.”

“Oh, what’s your name honey?” she’ll ask again.

“Nicole.” I always feel a drop in low part of my stomach when she forgets.

“Oh…yeah…that’s right…I remember. French name. You’re parents must be confused!” She laughs as hard as she can now. Her eyes squeeze shut and it’s like every funny moment she has ever had in 96 years of funny moments is being compressed into one, big laugh. She puts her left palm on her belly to contain herself. “I go bed now. See you at lunch?”

“Yes, I’ll come wake you at lunch.” I wait out in the hallway and leave her white door ajar. I peek in with one eye and watch her. Every Thursday her rickety legs allow her to kneel beside her bed and pray her Thursday afternoon prayer…

“Oh Lord, tell Thomas I miss him. Please bless me with dreams of him. Thank you for these good people. Thank you for my good life. I like this house. Please don’t forget me Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” Helga motions the cross and slowly moves to get into bed. She covers herself with her white fleece napping blanket. Helga smiles in her sleep. I know in her dreams she’s dancing with her husband. In other dreams she’s going with Jesus, so slowly rising up to the clouds, holding his hand and smiling. In the silences between her sleep-breaths, I think if asked her, she would carry that speckled pigeon up to heaven with her in the palm of one her small hands when she goes.

something about faith

my head is heavy.

i am touching my own fingertips,

they are soft and

//quiet//

the energy is flowing.

we have the same geography.

speaking inbetweens,

under waters, walking to parking spaces

or screaming at you on my knees-

i am free

i am freeing myself of the weighted worldly ties of flesh,

swirling up the spirit from a great hall or tiny dusty corner niche

and flying.

i am worship watching

and by watching, i am harmonizing

the words of gospels and

great men who stand wise before the body

and how the body stands next to my own soul.

the ground it vibrates, the floor is on fire.

twilight illuminates the pine arches through celestial auras

and windows

to light.

the decrepid throw their hands like widows,

green-eyed twinkling, at lover's who have already gone home.

they are the faithful lambs standing and serving.

Conversations carry for hours,

I start with soft words.

Sometimes, I don't speak at all,

my prayer is a smile.

Father, will you let me stay here?

Father, I hear you call me daughter

and you've never even held my hand.

(this one is dirty)

this is all about the skin.
papercuts;
skin that gives vertigo,
something about the way you sweat-
rocker you make me wanna get unconcious
passed out with you, smoking what you smoke
sharing air
i wanna leave my lipstick on your pillow cases
as for all the string along songs
keeping me busy by daylight
leave me stripped bare-
i know where your eyes go

creation

After wordless time
came slow gathering of all
in vast movements
comepletely organic
with depths and depths of
what was antiquity and what was to be.
Endless tiny stars
fell from the namless
each light fell to its own path
as if seen without eyes or knowledge of eyes
as each burst to pieces, it left traces
of the great wisdom left behind.

all blue

The Morning.

“When you've got small words to mould, And you can make 'em your own, Still love it would be much better, Love it would be much better, I'm told,” Devendra Banhart sang to me in his jangle cherub voice from inside my silver and black music maker. A sighing rollover later it was 11:30 A.M. on a Wednesday and I was galloping to my Saab, out my door and to my horses. Late. My speakers were strangely silent the whole way.

Walking through the mud I saw two perfect faces staring at me. Their little pointy tip ears and black flying saucer eyes were screaming in the silence. Late. I hummed them their favorite tune as I fed them.

Lily had her face buried in alfalfa shake, little green and purple flowerettes were sprinkled about her face. Puck instead of eating just hung his head at my hips, nudging my pockets every now and then. Between my broken hums, there were weeps; like malfunctioning hardware. Puck was always very empathetic.

The Afternoon.

“You’re doing our laundry? You hardly ever do your own laundry, whatssup?”

“I dunno, I just you know, didn’t have anything else to do. I slept through class this morning and they don’t need me at work.”

“Uh huh… What? You gotta take everyone’s spare change too?”

“Finders fee, Dad.”

“What the fuck Nicole? I took your car to get the paper this morning and your tank was on empty, I told you to never get a fuel injection that low. You slept in through class again, I don’t even fucking remember the last time you got your ass out of bed and went. Your last year in high school you wouldn’t even skip a class to get lunch with your ol’ man”

“Daddy, jus’ please...”

“Please what? Please what? I’m your father, this is my job. You’re doing laundry to put gas in your tank, I’m not fucking stupid. Eighty fuckin’ cents isn’t going to get you anywhere sweetheart.”

“Dad, I have to feed my horses.”

“So stop skipping work, you never used to be like this. Are you on drugs?”

“Yeah Dad, you should know, I smoke them with you.”

“Shut the fuck up and listen to me, I don’t know why you took such a 180, but GET YOUR FUCKIN’ SHIT TOGETHER.”

“I’ll work on it, Dad.”

Evening.

“Yeah, I’m totally come meet you at the show,” I droned into my new, white, cell phone. White March snow fell and ran up and over my windshield in streaking flight as I spoke with Alex. “I know, I know, your brother will be sad if I don’t make it. I’ll be there for sure. How much is it to get in? ...Oh five? Yeah, no problem.”

I had left my little sister a scribbled note in her pant’s pocket “I will pay you back $10 on payday, Love Cocoa Bean.” Five dollars to the gas tank, five dollars to admission. My horses were good on feed until payday, and if I came up short there was other hay around…to borrow.

I pulled off rubber muck boots while leaning on the silver tail of my car. The mud had cradled them so that my hands have a fine lining of reddish dirt even after being cautious to not get them dirty. I looked over my shoulder, watching my horses eating their dinner while a white glittering dust of snow came down over them. Before I stepped into my car, I buttoned in all my wrenched guts in my big wool trench. I kept them from seeping out, suffocating them, with my white woolen scarf.

The drive from my horses to Alex’s little brother’s show was filled with the quiet conversation between my tires and the sound of the snow slithering around them and splashing under my car. I still couldn’t bring myself to turn on my stereo. I stepped out of my car and softly clapped my way to the auditorium entrance. Above the door, a big black bow was collecting snow. I saw little solemn faces sticking to its dark damp bark and staring back at me. I don’t know how long I stood looking before I felt Alex’s hand grab my arm and pull me inside the doors.

Alex and I giggled before the intermission, but in during the second half his eyes closed and his head cocked to the side of his seat. I looked up to the stage. Phoebe Lamb, the beautiful head girl and president of the Thespian club at Centaurus High School, my high school, was giving her well rehearsed-monologue. She was a sophomore when I graduated, and used to look up to me. Now I was looking up to her on the stage and wondering if she would manage to fuck her life up as fast as I did.

Dues Ex Machina. Night.

“Fuck this fuck this fuck this fuck this I can’t live like this. I CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE. The clouds are so gray. Gray, gray, gray fucking GRAY, I’m like fucking SWISS cheese and the light is just seeping through me. When you've got small words to mould, And you can make 'em your own, Still love it would be much better, Love it would be much better, I'm told. The lights! The lights they are seeping through me and I am them and FUCK. Holy Fuck!”

The truck driver was a smoke stack. He towered above me and kept asking me if I needed to go to a hospital in plumes of cigarette haze. His Mac was about 500 yards from where he was standing above me next to my parked and running car. His brights had started to blink on and off for some reason, causing him to look up at the road from his comatose state and noticed a two small headlights suddenly swerving into his lane. He heaved his truck over into the shoulder and braked. When he walked back over to the rogue sedan, seeing the driver huddled over in the snowy shoulder, sobbing. He told me he’d be real upset except it seems like I was upset enough for the both of us. He wished me luck after I had calmed down and we both went on our way.

The Drive to Alex’s, Midnight and a Half.

“Calm down. Nicole. Please. Calm down. Please, calm down. What happened?”

“I…I…I drove into oncoming traffic because I…I…it was so quiet and I…I…I think I lost my mind. Oh my god, I saw bright light and then I just threw eww ewww eww my car into park and and and…”

“You did what? You did what? Are you o.k.? Where are you? Do I need to come get you? Where are you?”

“I’m…I’m driving. I might run out of gas. Then you… you… you might have to come get me. I’m coming to your… your…YOUR HOUSE! Is, is that o.k.?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes…Yes. Just get here?”

“I’m ummm, coming.”

Denouement

I buried my face in Alex’s jacket. It was corduroy and beige and the arms of the jacket moved slowly around my shoulders releasing all the wrenched entrails I had kept in with my own. As we walked to his car I saw two black eye marks below his chest pocket.

We drove in almost complete silence up to Chataqua, where we parked Alex’s little blue car and sat on the hood. The Gods were staring back at us with their solemn stone faces; the Flatirons seemed to be glowing in the dark. Frosted pines were frozen in place and lit up by the slits of moonlight seeping through the clouds.

I don’t know how long we sat there before Alex put his hand on my arm releasing everything I had inside me. All the blues, grays, blacks and reds flowed out of me until I was white.