Red November

 star crammed river crammed heart floors

won’t stop palp palp palping

             under the floor big engine noise

the stupid noise of this blue shred world

unraveled tipped into the burnt star universe

sloshy hort thump a zing bad country 

song a stoned rodeo queen trotting under

my floors tiara askew 

I keep thinking about that scene

in The Morning Show where Chris

wrote ABORT THE COURT in pink pink lip

stick my house floor hort monster my abor shun

my aborted fast blood slipping out 

of a woman’s sacred body I never write SACRED

it’s too 

sacred

big or small or big tied with green garden wire

thump thump a war in the capital city is moving

SSslip sliding under my floors flooding out into

all you beauty

all you strong

all you sacred women

bleeding for the land

Pig and farm report

 

Functioning as an adult and notes from a violin teacher and her 6 year old student

 

I love W

W greeted me on the floor, writhing and whining Poor Smigel, it burns, it burns, it burns us. My guess is he wasn't into having a lesson. I don't blame him. It's hard work and it's like first getting into the pool when you're standing on the damp concrete, shivering in your warm dry swim suit. You dread that first plunge because it always feels cold, but once you're in the water, it's heaven. W slithered up the entire flight of stairs, still moaning and whining. The lesson proceeded normally after that, except at one point he asked me to hold his violin and bow, then started madly scratching his legs. This went on for a full minute and then I asked him if he was okay. He said today is my itching day. I said What do you mean, your itching day? He said Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays are my itching days. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays are B's itching days. (B is W's best friend.) I said What's wrong with Friday and Saturday? W patiently explained that those are not itching days. I told him I didn't quite understand, so he picked up a pawn and a knight from the chessboard that's always on the floor, moved them strategically and tried to explain it to me that way. I still didn't get it but I respect his determination to make me understand. After the lesson, W offered me a piece of lemon candy called a Mega Warhead. It was so sour I think it took off the lining of my mouth, but I didn't let on that I was in pain. As I was leaving, W. said WAIT! and he ran into his room and came out with a small rubber chicken. He held it up and said BACH! BACH! BACH! BACH!

*

I called my medical clinic this week and asked if they could refer me to a psychiatrist they asked if I was okay but it was more like OH DEAR JESUS OH MY GOD SECURITY!!! And I told them I was just feeling a little bit manic because there was water in my house and there were men in my house every day banging with actual hammers and the loud jet engine fans in my closet and in the other bedroom running 24 hours a day and sometimes I wonder what my electric bill is going to be because I am a functioning adult and I always look closely at my electric bill and compare it to the previous month and those fans running all the time running in my ears in my bones down to my feet but especially bouncing around in my brain are going to be expensive.

*

I love W

I was 15 minutes late to W's lesson tonight because of a traffic snarl. He was a bit frantic when I got there, but I told him I would cut the lesson short if he worked very, very hard. W said your hair is getting whiter. I told him yes, yes it is. We didn't talk much after that. We were both tired. We just played Bach, and watched his bow arm. Watching his bow arm consists of me reaching over and stopping his bow when he gets to the tip, which is when the bow strays out over the fingerboard. This usually makes him giggle, but today it frustrated him. I kept doing it because if you practice the violin wrong, you learn bad habits that can take a lifetime to undo, if ever. Tissue memory, muscle memory, the body remembers. (This is not an exaggeration. Bowing is the most difficult part of playing the violin and I know accomplished musicians who have never learned it properly.) After our lesson, W took me into his bedroom to show me his brand new bed. It's tall. W said I want stairs to climb into it. The bed is covered with a beautiful quilt with deep blue and bright yellow stars. It's the first time he's asked me to come into his room, the first time he's invited me anywhere in the house except the foyer and the room in which we practice. It felt like a gift.

*

The medical clinic told me that Washington does not refer Medicare patients or anyone else to psychiatrists which is odd considering they have referred me to a fancy pants dermatologist and gastroenterologist. Even though I am a functioning adult I don’t have any kind of insurance except for Medicare and my car because I am still only one or two rungs up on the functioning adult ladder. In my not to distant past I never checked the previous month on the electric bill because I was too poor to function as an adult I was a frightened child all the time.

*

I love W

W: Do you want to hear my evil laugh? Me: After you play the Bach. W and I discuss a lot of things during his violin lesson. We've talked about poetry, painting, dance, sculpture, (his favorite story is me getting thrown out of the museum for sticking my fingers in Balzac's eyeholes) architecture, mathematics, history, science, running, swimming, and the ever looming OUTSIDE (he’s terrified of the OUTSIDE.) We talk about insects, books, composers, color, clouds, boats, snails and the fact that making a lanyard is never going to really be a fun thing to do. Today, W had this note for me: WRTING MAKES ME NRVS I had to agree. He then showed me how 2+2 = a fish, and how 7+7+7+7 = a window. I'd show you, but you need a pencil and a piece of paper. He told me that his friend D got kissed on the L by a girl. (L = lips.) He also found a picture in one of his father's books, and he showed it to me and told me it was Mr. Bach, when in fact it was Mary Queen of Scots, but I told him I could see his point even though he was about 100 years off, and this made me laugh so hard that W became slightly alarmed, and then he laughed so hard that a big long piece of spit fell out of his bottom lip onto his violin. I looked away and said I didn't see anything as he wiped it up. Our lesson was pretty much over at that point.

*

You can see how much better I am mentally these days. I actually live in a house purchased with money my dead horrible mother left me in her will. I no longer have a slumlord knocking at my door telling me he’s raising the rent again. I get a haircut at least twice a year. My clothes all fit and I have a Vitamix. You can’t get more functioning adult than that. My doctor called me after the alarming no I’m not crazy I just need a referral phone call to my clinic and insisted I come in the next afternoon. I had to say yes. I have a terrible fear of talking to regulation physicians about being bipolar 1 and having CPTSD agoraphobia panic attacks and severe anxiety. Regulation physicians really don’t get it and I have a secret feeling that they all want to lock me up because when I’m nervous I have a real knack for talking fast then stumbling over my tongue while doing so. My darling Johnny Cash Psychiatrist wanted to lock me up “for a while just a little while” and I asked him if I could write in there because I was working on Cadaver Dogs and he said no nope no way I might stab a crayon into my eyeball so I told him to fuck off. I think I scared him because I had a bad panic attack once in his office. I believe my fear is or might be well founded. That one flew over the cuckoo’s nest thing abides deep in my soul like Jesus and all his saints especially St. Lucy who scooped her own damn eyeballs out perhaps with a crayon and on walked around with them on a plate like they were Dilettante Chocolates. They were probably lock her up too!

Side note: Dilettante Chocolates is a chocolatier that used to be in Seattle and they are no more though my very soul longs for them. I have never found a better piece of chocolate ever.

I took my adult son with me to the doctor as my ADVOCATE because I learned from Elizabeth Aquino that if you ask for an ADVOCATE they pay better attention to you. I also walked right past the ever present scale and when the winged monkey nurse asked me to step up I said I won’t be doing that today and sailed right into the doctor’s office. Please read Elizabeth Aquino brilliant writing @elizabethaquino

Side note 2: Did you know that you all of you can skip the scale at your doctor’s office if it makes you uncomfortable? They make me uncomfortable because I was shamed for my weight for my entire childhood and most of my adulthood. If you skip the scale the bloody weigh in because you despise it or it terrifies you as it does me you won’t be arrested or anything. Nothing will happen! I didn’t figure this out until I was 55 years old.

*

I love W

Today at W's lesson, I had him write a poem for J.S. Bach whose birthday is tomorrow. Here it is.

Dear Mr. Bach,
Happy birthday.
Have a good B.day.
Why did you have 22 children?
Did you play piano?
You'd look good in a hot-pink wig,
but first try it on.
Why did you write so many minuets?
You'd also look good in a work suit.
I want to be famous like you.

Your friend,
J.S.W.

Later on during the same lesson:

Me: Okay, Feral Bunny, quit stalling.
W: What will happen if I don't?
Me: I'll get cranky.
W: Will you turn into a feral bear and eat everyone?
Me: No, I'm a vegetarian.
W: Then you'll only eat vegetarians?

*

When I got to the doctor’s office yesterday as a functioning adult meaning both shoes on the correct feet and my teeth in and my hair combed with my tall and muscular son who had a look on his face that said don’t fuck with my mom a son who knows what manic looks like (I’m so sorry to say my darling son I’m sorry I ever made you witness that) and who also knows exactly what meds I take etc. a son who knows more about psychiatry that any of those clinic yahoos. I mean he was fully prepared to be my ADVOCATE and you could tell the way the winged monkey nurse kind of squeezed away from us that she knew we meant business. I had to tell her everything about the water heater exploding and the subsequent flood and the hammering and the men in the house and my CPTSD getting massively triggered the whole goddamn drama as she typed squeezed away in her corner and she typed it all which is kind of weird but my clinic has a portal any patient can enter to read appointment notes and you know how I love portals. I could hear my voice rattling out of my mouth as it does when I am very nervous or when I am manic or approaching mania and I can’t make it stop. Once my doctor came in he rearranged my meds giving me more Tegretol (hilariously he was the one who made me take less Tegretol last year) and a little more trazodone so I can sleep I hope. Tegretol is my bipolar control drug. He told me that he doesn’t think the psychiatrist I am trying to contact as a functioning adult accepts patients who aren’t “locked up” though when I spoke to his nurse she told me he would be accepting new Medicare patients at the end of November. My doctor told me to come back in two weeks to see how the new meds are working but I told him we both knew that was not going to happen. In the end I was not sent to any 1950s lock up places where they put crazy people. I came right home and lay in my bed and listened to the goddamn fans in my closet that sound like jet engines.

*

I love W.

Tonight W and I mostly talked. We were both tired and I was late. He had forgotten all his music vocabulary words from previous weeks, but quickly learned the subtle and difficult bow marking that looks like this // that means a very slight lift of the bow, not even a real lift, more like a breath, like your bow is taking a breath. He understood immediately what I was saying and played it perfectly. As I was leaving, he reached down the back of his pants and said I'M GIVING MYSELF A WEDGIE! I asked why, and he said Because it feels good.

Well. There it is.

Thank you Darklings if you have read this far. You each get a gold star sticker.

Pig and farm report

 

Word is not responding

Yes I get it Word means brain this morning my son is scampering around on the roof blowing off pine boughs and pine needles and probably a squirrel or two with his goddamn noisy machine and I am panic panicking panic I keep my phone in my hand in case I need to call 911 in a hurry in case something horrible happens up there or down here or worse down there this is take an Ativan kind of panic it is both real and not real and feels a lot like manic

I sliced two onions in half then peeled them then sliced the halves into thin crescent moons put a bit of olive oil and one tablespoon of butter in a pan then piled the onions up to the edge and added salt I am caramelizing onions for a quiche this takes anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours on Lo which means almost no heat on my Black Becky Baker stove I am baking and cooking because my son is actually running on the wet roof with his leaf blower and my stress levels are already out of my skull high be careful oh be careful

out of my skull high is a professional term for my mental sick which is officially bipolar 1 it has been a long time since I’ve had a manic swing not since the beginning of covid but the flooding inside my beautiful house has made me spike Oh Spike Me Jesus

*
pass me the screwdriver
even your snow is selfish and wrong headed
an unmanageable stain a kind of hoarding
I abandoned my clothes
break me
I’ll swallow whatever you put in my mouth
stage a fake suicide
guttural momentum
Rocco Peacock
clean boys and roasted hog
the jungle drapes its skin long and wet across my feet
a woman suckles a piglet
oh plague oh Mena

*

part of this manic feeling this need to pummel yeast and flour eggs and onions yams and giant green squashes is because my house is still tipped upside down my son has completely moved into the precious empty outer outer room so he only has two walls and basically no privacy unless I stay in my own bedroom which makes me feel trapped and rusty it makes me feel like a rusty trap one that might bite and snap and I think I did just snap and bite at my son after he came down from the roof like Jesus on a Bender you might wonder why I have a completely empty second living room in my house that is what happens when you live with a hoarder I feel terrible for snapping at my son

I’m sorry
I’m sorry

on Sunday I was doing laundry and watching tv and I heard leaking in the walls I muted the tv and it was still happening I ran to see if the washing machine was spilling out sending water everywhere but it was not then I walked to my closet to peek at the new water heater but there she stood tall silent and sentry I finally opened the back door to see if the sky was falling but I heard someone mowing their lawn that was the noise

*

Sunday wears a beaky mask
stuffed with sweet herbs and flowers
meant to hide the smell of sickness
my son has the first apocalypse dream
we drive to the beach at dusk
and talk about ghosts
until I cry but I keep the tears
inside my eyelids
I dream a conga line of men
in my yard dancing their way into the ocean
dropping one by one
I am ripe and my blood is high

*
in truth I’m happy I love living here and things are going to start getting fixed next Tuesday though I wish they wouldn’t call it demo as in demolition happiness is sometimes fake mania with me so I have to be careful not to be too happy for instance is this happy deep Easter morning happy or is this happy floating on top of mania like a warm winter coat that is still a little too new to be comfortable happy

*

in this version of America
a girl in a yellow sweater bee bright
against black hair stands on a stage
the first day of spring
as photographers adjust lights
and microphones waiting
for the turgid man to squat bellow
thick tongued and vile
and attack the press corps

in this version of America
my son and I eat Sunday breakfast
every morning at the kitchen table
and the first day of spring streams
in cold sun and roses open
and cherry trees carry on unperturbed

in this version of America
we are all grieving each day a funeral
as every sparkling proud city closes its ears
puts on blindfolds holds its breath
and descends to its maximum depth

in this version of America
my son and I eat with only the ticking
of the wind up clock
the stunning sense of Equinox
against our voices as we plan the hours
place cloth napkins on our laps
his sky sky blue
mine zinnia orange

*

Side note:
Easter used to be my favorite holiday because it meant a new dress and new shoes and usually a hat with an elastic that was supposed to be tucked in back under my hair but I usually kept the elastic around my chin giving me that marionette look and the opportunity for friends to pull the hat up and snap it back. Once I think in 1963 I got a silver sheath dress entirely polyester and tinsel probably 100% flammable and silver shoes MY FIRST HEELS and silver nylons and a silver clutch purse. Damn I was fine. And shiny. Like the Tin Man’s prepubescent daughter. I kept the purse for years and when my son was little he carried his baseball cards around in it then it disappeared. Ahhhhh the 60s. The funny thing is that little clutch purse would be a hot item now. The nylons too.

*

The goat traveled around the planet a round
Twinkle Twinkle Little Goat
an old French folk tune
how the goat traveled
one person at a time going sick in the lung
like playing kindergarten piano
or blowing out candles on a damp cake
my goat has not fled my body
very still until horns and hooves clatter away
I have water I can force my body for six hours
go from knock-knock-knocking at death
to cheerful and radiant
it's not that we heal
it’s that we are liars and fakes

*

The onions are almost done they have been on the stove for two hours the pie crust is in the refrigerator I’m going to add ¾ cup of cream ¼ cup of milk 4 eggs spinach caramelized onions aged mozzarella cheese a little bit of goat cheese salt pepper and fresh grated nutmeg how I wish how I wish you were here.

 

Thank you, Darklings for reading this far.

Bone

this happened

eighteen I crawled through the duplex window into Wayne’s bed the rotten middle his fists all night I screamed ran down the street screaming neighbors called the police who knew Wayne I crawled into him what I expected love he called me love his fists all night I screamed ran down the street bruised black eyes broke broken broken rib I thought this was normal my normal the rotten middle his fists I a girl running screaming down the street every other night police sirens again again again no job no car a girl screaming running down the street waiting for the police who knew him my normal the rotten middle his fists I a girl running down the street screaming Wayne the police knew his name knew my me the girl running down the street screaming all night screaming & screaming & screaming then my dad sent me a bus ticket

*

Dear Henry,

my friend brought me a bear and I lived with the bear in my house we were quite happy the bear and I then my friend came back and told me he had to chop off the bear's paws I would have to eat them I sucked the meat out of one paw disgusted and filled with grief now I'm eating an avocado that tastes like fifty-five acres of California heartland it tastes like Frida Kahlo's dream of having a baby it tastes like sugar and sweet-grass and cream and butter and cotton bed sheets dried on a clothes-line in the hot sun and it tastes of the cornfields that spread across Illinois this avocado came into my hands like Jesus on a bender I'm not kidding

*

this happened

he found me at the commune everyone there told me not to go with him he was a bad man but I loved him he shot speed into his arm his needles his tiny packet of white powder his spoon then he spent hours and hours drawing pictures of women with huge breasts on ruled paper with a blue ball point pen and he hit me if I interrupted sometimes he hit me for fun and I ran down the street screaming then came back I always came back his job was drug dealer he told me I could take his car if I wanted to get away and I tried but I had never driven a stick shift I didn't know how I didn't know how to escape and he stood on the porch laughing at me

I finally figured out how to run away I had to actually run

*

Dear Henry,

I was inside an old Pentecostal church where cakes were being auctioned I tried to buy a perfect tiny orange cake for you I told the auctioneer I have three dollars but the auctioneer said sorry this cake is fifty dollars I stuffed a giant wooden crucifix into my suitcase I sat in a chair smoked a cigar what are you doing here

*
this happened

I got a job at a nursing home but he found me again and he found out that I fucked his brother for revenge I was living in my own little apartment I was so happy there but I went to live with him in a big white house with an open meadow behind it the white house terrified me there were no neighbors to go run to why did I go why  why    why  The Johnny Cash psychiatrist told me it was because violence was all I had ever known it was my normal 

* 
Dear Henry,

we were sitting in your yard when Violet turned to me and said I want a huge rabbit I jumped in my red Nancy Drew convertible and headed out in the rain as I drove the road disappeared I jumped into a powerboat on the ocean big waves rolled no sign of the city I kept my foot on the gas turned a corner there was a pet store with crates holding giant rabbits I looked in each crate to make sure they were open so the rabbits wouldn't drown the store owner said your life vest is too loose he tried to tighten it then said I’m sorry you're too small as I examined each rabbit the first had a sad disfigured face with one eyeball down near his throat the other rabbits were okay I was in a hurry but not hurrying I let the disfigured rabbit swim away then I saw a rabbit with markings like a Siamese cat a deep chocolate colored head and a white body with chocolate feet I held him and kissed his head then let him swim away remembering how you mistreated your dog finally I found a rabbit for Violet gray with long fur and eyes like God he looked at me with such love

*

this happened

he finally got tired of hitting me so he put a gun to my head he put a gun to my head then he put the gun down and punched me and punched me finally I swerved and he punched the wall and broke his thumb he cried!!! then he drove to the hospital and I called a friend from work and her mother showed up in a big station wagon and we put my stuff in it some clothes and my violin and my guitar and I never saw him again

*

Dear Henry,

in Chicago my son was in jail you had been abducted by aliens and recently returned you said wear the green dress which I kicked under the bed Violet’s car broke down and I placed round tables covered with white cloths embroidered with Napoleon’s royal bee crest up and down Webster Avenue summer undulated my hair a blond tangle of sweat my feet were buried in hot asphalt the heat rose up through my body like a kundalini picnic all set about with fever trees now a pure god a nasty little salamander lives with you in my heart

*

this is who I am now

animal insistence turned my velvet body to leathery grit arms & legs clammy skin a breath off corporeal temperature shivering dog calm trudge pant & blunt I ate mercury as a child broken thermometers bright pools on the bedroom floor gums not yet black not yet turned a grand tolling into children’s rectums removed it from a velvet lined case passed it with Jesus care one child to the next & I dropped it shattered globs silver animals wriggling toward a fairy-tale center I scooped them into my mouth I am about to die or win a great award a shivering dog inside you life swings onto the gridded macadam as my mother in the driver's seat turns smiles & waves she holds a cigarette a bottle of gin & a gun

this happened

my chemical fire hums when propane is forced through the pipes the pipes inside my walls whistle high birds on fire when I turn on the heater elder madronas drip and burn fluorescent in the primal sway in the animal ship the manic needle in my eyeball when we say medicine it is a red stigmata canvas when we say panic it is the guts of the cottage in the woods with the graham cracker door gumdrop windows where wolf crouches on the roof lick lick licking himself I choke at the worst possible moment smash the rabbit saint who gave his life for my glue the Palace of Versailles blisters in my shoes I want to tell you how my feet burn how bright steam rises from the dog’s bowl did I ever really dance in a sweet short dress flared at the hips did I prime did I tango?

*

Dear Henry,

you and my cat were bit by a scorpion a terrible deathly bite I had to choose who to save because I didn’t have enough money for two doctors I chose my cat the three of us drove onto the Nestucca ferry landing a long uphill ramp when we got to the top the ferryman said you had to pay him five dollars then we went down another long ramp onto the boat then drove on to another ramp going up again and the ferryman said you had to pay him five dollars and you handed him a huge five dollar bill painted on severely creased paper with mimeograph ink and water colors the ferryman said THAT IS NOT REAL MONEY my car slid backward down the ramp out of control my foot was crushed ached sharp its own scorpion bite

*

If you or anyone you know is being abused HELP IS AVAILABLE speak with someone today

NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE

Call 800-799-7233

24/7