Mid 70’s, my family– mom, dad, me– would drive across the country in the summer and visit aunts an uncles and cousins from Los Angeles thru Bakersfield, then Texas and Arkansas and finally Oklahoma before we’d come home.  My dad had a mobile home, that slept 7 i think.  We’d stop in Los Angeles and we’d pick up my aunt rosemary and a cousin or two for me to kick it with then head off up the road for adventures.

Many years ago i thought I’d try writing a poem for every city i remember.  To be honest, that idea never went farther than the poem below.  I started with Bakersfield because if anything it was a city to me of sharp features; hot weather, deep green grass, flat empty farmland (back then), Silence.  Pastels.  Watermelon, ice, moths around porchlights.  And what would I not give for the stories i listened to both involved and bored…  what would i not give for those voices now.

As I say, Bakersfield was my first and only attempt to make a poem memory from that time.  Its not too late– others will tumble out, especially with me thinking about it again tonight.

This has been pubished in print.  Looking at it again, it could use a trim, but i’ll leave it alone.  Who said poems are never finished, just walked away from?  i walked away proud.  it captures in words what my own memory and heart show me.  And aint that what poetry suppose to do anyway?.

Bakersfield

The grass on Aunt Pearl’s lawn appears
painted, each black perfect and ripe.
It bleeds if you pinch it between
your fingernails.  Her dog, named Rat
by a granddaughter for obvious reasons,
nervously darts across the lawn
like a stray mark of ink. He
stops at his water dish and greedily
chokes down the liquid, swimming with
tiny tablets of sand.  From a
distance, he appears to be a curly
black wig, his tongue a perfect orange slice.

The heat is a curse in Bakersfield;
worrisome and mischievous as a mad
fly, even coaxing my mother into
shorts.  It is a heat that hugs you,
sticks and burns.  It is a heat that
settles over you like ash and is cured
only by watermelon and lemon popsicles.

Night comes slowly as if the sky
were being patiently peeled in long strips
of blue banana skin.  One at a time
the stars remove their shirts
revealing their random white bodies;
tiny stones littering a beach of black
sand.  In the cooling darkness,
the sidewalks surrender tortured
memories of heat and mimic hot coals.

Uncle Jerry sits on the cement porch.
The sky above him ripens to a deep
plum color as he unscrews a story
from a bottle and moths dance
their suicidal dance for the flickering
porch light which, at this moment,
is brighter and hotter than the sun.

thus my friend emailed me recently.  I wrote back:

“i guess its the reason I share ANYTHING– be it on stage or off.  I need a witness — proof– to verify that I actually exist.”

writing is as much healing as it is releasing.  Its about creating, yes, but not from NOTHING.  Its about creating from whats already within.  If you write something closest to your own reality, its like tagging your emotion– tying a balloon onto the end of it– and allowing the balloon (the creation) to rise and be seen by others.  To be validated, and simultaneously let go.

I watched a video performance this weekend by The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.  The lead performer, Kembra Pfahler, is a unique performance artist to put it mildly.  But to watch her in action (no links here– if you’re curious, represent yourself.  Careful: she AIN’T SAFE FOR WORK!!!) my first thought was: WTF?!?  But then i realized, as in all art, its about being Acknowledged. 

Not ’seen’.  Not ‘validated’.  But acknowledged.  Maybe that’s not even the right word.  But there it is.

I dare not put words in her mouth, but I assume she’d agree with me. 

All these poems and stories, this manner of sharing, is also about releasing and letting go.

Creativity becomes a kind of exorcism where you dare to name the devil causing him to flee.

To be witnessed.  To be seen.  To be heard.  What else is there?

I don’t believe in coincidence.

But if you do, here’s two stories submitted for your approval

I rejoined Netflix in October, after having settled nicely in the new apartment.  I made a long list of 
150 movies.

Two weeks ago, Netflix suspended my account.  After paying all my other bills, my account ran shallow and when they reached in for their allowance, the cubbard was bare.  I had to wait a week before the next direct deposit.  Friday after thanksgiving the next two movies on my list arrived.

Thanksgiving was a bust.  My family is dead, and those remaining alive could give a shit less.  The friend I was supposed to have dinner with flaked on me at the last minute.  

So I was my own turkey and stewed in my own juices.

I wasn’t too depressed.  It is what it is; i made a huge pot of greens and ate. 

Once I began watching the second movie I realized BOTH were about the Same Thing.
 
Juno is about a teenager who gets pregnant and decides against an abortion to give her baby to another family.  The ending effected me very strongly.

Waitress is about a woman who is an expert pie maker in a small town.  Her husband is the only Jerk in town–Lifetime movie abusive, nasty, selfish– and she gets pregnant.  She begins writing letters to her unborn child, a  child she already doesn’t want to keep just  because its her husband’s seed.
 
The letters she wrote in the movie seemed like open letters to me.  Reminding me of the series of letters I been writing to both sets of my parents; foster and biological, dead and alive.

If you can see the point clearly, you are too close.

I couldn’t wait to send those movies back.
 
Story #2 
 
Weeks ago, an  aquaintance of mine offered me a couch– and I fell for it.  I’m no longer holding my breath.  I was supposed to hear back last Sunday, but no word.  Next Chapter. 

So I return to work Monday.  About 20 minutes before the end of the day, one of my coworkers sends me four emails for Craigslist ads of Free furnature.  That I’d mentioned being furnature-less to him before was one thing, but him suddenly & proactively jumping to attention–without us even talking earlier– caught me off guard.  I played along; called one of the contacts he forwarded who said, yes the table’s free– but he’s moving and won’t hold or reserve anything.  You pull up with a truck, its yours.  My coworker leaps up and offers to drive me back to get that table and/or a bookcase he’d heard about.

You mean, like, Now?  Ummm… okay.

We commuted back to his car in SF then drove across the bridge.

The table was gone before we got back to the east bay.  But of all the ads he looked at and forwarded me, he printed only One: for a bookcase left on someone’s lawn.

I took the map while he drove. That the table was gone was no surprise– it took about an hour to get his car. 

But I knew the bookcase would still be there, despite it being well past sundown.

In the top right corner of the map he printed, a few blocks over from where we were going, I saw ‘Avis Drive’.

Avis, my sisters name.  The one who died last year.

I remember sitting on my porch talking to her on the phone, feeling a bit like an ass.  I’d turned my back on that family, did to the mother who gave me up for adoption the same thing she did to me; walk away.  I felt guilty.  Frustrated.  But Avis, at the time living in Clear Lake and dying of prostate cancer told me mom asked her to leave Clear Lake and come back to live with her; because nobody cleaned her bathroom as well as Avis did.

.

The bookshelf was still there, waiting in the dark.  Not rickety, not junk.  Solid wood, four shelves.  My coworker balanced it in the trunk of his Honda and secured it with the single rope he had.

Just as we’re tying the bookcase onto the car, my phone rings.  A sister I know from back east,  calling to tell me she was coming to town for a poetry reading the following week.

Back at my apartment, I gave my coworker some gas money, a couple of old audio cassettes for his car’s stereo (he had only two tapes in his car, Bad Company & Stereo MC’s.) and a piece of  fabric I haven’t found a place for in my new spot.

I called back the woman who called me earlier.  We talked nearly an hour.  While chatting and talking plans, I washed the bookshelf with vinegar.  I missed her, I said, told her I need more healing female energy in my circle.  She said she knew and was coming…