Remembering Me

Sometimes I remember myself.
In moments of delicious clarity, I remember who I am,
and who I wanted to become
and I don't feel at all like I am missing out, or being passed over,
or passed by, or left behind.
I don't feel at all like I am missing out on anything,
or spinning madly out of control.

Sometimes, in delicious moments of crisp,
refreshing, blinding, clarity-
I see myself and I am happy.
Like the elation of a desert nomad who's just found the well,
it is the first sip that cures the thirst,
and reminds me I am still alive.

I am alive.
I am reminded to rejoice!

To be gracious and grateful and good.
To dance lightly across the face of this world
and throw kisses at the sky.
Sometimes in cool, fleeting moments, shaded by serenity,
I am reminded of who I am, and who I wanted to become.
I remember who I am,
and I am free.

Some Daze

Somedays, somedays, somedays, 

when you think maybe you'll move to a nice 

New Jersey suburb and start reading Better Homes & Gardens,

and have dinner on the table by 6.

When you think maybe you'll move back to where

everybody knows your name and 

the summers are warm and sandy and

you used to be somebody.

Or maybe you'll enroll in art school and 

trek off to live under the Tuscan sun for six months, 

and cast off all that dead weight you've been

dragging around year after year after year...

Or marry someone rich and handsome

who begs you to quit that second job and 

let him take you away from it all

to a well heeled Upper West Side apartment with original architecture...

Somedays, somedays, somedays, 

when you're lurking on the edge of another birthday

and trying to figure out where you'd like to wind up

as we spin silently through space.

Somedays, these days, summer, sunny, sundays..

Someday, somewhere, someone, some way, Sondheim, Somedays...

Some daze. 

The Trend of Living

Doesn't matter where you go, or who you're there with.

You set up shop in one place long enough, you notice the pattern.

The Trend of Living. 

We're all out with our battalions on Friday night,

spending our pennies, buying back freedom, drinking salvation, 

Stumbling home on our trail of bread crumbs.

 

We hate our jobs. We dream of bigger and better with an order of babies on the side.

We dream of weddings and runaway brides

and beaches, and far away islands.

We crave a kickback vacation, 

a do-nothing escape from our daily hum drum

Something more exotic than grocery shopping and lawn mowing and paycheck collecting

Far away, I am somewhere else, 

doing exactly the same thing.

Peering over the rim of my coffee cup into the distant future, where I am rich and tan and lazy.

From across my day dream, 

I'm pretty sure I can see you in the distance, 

Far away, somewhere else, doing exactly the same thing.

Everything (You Want)

It's another Rainy April Monday

and I've been working like a slave for weeks.

I just keep wanting things I can't have.

All this wanting is no good.

And then I get this bitter taste in my gut

when I start thinking about all the fun I should be having.

I want to be young and silly.

...I am young and silly.

Today's a day for punching ex-boyfriends in the face

even though it's long been over

and burning bridal magazines

and telling parents their children are ugly harbingers of disease.

Today is a day made of kicking puddles and

the dirty looks of a malcontent like me

and more strange dreams of

a strange life I don't recognize.

It's another Rainy April Monday

and I'm a slave to all the things I want

that I don't have

and that's everything.

Lilacs & Sunscreen

Somebody this morning on the train, 

sat somewhere near by 

and I

could smell the smell of lilacs

while I was staring at the sky

Out the window, it was blue

the sun was yellow and I was mellow

and humming 

Joni Mitchell to myself,

thinking about how summer's coming

And I could feel the sand under my feet 

and hear the ocean churrning

I could feel my pale skin

Burning, burning

under all that light...

WE DREAM OF FLYING (ICARUS)

So many of us, even I,
Even I, who have spent my life up in the air.
I dream of flying.

Last night I fell asleep and dreamed that
I fell asleep dreaming overnight I had grown wings
and in the morning I woke up and flew away.

At first, they were like butterfly wings
all light and air,
but as I dreamed, I thought,
Those wings will never hold me.

So instead I dreampt of
Black bird wings.
Big, glorious, Raven feathers
sprouting from that sexy spot between my shoulders,
Strong enough to carry me off...

Last night I dreampt-
I stepped off my roof and flew away
into the blue bird skies
on big black wings and
never looked back.

Dreams of My Father;

The past few nights I've been dreaming of my father.
The first night we lived in a world of trains-
a maze of tracks winding around the city.
He worked in a factory where they massed produced women who looked like me. 

I couldn't get him to pay attention to me.
He was too busy talking on his cell to even notice me.
He looked right through me.
He walked right past me.
And I ran after him, wanting to tell him something important. 
I chased after him, following the twist of the electrified third rail. 
Trying to get him to turn around. To look at me.
And finally, steps from the platform, he did turn and I was trailing in his wake,
and I yelled something-
Something important,
and he looked at me from across the distance and said nothing.
Then he turned and kept on walking 
and I woke up.


In the second dream he looked the same,
tall and dark in a woolly trench coat,
but there was no factory of women, there was no city of trains.
I kept getting text messages from him written in gibberish. 
Letters that should have made words 
but instead just scrambled themselves into nonsense.

And last night he was there again,
though most of it I've forgotten now.
Except the end.
I was sad, sitting on a curb with my feet in the gutter.
He was behind me when put his hand on my shoulder 
and asked me in a tone I've never heard him use, 
"Lulu, do you have peace in your heart?"
The tears of my dream self to my dream father when I told him, "No.."  
were so real that I woke up with the taste of salt on my lips.


Maybe he gave me advice I couldn't remember upon waking. 
Maybe the advice is there in the question. 
I wish he did care, the way he did in my dream.
I wish he would come around and tell me, 
"Lulu, you are beautiful and you should be happy and you should be loved. You deserve the world."
and I wish it didn't bother me that he won't..