http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/08/rumsfeld.ap/index.html

This has always been one of my favorite poems, but lately, the words have been repeating in my mind.  So here it is...  "howl" by Beau Sia.

howl

by Beau Sia

allen ginsberg

told me

that I was beautiful

in a new york city café

and I thought

he was trying to

pick me up.

you can imagine how arrogant chinese boys in new

     york get about love when old

gay white men are involved.

exactly eleven months later,

he died.

the distance between point A and B

can be measured in days,

but friendship hates math

and so the sum of experiences

between two people

is not a sum,

it's

eating blintzes under trees,

learning how cezanne liked to color

and

sitting in bed,

debating the value of failure in one's life,

and seeing allen

read one last time in front of 680 NYU kids

that had no idea

he would spend

the next week in boston

starting his negotiations

with death.

my friend is dead

and I don't know

how to approach the subject.

my generation has no starving, hysterical nakeds.

I'm a member of the fame whore, superstar-at-any-cost-we-

     could-give-a-fuck-

about-a-fuck-because-teen-angst-isn't-enough-anymore-our-

     self-absorbed-

natures-have-overkilled-into-egomaniacal-dynamo-rage club

and

we don't know

the first thing about

the words

"selfless"

or

"give.:

I mean,

fuck the fact that he's gay,

a beatnik,

and that I even get bored

with his poetry,

the ginz made tibet a cause to believe in,

he pushed the angry buttons of politicians for four decades,

and

he set fire to one hundred and thirty-seven million minds

in this world,

becoming lou reed, bob Dylan, billy burroughs, and my answer

to the question

"who has influenced you in this life?"

sure,

some days he came off

as an asshole,

but most of us aren't in the public eye enough

to be caught

in our asshole moments.

but for each of those asshole moments

there is the simple beauty

of him cooking mushroom omelettes,

and

him exposing me to buddhism (a culture my

     ancestors taught him),

and his wiley, old man eyes

correcting me and saying,

"you have a long way to go if you want to be a good writer."

don't try and dull my memories of him

at point A

I ran with his mind in a 13^th St. loft

because his legs

were no longer capable

of adventures on foot,

to point B

when I sat silent by the phone,

listening to him say

four days before his death

that he thought

he had another month. 

Point B to point C

is a distance I'm not sure I'll ever reach,

as I try and find straight lines,

reading his work in Barnes & Noble,

and

remembering how he talked

about his first connections to kerouac

with a certain reverie,

and

I don't know if I'll ever realize the scope of the words "death"

or "good-bye,"

but I'm getting that little ache under the ribcage

from loss

and the need to finally

tell a friend,

"I love you."

I have lost a dear friend and mentor.  This is my first time ever experiencing the death of a friend, especially someone I shared so much of myself with.  Rita truly changed my life. She recognized me when I was invisible to everyone else.  She shared with me and encouraged me. She made me talk and listened when I talked too much.  I  loved her very much.

I know Rita would want to be remembered for the good times.  For her words and her strength. I'm going to share with everyone a few poems from Rita/"Dr.Mama" --- my friend and my confidant. 

Bargaining for Breakfast at Emma's"

"What you got for breakfast, Mom?"

I asked, my first break from Tennessee.

"I got the makings for pancakes,"

she said, putting the water and brown sugar

on to boil.  "I'd rather have my dough

baked, not fried," I fussed,

and begged her to make biscuits.

Mama's doctor called me late last May.

I went to close the house and found

The pot of brown syrup on the back

stove eye, crusted hard.  I boiled

some water in the pot

to loosen up the crystals.  The steam

rose, fogging up my glasses and cheeks.

If she'd come back, just one more time

I'd eat that pancake dough, cold and raw,

and drink the syrup, scalding, from my plate.

What Cleaving Means:

"I didn't teach her

how to cook or clean,"

my mother apologized

when we came home for Labor Day.

She and Daddy signed for me

and sent the form to Michigan

when I got married at seventeen.

"I'll teach her all she needs to know,"

my husband said.

My mom tried to tell me about sex

the year I turned thirteen.

"A man will want to bite your breasts,"

she warned, "and push hard things

up into your body.

Sometimes you will bleed."

I learned my lesson

under his hand.

I found out

there was more to marriage

than making beds and biscuits.

Punch Line;

I'll tell you my life story.

It's about the length of a good dirty joke,

like the man who went to the doctor

with brown balls.  I'd use my husband's lines:

            "I think I must have hurt you

            'cause I thought I felt you move,"

or

            "You don't have to worry

            about anyone breaking in on you, hon,

            as many good-looking women as they are

            in this coal camp,"

and

            "I'd break your nose

            if I wasn't afraid

            of making you look ugly."

I'd want no filter, just the facts:

            "There was this wife-beater

            who worked his wife over

            whenever he felt like it

            for twenty-five years.

            She stayed because they had

            four kids to raise; besides,

            she loved him every day.

            "When he hit forty

            He ad-libbed a secretary

            His wife flipped out,

            flew to a nuthouse,

            got glued back together

            in tiny mismatched pieces."

That's my store.  So what's the point of my life?

I don't know.  It's been so bad for so long,

I guess I forgot.

Sky Painting:

Rich says I write in neon.

Chuckie says my brass tea set

is too bold, too big, too bright.

Frannie hates the five-foot roses

slathered on my kitchen wall.

David says my rainbow sprinkles

scooped on cupcakes

look like leprechaun shit.

Mickey says I shouldn't name a child

Rasputin or Rappunzela or Trieste.

My son says nobody paints the whole house yellow.

I know that sunshine talks

to those that live in hearing distance;

but I like neon –

its booming reds, screaming blues

blasting the dark to bits.

I Want Him to Feel That Desperate:

Desperate enough

to pick up pop cans for money

    to buy Christmas toys,

sell last year's coat to Goodwill

for this week's gas; stop the newspaper,

cut the cable bill, turn off the lights

as soon as the sun comes up.

I want him to feel that lonely:

lonely enough

so that he can't sleep because of the stillness,

the plants breathing in the living room,

the refrigerator refusing to hum;

lonely enough

to wander down to Hardee's at three a.m.

to find nobody's there except a high school boy

with zits and his own troubles, who won't,

or can't, talk to an insomniac Ph.D.

I want him to feel that unwanted:

unwanted enough

to wait for days with a mute telephone,

with a solid red light; to go to an empty mailbox

day after day, and watch no cars

    pulling into the drive;

to come back from working

    with people who don't care

about anything

except coming home

from work themselves

and having a home

which he used to have

and I used to have.

So I want him to be that desperate

because I have been, am now,

     and will contine to be

               that desperate.

               This desperate.

Turning Fifty:

I sit in the parking lot in a locked car,

the windows snapped shut and the radio off.

I'm trying to save my battery.

A fat brown spider drops from somewhere,

twitching. Must be knots in her thread.

It's the first cold day in September.

The oak leaves blanch, a Lady Clairol blonde.

The floor board's full

of rolled newspapers

and coffee cups.

I don't read the headlines anymore.

Guess it's time

to get out or pull out.

People going by might think I'm weird

and say:

            "Dotty old woman,

              Sitting in a parking lot,

              in a locked car,

              by herself." 

I just found out, in a rather bad way, that Rita Riddle passed away.  Rita was someone who was a good friend to me all throughout high school. She was a retired Radford English professor (I have a book of her poems at home).  She was a big encouragement to me when it came to my writing, and she was someone I felt comfortable confiding in.  I shared a lot with her.

In my email today, I got the following message from the Women's Studies sponser:

Went to see Man of the Year  with Kris tonight.  It was ok.  Not wonderful but not bad.

Been working on preparing a lecture on the life of Latina Immigrant Live-In Maids in America for class Monday.  Hope this goes well...

And tomorrow--- I get to write a paper on caffeine addiction!  Sound like FUN?? you betcha.

My aunt and uncle just went to Ohio.  On their way back, they called me. They stopped in Berea to see where I had gone to school, and they were talking to me as they drove through the town.  And for some reason-- the whole time they were talking, telling me what they were passing, etc. I felt that familiar empty, homesick feeling I got everytime I had to leave home to go back to Berea.  But this time, it was for Berea.  

Life changes.