slingshot and snafu

slingshot
the further you pull it back
The faster the snap
Depends on the brittleness
of the band
and if it can withstand
the snap

snafu
what a word
Like an elephant
with a trunk that waves
and legs like stands
and a goofy smile

my perception of them
is the reflection of myself.

Dull Pieces

The foot hurts.
A dull ache. Penetrates up back.
Numb toes every now and again.
Like a piece of body is dying.

And because of injury,
women share their experience
of injuring themselves,
or being injured.

about how they too, lost the use of their leg
their eye
their arm
their vagina.

All functional needs for woman.
All equally necessary pieces
of a pie
with mixed ingredients
a special sauce

With comfort and rest
they heal
every piece
slowly moulding together

Sometime soon
with patience
and comfort
and spit and sweat
all the pieces will work again.

Dying Old

I thought about dying today.
How at the passing of my self, there would indeed be sorrow,
but it wouldn't last long.

For some, there might be a tinge of sadness for sometime,
it dulls as the time goes on, but never dissappears.
I could handle leaving this world, I thought.

Even so, what's the hurry of leaving this phase of life?

The next thing I thought about was being an old woman.
Alone, still.
Maybe with no one left.
Maybe with a few others left.

Where would I live?
So unattached?
In a small condo in New York City?
In an open field in the hills of Italy,
drinking table wine like water.

How will my days be filled,
looking out into the ocean off some beach,
or laughing about the Americans as an expat in another country.
or, most likely, in the hills of southern Iowa with my best friend,
and her son's family.

That would be the way to go.
Cradling a child.
Loving the Earth.
Feeling grateful.
And alive on my last breath.

There's A Mouse in the House by Mindy and Troy

There's a mouse in the House.
A small little mouse.
In the month of October.

It's in this house.
This funny house,
On the side of Sleepy Lady.

There's a Lady in the House.
This funny house.
Where there is a mouse.

There's a mouse in the couch
of This house
on Orca

There's is a dog
in this house
with this mouse named Koda.

There's a mouse in the house
and she don't give
one ioda.

There's a small little mouse
crawling around the house
on this day in October

So many places for the mouse to hide.
Maybe she'll just stay hidden
So I won't lose my mind. 

On Finding Yourself

What does it mean to find yourself?
What does it mean to be happy with your"self" enough to feel accomplished and dignified.
If that is what you are seeking to achieve?

With a family, a husband, a career, what do you find wanting?
The stuff we have, that we think we need.

And the expectations that have been set before us, we consume
like a plate of food,
we eat like a child,
who doesn't yet know she has a choice.

Sometimes that choice is only to go hungry.
Sometimes that choice means cold cereal, but reliable and consistent.

Finding our "selves" appears to be a secondary mission of our lives.
The first mission is to accomplish things, acquire stuff, use time to make money.

How do we uncover that instead of things, we need people,
and without stuff, there is more room,
and time is as precious as money.

A Scream for Life

4:12 in the morning, a woman screamed bloody murder for her life. I was getting soda water from the fridge, earlier than usual, but still my morning ritual, when I heard her.

The scream was a blood-curdling, sheer terror for life. It lasted only a second or two, enough for the driver to slam on his brakes suddenly, the sound an immediate jerk.

The cat heard it too.

The windows were open, but the house was being painted, plastic covering them so I couldn't see.

I notice then, through the thick cover, a bright blue light shining in my windows. It started in the kitchen, and shined through all three windows.

"Oh good, the cops are here," I thought to myself as went to wake up Sandy.

"Sara! did you hear that?"
"What?" She instantly woke up.
"That scream."
She didn't hear it, she said as I peeked out from behind the blinds.

But what I saw, wasn't the cops.

It was a lean male, in a dark hoodie sweatshirt who pulled into my neighbor's house two doors down and shone the light in her living room windows and back towards our house. The light wasn't blue, it was an LED - bright with a far distance.

"He's looking for her," I said.
"Is the front door locked?" Sandy replied quickly.
"Hell if I'm going down there!" I said. I'm usually the one who checks out the noises, but I wasn't going outside. Not after hearing that scream.

"Well, I'll do it, then!" she bustled out to the arctic entry to the deadbolt lock.

I was frozen as I watched the car, a silver late 1990 Taurus, pull in front of our house, then turn into the house across the street - just barely in the driveway at first, then all the way to the garage.

"What are they doing at Diane's house?" I wondered. The deaf old woman would faint dead in her oversized nightgown and white socks if she looked out the window right then. The man was insistent on finding something. Someone. The girl.

But where did she go?

The man drove off after about two minutes of looking through poor dear Diane's front windows. Where was her footstool of a dog, Tiger when you needed him?

And where was the girl?

The cops came around next, but it was too late. There was nothing but the sleepy cul de sac of our neighborhood. Silent homes, and structures without words as witnesses.

The chills of the story still run through me. A woman, scared for her life. Yards, feet away from my sleepy head. What happened to the woman? Who was she? Where did she go?

And just like that: one day, as you're pouring yourself a glass of soda water at 4 am on a Monday morning, a girl's scream becomes etched in your memory. Without ever seeing her, or knowing the situation, her scream is still being reverberated through the walls of my chest, the crevices of my mind, pumping through my veins. The struggle of someone, desperate. The most desperate cry for help, not the kind in a dream when you lose your voice. The kind where you scream because your life depends on it.

My dear, I pray for you. I care about you.

My heart aches for you to be safe.

Sleeping Lady

I awoke from a dream
with dried tears in my eyes
You found another muse
a woman wrong for you
but good to you.

It wasn't that in the dream
you were still mine.
Or that the times were happy.
Or that I knew the woman,
in her boundless beauty,
or that the kiss was a cheat.

It was the light in your eyes
The way you explained your excitement.
You admitted you enjoyed it.

And I knew I lost again
And the distance continued to grow wider between us
You, wrapped in the red-died lips of another.
Me, asleep.