80 dollar needle

The only difference between a person with Cancer and Diabetes and a cat with Cancer and Diabetes is that they make diapers for people.
And also, people don't get up and pee in the corner of the living room.

My brother texts early in the afternoon that my mother is putting her cat to sleep; and also that everyone is mad at him for having high blood pressure.

Yeah. I relate. Everyone is mad at me for smoking.
And all the books I've read tell me not to listen to people who desire to make me feel worse than I already feel, and it is my role today to try to be in his corner.

It's a side effect of growing up in a war zone. I'd like to make him feel better, since I'm trying to be on his side, so I write that it translates into this: You eat junk food and wig out.
And I also comment that our mother seems to need to make every holiday traumatic and painful.

There is a cure for all of this.
And before the night is out, I am starving to the point of being nauseated, I've applied self-tanner to my face, my hair looks like a lion's mane and I'm looking at my mother sitting next to her cat on the couch thinking things I can't say out loud, like this:
" 80 dollar needle "
" Your time is up. "
"She's going to kill you."
"That cat is kind of cute even if she did hiss at me and bite me for her entire life."

The cat looks up at my mother as she speaks. And I say " You're her whole world. "

My mom starts crying. Fuck I always say the wrong thing!

My mother decides that she is not ready to say goodbye to the cat and I am relieved.

He's Alive

I heard the entire story by the time I was already late for bed. It started with some banging. I've heard it before. The college kids next door; I imagined someone locked themselves out or there was a creepy stalker girl who visited. The incessant knocking, like hammering. I turned the water off from the shower and listened to the wall like my family taught me to do when curious about neighbors.
I put on my sweatshirt and towel turban and opened the upstairs window. The noise stopped. I listened to the air outside. Two cars went by.
Was there a bird stuck somewhere?
I closed the window.
The noise started again.

I looked down into my dark yard; and then into Nellie's well-lit yard observing for something and then I saw a familiar short shadow moving with intention and frustration.

It was Nellie in her yard. I closed the window and began to dry my hair; hoping to not have drawn much attention to myself. I went downstairs and the noise began again.

Before long, I heard the sound of the air moving through the pump connected to my front Storm door. It was open and the piston thing made a 'seyuuuw' and the rustling noise of the leg or foot next to the aluminum bottom panel. And then a knock. "Meg!"

"Nellie?"

I opened the door and the next hour of my life was in her hands. I have known her for twenty-one years. Our friendship is old enough to drink.

I realize that her situation was desperate and also that if I hadn't opened the window, she probably wouldn't have asked for help and I was considering opening the door and investigating further, and many things went through my head about my own knowledge of being selfish, my own knowledge of knowing better than to interfere in a domestic disturbance, and my own knowledge that I told her that if she is ever in trouble to always knock.
If I'm busy, I'll let you know. She asked to use the phone.

I asked if she wanted the cell phone or the land line and I'm not sure why.

"Noooo. Not the cellular," she dramatically said this as if the cellular phone was some type of expensive luxury. And it reminded me of my grandfather.
It reminded me of Nellie crying outside in her gardening gloves, tears streaming down her face, as always, telling me that she misses my grandfather because he was her best friend, her fists drawn tight facing the ground in the mixture of sad and angry, staring up at my house where my grandfather used to live.
It reminded me of my throat getting tight and starting to cry myself.

I missed him too. And that reminded me of the people at my father's office who spent every day with him. Strangers who were a different type of family to someone I loved, who saw him more than I did and cried like babies at his funeral.

Generous, kind, respected. He would even give people money if they needed it. My father was generous. My grandfather would drive each and every widowed man to their doctor's office as often as they needed it and shovel snow and buy groceries for them. And he would fix things with wire. Pleyers and bandaids on his fingertips, glue, matching crayons or paint to touch things up. Recipes and lists on index cards in his front pocket.

Nellie dialed the phone, which I have nestled in the kitchen pantry. No one answered.
I was thinking her husband might be dead because at this point she had been knocking for a good forty-five minutes. I told her to sit down. It was thirty degrees outside and she had on just a tee shirt and sweatpants.
I made some tea for both of us as her story began about the Philippines and her schooling, her degree. Her career in the United States, how her husband took her savings and went to visit Thailand four times this past year and how his guts were rotting out as punishment from God.
And how we both know what he's doing on the computer late at night.

I hear the story; the WHOLE story every time she comes over. I hear it every time we talk. Last time, she talked about God having grace and putting it in her heart (as she clenches her fist against her chest and raises it up, again, this makes my throat become tight and I can't help but relate---"God. God KNOWS what kind of woman I am," she says.)

I don't know why this happens. My friend calls on my luxurious cell phone and tells me that he is coming to make a payment for the car he bought from me for five hundred dollars. I ask him if he feels like breaking into a house next door and he says 'Yes,' very few of my friends would say No, and I'm pretty glad about it.

The alternative is that Nellie sleeps over in the spare room, so I really got to helping around 11:00pm. Not that I don't trust her, but, I'm just not wild about having a roommate.

For one thing, I don't know why it is when I write that the tense changes from past to present, but it does and I guess I'll have to go back and fix it one day...

My friend and I finally help her into her house after banging on the doors and windows for another twenty minutes. I consider calling 911, since it was a real possibility that her evil husband was dead inside after this much racket, this many phone calls, and my inability to comprehend how a human being could let his wife stand out in the cold for three hours while he is playing with the computer or napping or whatever.

My friend sits at the kitchen table and I finish my tea, and Nellie pops her head into the front door and says, "He's alive."
And then she did an impression of his face pretending to be asleep. She closed her eyes gently and said, "this is how someone looks when they're sleeping."
Then she squinted her eyes closed, and wrinkles formed all over her face, "This is how he looks pretending the be asleep."

Movie Trailers Explain Life's Eras

Small fingers and licorice, anise to be exact.
Fantasizing about walking around taunting people, saying, 'C'mon, you know you hate it here.' And I still have this twisted joke about suicide like my friend used said there was a time when he was trying to find the most considerate way to kill himself. I was the only person in the room to belt out in laughter. I was the only one who got the joke.
The only one who kind of knew he was talking about 'the least cleanup'.

He meant the least amount of blood, the least imposition.

I knew about the couple gallons of his own blood the sky asked him for right before Katrina blew over our heads on 3rd avenue in the Haitian neighborhood;


The sky opened up and took some blood, but my friend heard a distinct voice in the night circling his block floating about 3 feet over and he could hear it getting closer and going farther away;
sort of like you can hear a helicopter circling, but not quite.

I've been hearing music at night and laughter and women talking. Women asking questions of each other, pitches changing from high to low murmurs. It's the heater in my room, I'm sure, but it still reminds me of Katrina for some reason.

The cold makes me desperately want to sleep all the time.
I remember the line in that vampire movie "Take me away from all this death."

I'd rather this be a poem about the movie " Lean on Me ". But, it's not, it's about suicide and hurricanes.

The Ice is Not Your Bathwater

I'm Ivy League wrestling with my laurels.

I have a lot of boxes to keep things in, but everything is on the shelves.

Seven or more pairs of sunglasses. Miracle goggles. When Sundays are too hard to face because Saturday was full of lust and cigarettes and vicarious living.

Sometimes Bruce Springsteen has all the answers to the questions of the universe and homeless people under the boardwalk in New Jersey have it all figured out.
Ten or more cats can keep you warm at night.

The only problem is chapped hands and a wind-burned face;
and wanting to scream at anyone that wants something out of me.

Stop trying to take and give it up, motherfucker. Get off the television crack and stop liking what everyone tells you to pretend to like and spit out the garbage so I can hear the real words fighting through the real world, real wounds, wheel rounded, wicked ruled venus shaped Jupiter heart of late Autumn breaking the ice

in the ashtray the bird mistook for a drink of water.

There are dance moves that can actually break your neck and I think you're scared of them just like I used to be scared to race because I'd run so fast I thought I might start to fly and I was out of practice.

Like tonight, I listen to French Hip Hop songs because the only thing that matters is the momentum.
Same goes for Korean, it's the same flow, it's similar like the Korean kids learned their flow from the French kids.

I just deleted some pictures on my computer and the person died a few days later.
I guess that's why some people are hoarders. They're just superstitious.

Things are symbolic kind of like that bird that thought the ice was bathwater.
Maybe it used to be, but not today.

You Lucky Elephantitis of the Brain-Havin' Fool

Pineapple agent bran muffin. Disco heads take disco naps.
New lines get drawn on maps.
The same lady waxes my eyebrows with an invisible line like a pencil next to
my nose to be precise.
Legends aren't as cool anymore since facebook came along
and computer injuries
Carpool in the tunnel. Coffee still grows on the Jesus tree and lobotomy ear shots
like q-tips are coming from ear buds.
Stop listening and focus.
Walk around with pulled muscles and lightbulbs over your head for ambiance.
Ideas fade into the background; starting something but rarely finishing.
Starting less things for fear of failure and opposition is dependable.

I stopped listening. I'm doing what I want. You can't stop me.
Editorial comments feed the flames, and dancers go out running naked as jaybirds while the breakfast sandwich shop burns
And floods form on the streets
from five alarms of water hoses raining from the sky like a big trope on what my dad
used to say was the final joke in Thelma and Louise.

An iceskating rink of municipal trashcan babies.

Take up a donation if you want but I'll tax it until your penny becomes unlucky.

Nine lucky pennies since new orleans and three gunshot wounds to match.

There are holes in the wall at the hole in the wall; like mirrors facing each other in a dark room imagining that I can see the shadow of my old dead friend.

But all in all, less sleepless nights than ever because the mojo bag is in the junk drawer with everything else, rubber gloved-beauty treatments make for good medicine and only lucky elephants are in the living room this time.