Several Disparate Things

First, I'm working in...a really tall Chicago Building today and the fog has moved in so all you see out the window is fog. It is eerie and beautiful, if dizzying, I feel like I'm in Brigadoon and the mist is shifting in to take me into the clouds for a hundred years.

(I had the name of the building, then I thought it might be like catnip to my stalker. My hours at this job are random and untrackable, so I am probably safe, but why make it easy?)

Second, there's a TON of wacky stuff happening that I either don't know what the facts are or I'm stuck keeping other people's secrets. People getting fired, having affairs, taking drugs... It's crazy town! Every part of it is bugging me and making me want to write about it on this blog, and every part of it would be stupid to have in print on a blog, even this one that no one reads. Dilemma.

Third, I am working on the no fear policy, right? The first step always comes out defensive, right? Like the time I bought a backless dress - the first time I wore it I spent the night saying, yeah, yeah, I know I never wear stuff like this but dammit, I like this dress! And then I finally firgured out no one cared and the next time I could just wear the dress without constantly commenting on the fact I was wearing the dress.

So, forgive me when I have to preface this today with: the hell with it...you stopped by, here's a poem for you. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it. (Eventually I can do without the disclaimer, but baby steps, ok?)


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14. (9 August 2010)

I wanted to howl at the moon
but Larry kept saying that was the last thing my momma needed to hear
the phone ringing late with policemen and their mumbled apologies for waking her.
He was rolling joints and soon we were arguing
cause he said that rusted out barrier was a levee.
"This one? This? I think it's just a big gate
stuck in what amounts to a pond."
Larry said what did I think a levee was anyway
(about then I noticed how the moonlight hit his mustache
how it looked greasy, how his hair looked greasy,
and it made me wonder when was the last time Larry had showered).
All of the crime of the night drained out of a sudden,
and it came to me how different the night would have been
if I could have loved Larry, or not even love,
maybe nothing as grand or complicated, but if I could look at him
and see more than just a two-bit hoodlum in training,
more than all the layers of filth he couldn't wash off.

The night felt absent, like it had just moved out
before Larry and I got there, like an empty apartment
and we were pretending the dust and flotsam left behind by the last tenant
were their furnishings, their nick-nacks.

So I did howl, loud, like a wolf in a horror film,
deep in the throat, letting it tear out of me like a rocket,
and in the distance, some animal barked back
and for a spilt second that night was full of night.
Some animal in the dark had heard me.