The sound of your own voice (shocking when you first hear it) / 2 poems: Carolyn and Bryan

I met Sultan Ali (pronounced soo-ton) at the eye doctor. He's making a documentary about a new building in downtown Philly which will house the homeless. He's looking for funding. I gave him some ideas: the penniless helping the penniless.

First of all, if you have an answering machine you hear your own voice. But remember when we were kids and you first heard your voice on a tape recorder? Sounded strange. Who the hell is that?

Anyway, I am extremely sensitive to the sound of voices. This facility began when my dad was dying many years ago. I'd wait for a call from my mom and knew immediately by her tone what was going on.

I appeared for about 20 seconds on one of Maikin Scott's behavioral health shows on WHYY-FM here in Philadelphia. Click here.

Also sent her my suggestion that there should be STANDARD TREATMENT for people with bipolar disorder or depression. She said she'd suggest it to the people on Voices in the Family.

It's a start.

This is the thing about all good ideas unless you're a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs. It takes EONS to push new ideas through. I still wanna be alive when it happens.

Speaking of which, my kidney donor daughter Sarah flew down to Dallas to interview another kidney donor, football great Everson Walls who donated his kidney to teammate Ron Springs. Read about her experience in her moving blogpost.

All was well with both of them until the recipient, Ron Springs, a diabetic, needed minor surgery to remove a cyst in his arm.

Don't ask.

He's been in a persistent vegetative state for nearly a year.

After I read about it I sent Sarah an email and said, If this ever happens to me, pull the fucking plug. I also told this to Scott. Wait for miracles, sure, but you'll know when it's time to say, Au revoir. And for godssakes give Sarah's kidney to someone who needs it.

45,000 people are on the donor list. Once every two hours someone dies b/c there aren't enough kidneys to go around.

Hail Daylight Savings. What a pleasure it is driving now after dinner. I can actually see where I'm going. So it was I traveled to Cheltenham High School for my poetry class, having written the assigned poems literally half an hour before class.

I can easily write on my blog, or do a Patch.com article, but for some reason I need to be forced to write poetry.

Bill actually said these were his two favorite poems I've written. The assignment was to write in the style of William Carlos Williams or Gary Snyder. My Williams poems were the ones that made me sad, so I concentrated on my new Snyderesque poems.

Bill Kulik, poetry teacher. He makes the class fun.

CAROLYN

i.

we drove all night from san francisco
your ‘55 chevy with gears
we lay under the stars in boulder
neither could sleep

city girls ..... we’d never known
the stars until that night
kind stars .....so far away
they listened to us through the long black night.

ii.

the park ranger came to call
asked us to his trailer
his wife had baked a bread with
molasses and cornmeal
missed her people back home
in her ruffled apron she
served us toasted slices
burnt around the edges
our chevy was impatient
and we said goodbye too soon.


BRYAN

you said i looked like a girl from new york
and i fell
i didn’t believe you when you said you were
dying
we drove to the park
where you took your son
you spread your coat like a blanket
beneath the pine
and showed me the swans on the lake

oh it was so dark
i could barely see your face
but knew it was true
the tumor had returned
and you wouldn’t tell me
your last name.