Today's goal: Clean the middle room.
Got it at the Hotel Joyce in Paris a couple of years ago.
Au revoir! It's on the Persian rug I bought from an Iranian merchant who left Iran.
Made three trips into the freezing cold dark night b/c Tonite is Garbage Night.
Found the poem about "Evelyn" I was looking for.
Started The Good Earth in the kitchen. It skipped so badly I can't listen to it. It's GREAT! So I went online and ordered another copy from my library.
It is so beautiful outside now. Stars are very far away.
Oh! Just remembered that Bendesky, I believe, wrote on FB about a comet.
The comet is shining above a devastated Paris where three Muslims shot 12 people "in a slaughter at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo." One, a teenager, gave himself up at a police station northeast of Paris.
Speaking of outrageous, horrific events, Scott and I watched a Frontline presentation Secrets of the Vatican. You would not believe what goes on there. Not all the priests and bishops, certainly, but it's a culture of self-promotion, greed for money and power, alliances with mobsters, drug usage, money-laundering from their unsupervised bank, and a ready-made culture for pedophila. .
This man and his appointees aim to make things right.
"If he lives long enough," said someone.
Over the years I've written numerous poems about my psychotherapy clients. For perhaps seven years I saw "Evelyn."
Where had she gotten to? She couldn't stand The Lamb Foundation. Her cousin Angie, who I wrote and asked to contact me, never did, so I thought, Hmmm, perhaps Bruce Brownell is still in touch with her.
Glory be! he is. And goes to visit her frequently. She is living with her therapist Rosie, Rosie's husband and their dog. Evelyn loves dogs!
Rosie has a lot of rules for Evelyn, said Bruce. I got his phone number from my library.
I used to drive her to this same Christian counselor, who, I must say, has proven herself a true Christian.
MOTHER WOULD HAVE LIKED YOU
Boston
Market, crucible of the western world
stands as
a watchtower on Welsh and York
as Evelyn
and I enter the air-conditioned splendor
with joy
and a sigh
A long
line of hungry people snake around
the glass
windows
she leans
like a hungry pup
fat rump
on the glass
her dachshund
breasts pedaling under her shirt
Every
manner of person has come to dine
in sodium
splendor, our fingers twitching with
eagerness
to tear apart a hen who had no home
only a
cage and a duty to give her life for mankind
gladly,
Unlike
me,
a hen
with a home,
my one
hundred eggs
done with
their duty
smoldering
useless until death
do us
part
Boston
Market, established 1985,
the year
after my nervous breakdown,
where I
failed in my half-hearted attempt
to slay
my mom,
what’s a
daughter to do but apologize
and take
her shopping on Saturdays
the cart
she pushes as a cane
her tiny
feet tramp tramping
in
tooth-bright sneakers
maintaining
her dignity
maintaining
her stance
as we
round the bend
in search
for the perfect peach.
She will
never know that
an artist
famous in our town
presented
me with an oil painting
of
peaches, each one soft and biteable
as a
woman’s breast
but in a
manic moment
I thought
it ugly and
threw it
in the trash.
I was
like that once.
Here at
our table at
Boston Market
Evelyn
pours gravy across her chicken breasts
tells me,
not for the first time,
“Mother
would have liked you, had
she
lived” – it is my job to keep Evelyn
alive and
do, her mom downed too many
gin and
tonics while Evelyn was swimming
inside,
an aquarium of booze
and came
out all wrong, except for
beautiful
black hair
she
refuses to wash.
A tiny
sneakered black child
enters
with his parents
a proud
American flag
stitched
across his shirt.
How can
they still
love America,
I wonder,
after
what we’ve done to them
after
what we still do.
Don’t ask
me to watch Mockingbird again
we swung
them from trees
as if
they were dolls not men
their
acts of forgiveness are boundless
boundless
as their love for chicken and for Jesus
You’d
love Jesus too I’m imagine
if you
ankles were shackled and bled
like
Jesus.
Their
African songs carried them
in the
ark across the sea
akin to
the Israeli soldiers
who
singing, sling their dead in
upraised
arms like that of a
man his
bride
blood
drops on the desert floor
I scan
across York Road
where a funeral
is in
progress on the opposite corner
I am
reminded of the funeral
of my
drunkard father-in-law
whose
mind back in Hot Springs
died
before he
did
Next
morning, like Jesus, I arise
standing
before the kitchen sink
on tiptoe
looking out at my green backyard
I can
only think of heaven as
seeing
that first shaft of morning light
splashing
against the backyard maple.
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