Quarter to 9 a.m.,
a man cracks open a tall can of Budweiser
He’s sitting outside a 7-11
I just watched him walk out the door and to
the shy side of a Redbox movie dispenser, lean
his body against the cool wall of the building and slide
down it with his back and his ass into a sit

He looks average,
aged, sized, minded
But I suppose he’s an alcoholic
or hey, maybe he just got off work like I did
He takes a big swig

I want to be like him
I want to give up too
I want a beer,
a cigarette,
something harder.
I stare at the man as I drive by in
my boyfriend’s baby blue Oldsmobile

Half past 10 a.m.,
I’m on a bench outside the public library
To the north and west of me are
the largest buildings in the city
Important people walk to and from them
Women who look younger than me carry briefcases on
both arms to and from the parking garages and lots
Their shoulders are back,
they’re looking like they have somewhere to be
Someone in the office bought Starbucks
warm, 16 ounce cappuccinos and latte’s await them
They wear barrettes in their hair
They have boyfriends who will never leave them
I want to be like them, too

My home is comfortable.
To me.
Often it is so comfortable to me
that I stay inside it
afraid of how uncomfortable the
outside might be

I’m outside of it now
The greatest risk I can perceive is my
walking into a lamp-post as I write

I’ve walked seven blocks or so
the air is brisk; I have mittens
the air is plain nice when it gets down to it

I haven’t been bothered by anybody
I think that’s what I’m afraid of most.
Okay, a hispanic man in a van did give me a kissy face
what was up with that?
I stared back at him blankly
It happened another time long ago and
I flipped the guy off
I’m in a different mood now

I’m on my own out here
Just like I like
Society, eh, not so bad after all
the people are minding their own business today
(this coming from someone who knocked on the new neighbors
door at 8 a.m. to introduce myself)

Do crows make a “knocking” sound?
I’m sitting here on a mossy stump
(in the middle of the city!)
the stump is miraculously dry
I realize I am to my own devices,
just like at home
Maybe even more so!
There is the knocking sound the bird is making
There is a ray from the sun
There is lonnnnnnnng grasssssss all around me
Oh how I missed the grass when I lived in Arizona

There is solitude here
…if I ignore the sound of the man coughing and
hacking inside the pickup at the stop light.
There is bliss.

Two minutes later
and a man is walking by
He points at me and says:
You’re a brave lady!
Oh yeah, why’s that?
Bum’s piss on that stump all the time!
Oh yeah, well I dont care,
I told him,
It’s just my ass.

Growing up
there was this wonderful place
called “Kid Town”
Kid Town was a park
located in both Crescent City
and Brookings
It wasn’t always there,
the park was built in the 90’s
first in Brookings,
then in Crescent City
I always went to the one in Brookings
because that’s where my mother’s family lived
and my mother’s family liked to do normal things
like take me to parks

In Crescent City, with my Dad,
we were likely to be tromping through strangers
backyards looking for edible mushrooms,
plastic bags wrapped around our feet
or, browsing grave’s at the graveyard for recreation

At Kid Town there were children,
And though I didn’t go near them, it was
healthy to be in their presence
You must be thinking,
this girl acts like was raised up under a rock!
Well,
if I hadn’t gone to Kid Town this one day,
I might still be wearing a training bra

I was probably 11 years old
Barely
I hadn’t taken to cigarettes yet
and was still running and playing like a kid

I was hanging upside down from a chin-up bar,
minding my own business
when two girls who looked like sisters
pointed and said:
Eeeeww, she needs a bra!
I was wearing a thin purple t-shirt
that had risen up to my chin
baring my stomach and an area that until
then I’d just considered my “upper stomach”
Never before had I given a damn about showing my upper stomach
but after recieving glances from even more on lookers,
I decided to stay the hell off that chin up bar

Later, my Aunt took me to Fred Meyer’s department store for my first bra
We’d taken my top off and looked in the mirror and
sure enough, my chest was ever so slightly raised
I begged for a pink or purple bra
but I ended up with white.

Ever gift-wrapped an item of clothing?
It’s lame,
If you don’t puncture the wrapping paper in the process of wrapping,
you’re bound to puncture it during transport to
your Dad’s house, your friend’s home, or the white elephant work party.

This morning, after a trip to Fred Meyer department store,
I decided I needed to wrap one particular gift (because it was fabric)
first inside of a box, then inside the flashy
black and candy cane wrapping paper
At this point, I was long gone from Fred Meyer’s,
contemplating the wrapping clothing items bit while
stopped at a red light

I’ll head to the neighborhood grocer for a box!, I decided
Jolly, I turned the radio dial to Christmas tunes
(the guy and I have really been loving them this year!)
and headed toward the Red Apple Market, the grocer closest to home

I parked the car, thinking I’ll be out of here in a snap!
Just a couple of mornings ago, I’d seen a cashier entering
inventory behind a big, pile of luscious sand-colored boxes
Upon entering the market this morning,
I saw that same pile of boxes, and behind it, a cashier man

Hi! I said to the cashier man
I was wondering if I could get just one box — small to medium sized
I was eyeing the exact box I wanted, it was teetering on top of the big pile,
opened, with nothing in it, and, yep, small to medium-sized
The cashier man looked at me in the eyes, said:
I haven’t got a thing. I won’t have a box for you until
I do produce and I’m a good hour behind on that!
Oh.. I said, looking at him from behind the huge pile of
gorgeous Little Debbie boxes.
You can come back then if you want, he finished.

I, through gritted teeth, cheerily replied, Hm…well, okay, thanks!
Reminding myself: kill ’em with kindness, kill ’em with kindness.
Two things:
1. I shop at Red Apple Market at least once a week
2. I personally despise when clerks, servers, flight attendants, etc.
(and, hey, I’ve been one!)
use phrases like “I don’t have any boxes right now or
I juuust ran out of key-lime pie or
I’m all out of peanuts but I do have pretzels.

You are working for a grocer, restaurant, airline,
You are not the owner of the boxes, the pie, or the peanuts.
Get over yourself.
You have coworkers! And bosses.
Look around you.
Try: “we unfortunately sold out of the key-lime pie”

Oh, and give me one, just one, of the boxes I’m
standing behind over here
Have some holiday spirit, man,
else take off that cheery santa hat!

Several years ago
I had a psychic reading
Not at one of those hole-in-the-wall places
with the flashing lights
and crystal balls

It was done in my living room

My former roommate, Sydney, had her future read frequently
Sydney had the same lady come over to our house
oh, every couple months or so
Always when nobody was home
I don’t remember how it was arranged
but the next thing you knew,
I too was signed up for a reading
Sydney promised not to tell the “medium” a thing about me
That way we could insure accuracy

The medium didn’t wear a long, flouncy dress
Or bring a satchel full of rocks and crystals,
She showed up in her subaru car,
dressed in a North Face pullover and jeans
Said to me, this isn’t my day job

We sat facing each other in the quiet house
Nobody there except for us,
That was one of her rules
That nobody else be there, too distracting

She took a few minutes to gauge me,
Had her eyes closed, seemed to be sniffing around at the air
Like she were some kind of animal.
I closed my eyes too, I was tired

Maybe its custom to start out by saying
a few nice things about the person.
Because that’s what she did at first,
mentioned a few of my qualities
Built me up a little bit.
She said she noticed that I was a writer.

She told me: Keep writing, someday there will be people helping you.
As you can imagine, I was pleased that this was one of
the first things she mentioned.
She was good

She went on to say that there was a person from
my past, who wished to speak to me.
From a past life, from a past life, she clarified.
The medium then, with her eyes still closed,
started speaking in a stranger, lower voice
I realized that the spirit was speaking through her:
It’s you! It’s you! I cannot believe I can finally speak to yyyooou!
The emotion that came with this voice brought tears to my eyes
Ooooohhhhh, youuuuuuuu! Oh, oh, you are sssso lovely in this life!
The voice was truly eerie,
but my, what a compliment! Lovely?

The medium broke the contact with the spirit
She looked at me and said:
Whoever that was they sure are fond of you.
But, know that not every spirit is good.
Spirits, like humans, are both bad and good.
Let’s move on, she said

I have some advice for you, based on what I’m seeing:
First, know that a good way to gauge your happiness, is that
you are happiest when you are most light on your feet.

I would imagine..

Second, you should eat less spicy food. More fresh food.

No and okay.

You are very serious, watch more funny movies and tv shows.

Now, I have given you some advice about how to better your life,
I’d like to mention just a few other things before we close:

You are wondering if you will have
everlasting love: you are not the type.
You will not be with the same man for all of your life.

I’ll show you!

You are wondering if you will be happy when you move from Arizona.
You will be happy, you will be more whole than you have ever been.

In the distant future I see you standing up on a hill,
inside of a prairie or meadow.
Your arms are wide open.
You are rejoicing because
you have finally reached the place
where you’ve been headed all your life.

I will keep my eyes wide-open for that place..

That was the last psychic reading I’ve had
The woman told me all I needed to know,
and then some.
Knowing your future is not fun.
Whether its true or not.
I mean, there’s the good:
I should keep writing!
People will be helping me with it!
I’m going to stretch my arms out wide like a crazy
person while standing in a high-elevation prairie!
And then there’s the bad:
I should give up Thai food,
no relationship I will ever be in will last.

Enough is enough,
I know enough now.
I will seek that meadow where
I will be whole and free
and I will try my darndest to have a long,
happy marriage someday.

I paid her $25 bucks that day
She told me a whole lot more
But its been so long that I forgot it
I hadn’t written it down because
at the time I thought I’d remember it all.

*Note: I dug this poem up on my dusty ol’ zip drive. It was written at least one year ago. Sadly I have no new material (that I’m willing to share with you). Somebody piss me off already and give me something to write about geez!

Its 1:45 a.m.
I’m sitting inside a 24 hour diner
on the outskirts of Grants Pass, Oregon
There are four silver-haired men
huddled together at a table near to me
They are talking loudly and laughing

They all order coffee

The waitress is a blonde-haired woman
with brunette roots
She’d called me “hon” when I took a seat
I like her

She’s wearing a black sequined top
and a scrunchie in her hair
The only modern thing about her
is a lip piercing
You know what you want?
She asks one of the silver-haired men.
His voice booms back at her:
I always know what I want! What time you get off?
His eyes blatantly scan her crotch
The other men at the table ROAR with laughter
I listen from the next booth over,
Thinking the waitress might kick them out,
I’m ready to defend her

The waitress hesitates for a moment…
Then, to my surprise, she replies:
Seven o’clock
And gives the asshole a wink

We’d built it in the summertime
It had started out as a fifth wheel trailer,
butted up against the northeast corner of “the lot”
Then one weekend when I was gone visiting Peggy,
a modest frame went up,
jutting out from the front of the trailer

What color should it be?
Dad asked as we stared at the
beginnings of our new home
Red, I responded
On the weekends we’d go to the hardware store
Mainly he was buying two by fours:
pretty nude colored things that smelled good,
Solid, round beams were also purchased

I felt so rich back then
Dad was working and the men at
the hardware store treated us with much respect
We had a truck, we had a schedule, and soon we’d have a home

The cabin went up that summer
You could hardly see the fifth wheel anymore
But it was there, an important part of the structure itself
Like a champ Dad put solar panels on the roof
And somewhere he found us a rustic wood stove
I remember us going to the fancy wood stove store but not
being able to afford one of theirs
Ours ended up being better, it wasn’t the kind you wanted to keep clean,
it was the kind you wanted to use

Under the blue of an August sky, me and Dad painted the cabin red
I remember thinking I could be a house-painter when I grew up,
it wasn’t so hard at all!
Though he had to paint all the upper parts

One of the best features ended up being the bay window,
It looked out to the yard where we kept the geese and ducks
At one point, the window opened, but its been a long time
I suppose too much cold air was getting in because now theres
a bunch of caulking on it
Back when it did open, I used to sit in it and daydream
But once I leaned so far out the window that I fell out
I fell roughly two and a half feet and then the geese attacked me
I’ll never forget that

Dad and I lived there for about a decade together
Then moved to town to care for my Great Grandma Faith
After I moved away to grow up and all that
My dad moved back up to the cabin
If people are ever looking for my him, they go to the cabin
Now there is no cabin
I hope he builds another one
The little red cabin was about the third cabin he built
The first two were in the forest behind his childhood home in Requa
They were stunning cabins, made of alder

I have pictures somewhere

Anyone who knows my Dad
Knows that he cares little of material wealth
The only thing he’s ever saved up for
is a chainsaw or a generator
And he’d recently bought a new toilet

My Dad had a decent car once
But his seventeen year old niece wrecked it,
He forgave her in a snap
And eventually, he gave up on automobiles all together,
opting for his own two feet and a used bike to take
him up and down the mountain, rain or sleet

An avid backpacker for years,
he never carried a backpack made after the year 1980
Nothing new, ever
Many a day I’d trek behind him on the trail
Staring at his external frame bag,
shredding at the corners,
rusted at the buckles
Looking like more hassle than good

He didn’t know any better,
He considered the bag a luxury
Better than carrying my sleeping bag in one hand
and a plastic bag in the other, he’d laugh
But there are newer backpacks that would be more comfortable, Dad,
with as much as you come out here…, I would tell him
Look, mine’s just fine, okay?
I would smile at the back of his head,
watch the pots and pans tied to his bag bounce around
On his bag, he’d written the words Hare Krishna
with a sharpie pen
Why let anything get you down?
Sing Hare Krishna and your heavy, rusty backpack
will suddenly feel like a feather
Hare Krishna
My Dad rarely complained
Hare Krishna

Anyone who knows my Dad
Knows that he cares little of material wealth
Raising me, he tried to teach me that
One year for Christmas, he got me a jar of dill pickles
I couldn’t have been happier
Didn’t even know what I would’ve wanted otherwise
…within our price range
Another year coincidently we bought each other THE EXACT SAME GIFT:
yellow flashlights from RiteAid
We couldn’t have been happier

I was at the bank the other day,
Signing up for a new account,
Since I live in a new town
The banker asked if I wanted to protect my valuables
with home insurance
My eyes scanned the air in front and above me
As I tried to recall any valuables I owned
I looked at him and said:
Wow, I have no valuables. I mean, my boyfriend has a few but..
When you do accumulate some material wealth…, he went on
I stopped listening
If I were anything like my father I would never accumulate the wealth
that the banker spoke of
Gosh, I don’t think I’d want something so valuable it have to have
insurance. A car, yes, a television, a ring, no.

When you walked into my Dad’s house,
you stepped into his bedroom
a one-room cabin
a wood stove,
a window,
a bed
and eventually, a kitchen and a bathroom
There was never even a mirror

For a long time,
even when I lived there,
there wasn’t much clutter
At first, we were minimalistic,
Just starting out I guess
But as the years passed,
Twenty years or so by now,
My Dad got ahold of a TV, some VHS tapes
and things to hang on the wall:
a painting of Wyatt Earp,
a painting of a cabin my Aunt Dorothy made a long time ago
and the Van Dusen family crest inherited from my Dad’s grandpa

You could tell what meant most to my Dad when you were in his cabin
He had an altar set up on the windowsill
He had a bookshelf above the bed
On the bookshelf were 3 big, fat photo albums,
Primarily photos of me
There were also books about religion, local Native American culture, and
the book Mushrooms Demystified
Thumb-tacked to the wall was a picture of my Dad’s girlfriend, Sis
And on his bedstand a photo of me, his only child

As I slept last night, I dreamt I was looking through photo albums from my past,
Albums that do actually exist, in my home
In my dream, the photos were much more flattering than they actually are
In my dream I was bragging to some stranger
Oh and look at this one, this is when I was a cheerleader
In the photos in my dream, I was smiling bigger and prettier than I actually did
When I woke up I thought wow, what a nice dream

Later, I got a phone call from a family member who promptly told me:
Your Dad’s cabin burnt down
Howwwww? I asked
Not sure exactly, they think some “friends” who were staying there
did it when he was gone. There might’ve been an explosion,
or someone might’ve done it intentionally

Someone might’ve done it intentionally
Someone might’ve done it intentionally

Even if it was an explosion, I thought,
The explosion was probably close enough to intentional

A person’s cabin doesn’t just start on fire

When my Dad wasn’t home,
when he was down in town for the holiday for christs sake
A “friend” sabotaged the few things he owned,
His bed,
His pillow,
His NEST.

I daydream about being violent toward these people
But there will be no justice,
We can’t afford that
And they know that
I fear that next they’ll take his land
I fear they’ll build a big, concrete fence around it
That they’ll peek over the top of it when we come home
And say,
Oh, is this your place? Says who?

My Dad owns a school bus,
It was right next to the cabin
He plans to live in there
Its shelter
But it has no heat
It has no picture of Sis hanging on the wall
And it just isn’t the little red hand-built cabin
It just isn’t him
His cabin was his life

I haven’t talked to him yet,
But the family says my Dad’s being optimistic,
as usual,
somehow finding the hidden meaning in it all
I’ve got family photographs,
though not the same ones he had.
He’ll forgive the people who did it,
And they’ll do it again or something like it down the road
Sis says they might be out to kill him,
Just for fun,
Seriously

I look forward to talking to him when I do,
Hearing how he’s making lemonade out of his lemons,
Hearing why he thinks this was all meant to happen
Not that I’ll agree with him at all…

But I’ll be happy because he’s moving forward
Hey, maybe its time to finally finish that dream house he started building
Kick the chickens out and spruce it up a little
Put a roof on it and get some homeowners insurance
Maybe put a padlock on the front door,
Start fresh

Society is one big butterball
And I am an oiled fist
I’ve tried so horribly
To fit right in
To respect the hierarchy,
kiss ass to get ahead,
to follow the rules
And to fake it

I’ve tried to push my opinion
Be set in my ways
Cause a scene
Draw all eyes to me
To be presentable
Pay my bills on time
I’ve tried to impress someone before
I’ve tried to contribute

But it just isn’t happening
People still look at me funny
when I walk into a room
Don’t you have something to say?
I’ll keep it to myself thank you
Maybe dabble with the issue later in a poem

Society is one big butterball
And I am an oiled fist
Getting a grip
Does not come naturally
Society may just continue on without me
Go ahead,
Act like I was never even here,
Please, really,

If anyone needs to find me
Take a machete when you come
I’ll be deep inside the brush
Nature has a way of pinning me down