I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. Anne Lamott
courtroom casino
A shivering mass in a cold-lit courtroom,
slunked skinny in government issue chair,
the lone “ring leader” sat in grim-lip stare.
Straight ahead at nothing in particular upon
a judge’s dispassionate immovable face, the
charged steered a red-rimmed vision eroded.
A shuffle, a gurgle, a sigh, a sniff and a cough,
and the whole matter was decided on a whim.
Scales tip in no one’s favor but the beholder.
A life’s mere matter, flesh forged in fire image
and fluttering time, like dust on butterfly feet.
And the revolving door justice spun 7’s today.
The Dancing Devils’ Eve
Three sports minded looking (shorts, windbreakers, running shoes)
men in their late sixties, early seventies in fine fit shape,
eating frozen yogurt and chatting about American Idol,
debating which singers touch their hearts rather than
merely their ears and how Adele, who has a powerful voice,
sings the same sounding songs all the time while outside
the kidlets also dressed in shorts, tennies and windbreakers,
well they just spin and run and chase and throw caps to the floor
“Pop!” and squeal and drag little sisters and brothers by the hand.
As I in my cloud of sleepless fuzz watch behind a counter through
the protective pane of legitimacy, bleary eyed, she who cannot
help but listen and let the wordy notes of lilting song and sting
float in and out of me, touching my nerves in a gentle buzz and click,
anodizing the metal of my thoughts to clumping the hours abiding.
A glance at my bloody finger, cuticle ripped down to the root, reminds
me the angst trembles beneath the calm veneer–tomorrow’s near,
and the dancing devils and retinue request (demand) my presence.
To the Thief Who Stole a Teacher’s Textbook
I wish no ill will
if to steal will fulfill
a desire to learn–
a worthwhile return–
in literary taste
as is truly the case
in so fascinting a text
“What happens next?”
The suspense never ending
in essays mind bending
priced at a mere 100 bucks
which to you probably sucks
because you obviously can’t pay
so keep it and have a joyful day.
Oh, and the essay on morality
skip it lest it damper joviality
at having stolen a book
to resell to some schnook
who’ll think he struck gold
at this collection re-sold
replete with scribbles galore
like none sold at the book store
but good luck deciphering words
gifts as intended but to fools, absurd.
In Patience…
…We wait.
For doctor calls,
nurse triage,
pharmacy fills
hospital beds
pressing 1,
then 3,
then 0,
then more numbers
and more
and more
and more
and then a voice
another voice
and then
a dead end.
Start over.
A doctor,
we need
a doctor
but
the wall
of admins
like fortresses
hide them
protect them
in gall.
Fighting
to live
beyond the
chains of care
of health-
no-
one-cares.
credit: thehealthcareblog.com
In the Key of Hate
The trump-er grown loud in palsied anger
defeaned himself to the mad deranger
While…
One penless poet in an inkwell stared
down letter-less pages of his dreams bared
For…
The world’s gone bonkers at last I tell you
rightside up is sideways blowing up truth
As…
When growing rich means exploding idols
and viscous real estate steals upturn skulls
So…
Time then once and for all to scrap the deal
that fear-stuffed progress regressives pig squeal.
End.
Hate.
Coda:
Magic Cure
“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.” Hippocrates
In Greece, Hippocrates freed medicine from magic,
deigning it dignified as the rational science.
Logically, medicine delivers cure, but
she’s sick again, for too long now.
No longer believing in time,
no hope sustains her.
We need magic.
Cardiff by the Sea
When the blue of sky and sea meet on the sun’s canvas, the world’s ills dissipate like wave vapor, crashed, floated and sprayed, melding with motion, recycling life for us who pass through.
Buffoonery and lies flee then, preferring cyber print to airy flights and icy dives in the Earth’s teal liquid split from firmament in places and times like these: the road peeled back revealing popped village pockets like blisters.
Here, when the blues of stinging seas sob seabird song, throngs of the foolish schools of the unschooled turn to the sun, seeking to bleach wrongs white or pure golden.
No trace, no nothing’s wrong here, the luscious hues just right for jog by smiles and sweet sweaty necks peeking through white pressed cotton tees tucked in creased linen tennis shorts.
A former Welsh fortress by the ocean free stands no longer firm, gone now but for those unaffected running on, keeping the tepid in and the cracked walled out, improbable as a teapot set sail on a vapid cup of tea.
Cardiff by the Sea breezes by me now and blushes me bright with springy lies of lucky losers and terrible saints, infamy tamed palatably blue, the color of infinity.
Eggs Out
“I was going to make you a cake, but I had no eggs,” she cried and then crumpled to the floor. No consoling her. She was crushed, fragile as the empty space where the egg carton used to be–a shadow of a former delicate, susceptible embryo container.
She too had been plucked from her mother’s warmth too soon, arresting her world in a devil’s playground of tears and fearful misfortunes always on the verge, always.
“It’s okay, really okay. It was their time to fly. You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault. I love cake, but I love you more. Come up and sit beside me this time, just now.”
She wiped her nose in the plaid flannel folds of her elbow and rose. It was over.
A Time for Mary
I have this watch. A client gave it to me at the start of my law career. He was grateful for the care and concern I gave to his affairs, business and personal. I was hired to develop and negotiate contracts, defend his interests in litigation or sue people for wrongs committed against his business or person. He was my second client, the first being the one on whose behalf I sued him, the second client.
Mr. M, I’ll call him, was probably impressed that I successfully sued him. We settled for my client’s costs and damages, and at that time I could boast that my success record was 100%.
I worked for Mr. M for 7 or 8 years. He paid me a monthly retainer to do jobs small and large. Once, nearly thirty years ago, he called me at 4 a.m. at my apartment. I lived with my sister then and she answered the landline (all there was then). He said he needed to talk to me right away and to meet him at a specific address. When I got there, I found myself at a dock in Newport Beach–on a yacht.
I spent the day with Mr. M, talking him down from an alchohol-induced craze about a fight he had with his wife. We mostly talked, then navigated a dinghy to the club across the bay for more drinks. I did not drink. He later thanked me and insisted on paying for my time. A few months later, he gave me the watch.
The watch had belonged to Nat King Cole, according to Mr. M. There was a story about the meeting that I do not recall. Honestly, I don’t remember whether it was Nat King Cole’s or belonged to someone else in the story about Nat King Cole. It was so long ago.
On the back of the watch is an inscription that has nothing to do with Nat King Cole ostensibly. I believe it reads: “Agie Trembly From Mary–April 20th, 1944.”
Each time I wear the watch, which still keeps time near perfectly, I think about Mary. Who is she? What was her relationship with Trembly? She did not engrave “love” as in “Love Mary”. Were they ever lovers? She is just Mary but he has a first and last name. Was Trembly her boss?
So much war and destruction on this date, the SS Paul Hamilton, filled with ammunition having exploded, killing all 580 aboard. A German-launched torpedo blew them up in the Mediterranean. The war would not end for another five months.
What did Mary think of the tragedy? What did she hope to impart, gain or express in giving Trembly the watch, a Rolex, no less? I imagine her giving this gift with hope in her heart during such desperate times, men off fighting in wars and she left behind to read about it in the papers. She must have worked to fill the jobs men left open, or she came from a family with means, whether earned or inherited.
I imagine her longing and pensive like this:
Perhaps the image is older than she, but the hint of forlorn in her posture, her gaze, might very well be the same.
There was a time when Mary had hopes or gratitude or platonic appreciation for a man, who might have returned from the war or never gone at all, being too young or afflicted in some way.
Mr. M died of esophageal cancer. Actually he died of an allergic reaction to the chemotherapy to treat the cancer some twenty odd years ago. He was a chain smoker and a drinker, a charitable man, a big man turned frail by disease. I saw him last at the court house, his brother in law prosecuting a case for him. I had since broadened my practice to 50 or 60 cases by then, and he had fallen to hard times.
For a long time after his death, I thought I heard or saw him. His presence haunted me for about a year, speaking a phrase or tossed word only he would have spoken. I remember the time he told me that I was not brilliant but a good, hard working lawyer. That stuck with me.
The man was a colorful client, an old time door to door salesman grown successful in the peripherals of the music business of the 70s and 80s. I credit him with founding the footing of my practice and sustaining it for years.
We were not close, not friends, but his unsolicited gift speaks to me, arouses mystery and memory, recalled in time-worn haze, our lives intersected in cloudy images, like the flattened engraving on the back of a Rolex watch–from Mary.
In the gaze of the other 