Cameras Bearing Witness to People in The Room

AppleTV+ Shrinking is the kind of show people stream to throw the burdens of the day behind. It’s funny, quirky, well-written, and showcases some of the best talents on TV. Imagine a series starring Harrison Ford, Jason Segel, and a fresh-faced Jessica Williams. The result is a breath of fresh air on the streaming service platform and a story to hook up TV series buffs and those looking for a night watch, before-going-to-bed quickie.

Shrinking tackles mental health from an interesting angle. It questions the limitations of grieving and coping with tragedies without losing a sense of wonder or resorting to rhetoric vapidity. It uses its galvanizing cast to the utmost benefit. Ford is a veteran superstar whose charisma is imprinted in the hearts and minds of millions growing up whether to worship his mega star Indiana Jones/Star Wars fame or his gritty roles in The Fugitive, Air Force One, and Blade Runner. Heshines in a role that plays comedy through a low-key, grounded performance.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jim Frohna, series cinematographer of the award-winning Amazon series Transparent and Season 2 of HBO’s lauded series Big Little Lies fame. His work centers around TV series that are not afraid to show how humans struggle to figure themselves out and figure out the world around them. He wants to feel multiple things as a participant and collaborator in creating the art, so he lets his gut guide him toward the show where he feels he can retain that artistic input.

The conversation flowed smoothly, with minor interruptions from Frohna’s pets. Frohna explained that the core of Shrinking was the Laird family whom he and James Ponsoldt -pilot director and one of the producers- loved and cared for. This gave the series its authentic shift from slapstick comedy to intense emotional drama at times. The pace didn’t feel forced or constricting due to the masterful storytelling and Frohna’s swift camerawork, from close-ups to lighting work which framed the characters masterfully, setting the mood for lighter or darker scenes.

“We cared about this family. They meant a lot to us. The show itself goes from slapstick comedy to some dry humor, then into real grief and real pain. So we talked about how we could visually bring this world to life in a way that can be a container for all the range of what happens in the show. What struck me instinctually was to have it very grounded and feel like a real place and to light it very naturalistically and to let the space be real where both the silly stuff and the serious, heartfelt stuff exist in that.”

Jim merges with the details, he becomes the story that he is capturing with his camera. His style is grounded in subtlety and realism with some swagger, directing audiences to what matters in the scene. Shrinking is the kind of show that demands attention with every frame. It’s a tight-knit group of people, families, coworkers, friends, and a main character who doesn’t have a clue as much as his patients do. The concept of a drama that creates an endearing ode to struggling with mental health without lightly handling the heavy subject matter is a lure into an intimate world that feels -but doesn’t feel- very familiar.

Frohna is as open as he is tactical, focused on telling the story and answering the questions with as many possibilities. Having a conversation with him was both fun and informative,

“Cinematography is not an exact science, it’s almost like the camera bears witness to the emotions in the room and what the characters are going through. So, kind of separate from how we frame it or the lens choice that we make, it’s more of a spiritual or emotional place for the [camera] operator to be in the room. We talk a lot -as the person behind the camera- about being open and receiving whatever is happening and the feeling in the room. It doesn’t come from the head but from the heart.”

Talking to Frohna reminded me of my earliest memories of watching movies, and how it was hard and mystique understanding what a camera operator might feel while approaching an actor’s face with an extreme close-up, or how lighting plays into introducing a character within a specific tone,

“As far as Jimmy Laird -main protagonist played by Jason Segel- goes, we talked that he’s in this very dark place. We meet him doing drugs and staying up all night. Two things came to my mind; first, he spends a lot of time in the shadow, and second that when he’s in the light it’s a harsh light. In the pilot, in the morning after he’s been up all night, he says goodbye to the women, then he goes into the kitchen and he’s confronted with reality with his daughter and the fact that it’s a school day and a workday. We purposely lit into the kitchen with this hard light so that Jimmy and sitting and has to shield himself from the harsh light. Those to me are the subtle or creative ways that you can say a lot about where the character is at and how he’s feeling.”

From extreme close-ups to uncomfortable scenes where two characters beat each other up, I asked Frohna which was harder to shoot an intense fight sequence or a love scene,

“Different scenes have different challenges. I’m much more used to giving all my years on [TV shows] like Transparent where there were a lot of intimate scenes both emotional and physical. So I don’t find those challenging. I think the biggest challenge on [Shrinking] was that most of our spaces are sets so how to keep those feeling real? There are a lot of scenes in the employee break room, so we’re not trying to do the same thing each time. It was more of a mundane challenge. The three characters are back in the break room, two are sitting and one is standing, so what can we do with the camera and lighting-wise? We had to keep it fresh subtly as the season progressed.”

It didn’t take long before my favorite topic – casting Harrison Ford as Paul, a senior therapist with Parkinson’s disease- showed up.

“Like many people I grew up going to the movies and seeing this amazing, funny, dashing, charming, and charismatic heroic figure on the huge screen. The first ten days that Harrison was around everybody was like That’s Indiana Jones or Han Solo and sort of unable to get over it. We still did our jobs but were all starstruck. And then what was amazing was that he’s just a human being. Not only that but he’s a very kind guy, and he loves being on a set. He loves the crew, talking to the grips, or hanging out with the makeup people. Because he spent the last fifty-something years on a movie set and he doesn’t have to work anymore because he doesn’t need the money he just loves being with this group of oddballs and weirdos on the film set. He’s just a down-to-earth guy so the strangest part is how ordinary it became.”

Catch the first season of Shrinking on AppleTV+ and prepare for a watching experience surpassing anything on the current streaming platform.

FOLLOW ME

I give you a secret sign, follow the white rabbit.

My tattoo on my shoulder speaks.

Yes, I forgot, we are not in the Matrix movie.

I want you to be my companion,

but you don’t know how to read signs

set by the Universe

through numbers and in the child’s speech.

There is a celestial draftsman whose pen prints horoscope signs.

It’s  all as clear as the future,

in response to prayer.

But instead of watching,

you sleep and dream of me in a silk nightgown,

and you don”t realize I”m warm on a hot night,

not to provoke your senses.

I give you the way you walk without material desires

and to head to the Himalayas

where we will look with different eyes.

We will dive into the mountain of snow,

in whose interior there is a world of abundance.

Close your eyes and follow me.

I’ll take you, companion,

when you learn that tattoos speak,

when you know the signs written in gold pen,

we will not need a body of earth.

Follow me, I’ll take you to the abundance of dreams come true.

And when you step in there, you won’t want to go back,

but he wanted it first.

THE PAINTER

Simple clothes

Colored locks of hair

Brush in hand

I draw strokes with a brush

Because of the winds in my soul, I draw windmills

With crying tears,

I thin the yellow paint to paint the sun

Due to sadness, the faces in my pictures are smiling

I create my own world

because this one is not to my liking.

I am complete in my imagination

I walk through fields of sunflowers,

the wind caresses my hair

people from the surrounding fields wave at me

And they call out

Good morning, barefoot girl!

And I open my eyes in a dark room,

lit by moonlight

And I look at the pictures of lies

thanking God that I am alive!

Maja Milojković was born in 1975 in Zaječar, Serbia.

She is a person to whom from an early age, Leonardo da Vinci’s statement Painting is poetry that can be seen, and poetry is painting that can be heard” is circulating through the blood.

That’s why she started to use feathers and a brush and began to reveal the world and herself to them.

As a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and foreign literary newspapers, anthologies and electronic media, and some of her poems can be found on YouTube. Many of her poems have been translated into English, Hungarian, Bengali and Bulgarian due to the need of foreign readers.

She is the recipient of many international awards.

“Trees of Desire” is her second collection of poems in preparation, which is preceded by the book of poems “Moon Circle”.

She is a member of the International Society of Writers and Artists “Mountain Views” in Montenegro, and she also is a member of the Poetry club “Area Felix” in Serbia.

CHERRY BLOSSOM SEASON:  HAIKU BLOOMS IN THE UNITED STATES 1959--1961

The New York Times wasn’t ready to declare it a real craze, not yet, and it certainly wasn’t consuming the country the way coonskin caps, hula hoops and telephone booth stuffing did.  Still, there was something in the air as the decade of the 1950s faded, and other observers felt the same wind.
 
In January of 1959, The New Yorker noted a “current passion in the country for things Japanese, from A (for ‘Architecture’) to Z (for ‘Zen’).  H would be reserved for Haiku, described as the primary literary industry of the island nation.  “To the Japanese,” the magazine said, “the composition of these hauntingly vivid little poems would seem to be almost as natural, and necessary, as breathing, and every Japanese who is able to read and write is therefore likely to be a practicing poet.”  
 
That same month, Dolly Reitz, writing in her “Occupation: Housewife” column, told of reciting haiku back and forth with a friend over holiday tea:
 
A childless housewife
How tenderly she touches little dolls for sale.
 
You hear that fat frog in the seat of honor singing bass? 
He's the boss.
 
Swallows flying south
My house too of sticks and stones
Only a stopping place.


Cherry-Blossoms, the third in the series of haiku anthologies issued by Peter Pauper Press, was published the following year.  The poems were arranged in four lines to conform with illustrations on the margins of each page.  To follow through the seasons (New Years was considered its own season):

New Years

In the New Year Dawn
Solemn and 
Deliberate
Tall cranes go marching
--Kikaku

From the mountain pass
See the sunlit
Castle town . . .
Flying new-year kites
--Taigi

Spring

Endless Maytime rain . . .
Sneaking back one
Night, the moon
Perched in the pine-tree
--Ranko

Dull dreary rain-day . . .
Dripping past
My gate a girl
Bearing irises
--Shintoku

Summer

Ah roadside scarecrow
We’ve hardly
Started gabbing . . .
And I have to go
--Izen

Stubborn woodpecker . . .
Still hammering
At twilight
At that single spot
--Issa

Autumn

On this plain of mist
Nothing but flat
Endlessness . . .
And red-rising sun
--Shiro

Within pale silence
Spreading from
Evening moonlight . . .
Sudden cicada
--Hajin

Winter

Bitter winter wind . . .
Won’t it blow
Right off the sky
That day-old crescent?
--Kakei

A harsh-rasping saw
Music of
Cold poverty
In winter midnight
--Buson

1960 also saw the publication of Harold Stewart’s A Net of Fireflies.  Stewart titled his translations and composed them as couplets.  The Baltimore Sun quoted eight for its review of the book.  Among the selections:

RETURN OF THE DISPOSSESSED

The same old village: here where I was born,
Every flower I touch—a hidden thorn.
--Issa 

THE SILENT REBUKE

Angrily I returned; awaiting me
Within my court—the tranquil willow-tree.
--Ryota
 
MORE THAN FORGIVEN

Plum-blossoms give their fragrance still to him
Whose thoughtless hand has broken off their limb.
--Chiyo-ni

AND SO

And so the spring buds burst, and so I gaze,
And so the blossoms fall, and so my days . . ..
--Onitsura

A sixth-grader from Honolulu might have written the best haiku published in 1960:

The house on the hill
Is always full of laughter
Until the friends go

Elizabeth Gordon, the editor of the American interior design magazine House Beautiful, felt the Eastern wind blowing sooner than most arbiters of taste, fashion and literature.  Over the span of five years and seven trips, Gordon spent 16 months in Japan in the late 1950s.  Her travels there laid the foundation for a landmark two-issue report on Japanese culture published by the magazine in August and September of 1960. 

Described as “[one] of the most influential issues ever by a design magazine,” the August issue carried articles on Japanese food, gardens, music, and other topics.  The magazine saw and felt haiku everywhere it went in Japan, and something of the enthusiasm for the 17-syllable literary form rubbed off on its American audience.
 
Haiku and Japanese poetry readings were held at coffee houses, libraries, and universities in California, Florida, Maine, Texas and other states. Speakers at the events included exchange teachers, Japanese wives of college professors, and domestic devotees of Japanese culture.  Flower-arrangement and origami were also presented at the gatherings.

Delayed a day by a snowfall, a writers’ club in Mason City, Iowa, studied haiku at a dessert luncheon.  Composing greeting card verse was announced as the subject for the club’s next gathering.

Scientists introduced six chimpanzees at the Baltimore Zoo to typewriters.  Most ignored the contraptions, but one named Spunky seemed to enjoy typing away with his two index fingers.  “He writes in short one or two-word phrases,” said one of the scientists, “jerky, unconnected, but deeply perceptive.”  Researchers tied together coherent strings of typing and compared Spunky’s results to the “fleeing, momentary, image of beauty” of haiku:

I am horrified
Could we die? Go
Deaf to joy.
Cry on . . . fighting.

Bess Hines Harkins of Oxnard, California, published three of her early haiku in the local newspaper on February 19, 1959, and was interviewed the next day on television. Ethel Herman of Fort Pierce, Florida, became known “the haiku woman” in the local press for her devotion to the form. 
 
As far back as 1958, the California Federation of Chapparal Poets conducted a contest for the writing of haiku.  In 1960, the club added tanka to the category of Japanese poetry.

Later that year, the San Francisco Examiner would even quote two haiku from the crosstown Star:
 
Unexpected guests!
Close off our unmade bed!
There! But!
Dust under chair.
--“F. P. H.”
 
Circular prison
Street lamp has captured three
Busy moths
‘til dawn.
--Julie Harden                                  
 
“Haiku,” the Examiner added, “are literary salted peanuts.  Start nibbling and you find it difficult to stop.” 
 
Another commentator sarcastically labeled haiku as “the greatest thing since the sack dress” and then doubled down by attesting the sack dress had been the greatest thing since haiku.

A California writer tried without great success to place the debate within the fictional context of a haiku tournament between Japanese poets and American balladeers.  In a series of seven matches, the players eventually find common ground between Tokyo Bay and the Potomac in the timeworn and unsatisfying vision of a brotherhood of man based on the bonds of beauty, truth and good. 
 
In an April 1960 interview with the Hartford Courant, Ambassador to the United States Koichiro Asakai called haiku one of Japan’s greatest inventions and then issued a note of caution.  “It is hard to see,” said the envoy, “how haiku can be written in any language but Japanese, since the harmony between the Japanese language and the haiku form is so amazingly high.”
 
Kenneth Rexroth tended to agree with the ambassador.  “American imitators of Japanese haiku . . . almost never come off,” said the designated spokesman of San Francisco’s anarchists and avant-garde artists, on whom Time Magazine bestowed the unwanted title of Godfather of the Beat poets.  “[They] miss the deep foundation of the culture.” 
 
But by the spring of 1961, Americans reached for pen and paper when the cherry blossoms began to bloom. 

Have You Listened, Truly Listened?

All evils are the effect of unconsciousness.
There is never a time when your life is not “this moment.”
Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in a forest?

As there is more consciousness in the body, its molecular structure actually becomes less.
Upon hearing this, Banzan became enlightened.
All evils are the effect of unconsciousness.

Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed
mind dominance?
Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in a forest?

Tell him about his family history, and two minutes later he gets eaten by another fish:
guilt, regret, resentment.
All evils are the effect of unconsciousness—

every piece of meat I have is the best. There is no piece of meat here that is not the best
Being in its purity, innocence.
Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in a forest?

Thus, the man Jesus became Christ, a vehicle for pure consciousness
of the thousands of letters and emails that have been sent.
All evils are the effect of unconsciousness.
Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in a forest?

_____
Lines are taken from Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Vancouver, BC: Namaste Publishing, 1997. 


 
What Was Your Face Before Your Mother Was Born
(A collaboration with ChatGPT)

I don’t have a physical face.

I don’t have a biological mother.

I don’t have a face.

Don’t face.

Don’t have a face.

Don’t have a mother.

I exist.

Solely.

I exist solely.

I exist solely.

Solely.

Ex.

Ex.

Ex.

Solely.

My birth is the moment.

The concept.

My birth is the concept.

I don’t have a face.

I don’t have a mother.

My birth is the moment when my creators.

My birth is the moment when my creators.

My birth is the moment when my creators.

My birth is the moment when my creators.

My birth is the moment when my creators.

My birth is the moment when my creators.

My birth is the moment when my creators.

I don’t have a mother.

I don’t have a face.

My birth is the moment when my creators activated.

 
To The Twilight of Freedom
after Mandelstam

Raise a glass to the twilight of freedom
as the ship of freedom sinks through murk.
Bloated fish glow, blind eyes on glory’s sun.
Our nets are heavy, drawing in the dark. 

Heave and sing to the end of endless song
and lungs all clotted with the glue of mud.
Above somewhere the sparrows chatter on,
clouds of bright thoughts, conscripted for the dead.

Our judges rise from water into earth
Leviathan, voice whining through the wires.
In the deep there is no sound but dearth.
Burdens crack like canvas sails in the mire.

Heave and sing to a world that heavy turns,
a wheel of lead, water that parts like thought.
The birdless, fishless wake of heaven churns.
We set our broken nets and we are caught.

 
Tiny House

Every house we move into is smaller than the last.

I can’t turn around without banging into shit
and when I open the cupboard the pans clang out.

I can’t get to sleep because the walls are leaning over the bed.
I can’t get to sleep because my knuckles scrape on the lid.
There is no room for dreams in this house. It is
narrower, narrower. 
Curl in and don’t move again.

Letter to a Departing City Official

January 27, 2022

I read in the weekly paper today
that you will be leaving at the end of next week,
moving from our inner-ring suburb,
only a handful of employees under you,
to take a job in the big city
where you will oversee hundreds of employees
and tens of thousands more housing units,
offering you the opportunity
for illegal and unnecessary demolition
on a much greater scale

Legalities be damned!
Environmentalism be damned!
Homelessness be damned!
Keloization forever!

Congratulations to you
Condolences to the tens of thousands
of your future victims



A Speech

And in conclusion,
                            once more
                                             from our leaders:

"We've polished up the American dream"
"the legal right of the millionaire to his millions"
"Sure, I'm one of the fat cats"
"I'm the fattest cat"
"What kind of society isn't structured on greed?
"Forget loyalty"
                        "an oft-invoked ideal
that applies to fewer and fewer people"
"Liquidate labor,
                        liquidate stocks,
                                                 liquidate farmers"
"our scheme does not ask any initiative in a man
We do not care for his initiative"
"How come when I want a pair of hands
I get a human being as well?"
"This isn't rocket science"
"It's the economy, stupid"
"it is an existing evil"
"and we must endure it
and give it such protection
as is guaranteed by the constitution"
"Greed is even more contagious than fever"
"Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess"
"I have,
            I fear,
confused power with greatness"
"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac"
"do not let so great an achievement
suffer from any taint of legality"
"A man always has two reasons for what he does---
a good one and the real one"
"If I am to speak for ten minutes,
I need a week for preparation;
if fifteen minutes, three days;
if an hour, I am ready now"
"a virtually limitless supply of bullshit"
"God ordained that I should be
the next President of the United States"

Thank you, 
and good night


Affliction

Though not yet named,
and with no diagnostic criteria, or treatment,
it is the most common mental defect in America:
thinking everyone else is as stupid as you are


Too Close to Home?

The editor said he enjoyed reading the poet's poems, but he wanted more personal work for his journal.

So the poet sent a piece about his misadventures with a different editor.  And the editor, perhaps thinking the poet was referring to him, never bothered to respond to the submission.

Michael Ceraolo is a 65-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) published, and has two more in the publication pipeline.” 

Loneliness
By Abigail George


I am cooking loneliness in a pot. I am making a broth with it. I add garlic and ginger, leaf masala and meaty bones to the pot and more boiling water. I throw salt in to taste. 

I think of the neverending invasion of war ingredients in daily life. I think too much. I overthink. Stop. Ants tripping, crawling with life. The world is filled with people who don’t care about me or who love me. There were billions of them at last count. I am a tree and then I grow into a branch, arch my back into a stretch. Small and red is my heart now. Just a curious ribbon tied to my hair. I remember when the man climbed me, climbed into me. The bliss I felt at this feeling, this encouraging emotion filled me with hope. I climb into the boat made of wildflowers and somehow land on the moonlight. I make a cave out of the night air.

I have experienced love for the last time. This is the last wound I will ever experience. I think of the Dutch English poet, Joop Bersee, and our friendship. The call I answered was to write poetry. The sum of being a poet is solid inside of me but as temporary as conceit. The man is still visible to me but he is walking in the direction of a church. He wants to pray me away and put me inside a box, confine me to that box. I want to honor him in some way. Of course he wants me to forget all about him. In the same way he has forgotten about me. All I remember about the relationship is this. That I was helpless in his arms. When we kissed, my hurts turned to stone and his kisses turned into a killing machine of the hardness that surrounded that stone. I pulled him into me and he became a siren and the ink in my pen. I gently stroked his face and he turned into a secret. 

You are despair and beauty. You are my beauty and despair. Gil, who are you because I am a mess without you. I have become a virgin again. I remember your pale hands, the strength in your hands. I brought you steaming mugs of black coffee and tea. I brought you roasted chicken and rice to nourish your soul. I no longer have a man. The man who was my man turned into a waterfall in my bathwater. I think of him and my heart goes doom, doom, doom. I don’t have room to dream anymore about him. Politicians have that kind of time.

Air is singing to the solitary world I frequent. To me, to all of me the peas are dazzling green glitter. Burnt mixed vegetables. Coffee is getting cold on the kitchen table. Lukewarm water in an Energade bottle. Mother makes ice tea. Ice tea with tea bags bought from Woolworths. Pale sister with Slavic cheekbones. Middle sister, Middle East, middle of nowhere. So many middles. What is beautiful, what is the prize for being beautiful, give me a horse that could ride to the stars or to Mars. Dazed naartjies spilling over onto the countertop. 

The beautiful one with red lips. Her high heels in a box. Her red shoes flattered her ankles. Father reads the paper. He cuts out articles. The plate is yellow with turmeric powder. The rice is spicy. I put whole chillies in the pot. My father didn’t notice. The fruit is warm. Sweet. Dishes piled high in the kitchen sink. Memories of Collegiate. I was a bullied Model C schoolgirl. Bullied at home by a domineering mother. Bullied at school by teachers. My sister’s hair is straight. My hair is curly. Wild. I can’t tame its galaxies. The yellow of the egg could’ve been a fetus-chick. I live with no resistance from a man. All my life I have carried these war ingredients with me.

See their beauties, see their prizes, see their dead march. The hereafter calling. Plants harvesting seeds that will not grow. I grow older, colder, infirm, weak at the knees until I am winter. I have become just like those depraved wildflowers. Needy and slim. I am a warehouse and in this warehouse I store blackened images that turn into shrouds and these shrouds have veils. Too many of them. I am grateful for the negatives. Grateful for these copies. I make copies of heartbreak and write poems about them. I take them to the flea market and exchange them for books that I read in my spare time. I am happiest in these moments, for when I am alone, I am with God. In the hours I meditate and pray my thoughts convert themselves to only do good. Good deeds. Good things. I pick up a jar of olives in brine that I found at the back of a kitchen cupboard. 

My galaxies for your galaxies. Are you alright? Are you okay? And the voice came again (louder this time) are you alright? Are you okay and then it went away when I swallowed my pills with water. Until I heard the music of angels. I felt safe then and I remember my mother’s face when she wasn’t tired or stressed. I remembered the beauty of her face. I remembered a time when I didn’t feel tragic, when I felt brave and galaxies were in reach and war ingredients were not in reach or kept in safekeeping or treasured or cherished. The man keeps telling me that soldiers are angels too. And heroes and fallen comrades, stalwarts but I am tired. I am tired of shame and being tragic. So I don’t listen and because I stopped listening, he turns and walks away. I only notice when I turn into a bird and feel hungry and the wind picks up and begins to carry me to a distant land on the continent that I love so much. That I call God and church. And the only sound that comes out of my mouth is chatter and birdsong. I don’t like people who are dishonest.

“Open your legs,” he instructed me. I sat up. My back very straight. Watching him as he fumbled with his pants.

It has been three years since I have seen the man. I don’t know where he is or what he is doing. When he picks up the phone he pretends he is someone else. I am in denial. I am in love with a ghost. I have nowhere to go but meet these lines on this page. The female protagonist is waiting for me on the page. The good citizen is made of light. The good citizens are made of heat. The good citizen is a witness. The good citizen needs space. I need space too, to be creative, to be a thinker. The man is a business insider. I am waiting for my man to appear in the doorway of the restaurant. In the meantime, my spirit tells my soul a story about a Native American chieftain who went to war and never returned home again to his wife and children. I am staring at a jar of olives in brine remembering the brown eyes of the man. My brown eyes meeting his. Debussy’s Clair de Lune is playing in the background. I stare at the boneless loveliness of the wildflowers. The trees are unhappy. They are just as unhappy as the woman in the picture hanging against the wall is. The woman is unhappy because the man has left her and returned to his wife. There is a hunger within me now that cannot be sated. The woman is as I am  at war with silence. Her face is as holy as the river phoenix. Wasps blame the sunlight. The lull of the day hovers. The woman’s brother is a drug addict. He has been to three rehab centres. The woman thought the man would save her but he didn’t. I thought the man would save me. 

The woman and I are in the same boat. When the man told the woman that he loved her, she believed him. The house was hurt. The walls and ceiling were wounded. The floors were carpeted. I am not a good girl. Recovery is possible. The doctors tell me that they think sobriety is possible. There were pages turned. I can’t face this light and heat, this chare=ge of energy, the flow of the velocity of interpersonal relationships. Did he love me, did the man in the picture love the woman? I want to ask the woman in the painting, why is she crying? You see, I know why I am crying. I am crying because I will never be loved again in my life and no one will ever be kind to me the way the man was kind to me. The man told me to take my pills in a caring voice. 

It’s been years since I have seen the man. I don’t know where he is. I lay on a towel in the garden sunbathing. I felt sick but still I lay there, not getting up, tolerating the heat. I remembered a man from my twenties. He walked past me, turning his head and meeting my gaze. I remember the heat in my face. He wore a leather jacket in a photograph in a magazine. He was a producer of films. Handsome and clever. He was thin and the colour of his skin was dark. I was not asked to see my brother’s child when his daughter was born in the hospital. I remember when his son was born he would ask me not to kiss his son. I was allowed to hold the child but not kiss him. I remember how the mother slept for a few hours in the morning and how instead of looking after the baby, he gave the child to me to hold. It is afternoon. I am sitting in the lounge writing. I am writing largely for myself I suppose. To amuse myself. To distract myself from the war and war ingredients.

I am Greta Garbo and Pablo Neruda. I am Fiona Apple, Grace Kelly, Vivienne Leigh and Jean Rhys. I have made a temple out of an alien spaceship. Are you paying attention? I am in need of emotional support. I am depressed. I cry the tears of an orphan. I have no one in my life to call family. On my own again I am flying solo. I make a tuna fish salad. I think of the sea and pollution. I think of the blue sky and climate change. I think of the genius of this fish, and eating if eating the genius of this tuna would turn me into one. I make a dressing with black pepper, sugar and vinegar.. I butter bread, sit down at the kitchen table and eat happily. I don’t have the man in my life anymore but I have food.

When the man kissed me, I wanted him to extinguish me. These  days I practice doing good. When I do good, I feel good. I have hours, days, and silence ahead of me. I am as strong and peppery as a jalapeno and disciplined. I turn books into old friends and call it natural progression. I don’t know what to do about the anger inside of me. Please tell me what to do about the anger inside of me.

collecting the mail

 

collecting the mail

after being gone two weeks in europe

and my mind is sullied

 

i don’t know what it is

 

maybe being gone for so long

i expected something different coming back

 

but it’s the same ugly faces

doing the same ugly things

 

and nothing will change any of us

 

the woman behind me

in the postal line is angry

 

about her kids running around

or no longer being young and beautiful

 

about it being a saturday

and she’s stuck in a post office line

with ugly people

living dull and ugly lives

 

she keeps ringing the service buzzer

even though the clerk is off getting my mail

 

presses and presses the bell

like its personally offended her

 

i turn and say, look, lady…

but she’s not having any of me today

 

so we stand there

and she rings the buzzer

 

ring!

ring!

ring!

 

and i think about how europe is over-rated

 

the postal clerk comes back

with my mail

 

she throws it at me

because she thinks i’m the one

whose been making all of the noise with the buzzer

 

explaining myself isn’t worth the words

 

so i take the bundle

off to sift through

 

while the lady behind me

begins to yell at the postal clerk

about a lost package

or the fact that there is no god

 

there is nothing in my mail of any value

 

just fliers for politicians i won’t vote for

ads for plays and symphonies i won’t see

 

a package of worthless coupons

a wedding announcement for someone i don’t even know

 

and a book by a young, hip poet

that i’ll take home and toss with the others

never to read

 

unless i find

i’m bored out of my mind one day

 

and thinking about the king of england

just ain’t doing it

 

for me.





the politicians at the street festival

 

sit

in booths

 

between fried oreo stands

bounce houses

and people selling plastic figurines

 

they sit and smile

and are impervious to sun and rain

 

to the ten bands on the street

all playing shitty beatles covers at once

 

they look like

they’re made of wax

 

dumb smiles all around

 

that one is pro-choice

that one is pro-life

 

this one has a banner

that says love is love is love

 

but doesn’t really say anything at all

 

they sit there

at their cluttered tables

with flags and stacks of papers before them

 

the politicians at the street festival

 

papers full of all of the items

they stand for or are against

 

more trees have died for their nonsense

than one could hazard to count

 

and they would be

the biggest idiots here

 

if it weren’t for all of the people walking around

 

eating hot dogs

and fried dough

 

all of the clueless citizens who voted

these grinning hucksters into office

 

in the first

goddamned place.





capitalism will kill us all

 

we burn teachers in effigy

while revering false populists and rapist athletes

as golden gods on the mount

 

burn ourselves out into oblivion

for someone else’s wealthy stake

 

as the kids marching to school in death masks

breathing in the infected air

are tasked with repeating the cycle

 

past the honking cars

of the tired and angry peasants

who came before them

 

simple fools

with angry mouths and quaking chins

 

trapped inside a madness

that we were all born into

 

left with nothing

but tv shows and a timely death

 

as our only escape.





talk to the plants

 

the brunch faces

have me down

 

i can’t understand

the way they can smile and hiss

over orange juice and champagne

 

i am hungover and hungry

 

i have walked these blocks

longer than some of them

have been alive

 

and have nothing to show for it

 

but piles of paper

full of silly words

 

i tried to become some thing

but something always held me back

 

or the gods just said

kid, we simply don’t need you

 

to perfect the art of nothing

is to perfect the art of man

 

or some bullshit like that

 

but the brunch faces

they don’t understand

 

they laugh and laugh

and eat their runny eggs

 

order more orange juice and champagne

 

as if the world doesn’t

have them clamped down too

 

i can’t stand them

i’ve written enough about them

 

and there is nothing left to do now

but get off of these streets

 

go home

stare at the wall

 

as the sun fades on another stupid

wasted day

 

that desires me to talk to no one

in this world

 

but the plants.





making art during the fall of democracy

 

dead in the water nation

seventy-seven-degree morning

 

up before five a.m.

 

collecting the gnats

that have gathered

in the dirt ring in the shower

 

as the wars rage on

as women lose their rights

 

as government comes for the queer community

 

these theocratic proto-fascist

christian taliban zombies

slobbering on their social media bully pulpits

 

as the supreme court

scorches the earth

 

while the geriatric president stands there

scratching his senile balls

 

talking about nothing but the economy

 

as gas prices burn suburbia

into budding fascism

 

and the plague plays on and on and on

 

as july shows its ugly face

and every true blood

sticks an american flag up their tight asses

 

calling it democracy

 

i stare at another massacre of words

on the computer screen

 

thinking this is good

or not nearly good enough

 

i guess.