Categories
Americana art books comfort family food furniture happiness history holidays life love muse Ohio painting parenthood poetry psychology rituals sex traditions Uncategorized war weddings writing

this house has a history

 

i put on some water for tea

then decided to mop the floors

of our new little nest

before the furniture gets carried in

before the rest of our lives happen

Murphy’s Oil Soap

water and sunshine into a bucket

carried through the echoing emptiness

of what will be

over original hardwood

placed there in 1941

i love to clean

the ritual of it

i write in my thoughts as i work

images painting themselves

into spaces around my gentle humming

spreading wet across the grain

seeing hands that mopped this floor

before me

wives husbands

fathers mothers

lovers and

put-upon teenagers

oh this house

has a history

built the year

the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor

it’s all still there

nailed down memories

layers of time entombed in wax

someone stood in that living room and heard

we dropped the bomb

we landed at Normandy

of a flag raised in Iwo-Jima

Kennedy was dead

Vietnam was a lost cause only good

for folded flags being handed to weeping mothers

Nixon was a crook

Reagan and John Lennon had been shot

the Berlin wall had fallen

i heard first steps

crying babies

crying widows

joyous laughter

say cheese

wine glasses clinking together

realizing with a smile

this floor is mine

the foundation of a family

and i will love it

then

the teapot

began to whistle

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Jazz Music poetry Short Stories Uncategorized Urban Legends writing

memaw’s dishes

it’s all comfort seeking behavior
when you stop the automaton
for a moment
and think of it

sleeping eating sex drugs social climbing
tread mill running
consuming
consuming
and still more consuming
a great mass
of maslow’s needy children are we

see me
i’m an addict
an anemic ice chewer
and plate washer

it all started at memaw’s house
when i had to stand on a chair to reach the sink
somehow her suggestion of doing the dishes
little hands submerged in dove soap
always dove soap
the smell of it
(now inextricably connected to her)
made everything right

my sensory storm calmed

so now

when life gets dirty
i wash a plate

for ten minutes
faux flow blue pattern
showered
rubbed clockwise by my attentive wash rag
with the white dish soap full of extra emollients
so one feels pampered
as the toil over soil is underway

and maybe it’s a plate that doesn’t even need cleaning

a metaphoric stand-in

comfort seeking indeed

what i’m cleansing
is my soul

Categories
Jazz Music poetry Short Stories Uncategorized Urban Legends writing

douchepeddlers

last night i fell asleep
reading on the couch
waking at 1 a.m. to find the television on

the screen displayed a commercial
featuring a woman applying makeup in a mirror
explaining to her bumbling husband
who was showering
(and illiterate for the purpose of this advertisement)
that he was washing his face with
her ph balanced summer’s eve feminine wash

she said if it was gentle enough for his face
it was gentle enough for her “V”
yes, you read that correctly
she actually referred to her vagina as
the letter “V”

i take issue with douchepeddlers
who are afraid to use the word vagina

but more than this
i take issue with the false dynamics necessary
to convince a woman
she needs to purchase a special soap
to wash her mysterious nether regions

it requires making a vaginal soap that reads
“External Use Only” on the bottle
what a mixed message

it requires a marketing campaign
creating the fear that your vagina
will smell like swamp snatch if you get caught using ordinary soaps or washes

it requires consumerism as disease
lurking within your female genitalia

it requires willing suspension of disbelief
and forgetting that women
somehow managed to wash their crotches
before 2008

and their is no male equivalent
for a man’s penis and testicles
the shelves are all together devoid
of axe brand cock n’ ball wash
because men are less gullible consumers

remember that

the soap
the marketing
the fear
the dichotomy
the disease

the next time your unwashed anxieties
dictate you spend
another
$7.98

Categories
Jazz Music poetry Short Stories Uncategorized Urban Legends

made of glass

mornings and death
are the great equalizers

we’re all drawn the same when we’re dead
or first thing in our early morning

my shower stall is
made of glass
it’s where i lift the fog
seeing clearly

hanging within my stainless shower caddy
are shampoos and conditioners
made with the tears of kittens
lanolin
and local honey

a bottle of wild turkey and/or
a travel mug
of illegally smuggled cuban street coffee
beside rain forest friendly shaving creams
lost love salves and angry razors
knotted hair detangler
french bottled bath balms
and derrida mind deconstructor

hot water
the holy father

they would have you think the virgin mary
merely a sponge

an exfoliating soap bar
made from dead sea mud
which leads me to hope
i’m soaping my bits and pieces
with bits n’ pieces of jesus

i write poems on my skin
and wash them off

into the river seeking drain

knowing all my words
these fleeting thoughts
and this body

are graced with the glorious state
of existing
temporarily

we

like seas

end

just before the edge
of stars