sweetheart redux

She was mine and I was hers Gambled hard and split the purse a patient and her patient nurse She was mine and I was hers.

my current favorite photo of my mother jill My mom died from a heart attack on Monday morning, much to my surprise.  She was overindulgent, compulsive, impulsive and took a lot of pride in being the person to appreciate the peculiar beauty of objects like old clothes, toys (vintage, dumpster-dived, bought at the 99 Cents Store, or bought brand new and for a fair amount of money she should have used to buy food instead), jewelry, blank books, old aprons and tin plates with chipped enamel surfaces.  One of her last texts to me was: Reading kate braverman...my favourite poet...I think my poetry was good.  couldn't write a poem to save my life...what do I want to write about...doll suitcases, blue with silver stars, plaid inside...circa 1954. With all this appreciation for objects and the temporary thrill of discovering them, she loved buying and making me gifts, which she gave to me a million at a time -- I have boxes full of things from her that now seem like hist...

Sometimes my body feels like a rattrap.  I can feel some small animal, hardly a morsel, sickly and slowing down inside my skeleton.  Every day for a year and a half straight I pondered the meaning of every inconvenience. Was a flat tire a sign that I shouldn’t leave the house?  I walked everywhere.  I was always seeing something I thought I should write down – a violent protest to end the war, a cop throwing his cigarette butt on the lush green grass of a public park.  Eventually, I tried to help homeless men and women and even children decipher a meaning to life. I approached it like a math problem: this one person has to suffer enough to cover a sadness deficit so some other guy and his girl can live in a decent apartment and both own cars. You shouldn’t describe the meaning of life to a sick person unless you are also sick.  My body is a rattrap but I feel okay, all i...

Framed beneath the smoggy, pink sunset, the gray frankness of lonesome smoggy streets lets Angelenos know that the city is a heartbreaker. Good and bad and mean and nice and happy and sad. Why does there have to be so many people? How can there ever be enough attention for each of us? Dear Native Angelenos, I have no siblings. Can we be brothers and sisters? Do you like me? Am I pretty? I like dangerous streets  and safe ones, too.   I like attention but I also like being ignored.

prelude What did you do in the dark and the cold? I smoked and I shivered with no hand to hold. Where did you go when your teeth got fucked up? I slept on the stairs and I never woke up. Who was the girl that you used to be? Nobody much,  Just little ol' me. *************************************** Dear readers, I have  been in a psychiatric hospital since last Thursday and just got out today.  I would say I just got sprung, but it was nice in there; the food was okay and sometimes good, the nurses were nice, Christian, pretty Armenian women who wore a lot of make up and who I would have written off as being dumb and mean when I was a teenager, just for being pretty and religious.  I had a nervous breakdown.  I haven't gotten over the summer's heart surgery and my new ticking heart yet.  I take too much stuff. I am moving to Florida on Friday, to stay with my dad and stepmom for a few months.   I just wanted to let you k...

sometimes I feel so old I feel like a woman  instead of a girl.

Ain’t We Got Fun In my darkest hour of need Still I reek a bit of greed Hands that shake and legs that lock A heart a lung a cunt a cock Who’s that sleeping ‘neath the sun? Why, it’s me! Ain’t we got fun?

tired glamour like a magnolia leaf fallen from its tree.  it is losing its velvety whiteness, starting to crinkle dry at the edges, but it still smells sweet, like the pasadena streets of my childhood.

Here is Children's Verse, first published Autumn 1998.  Jesus but that was a cold season, obviously.  I misspell Cemetery in here, which is funny because I ended up working in a cemetery for a couple years shortly after  graduating college, and I misspelled it for awhile even when I worked at one.  Enjoy.  or, I mean, enjoy? xoxo robin