The Poisoned Ink Well

2011-09-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

*****************************

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

AMERICAN IDIOT

Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

American Idiot

2011-09-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

Heaven is coming soon for me and eddie. Pray for us

Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

2011-06-30T00:22:00.000-07:00

@}----}-----------------

Goodbye Nicki

We All Loved You

2011-04-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

# Chernobyl Legacy Paul Fusco @}---------}---------------------------

Support Wikileaks and Freedom of Speech

# To the Egyptians involved in this revolution I adore you. To the highest level of heaven that our prayers can reach I adore you. You are the most remarkable people to have ever walked the face of this earth and once again you have proven yourselves to be the awesome people that you are and every prayer that I pray every day includes a prayer a prayer for all of you, that you remain safe and steadfast in your goals for a true democracy and freedom and that you and your families suffer no harm In your fight against Mubarak's bloody oppressive regime and that you achieve every thing that your hearts desire. I adore you Egyptian people

$ NEW Wiki Poetry Haiku Leaks

From Fabrice

WikiLeaks cables: BP suffered blowout on Azerbaijan gas platform in September 2008 How come we didn’t hear about this in Louisiana until WikiLeaks pointed it out. Manning and Assange are heroes! * 3.25pm: Assange has been granted bail, to cheers from inside and outside the court. Free Julian Donate to Wikileaks Operation Payback Ok now off message The Raging Pelican and Have a look $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ SORRY AIN'T ENOUGH NO MORE $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

2011-03-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

2010-07-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

*

Why does LISAFUCKINGJACKSON still have a fucking job?

?

@}------------------------------------------------

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

@}------------------------------------------------

2010-07-04T19:11:00.000-07:00

*
* GO KINDRA *

tO BP EXECS ON THE 4TH OF JULY

*

2010-06-23T17:50:00.000-07:00

Gulf Oil Spill: A Hole in the World

2010-06-21T23:41:00.000-07:00

Now they want to execute Lil Boosie. The man is a poet you dumb fucking pricks. The man is an artist, not a killer. Sticks and stones. I am pissed. I write auto biographical fiction. It’s a genre not a crime. Examining lyrics/poetry for criminal indictments makes no sense at all. Rap is street poetry. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck and fuck.

2010-06-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

HOME

Louisiana

The evil is rampant
I think of going home helping
Breathe in deeep a life so far
One more time
The mighty Mississippi is a sewage line
The Gulf of Mexico already a large toilet bowl
Chemical plants line the riverside from Baton Rouge to New Orleans

Another Bhopal
is waiting
Just around the corner
from the Louisiana State Capital

in an area nicknamed

The CC or (Chemical Corridor)
in North Baton Rouge
Exxon Refinery and many other chemical plants
like the infamous Honeywell
sit across the street
from people's homes, Elementary Schools.
Churches, and Daycares
for those unlucky enough
to live, attend school or work there

It's always
another Day, another
CC lockdown
Better known as the shelter in place rule
every time there is a chemical spill .

Reminds you of those 50's short self defense films
where everybody hides under a table until the atom bomb
blast is over.
You know the curtains blow a little,
so does the cloth on the table, but everything is intact
and junior, mom, and dad are just fine and go on cooking dinner like nothing happened.

No rare incurable cancers, or childhood Leukemia's to see here folks just move along.

It's exactly like that during CC lockdowns.

And they actually tell you to
stuff towels under your door.

The worst part is that
You can't leave or flee
even if you want too
Because
the state troopers
block the entrances to the interstate.

AND YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME THE LOCAL POLICE
worked for Multi-national Corporations and harassed citizens.

Terrified citizens who want to run as far as they can from the latest deadly toxin are stopped and told to go home to wait.

It’s over and over
And worse things
are waiting
Watch how they act and what they do.
Petro-Chem
Responding to the supposed non- crisis

But don’t be as surprised the next time
Tragedy Strikes at their hands
Chernobyl, Ukraine, Alaska
3 Mile Island
These man made disasters
Are disgusting

Especially when you know
greedy, spoiled. children posing as men
are at the bottom of this oil slick
(or at least we wish they were down there
plugging the fucking hole. )

I think we should take Tony Heywood
and the rest of the Corporate Heads at BP
(pun and punishment intended)
and put them on spikes at the mouth of the Mississippi
Their bodies forever incased in cement
Around the well at the bottom of the GOM
As a warning for what happens
if you fuck with U.S.

I'm just saying

They maybe better off in prison isolation
then left to the kind of justice they really deserve

And Cheney, Bush and so many before them and with them
So many years, closed door handshakes, hand jobs, blow jobs
and enough other kinds of blow
to sustain any fisherman's family for at least a 100 years.

That's why no one worried about the blow out preventer's at the MMS
They were too busy letting BP and big oil be blow out enablers
at the MMS

Don’t blame this one on Obama
We all know who started it

But who are we going to hold responsible for how it ends
if it ever does.

2010-04-08T18:05:00.000-07:00

2010-04-08T17:28:00.000-07:00

To those who have labeled this frivolous come cry with me sometime.

old new post just now able to share this

Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Posted 8:29 PM by melanie
GOOD BYE GARY rantNow I put up my 2005 King of The Hill calendar and exotic landscapes and pictures of Mediterranean and Caribbean beaches will decorate my walls for 2006 and familiar months will reappear without him. May the 13, I said good bye to one of the best friends of my life ( 25 years of friendship) Gary. He called Renee in Baton Rouge just two days before his death and died on her birthday May thirteenth and she relayed the message right away and was going save it ( so I could hear it) and he said that he loved us both and it seemed like we had all been friends forever (he couldn’t call me because it was long distance) and then the next day her young son got in a car accident with his half brother and we held our breaths until we knew both boys were going to be ok and Gray’s last message was lost somewhere in the flurry of phone calls and saved messages from different ERs.And then I didn’t even know that he went into a coma and was in ER and intensive care, himself (He was dying of liver disease and HIV) because I let my son and his friends use my phone for employment applications and reference numbers (I seem so stable to them/ how funny) and one of them saved the message that he was in intensive care and forgot to tell me (teenagers) and I was working and I didn’t know it was there and his family (some of them ) misunderstood and thought I didn’t care about him and I heard of his death two days after it occurred and I called Renee and told her that he died on her birthday and she cried because we couldn’t recover the message and then said that now we can always remember him because he died on her birthday and we would celebrate his life with hers and she said Marie even though I don’t have his last words they were sweet ones and he loved you so much.Good bye Gary

SAME DAY DIFFERENT YEAR

MAY 13, 2007 (I Love you )
JOE died.
You haven’t heard from me in a while.
This is why?
The coolest human being on earth,
Died
JOE HOPPER
Who am I going talk to NOW?
JOE?
Down the street Hot Springs
Central Avenue
Lucky’s Bar.
Beautiful women always
Surrounded him,
Always
Julia, Jessica, Paula, Dahlia, Marlena
Me?
JOE
Red hair
Flying in the air.
Going so fast
The Tourist are in slow motion
Behind your chair
JOE
I can not believe I won’t ever see you again
JOE
my
LOVE
May 13th 2007
What is with that date.

Love always
I promised two weeks before you died
I'd never forget
your kindness
I love you
JoeHopper.

2009-11-11T22:11:00.000-08:00

2008-11-01T20:42:00.000-07:00

Ok time to get up off my ass and go vote (early) and yes, Mom and me are voting for OBAMA. Oprah annoyed me, but there is no way I would ever, ever vote for a Repuke. So yes we are OBAMA voters all the way. I am very fond of and loyal to the Clintons (still, and always will be) and I would love to have seen Hillary as our Leader and Chief, but it didn’t happen like that, and know way do I want that Alaskan BIMBO as our possible next president. OBAMA will be our next president and I wish him and his family well and every prayer I have is with him and his whole awesome family.

2008-05-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

LaJuan

2008-01-28T17:24:00.000-08:00

GO CLINTONS!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ok This is it, not that my opinion is worth a damn. However I can’t help but express myself.

I AM NOT AN OPRAH VOTER. I DON’T LET HER CHOOSE WHICH BOOKS I READ AND DAMNED IF SHE IS GOING TO CHOOSE MY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE!

I AM ALL FOR HILLARY ALL THE WAY.

EVEN IF OPRAH BOUGHT ME A CAR I STILL WOULDN’T VOTE for OPRAHBAMA.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

GO CLINTONS!

2007-03-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

@}----------}-------------

About Abortion

2006-08-19T17:59:00.000-07:00

Problems With Punctuation or Remembrances of Former Nazi’s

I remember when I was a child of nine
In the mid 1970’s in southern Louisiana
Waiting for my mother outside the A&P grocery.
I leaned on the newspaper machines
As I watched a mustached man in a brown suit
Who was stalking back and forth in front of the store.
He was trying to get people to talk to him.
He looked miserable on this day
He kept nervously tugging on his collar
And he swallowed in between every word.
He was being politely ignored,
He was an embarrassment to us even back then
We in our new yet somewhat ill fitting suits of seventies southern liberalism
walked proudly past him….. No rebuff needed.
I guess because no else would talk to him
he approached me.
Perhaps hoping that a child would be more open minded.
He stood in front of me,
His shoulders hunched, his knees bent , and his chin thrust forward
So he could be at my level.
His body formed a question mark on my mind.
To me he was just another stranger,
So if he offered candy I was prepared to run away.
Instead he thrust some leaflets in my face.
(My mother warned me about perverts showing little girls
Pictures of people having intercourse)
I was curious so I leaned over just to get a peek.
But instead of pornography he handed me leaflets
About his white racist platform.
Now he had me backed up against the wall
in between the newspaper machines.
I was stuck and I couldn’t run away.
I had the New Orleans Times Picayune to the left of me
And the Baton Rouge State Times to the right
And David Duke hunched over me
Like a giant question mark.
Just then my mother approached and saw I was trapped.
I recognized the fierce look in my mother’s eyes.
I shrank back knowing the penalty for talking to strangers.
My mother’s eyes bore down on David Duke
Still not recognizing him.
Mr. Duke did not seem to see this feral look on my mothers face.
He stood no longer in a questionable position.
Shoulders back, chin up, back straight,
His body seemed to form an exclamation point.
His pale iridescent skin beamed brightly in the sun.
My mother thrust her hands in between the newspaper machines
Hoping to retrieve me from my hapless position.
But Mr. Duke misunderstood my mother’s intentions.
He thought she meant to shake his hand.
So he began pumping her hand vigorously.
He said he was David Duke of the white people’s party.
He said I was a perfect representative of all he wanted to protect.
I stood behind them shaking, my body curled up
Like a little comma in Mr. Duke’s agitated quotations.
As we walked away my mother crumpled Mr. Duke’s literature
And dropped it on the pavement
Where it lay like a period between him and me.
My mother was visibly shaken,
But as she held me close to her body I felt her begin to relax.
Our neighborhood was still safe,
Her baby wasn’t accosted by a pervert
Only by an over zealous neo-nazi.

by Mel( among my many other
pseudonyms) 1991

written to be read aloud at rally denouncing David Duke's run for governor and published in Eastern Rainbow #1 in June 1992 in London England

2006-04-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

*
*

A. P. B.

Or

A. P. B.

His Real Initials (Believe it or Not)

2006-03-01T17:56:00.000-08:00

2006-02-24T11:12:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras

Time.

See ya'll after the

parades

2006-02-03T13:21:00.000-08:00

*
The phone fairies did it to me again. I missed a whole series of messages that didn’t come up in my voice mail box and everyone is pissed. They arrived 3 days later and I wonder who had them before because I didn’t get them until now. Damn
*

2005-12-14T20:29:00.000-08:00

GOOD BYE GARY rant

Now I put up my 2005 King of The Hill calendar and exotic landscapes and pictures of Mediterranean and Caribbean beaches will decorate my walls for 2006 and familiar months will reappear without him. May the 13, I said good bye to one of the best friends of my life ( 25 years of friendship) Gary. He called Renee in Baton Rouge just two days before his death and died on her birthday May thirteenth and she relayed the message right away and was going save it ( so I could hear it) and he said that he loved us both and it seemed like we had all been friends forever (he couldn’t call me because it was long distance) and then the next day her young son got in a car accident with his half brother and we held our breaths until we knew both boys were going to be ok and Gray’s last message was lost somewhere in the flurry of phone calls and saved messages from different ERs.

And then I didn’t even know that he went into a coma and was in ER and intensive care, himself (He was dying of liver disease and HIV) because I let my son and his friends use my phone for employment applications and reference numbers (I seem so stable to them/ how funny) and one of them saved the message that he was in intensive care and forgot to tell me (teenagers) and I was working and I didn’t know it was there and his family (some of them ) misunderstood and thought I didn’t care about him and I heard of his death two days after it occurred and I called Renee and told her that he died on her birthday and she cried because we couldn’t recover the message and then said that now we can always remember him because he died on her birthday and we would celebrate his life with hers and she said Marie even though I don’t have his last words they were sweet ones and he loved you so much.

Good bye Gary

2005-10-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

****************************************************************************

Let me tell you what I think of the situation in New Orleans with the doctors and nurses at Tenet Memorial Hospital.

I think they should prosecute Michael Brown, everyone at Fema, President Bush, Donald, Dick and all the little duckies and everyone who was truly negligent during that hurricane.

Foti should be going after the people who had command over the helicopters and the boats and the food and the water.

Our government practiced their version of mercy killing in the ninth ward.

Or this was pure unintended negligence,

incompetence.

either way

if they go after doctors and nurses then they should prosecute and pursue prosecutions at the
highest levels of our federal government for their utter incompetence

We know who killed New Orleans and it wasn’t the doctors and nurses.

IMPEACH BUSH for his negligence during Katrina!

Let's prosecute the guilty parties.

2005-09-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

@}----------}-------------------

OK, now all I need is a rubber room, some xannax,
and edible finger paint (rainbow colors) and I'll be fine.
Really.

2005-09-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

@}------------------------------------

Louisiana Native
born in Louisiana,
raised in Louisiana,
and very proud
to be from Louisiana.

They rebuild when tornados rip through the heartland
they rebuild when an earthquake rumbles through the west
so I am having a hard time understanding why anyone would
dare question helping New Orleans or the people of New Orleans.

And yes, the people have a RIGHT to stay in their own homes down there
and I hope that everyone who wants to return home is able to do so because
people from Louisiana are United States citizens and they do have the
same DAMN rights as everyone else in this country.

2005-09-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

***********************

New Orleanians were BUSHWACKED.

2005-07-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I am so proud of Amnesty International’s recent report

that I decided to donate.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

2005-05-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

GARY DIED

2005-02-04T06:30:00.000-08:00

It's Mardi Gras Time.
See ya'll after the parades

2005-01-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Keep Objecting!

And let’s start talking Impeachment!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

2004-12-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

@}----------}---------

Tip of the Iceberg:
How Republicans MOCK the VOTE

The Great Voter Disenfranchisement of 2004

Over all there were 34862 incidents of voting irregularities reported;
these included machine malfunction/errors, disability access problem,
and voter's being harassed at the polling stations.

Nationwide 24842 incidents of voting irregularities were reported on Election Day.
(Election Incident Reporting System: 1-866-OUR-VOTE through this hotline/
many other incidents have since surfaced and are still surfacing with public hearings)

1414 incidents of voter intimidation were reported Election Day with 201
incidents in Ohio, 252 incidents in Pennsylvania and 223 incidents in Florida.

If you delve further into this site you’ll see that many harassment incidents were
reported under other poll related problems (2531 incidents/ everything from
scuffles, to police involvement, to rude workers, challengers, and long lines) which
would bring the figure quite a bit higher.

In Cuyahoga County, OH there are over 46 incidents of intimidation, many are
cases of police harassment and intimidation by Republican poll challengers.

In Broward County, FL many instances of police intimidation and first hand
accounts of Republican poll challengers harassing voters.

I grew up believing that my country was special and that voting was a sacred
civic responsibility, and now they tell us that this election was all about Morals, yet
what the Bush supporters did to mock our voting rights and deny us our right
to access the voting booth is Immoral and wrong and I am ashamed of our media
and our representatives and the power elite in both parties for refusing to acknowledge
that these problems went on with this election. I won't shut up and I won't stop writing
about this.

2004-11-20T14:04:00.000-08:00

**********************************************************************************

Ok, here's a really good link on the exit poll discrepancy, if you'd like to read
an intelligently compiled study, and love graphs, statistical analysis, and research data
as much as I do; it's from Steven F. Freeman Ph.D.,

Renea, (my fellow pollster extraordinaire) this link is for you (especially) so please
be sure and read it. You'll appreciate this one. All intelligent life forms,
happening by my page please read it, too.

The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy

2004-11-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

@}--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Contact Rep. Conyers and report all voter irregularities to Mr. Conyers
and The House Committee on the Judiciary-Democratic Members here

M ission Accomplished NOT!

BLOGGERMAN (THE MAN)

LEAGUE OF PISSED OFF VOTERS TO HOLD:
PUBLIC HEARINGS IN OHIO!

Ohio Voters tell of Election Day Troubles at Hearing

Green Party link to recounts (sorry Dems)

Link to report problems with voting in your stat e includes access issues ; disability, discrimination (provisional ballot etc.) If you were forced to cast a provisional ballot; it's the law that they have to tell you if it was counted or discarded and why. HAVA SEC. 302./a> <> PROVISIONAL VOTING AND VOTING INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS.

VOTERS UNITE

2004-11-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

BUSH LOST! Mission Accomplished NOT!

VOTER
GATE

The war ain't over and neither is the election
until we say it is.

(Keith Olbermann's Blog)

Note I updated links on voter fraud: today 11-09-04

New Links today: 11-10-04

Ideamouth

Members of House Judiciary Committee seek investigation

New link 11-12-04

And in Indiana RECOUNT is ON

2004-11-03T18:56:00.000-08:00

@}-----------------------------

A Values minded post for the Christian Right

Let me explain the post below to all you values minded folks. You just fell for
the oldest trick in the book. You went to the Republican store for their loss leaders
(discounted items intended to lure you in for bigger purchases.) You entered the
voting booth for the ban on homosexual marriage amendment, the possibility of
restricting access to abortions, adding regimented prayer in the schools (like every
child doesn’t say a private prayer before a test) and to have the 10 commandments
displayed on the lawn of city hall.

You probably got those things, but before you left they stocked your shopping basket
full of goodies like, corporate corruption, war profiteering, torture of other
human beings (you know the ones that are already born) global warming,
and the always-present chemical goodies they spew out of their
enormously profitable plants that maim and disease all of God's children.

You voted for the anti Christ not once, but twice, naughty, naughty
little Christian half-wits. Hope Jesus is real forgiving when he gets
to your luke warm souls.

In other words:

You're straining at gnats while swallowing elephants.

2004-10-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

*************************************
KERRY ******************************
EDWARDS ****************************
*************************************
*************************************
*************************************
*************************************
*************************************
*************************************

I picked up my mother this afternoon and we voted early
for KERRY/EDWARDS and every Democrat on the ticket.
We voted NO on the Protect Marriage Amendment.
I’m so glad we voted EARLY!!!!!!!

2004-07-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

*
*
My poem Ritalin was chosen to be included (Along with many other
talented writers. I'm so excited to be included with this group) in a
new print book anthology of online poets called Slow Trains Volume II,
it’s edited by the wonderful, and amazingly, talented Susannah Indigo
and it is also available here through Amazon.

Some of my other poems are also online. I am listed as Melanie Burke Zetzer
in the spring/summer Slow Trains 2003 edition. Stick around and read
the other writers, too. You’ll find that these are some of the most talented
young authors anywhere on the internet.
*
*

And if its really good literary porn that interests you, then check out
Clean Sheets Literary Porn Magazine.
You can read my poetic contribution under Exotica right here.

********************************************************************************

2004-07-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

2004-06-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

@}-----}-------

Daddy (for your grandson)

The last time
I saw you or touched you
was in 1985
It was on my birthday.

You stood in the front yard
in your overalls
working on my car
screwdriver in your hand
red grease rag tucked in your
back pocket.
The autumn sun
winked a lazy afternoon eye
through a hickory nut tree's
branches
lighting your face
for a moment
making you squint
and wipe your brow
with the oily rag.
You wished me Happy Birthday.
I kissed your grease-smudged face.
I cranked my car, two sputs then vroom
you smiled at the engine.
I waved to you
standing there, lonely with the pavement
and I was gone.

The last time I talked to you
was on the phone
the day before
Thanksgiving.
I told you I couldn't come home.
You offered to fly me back.
I refused
I said I was busy.
I said I had to work.
I was lying to you.
The next day
at lunch
I sat crossed legged
my hair wet, in my bathrobe
on my bare wood apartment floor
eating a cold turkey sandwich
and drinking warm corona beer
without lime.
I should have been
with you.
I called the bus station
to ask about tickets
and plan my trip home for Christmas.

December 12, 1985
I made it home
for your funeral
and now you are
the center of my attention
laid out, like a conversation piece,
everyone says, you look good
to them you are a
coffee table book
open to the last page.
I walk out
to the store down the street
to buy a bottle of wine
and I can still smell your roses
two blocks away.

One week later
My mother is crying
next to me in bed
all night, she won't stop
I am on my left side, facing her
propped up on one elbow
I brush back her hair from her face with
the palm of my right hand
and my fingertips trace the lines on her forehead.
It is raining outside
for the first time
since we buried you.
Cold December
taps on the windowpane.
She is worried about you
out there, in the rain.
She wants to bring you a jacket
she thinks
you are getting wet.
I hold her tight, swaying back and forth
until she quiets.

Two years later
my first son is born,
September 1987.
I name him after you.

He is 3 months old tonight.
I wrap him like a Christmas present
in a soft blue blanket
tucking the corners around his legs
folding it, carefully,
over the back of his head.
He cries and screams
He is a colicky baby, tonight.
I cradle him and walk across the room
I sit in a rocking chair
and hold his head to my chest
rocking slowly.
I repeat your name over and over
until he falls asleep.

2004-06-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

***************************************

I wake up in the middle of the night
With the dumb foggy room realization
That someone suffered
The only dull ache comfort
Other than pillow and blanket
Is that
Thank god it wasn’t me
Ruthless prayer
Like a warm wind on a humid day
I can’t cry out or seek forgiveness for what
I didn’t do
Survivor guilt
Apparently my shoot opened
I landed here

When I finally wake at 6 am
and make coffee

I am surrounded by the lush green pine
Hard bark stretch to the sky
soft pink champagne and orange juice trees
Litter my roadway with fluff
Skies thick with clouds hang heavy
Interspersed with bright patches of sunlight
Steam rises from leaves and frogs
and snakes sunning on sharp jagged gray slate rocks on water’s edge

Every morning my first thoughts are the night before
Wakeful moments never to be dreams
startled to eyes opening
Twilight nightmares
Other people's pain
Problems with no solutions
No logic to suffering or dying
Or how to prevent what has already occurred
Tears can’t soothe wounds on their corpses
My half wakeful mind doesn’t know this
I can’t stop last minutes or make it any better
I spend a lifetime of nights
Seeking redemption for something
That I didn’t do
Grateful for every sunrise
I smile at every blade of grass wet with dew
Blackberry bushes ripening twenty feet from my door
On soft June morning
Tiny rabbits run ahead on deer trails
I bury my conscience day in sight, sound, smell and taste
Children playing in the woods
Water splashing on creek bed
We do things like drink strawberry margarita
Boil shrimp in lime and talk about the weather.

Hedonism is the order of every day
Shallow comforts skin thick
no salty tears
to rub in wounds as long as the sun is shinning

I am happy to be alive and have shelter
And eyesight and hearing and legs
Very lucky and knowing it.
Not understanding why
I was blessed.

2004-05-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

Presidential visit memorable event for Baton Rouge

By BRETT TROXLERbtroxler@wbrz.com
2theadvocate.com staff
From a report by WBRZ's Tammi Arender and Summer Jackson

"The motorcade, we knew it was coming because all the emergency vehicles came and they had a Secret Service guy up there," said Terry Dicarlo, who caught a glimpse of the president's motorcade. "And in the second limo was President Bush, and he was just smiling and waving. It was real exciting."

But not everyone on hand was excited to have President Bush at graduation. Some protested his presence by spray painting the words, "Bush is a killer and a coward. And 800 soldiers dead for what?" on the sidewalk next to Bernie Moore Track Stadium.

While some on campus protested his presence, the president received a strong send-off before leaving the city via the Baton Rouge airport. A crowd of 300 supporters gathered to see Bush before he boarded Air Force One.

2004-05-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

***********************************************************************************

Life with Artie (a true story) A. P. B. (his initials)

My baby and I were sleeping when he came in drunk looking for the car keys. His eyes were wild and he looked like he had been doing crank, crack or some other disgusting toxin. He came in and he pulled me out of bed to help him find his keys, but we couldn't locate them. He got angrier and angrier at me and he was yelling and calling me a "fucking cunt."

He picked up a shotgun that was sitting in the corner by the front door and he ran at me with it. He held it over his head and he backed me in to a corner with the blunt end. I was on my knees, and I was covering my head with my hands, and he acted like he was going to bludgeon me to death with it. I begged him not to kill me and I told him that I didn't hide the keys.

After awhile he let me get up and he kept demanding the keys. We looked for them as he carried the shotgun waist level and held it on me the entire time as we searched through the house. I was crying, and I was sober, I had just woke up, and it was 6am. I hadn’t even had my coffee, yet. He started getting madder and madder because he thought I was hiding the keys, but I wasn’t and I didn’t know where they were.

He aimed the shotgun, and he held it on me, and then all at once, he threw it off safety, and he cocked it, and he pointed it at me again. I thought, oh fuck, this is it, I'm dead. He was going to shoot me. The baby was still asleep in the next room. I wanted so badly to get the baby, but I was afraid that he would shoot both of us.

He started running across the room towards me and I had to think fast. I thought if I went out the front entrance and into our courtyard, someone would see him from the hotel next door, and then if he shot me in the back,he would have to keep on running and the baby would be safe. I really wanted to get my baby out of there, but I couldn't.

I ran out the door and he followed me and I could feel the butt of the rifle close to the small of my back. When I hit the bottom steps, he turned around and ran back into the house. He grabbed the baby out of his bed and held him up by his leg and pointed the gun at him and he told me to get the keys or he was going to “kill the kid” or “kill the little bastard” as he called him because "he wasn’t his son and he didn't care if the little motherfucker died."

He held the baby up high by his ankle, so that I could see the shotgun aimed at his head. The baby started crying and it was pissing him off. I was so scared and I didn’t know what to do. I ran and I grabbed my Mother who lived the down the street. We wanted to call the police but we were afraid that, that would only escalate things. We finally talked him into handing us the baby back.

I was still afraid to call the cops because we thought he would kill us all. I waited an hour and I snuck back over to the house and I peered into the window and I could see him passed out on the bed. He was snoring loudly and the shotgun was laying on the floor. I eased open the window and I climbed into the room and I retrieved the shotgun. ( I was determined that, if he was going to kill me, it wouldn't be with that gun) I noticed the keys on the floor under the bed and I got them too. I took his shotgun to the pawnshop and I pawned it and I used the money to buy gas for my car, so that my son and I could leave him forever. We sped out of town with out looking back.

2004-05-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

@}---------

This Is Final

When we all do that final

nod

At the end of life

hooked up to a
morphine
d
r
i
p
.

That over half of us reading

THIS

L o n g e d

for

(and I ain’t naming names)

For most of our adult lives.

Then we won’t appreciate

IT

As much as when

we were younger

and nodding

OUT.

And we won’t remember our younger years

Only the moments in between

WAKING

And

falling asleep.

Oh never mind…

this is your brain on

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
(((((SNORE)))))

2004-04-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

*
I've added some new things to this one and I may keep on going with it.
more additions this am (4-17-04) and (4-20)

W, and The Prophecies of Nostradamus

(Warning: The Alert Level is now raised to Flaming Red)

I had a friend years ago who was a real idiot. I hope you don’t mind me calling him that, but he really was an idiot. For the purpose of this diatribe I am going to call him by the first letter of his first name which is W. I don’t want him to get busted, so I‘m not going to use his whole name.

I think the only book that W had in his house, besides the phone book, and the bible, was a book on the Prophecies of Nostradamus. He kept an AK-47 in the corner of the kitchen and lots of FMJ ammo in his closets to help him prepare for the day when every thing fell apart. I knew him and his family as they readied themselves for the end of civilization, as we know it, back in the late 1980s. They were sure that 1987 was the year, that was going to be end of the world. I was pregnant at the time and they were my neighbors.

Every morning I had to face W in the parking lot. W was a short, middle aged, gnome looking, little country guy, from way back in the swamps, he had greasy dark hair, and squinty eyes. When he smiled it revealed a half empty mouth of blackened, decaying, corpse-like, fetid, rancid meat smelling, stumps of teeth, and he knew how bad they looked, but took pleasure in their appearance, and would sometimes try to kiss unsuspecting friends of his teenaged daughters and send them running out of the complex parking lot in tears.

And it wasn’t that W didn’t have access to a dentist. He did have a dental plan at the auto body shop where he worked and could have had them all pulled at once, and replaced with those new egg shell colored veneers, but he preferred to have them done one at a time after he began seeing the new dentist whose office sat over the floor of the old grocery store on Airline highway. Everyone had given the new dentist the nickname of Dr. Demerol, because of his favored method of pain control, and W figured at the rate of having one tooth pulled or worked on per month, that he could get enough prescriptions to last him up to the Apocalypse, and after that it wouldn’t matter because all the drugstores doors would be wide open (it’s occupants having fled in the confusion) and then it would be “ Nothing but Dilaudid for this old long haired country boy” W’d say patting on the dull rig in his right hand pocket of his filthy, grease stained levis while sucking gleefully on his remaining teeth. And judging from the six teeth that I could count on the top and three on the bottom, it looked like Armageddon was going to happen in about nine months give or take a few abcesses along the way.

W always wore a dirty white T-shirt. His parking space was next to mine at our apartment building and W would always be sitting on the hood of his beat up old butternut yellow colored 1966 Chevelle with his AK-47 assault rifle propped up next to the 15 inch front driver side Cragar wheel. The Cragars were the only thing decent about the whole damn car and I think W knew that, too and he would position his assault rifle propped up next to the wheels just to show off his most valuable worldly possessions.

When W wasn’t talking about the end of the world, he would read the want ads in some soldier for hire trade magazine out loud to anyone who would listen, and he’d talk about which job he was going to take, usually some kind of mercenary position in South America, I think. He'd exclaim loudly if he found one looking for a hit man, and who ever was walking by, (mostly me) would have to point out to him, that the one for the hit man, was probably put in there by the feds. And then he’d scratch his head and agree, and go back to reading, or he’d bring up Nostradamus and the end of the world, again.

I don't think W ever carried out any of his plans, although everybody in the neighborhood had heard about the aborted hit that didn’t place in Metairie when the ex wife of the man that paid them caught him and his friend hiding in the bushes around her town home just off Veterans Boulevard and chased them out of the yard armed only with a garden hose and spewing obscenities as they hopped a fence and almost dropped their assault rifle. “ That was just a rehearsal for the big one" is how W explained it later as he counted the 1500 hundred dollars that he had to return or get hit himself.

W’d see me outside going to work or a doctor’s appointment or something, and he’d walk over and say things like, “Well Marie are you ready for it? It’s going to start with earthquakes and then everything is going to happen at once. It's going to be the war to end all wars and everyone on earth is going to die” and then he’d hold up his assault rifle and pat the barrel of it and say, “If you need protection, girl you know I’m here.“

His daughters and his wife believed it too, except they were into this religious thing and if they were outside, they’d chime in with eerily sweet little tinny voices and say odd things like, “Jesus, will come for your baby, so he won’t have to be born or die.” Everyday was going to be our last day on earth, or could be according to them, and Orson Welles, who narrated the movie about the life of Nostradamus, which they watched over and over, and talked about incessantly.

If you live in a city like Baton Rouge you get used to scenes like that. Hyper religious, republican, racist, gun nuts with assault rifles in your parking lot are all the norm in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas but W and his family were starting to really get on my nerves. I was 6 months pregnant and every morning I awoke to that asshole and his brood and their apocalyptic visions complete with weapons, and descriptions of how he was going to be ready for the fall of all civilization, and he said it with such a gleam in his eyes. You know, I think W and his family were actually looking forward to it.

Finally one morning I’d had enough, so I started yelling at him “Look W, let me tell you something. I don't give a FUCK if it is the end of the whole FUCKING world as we know it. W I have had enough of this and I don't care if we are all about to die. I have to go to work, and my feet hurt, and it's going to be another hard day, and the last thing I need to wake and hear, is more about possible catastrophes. I may walk across the street and get hit by a car and die from my injuries, or I may get struck by lightening, or die suddenly from a heart attack. W what you and Nostradamus say might be true, we may all be about to die in one big bang, in earthquakes, wars, or terror attacks, but we’ll all still be the same kind of dead. It doesn’t matter if we die one by one, or whether we all die at once, because when I die it’s the end of my world, and when you die it’s the end of yours. People have been dying for millions of years, so what fucking difference does it make how you die, or how many people die along with you? You‘ll still be just as dead. W you gloat too much about fighting in wars for profit and you don't even think about who you might kill if you do answer one of those ads. W I think you and your whole family should enlist and go join the fight." I kicked the Cragar wheel on W's car for emphasis, as hard as I could, and watched as his AK-47 clattered down to the pavement.

W just scratched his greasy gray-black hair, and pretended not to think, and jumped down off the hood of his car, and picked up the assault rifle and released the magazine catch and removed the magazine and cocked the rifle, holding it with his left hand ready over the receiver to catch any ejected cartridge. Then he released the catch on the right side of the rear sight and he pushed the piston assembly cover forward, detaching it from the rear receiver. Then he lifted it and then pulled it back and removed the piston assembly and bolt. Then he began cleaning it and paid extra special attention to the barrel, gas hole and gas piston. He oiled it and reassembled. Then before he inserted the magazine he pressed the trigger to release the spring tension and then he cradled it, like it was a newborn, (I think he may have kissed it) and then propped it up on the car, again, and then went back to reading the classified ads. I think the idiot really wanted to be a hit man or a mercenary.

My baby was born, healthy, months later, and 1987 came and went without the fall of civilization or the massive continent jarring earthquakes, or world wars, and we moved away and I don't know if W ever answered any of those mercenary ads, but I haven't seen him in quite a while.

2004-04-01T06:25:00.000-08:00

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Baton Rouge is getting fooled by the Big Business representatives of the Chemical Industry, again and our emergency federal planning officials (the guys who are supposed to save us from the terrorist are helping them. No we are not safe)

Honeywell and our local Department of Homeland Insecurity met with the residents of the Chemical Corridor, better known as the CC (not to be confused with the OC. The CC is where the poor people have to raise their children) in Baton Rouge two nights ago and no one came away feeling any safer or less toxic.

My friend Renea (who lives in the neighborhood) called me and told me that the Feds and Honeywell hosted a neighborhood meeting about the CC and the recent chemical spills and they are claiming that they warned the residents as soon as the spills occurred, but those of you who have followed this domestic act of terror with me will remember that as it was happening we were discussing it here and here and the residents were not given adequate notice or even medical treatment.

This was an impromptu meeting and instead of discussing real safety concerns the industry and government reps ended up talking about boarding up old houses in the neighborhood that surrounds the chemical plants and planting flowers or something. They seemed to think that once a CC Lockdown was called that the people were allowed to evacuate, but this has never been the case. Police cars seal off the interstate ramps. Nobody is allowed to leave this area once they call for a lockdown. CC Lockdown means evacuate in place and like I discussed in my above links as this crisis was happening it is not enough to tell women and children to do this.

2004-03-31T17:34:00.000-08:00

*
My Abortion

So glad they were there for me.
Leave child at friend’s apartment
Drive 6 hours by myself to Planned Parenthood.
No doubts.

Sit in waiting room read article in magazine
On Romanian street children

Third generation
Living in sewers.
Think about Ceausescu

Think about Bush, Scalia,
then think again about Romanian street children

Pray to God for those children.

Pray to God that it doesn’t happen to us here
With these idiots in office.

Say private thank you to God
for kind Doctors
Risking their lives to help me
Cramps, pain, and blood follow.
No regrets.
None.
Not now
And not ever.

Obsessive/ Compulsive
(Don’t cure Me!)

And then it all goes back to the poetry
When I get frustrated
I think with my fingers
Endlessly pacing the width of the screen
I walk to one end
And then jump back
and walk across almost the same path
My hands know what I am saying
before it reaches my brain
(Automatic writing)
And if it gets too hot
I flinch only after the sentence has been written
Sometimes I have to slap my own fingers
If they get out of hand
Years of masturbating
Having given them a mind of their own
And that is weird
When I get angry or frustrated
Or especially if I have something else
That I’m supposed to do
Then that’s when I need to write
Writing being an uncontrollable urge
Sometimes I’ll think about something for years
Before I know how to frame it
Or theme it
And then it comes all at once
In the middle of the night
I drag myself out of bed
Make a pot coffee
And over to the computer
And then I write
Because
I do
.

2004-03-16T13:23:00.000-08:00

Another old one

*To A.P.B.*

Motherfucker with your faded blue eyes
Like the stars on a rebel flag handkerchief
You kept folded up in your back pocket.

Blue eyed Cajun’s son
You thought you were like Lafitte
When you were dealing drugs.

Your smugglers blues
Are nothing but leftovers in a silver spoon
You stole from your mother’s kitchen sink.

Junkie fever
Have you got cotton candy in your blood?

I’ve watched you twitch and flinch
With your veins rolling like wheels on a hearse
To your own Goddamned funeral procession.

And I would be glad to be there
And cover your grave in shit
Just to watch the poppies sprout up when springtime comes.

But old junkies never die
They just get used up.
Their heads hard and dull
As the needles they try to poke in the backs of their hands.

Mel 1991

2004-02-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

Continued from Visiting Day a piece that I wrote a while back

Visiting Day

concrete, blacktop diamonds
glistening in hot texas summer
the fields held in chains of thought
like sweat driping round my neck
stark pale building
with turrets and gates

appears in distance like city from nowhere
after long drive
this is oz in reverse
anti-oz
walk the careful path in between lines
past grim faced men
in dark glasses
with thin pursed lips
standing on a series of x's
printed on cold stone floor
being searched and searching for answers
in your thin face
through thick glass
eyes meek downcast
cheeks drawn
like soul shotgun
through pock marked plexi-glass
I was 12
you were only 18
and I could never go back again.

Visiting Day: Continued Part Two

On The Way To The Pen

My parents picked up a girl walking up to the prison.
It was on a hot summer day and everything seemed to be wilting
And there she was walking along at a nice country trot
There were no houses to speak of for miles and no gas stations
There was only one place that she could be headed and the road ended there
We had never seen anyone walking on this stretch of highway, before
She was tall and lean and she had straight copper colored hair
And a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up
Freckles covered her arms, neck, and face
The only tattoo I noticed was the obligatory thorns around her left wrist
She had on frayed blue jeans and white tennis shoes
Everyone was passing her by when we noticed her
My dad leaned back and looked at me and my mom

We had driven the whole day in the old Cadillac to be there
The air conditioner was on and we had just stopped to ditch all the beer cans.
And this was the last five miles before the searches, the dogs, the questions
The clipboards, and the weird otherworldly lighting with grown men who liked to wear sunglasses inside and who would only grunt at you in response
If you were dumb enough to ask them for directions.
We saw her as soon as we turned off the main highway
to the long road with the plowed, sickly, looking fields on either side
It was so dry and dead that you couldn’t tell what had once grown there
Her hair was shining in the sun in the midst of all the brown dying grass
The blacktopped road rose up in odd, eerie patterns of heat waves
The white rubber soles of her shoes contrasted with the hot, hard pavement
she didn’t look like the sun was going to slow up her pace.
And we all decided that we liked her at the same time
“Anyone that determined deserved a ride.”
“And she was headed to the prison and not away.”
We had a quick conversation amongst the three of us.
“So she wasn’t escaping.”
“Not that there was a women’s lockdown anywhere near.”
“And it was a long way and it was awful hot.”
She seemed surprised and relieved
when she saw it was a family offering the ride

she wasn’t hitchhiking, but she smiled, and got in and thanked us
We offered her a cola from the cooler and she asked for a piece of ice
Which she rubbed on her face and her arms
She wasn’t a girl, she was probably in her forties
With smooth lines like a road map of many smiles
And miles of walking and not giving a damn
Though she wasn’t going to turn down a ride
She was very tan with freckles on the inside of her eyelids
You could tell that she had worked hard all her life
She was muscular and had the healthy glow
of someone who worked outside and liked it
or was at least never going to admit that she didn’t.

She had an air of resignation without any sort of self pity.
She was going to see a husband who was going to be in there a while.
And that’s all she said, and we weren’t anxious to share our tale either
We didn’t talk much, none of us
But she thanked us for the ride and smiled the whole time.
It was such an odd moment of triumph for everyone in the car
A civilized gesture met with equal civility
in a place that was supposed to have none.
Finally we saw the gates off in the distance
With rusted barbed wire fences and guards on horseback
All the cars slowed in dreary procession about a half mile long
She asked my dad to pull over
and she volunteered that it was probably
“better if she walked in by herself, so no one would get the wrong idea.”
She thanked us again
and she got out and maneuvered in between the cars
and walked up to the gate and was the first one in.

Mel 2004

2004-02-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

Edited to add. I don't know how I should end this or if I should take the other part into more detail. I didn't mean to sound drippy, but I honestly felt like that at that moment and it's hard to change the way you feel. It made me feel better about everything and it all occurred to me at one moment in time, it was very brief and I thought about how different my life would have been had I never met him and how much richer my life was because I had, every bit of bitter fled out of me, and I know a lot people take this voyage frequently (the ferry ride/ no big deal) and may not understand how I could see all that, but I did and I was happy at least for moment and sometimes in life that's all you can do is grab time and hold on to it tightly and memorize it and understand and you get to know it ALL for only a second.

Repost from last year (I'm still working on this!)

Imagine
(this is a piece that I continue to work on, it grows, evolves, and changes daily)

Reflections

Ed and I boarded the Ferry that takes passengers from Port Clinton, Ohio to Put-n-Bay Island, a tourist destination on Lake Erie

I sat at the back of the boat on a metal bench, I propped my feet up on the rail, and surveyed the immediate area

From my two story vantage point, I could see a grocery store and a seafood restaurant where we had just eaten fried walleye filets

across from me was the garage that Ed's great grandfather John Zetzer had owned; the parking lot still had the old man's name etched on the brick wall

and then I looked at the harbor with its sailing vessels, mahogany cabin cruisers, fishing boats, and small black and white dwarf lighthouse

A raucous crowd began to gather on the deck, a whole group of corporate kids (middle aged business men and their underlings)

in their matching red company blazers, around 20 of them, laughing, leering, stumbling, intoxicated, flirting and chatting with all the women.

grandmas, grandpas, and teenagers, in Hawaiian shirts, tank tops, blue jean shorts, straw hats, flip flops and tennis shoes, all laughing and going to get drunk.

The ferry powered up and began moving across Lake Erie's, grayish-white wave tossed waters; I stared at the whisps of cloud against a blue sky

and the disappearing, storm faded, old city buildings of downtown Port Clinton and the docks and pylons alternating with the wake of the boat

I wondered why he’d ever left a place so beautiful, then I thought about a time when he and I lived in Louisiana at Head of Island on the Amite river.

He was exasperated with me as I tried to direct him in the proper boarding of a Batto as we piled in to go to Lake Marepaus to fish for our dinner.

He was so much fun; he woke up every morning and stood at the end of our pier in his undershorts and sang the Banana Boat song at the top of his lungs.

Our neighbor across the river was a chef from Detroit who cooked Cajun food at a local hotel and he would come outside and sing with him.

I would listen to their voices mingling with the fog and the sound of splashes as they checked trot lines and hauled in our meals for the day.

I turned and stared at the sun, closed my eyes for a minute, and let the wind blow at my hair, beating against my forehead in a wild pattern

Ed tapped my arm and hugged me, placing his chin in the curve of my neck, before he took his Harachi clad feet up the metal steps to the next deck

to talk with a pretty brown, wavy haired, dark eyed, girl of sixteen who was all dressed in freckles, laughter, and a white halter top sundress.

I looked back at the Victorian style, prohibition era, summer homes with their gazebos and the ivy crawling lattice work and the red and yellow rose bushes.

and the wild grasses of the islands dotted with red cardinal flowers, orange trumpet creepers, white bone-set flowers, and acres of hardwood;

cottonwood, green ash, juniper, dogwood, oak, maple, and elm, growing along and beyond the rocky banks of the meandering shoreline as we sped past;

I felt the misty foam touch my face like early morning dew and I looked in the distance at the faint bluish purple traces of the Canadian shore.

It occurred to me that I was lucky to be there. That if I had never believed in Ric, or his music, or his poetry, or his life song

I would not have a curly headed teenage son who laughs, cries, sings, and shouts with the perfect timing of his musician father

I can hear his father’s voice echo in the many mansions of his mind like a haunting melody in the dance of his footsteps, his life, and in his voice.

I thought about our ferry ride and I stared deep into the shimmering blue-gray waters of Lake Erie; the wind continued to blow my hair in a carefree way.

I imagined his soul in the moist breeze on the ends of my eyelashes

I imagined his soul through the vibration of the motor on the pads of my feet

I imagined his soul smiling inside me like a sated feeling in the bottom of my stomach

I imagined his soul in the waves that rocked the ferry and moved my shoulders back and forth

I imagined his soul in the rhythm of my heart as it beat faster when the boat picked up speed

I imagined his soul like a dolphin dancing in the waves splashing along behind us in the lake

I imagined his soul on the tip of my tongue like something I’d forgotten to say; the last time I saw him hair damp in the rain

I imagined his soul in the refracting, shifting, and changing beams of sunlight that rippled and sparkled on the water

I imagined his soul laughing in the green tree tops of the hardwoods and pine growing along the gray craggy cliffs

I imagined his soul flying with the sea gulls swooping down to the frothy swirling water up to the clouds and finally free

I imagined his soul singing with the birds; I could hear his strong sad life song enduring in their cries, and chest beat of wings

I imagined his soul in the steady damp breeze that tousled my hair and blew at my dress and touched every inch of my skin

I imagined his soul in the rustling of clothing and footsteps and in a dozen different conversations in the crowd around me

I imagined his soul in the eyes of our son as he smiled at me and leaned over the rail to feel the foam-born splash of water

I imagined his soul in the gusts that billowed and powered the sails of a passing ship

I had a long friendly talk with him and in my head

I talked to the sky and the lake and the wake of the boat and the seagulls trailing along

I talked to the houses that lined the shores and sail boats docked in the harbor.

I talked to the clouds, and the sun, and the spirit that was Ric

I said thank you to Ric and thank you to God

Thank you for giving me this day, thank you for this healthy son

Thank you for the chance to be here

Thank you for the chance to see what you saw when you were growing up

Thank you for the chance to meet your family and your friends

then I knew, it was so obvious, that I almost missed it.

God is easy to see, so easy that sometimes we overlook the blessings that are abundant in our lives.

Our trek, our journey, our visit, our pilgrimage to Port Clinton and to Lake Erie

to visit the grave of my son‘s father was all meant to be.

Mel 12-23-02

I may work on this some more, it might become something else. I haven't decided.

2004-01-24T06:59:00.000-08:00

*
No Child Left Behind

I dropped my son off at a party tonight. It looked like fun, somebody’s barn away from the main house down a dirt road way out in the country with lots of lights and laughter and loud music. It was his friend’s birthday. I asked him if he would call me, if he needed to leave, or had to leave, or if the cops showed up, and please don’t get in the car with anyone drunk, because I was hanging out at home and not doing anything in particular and would be happy to get him.

He called me about 4:30 this morning and I slurped down some coffee and jumped in car; he was waiting at the rusted gate in front of the old farmhouse with a big smile, and sleepy, happy eyes, and he climbed in the car and we sped away. He said thanks, Mom and I told him that this is the moment that parents live for. I drove him home and made him breakfast and he went to sleep (all in one piece) and I put on a pot of coffee and started reading Litkicks.

I remember when I was his age. I spent my 16th birthday in the French Quarter in New Orleans drinking hurricanes with a gorgeous oilrig worker that I was dating. I still have the picture. My parents were probably at a party somewhere, maybe in New Orleans, maybe somewhere else (they usually were) and I didn't even live at home most of the time, so who knows.

They say, as you get older that you become more like your parents, but I don't know that I could keep up with them.

My son and his friends are the kids left behind, left out, pushed out, unable to fit in those proverbial round holes, they are the ones pushed from school to school until home is the only place left for them; bright, smart, articulate, politically aware and literate, computer savvy, and hopelessly devoted to their music, play station games, and the real world; I marvel at their determination and I remember what it was like to be like them and I try to help and get everyone on the right track with ACT preps, student aid info, (I want them all to go to college) encouragement and being there for them, and mostly that means staying sober, so I can sort out the difficulties that arise. They won’t be prom queens or football stars or valedictorians, no one’s offering them any Ivy League scholarships, (they won't even let them stay in school) but they are so much a part of the future that I refuse to allow any of them to be marginalized.

2004-01-20T12:51:00.000-08:00

I was reading some of my first post, and when I started writing this blog over a year ago, I was lot more personal, and I may try to work my way back to that. I had more time back then and I had just been through some traumatic events and was talking my way out of it. I'm back in school, now and trying to figure out what to do with my life, again.

I don't know what I want to retire from when I reach 70.

2004-01-19T19:59:00.000-08:00

*
COME ONE! COME ALL!

Freaks of technology now on digital. Watch your favorite celebrity as they fart, pick their nose, and scratch their ass, 24/7 coming soon to your TV.

I sometimes think about the odd assortment of people that pass by my TV window everyday, and I think of how we used to go to the carnival, and witness freaks of nature and side shows, and now we have the freaks of technology, instead; the un-elusive celebrity culture, so sure that everyone wants to be like them, but most people watch with a grotesque fascination once reserved for two headed cows, bearded ladies, and the world‘s smallest man and I think we view this in the same way we did when we went to the carnival, observing only to reassure ourselves that we are the normal ones because after all we’re not the ones on display.

Please note that even with the advent of digital channels, our celebrity population seems to be increasing at alarming rates with the massive over breeding that seems going on amongst the indigenous population of so-called show people and it may be necessary at some point to tag them (perhaps a silver tag on the ear) and track their mating habits and introduce new forms of birth control so as to ensure they will not over populate existing broad band channels and eventually trample FTC airwaves and depopulate by starving off local dinner theater fare.

2004-01-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

$
Better RED than dead.

I feel the need to explain myself to those of you who may now believe that red means Republican, it doesn’t and I realize that I am a bit old fashion in my own fashion of political idealism and purposeful naivety. There are those of us out there that still believe in a utopian philosophy of socialism, and who still adhere to the tenets of Marxism, and who aren’t afraid to express ourselves, which I know makes me a little crazy, but frankly between you and me; I could give a fuck if someone disagrees, or doesn’t understand my viewpoints, but don’t steal my vibrant red stance with your blue and red state media blitz, CNN/FOX/MSNBC, because there are many of us out there who still remember and still believe, and who realize that things like minimum wage, child labor laws, and workplace safety standards would have never been enacted in to laws without a good push of Marxist ideology . By hijacking the red label I feel like the modern media ideologues of capitalist expansion, and free market wankerism, are trying to make it all moot, like that era never existed, and by doing so, are going try and make the reforms non existent as well, so call me what you may, but don’t you dare call me a Republican because I call myself a RED.

2004-01-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

BURP

2003-12-25T05:37:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas morning and I just lit a fire, put the dog out and made a pot of coffee. Time to get going. Food, food, food!

2003-12-24T04:19:00.000-08:00

$
Good Luck to you guys in the CC. I hope you win!

Residents sue Honeywell over leaks

Advocate staff report
A group of more than 200 residents living around the Honeywell International plant on Lupine Avenue in Baton Rouge is suing the company over three chemical releases earlier this year.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday afternoon in state District Court in Baton Rouge.
The residents, who claim they suffered injuries during the releases, are asking for damages less than $75,000 per individual. The lawsuit does not have class-action status.
Reid Walker, a spokesman for New Jersey-based Honeywell, said Tuesday evening company officials couldn't comment until they received the lawsuit. As of Tuesday evening, Walker said the company had not received a copy of the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs are people who said they were affected by one or more of the three releases this year, the group's attorney William Grimley, said.

According to the lawsuit, on July 20, about 45,000 pounds of refrigerant brine and 15,000 pounds of chlorine were released. Plumes of the gases drifted over nearby neighborhoods and affected several hundred people.

Eight plant workers and some residents went to the hospital, the lawsuit said.

On July 29, a release of 2,000 pounds of antimony pentachloride, antimony trichloride and arsenic trichloride harmed area residents, the lawsuit said.

On Aug. 13, an employee caused a one-ton tank to release chemicals, including hydrogen fluoride, the lawsuit said.
Because of the releases, the plaintiffs suffered injuries, including breathing and skin problems, as well as mental anguish and fear that more releases could happen, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit claims that the reason for the releases was negligence on the part of the company and named employees.

A Honeywell employee died as a result of injuries he suffered in the July 29 release.

The releases also prompted investigations by local, state and federal officials, a review of safety procedures by company officials and temporary closure of the plant.

2003-12-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

*
It's all about the propaganda, Stupid!

2003-11-23T06:24:00.000-08:00

*
Renee

My friend rides a bus to and from work. She has a job as a waitress at a well-known eating establishment in Baton Rouge (not Hooters, the favored Republican restaurant of the bayou state.) She lives in one of the roughest parts of the city, but doesn’t complain much, and smiles at the change that jingles in her pocket and pays her bus fare every night after serving up coffee to academics, drunken high school students, and the tourist who wander in looking for authentic Louisiana cuisine.

She works with a bunch of college students who have never had to make their own way in life, twenty years younger, and they sneer at her because she needs to leave work 5 minutes early each night to catch the nine o’clock bus and not be stuck waiting for the ten thirty bus which is the next one on the route. She transfers and it probably takes her an hour and a half to arrive at her home in the Chemical Corridor of the city.

The ten thirty ride is scary for a middle aged woman at that time of night, and not safe, and to get to the earlier bus all she needs is that extra five minutes. They don’t like to punch in early; those Old Navy, Gap clad children of suburbia, working only to have extra peanuts to throw at the lecturers in the large damp auditoriums at LSU. They love to give her a hard time, driving by her in the rain, and late at night unwilling to stretch their imaginations, or to reach that point in themselves to find any empathy for someone who has seen every thing that life will never offer.

I don’t remember us being like that and I wonder if this is reflective of the way life has changed, or is it because in Baton Rouge, a Republican strong hold of the religious right, they sometimes refer to the city buses as welfare transportation and argue in letters to the editor that they shouldn’t have buses at all.

2003-11-05T08:50:00.000-08:00

*Reposted from an earlier dated with additions.*

REDNECK FREE ZONE (Warning this blog has been chemically treated)

Here, I am again in Arkansas and the rednecks hate me, as usual. They come after me with pit bulls, kids, and boyfriends with rebel flags on the front of their pick up trucks. They breed and breed, so I am always out numbered. They don’t attend school or have any goals other than how to produce the next batch of Meth and who sell it to, so they have lots of time on their hands. The police look the other way and I can’t even get into my drive because someone is letting their dogs run loose on my property.

I’m declaring my blog a REDNECK FREE ZONE. No rednecks are allowed anywhere on this page.

WARNING: if you tote a rebel flag, if you married your cousin, live in the south, and have bunches of kids, if you have a pit bull without a collar or a leash,

This blog has been chemically treated against all forms of rednecks and within 20 seconds your hard drive will self destruct, your sperm count will fall, and your children will marry outside of your immediate family, and will begin to seek higher education ( higher than 6th grade). Your dog will die. Your meth lab will spontaneously combust. A democrat will be elected governor of your state. The tax on beer will be placed at 50% and snuff and dip will be declared illegal and hunting season will be cancelled until further notice.

2003-11-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

2003-11-03T11:03:00.000-08:00

!

If I could take all of these upcoming holidays that are on my calendar and ball them into a great big wad and throw them all into the trash then I know I’d be happier.

Maybe we'll not pretend this year and my son and I can sit on the couch and watch a marathon of Steven King movies day and eat popcorn, candy and nachos. And then do the same thing for Christmas. BAH Humbug

2003-10-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

*
The house that Eddie built

I went to my father’s retirement home yesterday, a place that he would never get to retreat to; it sits behind a veil of woods with pine trees. The wind and the clouds touched the trees directly above my head as I approached and made the whole hill rock like a serene ship on a sea of woods. My son was with me and carried a big stick to scare snakes and knock down spider webs.

My father took time off from work to build this house and then died the first month that he went to live in it. My father had to work all of his life, growing up with a widowed mother during the Great Depression. He once took a job delivering milk in glass bottles as a young teenager, and he fell out of the truck, onto a case of broken bottles and spilled milk, severing the nerves in his right hand and giving him a life long disability that he never spoke of, except to explain quietly how it happened. After this he joined the army during World War Two, anxious to serve, he hid his injury, and then finally returned home with his GI Bill in his good hand, and he got a college education, and worked to the last day of his 65th year, always dreaming of this retirement home he was going to build.

My father worked for the same two companies for over a period of 45 years; he was proud of being vested, but after his death, long before Enron, (during Reagan and the first Bush) they consolidated and re-conglomerated and made up new rules and managed to cheat my mother out of every penny of his pension, so she was never able to finish any of this and had to go to work in a near by city.

I stare at this place in wonder; standing alone for 20 years with deer, and mice, and owls, and snakes, and spiders as it’s only company; thick webs nestled in every corner of the structure, a bed of pine needles gathered at the front door; a mail box seldom used, and a road now so over grown, you have to park and hike and would never know it was there at all unless, you knew it was there.

A tornado briefly touched down on the top of the hill where his house sits and took the uppermost branches off of trees, and peeled back the siding, slightly but the shingles some how held, and it still stands alone, a solitary farmhouse built like a barn, rising from the ground like a tombstone with my father’s life written on it.

His physical grave is 500 miles from this place in the city where he worked and mostly lived, but this is the place where we gather wild flowers and cut our Christmas tree every year and still come to visit him.

I can mentally make notes of what might have been had he lived and picture the merry scene in my head of paved roads, roaring fires, black kettles, iron skillets, warm people snuggled into down mattresses and I can almost hear the echo of laughter filling the unfinished eaves and the almost attic that would have been a loft bedroom for me when I came to visit.

I climbed a work latter and sat 20 feet above the floor, on a wooden pallet, in the rafters, between the arch of the roof, in the skeleton of the building, with hard concrete beneath me. The house plans still sit in the corner of a shell of a closet space in a big brown cardboard tube, large white pages with renderings, and plans for another bigger house to be completed after this one was finished. He had planned the house long before he got the land or began work on it. He would steal away moments early in the morning drawing up his plans. I can still see how everything stopped the day he died, in the middle of boards, and 2 by 4’s, half nailed, with the hammer left where he last sat it, and the doors with rusty hinges left leaning against the walls, and now all, gathering dust and I know this is not the way he lived; he always finished everything he started.

My 17 year old son walked around in the room below me and exclaimed when he came upon a box of business cards with my father’s name, and work title, and office address, and they looked like new, still white, and black and crisp, and he ran his fingers over the imprinted words on the cards, and touched them like Braille, and held one close to his nose trying to smell it, and he smiled at me, and took out his wallet, and placed my father’s old business card in the crease of his billfold, as though it was the most important piece of paper in the world to him.

An address book sat on a counter in the kitchen by the carefully hung windows in the finished part of the house. It has a day planner with appointments and phone numbers of people dead for many years. I lie on the pallet and slowly smoked a cigarette and looked at it and turned the pages and then I watched the smoke curl up to the ceiling and I remember him and I feel safe in his house. I’ll be 40 this month and I have seen incredible brutality and violence from the men in my life since his passing. My father was never one of them.

2003-09-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

*

Rest In Peace

I feel very pensive right now. A death anniversary passed and I didn’t realize until yesterday that it had come and gone. Rick died September the 14 almost ten years ago and I didn’t remember until I heard the Saliva song Rest in Pieces, because it reminds me of him. He was cremated in California and his mother and brother transported the ashes back via airplane and his Mom took some ashes out and holds on to them like they’re the most valuable possessions she has; the rest of him was buried, and now every time I hear that song, it reminds me of him resting in separate places.

I started observing death anniversaries because my oldest and favorite brother died the day after Thanksgiving and that made it hard for us to forget the time of his passing, and then my father died just about two weeks before Christmas. We had poinsettias instead of roses at his funeral and my family (what is left of it) is always a little blue around the holidays. I never started this time of mourning and remembrance until least November and then Rick had to go die in September, so now it starts earlier. No one in my life dies in the spring or the summer; its always the fall or winter.

(In case you think that I am a total drag, just remember that my father was 100% Irish and I grew up in Louisiana where we have jazz funerals. I intend to make khalua, again this year even though I quit drinking. Want some?)

2003-09-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

*
We need the Clean Air Act in Baton Rouge

They're not locking down CC, like it matters.

They're not even bothering to lock down the Chemical Corridor anymore. This is the 4th incident in a month's time.

Now, I’m not harping on this, but another one? Exxon has an explosion and all my friends just happen to be in the area, sitting at their home after a ball game and eating hamburgers for Christ Sake!! No CC lockdown this time.

By MARLENE NAANES and
PENNY BROWN ROBERTS
Advocate staff writers
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/090303/new_soars001.shtml

Pipes carrying gasoline components at the ExxonMobil refinery caught fire Tuesday evening, sending a tower of flames and thick, black smoke high into the air for almost an hour.

Residents who live around the ExxonMobil Refinery said their homes vibrated after a pipeline containing gasoline components caught fire Tuesday evening. No injuries were reported.

While the fire burned Tuesday, police temporarily closed Scenic Highway between Mohican and Shelley streets and the Evangeline Street exits off Interstate 110, police spokesman Cpl. Don Kelly said.

2003-09-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

*
I used to not be like this. Anti Social

Ok here is my weird dilemma. I want to work online, I already take some classes online, and I like it here at home. I could live in front of my computer and never leave and be totally happy out here in cyber world. If I wasn’t in the boonies, then I’d have my groceries delivered, toiletries, everything. I like being alone and with people at the same time through my computer. I have absolutely, no desire to leave my home. Right now I have classes that pull me away twice a week to another city, but if I could do everything through this screen and keyboard then I would. In the real world there is traffic, cops, mean people, courts, judges, and nothing, but problems; on my computer there is information, hours of pleasurable reading, learning, chatting, and now my favorite thing to do is, looking for a job or a new field on monster.com. Something that lets me stay at home away from the public.

Part 2: Mel the Basket case.or (here I go, again, referring to myself in the 3rd person)

I am about to get put through it again. I can see it coming, another ringer. I'm going to be put before a bunch of public servants (what a name for them) and be told (again) what a worthless human piece of living matter that I am. My self esteem is already low and I know what they think of me and it's nothing personal; it's how you win your case if you're a ruthless bastard/bitch, but damn, I'd rather stay at home and not deal with it all again. A couple of ruptured disks, many attorneys and several judges, later and now you have me; someone who was once a perfectly good nurse, who used to like herself, and her profession, and who loved every patient she ever took care of, and I have become a total introvert who would rather talk to myself through my keyboard and avoid all contact with other people.

Judges (another rainy day rant)

I told my mother the other day that I know why we have a court system and judges; it’s not to administer justice or protect the constitution, or argue the separation of church and state; it’s to divide everyone into two classes of human beings; worth a shit and not worth a shit, and according to them, (the courts) most of us litter, the not worth a shit pile like so many skin bags of human refuse ready for disposal, they dispose of us in institutions, penal and otherwise, and execute us, or drug us when they get a chance to. I have spent my whole life trying to escape the not worth a shit pile (through school, work, and volunteering in the community) only to be directed back to it again every time I am unlucky enough to walk too close to a gavel.

2003-08-28T17:42:00.000-07:00

*
My son will be 16 in a few days and everyday he looks a little bit more like his father and like my brother Alan. He is all muscles and grace and fluid movement. He climbs up on the roof and cleans out the gutters for me. I am afraid of heights. He’s not. He lifts all the heavy stuff for me and I marvel at his energy and his robust nature, so much like my father, and charming, smiling, able to coax and smooth things over and laughing in the sunlight with no need for shadows at all. I wonder if I taught him enough to survive, to thrive, to reach whatever potential he possesses.

2003-08-21T11:22:00.000-07:00

@%#&!

Never mind Honeywell, Baton Rouge, it’s just those damn Trees and Wildflowers polluting our environment again!

"According to Mayor Bobby Simpson of Baton Rouge, approximately 50 percent of the ozone in the Baton Rouge area is produced naturally by trees and other vegetation, while 40 percent comes from vehicle and industrial emissions." BR Advocate 8-21-03

2003-08-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

*
Another chemical spill at Honeywell, another chemical spill, shut the plant down, and pass the chemo around; it’s another chemical spill.

2theadvocate > News > Acid spill at Honeywell plant hurts 2 workers 08/14/03
Acid spill at Honeywell plant hurts 2 workers
By NED RANDOLPH

This is the third accident at the chemical plant in just more than three weeks. Honeywell will be cited with a civil violation by State Police for failure to report Wednesday's accident in a timely manner, Trooper Johnnie Brown confirmed.
EMS was called about 11:15 a.m., an EMS spokesman said.
Honeywell has been dogged by its safety record as of late.
The company's chief executive, Nance Dicciani, said July 31 she had shut down the plant, pending an investigation of two recent spills: on July 20 and July 29.

Gee, I wish I could stand in the background and cheer everyone on; that is if anyone but the lawyers ended up with all that class action money. The poor get cancer, and the rich get, well you know what they all get; that’s right, they eventually all get cancer, too. We’ll all die in our hovels and they’ll die in their mansions, too bad they can’t take it with them like they want to.

2003-08-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

*****
Yay! Yay! Yay! I'm back! It's cured!!!!! Now, Back to work and school. Wheeeewwwwwwwww.

2003-08-09T16:50:00.000-07:00

*****

(Let me go into what CC Lockdown is; CC stands for chemical corridor and if you live within it's bounds and there is a spill or leak at the local plants, you are told to go inside your home, turn off air conditioning, close your windows, and stop up any holes under your door, and don’t come out again until the all clear. Well, a lot of people don’t get warned (like my friend) and their homes are drafty, old, and in need of repairs, and telling people to go inside and lock their doors, reminds me of the old civil defense films of people hiding under their tables for a nuclear blast. It doesn’t help. )

CC Lockdown's continued: Taken from the classified section of today's Baton Rouge Advocate (conveniently hidden in the public notices section)

DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY - - - Department of Environmental Quality Office of Environmental Assessment Environmental Planning Division Unauthorized Emissions Reporting Procedures (LAC 33:I.3931) (OS052E) In accordance with the emergency provisions of La. R.S. 49:953(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act, which allows the Department of Environmental Quality ("Department") to use emergency procedures to establish rules, and La. R.S. 30:2011, the secretary of the Department hereby finds that imminent peril to the public welfare exists and accordingly adopts the following emergency rule, which shall be effective seven days after the date of adoption for 120 days, or until promulgation of the final rule, whichever occurs first. In the last two years, the Baton Rouge Nonattainment Area (the parishes of Ascension, East Baton Rouge, Iberville, Livingston, and West Baton Rouge) has experienced exceedances of the one-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) promulgated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). These exceedances did not occur during circumstances that typically result in excessive ozone formation and led to ozone readings the Baton Rouge area has not experienced in a decade. The ozone readings for two separate episodes in September 2002 and July 2003 were 164 parts per billion (ppb) and 174 ppb respectively, over 30 percent above the standard. Monitoring results from these exceedances indicate a high rate and efficiency of ozone production, which was limited spatially to the immediate Baton Rouge area. These ozone episodes correspond very well to the kind of episodes that have occurred in the Houston/ Galveston areas. The Texas Air Quality Study, conducted in the Houston/Galveston areas, concluded that the reactivity of the hydrocarbons was most often dominated by low molecular weight alkenes and aromatics resulting in explosive ozone formation. Air quality sampling in the Baton Rouge area also showed substantial quantities of the mentioned ozone precursors. The ozone formation experienced in the Baton Rouge area may similarly be the result of the emissions of "highly reactive" ozone precursors. The Department needs additional information regarding the emissions of these highly reactive ozone precursors to understand, predict, and prevent further exceedances of the ozone standard. Results from computer simulations based on Houston's industrial regions suggest emissions of as little as 100 pounds of light alkenes and aromatics can lead to 50 ppb or greater enhancements of ozone concentrations. Baton Rouge's type of industry (petrochemical plants and refineries) and meteorological conditions are similar enough to Houston to warrant further investigation. This information is needed immediately to monitor the remainder of the 2003 ozone season in the hopes of achieving attainment of the standard. Facilities are to continue to follow the LAC 33:I.Chapter 39 reporting protocols and, whenever possible, to utilize the new notification procedures found at http://www.deq.state.la.us/surveillance/irf/forms and http://www.deq.state.la.us/surveillance. This Emergency Rule is effective on August 12, 2003, and shall remain in effect for a maximum of 120 days or until a final rule is promulgated, whichever occurs first. For more information concerning OS052E, you may contact the Regulation Development Section at (225) 219-3550. Adopted this 5th day August, 2003. L. HALL BOHLINGER Secretary 2670385-aug 9-1t

2003-08-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

****
CC Lockdown's twice in one week in the same neighborhood in good old Baton Rouge

I'm still here, but I am slightly speechless at the moment, not that I've run out of things to say, it's just that I'm not ready to say what I've been thinking about a lot lately and that is about the all the CC lockdowns going on in Baton Rouge.

I have some modest nursing experience, so my family members call me and tell me when they are ill. They didn’t hear about the lock down until it was too late and they called me before they were aware of a spill and told me they had symptoms similar to strep throat; unable to swallow or breathe deeply, but with excruciating migraines and burning, red eyes, and extreme nausea. I always say go to ER, or go to a doctor, but they decided to wait, and then got the news that there was a chlorine leak. And then heard the local ER doctor on the evening news telling everyone not to bother coming in because there was nothing they could (or would?) do for them.

Then just a few days later my friend called me and said she thought it was happening again because her symptoms were getting worse and she was scared and we found out there was another spill at the same place. (Honeywell) This time it was a chemical agent called antimony pentachloride and she couldn’t open her eyes because they burned so badly, and there was nausea, vomiting, splitting headaches, and trouble breathing, again. This is disgusting and they tell people not to go the doctor. I have some friends severely affected by this and I'm worried and I don't know what to say to them.

My friends live within a couple of blocks of the latest two that occurred within a week of each other at the same plant. (They can't afford to move)

They're all getting nausea, headaches, and vomiting and the doctors in ER are refusing to treat most of the people in the community who have been exposed. Hey maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's a POOR mostly minority area and the fat cat doctors in that town don‘t like poor, uninsured, or medicaid patients. Yah think! Anyway I am aghast at how this is being handled.

Do yourself a favor and don't relocate or move to Louisiana until they get their act together. This bullshit has to stop and gutting the clean air act just for Baton Rouge ain’t a good idea.

2003-07-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

Never Mind!

2003-06-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

`
Why I returned my Special Olympics Ribbon

I was thinking about a long time ago when I was around 18 and I volunteered to be a softball coach for the International Special Olympics. I had so much fun hanging out with the kids, too much fun, apparently, because some of the event officials kept thinking that I was one of them, and I guess I was, and people were hugging me like I was, and that freaked me out, but it was funny, and the real athletes all laughed too. I wandered over to the gymnastics competitions because I had been a gymnast in my early teen years and I sat with the athletes and talked and drank cokes and laughed; they were incredible people. At the end of the event they had a dance in the field house at LSU and the other volunteers sat in bleachers and gawked, but I like to dance, and my new friends were asking me to, so I got out, and I jitter bugged, and shimmied, and waltzed, and my mother who was an official ‘hugger’ kept getting compliments about her ‘special child’ and I did nothing to dissuade the rumor, but I did return the ribbon.

2003-06-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

Last Call

I seem to be playing phone tag this morning, because I can’t get in touch with the people that I need to talk to and I thought about a friend of mine who spent the last hour of his life making phone calls. He was calling different people and no one was home. He left messages on answering machines, but he never got to talk to anyone. He was calling from a hospital bed. I thought about him this morning as I was pushing buttons and hearing recorded messages, and I wonder what he was thinking while he was making those last calls. His messages sounded casual, and he didn’t sound desperate, he didn’t even say he was calling from a hospital room, and he even had the presence of mind to leave a joke on one of the machines. About an hour after that last call, they found him slumped over in bed, the top pulled off his margarine, his butter knife askew, and his bread still unbuttered, and the phone on his bed, next to his head, as though he were waiting for a return call that never came.

2003-06-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

(Sigh)

Months later, after her death, I have flashes, like lightening quick memories of tiny moments of knowing her during one of the most difficult times of my life. I remember her friend coming over and talking to me; me sitting cross legged, my head in my hands, in the middle of my living room rug, and him telling me that she was someone that I needed to know. He said that she wasn’t judgmental; she wasn't like that, and that she was good at putting people at ease, and that I needed to meet her and talk to her. He thought that she could make me feel better. I guess I looked like I needed an anchor, a friend, someone who would listen, anyway, she did come over to visit with me.

I can’t remember what we talked about that first day. I think something about us doing laundry together, and that she had the same last name as an acquaintance of mine in another state, and we discussed whether she might be related to him, and she said that she might be second cousins or something. I’m not going to exploit our friendship, that has never been the goal of my writing, although I do exploit myself quite a bit, but I deserve it, anyway, this bugs me, because I know, several years from now, I’ll be sitting somewhere and not thinking about this and it will all come back to me, and I’ll remember her vividly, all the way down to the kind of sneakers, the gray baggy shirt that she was wearing, and how her dark hair fell in big loose ringlets, damp with sweat, and the way her eyes smiled with her, in an intense, instant, Polaroid kind of way, in one big flash of recognition, and that she was like that, like the kind of person I try to be, petal to the metal, take no prisoners, strap on your seat belt and let's go, and I guess she did befriend me, and I know that she didn’t feel sorry for me at all; she just thought I needed to get up off my ass and do something with my life. She was a dynamo, someone who was out to save the whole planet, and she took time in her busy schedule to try and save me; to help out a depressed neighbor, someone she had never met before. What a sweet person she was. I know that I was very lucky to know her and I wish that I had told her that back then.

I thought about her, again, as I was riding up the Talimena Trail in western Arkansas, to the lodge on the top of Queen Wilhelmina mountain last Sunday. I was in a silver Mustang convertible, the sunlight was dancing off the hood, illuminating beads of rain, and changing them into every color of the rainbow, like a prism, a kaleidoscope effect on the windshield, bright beams of light, almost blinding me, and blending in with the gold, tinted shade of my wire rimmed sunglasses, with the wind flying through my hair, a storm cloud chasing, but not over taking us, and my son sitting next to me, chewing bubble gum as fast as he could, and him smiling so hard, it looked like it hurt his freckled cheekbones, and then I thought about her with the same kind of wind touching every strand of her being, and I thought about my deceased father, and his black, 1955 T-bird with the red wings, and about both of us laughing, and me by his side, us sailing by on the same pavement, and then I pictured all of us together for a single precious moment of life, and forever, finally free.

2003-06-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

The right to choose and welfare reform.

I am not abdicating responsibility for my self or my predicaments, but I’m not apologizing for them either. It’s just simply the way it was and is for my son and me. I once tried to argue with a young conservative republican about childhood nutrition programs using my own situation as an example. He wanted to know and I quote. “ Who is to blame? Who is at fault? And Who done you wrong?” I told him that my child was not a fault and that babies are one situation where two wrongs do make a right; a right to eat, a right to have shelter, and a right to choose, and to be able to make a decision that is not based on your lack of food or lack of shelter. You won’t find my soft and fuzzy logic in any algebra equations, or technical manuals. I think that is why men don’t understand and they continue to gut the safety nets that women like me need in order to survive and to make choices.

2003-06-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

Drumline: Ed and Ric's version

Well we’ve had two visits from the local sheriffs, so far in two days over my son’s drumming. It was before 10 pm last night when they arrived and I just shook my head and said Ok whatever. He wasn't playing the night before, but they said they were in the neighborhood. (What ever) Now, it’s morning and Ed is practicing, again. I’m relieved as long as he is on those drums and pounding away at his teen angst, then I know that he’s not out doing drugs, getting in trouble, or doing anything except hitting cymbals as hard and as fast as he can.

I remember his dad tried to start a band. We lived in a low rent apartment, the kind where people sleep in the lobby and you hand them an old coat to use as a pillow. One of those California neighborhoods full of over grown boys (oh excuse me, I mean Men) where the sign painter is a bass player, the mail man writes songs and plays rhythm guitar, and the apartment manager sings, and if they had been teenagers then they would have a garage band (probably did), except they were all in their 20s and 30s, and too old live with their parents, so instead they had an apartment band. Anyway, they practiced on the second floor in a corner apartment of a four-story tenement. We thought people would call the cops, cause man they were loud, instead we got knocks on the door, song request, and it all usually ended in a keg party. Wish it were like that here.

Boom, boom, bam, bam, crash, crash goes my Ed: I hope someone bails us out of jail, because I will not tell him to stop.

2003-06-06T07:09:00.000-07:00

Shoe Laces

You can study one person, and replay him, and moments with him in your mind, things that happened 20 years ago, and you realize that somehow you have memorized even his shoelaces, and the way they were tied on that one particular morning, but you can’t remember if you paid your water bill from this month. These are the tricks that my mind plays on me. And maybe the shoelaces were, frayed, dirty, and endearing, because one loop was larger than the other, and he always tied his shoelaces that way, haphazard, not paying attention engaged in conversation, adamant over something that his boss said, or something on the news that morning, and you don’t remember what it was, but you can see the three beads of sweat inching down his nose, the way one strand of hair flipped to this side or that side, as he became emphatic stressing his point, and you arguing just to take the other side so you'd have something to discuss, and the black soled tennis shoes, he wore that day stand out in your mind, (he was preparing to walk and hitchhike the 30 miles to town, to get to work, that evening/ he made it, but then he always did) and you wonder why it is important to you, to have these pictures in your head, home movies of your soul.

You remember the Amite river's brown water rushing outside your door, the early morning mist rising up obscuring the view of the other bank, the sound of splashes, and men working on some project, the current was swift and the water up, and it was a two mile hike just to get to the bridge and the highway. This was your favorite place in the world at the time, ( even though you barely had electric and the well pump was broken) and there was always a big rod and reel cast out to the middle of the river, trying your luck and hoping to eat something (anything would do), and the logs and snakes, and debris rushing by, and the way the road always flooded when it rained; if you had a car, you had to park it at the bridge, and walk through, knee to waist, deep murky, swirling water to get home, and you never minded dodging the water moccasins, they went their way and you went yours.

2003-06-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

Rainy days

I freak out when it rains. I used to not be like this, it always took a lot to get me upset. I’ve had guns held on me, shotguns, knives to my throat, you name it, and I’ve had it happen, and you’d never know it, to look at me, but my friends that have known me for a long time (the ones not dead or in jail), they know.

Now I hear a clap of thunder and my knees tremble, and if I’m on the road and my car hydroplanes, the least little bit, I have to pull over, and I shake, and I get panic attacks (imagine that) and don’t even mention tornado warnings, you don’t want to know.

Which is strange, because where I grew up, we used to party when the weather got bad, and we’d stand outside and watch pine and hardwoods, rock back and forth in the wind, their tops touching the ground, as the gust changed directions, and laugh when the trunks would finally crack, and land in some parking lot on top of somebody’s car, and we’d go out riding during the worst of it, mud running at the edge of bayous and canals, in and out, up and down, and the worse the weather was, the more fun we had, of course we were all drunk off our asses back then.

It’s strange that I can’t stand the weather these days, and I don’t know what happened to me, or when it started, but all of sudden there it was, a brand new neurosis, that I didn’t have before, but then again, since I am quite used to my own neurotic indulges, I just shake it off and go on. I wonder why?

2003-05-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day

I think about them sometimes, the people whom I’d like to talk to, but can’t, and I can count them on my fingers, my sweethearts gone forever. I feel like I’m on the edge of precipice and looking down into a pit and I know that none of us left living are very deep anyway and then I think about death like deep water and I wonder if I’m right about that, that once it’s over you head, once you die and plunge into the pool then it doesn’t matter how deep it is, or how long you’ve been dead, just like deep water, but then maybe you swim, and you don’t sink. I think I’d like to go all the way to the bottom when it happens to me and see how deep it all is and then touch and push my way back up, coming up for air or will I? Will it feel like drowning and will I grasp desperately for life in some ghostly way, trying to grab the living, or will it be like the time that I fell in the Amite River at Magnolia Beach once when I was five, and I sunk down and I heard music, and I saw colors and it was all so pretty and pleasant until someone, a very nice someone, pulled me out, and patted my back and carried me back to camp wrapped in a blanket not really comprehending or grasping what had happened and I still think about it and I still can hear the music and see the swirling colors in my dreams, and when I close my eyes, and I hope it was like that for them, like diving in, and it’s all over your head anyway, so it doesn’t really matter, none of this does, does it?

I have this really calm quiet little place to live right now and it isn’t unpleasant to be here at all. The coffee pot purrs, my dog wags her tail, and licks my feet, and I can hear a babbling creek close by and I have no complaints, I’m not hungry, and I have a place to live, and I absolutely don’t fit in, in this place of Shotguns and Pick-up trucks (a Marketing term), having always been more of a Bohemian mix (another Marketing term), but I I’ve crafted an art out of being alone and am good at finding things to fill my days, as long as my life has some purpose, and doesn’t hurt anyone, and I achieve something, then I think that it’s OK.

Someone came by my house the other day with metal detectors and hiking stuff (I live on the edge of a camp ground and national forest) and told me our homes and street were built on top of an old Civil War era Gold Mine and I know that there’s some kind of big cavern beneath my street because it keeps caving in (that's a bitch); and all I could think of was a great big sink hole waiting to swallow me, my coffee pot, my dog, my son, and all of my possessions and everyone saying “Oh well” when it happens, because I know that people like me don’t get gold mines, we get sink holes and the insurance company refuses to cover it and then you are basically FUCKED with, no house, no coffee pot, no dog, no street, and no gold, because that’s how it’s works.

2003-05-04T04:55:00.000-07:00

A Rant on Food from a Louisiana Cook

I am food obsessed. I am down right weird about food. I bought 20 pounds of potatoes at the super market, and I felt like a rich girl, and I know that’s silly. I looked around in the super market parking lot, and I hoped that someone saw my son load it in the car, so they'd know we had food, and plenty of it.

I watch the stock market all day on TV with it’s huge commodities, and markets, and billions of dollars, and millions of products, produce, and I think, my freezer is full of chicken and ground meat and I feel like a big success. I love plump juicy tomatoes, sweet vidalia onions, sacks of par boiled long grain rice (I have 10 pounds) I repeat what I have, over and over in my head, before I go to sleep, like night time prayers, and I memorize every thing in my pantry, and sigh comforted that I have enough food, and nothing can really be that wrong as long as we have something to eat, and food to last, and I try to make calendars in my brain to see how long each supply would last if there were a famine, or every grocer closed at the same time, or if for some reason I couldn’t buy anymore, and it is a big deal to me. How much food I have, and how long it will last, and how many people I could feed, and whether I have enough to help out, or contribute if someone calls, or comes by, and is out of work and needs some.

Groceries are my comfort margin, and my measure of my own person wealth, isn't what is in my stock portfolio, but is if I have enough food to share, but of course, even if I can't send a care package, if someone wants to stay for dinner, we can always stretch it with water, or tomato sauce, or flour, or we could eat it over rice, or with potatoes, or you know how it is don’t you?

Even if I am worried about something like a job, or a bill that’s due, when I go to sleep all I have to do is think of my refrigerator, and what’s in it, and what food I have to prepare the next day, and if it is full then I can go to sleep, it's like counting sheep for me. I think about food so much I ought to be 500 pounds and my idea of heaven would be to eat and eat and eat and never gain weight and never run out.

My father grew up on a farm, and in a rooming house in north Louisiana during the Great Depression and he was food obsessed too, because when he was young he didn’t always get enough to eat. The only time, that I ever went hungry was after he died. I was pregnant, and people turned me down for food, and it made a huge impression on me. I decided to not have anymore children, and never to trust a man, or anyone else to provide my living, and never to go hungry, or get pregnant, again.

(I am so self sufficient, that I scare the Hell out of most men, but that's Ok, my grandmother, my Dad's Mom, Edith was the same way. She never re-married and she managed to put all five of her children through college (even the girls) on her own by working.) I think that, that rough time brought me closer to my Father, even after his death. I understood him a whole lot better and I know, I would have never known a hunger pain in my life had he lived.

Anyway, he once took me walking down gravelly, dirt roads to his family’s former homestead, past newly plowed fields, railroad tracks, and oil wells pumping (of course they didn’t discover the oil till after they evicted his widowed Mom and 4 siblings, but you’ve heard those stories before so we won’t go there) and he would point out these little houses with white picket fences and small gardens and say “That man grew the best watermelons and when I was kid we would swipe them.” (he never said steal) and sometimes, the same family was still living there, and an old black man in his 70s would come out on the porch, and say “Look it’s that Eddie B. kid. Do you remember that time my Mama caught you with the watermelon, and we hauled you back here by the scruff of your neck, and she felt so sorry for you that she fed you corn bread and collards with ham hocks? Man you was a skinny little white boy back then, and you said it was the best food you’d ever had?” and my father who was in his 60s at the time (still the kid) and could still blush, would turn beet red, and laugh, and apologize, and introduce me to them. They would shake hands and everybody would hug and then we'd have iced tea or lemonade on the porch. My Dad said a watermelon tasted sweeter if it was snitched. Then he would tell me that he was hungry as a child, and if it wasn’t for them, that some nights he would have gone to bed without food.

Back when the Waltons (the TV show about the depression era family that wouldn't take charity) was on TV, my Dad would watch it with me, and tell me that they would have been the 'Rich Folks' in town, and then he would admire the heavy oak table that they sat at, and their big house, and big front porch, and he said, he didn't understand all the talk about the Waltons, not accepting charity, and being self sufficient, because any fool could see that those folks would have had money back then. "Hell, he'd say, "Look at em. They owned a whole damn mountain. That ain't poor."

My dad always ate very quickly. He said, he couldn't help it because after his family lost the farm, his widowed mother had to open a rooming house in Ruston, Louisiana for college kids, and that he was the youngest and smallest person at the large table, and if he wanted enough to eat, then he had to eat large amounts, and he had to eat it fast, and he never took the time to say "please this' or please pass that" He'd laugh and tell me to use my boarding house manners, because when he was young all the meat would be gone in the time it took to pass the salt or pepper. One rule was observed, though and that was the elbows "Mabel, Mabel get your elbows off the table" he'd say to me. I think it was so you could fit more people at the table.

( I still have that very same rooming house table. It is sitting in my dining room. I often wonder what it would say if it could talk. It'd probably say, "Get your elbows off of me and invite some people over for dinner." I'll bet it's lonely compared to it's boarding house days.)

My father cooked a big pot beans every Saturday like clockwork and beef or pork roast on Sundays. He would cook huge amounts and even the insurance salesman or Tupperware guy was invited to have plate. He was food obsessed and I guess anyone who has been without, always is, and the driving force in life is an empty belly or the memory of one. I know it is in mine.

My son and his friends worry about labels on clothes and products (better known as the upward pull strategy), and it freaks me out, because I have never cared who made what, or what name was on it, as long as it fit, and was comfortable. He thinks that the more you pay for something the better that it is, and I try so hard to steer him away from that notion. Yet all the while I hope that he never looses his youthful naivete, at least not the way I did, and then I think about getting life insurance, and making sure that he never, ever has to worry about food, and he loves to eat and I am so glad that he has enough right now and I tell him that he should be a chef because then he'd never go hungry.. Blah, blah, blah, blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

(Yes, I'm nuts. Maybe toasted almonds, or pecans, never peanuts, but possibly cashews. Have you ever had Cashew chicken? Yum.)

2003-05-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

Old Time Religion (Why I don't attend church in my home state)

When I was younger and involved in the women’s movement, I loved to pick on the Nazis. We would go to the capital with our group and lobby for some bill of the moment; sex education, equal property management, or the ERA, and the Nazis (Christian Right) would be there, too. I was the youngest of our group of women, and I felt free to observe no decorum what-so-ever, since I had declined to have a reputation to protect, I loved to dog them to hell and back and I mostly got away with it. (I still do it on the internet as much as I can)

Up and down the capital steps, into this meeting, or that meeting, catcalls, insults, and disruptions, and I was tolerated (or so I thought). Of course that may be why some people still don’t like me to this day, but anyway picking on the Klan (translation Christian Right) in Louisiana, is how I vented, and let off steam when I was a teenager. It was my favorite sport. It was how I spent my youth.

They would come by the busloads from out in the country, or else they, like me, were some of those perpetual hangers on, that you would see when any bill was being debated at the capital. I was only 15, 16, or 17, so I had lots of leeway to jeer and make fun of them.

They would arrive under the guise of Christian Right, (really KKK) bibles in hand to fight sex education, or birth control funding; and would almost always dissolve into a litany of holocaust denial, and talking about mud people, and totally forget what they came for, especially if I got a hold of them.

My fun when I was young was catching them at it, and remembering things that had been said at previous encounters, and calling them on it. I called it sport, and sometimes I think of returning to my wild younger years.

2003-04-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

About Abortion (a work in progress, hopefully)

I have never told
anyone
why I feel like I do (about abortion)
or what it was like to go hungry while I was pregnant
my stomach growling with a baby in it.
begging the welfare office not to cut my food stamps
(they did anyway)
Waiting two days, three days,
I was so hungry during the first half of my pregnancy.
That I kept loosing weight for the first five months.
I remember scraping pennies from every corner of my house
to buy a box of macaroni and cheese for 24 cents.
And making it without milk or margarine
Nothing left in the cupboards
and no car to go and argue with an office of sneering strangers
Stranded without a way to leave a rural area.

Calling asking for help and being told
Too bad. (Too fucking bad)
I'll never ask anyone for anything, again.
ever.

(This was 16 years ago and I still remember it
that feeling like a punch in the gut
when every tear sucks inward and won't fall
and helpless to help yourself
There is an anger that won't ever leave no matter what you do.
It's not the emptiness of a hollow stomach that you remember
It is more like a hard, firm, fist inside of you, it fills you up,
and the fist becomes your soul, but it's not a mean one
and it isn't evil.
It stays there long after the event and it makes you determined
to be tough, fierce, mean, resolved, and most of all independent.
Determined that you will never let anyone in your life
feel like you did, even the ones that said NO,
but you know better than to ask for their help, again.)

You resolve to never ask anyone for mercy.

And then finally the only person who would help was
Your old friend from childhood
(a person misunderstood by just about everyone else,
but she understands you and your soul)
So, so, thankful to have this friend, who cares
(Renee) who makes sandwiches at a deli
She would drive 20 miles out of her way
She would sneak the day old ones home to me.
She was told to throw them away
but she’d bring home a whole bag of cellephane wrapped
sandwiches just for me.
and how good it felt to have day old barbeque
and how rich and greedy I felt
with a whole bag of whole wheat, rye, or white
ham, pastrami, and roast beef,
and just how good it tasted
and there was no limit to how many of them
I could eat in the evening
as she arrived at my house with the bag of sandwiches
meant for the dumpster
that ended up in my stomach instead.

Oh yeah,
About abortion
I’ve been determined to never be weak or needy, again
Ever.
That my son will never go hungry like I did
Ever.
I save every little bit of food
(scraps of bacon, ends of onions) in my freezer
and keep large stocks of beans and rice
just in case.
That I will never hold a crying baby in my arms
and beg them not to turn off the water
or serve an eviction notice.
That I was never liked as a human
at least not enough to reproduce
not that much, anyway.
And certainly no one
Wanted me or my offspring.
I am always hiding
this from my smiling
much doted on suburban son.
He and I were never wanted
Ever.
(so what could I assume about having, more children?)

The one lesson that I learned in life
My main fact in life
That I learned in my young adulthood

Growing up the hard way
in the southern United States
Louisiana in particular
Was if you’re
POOR
Don’t have children.
If you can help it.
Nobody wants you or them.

My poor friends have kids, now
and I try to help
People have hooked up to my electricity
I've fed entire families
Given out instructions on how to fill out
food stamp, welfare, student aid forms
(stuff I wished I'd known back then)

And you know Louisiana is like a third world country
in the US.
Tourist come and go and enjoy the atmosphere and the food
They ignore the poverty
the growing prison population,
the crime, the murder rate
and the poor kids.
And there are alot of them
in that state doing
without things that most people in this country
take for granted
like
food.

Melanie Burke Zetzer

(You know it's funny that the same people
who want you to have children
are the same ones who want to cut back on
school lunches, welfare, and food stamp programs)

2003-04-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

(Inhale)

Stoner thought on a rainy Thursday morning.

Being at a loss for words is not something that happens to me often, yet sometimes, I am only at a loss for the right words to say at the correct time, and end up being hopelessly socially awkward, but still naive enough, and determined enough, to forge my way through, irregardless of my state of emotional well being at the time with the knowledge that one day follows after the next, and so on and even if we slow in our journey, we always reach our final destinations, and in the end, the most marvelous thing about being human is our mortality, and the comforting knowledge of generations behind us, and the generations ahead, and the smallness of each of us as individuals.

(Exhale)

2003-04-07T04:48:00.000-07:00

Great Expectations and Iraq

Every now and then the façade crumbles, the face cracks, and you’re in the here and you’re in the now. You tolerate no amount of failure in your life; you are not allowed to burn the birthday cake, or dinner, or fail to meet even the smallest of goals.

And then something goes wrong, several things at once, and you become aware of yourself, and your environment, and life becomes achingly real again, and you feel guilty for dwelling on intellectualisms, like educational or career goals.

The carpet beneath your feet feels twice as soft, while dimly viewing television news about villagers in stone dwellings with dirt floors, and you watch women dipping water from mud puddles, while your own faucet runs clear.

Children on news channels cry for soldier fathers and mothers, and entire families are incinerated in boxy sedans with babies in their arms while trying to find safety. And then you feel guilty for feeing bad at all, but you feel guiltier for feeling good.

You dip strawberries in white chocolate, and watch it set, and the sofa cushion beneath your butt becomes twice as soft.

It’s spring and you’re planting flowers; pansies, petunias, and begonias, white, yellow, pink, and purple, just outside your door, and the dogwoods are blooming behind your house.

People are laying without limbs in makeshift hospitals, and some of those soldiers aren’t going to make it home to see their children.

You boil headless tiger shrimp with limes and hot red pepper, and you ponder friendship as the shrimp turns pink, and you meet someone new, but you fail to meet all of your personal goals, but they don’t seem so important today, and you feel guilty for feeling at all, emotional excesses, don’t really matter, as long as your roof isn’t leaking, and your cupboard is full, and life goes in spite of it at all.

You argue with your new male friend about whether it’s OK to kill snakes if they’re not bothering you, and he says, “NO, you catch them, and let them go.” and you think he’s crazy, because you always kill the poisonous ones.

And then you remember laughing at a king snake last year, sunning in your garden, oblivious of the neighborhood tomcat creeping up, and you remember shewing away the cat , and saving the snake, and then you feel guilty for ever caring about a snake.

You tell your friend (a gulf war veteran) that, yes of course, if they are poisonous, you must kill them, or they may come back, and crawl in your house some summer night. He disagrees in a slow Texas drawl, and laughs at you for arguing your point so hard.

And you laugh at yourself, and then you feel guilty for laughing, and you both go back to eating double dipped white chocolate strawberries, and watching the TV news; he watches the coverage like a hawk, and you know he can still taste the sand and dirt in his mouth, and you think about killing the king snake if he comes back to your garden this year .

2003-03-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

RISK: The game of world domination. A RANT

Now, we have body bag totals starting to pile up. Guess it wasn’t as easy as the cable news networks tried to portray it, although they do seem giddy with anticipation, over the possibility of all the follow ups, and interviews with the family members and platoon mates.

Have you ever seen so many middle aged, white men in your life? I haven't seen that many suits in one place since the last time I was at happy hour at the bar of the local Holiday Inn. They are all standing on these large maps, and they all look like such dorks. It’s like a chess game for them, or game of Risk. Did you ever play that? You start with a map of the world and everyone gets different colored pegs. The goal is to invade and conquer as many continents as possible. We used to play it for days, when we were kids, it’s a very long game, and it seems to never end.

I think the troops all deserve our heartfelt prayers, but the problem with this media blitz, is that if these incidents become more commonplace, and the death tolls on both sides, continue to mount, they will eventually drop their coverage of families and soldiers like yesterday’s news. When this War ends, and hopefully it will, our government and media, won’t help the veterans, especially the injured ones. Just ask any of our injured veterans of previous conflicts. I’ll remember them, and try to help them, and I hope you do to.

It is shame that we can’t elect our media outlets and reporters the same way we elect (or try to) the other people who decide public and foreign policy issues. It's not a game, guys.

Here’s a description of Risk from their homepage and here’s the web address to it, if anyone is interested. Why watch it on TV when you, too can play the game of global domination, and no one gets killed in this board game.

http://boardgamecentral.com/games/risk.html

"Risk is a game of world domination, where the object is to conquer the world. To win, you must attack and defend – attacking to acquire territory, and defending to keep it from your opponents.
The game board features a map of six continents divided into 42 territories. It's a game of strategy as you battle to win by launching daring attacks, defending your territory, and moving across continents with your cunning plan! Play three variations: World Domination, Capital Risk, and Secret Mission Risk. This game will engage and challenge any player to join the ranks of world leaders!
The board game versions include dice, Risk cards, and six sets of miniature armies. The software versions feature cutting-edge artificial intelligence and stunning 3-D graphics, as well as excellent multiplayer options."

2003-03-21T17:33:00.000-08:00

That’s the ticket, W.

I hate this War. I hated watching the bombing's today and then listening to the smug voices of Ari Fleischer and Donald Rumsfield. It seems, according them, the military didn’t hit any civilian targets. We all know that this can’t be true.

Then I got to hear in two separately released statements that our fearless leader failed to watch the military action. He laughed it off and said that he rarely watches TV. Hours later, after finding out that he had put his foot in his mouth, yet again, our hero, changed his mind about whether he witnessed it in real time, or not and said “ Oh, wait I did watch it as it was happening.” That’s the ticket, W.

That was one of the most horrible scenes that I have ever witnessed in my life. I feel so sorry for the Iraqi people, (the real ones) especially the families and children that were hiding in basements around the city. Every prayer I‘ve got goes out to them tonight.

My heart goes out to all of our enlisted men who were simply following the orders of corporate failures who couldn‘t even run a company properly and are now busy running our military and government the same way they did their previous positions.

They called this shock and awe. I called it nausea and disgust.

2003-03-10T07:09:00.000-08:00

The Bullshit Fairy

I want to take a minute and explain my blog process for you. This is nothing, but my own personal writing exorcism to rid myself of clutter, demons, and nice memories, too. I have many miserable things that I could write about, however I choose not to, and that may lead some to believe that I have had an easy life, trust me, I haven’t, maybe later I’ll share some of the torment, for right know I’d rather dwell on all the positive things that have happened to me along the way.

As easy as it is to write fiction it is much harder to write biography or autobiographical material; attitudes, ideas, and sentimental thoughts may creep in from time to time.

If you have an objections to the material, then don’t read it, and that is as easy as point and click.

I have to warn you that sometimes the Bullshit Fairy visits my pillow late at night and leaves a mess behind and then I have to deposit it here. He does this regularly. Maybe he’ll visit your house too.

2003-03-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

Ash Wednesday (The Day After)

Bead Rage, Mardi Gras, and War in 2003

One thing that I witnessed this year (more than usual) was multiple acts of bead rage. Also known in city slang as “Motherfucker, he threw them beads to me” Syndrome, at which time a tug of war goes on, and the beads break in half, scattering into the street and rendering them useless for hanging on your rear view, or later storage in your attic. I mean come on people. Let the babies have the stuffed toys and if a girl has flashed her way into the biggest, bestest, ones on the float rack, then you’ve got to give them to her.

And if someone does step on your Popeye’s fried chicken meal, don't threaten to beat them up, just pick them big, fat, dirty, breast up off the street, and brush the dirt, grime, and footprints off, and continue eating, or you could choose to sterilize your chicken meal with a can of beer ( I saw this) and then you have yourself, some real drunken chicken. Why do you think we call it dirty rice, anyway?

Militaristic themes on floats may have contributed to the abundant, bead rage attacks this year, since a few full fledged battles, almost broke out, all along the parade route on Veterans Blvd in Metairie. Some were only limited skirmishes over staked out turf, (grassy medians are some of the most desirable properties in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day) with instant walls of tents, going up, and self appointed sentries, guarding coolers, lawn chairs, and sometimes demanding sexual favors to cross over their borders and into the occupied territories, and make it to the Port a Johns on the other side of the street. Occasional police actions were called when the combatants become unruly. I only saw two weapons pulled all day, when I watched a couple of drunk guys, uncock their penises, and threaten a tent settlement of women with biological terrorism on their blankets if they didn't let them pass the demilitarized zone of radical lesbians immediately.

There was the one float simply titled WAR, it was puke green, with WAR, WAR, WAR, written in big black letters all over it, like they couldn’t figure out anything witty, or clever to go with a theme of mass murder and possible Nuclear pre-emptive strikes.

Somehow murder, death, guns, bombs, and violence don’t go with Mardi Gras. We were there to try and forget about that stuff.

We were the ones dancing next to the official WAR float and singing our own patriotic protest songs. Our favorite song this year was “ WAR! War what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again. WAR! War what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.”

It was a good party (Mardi Gras always is) and the Cannabis front was out dressed with full paraphernalia and hemp regalia with some of the most popular throws being the big, green, shiny, beads shaped like Marijuana leaves (we got some.) And quite a few people sported large, green, gold, and purple, peace sign beads in the crowd, and on the floats.

2003-03-03T17:09:00.000-08:00

High! I'm in New Orleans and its the night before Mardi nGras. It just rained on our Zeus parade in Fat City and we're drinkning dauqaris in a hotel in NO. Hey ya''l wish you were here. HAHAHAHAH Lennie, Tina Mel, jacob, Joe and Renea say High. Eddie says hello. C-ya at the parades tomorrow

2003-02-20T08:19:00.000-08:00

( All of this is still a work in progress. Rough drafts. I thought it would be fun to work online and it is.)

My Grandmother's house on Ovid Street.

That's pronounced Oh-vid like the street in Baton Rouge that I grew up on and not Ah-vid like the poet.

I grew up in a family that was well versed in the early history of the United States of America. I spent summers and weekends with my father’s mother, our official family historian. I was 5, 6, and 7 and she was in her seventies and we would sit together in her little parlor, and read, and paint, and she would try to teach me needle point, and every night she’d let her waist length hair down and we would both brush our long hair one hundred strokes, as she talked to me about our family and the fact that we were direct descendants of a Revolutionary War soldier, Matthew Davis. I was surrounded by my family's history, old book collections and tales, her oil paintings and pastels, and every candy dish was handmade with her own homemade candy inside.

Ladies didn’t smoke or talk loudly and I was expected to read quietly, draw, paint, or do embroidery, when I visited her. I liked her books the best, and I learned about world religions; Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, early Christianity, the Jewish faith, and then philosophy, world history and poetry, and the Greeks, and of course the Revolutionary War and Benjamin Franklin (one of her favorites) It would have been the typical upbringing of a young girl from the 19th century but it was the late 1960s and 1970s. My father was left her extensive book collection after she passed away in 1972 and for many years after her death, I would exclaim with delight over a newspaper article, or poem, or column, that she had a habit of clipping out, and leaving behind in whatever book she was reading with news of her day and the popular culture, literary, and art world of her young and middle aged adulthood.

My hippie cousins were in and out frequently (returning from rock concerts, anti-war protest, or road trips, college, etc) and she held them special in her heart, because she always was a bit of a firebrand in our family, (one of many) and she loved them (every one of them) and their intellectual and artistic freedom. There was a special room for them that I was never allowed to sleep in with her most controversial works; tapestries, crazy looking quilts, and wild psychedelic paintings. My favorite was my cousin Warren, who has since passed away; was 20 years older than me, and he would appear out of nowhere with his beautiful long curly brown hair, his guitar in hand, reciting poetry, or singing a song that he had just written on the spot and dedicated to my Grandmother and me. (Children in my family are known to sew their wild oats well into their late thirties, at which time we all return to school and become engineers, doctors, or accountants, ( a few judges) and respectable citizens at rather late ages. Wild spent youthful years were bragged on and encouraged in my father's family.) I know it all sounds bipolar, but that's the way they were back then, so forgive me my momentary insanities.

My father loved Opera and Woodie Guthrie's music; he admired Will Geer, and the Longs (The disenfranchised in Louisiana liked him and his populist family;) he really thought (at the time) that Will Rogers (and we ain't talking Jr.-- bleh) was running for president, and backed him, and his left leaning platform wholeheartedly, and my father was a bit of a socialist, who loved to read, and study; he hopped trains when he was a teenager, and then he hitchhiked around the country after the war before returning to college to become a staid engineer (yeah, right). Contrary to popular belief Louisiana politics have never been really static and it might surprise some people to know that Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate of 1912, carried most of the state, especially certain parishes in northern Louisiana.

There was once a family uproar over my Grandmother (I have a picture of her with a made up face and Clara Bow lips and short vivid red hair. In it she is a gorgeous, tiny woman in a lace blouse, just beautiful like all of her paintings.) When she was in her twenties, she bobbed her hair in a moment of pique, and scandalized the entire city of Ruston, Louisiana, where she ran a rooming house for university students after her husband died. She was a young hardworking widow, considered to be wild at the time (the 1920s and 30s) and I think she would have abandoned it all and headed for Hollywood, or an artist garret in Paris, if it weren’t for her children.

Instead, she ended up in Biloxi, while her sons and nephews went to fight in WWII, and maybe that was just as good for her purposes, because she never remarried, and was rumored to have a lover in that area. After that she moved to Baton Rouge to work in civil service and had an artist studio on Chimes Street and then finally settled on Ovid Street just off Perkins Road.She loved to paint swamps; incredible oils with snakes, boats, and trees rising out of the mist that looked vaguely like people in her life. She was an awesome Grandmother. She still had beautiful legs when I knew her, and she loved to wear short skirts even in her 60s and 70s, along with her beret and artist smocks.

You could never curse, or say the word Nigger, or be racist around Edith; anything like that was met with a stony faced silence that let the speaker know that, that was considered the utmost in uncouthness and ill breeding, and God forbid if you were ever uncouth or ill bred in Edith’s presence. I think it was because after her husband died the only people who befriended and helped her were the black people in the (Rayville) community. She was a beautiful petite 25 year old woman with five young children when he died in 1922 and left her in debt with a large farm and house to care for and the busy bodies in the town labeled her as a racy widow woman and all the local good people gave her a hard time. They even suggested that she put her children in an orphanage. Edith was very stubborn and refused the sort of help that the white town council offered. It was the black farm families that came to her rescue when she needed help with anything. She always spoke so fondly of them. The bank finally foreclosed on the farm and her house and she moved to Ruston to run the rooming house. She managed to put all five of her children through college, including her girls, and she never forgot the slight that the uppities in town gave her and she never forgot who her friends were during the most difficult times of her life.

2003-02-17T09:59:00.000-08:00

MY Thoughts on War With Iraq

To question the ethics and morality of our leaders is not un-American, but American to the core. We have a right to do this. It is what our country is based on.
And just because you don't support military action does not mean that you don't support the individual soldiers and their families. I'd like to see them all safe at home.

(Direct Descendant of Matthew Davis, soldier in the American Revolution, Halifax, NC)

2003-02-07T18:54:00.000-08:00

W, and The Prophecies of Nostradamus

(Warning: The Alert Level is now raised to Flaming Red)

I had a friend years ago who was a real idiot. I hope you don’t mind me calling him that, but he really was an idiot. For the purpose of this diatribe I am going to call him by the first letter of his first name which is W. I don’t want him to get busted, so I‘m not going to use his whole name.

I think the only book that W had in his house, besides the phone book, and the bible, was a book on the Prophecies of Nostradamus. He kept an assault rifle in the corner of the kitchen and lots of ammunition in his closets to help him prepare for the day when every thing fell apart. I knew him and his family as they readied themselves for the end of civilization, as we know it, back in the late 1980s. They were sure that 1987 was the year, that was going to be end of the world. I was pregnant at the time and they were my neighbors.

Every morning I had to face W in the parking lot. W was a short, middle aged, nome looking, little country guy, from way back in the swamps, he had greasy dark hair, and squinty eyes, and bad teeth, and he always wore a dirty white T-shirt. His parking space was next to mine at our apartment building and W would always be sitting on the hood of his car with his assault rifle propped up next to the front driver side tire.

When W wasn’t talking about the end of the world, he would read the want ads in Soldier of Fortune magazine out loud to anyone who would listen, and he’d talk about which job he was going to take, usually some kind of mercenary position in South America, I think. He'd exclaim loudly if he found one looking for a hit man, and who ever was walking by, (mostly me) would have to point out to him, that the one for the hit man, was probably put in there by the feds. And then he’d scratch his head and agree, and go back to reading, or he’d bring up Nostradamus and the end of the world, again.

W’d see me outside going to work or a doctor’s appointment or something, and he’d walk over and say things like, “Well Marie are you ready for it? It’s going to start with earthquakes and then everything is going to happen at once. It's going to be the war to end all wars and everyone on earth is going to die” and then he’d hold up his assault rifle and pat the barrel of it and say in a deep, gravelly, voice, “If you need protection, girl you know I’m here.“

His daughters and his wife believed it too, except they were into this religious thing and if they were outside, they’d chime in with eerily sweet little tinny voices and say odd things like, “Jesus, will come for your baby, so he won’t have to be born or die.” Everyday was going to be our last day on earth, or could be according to them, and Orson Welles, who narrated the movie about the life of Nostradamus, which they watched over and over, and talked about incessantly.

If you live in a city like Baton Rouge you get used to scenes like that. Hyper religious, republican, racist, gun nuts with assault rifles in your parking lot are all the norm in Louisiana and Texas, but W and his family were starting to get on my nerves. I was 6 months pregnant and every morning I awoke to that asshole and his brood and their apocalyptic visions complete with weapons, and descriptions of how he was going to be ready for the fall of all civilization, and he said it with such a gleam in his eyes. You know, I think W and his family were actually looking forward to it.

Finally one morning I’d had enough, so I started yelling at him “Look W, let me tell you something. I don't give a FUCK if it is the end of the whole FUCKING world as we know it. W I have had enough of this and I don't care if we are all about to die. I have to go to work, and my feet hurt, and it's going to be another hard day, and the last thing I need to wake and hear, is more about possible catastrophes. I may walk across the street and get hit by a car and die from my injuries, or I may get struck by lightening, or die suddenly from a heart attack. W what you and Nostradamus say might be true, we may all be about to die in one big bang, in earthquakes, wars, or terror attacks, but we’ll all still be the same kind of dead. It doesn’t matter if we die one by one, or whether we all die at once, because when I die it’s the end of my world, and when you die it’s the end of yours. People have been dying for millions of years, so what fucking difference does it make how you die, or how many people die along with you? You‘ll still be just as dead. W you gloat too much about fighting in wars for profit and you don't even think about who you might kill if you do answer one of those ads. W I think you and your whole family should enlist and go join the fight." I kicked the tire on W's car for emphasis, as hard as I could, and watched as his assault rifle clattered noisily down to the pavement.

W scratched his greasy gray-black hair, and pretended not to think, and jumped down off the hood of his car, and picked up his assault rifle, and cradled it, like it was a newborn, (I think he may have kissed it) and propped it up on the car, again, and went back to reading the classified ads in Soldier of Fortune. I think the idiot really wanted to be a hit man or a mercenary.

My baby was born, healthy, months later, and 1987 came and went without the fall of civilization or the massive continent jarring earthquakes, or world wars, and we moved away and I don't know if W ever answered any of those ads in Soldier of Fortune, but I haven't seen him in quite a while.

(Hey, It's Satire and yes, I know, I have a warped sense of Humor) Mel

2003-01-18T16:46:00.000-08:00

(A work in progress, I hope)

Amanda's house. My Grandmother's house on Bartlett Street in Baton Rouge.

I listened to my grandmother die
In short shallow breaths
Like prayers that couldn’t quite reach
The alveoli of God’s lungs
No exchange seemed to take place
Even her rosary beads
Fell like drops of blood
In crushed Kleenex at her bedside
Her big green oxygen tank
Sat next to her as holy
As Mother Mary Statute
And helped her continue
I never saw a priest or a doctor visit her
But a big smiling bald man came twice a week
With new tubing and a tank
Exchanging our prayers
For handshakes and oxygen
A signed bill
And always an introduction
Every time like the first time
She called me her favorite grandchild
A pat on the head from him
And a whole night in her arms
Made her my patron saint
And the best part
Of my childhood
Was spent heating her soup.

2003-01-16T08:54:00.000-08:00

The Zetzer Bowling Alley

I’ve seen a picture of it
All black and white and red
Every chair in place
The bar in the back
Every glass hangs shining
Circa 1963
I think
Opening day
His sons have it hanging on their wall
So, It’s still a favorite hang out
Stalwart sons remember and know
And understand the pride
Of their father
Gone for years
Condo parking lot for the rich
You used to be a bowling alley
You were working class
Class
At it’s utmost
And in the picture you still look accessible
To everyone
Brown wooden chairs and stools
Maroon colored plush cushions
Champagne bottles and glasses on the bar
You were
All that to young men growing up
In the alleyways
All polished, waxed, gleaming
What an example you set
Pinned to their walls now
Gone before your time
Like your owner.

2003-01-14T20:01:00.000-08:00

Getting Screwed

“I was warned about you.” He said as I walked into the overly plush, mortuary/museum type office and sat in the large overstuffed chair, my ankles barely crossed, my purse hadn’t even hit the ground beside me. “I was warned about you,” he said again, as I leaned back in the chair and adjusted my chin so that I could see him more clearly. He had that, "Now I’m dealing with a stupid woman." glaze on his face, as he adjusted his tie and I knew he wanted to straighten out the folds in his crotch and didn’t dare do it in front of me, but the intent was still there. I gave him my best “Ok, asshole so I’m a dumb bitch am I?” look and then I grimaced visibly at the games; old, old games that some men will play with women when they’re involved in a business deal with one that they consider to be a vapid airhead, which is 99.9 percent of all women with those guys with the exception of their daughters and that’s only if they’re not banging them or thinking about it.

I looked at him and said, “ So what?” I wanted to say, “Fuck you asshole.”
“It’s OK,” he said, “We’re friends” and he leaned over and pretended to look earnest. I couldn’t ever remember being real friends with him or even fuck-buddies in all the years that I‘d not known him. Trying to get a straight answer, a good deal, an honest estimation, anything that bordered on logic, or dealt in truth would have been impossible to achieve from him. This was still the old south, the good old boys with their young sons all grown up.

I hoped that the meeting would be over early, as I tuned out the standard "I'm your best friend I've known you for years spiel" that sounded more wooden and preconceived as he droned on and I wondered why he didn't give his secretary a form letter, sign it and mail out the rest of the speech in duplicate, since I could tell that he had used it many times in the past.

First you put them off guard, and then before they recover from the unexpected slight, you put them at ease, and then you deliver the TKO, which reminded me of my favorite daiquiri at the club down the street and I wondered how soon I could get in there and order one and get away from this jerk.

It's all about role playing and them owning the venue and setting the rules and placing you in what they consider your proper place which for me was, dumb witted and pregnant, or barring that, dim and effectively medicated, so that you won't be any trouble to their way of doing business and suddenly in a moment of insight; I understood how it was easily possible for Uncle Earl to rule that state from the loony bin and I thought about getting committed and running for office on 'real issues' (housing, healthcare, workplace environment, ethics, etc) which would certainly seem delusional to that piece of work in front of me, no I thought, better to not sign off on anything, beg off and go for that daquari.

I managed to extricate myself from the meeting intact and make it to the club down the street and I plopped down in a bar stool, ordered my own TKO and began talking to the guy in the seat next to me, a forty something business type, very similar in class and comportment to the one I‘d just left. I thought about a wild night of strange, but was weary from the screwing, that I’d already gotten that day, and anyway I wasn’t in there to do anything expect get a drink, and unwind. Then I noticed the grungy little, twenty something, bartender who was playing hacky sack in the kitchen behind the bar. I liked his long brown dread locked hair and his air of ease, recently smoked marijuana breath, and the way his low slung pants fit neatly around his hips and he had no qualms about adjusting himself in front of me as he caught me staring and gave me that, "knowing you want to do me," kind of coy smile.

He and I began talking, and we played a rousing game of trivial pursuit, choosing politics, as the subject matter on the bar machine; laughing as we picked the most absurd answers from the multiple choice list, knowing they were wrong, and secretly wishing that they were true. When the bar closed, he followed me out into the evening, and we agreed to meet at his apartment on Perkins road.

Later, I lay on my back on a mattress on the floor without my shirt as he leaned over and began suckling on my nipples in between pulls on a roach with a beaded feathered clip. I concentrated on the flatness of his brown belly and the subtle grind of hips and the way every muscle in his calf tensed as he grabbed my hair and rode me to the polished wood floors and we knocked over ashtrays and drinks on a night stand, laughing the whole time.

(More on Getting Screwed;

OR JUST BIDNESS AS USUAL IN LOOZIANA YA'LL

It occurs to me that perhaps I wasn’t wise in my choice of friends and choosing an attorney who built an office that looks like a reproduction of an antebellum home and dedicating it ostensibly to the working people of his state on a brass plaque in front of the entry is a little like a 19th century slave owner dedicating his plantation to the slaves that worked the land and built it, but you know that is business as usual if you’re from the deep south, and you still secretly believe that states rights is going to help your true native country to rise again.

And if you hire the football players and their families from the local university and treat them like illiterate lackeys and make them mix your cocktails in the board room and call them law clerks while trying to explain to the local media why they still sign their exam papers with an X, then who the hell was I, to expect them to conduct their business in an ethical manner.

Note: any resemblance to anyone or any firm in the city of Baton Rouge however intentional is purely fictional supposition.)

<

2003-01-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

I had one of those disagreeably, dysfunctional, eccentric southern families. We had Azalea bushes, instead of picket fences, and our grass in typical Louisiana fashion was greener than the grass in most other places. I grew up in one of those homes where they put on a big pot of food in the morning and said to everyone (even salesmen) "Ya'll come on in and get a plate." I think my parents have at different times fed half the city. Even when the constable came out to serve warrants he was offered a plate chicken and rice, or pot roast, or red beans depending on the day of the week. I’ve seen search warrants accompanied by coffee and pie in the sitting room "Let's go eat and have coffee first and then we'll talk about all this, Ya’ll.”

It usually started with one of us peering out the window and an exhaled “Oh fuck!” as we counted the number of police cars or sedans and determined whether it was the local, state, or federal. “Ah One, two, no three cars, and wait here comes some more.” and an “I wonder what he did this time?”

Sometimes we had warning, with him arriving just a moment before, drugged out of his mind, and shouting things like “ I don’t care what they say I didn’t rob the drug store.” or "I didn’t beat that guy up and I have 21 witnesses that will swear it wasn’t me.” and always the “They’ll never take me alive.” and one of us saying “Well if they’re coming, don’t you think that you should leave?” and he usually did.

It was always, "Mom the constable's office is here," or "Mom the city detectives are here," or "Mom this time it's the Secret Service," or "Mom it's the FBI." I'd have to count the number of uniforms or suits and get the right number of coffee cups and then serve them on a big tray in the front room.

The front room, or living room as we called it, with it’s overly ornate gold leaf coffee table, french reproduction sofas, lace curtains, large oil paintings, pottery and sculpture, always seemed to take those fellows by surprise. They clearly were not anticipating a tea service cart with fine bone china and homemade pecan pie when they arrived in their SWAT Team uniforms or black suits and sunglasses with wires protruding from their ears; they always sat a bit uncomfortably looking like errant schoolboys awaiting a scolding from some long forgotten Great Auntie; it was my job to put them at ease and I guess I laughed a bit too much under my head and in my own inner dialogue as I witnessed, yet another visit from another branch of the farce. Perhaps at some point when they left empty handed, one said to the other, “Get that bitch. I don’t care how you do it. Get her” Anyway, that's what was in my imagination as they sped out of our driveway, one by one, on to the country highway.

When I was 16, I abandoned the wild scene of my home life, and took up residence with some friend’s who lived on the Mississippi River in a complex with no elevator, and four flights of steps between me and ‘them’; sleeping head to head and side by side in quilts with pillows all over the floor, no electric, and flower arrangements with some of the finest swamp bud grown in that era, long green stalks of dense pretty cannabis, with wild, wiry, resinated, red hairs that stood out like an aura around the green edges; they went by the gram and we always separated our pounds, according the size of the bud, and placed them strategically in different vases and on constant exhibit, next to the scales, in my own version of my parent’s front room. We would stay up all night smoking and drinking Sunrises while laying on the roof and staring at the gray and blue clouds of Exxon billowing out just across the river; listening to Pink Floyd or the Calliope music from the Delta Queen when morning came. No one came to disturb me or my friends until the manager got wise and showed up with the police and an eviction order.

When my father died I had to leave the state. I was never the one they came to see, but they hated me anyway. So I just packed up and left.

It was early in the morning, around 2am, there was no moon out, the sky was pitch black, I was driving into the middle of a thunderstorm, flashes of lightning, occasionally lit up the countryside, and I could make out the lines of oak tree branches hanging over the narrow highway; I was alone and I couldn’t imagine my life being any different than it was, as my tires splashed across the pavement in north Louisiana, and the rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers, blended in with the steady drops of rain on the hood of my Dodge Charger, and blunted my consciousness; I was going at a steady speed, well above the limit, until I came to a wall of water in the road, out of nowhere, the beam of my headlights ended into a deep gully, the bridge had washed out, and I was the first one to encounter it, I slammed on my breaks, and hit the water, causing me to do a complete donut in the road, leaving a large plume in the wake around me, I stopped for just a second, stunned, I looked around, and as the water began seeping into doors, I floored it, and I barely managed to make it up, the muddy sloping embankment, and back to safety on the other side, my tires squealed, and I sped on, there were no towns to speak of, just boarded up old ma and pa stores, and a few dark farm houses, with shotguns and dogs, and barbed wire cow fields; I finally made it back to another farm road headed north and then I drove even faster to the Arkansas state line.

2002-12-25T14:29:00.000-08:00

*******************************************************************************************************************************
Help I'm trapped inside of a poem; no really, I think I am going to put this one to rest, for now. I may work on it later.1-5-03

(this is a piece that I continue to work on, it grows, evolves, and changes daily)

Reflections

Ed and I boarded the Ferry that takes passengers from Port Clinton, Ohio to Put-n-Bay Island, a tourist destination on Lake Erie

I sat at the back of the boat on a metal bench, I propped my feet up on the rail, and surveyed the immediate area

From my two story vantage point, I could see a grocery store and a seafood restaurant where we had just eaten fried walleye filets

across from me was the garage that Ed's great grandfather John had owned; the parking lot still had the old man's name etched on the brick wall

and then I looked at the harbor with its sailing vessels, mahogany cabin cruisers, fishing boats, and small black and white dwarf lighthouse

A diverse crowd begins to gather on the deck, a whole group of corporate kids (middle aged business men and their underlings)

in their matching red company blazers, around 20 of them, laughing, leering, stumbling, intoxicated, flirting and chatting with all the women.

grandmas, grandpas, and teenagers, in Hawaiian shirts, tank tops, blue jean shorts, straw hats, flip flops and tennis shoes, all laughing and going to get drunk.

The ferry powered up and began moving across Lake Erie's, grayish-white wave tossed waters; I stared at the whisps of cloud against a blue sky

and the disappearing, storm faded, old city buildings of downtown Port Clinton and the docks and pylons alternating with the wake of the boat

I wondered why he’d ever left a place so beautiful, then I thought about a time when he and I lived in Louisiana at Head of Island on the Amite river.

He was exasperated with me as I tried to direct him in the proper boarding of a Batto as we piled in to go to Lake Marepaus to fish for our dinner.

He was so much fun; he woke up every morning and stood at the end of our pier in his undershorts and sang the Banana Boat song at the top of his lungs.

Our neighbor across the river was a chef from Detroit who cooked Cajun food at a local hotel and he would come outside and sing with him.

I would listen to their voices mingling with the fog and the sound of splashes as they checked trot lines and hauled in our meals for the day.

I turned and stared at the sun, closed my eyes for a minute, and let the wind blow at my hair, beating against my forehead in a wild pattern

Ed tapped my arm and hugged me, placing his chin in the curve of my neck, before he took his Harachi clad feet up the metal steps to the next deck

to talk with a pretty brown, wavy haired, dark eyed, girl of sixteen who was all dressed in freckles, laughter, and a white halter top sundress.

I looked back at the Victorian style, prohibition era, summer homes with their gazebos and the ivy crawling lattice work and the red and yellow rose bushes.

and the wild grasses of the islands dotted with red cardinal flowers, orange trumpet creepers, white bone-set flowers, and acres of hardwood;

cottonwood, green ash, juniper, dogwood, oak, maple, and elm, growing along and beyond the rocky banks of the meandering shoreline as we sped past;

I felt the misty foam touch my face like early morning dew and I looked in the distance at the faint bluish purple traces of the Canadian shore.

It occurred to me that I was lucky to be there. That if I had never believed in Ric, or his music, or his poetry, or his life song

I would not have a curly headed teenage son who laughs, cries, sings, and shouts with the perfect timing of his musician father

I can hear his father’s voice echo in the many mansions of his mind like a haunting melody in the dance of his footsteps, his life, and in his voice.

I thought about our ferry ride and I stared deep into the shimmering blue-gray waters of Lake Erie; the wind continued to blow my hair in a carefree way.

I imagined his soul in the moist breeze on the ends of my eyelashes

I imagined his soul through the vibration of the motor on the pads of my feet

I imagined his soul smiling inside me like a sated feeling in the bottom of my stomach

I imagined his soul in the waves that rocked the ferry and moved my shoulders back and forth

I imagined his soul in the rhythm of my heart as it beat faster when the boat picked up speed

I imagined his soul like a dolphin dancing in the waves splashing along behind us in the lake

I imagined his soul on the tip of my tongue like something I’d forgotten to say; the last time I saw him hair damp in the rain

I imagined his soul in the refracting, shifting, and changing beams of sunlight that rippled and sparkled on the water

I imagined his soul laughing in the green tree tops of the hardwoods and pine growing along the gray craggy cliffs

I imagined his soul flying with the sea gulls swooping down to the frothy swirling water up to the clouds and finally free

I imagined his soul singing with the birds; I could hear his strong sad life song enduring in their cries, and chest beat of wings

I imagined his soul in the steady damp breeze that tousled my hair and blew at my dress and touched every inch of my skin

I imagined his soul in the rustling of clothing and footsteps and in a dozen different conversations in the crowd around me

I imagined his soul in the eyes of our son as he smiled at me and leaned over the rail to feel the foam-born splash of water

I imagined his soul in the gusts that billowed and powered the sails of a passing ship

I had a long friendly talk with him and in my head

I talked to the sky and the lake and the wake of the boat and the seagulls trailing along

I talked to the houses that lined the shores and sail boats docked in the harbor.

I talked to the clouds, and the sun, and the spirit that was Ric

I said thank you to Ric and thank you to God

Thank you for giving me this day, thank you for this healthy son

Thank you for the chance to be here

Thank you for the chance to see what you saw when you were growing up

Thank you for the chance to meet your family and your friends

then I knew, it was so obvious, that I almost missed it.

God is easy to see, so easy that sometimes we overlook the blessings that are abundant in our lives.

Our trek, our journey, our visit, our pilgrimage to Port Clinton and to Lake Erie

to visit the grave of my son‘s father was all meant to be

He was the only man I ever really loved,

I love you Ric and I will always love you.

Mel Zetzer

2002-12-22T12:03:00.000-08:00

RIALTO

We left Rialto, California with $200 dollars; two loaves of French bread and 3 pounds of sharp cheddar. We thought that we had enough money for gas to make the drive to Baton Rouge, and we could sleep on the road and maybe pinch pennies to buy coffee. My friend Renee was waiting for us back in Louisiana; she said we could stay with her as long as we needed.

Our car was loaded down with musical equipment. We had Ric’s CB 700 drums and a set of Zildjian cymbals crammed into the backseat. I was three months pregnant. It was early March and at night we wore two sets of clothes and wrapped ourselves in indian blankets because we had no heat. We didn’t care. We were happy, stupid, and free.

When we got hungry we tore into the French bread and cheese and fed it to each other, we listened to the radio, or talked, or Ric would pull out his guitar and sing, and make up funny verses to go with pop songs that usually had something to do with one legged syphilitic prostitutes or fat men who couldn’t make it through the door of the pay bathroom at the airport.

We listened to ourselves talking at 75 miles an hour, and the rhythm of the tires on the pavement, per cussed to the wheels hitting the seems of the rebuilt highway, and every now and then, a pot hole in the road would set off a cymbal, we would hear a loud crash and it would startle us, and make us look at the shining Zildjians in the back seat, and then we would laugh, and talk and sing, even faster and stare at the bright sun beating down on the endless miles of desert, and roadside Stuckey’s signs with thirsty yellow diamond sands on either side of the black tar highway.

When we got to the mountains in New Mexico, it was 12 degrees outside, and we were freezing, the right passenger window in our car was broken , we didn’t have any heat, and there was ice on the inside of the windshield. It was about 12 o clock at night.

Ric got us a free motel room. It was a little mom and pop motel in the mountains in New Mexico. We were driving through town and we saw a sign that said, “Praise The Lord/ Vacancies.”

We pulled into the drive and Ric spied a picture of Jesus through a window hanging on the wall of the lobby.

So he walked in and said in his best mid westerner accented DJ/gospel preacher voice, “Praise the Lord. I think I found the right place. Could you offer some humble travelers Godly assistance?”

The owner was a little old lady, maybe about 70, she had gray hair in a prim bun, and big over size reading glasses, and she was embroidering something. I think it was the second part of a collection of the entire Psalms, she had the other verses hanging on her wall, next to a picture of an auburn haired blue eyed praying Jesus with little lambs and cherubs and harps.

She said, “ Well praise the Lord the son we don’t usually give our rooms away.”

Ric, looked at her and said, “I understand that, Mam, but you see my wife is pregnant” and he patted my belly for emphasis.

She relented, and we repented, and she gave us a cozy little room with a view of mountains, and told us we could stay until check out the next day at noon.

We snuggled down into the soft mattress, and she called our room to make sure the sheets were clean and the heat was on, and we said in chorus “Yes, Mam and Praise the Lord”

We giggled, turned off the lamp, and proceeded to “Praise the Lord” all night long to the muted neon light blinking through the soft beige curtains.