Poems, etc.

Today another writer expressed curiosity about my work. I damned near tripped over myself getting to the disc with my one-woman show, "Old Bitch Dog," on it, and also found a piece from "Midwest Mournings" to put here as well. What the hell -- it's my BLOG, they're my particular arrangement of words expressing my most specific and sometimes whacked out thoughts and feelings. So, here goes nothin'! And hope you like it!

Opening monologue from my one woman show/performance piece, last given a reading at LaMama's Le Galleria in the Village, before I left NYC.

(LIGHTS UP ON A SET THAT WORKS AS BOTH THIS WOMAN’S APARTMENT AND STREETS OF NEW YORK. SOMEWHERE ON THE STAGE IS A MUSICIAN WITH APPROPRIATE INSTRUMENTS – GUITAR, DRUMS, ETC. – AND THE PERFORMANCE IS SCORED AS APPROPRIATE, ESPECIALLY WITH PERCUSSION. PLAY WITH THE RHYTHMS OF THE TEXT. THE SET SERVES AS INSIDE/ OUTSIDE. THE WOMAN IS PACKING. THE SET IS APPROPRIATELY STREWN WITH BOXES, BOOKS, CLOTHING, DISHES, LARGE AND SMALL OBJECTS, ETC.)


WOMAN: I had it with this burg, know what I mean? Live in this burg long enough, you learn. You walk the streets of this burg, you run into a lotta’ weirdos, know what I mean? Like the thrill is gone.
I lived here a lotta’ years. I finally had enough. I walk on Broadway, some kid with a snake standin’ on the corner, got a fuckin’ snake, I tell ya, wrapped around his neck like some feather boa, only this ain’t no boa. It’s an albino Burmese python. Guy stands there strokin’ the snake with his hands, folks stop to watch and talk to this guy with the snake.
He says he fed that snake thirteen rats last week. Bought the rats at the pet shop. Coulda’ done this burg a big favor and picked the rats up offa’ the streets, but no, gotta’ buy the rats at the pet shop. Feeds the snake live chickens too, must make those Santerria folks mad, know what I mean? Feedin’ chickens to a snake.
So I walk away from the guy with the snake, and I’m lost in my thoughts, I get home, turn on the television. I see some talk show. They got these journalists and politicians talkin’ about California, and this politician, she says, ‘Well, you know, Charlie, here in California we re-invent ourselves every ten or twenty years.’
Reinvention! You know what we do here, lady, every day of the week? We survive, that’s what we do in this burg.

Cause life in this burg be an old bitch dog,
Old bitch-in-heat dog
That stands like a sentry in Columbus Circle
and growls at the traffic
Moving aimless through the lights.
She is a perfect reflection of the city
And an embodiment of my mood, of all that is wrong,
She is some symbol placed there as a message to me.
I think this today as the bus moves among the cars,
Takes the turn wide and rumbles on down Broadway.
Big old dog showin’ me what it’s like, naked in the rain,
Snow on the way, winter without end in New York City,
Strangers here, everybody runnin’ in packs,
Talking about individuality and different,
Do your own thing, New York, pack dog, do your own thing,
All but the lead dog stare at assholes all day long.
What’s the deal, anyhow?
Seem to me like that bitch dog know but she ain’t tellin’.

Got to find out for myself.

Wanna find something out, only two places to go – inside or outside.

Inside maybe I’m weeping or laughing,

And on the outside, it’s just another keep-your-ass-covered day.
____________________________________________________________

And the following prose poem is part of a big mess presently titled "Midwest Mournings," which is a collection of (1) my aunt Catherine's detailed memories of her early childhood on the Welte farm in rural Woodbury County, Iowa; (2) my poems/excerpts from the family calendar of the past 15 or so years, and finally (3) my own rememberings and just stuff. Here it is.

Eating watermelon, I chew on my childhood.
I hear again mother's story
Of the depression:
"There were so many watermelons," she tells me.
"We made pickles. Then,
We took the wagonloads of watermelon into town and just gave them away.
Nobody had the money to buy them. And folks were hungry.

I am small. My mind's eye is large, filled with wooden wagonloads of watermelon
On the streets of Danbury, Iowa, in the 1930s,
My mother's bowl-cut hair swinging
While she rides the pony with her brothers and sister, there are four of them in the photo,
Four on the pony.
I want to make it five, hop on and ride away into the pictgure and its past with them!

"Finally," she concludes,
"We ate only the hearts and left the rest of the watermelons in a wagon
to rot, down by the creek.

Wagonloads of watermelon rotting in the sun,
Hearts ripped out and consumed by the hungry family.

Enthralled, I listen, too, to my godmother's story of the ring she has put on my little finger,
The marcasite glistening around the cameo.
"I got it in the Italian pavilion of the Chicago World's Fair,"
She explains,
"In 1933."
"I took violin lessons," she continues,
And Leone played the piano.
"Your mother sang."

The stories go on.
All the doin's of the Welte girls in their growing
So pretty, so well put together, so of-a-piece and polite.

"Then what happened?" I want to know.

"Why, then the Depression happened, girl, and we didn't do anything!"


So that's Kay today. More later.