Amanda Murray's Blog

Political Musings from "The Door"

2010-03-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

I went to the Varsity movie theater to watch the live action short films that are up for nomination at the Oscars this year. What I liked about the short film, "The Door", was that it did not directly chide the Russian government for Chernobyl, though it did indirectly blame them. It also gave blame to the family who brought their daughter’s radioactive colored pencils away from the place, though it was forbidden that they bring any belongings with them. Of course, when the military shout through a megaphone, “Bringing any property with you is a major offense,” it does not exactly convey the same message as, “Your property is dangerous; it will kill you if you do not leave it here.”

I wonder what their leaders thought of them. Did they believe them to be unintelligent panicked animals who simply need to be herded from here to there, that they will go out of their way to disobey because they are dumb, and that scientific accidents regarding splitting the nucleus of atoms were above their understanding?

I’d like to know because we are considering seriously using nuclear power here in the United States, and if there are any accidents, as there was at Chernobyl, will we be told simply not to panic and that we must leave our personal property behind?

I wonder if we have fully explored other forms of energy that do not involve nuclear power, such as solar energy or electromagnetic energy, wind power, or bio-diesel?

“Fruit sellers and the tabloids”

2009-05-20T21:58:00.000-07:00

Fruit is grown to eat "as is", that is, there are no individually wrapped packaging, for the most part, and the sellers of fruit want it to go from purchase directly to the buyer's mouth. As these fruit-sellers grew bigger, they were naturally concerned with producing a fresher, longer lasting, nicer looking, and better tasting fruit than the other fruit-selling companies out there. So they started a new department, full of scientists and laboratory equipment. They created new pesticides and growth enhancers and finally began genetically modifying their fruit.

Why? Because it must be the best. They must beat out the other competition.

This is where the marketing department came in. Why, they asked, do we still put stickers with our logo on our fruit? Haven't we gone beyond that? We want people to eat our fruit as soon as they buy it. We don't want them stopping to pull off a sticker, or worse, bite into it and taste the label. We need to find another way.

The administration turned to the scientific development department. “What can you do for us?” they asked. “We will pay you extra bonuses for a result.” The scientists got together and created a solution: genetic branding. The fruit would have a genetic code to brand itself with the company logo.

“How did you do that?” asked the Administration.

“It's much too complicated,” answered the scientists, “We'd really like to explain it to you, but it would take calculations and charts and in the end, you really wouldn't get it anyway.”

The marketing department hailed their new product as, "An inventive innovation inundating the industry" in their press release.

There was an uproar in the form of a protest group, which happens every time a truly innovative concept hits the marketplace. It quickly abated when the People's Press published a much misspelled article claiming the new apple, "wonderful too eat" and "a knew product for the People". It was the fault of the copy editor of the paper, which was the automatic spell checker ever since George left in a huff to start The Popular Socialist.

The Administration made all the scientists sign binding non-competition contracts to keep the incomprehensible formula out of competitors’ hands. However, there was one scientist who refused to sign the non-competition contract. He was being sued by the fruit corporation for violating his employment contract, which stated that the company could make him do anything they liked as long as they paid him. This scientist didn’t care; he was stark raving mad. He was the one who invented the genetic formula and the only one who knew the entire code to genetically brand fruit. His name was the Professor.

The Professor did not go to another company with his invention; instead, they all chased him. But he refused to give the formula to anyone. One year later he finally confessed the formula one night to a potted plant while urinating into it. This was unfortunate for the young woman on the other side of the potted plant.

Her name was Maddie Jones, and she was a reporter for a tabloid newspaper, Starrr! She was quick enough to write the formula into her notepad, which was unfortunate for her. She wrote an amazing article for her newspaper, which would have been the first tabloid article to win a Pulitzer had it ever been published. Instead, her editor won several secret favors from certain government “friends”. And Maddie earned a job for life, which is to say, the job was hers until she died. Unfortunately for Maddie Jones, her boss was planning on her termination.

2009-05-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

Jeff looked mean tonight, the drink having gone through him all day and the storm raging outside of which he had no protection. He didn’t recognize me, I don’t think, when I said, “Hello, Jeff,” to him. He was about to walk into the convenience store that my husband and me were standing outside of, untroubled in the storm. He made some unintelligible reply, and then told me to pick up the black umbrella that our friend, inside the store, insisted on propping near the outside. I picked it up, smiled at him, then looked away. I didn’t want to antagonize him, since he was in such a bad mood. Geoff said nothing, and I don’t know what he thinks of the time I spend with Jeff and other homeless people in the neighborhood. I feel like a fraud about it, since I don’t really help them, I just talk to them, and sometimes they are happy to see me, and sometimes they aren’t. And there are people I do stay away from, because they scare me. And there are lines that I draw even with the people I consider myself on good terms with. Because no matter how much we talk, I know that though we are fundamentally the same, we are both people, I get to go home, and they are stuck outside. I don’t understand the constant barrage of the weather, sun or rain or snow, and they treat me nicer than one of their own, because I have things that they don’t. I may give them something they need, something I don’t think twice about having. So we are not friends, and in many ways that makes me sad.

life, in addition to the pain

2009-03-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

life, in addition to the pain

chafes at the soul

warmed by electric heat

and soft embrace

of love’s intangible promise

dreamscapes in images of rust sand

and strange creatures stalk our presence

blades moving in jigsaw precision

in mouths gaped bare, a black hole

bleak, empty space

with no stars

only a yellow blazing sun

that arches out fire to touch the earth

in heavy caress as she buckles and cries

to brightly lit aurora come across the indigo skies

life, in addition to the pain

force measures upon us

to keep our differences tightly wound

like a string of a kite yet unfurled

in the secreted wind of weather’s support

freedom is a state of mental acuity

influenced by outside pressures

So bees swim in the open air

And whales fly in the ocean’s water

bleak, empty space

at ocean’s bottom

creatures both bulbous and glowing

consuming each other, being devoured

as dark magma pushes out of the earth

in the pulsing rhythm of mountainous birth

Demanding Pisces* Youth (2000)

2008-12-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

I have a recurring dream that I am at the bottom of a pool. I am not drowning; I am just standing underwater as if I was born an aquatic creature. I gracefully glide my fingers to the front of my face, and I marvel at the beauty of my fingers seen through the soft, filtered light of the sun. The peaceful silence fills me with a calm, certain strength.

All of a sudden, my arms are being yanked almost out of their sockets. The pain in my shoulders is unbearable. Worse, I am being pulled out of my haven and into the brittle sun and rough air. From silence, the frantic babbling around me is violent and painful to my ears. My peace is shattered. I begin to cry.

When I was three years old, I nearly drowned in my Uncle Bill’s underground pool. My family and I were visiting him in New Jersey for the weekend. On this day, we were having a barbecue. My Uncle Bill and my father were chatting as they watched the hamburgers and hot dogs burn over the open fire. My mother was arguing with a stubborn three year old: namely, me.

“Mama, I wanna go swimming.”

“We’re not going swimming until after lunch.”

“Let me go. I can go alone.”

“Amanda, I said ‘No!’”

“Why not?” I whined.

“Say anything more and you aren’t going at all!” My mother spat out, turning on her heel to walk away.

I didn’t know how to swim yet, so my mother had put bright yellow plastic swimmies with orange ducks on my arms. I hated them. I wanted to go swimming like the grown-ups. I wanted to go swimming now. My mother left me to yell at my brother, Brian, for playing in the mud. I stared at the bright blue water in the swimming pool. The peaceful rippling of the water’s surface mesmerized me.

Slowly and deliberately, I pulled my bright yellow swimmies with the orange ducks off my arms, and they fell to the ground. Without hesitation, I jumped into the water and sunk to the bottom like a rock.

My mother told me that, for her, everything from that moment on happened in slow motion. She slowly screamed. My father slowly ran as fast as he could towards the pool. My mother slowly followed him. My father slowly pulled me by my arms out of the water, and I slowly began to howl. Time then returned to its normal speed.

Immediately after this, my parents decided that I needed swimming lessons. They enrolled me in swimming classes at three years of age. I learned how to hold my breath underwater, how to float on my back, and how to tread water. When I was six years old, I began swimming with a team. I practiced the four strokes for two hours each day. On some weekends, I would race against other swimmers to make me a faster swimmer. Swimming has become a very important part of my life, and I want to thank the stubborn little girl who inadvertently made it happen.

I don’t remember nearly drowning when I was three years old. This story as I have related to you was told to me several times by my family as I was growing up. I have no proof save the belief in my parents’ word that I actually jumped in my uncle’s pool when I was three. That is, I have no proof except their word and the dream that I have continuously: I am at the bottom of a pool.

*Pisces is the astrological sign of two attached fish swimming in opposite directions. Its element is water, and its weakness is the foot, a symbol of land.

My Little Boy

2008-12-16T10:07:00.000-08:00

It is not unusual, I am told, for young women to feel anger inside us like a raging storm. Outside, we are smiling.

Women, after all, are delicate creatures, beautiful and serene. We take care of others, and we are comforters of men. We are not violent, angry, or forcefully strong. We are not the attackers; we are the victims. Always the victims. I hear that it is changing, now; but my era, which was not so enlightened, will not leave me. It was only twenty years ago. Not that long ago. But then again, slavery was not that long ago. Jim Crow laws were not that long ago. Even today, we don’t think too hard about the Mexican-Americans held without trial in prison until they agree to be deported. Anyone who can’t prove they were born here must go. We are not so enlightened. We are not so sweet.

My little boy watches me as I type this into my computer. He watches me a lot, his ice blue eyes piercing through me as I attempt to make a living as a writer. Though I don’t turn around, I can feel his eyes on the back of my neck. I don’t know how he managed to get my blue eyes, since his father is an African-American with African-American parents. They have brown eyes. But I see myself in those eyes, cold and unforgiving. It’s because he is stuck with me that he hates me. I can’t really blame him for that.

My little boy never had a chance. His father may have been prepared to do the right thing, but I didn’t give him the chance to refuse me. We were already on the way out: he was so much more conservative than me. He was a real military missionary man, not even interested in anything as adventurous as me being on top. Despite numerous attempts to spice up our love life, I couldn’t even get him to give me rug burn.

He held down two jobs, one at the supermarket and the other at a video rental store, while going to college. Dominic was his name; he was going to be a lawyer. His parents, suburban yuppies, weren’t fond of me either. He took me to see them after our first date. I sat awkwardly at their kitchen table while they grilled me about my life choices. His father, though cordial, was cold; I don’t think I impressed him. They didn’t see me as the perfect potential trophy wife for their darling little boy. I’d be surprised if they even considered me a fixer-upper.

I am much more conservative in appearance now; I work as a graphic designer at a computer company, and I wear long sleeves to hide my tattoos. My hair, once artistically shaved and dyed, is long and I wear it in a bun tightly tied to the back of my head. I do not drink at all anymore, unless it is a single glass of wine to be nursed at corporate parties.

People feel more comfortable around someone who appears to be drinking. Up to a point. The rule is to drink but stay one behind the number your boss is drinking. My boss is a pitbull, though, and to stave off his constant demands for me to drink more alcohol, I pour out some wine during trips to the bathroom so it appears that I am drinking more than I actually am. He seems to believe that you don’t know a person until you see them drunk, and that he needs to know everything about the personal lives of his staff so that he can trust us. I don’t think that my drunk self, which is a self without thought, is my true self. You can’t remove someone’s brain, and then evaluate them as a whole person. Not if you want to be accurate. We are defined by our self-restraint.

My boss doesn’t know about my little boy, and I intended to keep it that way. It’s enough for me to endure, his constant tagging along, hiding along our showroom displays, appearing behind windows and reflections in the glass. Even after all this time, I’m still not used to it. The first time he appeared to me, only a few weeks after the procedure, I went into a state of catatonic shock.

I recovered. I do not think it was my baby’s intention to kill me. He can’t really affect the things that happen in my life, he can only watch and wait for me to join him. At that time, I will be asked to explain; I will have to find the words to share why I decided to keep him from experiencing this world in a physical body. Why this world isn’t always accepting of certain choices; how we all want the idealistic life, but we are not always willing to stand up for it.

So I smile, while the inside of my head displays horrors, and my son waits for my answers. And I wait, too, knowing that one day I'll have to give them to him.

What Federal Debt?

2008-11-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

One of the issues that the politicians ran with this election year is that we need give money to third world countries to help educate their children. While this is a very admirable goal, I wonder how we can afford to give money to other countries while we are so deeply in debt.

The Federal debt is approximately 10 trillion dollars, and climbing. This is what it looks like: $10,000,000,000,000. I had to look the number up because I didn’t know how many zeroes to add, which puts my American education into question. What about you? Do you know enough math to check if I’m wrong?

Test scores are showing that many other countries are higher than us in math and science, foreign language and various other subjects. At the same time, Federal funding for our schools have reached record lows, and, as a result, many schools have flipped the burden of textbook and supply buying to parents so that they can cover other costs. So what about our schools, Uncle Sam? Do we have any money for them?

I sit and ponder this while I decide what to pay: my dentist bill or my cable bill. I cannot afford cable. And yet like any good American, I still want it. I decided on paying my cable bill, since they can shut that off but can't take out my dental work. I hope. I am going to pay the dentist, I tell myself, just not right now. Many American families are doing what I’m doing right now: deciding which bills they can pay, and which ones that they'll put aside for later.

I wanted to see how I was doing compared to everyone else, so I checked online to see what the average personal debt is in America. In 2007, it was approximately $122,000 per household. The breakdown was interesting: among other things, Internet sites listed mortgage payments, car payments, and Christmas shopping to be our highest spending.

It appears to me that our representatives are doing exactly what we are doing: spending money we don’t have. More money goes out than tax money comes in. And since the Federal government represents us, we are responsible for what they do. Okay, so considering there are 305,325,163 people in America, and we owe $10 trillion dollars to foreign investors, that leaves each American with a bill of…carry the one…$32,751.96. Oh, and interest increases that amount every single day. $32,751.96 plus $122,000 plus our regular taxes plus interest. I really wish I had better math skills. Then I could add that up.

Whatever that adds up to, I’m very certain we can’t afford to pay it. Not without a complete reversal of our spending habits. Not without a re-write of our Federal budget. Not without a tax increase. No wonder our politicians would rather talk about Iraq, whether abortion should still be legal, and any other controversial subject than talk about the budget. No wonder our news sources would rather go into too much detail about the local street crime. Who wants to deal with that big, complicated, and worse, boring mess? I know I’d rather watch Dancing with the Stars than contemplate exactly what needs to be cut out of the budget. And I don’t even like that show.

It won’t go away. We need to talk about this. We’re going to have to turn off the cable. And cut down the military spending. That nice piece of social security you had your eye on, and even put in for a few down payments? Some of us won’t be getting it. We’re going to have to start talking about tough choices, most of which are not nearly as interesting as the ones I’ve mentioned above. But if we’re going to have a discussion about the budget, I want to be part of it. Don’t you?

Homeless Chronicles

2008-08-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

i live with the old tires in the new growth forest

where the ivy grows up on every side of the bark

and everything is many different shades of green

i've pitched a tent in the dirt among the trees

i'm not a homeless man, i have a place to sleep

Her name was Rose. I met her next to the only coffee shop in the U-District that serves breakfast. Rose is my grandmother’s name; it is my middle name. I don’t know why I leaned over to talk to her, unless it was the ache in my chest that told me that something was wrong with what I saw and that I needed to make it better.

“Do you want some coffee?” I asked her. She glanced up at me and I looked right into her hazel eyes. They were so beautiful, so intelligent and calm, so inherently human. I admit that I was thrown by them, as well as by her soft speech and vocabulary. She didn’t seem drunk or mentally ill. She was a perfectly ordinary person who happened to be homeless.

“I don’t like the shelters downtown,” she said, “The shelters are like bus terminals with cots. Everyone sleeps there; many of them steal or are high. It’s not really safe there for someone like me.” She looked away wistfully, as if remembering a better time.

She was slight, pale except for her sunburned nose, and bony. In that way she reminded me very much like my grandma, who had the same build, like a fragile white bird.

“I’m sorry about the smell,” she said, looking embarrassed. I thought about that for a moment before I realized she was referring to the fact that she hadn’t bathed in a while.

“I can hardly smell anything,” I said, mortified, as if she had said something that shouldn’t have been spoken. Something to remind me that it was unusual for me to sit here on the sidewalk and talk with her as if we were friends. I suddenly felt like crying, and I don’t know if it was for her, or for me, or for the kind of society that let her sit out here in the sun and ignored her.

“I wasn’t always homeless,” she said as if to explain. “I lived in a nice apartment about ten years ago. But they tore it down. I couldn’t find a place I could afford after that.”

Jeff had a long dark beard with red tints and shaggy, wavy hair down to his shoulders. I had met him once before when he was with his buddy, singing and joking, drinking liquor from a flat glass bottle. I saw him when I got off the bus; it was snowing, he was sitting on his sleeping bag alone in the bus stop. His eyes were watering, and I thought that maybe he was trying not to cry, but I could have been imagining that. I asked him if he had a place to stay, and he winced. He said he had his sleeping bag; I tried to remind him of how cold it was going to get. I asked him if he knew any nearby shelters, and he visibly shuddered. “I don’t like ‘em.” is all he said. I didn’t press him.

I did press a five-dollar bill into his hand, and he perked up. “You serious?” he asked, if he couldn’t believe his good luck. He sang me old songs: Bob Dillon, Steve somebody, all the old folk tunes I didn’t know, and he talked to me about his life. I don’t remember most of it; I wish I could.

He handed me something he wrote, which was written in red ink and filled a small page. I complimented him on his handwriting; he seemed surprised that I could read it. He told me to keep it, so I’m sharing it with you:

“As I’m sitting here next to one of Seattle’s lakes, I can’t help think of sports fishing, and how much fun it can be. Or how tasty the fish can be when cooked certain ways. However, when our Earth’s waters become polluted, the quality of fishing obviously goes down. Like Dan Marino says in his Isotoner Gloves commercial, “Take care of the hands that take care of you.” I noticed a couple of fish surfacing and my fishing pole is getting hungry. Funny joke, huh? HA! HA!

Rain, rain, and more rain. A record for Nov. In our town of what used to be little Seattle. Its growth since we were children is incredible. Yet road, sidewalk, and lighting conditions just keep getting harder to maintain and fix, causing more accidents and vehicle damage. Oh, well, at least the Huskies won the Apple cup against the Cougs, somehow in one of their poorest seasons in years.”

He wasn’t listening to me about the shelter, and I knew this weather from back home in Buffalo. This was Seattle’s first snow since I got here two years ago, and it was snowing hard and getting cold. I remembered the 24-hour coffee shop that my husband and I sat in one night when our power was out and our basement apartment was so cold that we were shivering. I told Jeff about it, and he thought it was a really great idea to go there. I felt good about telling him that, and it was getting too cold for me, so I told him I was going home. But he kept talking and singing, and I couldn’t get away. Somehow I knew that my company was as good as the fiver to him, even though he did most of the talking.

When Jeff said he was going to pop over to the corner store in Wallingford before they closed, I knew he was going to get liquor; I could smell it on his breath from before. I felt tightness in my chest that the money I gave him was going to make him more susceptible to the cold. I reminded him again of the coffee shop; he looked at me sadly, knowing that I couldn’t understand.

“Beggar” said his sign. When he saw me coming, he turned it around so that it said: “Aggressive Beggar”, and he shook his fist at me. I laughed, but I didn’t have any money. He didn’t seem to mind.

I saw him a lot more after that, on the corner between 45^th and 7^th Avenue NE. He’d get money from passing cars, just one of the many people who begged on that corner. I’d watch them change shifts, like a real job. Two more would come over, say, “It’s our turn,” and the two that had been out for a couple of hours would leave and sit under the tree by the bus stop where it was shady.

He must have thought I was cute because after a couple of times passing his way, he would call out a saucy comment or two. He’d say, “Nice hair,” and I’d smile and say, “Thank you,” and wait for the light to change to green. I never did ask his name.

One day, he gestured for me to come sit by him under the tree. I didn’t like the way that he gestured, so I shook my head and smiled, standing by the curb for the light to change.

“Stuck up bitch!” he yelled, so I stayed away from him after that.

I met Michael at night in the park by my house. I was walking home from work and saw him there, lying on the bench as the rain poured down. He was listening to a Walkman. I don’t know why I assumed he was homeless. It must have only been because it was so dark, and so late.

I made spicy chicken with rice for my husband and me, and after dinner there was plenty left over. It was one of the rare meals that I actually made myself and that didn’t come out of a frozen container or can. I put the leftovers in a Glad container and filled a Thermos full of hot tea. I added some plastic cutlery and napkins. Then I went back to the park. He was still there.

I went up to him and, suddenly, I was completely shy. I didn’t know what to say at all. It could have been that he was really cute, with beautiful curly hair and clear, chocolate skin. I began to stutter, “I...I...I had le...leftover...dinner and, I, um, thought you’d like some. I made spicy chicken and rice; there are steamed carrots on top and some tea with sugar in it. If you are interested, that is.” I laughed nervously, and he smiled.

“Thank you,” he said, with his fantastic bright smile, reaching out and taking the bag from me. “That’s very nice of you.”

“Well, anyway,” I said, just wanting to leave and end my blushing. “I come by here all the time, so I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Okay,” he said, still smiling, and I left as quickly as I could.

I saw him sitting or lying on the park benches for weeks after that, but I couldn’t, just couldn’t, go up to him again. After awhile, I didn’t see him there anymore.

"Ronnie!" she shouted from her corner in the bus station, "I've got a message for you!"

I didn't even see her, such a small thing, huddled in the shadows of the bus shelter. They pass messages along? I wondered, and then realized that was the only way they could communicate. Word of mouth.

Ronnie, an older man in hiking books two sizes too big, ran his hand through his beard and made his slow way across the street, waiting in the middle for the odd car to speed past him. I wondered if it was smart for him to cross the street like that, with no crosswalk. I did it all the time, but I ran across that Ballard street. Those cars showed no mercy, and several times someone had been hit and killed.

But I was learning that the homeless have their own rules, and our rules usually didn’t apply. Unless someone called the cops on them. Even then, they didn’t seem too concerned with being arrested and the police didn’t seem to really want to arrest them. They fit between the lines, and survival dictated what they could and could not do, not us. I wondered how the weaker ones survived, and I understood at once that they probably didn’t. Not out on the streets, anyway.

I remember once going into the grocery store in Wallingford and seeing a young girl with matted dark, curly hair. She looked numb, and she was sitting quietly on the sidewalk right across from the grocery doors. So I bought her something to eat: nothing special, just juice and sandwich. When I came out of the grocery store, there was a very intimidating-looking man in her place. He was there, and he was holding a sign saying that he was a veteran and needed money. He was there, and she had disappeared as if she had never been. So I gave the food to him.

We are civilized, I thought, but they live in a world that is not. And we ignore it, every day, because we are scared. We are afraid to admit that life isn’t safe. That not everyone is fortunate enough to ignore survival of the fittest. Our wildness, too, lurks underneath our civilized demeanor, just underneath the surface of our skin. Perhaps the reason the homeless hold our contempt is fear, fear of what we could become with one stroke of bad luck. I force myself to see them, not to ignore them, though it becomes harder every year. When I stop seeing them, I’ll have ceased knowing myself.

Untitled

2008-08-15T18:22:00.002-07:00

Stepping through a crack in the world,

I fell down, down, down.

You begged me to do it, so I fell—

I went to hell.

I met Shel Silverstein’s Billy down there;

Fell in love with a goat who had silvery hair;

Roasting marshmellows in the pit, getting tan,

I toured the nailed skin that was no longer a man.

And they moaned down there,

They whined down there,

They screamed and bled

But did not die down there.

I sat on a black beach, hot and sandy,

Next to the devil, who fed me candy,

Taking liberties with her crooked tail.

(No, no: you don’t get to watch in hell.)

Glory to Ishtar

2008-08-15T18:22:00.001-07:00

Women rock to men's music,

But they recoil from our same.

Our raised Voices echoed in Temples.

Glory Ishtar! who stole Yahweh's name.

While women's power in the world draws focus,

The squirming hormonal creatures fuss.

We lead where they can’t follow-

All of us covered, shapeless.

Our Ishtarian eyes cause men to stumble;

We’re hurt in their haste to keep on top,

Like a military man first trying missionary

Or a religion that just doesn’t know when to stop.

Our bodies birth souls to the world’s wonderment;

Our hearts are free in our wild walks and finds

That they can bottle Her essence but She is not captured

As we breathe consolations to ease men's minds.

We're beauty and Wild wonder-

We are the break of day.

We're Oestara; we are Ishtar-

We are the Sacred say.

Taking the Bus / Driving

2008-08-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

Part I. Taking the Bus

To wait as the air overtakes me,

Seeps into my clothes with frigid hands,

Touches my skin and soon I’m freezing;

I don’t remember being simply cold.

The imagined bus for which I wait—

It is late.

Perhaps this theoretical bus disappeared from then to there

Without appearing here, where I wait.

The bus becomes real. I step up, and a machine eats my money;

Fuel to motion and it lurches, my stomach holds two places,

And I clutch my mouth tight against liquids

Spilling down my chin.

The driver’s foot caresses his petals like a lover leaving

Roughly, afraid to go: returning, kissing, leaving, and

Returning for another space of seconds, kissing again,

Moments stolen from my stomach’s peace.

Crowded Buses in the winter lend

To sniffles, snorts, and ugly wheezing.

I almost miss the cold, silent waiting

When the bus was still imagined.

Part II. Driving

To clutch the steering wheel with cold fingers

And turn into terrible traffic cluttered over mountains,

Cars clinging onto streets like moss on Northwest trees:

This is a frosty morning in your car.

You are stopped in a radio dead zone and static

Hums until you roll slightly forward

To pick up a country western station

That never existed for you before.

A light bulb clicks on in your brain and you wonder for a

Moment if you could get away with parking.

The thouhgt strikes you as genius:

You, the lone parked car, among a sea of gas guzzlers

With cramped brake feet.

Just then, the lurch of movement in traffic starts

Like an earthquake that rolls on foot of mountain forward,

And then stops. The dream of parking is shattered.

You fume as a jerk next to you cuts in front of you, and

Stalled by the lack of space, leans sideways, blocking two lanes of traffic.

Your eyes narrow at the side door of his black Acura,

Placed so auspiciously in front of your fender,

Like a darling deer, nibbling on a sweet, lone leaf on the double yellow lines—

Right in front of a hard hitting truck with a blindsighted driver.

Car exhust makes you achy, your eyes raw and red,

While you pray for your double chocolate latte, still two blocks ahead.

“He’ll never feel it,” you think darkly, “He’s better off—“

You break off as traffic moves one more inch again.

The Country Western station shares static,

Fighting frequency with a preacher

Who thinks “Je-es-su-us” is a four syllable word.

And you are willing to give him money,

If he can promise you the Miracle of Motion.

Civil Liberty is So Last Century

2008-08-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

You play Nintendo, and I’ll watch TV.

I don’t care if the news is lying to me.

Civil liberty is so last century;

I’d rather kill people in GTA3.

We overspend credit cards without a clue

Until our Credit Scores tell us what we can’t do.

Our government spent trillions of our dollars, too,

And they’ve left all the bills to me and to you.

You play Nintendo, and I’ll watch TV.

I don’t care if the news is lying to me.

Civil liberty is so last century;

I’d rather view dolphins on an IMAX screen.

We still have 300 people, who continue to pay,

Tortured and not charged in Guantanamo Bay,

And that’s after Congress has had their say,

Eight years after they put them away.

You play Nintendo, and I’ll watch TV.

I don’t care that the news is lying to me.

Civil liberty is so last century;

I’d rather watch Lost than fight to be free.

Mexican-Americans are jailed without say

And fed an ultimatum to leave without delay.

Private prisons built in preparation for the day

That new laws will put more and more of us away.

You play Nintendo, and I’ll watch TV.

I don’t care if the news is lying to me.

Civil liberty is so last century;

I’d rather download movies illegally.

If you want to know who’s to blame,

A glance in the mirror should give you a name.

Don’t worry, life should still be the same—

You go ahead and keep playing your games.

You play Nintendo, and I’ll watch TV.

I don’t care if the news is lying to me.

Civil liberty is so last century;

I’d rather scan YouTube for sweetafton23,

Who’s playing “Toxic” on her ukulele.