Prompt: childhood, snapshot

There are images we take from childhood, snapshots of ourselves as a fully formed character. Sometimes even at the smallest age, we knew we were destined to be ourselves. Share a story of the child you were, and where that child still resides in who you have become.

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I found a white plastic pail nearly half my height and filled it with water made sudsy by pouring in lots and lots of gel green dish cleaning soap.  I needed to find a very, very  big rag as well because I had made a HUGE mistake. I wrote in bright pink colored sidewalk chalk on the street near the bus stop for us younger kids “Jill is a cripple”. I was so mad at her - the reason why is not in my memory at all; just the feeling that I was invisible and Jill was not. Always 1st in line. Always lifted on her brothers shoulders to get a better view. Always getting pretty dresses. I was the oldest child, she the youngest. I seemed to have so many more 'responsibilities'. A big word that adults used and one I had already learned to spell. She had a club foot. It was the excuse for being special or so I perceived. I suddenly knew the words in my head now carefully printed in chalk were wrong. Well right, in fact, but wrong in how I used them. The eraser I had in my jacket pocket to fix my printing if I made mistakes did not seem to work on the asphalt road. I could not let anyone see this and drawing flowers was not going to disguise my finely crafted boldly printed letters. 

I lived in the house farthest away. Jill's house was much closer though off into the woods. I needed to be fast to make the evidence of my anger go away before anyone else could see that it had emerged.

"What are you up to? You have enough soapy water to clean an army" said my mom.

I mumbled, “ I have lots to clean-up”  and I dragged my pail for what appeared to be an eternity to the pink words chalked on pavement. I was too late.  I could see her older brothers reading the road as I approached the scene of my crime.  My heart pounded out of my T-shirt.  I wanted to become smaller so they could not see me. Jill's brothers screamed cruel things at me. What they actually said is not in my memory at all; just the feeling that I wanted to be invisible and the even louder voice in my head  saying “you deserve this for your meanness”.  I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. My arms drenched with darkening water where my tears got lost.

The words faded in to the pavement but there was not enough water to cleanse away the pink truth of confusion, hurt and the anger within.

Reflect on a moment of darkness before a shift to light or perfection

What is light or perfection? My gut response is that “Moving on moments” are hard to find today. Then I wonder, is it today or is it how I live - stuck? 

I am feeling inert in the darkness that hangs above my eyes like the allergy headache of these same days overwhelmed by the incompatibilities of technology and blended family.  I feel best after a rain storm and wish for a hard rain to take away the pollen. I was recently reminded by an expert in lighting that cloud cover helps capture images better – diffused light often key to good quality images. So I close my eyes to see-k the perfection moments in my darkness.  

The only perfection I can claim is the birth of my son: but not in the moment.  Before the birth there was planning; food to prep, one of a kind announcements to design, invitations to childless pastor & neighbors and extended family to decide upon. Then amidst the timed pains of labor there was the unplanned talk of cameras and cigars; we passed both shops on the walk to the center. 

The center was downtown. No doctors just midwives. I was to be standing over a three legged birth chair. Planned was the walk, my 1st ever whirlpool bath and lots of post birth carbs. But I twist my ankle and all plans to stand were challenged and I do not stand until moments before the birth push past the wall of pain from my middle into perfection.

I once owned a perfect birth picture of neighbors holding my son moments after his birth. I had wanted to give them a birth gift as they were childless at the time - adoption in process and we had shared fertility trials & tribulations for a few years. I assumed they would be friends for life, not so, just another story with an ironic twist. This picture of neighbors holding my son minutes after his birth has an appearance of perfection. It hung among family photos in hallway of my former home. Now this picture is a memory and reminder of stolen perfection; gone like the lasagna I had so looked forwarded to post birth. There is a cigar haze over the day.

Cigar Blues

You know the ones i mean.
White patent leather shoes, matching white
belt, a polyester suit with wide stitched
pockets that cigar wrappers peek
over like fat displaced fingers.

They linger against door sills
where 24-hour coffee pours into
dawn. They came
frequently for services best rendered
by dim light. You know the ones i mean. Lean cigarillos
classic styling, a latino flavored virility
A slim itchy slough to bite off and
spit. How i wanted to - spit
at quick - no accounting
for pleasure pistols that could and
would fit just about anywhere. They came
when their women got religion or feminism,
same thing.

You know the ones i mean.
Slothfulness defined in their girth
and shirt-tailed memories long faded
as their knees of corduroy, laid bare
side by side, balls and prick, sans cigar
unsubstantiated. They came
convicted -- opportunities elsewhere
bought disease.
and picture this
a voice as high as rump round -- throngs would kneel
in delight boasting. Aromatic blackness
turkish wrapped, disguised with peacock struts
and bon bons for the must be fair damsel. He came
laden down with want me white lady.
Gladly.
and then
there are dough Johns. They tip off
at the greens and pad their expense accounts
as regular as clockwork. Just need a get away
free jump start -- pendulous without
self-flagellation.  They came
when breasts heaved with hardness
of ebbing menses below their nostrils.
But the one I will never forget left 
a Titan stench lingering with dustballs and spider webs. His glare fixed upon his desired
out come
clumped like Elmer's glue on my fingers.
Performance rated. The anti raised. Fertility swollen in petri like ash trays. Sperm samples
cultured by the hour, emulsified rubber
effacing smoke curls blue, the air
ringed with mildew.
Its a boy. Surprised?  Have a cigar!

The Body - Seven Stages Prompt

Prompt 1 Share a moment in your life when your body taught you a lesson

Hold it. I need to hold it. It was a common phrase of the voice in my head. I remember it starting about grade 6; when hall passes were needed to go to the bathroom. Sometimes 'the holding' made my legs twist so much that I imagined my insides twisted like shiny metalic fish guts. This very squirmy image came to me the night I faced off with a shiny metal toilet in an intensely glaring white “holding cell”. I was again holding, squeezing tightly because all my movements could be seen on the monitor by uniformed MEN in another room; my fingers still inked black so I dared not soothe my tummy with a rub. I imagined squeezing hard with the whole of my body and praying, for that is what it seemed, for morning. Suddenly the Hold and twist was interrupted by a strong desire for a pencil for the poem untwisting inside my head - about redemption. And I kneeled and focused on remembering the words not the feelings because I would not get a pencil here.

I did give birth to a very visceral poem that night. The next day I was free from more than the holding cell - I was free to control my urges to Piss on the World.

HUMANE
What does it take to respond to basic human need?
You know that feeling you get when you succumb -- to cold, coffee, or fatigue; your urine recycled – reaching that urgency, numbed without the benefit of pissing feeling? You know how the next urge demands your immediate attention? How your mind goes to your knees pressed closed, tighter -- hold on, keep you together, begging -- that need for a tree urgency.
Let’s start here… begging, silently before a stainless steel toilet-water fountain. An ensemble. Everything less than a full-step away. Every being in constant view, monitored by human-bodies elsewhere in the building.

What did start there…where I could not sleep or drink or piss freely. I was arrested.
I thanked the man who knew procedure, saw Me, then did the decent thing.
Knees together, hands folded what came next was unrestrained.

Do you know that feeling you get when you pass the you can't even count them, person on the street who has no place to sleep, to drink, to piss and compassion demands your immediate attention?

PROMPT 2 Reflect on a Scar
What the idea of scarring means to me is that time has passed and there was an attempt to fix a wound that decided to remain visible. But many scars may not be visible or is that a rationalization because maybe they are visible in ways we do not wish to admit. Not enough pretty language here so I will merely declare that I do not get my fingernails polished nor is a true manicure a habit of mine. My nails may often reveal that my last shower was 2 days ago but the threat of the teacher’s assessment of my hygiene is long gone.

Sometimes when meeting someone new I look at my fingers and see how ragged they are and that like Sylvia Plath 'Cut" that I have had a thumb onion experience, many layers of eyes tearing and opportunity for poems.

Cut

What a thrill -

My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Prompt 3 Select a Body Metaphor to start, end or just muse upon
To Keep Abreast...
In general it is impossible to keep abreast, more so if it is not clear what it is that you wish to be informed of. Serendipity abounds and there are tweets, chats, feeds, and occasional face time that distract.  A slow reader, I feel compelled to ingest so I scan much. I see patterns and connections and want to transform data into information, into understanding ,and therefore - story.  And all this is somehow tied to the quest or question "What do you wish to become when you grow up?

On the precipice of growing old I recall this as a common intergenerational question among near strangers; often posed by distant relative at equally distant gatherings of family – and the older men leering at my breasts as they asked. I was approaching thirteen when an elder who I can to see as some old guy rudely blurted; “Obviously she is made to be a mother”.  It was not so obvious to me who planned to be the 1st college bound member of my family.  But there was an echo in the remark that I shared with my generation.

This echo ebbed and flowed throughout my life. It was uncanny how much of my life quest became to create an uncommon yet perfect family. One that resonated in the world like the Helen Doss story "The Family Nobody Wanted". I was excited to find a copy on the Library discard pile for a dime. More eager to share it with my step-daughters than they were to embrace it.
It was an inspiration for many 'penny for your thoughts' moments during my emergence into womanhood and assumptions of leering men.

I felt such deep dissapointment on so many levels when I found it discarded by them. It took me years to realize that creating a family was not the same as being a Mom.

Revisit Seven Stages Prompt: Transformed by Sacred in Nature

Carving out the time for the Socratic Practice of self-examination is more challenging than it should be.. so I tried to use a voice technology to capture the 1st draft and it was close to SAVE then POOF with no UNDO in my knowledge to keep it from total loss. With a deficit that keeps the words in my head so far from words on a page --- I wonder if writing is a fantasy. 

I begin again to revisit the a transforming nature writing prompt of 8 minutes.  This time unencumbered by the preconceived notion that transform implies good.  While there may be eventual good this connection was terrifying in its experience and in each unintended slip in to recall.  However this is to be different as I approach with intention the 'seed' to see where it grows.

Immense. Dark. Powerful. WET. An all consuming WET.I feverishly kick with all my might and stretch my fingers with all my will and my voice is screaming inside my head a very important word HELP. It is very important. Is anybody out there? in here, in this murky fast strong water with me and the bubbles. I want to go with the bubbles. Up, up, up out of the water back to the beach  - the family -  the picnic  - the sun - the carefree. I want to live. I want HELP.  HELP a very large word joins the water behind my eyes in my head and echoes in the waves. Heavy, strong water does not let me reach as far as I imagine that I can reach. I kick as hard as I can kick but my legs seem to be getting smaller and weaker.I go farther down, covered in wet dark fear. Again and again and again. I will not count. I know lots of numbers. I do not want this to happen that many times. My body is furiously kicking. Paddle joins the word HELP in my head. It sounds instructive and firm. Paddle. HELP. Paddle. HELP. I am not a swimmer but I can dog paddle. I can on top of water. I try. Paddle. HELP. Stronger. Darker. Deeper. My nose fills with water. My mouth opens to breathe. More water. It is dark. No more voices in my head.