The Coach

Fate’s Footballs Hostage

Arms folded in sideline support.

He’s holding onto an internal applause.

Perhaps in boredoms appendages 

Tight in order not to cheer. 

Numbers and misfortune control. 

Pawns struggle into action 

That moment his game begins. 

When his view jolts, loosening his hold.   

Onto the field; no sideline prop awaits 

Halftime comes with or without action.

Shoulders heavy walk out of site. 

He’s an unexpected soldier waiting.

The Visit

I sit where the music played

This space is mine

I sit now in hours where I danced

Greeting the world I had created

You walk with me yet you’re not there

Steps cemented with vibrations;

Vibrations of you

My body wrapped in yours

I know the photo exists.

A photographic memory

Tender touches and grace

Windows light and fire blares

A crest to my back illuminates

Your words are mine.

You thought I might doubt:

I do not; I will not!

A little bit of Lust

I sit within my latest fantasy, realizing I’ve decided not to read the latest erotic romance, its beginnings were colored with gray. Finding it’s wrapping a truth I didn’t want to visit.  This quiet stance is too uncomfortable for me, given what I don’t want to remember. I want to be secure within, to drive myself further into creating stories about who I have unidentifiable lust in his posture. He wanted me to like him, I am sure he didn’t know or care what that meant and neither do I know. I was consumed by my own life’s need…What am I doing to myself and why is he promoting my playful nature, or is he?  I wrote this poem as I went to his office, not to see him, however I did. Within the poetry of my mind I find a truth in this poem. 

You say hello…without hearing your voice

I laughed as you held me with words unsaid

I speak and venture where I dare not go

Here in the White of you, I dance on paper

My pen wrapped while flowing within

My speech takes flight, wings flying to you

Each line disturbs the palate. 

How are we attached to reaction or response?

Questions arise in your shining light

I am given the taste and a thirst is quenched

Nectar found in our place and spread

Tell me and I will now know.

Where is the Sun

A single light glares out my window. Do I live near the Sun? It floats with no base as I peak through the branches moving into the night. I am alone within this day and an effort to connect finds longing, once again tapping at my window. I wonder where I would go if I wouldn’t be sustained in your memory. Stay with me in time, not confined by reality. Slipping within shapes covered with modest restraint. I’m here, I am alone. The world connects to the light floating in the at dusk.

I am stopped by you

I am not stopped now

I rest in other words

Not yours, not mine

Swept clean

Looking for Love

I became a compulsive truth teller in reaction to the power of my mother’s expressive confusions. Her lack of being able to tell her truth because of fear found me lacking.. I must have observed it, she also held over my brother and I the fear of loss that she carried on; only to be understood later. My brother was 17 and became the new man in my mother’s life. When I would think he was my father's replacement, he only wanted just to be a teenager. My sense of craving attention among the men at the rifle range was gone when my father passed. I see it now, Daddy as I called him and the attention and the other men; gave me a sense of entitlement. That has carried me through my life, within this base of how I developed, men and a doting father had been lost with a teenage brother who was not taking both my mother and being a father image. Within a year he barely got out of high school, he was wanting college and he had received a college scholarship for Basketball. All that  was out of the question. He started working to help my mother and me. She took in foster babies to add to the loss of my father’s income. He was only 45 years old and his career and sense of party spirit left our home to be paid for by only Social Security. In today’s world he would still be alive because of the advancements of medicine.

My brother was gone a year later drafted into the Army in hopes of going to college. I was home with my grieving mother, not yet 5. I was unable to go to school yet, so my mother couldn’t work outside the home. She became a Foster Care person for income.  This would also add to our income and be there in some sort of temporary fashion. They were babies and  my playmates until they would leave. Grief found itself another home within me as each of the baby's short stay, lost me a playmate until they were adopted. This was a brief bit of financial assistance till I got to kindergarten, where I began what was a different form of attention. I visually can still remember two cribs in our dining room in my mind. This was another bit of attention gone.  So soon to have my brother leave for the Army, going to Korea, and my fathers death. It was then my mother and I. Continually knowing and watching her embellishments and manipulation her surroundings; because of her pride. She would not take public assistance. Her farm girl would control her circumstance at whatever the cost to me. None of this is meant as a poor me statement, just a building of who I became and she as my female model. She taught me resilience, however lacking in character development. I now say she raised me to be a character not to have character.

The Doctor

What would it mean if I got exactly what I wanted. How could I ever know, I couldn’t. I play with life and all that comes before me until I am calm. Now in these aging moments I want to choose more carefully as the bubble existing within me spills over. Loss hangs as if on a hook has been placed in the center of my soul. How can I want, what I want? From the depth of my being. I am seeing how I play my game, which has changed and no longer wants just amusement; I want reality. This must be a conscious choice with intention.

Is it arrogance or faith? I knew a year ago I had to stop my game and the rules giving way to watching another game continue. Was it a practice for the world you live in or just you doing you? What are you and who are you really?  My story finds trust in how I am with you; perhaps only amusement for me, you do laugh. This has led me to a safe world where you do just as you want and allow me the same.  Words and thought, practices have brought me comfort and distractions.

What do you want from me? What do you want for me? I know what I want. Ha! Is this pushing an envelope, I should never have opened? My longing is stealing my breath, rather than giving me breath. Perhaps it is the air at my depth I have never known. I want to understand just a portion of what I have become and see if I can heal. I want to tell you all my stories and entertain you as I want you to entertain me. This gives me a remedial life letter. Not the fractured narrative wrapped in question marks, where I emphasize wonder. Do I wait or have I waited too long, living in the moment, because I had no intentions. I need what is scratching inside to be expressed. Is life giving me a Band-Aid or a cure? Where are your words?

Living my Story

Where did all my stories begin? My stories were never written, only talked about till now. Talking is often easier than writing when it is meant for capturing the reader with my choice of language when I talk. I can see the person’s response, and I can change my words or stop or find some expressive drama. I so love to create with a captive audience. I’m much more secure with talking. In my family of origin sharing repetitive stories seemed to have a boring effect! They were almost frightening without immediate feedback.  Personal lives were to be private. I really learned a lot about the need for secrets from my mother and her Southern roots. If the truth was boring a lie was better. she called it embellishment. As I searched for some old comfortable place to cling to in order to begin writing an recounting of my history; I thought of how do I draw a reader into the web of my life. Telling one of my more shocking narratives, beginning with the ones that gave me a sense of being a star.

A few friends who are still in my life for some 45 years remind me of my being quite the gal. I used to actually get asked for autographs. Why autographs? Well I had been on television, modeled, had a full page newspaper article written about my creative wedding and modeling. I had also been backstage with rock stars and did lip sinks on television. I sat with the press at concerts and over drinks with rock stars and coffee with movie stars. I got a back rub from soft and gentle folksinger. Then a star I am not wanting to be proud of, only now. I always wondered why I had a certain air of wild child, however it didn’t stop me. My very resilient, primal nature, with a spirit just keeps going forward.

I decided to set my stage where sense and thoughts of stardom and entitlement began. At the base of how I developed. I remembered the story my mother often told me about my father and me and not wanting a baby at 40.  My parents were in their forties and there I was toddling into their lives with a force that pried opened their vision with: “Oh my God we have a baby...

One tale begins with my little purse and my father taking me to work with him.  I was so loved by this man and can still feel the impact still. My little purse became the essence of what connected me to men and later in my adult world. At least I have discovered that in my years of searching for my truth.

 “Do you have any money in your purse honey?”  My father’s customers would ask pointing at my purse and sometimes even taking it out of my hands without permission.  Blonde, curly headed, blue-eyed me with all the feminine charms a three year old could muster. Every time my mother told me this story, it changed a little. I continually got the feeling that she harbored resentment attached to the story and having a baby in her forties.  She was in competition with a three year old and I was winning, at least I thought I was.

                I can remember looking forward to going to my father’s rifle range where men would set down their guns and reach into their pockets, pulling out a hand full of nickels and dimes.  Always noticing if they had quarters, I’d watch them carefully pick them out before offering me my reward.  Quarters to men who lived through the Depression were not to be given away. Perhaps giving me money was a way to quiet me or get me to go elsewhere; they no doubt wanted to get back to their enjoyment of shooting.

A dime could buy a lot in the late Forties, a loaf of bread or enough sliced sandwich meat for several people. Looking into the large open hands of these men seemed like a wonderful opportunity for fun, I’m sure.  My mother’s story continues with my need to always pick the nickels out of these hands.  I was insulted about the dimes. She told me to give her the dimes after all dimes were smaller than nickels.  How could these men insist I take a dime and they couldn’t convince me it was worth more? I did still take the money, I could see the dime was smaller.  My temperament didn’t allow for teaching me otherwise.  It seems laughable now and there probably isn’t a three year old alive that doesn’t know the difference between nickels and dimes.

                I pranced around the rifle range in my cute starched dress, guns roaring.  I ran from man to man collecting my coins to fill my purse. My mother told me I was thrilled with my treasure. Still I held on to the thought of these men having the nerve of these men giving me dimes.  I remember the game my mother told of what developed between myself and her and the men’s money.

My father’s party spirit irritated my mother. She recounted that she would search for money in his pockets when he came home from the rifle range after drinking. I wonder if this is where my sense of money and men and spirit developed.  This must have been a grand position for me at age 3 and 4 to having men set down guns, making  loud noises and put holes in far-off targets. These men stopped just for me. The noise was tolerated, no doubt for the reward of the money and spirited dressing up like a doll. I presume the attention I got helped.  It was in a grand position, I have been searching for such attention ever since. Given how I proceeded in my life, I am also sure my nervous system became hard wired for excitement, the noisier the better, metaphorically or not!

Story Search

 My acquaintance with an insatiable hunger is tugging as if at war with wisdom. My appetite for understanding becomes a connection fostering self discovery with components of reproach.  Deflections in my path create tribunals, while I cannot overlook what my heart whispers. Be still, lodge where care finds pattern. Perception only happens backwards and whatever aches endures; this has to be for a greater healing than any diagnosis surfacing. I believe doctors have become my muse; stories create chaos when my malady is vague. How do I keep my life simple when whatever I have exists in my objective opinion? Am I really unremarkable? Is this just my longing to value what has no price, constructing a reality for convenience? Medicine has become my art form, a game I play with; in poetry and verse. Inscriptions unravel what my mind cannot, while searching for an intention.  Must I once again linger in this exercise of verbal stroking; looking for the reward which exists only in the implementation of reverie? My trance has become a tango with a partner who I cannot greet? Predictions complete my comprehension, while prose exist in my engagement with imagination. My breath exhales waiting for language not found; I inhale and wait for the union. Is this my dance with an unknown future’s wave? Can questions propose an opportunity, existing in humility and affirmed in happiness? This may be the reason my heart persuades deliberate word worship. I don’t presume to know for sure. Perhaps my stories will find my truth.

Help Required

There have been many times I acted one way and felt another. The title of my life exists in just those words as a game without rules, only paths to find my Art in the Game I have been given. Life isn’t a game, where there are no rules, guidelines finding an exquisite form I have continually looked for. 

I am a jester where my eyes looked in one direction and inside I felt cross eyed. In most of my life I acted as if I were rich, poor or whatever. I didn’t feel beautiful when I was. I was praying for riches, only while I was forgetting there are other kinds of rewards than money. I am privileged to know it now, when I didn’t really know of my gifts. I have talked to anyone who would engage. Stopping for a moment and welcoming their misery or their joy. Sometimes people would not always want my joy. I would love them anyway. I was the embodiment of Pollyanna playing the glad game. 

Today I have discovered how I play just another inning in my own game of self discovery. How do I take care of myself and myself alone? Allowing others to provide me with gifts cultivated in skill. I am going to practice welcoming them with how they challenge me as our paths cross. Being as real as I can be. Even when they close their hearts to me. I no longer want to act one way and feel another. Help still required!!

Regrets with Redford

I had built my career in Rochester NY. I had hung out at the Radio Station WBBF where somehow I became a pet to the DJ’s . They liked my nature and honesty, with an air of humor. I would bring them doughnuts, finding a friendship in the world that wasn’t as protective as it is now.  Eventually  I would just walk in and eventually I called Nick Nickson a DJ, Uncle Nick. I was sweet and modeled. I don’t remember ever being stopped even at midnight after being out dancing. I then traveled and landed in Buffalo, NY. Rochester is where I got to feel so comfortable with my own private stardom.

I got to go backstage, so when someone on staff at the Natural’s filming called; they were redoing a film  scene  with Glen Close in the bleachers . I just went. I had a 3 year old and had to quickly find someone to take care of him. This was going to be just a chance to relive being an extra and thought of stardom. I did get this call back and just being a bit late, they got my period out fit and I got to be in the dressing room all by myself having my makeup put on. I had the same innocence of the young woman walking into the Radio Station. Part of which I regret. This was to become my adventure standing behind the Cinematographer. I have to say I had to be posing as I leaned on the rail that day, separated from the crew from the actors on the field. I was looking up at the extra’s and as I assume I had an attitude of comfortably in a red coat, scarf keeping me warm after being styled for the retake. It was cold in late October. 

I loved this attention and suddenly I felt someone grab my hand lightly as I was leaning on the bar. It was Robert Redford, he nodded in an apologetic fashion, saying “sorry”. I was so cool as I looked at him. I had no sense of shock or his stardom.  

Then the second chance with my interchange with him came. I was thinking about my son at home in my new mother fashion, I would like to think when I blundered as Redford talked to Cameraman and Producer. There was a man next to Glen Close who was stiff and expressionless. They were making a decision as to what to do with this man. So I was still standing there waiting for my turn amongst them and Robert Redford glanced at me as if to have me affirm what he was planning. I in a moment looked back and said; “Oh give him a Kiss” Now that is a statement I will forever remember and regret. He didn’t respond, when I wanted to play, I saw immediately, he was in his serious Hollywood needs. I am sure I will always remember that moment, I am sure he will not. 

An Interval

There will be no discussion of how my Robert Redford story continues. There will be no searching for poems that could relate. I will only add a brief collection of words belonging to by life that has committed to writing on my blog and life eash day as a memory for how I have lived and want to continue to make my stories continue for as long as I live and rest my gifts here to be remembered and referred to in a rhythm I continue to hope to continue. 

This is where I “ Jump start my memoir” Read as you will! Robert wouldn’t remember me. Maybe the bazaar words I said to him. The game I play to be remembered.

Robert Redford Experience

I was 38 and he was 47 when Buffalo NY came alive when the movie the “Natural” was being filmed here. The Producer offered me a job because I was more than qualified. I dressed up, took my portfolio and I could have been a PA, (production assistant). I was making 4 or 5 times the money they offered me and I knew it wasn’t worth my time and effort. I had worked in advertising for at least 10 years as a stylist. Probably the equivalent of a PA for stills and TV commercials. I would fill in the gaps as a stylist for whatever the any major art director or Photographer would want. No I didn’t cut hair unless it was in the way of a photo need. A glorified prop person. 

Robert Redford and Glenn Close were to star in the perfect period piece for we had two older stadiums. I came dressed for my application. The man who interviewed me actually apologies for the salary he offered me and was very gracious when I refused the job. At the time I didn’t feel I needed the experience. 

Little did I know I would have a better experience:

To be continued!!

Male Madness in Memories

I find myself tightly confined by the lingering thoughts, the residue of yesterday and the day before. I ran into a man who I hadn’t seen in awhile at the grocery store. He and I sat and talked for over an hour in their restaurant. It was just so nice to have a hug and sit with an attractive man; it popped right out of my mouth. “Oh just what I needed to see an attractive man that I know” He was in my Spiritual Group, so I am sure that my openness was taken with extra honesty and welcomed.  Yes I know he was flattered. I then talked about age because I got shy about the male female attention.  I said I was older than him because he talked of becoming 60 soon. Oh that is what I do! There is a genuine bit of myself that remains a little girl who is out in the world entertaining without an ability to filter my words. Digressions’ in my excitement to have fun and express myself abound.

 I could smell menthol or some medicinal smell. Not cologne and then I kissed his cheek in one of my Hollywood moments and I felt his beard. I stepped back and I reacted to his wool tweed jacket.  I have probably only given him a kiss twice on the cheek.  I have been left with a poetic response to my past traumas. This time I kissed him again and was left with a deep breath of sadness and desperation of an old man too near me. I knew that he is not old and while these feelings are there they are not about him they are about a deep memory of some old man with a similar jacket and smell and my little girl wants to cry, my trauma wants release.   While I keep saying to myself this feels the same; yet it is not the same. I feel violated when I haven’t been. The mix of feelings that come pouring out of me, as I move through my life working at accepting who I am. He is a very attractive male I can get confused about. This is the truth, I am the little girl running around the rifle range and then there is the vision of my grandfather’s exposure: a violation of a 6 year old. How to heal this I don’t know, what I do know is that life has offered me the kindling of the charred spirit of the ghost of the little girl lost, which now I’m healing.

Pretty

The ride down the hill was where I was told I look like a movie star. I never believed I was pretty. I just kept living in the moment. Maybe I just didn’t feel it until my later years, where I am gathering the stories of my life. How is this true. My Doctor just affirmed he didn’t believe me when I told him in a flip statement. I never believed I felt pretty. Have all these years I just been flirting for affection and warmth which never had roots to serve me. I know I like to pose and be looked at with fun, freedom with interchanges in happiness. 

The movie of my life is now being written and expressed, being given form with writing. At no time do I intend to express sentimentality or be felt sorry for looking for  compliments. I know that the little girl in me has been searching for the party I had in my formative years. The hugs and kisses lost.  I said in the first 4 years of my life I was  given enough attention for my lifetime. An abundance of love allowing me to smile for my lifetime, laugh and sing and take care of my grieving mother and now I grieve for myself and whatever my beauty might be. I am such a small piece of the earth's surface and I keep this digging, waiting for the water that refreshes me, to be secured in love and my beauty inside and out. Maybe it is just what keeps me alive and willing. 

I am famous and living, learning the articulation of moments with visions stretched in time. 

Have I told you what I didn't tell you that I do feel famous? Famous for what I didn’t tell you as I ride on a flight and swing of my own. My life has been large and while sadness exists; I have found contentment in watching my life unfold in the many joys and sadness’s. Still I’m looking to believe what I want to tell you. Do I believe that I am smart and pretty. Does it really matter when the world struggles and I have been gifted with so much. I can see my story unfolding as it is and was. I don’t want to be alone, yet perhaps this is what I have to come to terms with?

Tactile Opus

Pages blew in the wind inviting me to tell you about what I didn’t tell you then and I still may not tell you now. My words hide my feelings, dug so deep lodging themselves in poetic phrases. Expressed from the corners of my body reaching into my core. Clarity of how my life proceeds reminds me of what and how telling you that nothing was ever enough. Thirst grounds itself in a tactile wind and fire breathing as my chest rises and falls. Drinking liquid life, feeling fights within. I resist an invitation to fly on a trapeze beyond my reach. Flying that night knowing I couldn’t, I shouldn’t, I won’t. My mind reaches for a grasp beyond ability. Seduced by a man with a Handlebar Mustache, frozen for I see my legs have been moved to much and not enough.

Was it my life that captured you or was it you who was so easily swept  into a provocative song. Pictures got you and my interest was in the music. Those lyrics said what I couldn't.  In essence it was the same. I will never forget the day when you were not gentle at all.  I flirted with life and I became too old to take a ride.

The Football Doctor

What is this walk with fancy and delight?

 Words folding and collapsing upon themselves

I breathe deeply with every breath

One smile and I'm alive

The ease of style 

Who are you in those moments I concede?

Where do you go to protect the life you know?

 You stand separate

Waiting

Alone from beginning to end

Looking deeply within each moment

A look in every turn

The game of life

Games defined in chance and skill.

 Found in my words.

I continue!

You watch and wait!

Omega

Returning to those moments of running to the door. Rising to the occasion stretched before me. I didn’t want to be outside. The phrase “ never underestimate the power of boulting.” I stopped placing myself in the corner, I sat close to the door. I knew this was where I would find my comfort, in the corner. I sat alone wishing for a hamburger, which I hardly ate. It was a vegetarian place mostly, some past memory wanted control.

I like my space, but I needed to lean on a memory, why a hamburger? I do not know. I stayed near the door wishing my reminiscence could explore this place with someone. The need to bolt for me has become a response to not facing being alone with myself and who I am. 

This is where I am shaken free, awake. Sitting in this corner on the edge of tears, I will dance with a partner I have loved and hated. As I’m led and humbled in my time I knew nothing as I told my stories, the evolution of words said to rise in a cramped display of  pretense ran wild. Looking out the windowed door on a vision of greenery as if kissed by the sun. Can I climb the stairs of creativity for this story or lose  because it is so tempting in ringing my own bell. The freedom of my light wanting to be able to lie under a tree.

The Bodies Story

My mother would take my face to stop my talking with the pinch of my lips and cheeks as it would stop my talking. Then I would smile, and now another tooth trauma began. A language of my body and its history was about to exit, extracted, executed in mind and bruises, exhibiting the stress of years in struggle. I was infected and I would now meet the vision of a hockey player hit one to many times. This was to became over a year in its process. 

My mouth still burns with the burning of words I never got to say. My voice came out in school where teachers asked me to stop talking. Punished once again. This is where the voice can hover over me like a balloon or an angel waiting for a protective expression of wishes waiting for an explosion, reverberating and freeing my years of loss. The mirror found new meaning, beginning a journey about facing the world of self expression with a loss of a front tooth to  symbolize my truth.

As a child my teeth were all about being crooked, in certain angles this tooth was the one that as it rested behind, in a shadow of my front teeth, as if I didn’t have one. Now again it became a war I didn’t know how to face. No experience and looking for a perfect solution with no point of reference.  

Was I to become a new person in having an implant with titanium and bone from an unknown donor. Somehow; in my continual journey of creating and becoming a story maker I was still learning from my courageous training as a child. 

The Tooth’s Tale

The last time I saw my face looking into the mirror I knew there was going to be a journey of change. Paled in every thought, encircling my face in the mirror. Pinching my face as if each pinch would add color to a face I saw as drawn, gaunt and pale, where fear of my mother grabbing my mouth. This perhaps was the reverse side of my coin, taking control of my cheeks where I was going to have my tooth extracted from years of dental work and memories of trauma of not being allowed to talk.

A Pate’

                Can it be true

In some far off corner

Of adventure created 

A life found 

Does spirit liner

Fall in combination

Of truth and myth

Am I a marriage 

A synthesis, composite of words

Unlocking feasts waiting to be enjoyed?

Is this mine?

August 2018