Lord Have Mercy

That was one of the songs at chuch today. Something like that in the lyrics. Like God showing mercy within our struggles. I didn't plan on going because we hadn't been in a while, and it's nice NOT to have to do anything. Not to be on any schedules, even if it is something as important as spiritual growth. So this song at the end, the lyrics went something like, our health, we pray, yada yada, and wait, and 20,000 years of insomnia making it so that it's really HIS mercies. To be closer to him through strife, struggles, the whole bearing the cross on our shoulders thing. I've tried, really tried to build a better faith, a stronger belief, praying ceaselessly, at least until I fall asleep. I always say thank you and show gratitude first, I know not to be a selfish person. I say thank you before I ask for something. The main thing I want back right now is my health. And I have done nothing but take pills and eat junk since my health has done it's downward spiral. My reasoning being that I was healthy before, drinking spinach smoothies, walking, jogging, trying to eat more from the earth, and less processed and then I had surgery in February and since then it's just been stupid. I don't have a better word. My health is stupid. My reasoning is stupid. I figured I did all the right stuff and still had a surgery and had many complications that I'm still having so I went back to old habits, very bad ones and I eat crap. So my cross, my burden is my health and that is supposed to bring me closer to God but I think I was just fine before. My faith in the unseen was surely stronger. I was a more spiritual person. My belief was one that we are all dominoes in the game of life and each step we make affects the other. The Golden Rule. Got it. Gossip - don't do it. Got it Lying - bad choice, even a so called white one. Definitely got that one. Personal responsibility, and having integrity, check that one off too. So we blame God for whatever goes wrong, is what the message was about, sort of loosely about today. I don't blame Him/Her, has there ever been a gender specific in the bible about God, I don't think so. He/She was only in body form when Jesus came down. Anyway, I'm not a thumper. I can have an honest discussion and remain open minded about pretty much anything. I'm not going to say what my beliefs are here, unless I've already said it. I'm not going to edit myself, or read what I've already ranted. And I haven't even begun to rant yet. So here it is. My rant. My health. I'm so over feeling the way that I feel. How is that? You ask? I'm tired of being asked. Because I like to focus on the positive, always have. Maybe that is naive of me. Certainly I've always been a more vulnerable type of person, but on the good side, like empathetic, sensitive to others. My health sucks. That's what it does. And I know words are powerful, and *energy* and *like attracts like* so I better not say too much. Well screw that. It just plain sucks. I'm tired of being in this body. It doesn't feel like me anymore. The old me was a better me, just less than a year ago. I cannot walk or stand for a long period of time, my knees burn like ant piles are climbing higher and higher in them, especially my left knee. Yes, I know what Louise Hay would say. See, I'm one of those people on the metaphysical side of the fence, both a christian and Agnostic. But I wasn't going to get into that here. I don't want to be judged, certainly not by anyone reading this. But she would say that the left side of me is the feminine side and my unwillingness to bend, or move forward. I haven't looked it up but I'm sure it's something like that, it's always something very similiar to the body part, and whether it is on the left or right side. I think I could've written a pokey book like that myself and made boucoup bucks myself. It sucks that I feel like shit all the time. Can you say shit on blogger? ANYHOOoo...I'm on more meds than I can count, there's no logical, or medical explanation for me, not unless the latest blood tests show something else and I don't have a follow up until 3 months. I got a tattoo. Another way to show my body that I was in control of it, and the pain of it. I was tired of being a slave to my pain. And feeling like I'm 80 years old instead of almost 40, which is the new 30 or whatever. Wrists hurt. Typing hurts. Walking, I mentioned that, which I don't mind, not in Walmart anyways. I mean I don't mind that it hurts walking in Walmart because it's an excuse for me NOT to go there. Latest tests are for thyroid balances, and cortisol levels, and adrenal function. I think that it will not show up anything. And I think, or said to my husband that if that is the case i will have a shotgun to shoot the doctors or myself. Which is not really funny because I need to get over myself, which I am, I think it's called depression, but I'm not sad, I'm just very pissed off, and also it's not like I am fighting cancer. I would like to know what I am fighting. That's what I pray for. The mercies are the things that bring us closer to HIM is what the song said. Lord Have Mercy then with me, and please stop causing me pain if that is the case. I will be a willing follower. I will follow and do whatever it takes to have my body back. I will even do hoo-doo magic, I will click my shiny red heels together and say, "There's no place like home, and there's nobody like my body." I want my body back. That's all I want. Just like it was before. Or give me a name for what I have so I know what I am fighting. Thank you God if you're listening. Thank you dear reader if you are. I'm really at a loss. I've thought all the happy thoughts that I can think of and they are just starting to really piss me off.

TIME JERK

Okay get this

Time slips

Tangible

A crack in my landscape

The backyard, right where the grass meets the trees

I stand

And it just opens up

It skips, time does

Like a scratched CD, a song or voice repeating itself

Over and over in a smoker’s voice

But the slip is silent

No door

Just transparency all around me

So I walk through

You got it

I walk through

And I am stretched out on the couch

Right shoulder balancing the phone

Watching the TV on mute

The old show “Love Connection”

Funny when muted

Because the couples lick their lips

Before talking

And kind of twitch or toss their hair

Over their shoulder

And blink, or shudder, moving

Their bodies in suggestive ways

That wouldn’t be noticed with the sound on

Talking to my best friend

I call him Trosclair

He calls me Clothilde

Old Cajun French names

Our pact is that  

He will lose weight and I will quit smoking

He keeps me from trying to kill myself

Talking in a smooth voice, soft for a man

But not too pansy

Keeps me seeing the big stuff

Not focused on the little things like why

I am not good enough

Or pretty enough, or smart enough

We just watch it in silence laughing and making remarks

Time Slips

It jerks me back

I am at the computer

Sitting on a chair

We are this age now, much older

He says “Hello, How are you?”

I reply, “Good, and you?”

Twenty Years

Hey says back to me,

“Jesus is my rock,

About 4 years ago I gave my life to Christ

And it hasn't been the same.

I couldn't imagine my life w/o Him.”

What a Jerk

That was, not a slip, or skip

But a big jerk

Into reality, and yet not real

My two years being a best friend to him

Gone

I was erased

I wasn’t a person

And He wasn’t there for me

Keeping my feet on the ground, not

Pulling away at the weeds of my negativity

Did you get that?

“Jesus, huh?,” I said back.

I like him too.

We are Here for you Deb..and.. Counting Blessings...1 and 2 (Eluid and Emile)

What to say

About

What to call it

Destruction

Devastation

Denial

A lot of d words

But also

Survival

Strength

Perseverance

Spring flowers flowing streams ice cold to numb your toes as they are dipped in then your legs up to your knees cold blue numbness feeling better than the alternative which is nothing or more than nothing but nothing being the choice between what could be worse

Skipping rocks, flat round, oblong shaped black shiny smoothe rocks from the water forever rushing over them smoothing their surface, rocks skipping farther and farther, then farthest trying to skip rocks like time, skipping to next week, and then next month, then next year, like at a carnival if you hit with the mallet hard enough it rings the bell, like that but with synergy, as it will be, a whole lot of energy, hard to keep still when there is nothing that can be done, nothing to sift through, your life has been reduced to shards, and shingles, gray and white wet rotted paper bits, slivers of glass, rained on ashes, hanging electrical wires, and just that same gray rotted paper which was ashes until the rain came, rain much needed but not for this, this reduction of life, even though life is to be thankful for, but life in the future, not now, in this rubble, pretty word, rubble is. So concise. Short. To the point and pointless. Skip skip skip rocks, skip skip skip time, if it could, I would, and put her in a bubble, the white light kind, a bubble to ease the pain and keep it at bay, a bubble so strong nothing can penetrate it, not the scene before her, not the pain that comes with it, the bubble would keep out the boogie man, and keep in the happy soul, restore the spirit, bring back the green and living things, not the black, gray, ugly mess before her. Masks on. Blue rubber gloves. Shovels. Piles here and there. A see through Couch. Hanging lights dangling from the ceiling. Melted keyboards. The ceiling fan on the floor. The door with its icicles made from melted foam board, or whatever doors are made of. Not wood those. A roofless room. All of them roofless. How to make it go away. Not with our shovels, not with our kind words, not with our questions, of what are you looking for. What can we find in here. Is there somewhere we can look. Something to sift through. Where can we find your life, some memento to bring back what was never there, still not. Your great aunt’s hat pin. Your Dad’s metal detector finds, bits of nothing but something that still held them close to you. The crocheted hat. What to do now. Work. Wait. Call. Wait. How to move forward. our shovels are no match for that. They could’ve been matchsticks, or q-tips, or little toy sand shovels, nothing could take that mess away. There is no word for the mess. Just the words above. Destruction, like I’ve never seen. A third world country after a bomb went off and then rained inside. Flies rooting inside making homes and little baby larvae, and lots of mold, the smell something hard to get out of your head, several showers with your face and chin held up so that the back of your head hits your neck with the spray of the water raining down into the grooves of your closed eyes, and into your nose, swishing with it in your mouth to spit it out, raining down water, much needed shower. What to do now. What to do. Moving slowly very fast. Staying in one place. The place you need to stay away from. It’s not your home anymore. It never was and you never wanted it to be. But its more so now, a wreckage. You can salvage your life, but not in there. That’s where hell is. Or Purgatory. Two blessings, actually threee counting yourself Deb. You, Emile, and Eluid. And your health, which will continue to get better but you can't keep going back. You've already got COPD and there's mold in there. You were told that it was killing you. So in a way the fire saved you. Too much to roll around in your mind right now. too much to comprehend, digest, dissolve. Let it be. Let it Be. Let it BE. and continue to live and be thankful. I guess. I guess that's what you do when faced with something like this. a house fire. it sounds so tame. a house fire. the pictures speak better than my words do. I love you Deb. And we are all here for you. What can we do? Give a *HUG*. make a joke, try for laughter. Anything that heals you. touch. Kind words. Empathy. A cold beverage. Nearness. Anything clean. Healthy. We are here for you. And You are not alone.



plastic icycles





the table where we broke bread, many times before




the couch




what we could find and bring out, not much to salvage



my hand and shadow on the back porch

Eluid's room



Me in the bathroom mirror





melted keyboard




One Blessing- Emile



Deb in the kitchen



I Have No Aunt Helen

I have no Aunt Helen

It makes me sad

If I did

She would be cheery

With freckles

Pull radishes up from the ground

Barehanded, with clipped nails

Short but still with dirt beneath them

Black grains would find a way

“Come and see this little ladybug,”

She would say

Not red with black circle dots

But yellow
It would make her remember

A story about one yellow ladybug

Unusual, Different

“More so than just on the outside,”

She’d say, shaking dirt off the radish

Yanking it hard from the ground

One speck of dirt would fly into my eye

The right one

I would shut it, and squint

Not reach up to wipe it away

Both eyes would water up

To make me worry if she noticed I wasn’t

Looking her in the eyes

 If I moved even that much

to break the connection

“Life would be simple,” she would explain,

“A lot easier for others to make up their mind

Whether they would accept him, or her, but it wasn’t

That easy for the yellow ladybug.”

She would reach over to my left side, where

My hip was connected with the earth

Start to pull again

“That’s really the most of it

What I wanted to say,”

I would suck up her words

Feel each letter turn around in my mouth

Each word disconnected from the next

I would almost be able to see them

And feel what she was saying

Knowing how important it must be

What she would be telling me

She would reach over

Grab another weed

Never with gloves on

Just barely brush the side of my shorts

With her bare hands

Just that much of a connection

Like wind when it ruffles things

My hair, the grass, the wish flowers

Bending down their fluffy heads

No good luck with those, no belief in them

I would have already blown a million

Still each day the same

The brush of her hand while reaching

For the metal rusted garden tool,

From many years of use

The claw we would call it

The claw, it shall reclaim the Earth

It shall make the weeds behave

Surrender and retreat

If I had an Aunt Helen, I wouldn’t have to

Ask my dead father, or convince my distracted Mom

I’d ride my bike since she lived

Exactly three miles down and on the corner

We would spend time together

Real time

The kind where she would talk

And I would listen

Sometimes she would ask

Me a question

“Are you okay, is your world

Still on kilter?”

Kilter, the word would make

Me think of a rocking chair

Broken, someone spastically rocking

Until it flipped over

She’d keep telling the story

The other ladybugs did not shun him

 Ignore him, or make him an outcast

She would say

How they made it a point, a very pointedly point

Acting like he was the same

 Exactly the same as everyone else

Like a person with only one eye, the other poked out

Or a crippled girl in a wheel chair with dribble

Running down her chin

People stopping to smile and say Hello Dear,

And walking by like there was no spit pooled on her shirt

Or the guy with the empty eye socket, looking at

Him full on, like there was still an eye there.

“And that was more disturbing, Aunt Helen would say,

Those other ladybugs creeping close to him, invading his space, the poor

Yellow ladybug. Forcing smiles,

Not giving him a voice.”

I would not understand

Distracted by the gold and red shimmers coming

In through the holes of her hat

Shining on strands of her hair

Something about a bug, and smiling

I would think

“Nature, in its wild unruly ways

 As much so as this garden

As much so as the breath you take in

And the breath you breathe out

Taking it in, forcing it out, or letting it out gently,”

She’d say

We would sit.

Still. Quiet for a moment.

Weeds growing despite all of her effort

To pull them

No chemicals to spray on them

Not My Aunt Helen

Not killing any living thing

Even for her food

I would have seen her actually harm a fly

Swat at it with rolled up newspaper

And laugh as she did it

So that would be confusing to me

As sayings and words come and go and people

Use them for things that don’t make sense

She’d make a game of swatting flies on our back porch

And mosquitoes.

“We’re all good for something,”

Her reply after a good swat on the table squishing

A speck of bloody mess

“But not flies, or mosquitoes, but your Aunt

Doesn’t know a thing,” she’d say,

“I don’t know a thing or two, or three

But I can swig with the best of them and keep my wits

About me, my wits, yes, that and my swing.”

I wouldn’t know what she means, but it would be

Something she’d say

My Aunt Helen

Spraying red hot sauce from Louisiana

Or the orange bottled ones on tables

Where we’d have coke and tacos

That and some dishwashing liquid, and some

Ground pepper, or Old Bay

The one the tourists would ask for

We would live near the beach

The homemade bug spray would be natural but stinky

I’d try just a drop on my finger        

To feel what the plants feel and what the bugs taste

“Anything to keep the bugs at bay,” a common

Aunt Helen saying

Not the ladybugs, that we would be talking about

The yellow ladybug

Only stopping to take grubs off leaves

 Worms a fat green, not really worms

Distorted feather pillows

All sewn up in separate lines

To fluff up their selves, slimy fat things

Squishing, never moving it would seem

The ones that eat up everything

Especially the tomatoes,

Eating holes through the leaves

The spray would not bother the bugs

She’d say “Bloody Hell!”

All the time except

Never ever in her garden

Not for her plants to hear

She would hate anyone who said the words

“Mother Fucker,” because “All women are

Beautiful especially mothers, and they are

More than fuckable.”

I would know this from listening to the conversation she

Would have had with my Mother

The spray would do nothing to the weeds

The green stalks just slightly bending their heads in shame

Continue to keep pulling

Her way

Through the radishes

 The carrots,

Hiding below ground

Green leafy stalks

Asparagus would be trickier

“Taking three years

To grow, the stupid blessed buggers.”

My Aunt Helen

Would have already said a million times before

All fluffy green cloud like stalks

Mistaken for weeds

Stubborn as poppies

My favorite

Big face like flowers that smell like fruit punch

Some peach, some white, some pink

“They need ants at their bottoms to bloom,”

She’d have said,
“Watch your step when you walk near them”

Pulling weeds

Tossing them aside

“Those blasted ants, the bloody buggers,

They have no purpose, but for robbing the

Fruits of our labor.”

Laughing at her own joke

Me not getting it because it would be vegetables not fruits

Throwing piles of long leaves, and grasses

 Paper cuts if I dragged my hands along them

She would throw them behind her in a pile for

The compost

A red stained wooden one

Full of egg shells, coffee grounds, and even shredded bills

Not with plastic see through letters

A handle to turn, many turns

I would crank the handle

Churning the compost for her

She would say,

“The ants, they stick together in piles

And rows, and perfect straight lines.

All one being it would seem.

Sometimes a few going off on their own

Sometimes not lines, but zigzags and squares

Some few, or several, maybe a lone one or two,

That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

She would ask, “Does it depend on their job

Were they truly supportive of their queen or Taking

What crumbs they could for themselves?"

I wouldn’t answer, just look up at her through her hat

So she would know I am listening

“The birds I know a whole lot about, a whole lot,

More than one should know.”

 She’d wipe her brow, under a big floppy hat,

Wicker or something

Ones worn at the beach

Wipe her brow with the knuckles of her right hand

Smudge soil on her forehead

A spot on her nose

Bigger than the freckles on her face

It would annoy me

And I’d sit on my hands to keep from reaching out

To wipe off what wasn’t

My Aunt Helen.

“The worst thing about the yellow ladybug”

She would say,

“Is that it knew it was different.

And it was treated exactly the same.”

Just like all the other ladybugs on her tomato

Plants eating aphids, which is a fun word

I would think because

If I had an Aunt Helen

I would be eight years old forever

And I would follow her wherever she would go

Trying to make sense of her mumbles

Bumper Sticker Theology

She has this gift
You see
Words that are in her head
Which her tongue cannot speak
or her mind cannot spell
Much less write
Yet she does
If you ask her
She says she hears words in her head
like carnation, but not the flower
or exit, not meaning taking leave
but going forever
instead of just saying the word death
Dire things come out of her head
Onto the paper, the words
Fall flat
Like sliding pancakes
   Right off your plate
       To fall onto the floor
                         At your feet
You have to decide whether to pick them up
And take a bite
Or decide that they are soiled
Its the same with truth
A decision made
Instead of a concrete thing
Never do the words come out
As True or False questions
Too easy
She lives inside her head
pretending to play cards with herself
Ignoring the words
Stretching rubberbands
Which is code for cigarettes
It was their time to exit
They decided not to
Like living in a tent in the Southern fried Summer
is better than taking a short tunnel ride
It isn't known who was supposed to exit
True
or
False
Do you like your existence
True
or
False
Does it make sense
Universally speaking, its all a joke, a trick
A slight of hand, or a rabbit's foot
throwing salt over the shoulder
Whatever
That was neither a yes
Nor a no question
It just is, they say
It just is
Or she tells me that they do
Until it isn't
It isn't
Bumper sticker theology
Little fishies on the backs of cars
And peace signs not making it very far
Fuel is tight, just like money
And war is just nature
Little fuzzy field mice fighting for their life
And the guy behind you calling you a "Jack" something
When really you're a Jill
Take that, you inbred mongrel
Genetically sliced and diced as seen on TV
the DNA chain losing many links
Distortion, Dis-evolution, De-evolving
Until you can only speak in grunts and lift fingers up
at people, too stupid to take the exit
But that's me, and that's him
Not her
She
would just look ahead
Stay still
Listen
Or
Close her eyes
If asked
True
Or
False
And say, What is your next question