If I Had a Window

Here's the most recent "finished" poem I've written. I think it was about a year ago. I think it had something to do with my attempts to figure out what landscape painting was supposed to be good for.

If I had a window I
Would sit and watch the cars go by
And roll along, and roll away
And roll into another day

The wall here is no good to me
When it's all there is to see
You know drywall's such a sorrowful sight
When it's all you see for day and night

Outside the door, out in the hall
There hangs a lamp, and that is all
A cold and silent corridor
With bare walls and a polished floor

But all I want to do today
Is watch the cars as they go away
I swear I'd need no other guide
If I could only look outside

The Little Things

Wrote this in 2011 but thought I would share because it's seasonally relevant...
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Earlier this week, I bought a bag of candy corn at the drug store and put it in a desk drawer at work.

Every morning, I forget that it is there.  Then, at some point a few hours into the day, I open the drawer looking for a highlighter or some white-out or stamps, and voila!  Someone has sent me a secret surprise!  Delighted, I grab a handful and shut the drawer.

A minute later, this time with no pretense of needing the white-out, I open the drawer and grab another handful of artificially colored, sugary goodness (which, by the way, claims to be “made with real honey!”).  Perhaps 45 seconds later, it happens again, this time unconsciously.  Open, shut, chew.  Open, shut, chew.  I am compelled - I can’t stop - MUST HAVE CANDY CORN!

Ten or fifteen minutes into this routine, I choke on a piece of candy corn that, in my manic haste to pump corn syrup and yellow #5 into my blood stream, goes down the wrong way.  I pause, take a few long sips of water, and breathe.  My body has saved itself from near-death by tiny triangular confection bullet.

In that instant, self control is restored.  The mind is back on top; all animal appetites are at least tentatively subdued.  I go on with my day.  The drawer stays closed, and all traces of yellow-orange-and-white striped thought vanish from my brain.

Embodiment

Sorry my first post is about gross bodily functions, but you have to start somewhere, right?

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Our bodies often speak to us, but we're not always very good at listening.

Today my body shouted. It wolf-whistled at close range and then exploded in a tantrum of frustration. It yelled, "STOP! SIT DOWN, SHUT THE F#$% UP AND LISTEN TO ME." And, as you might expect, I didn't have a choice.

First, it went for the jugular. I got a sore throat, and it hurt to talk and swallow and breathe. 

Then it took out the nerve center by delivering a pounding headache, which turned into a migraine. I fired back with a round of potent meds and the headache subsided. I had this under control.

But neurons still weren't firing like they should. My head was fuzzy, and I started to forget things, mess things up. I saved over an important document at work and couldn't recover it. While I was fumbling and disoriented, the next wave struck like a tsunami: massive head congestion. 

I couldn't breathe, everything was heavy, snot everywhere. You could hear me losing the battle every time I tried to speak. I grasped for office tissues, whose sandpapery consistency left me looking like Rudolph after three blows. Every part of my face seemed swollen - nose, eyes, temples...

Oh, and a zit the size of Mt. Fuji had erupted at the corner of my mouth.

I grossed everyone out at an interdepartmental meeting with all the loud, juicy nose blowing. The guy on speaker phone was singing silent praise that he, at least, was insulated from the vast plumes of germs that filled the air with every uncontrollable sneeze. 

Yes, the sneezing. Perhaps it was exacerbated by the poorly-constructed tissues, but the episodes had reached beyond the powers of any antihistamine to contain. Each sneeze was bigger and more mucus-laden than the last. Like some nightmarish negative feedback loop, one led to the next led to the next and I grew rather awed at the ability of my body to produce mucus at such a rate.

As I drained tissue boxes and traded phone calls about the interview I was supposed to be conducting, I had one of those unmistakable twinges of twisting, halting pain in my lower abdomen. But I wrote the cramp off as sneeze-induced. The interview was cancelled. I went to the bathroom to relieve my bladder of the pressure from a liter's worth of tea only to confirm that yes, I was indeed bleeding. 

It felt like my body was one big hemorrhage. With an email titled "Going home for the greater good," I left the office. As I sat on the train, I prayed that the parents who'd taken their children for a midday outing would forgive me for contaminating everything around me. I'd stuffed my pockets with tissues, but it wasn't enough to make it home. As I stepped off the train, I was possessed by a demon sneeze that shot forth violently and was caught only by my bare hands. I'd been slimed, Ghost Busters style.

I curled my disease-infested hands into ecto-fists and walked out into the glaring sunshine. In the fresh light, I noticed that there was a long snot stream down the front of my skirt, and another on my jacket. I was reminded of a man I saw on the subway once who had a twelve inch booger hanging from his nose and made no effort to remove it. He was not in a good place that day, and today I was not much better off. At a certain point, there is nothing left to do but surrender control.

I entered my quarantine, changed clothes, made soup, hit the couch. I am listening, dear body. I hear you loud and clear, and I'm not fighting anymore. Now what was it you were trying to tell me?