Peeing on both poles

I'm back after a tearful
threat at a table full of
teachers looking concerned,
not knowing what to do
with my son who they've
described in black and white
lines upon official paper.
I'm reminded of the old
well room attached to
my rundown childhood home.
The door was helplessly ajar
and the cats would find all
kinds of curl places in the
dark, wet, cool, trashed-out
place where they were
safe from storms and people.
~~

I have a secret in my purse.
It is an object
which I feel guilt about
because I have already
given so much money away
this year and now
I am encumbered more.
However,
with this object we will
have a moment and his
eyes will widen and
before he thinks about
his wife being in debt, he
will only think of how much
he is loved.

~~~~~

When I go to the mall with
my daughter, no thing is simple.
So many unspoken words,
hopeful intentions,
repressed feelings accompany
our rack search. In the sock
department in JC Penney, I
bizarrely blurt out bits about
God and our prayers for her.
She says her usual, "Hmmmm"
and picks up a really cute
pair of discounted tights.

~~~~~~

Moses, the black lab version,
is one of my running partners,
but he only greets me after
he has sniffed and peed
on both poles.

The pants just stink

The coffee pot creaks,
the Bible app reads.
My cats are where they
want to be. An expectant
morning quiets the
soon rush sounds and
we sit together once more.
I show my age but morning's
face is seamless and fresh,
but she will be thrown down
as noon takes her life,
while I will be made-up
and alive.


~~

And the students are captured
away from their beds
where late nights up trapped.
And now they're caught speaking
of chivalry and Chaucer,
courtly love and confession
in chatterly groups of four,
and I'm happy that in America
freedom isn't entirely
widespread.

~~~

You sit down in the highback chair
if a cat isn't there first. And you
look down the fretboard to your
fingertips. You see what they do and
how they move. You see that they can
make sound. You see that you are
capable of something in this big
uncontrollable world, and you look
up at your lesson teacher.

~~~

If I could bottle up all of the Old
Testament wrath, all the swinging ass'
bones, all the conquering nations'
drumrolls, all the slews and all the
slays into a pretty black bottle, I would
have hurled it today at the heads
of the three students
who turned and laughed at my son.

~~~

I have a black pair of jeans
which smell.
I've washed and washed
until they're faded out, but
still the dye is a stench.
If I were not so modest, I
would ask someone, somewhere,
"What do you do when your
pants just stink?"