poem: Good Medicine

your home, my home, everyone's home

 

 

What this place needs is more observations of the intimate life of fire ants

and diving water beetles. More blackburnian warblers singing in early

spring maple themed orgiastic festivals, more canonizing of non-Catholic living

saints, more tall tales and giants to slay and baobab trees to hang the slain

carcasses from. More solo trips across Jupiter's moon's surface in search

of the one that left you high and dry with a raging hardon and nowhere to

turn when July's humidity reached its breaking point. more humilty. More

seven deadly sins. Especially Greed. But especially Lust. Perhaps more lust

than greed, even- your grandma recounting her nocturnal adventures with

Burt Reynolds in the French Riviera; how you were certain that girl in 7th

grade was your soul mate and you chased her into magical realms only

to come face to face with a real living and breathing goddess and discovered

that you are really meant to be a god not a suburbanite not a garden gnome.

 

 

This place would benefit from more biography of the haphazardly insane,

trivia of the ones who peer into humanity from the world's great stages,

tributes to driving grating infuriating perfect obsession; mockery of the vast

mediocrity of twaddle and schlock and sophomorically earnest but unearned

unlived untested Love of Him, all wrapped like straight jackets around our

most precocious and bright youngsters' burgeoning identities. This place needs a

regimen of one-eyed Swedish swashbucklers armed with rapiers and foreign

accents to immediately muster with wit and derring-do against the threat of

invasion by pestilent hordes of vampires and werewolves and Hallmark stores.

More dear God in heaven who the Hell is boiling pickled cabbage in here AGAIN?

 

 

This place needs a kiddie table where everyone starts out and a select few

graduate to the big person's table where they had better damn well mind their

manners knowing they can be kicked back for any measurable amount of inane

sycophantery or any of 18 identifiable offenses styled in nincompoopery, and

that table would totally rock if it were presided over by a heavy handed matriarch

wearing owl glasses and purple robes and a big old flopping high-faluting fire-engine

red honking hat. Definitely needs more gossip from a backwoods Pennsylvania

front porch neighborhood watch brigade complete with a cooler of ice cold Pabst

a fan and a porch swing. This place needs more mockingbirds serenading day

into her predictable close and welcoming nightfall into his unpredictable strains

of crepuscular space where foxes' wails echo like sirens of old in evening's soft flame.

 

 

This place needs more decorated war heroes laughing about getting thwarted by

little brothers in their attempts to lose their virginity in hay barns and basement

couches. This place needs to step aside in wonder and let its princesses take the

hand of her fellow prince, and waltz in awe-filled recognition even if it is just for

one round, one night, or one season's tune, remembering that sometimes make-

believe is for grown-ups as much as for star-crossed adolescents, and magic is magic

and we should never be afraid of letting it in, we should be afraid of letting it slip

out unnoticed before the spell's casting could be realized. Virtual affairs made real

and real ones trivialized by sleight of hand and smoke screens while lovers carouse

on hot savannah afternoons with grapes and honey and pacifiers. More celebrating

out loud when a wanted baby is made, no matter what the circumstances; more

compassion when failure of technology or boundaries or human judgment creates

one that is not. This place needs more kvetching over real and imagined ailments

by stodgy old curmudgeons or just my own Aunt Marilyn to sit in pronouncement for

a day. This place needs more veterans' spouses and families telling their story- on

both sides. More Andy Warhol sharing an ice cream with Moby on second floor balconies

while the bellhops scramble to drain the dishwater in time. For what? We forgot.

 

 

We wait for John Wayne to admit that none of it was real, you all just wanted it to

be. For Armenia to say yes it was real and there to be a collective moment of world

silence. For our little girls to safely say, daddy, I want to study the lives of fire ants

and blackburnian warblers and make the world's best ice cream and meet my princess

and dance under the moon with her. This place needs to recognize that it by the grace

of our charlatans and broken ones and misfits and and honest madmen and watercolor

artists that we grow and thrive and break out of mediocrity. This place should open

reserves for kung-fu pandas and trial lawyers and men wounded forever by the One

who never loved them enough; for the skittish and the bold, the observant and the

always-abandonded. Children need to pet dragons and be allowed in sick-rooms and

know they are never alone in this deception of a life. We need to spend brooding time

walking across moors in search of the life-giving blue flowered hallucinatory plants

that awaken us to the Prophet's Madmen. This place needs more jazz dives and kids

playing in the spray of fire hydrants and whale song researchers and truth commissions

and divine recipes whipped up by foul-mouthed Brooklyn working class Italian babes

demanding to know what your fookin' problem is. A handsome Latino man showing up

at the door at 4 am with a rose between his teeth. An infinite dose of authenticity.

 

This place needs a whopping share of what the Cree called, simply, Good Medicine.

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

today, for: Chris, Christian, Vesa, Jeff, Lynne, Emily, Jorge, Chris, Ken, Emma, dana, Kylan, Craig, Jill, Patrick, Marc, Mary, CJ, Peter, Phibby, Mark, Rick, Linda, Christy, Yos, Mike, Shmoke, and Ed.

tomorrow, there will be probably be more. ;-)

Reviews

[TL Boehm]

Marie, I'm not even at the kiddie table. Perhaps I'm in the back room, the basement or that crawlspace in the attic. I've not been truly read here since 2007 - but I consider myself a fixture. Perhaps I am roaches in the wall....I actually have UNREAD posts here. But that is my lamentation and maybe it doesn't even belong in a review.
There are real writers here - I know a few and I seek them out. I concur we need more. I love the way the thoughts just spill together as though you were twirling under a late summer sky, fat raindrops splashing at your bare feet and a song bubbling up from your heart.
There was a time I wrote a story - and a few at the cafe read and enjoyed - and I published the thing. Then real life happened - stops and starts and horror and now I'm back but this poem - it eats at my soul and reminds me I am lonely - I want to sip tea with these writers.... I do
This was a wild river of a poem - beautiful, deep...all the things it should be

[ríða andlit]

Pass the gravy, TL, because you are definitely sitting next to me at the kiddie table!

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

Screw the gravy. I want Hollandaise.

[ríða andlit]

Surely not for mashed potatoes!

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

I want Hollandaise for the steak. Butter and parsley will suffice for the mashed potatoes.

[ríða andlit]

And salt, d****t.

[TL Boehm]

Do we get bendie straws? My parents never bought me bendie straws!

[ríða andlit]

That is a TRAVESTY! The only straw worth its weight is the bendie kind!

[TL Boehm]

I know, right? And just because I'm at the kiddie table - don't cut my pasta. I want to slurp it down and get the sauce on my shirt.

[ríða andlit]

Screw that! We don't even need utensils!

[Marie Anzalone]

Do you have Friendly's restaurants where you are? Because they offer this awesome thing that is better than a bendy straw. It is a large bore swirly straw... that changes color depending on the temperature of what you are drinking with it. If you ask for one, they will bring it to you. It is sturdy enough for several washings and reuses.

LOL TL will be back soon to give you a serious response on this wonderful review. ;-)

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

Still can't believe I forgot the salt and black pepper.

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

I've never used a bendie straw in my life! It's not fair!

[ríða andlit]

I also like the straws that change regular milk to chocolate or strawberry...

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

IMPOSSIBRU!

[ríða andlit]

http://www.magicstraws.com/

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

Looks fun.

[Marie Anzalone]

Magic Straws rock, too. I think all of need to go out and buy us soem funky straws and have a chocolate or strawberry milk tomorrow. Or a malt. I found a place ion town here that serves chocolate malts. I wil join you!

See, TL, here's the thing. I looked across once at the big persons table, and did not like how they treated each other, nor the location of the table inside a hot stuffy room with forced politeness. All that scraping and bowing, you know? Just not for me. If we're at teh kiddie table then let's build us a tree house like the flets in Lothlorien and have an open air banquet table among the treetops, with wizards and elves and brave and fair folk stopping by to enliven the conversation. Let's make it the kind of place where such people WANT to be a part of the conversation.

You only live once, you know?

and I am so totally there with the straw thingy. :-)

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

Marie, no elves, please.

[ríða andlit]

Why? I love the elves of Lothlorien... in fact, all the elves in Middle-earth are badass!

[Marie Anzalone]

PS: TL, I have always been one of the most under-read of the longer standing authors on site. I have learned to accept quality of review as a suitable replacement for quantity of reviews. When one of the "site giants" steps down far enough to review me, it really becomes something special to me. That's the kind of grown-up table I hope to someday sit at. I invite you to come sit at it any time.

[Marie Anzalone]

I like elves. I think I have Elvish blood.

[ríða andlit]

I far more prefer Tolkien's elves than those of the cookie baking (Keebler), shoe or toy making kind.

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

First things first, I'm not really a fan of Tolkien. I used to enjoy him very much, but then I started reading Martin. I find that Tolkien is a master at painting landscapes but is clueless as to how the human mind works. His character are devoid of personality and appear to me pretty much dead inside. Other thing is the cliché Good vs. Evil antic. And the complete lack of sex and personal interaction is disturbing. Now, I really do hate elves and their up-tuned noses and pointy ears.

[ríða andlit]

Between your eyes, Meta! http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/i/2013/06/03/FL-The-Hobbit-Desolation-of-Smaug_1224x760.jpg :D

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

Hey, I still like the films. I just don't swallow the Tolkien-is-a-genius speech.

[ríða andlit]

Fightin' words... :D

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

Once I was told the following, by a guy that works in a local record store: "The Lord of the Rings is for children and Game of Thrones is for scruffily-bearded men."

[ríða andlit]

LOL, that is definitely true regarding Game but I always said, "Narnia is for children, Middle-earth is for badasses."

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

http://youtu.be/RXAhqvMy2lQ

[TL Boehm]

Thank you, Marie. Yes, when one of the cafe giants reads me I am humbled, but when one of the kids at the kiddie table comes over I'm excited - and I even appreciate it when one of the toddlers tries to hand me a half sucked lollipop. I'm a bit of a dog. Any attention I can get, you know? Its my IVM. (internet validation monster) As for elves depends on the clan and how it interfaces with my berserker DNA. (random boring fact: I come from vengeful pillaging Viking stock - it takes a Viking to raze a village....you know pillage first then burn.)

[Marie Anzalone]

yes, exactly. Or, as my wise friend Dan used ot say, "Rape and Pillage BEFORE you burn."

read moreyes, exactly. Or, as my wise friend Dan used ot say, "Rape and Pillage BEFORE you burn."

George Martin is a JRR Tolkien fan. I rest my case.

And I delight in the kiddie table. More creativity over here anyway. Just saying when we graduate, I want something than 18th century morals and wallpaper to look forward to. :-)

[Marie Anzalone]

*something better

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

Ma'am, I like the way you think.

[Marie Anzalone]

Thanks so much, WC, for deleting the rest of my comment there. Much obliged. What I was going to add, TL, is that I spend a lot of time at the kiddie tables because the ideas are less stale and old. Edgier. Got more that is worth listening to. Us stodgy middle age folks seem to lose it after a while. When it comes to adult tables, I want mine situated somewhere that is not bound by 19th century morals and wallpaper. Give me somewhere with a better view and underwear that is less constrictive, please!

[TL Boehm]

yup. we need a spanks free table. Can I I say that? I mean the undergarment....ok, and no spanking either.

[Marie Anzalone]

Let it all hang out, TL. No one will spank you for it... unless you want them to. :-)

[gombeggar]

this place needs to take note of yer words...well said

[Marie Anzalone]

Thanks, gombeggar. This was mostly tongue-in-cheek but dead earnest at the same time. I had memories of my friend Vince Quatroche's "Kill the Poet" in my literary back pocket when I wrote it. For God's sake, he pleads, give me something interesting to read about! Give me reality, give me trivia, give me hubris, amazing personal experience, fantastical voyages, quirky family members- just make it touch the discerning reader's heart. Produce a damned reaction. One can only read bitter notes about every person some testosterone filled pimply faced tart fantasizes about dismembering, or how a sighing schoolgirl who forces boredom on herself and longs to be a romantic vampire; so many times before wanting to gouge one's eyes out with a serrated edged spoon. Of course, they say the same thing about my writing. :-)

But yeah, I pictured my Aunt Marilyn walking through here brandishing my grandmother's wooden spoon; I pictured Isabel Allende at age 60 telling the audience about a dream that included Antonio Banderas in a pool filled with oatmeal, I pictured an old Black woman I heard recently giving an astoundingly moving performance as she delved into 4 different characters on a mesmerizing TED Talk. I hate to say it, dude- this place needs more matriarchal power. I think sometimes that Emily and Emma and BRS and Leica and I should just stage a coup. I would ask dana to memorialize it as it happens, and you to remember me years later after I was sent packing. ;-)

[gombeggar]

hahahahhah...muy bien, bonita

[gombeggar]

always I am the recollector

[Marie Anzalone]

if I die preamturely I shudder to think what you will write about me

[gombeggar]

ohh? ;) have no fear, mah dear...underdog is here!!!

[h d e rushin]

i still get goose bumps on my arms over the contributions of Louis Armstrong to pre-jazz
america lulled hopelessly to sleep by the shucksters of Ecclesiastes wisdom and 'dust-bowl'
mediocrity.

and then there is you Marie, placeing the microphone close to the lips of reason(or the reasonable),
sorting the readily natural from the spontaneous and even making this supernatural human condition
kinda dooable.


an absolutely amazing effort. I will reread and resubmit a review when this substitute computer
stops fighting me...dana

[Marie Anzalone]

Ugh here it is the neverending fight against good internet signal (which is still often better than in CT- someone explain that to me??) but thankfully not yet the computer.

I swear, it is all the Puritans' fault. I can say that because I am descended form Puritans- the ones who fled in the middle of the night to avoid exile from MA Bay (for differences of relgious opinion, ironically) and founded Rhode Island. RI- the only state in the US founded with a generous GIFT of land in friendship by the Natives to a white man. Heretics to the core, we were. I read an actual account once in a library of the founding. The earliest 3 settlements were designed so that their respective inhabitants "would not have to live too close to each other." Exact words.

A prissy librarian once told me, upon finding out that I did have relatives on that damned Mayflower, that I should definitely join the D.A.R. I told her they would not want me, I am too much like my ancestors.

[Leica]

i feel right at home in this piece for i fill any number of those "must need" categories..
we also need more days of throwing work shoes out the car window on our way home and feeling the earth in our toes when we put the car in park..
oh lordy, i better stop or you will have me writing a 5,000 word comment..
what a great read tonight!..love it!

[Marie Anzalone]

Thanks for stopping by, Leica, and I knew you would appreciate this one. LOL I may have to add another verse at some point with suggestions from other writers (barefoot toes in squishy mud alwasy great yes!); but I also think any poet worth his or her salt could write his or her own version of this. You could write it with one hand tied behind oyur back and eyes closed!

Always love your reviews and insights, Leica. Your'e the best. You know, you kept me on site all those years back? I do not know if I ever thanked you for that. You encouraged me to write, and amutual friend gave me the courage to leave a bad relationship, even tho I did not go to him. I owe so much to you both...

[ríða andlit]

Precisely! I've beheaded many a garden gnome, have trundled over the frail beliefs and insinuations that mire and muck up the misty patterns of soccer moms heading in their vans, full of screaming children, to school, the field, the park, the video store, the mall, the fast food dive. They're always late and they always use a heavy foot even when the intersection is teeming with besieged and beleaguered youngsters just trying to find the moment when they can finally cross into their day. I've wielded my sword against the tiny boxes all dotting the hillside, turned the emerald squares into straw and have set my middle finger to work against those who are plagued with ignorance and little imagination.

I sit with you at the kiddie table, it would be my honor to pass you the rolls and the sweet pickles and pluck black olives from my fingertips after I've waved my donned hands at you, like a tree frog proudly displaying his bulbous suckers. You and I match his bright colors and stand out against the drab grays and tans that taint life like a plague.

We do need dragons, princesses, handsome Latin lovers with red roses clenched between their teeth. We need fresh air and creativity and daring attitudes. We need the panda, the zebra and the lion to point our way through the stars and show us that even a beheaded garden gnome can have some merit.

[Marie Anzalone]

LOL BRS, you crack me up! Instead of beheading them, I opt to take them off their litlte sawed-off tree stumps and into the real woods to fend for themselves. They are far more fun lost than beheaded, you know?

I am so honored to share that kiddie table with you. When we meet in person, we will so have to go out and order salad with olives. Then again, I just bought olives tonight, after waiting to get past two guys negotiating the sale of a pregnant donkey in the middle of the aisle. Since we are the same person, maybe I will just stick on my fingers, wave at you, and sing along to "Friends in Low Places." I would say everyone on this page who commented has those standing-out bright colors. We need all of that and more. We need people to teach us about the joy and wonde rof being alive, and how it feels to be a woman again. Still wating on my Latino, LOL.

Thanks for such an awesome review, BRS!

[ríða andlit]

Ugh, a typo up there, kiddie... not kiddy. Ah, well. :D Glad you enjoyed it. Hope you're having a better day.

I, too, can bend my big toe but I'm freakishly double jointed and can bend my toes back flat to become a perch for a beer or an ash tray. I can bend my fingers in many creepy ways and spread them out into fan-like claw things. Perhaps that's why my big toe can curl, both ways. :D

[Marie Anzalone]

LOL I can use my toes to pick things up, and in some unusual ways in intimate settings...

[ríða andlit]

Ha! Me too! We're so talented -- we MUST be the same person!

[Marie Anzalone]

you beat me to it...

[Mike Emil]

where are the bandersnatches and jabberwocks?
and where's my saki and plumb wine?
that's good medicine!!! HAI!!!

[Marie Anzalone]

sorry Emil I did not have time for everyone's delusions

[Ken Simm.]

This is Molly Bloom on acid.

[Marie Anzalone]

I hope that is a compliment? ;-)

[Ken Simm.]

Molly Bloom's solioquy from Ulysses by James Joyce. Yes my friend it is. Given what I think about Joyce.

[Marie Anzalone]

I did recognize the source- I also know that Joyce tends to be a very polarizing author and I try to not assume I know anything I don't take the time to ask about. Gets exhausting sometimes.

[Ken Simm.]

Appreciate that. When I was 17 I was walking through my local town and a voice from nowhere said quite clearly Read Ulysses. At the time I thought it meant Homer. It was only later I discovered Joyce. One of those inexplicable things.
This piece jst reminded me of the way Molly Bloom wanders through her thoughts. Saying what she wants and how she should get it at the end of the long Ulysses day.

[Marie Anzalone]

I have heard those voices, too. They are never wrong.

[Ken Simm.]

The doctor's said I was strange. Didn't feel strange.

[Marie Anzalone]

rest assured, you are in good company

[Emily B]

good company, indeed

[Emily B]

i see snippets of conversations and i can imagine the person who engaged in them with you. I'm going to claim to remember the line about children being allowed in sick rooms, not because i said it, or you said it, but we wandered around it recently.

this is such huge work, i don't think i can take away more than an ant-sized crumb, but i will b back for another and another

[Marie Anzalone]

there are news articles and Radiolab shows and Gacebook statuses and retirement parties and personal observations and personalities and yes much recent conversation in here- including a few inspired by you ;-)

glad you liked it

[Emily B]

Saturday, Danny said if he had some cold beer and a lawn chair he would be happy to sit in the backyard and grill chicken. I went and picked up the beer. The boys found the lawn chairs on their way home last night, perfectly good chairs sitting out for the garbage truck :) enough for all

i say a chain saw will show up too, he thinks i must be crazy

[Marie Anzalone]

that is my definition of ordinary faith and everyday grace. crazy is not always a bad way to live

[Emily B]

some friends of ours were given a three hundred acre farm and a house to live in, their faith is a little extraordinary

[Marie Anzalone]

wow holy typo... should be "Facebook statuses" in that first comment. I never learned to type properly. I spend more time correcting than writing.

[Marie Anzalone]

I would say that is definitely extraordinary... talk about a lifetime's worth of gifts

[Emily B]

my friend is a combination of mary poppins and the holy Mary :)

the best example of how to live a Christian life

[Marie Anzalone]

reminds me of my friend Jo- a resoulte Christian minister with more than your usual Unitarian leanings. She was disowned by ehr conservative congregation the day she asked them to examine their prejudcie agaisnt Latinos and Blacks and Muslims. She inherited her husband's farm, turned it into a sanctuary for foster kids and abandoned livestock. Bought her husband a Paso Fino with her life savings and is celebrating her 51st birthday by bicycling across North America to combat apathy about poverty.

There are ordinary saints all around us if we know where and how to look, I think. Your friend sounds very much like soemone I would love to share a cup of tea with one day.

[Emily B]

she loves tea :)

spending time with her brood teaches me so many things about how to be