Love for a Boy

I took my son to see a movie tonight. It's Friday. It's been a long week - up early to summer school every day. Mars is 4 - almost 5 - and he is mildly autistic. PDD-NOS they call it, but no one knows what that is. To be true, no one really knows much about autism either. Mars is about the most fascinating and beautiful thing I've ever been close to - he is wild and strong and fierce and he is tender and wise and kind and full of laughter. He goes to a therapeutic preschool class that is, thankfully, very structured and full of amazing adults that understand him and love him totally. But by Friday, it's a long week. Nonetheless, tonight we went to a movie which started at 7:05 - 55 minutes before his usual bedtime. About halfway through the movie, he began to wilt. He was standing on the floor in front of me in my seat. He turned his big jughead towards me in the faint light of the projection and said, "Mommy, I'm very tired." He held his arms out and asked to sit on my lap. I scooped him up and he nestled his head just junder my chin - his breath hitting my chest in its unique rhythm - my hand firmly around his ribcage. We began to breathe in sync and I could feel him totally relax. I was overwhelmed with how much I love this little boy and I just whispered to him, "I love you, I love you, I love you." In his sleepy little voice, I heard him whisper back, "I love you, I love you, I love you." I felt a tear begin to stream down my cheek - It fell on Mars' head and travelled down his ear and then dropped on my hand. What grace is this that I am allowed such a pure experience of love in this world?

There is no greater art than holding this little boy a little tighter--this moment one of the most beautiful I've ever known.

-p

Tequila Blessing

To all imbibers of the GirlieToolshed Reserve:

As you drink this colorless muse,
May you feel the warmth behind your eyelids,
the itch in the fold of your arm,
the tiny sockhop on each fingernail,
the reach between this and that.
May you feel the curl of your cigarette smoke as it licks your cheek,
the feast at the end of each inhale.
May you scribble the sense of alter and altar,
May you hear the engines of stock cars on the tongue of your lover and
eat the grub of your longings...every least and last one of them.
Lastly, may you hold me amongst you and your scratchy sweaters.
To Joan: the most daring, most certain woman I've ever known, the only one daring the buffalo to produce a pearl.
To Thad: good times as you head off to a new part of your life...gasoline and tinker toys for you!
To Mike: all noise and quiet, a motorcycle between the thighs...drink up for understanding that art is the only road to everywhere.
To Andrea: to your explosive genie bottle magnitude and fearlessness.
To Colin: here's to your courage and for evermore of it.
In honor of Krissy...another fearless femme who could eat a lazy boy and then turn cartwheels.
And to Willis...purveyor of the Western Pacific mix, mood arms that reach across the ocean to the hearts of all of us to tip his shot glass back from the bath to the porch to the campfire and the sketchbook.
Wish you were here, or I was there.

Naptime

In stolen moments and dashes---inhaling and setting things afire, I draw my own face as if I am absent or blind...to remember me as was. Cuz with you, I don't yet know myself. You are constantly moving, vibrating. What is the pitch, the tone, the note of you in me? It's hard to know with all the old melodies rushing in, attempting to survive you.

Are you, perhaps, not the tune, but the funnel, a conch, the distillator of my cacophany? Maybe this will help me fear you less...the effect of you in me as opposed to me as was.

Gold Mirror

Reflection
how I draw you
with every stroke never felt,
your shape is a blaze on my forehead.
I craft you, crafty image,
with intention
I build to suit the voice
velvet of your underneath not showing -
your pink, your red
your grey pallor.
My nose, my fingertips pleased -
sweet earthy moss -
I hear you grow,
my belly shrink the center
clean through.
Poke me,
drive inuparound the tumors,
calfskin romance by the pound,
gold, red slick of a wet tongue dick,
What have I rendered?

Warning

A lion's mane
-wind blows thick through thoughts-
What am I doing here
in this chair, on this Sunday afternoon
I know your blow is imminent.
I hear the roar stew up in my belly,
but look down to webbed feet
and dry ground.
My mirror shows I am a lion
for you - good steward of what I know
I believe I am strong, yet
muscles hang in ribbons from your ceiling
where you swing wildly.
I move ridiculously with duck's feet
and lion's heart,
dragging shreds of skin and bone I found
around you sleeping.
I eat tadpoles and tell stories
about the blood of antelope.
You pick flesh from teeth, and
toss back the mane of a predator.
Let me tell you over this bowl of tomato soup,
these will be a few of the last few tears
I have for you.
I had
for you.
So go ahead and lick the blood from my ear.
I haven't heard you for months
just the sound of my own wet feet stepping.