Big Bang Theory (or Where We Begin)

I saw a picture of a friend as a toddler that was dated three years

Prior to my birth.  My mind said,

(not sure why, but it often talks to me)

“This was before you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye.”

 

Phrases I have heard all my life often seem forever

Saddled with the meaning I gave them using a child’s mind.

 

For 44 years I believed,

Without even really thinking about it,

that the “twinkle in my father’s eye” was the

Pure unadulterated joy he felt knowing that

I, his precious daughter, would someday

Come into being to

Enrich and fulfill his life.

 

It just dawned on me today that it is likely referring to

The flirtatious glance that is the true moment of conception.

 

There was a time when we were all nothing more than

The lustful leer of a woodie-wearing boy who thought his

Asp was an anaconda.

 

Our first raspy wail was caused by that slap on the ass

Which followed the pointy-headed journey through a very tight place

After the squeezing and squeezing

And living upside down

Spawned by nine months of cell reproduction

starting from a blastocyst created by that lucky sperm

Who won the gold in the freestyle

Of the biological Olympics and

Pierced the membrane of a single egg . . .

 

. . . Because a penis ejaculated in a vagina after

Kissing and hugging and rolling and spooning and

All because of a twinkle in the eye of some dude who thought

His roll of dimes just might get to pretend it was a worth a whole lot more

And play a little game of cha-ching.

 

And that, if you want to get downright technical, is the moment of conception.

 

So the right-wingers and Catholics and pro-lifers who believe that

Life must be allowed to blossom from the tiniest potential

To a full-fledged being

should insist that their daughters follow through,

Stay out late after the dance,

And create the potential found in the twinkle

Of a school-boy’s eye.

 

Thistle

I love to see a field of thistle

from a distance.  Get too close

and you will bleed.  But someone

has to chop it down before it

 

goes to seed and spreads its drifting,

downy, dangerous self into a

field of corn or beans or maybe

where the cattle feed.   It has not

 

many friends except the butterfies and

bees.  And I am not one either except

I love to see it purple in a field, far

away, where it cannot make me bleed.

Curriculum Vitae

My first job was selling shoes.

Sixteen years old.

Needed gas money.

Bought a cowboy hat with my first check.

Went to college.

Started part-time at a hotel.

Went to full-time when I quit college.

 

Thought I knew everything I needed to know.

 

Worked in fast food,

then as a bank teller,

then started waiting tables.

That lasted awhile.

Shifted into bartending.

More prestigious.

Did that through school.

(Realized I didn’t know everything I needed to know.)

Got a Masters degree.

Started teaching.

Part-time, then full.

Had more fun bartending, frankly.

Took a medical transcription job.

More money than teaching.

Got to work from home.

Scattered throughout were the odd jobs –

in a plant nursery,

in a wood-working shop,

in a music studio.

Gave real estate a go.

The mortgage business,

Sales, free-lance writing.

It got downright embarrassing.

 

Don’t think I’ll tell anyone

I think I might be a poet.

Poet At Work

Sunday morning sipping tea.

Different from past Sundays.

No newspaper. No black and white movie on t.v.

No coffee (too acidic, causes arthritis, gums up your joints).

 

Now I sit at the kitchen table

still in my robe at noon

laptop computer wirelessly surfing the net

from one website to the oddly connected next

like a cyber version of six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

From the blood type diet to the blood type of Jesus

to a blog about Ernest Angley to a Wiccan site (for balance)

to a chakra site to Shirley MacLaine’s site

which talked about her new book

and had the first chapter online

which mentioned the connection of musical tones to colors

and how that is evidenced in the chakra system

which made me think . . .

 

Connection.  Colors.  Tones.  Energy centers.  Emotion.

So I wrote a poem about the color of anger.

 

Can’t you see I’m working?