Secrets

Don't share your secrets.
Do not upset people.
Bury your secrets deep inside.
Try to forget.
But then,
Your buried secrets
fester,
like a malignant mass
that metastisizes
to distroy the whole person.

Soot

Wild fire soot darkens the sky.
A brown haze hovers over the city
It falls on every building, car and person
on every part of my body
even iside my mouth.
It smears grey filth upon my skin,
much like a drepressed mood
that smears darkness
over my entire body and soul.

The Seclusion Room

The horror
of the seclusion room,
the window
with it's criss cross screen
tht holds me securely in.
inside the white walls
with a high ceiling
that holds a camera.
Oh! The Camera!
Have to break the camera,
Somehow,  I must reach the camera
and distroy it.

Ingeniously,
someone left a chair in the room.
I scoot the chair
over to the windlow,
planning to balance on the window seal,
then reach over and smash the camera

I start my climb.
Suddenly,there are five people
holding me down
tieing me down.

Unable to move,
I know I must calm down.
I breath deep
and try to relax.

The seclusion room,
on the psych ward.

What has become of me?
 

The Gift of a Song

Trapped in a body
that was unable to move
my mother lay
in her hospital bed.

"I love you, Mom."
the only words I could
think to say.

I watched as my father
stroked her forehead.
Singing,
"Sure, I love the dear silver
that shines in her hair."
"Oh Godd bless you
and keep you, Mother Mckree."

A bright light of love
glowed around them.
A halo that framed
the two of them.
together for the last time
on this earth.

Eight years later,
in my own unconscious body,
I heard my sister singing,
so peacefully,
the overwhelming gift of love.

Never Married

I don't know why I never married.
It just didn't happen.
I told my neice that it was because
no one loved me.
She cried.
I realized it wasn't true.
I've had my romances.
Some people think I am unusual.
Some people speculate
about my preferances.
I'm just alone.
I haven't given up
I've heard of people
getting married for the first time
in their sixties.
Right now,
I am between boyfriends.

Old Age

Quoting my sister,
"I'm not getting old.
My body is."
My body is gradually
getting more wrinkled and
moving slower.
Sometimes it hurts and
sometimes I fall down,
and yet, I am thankful
to be able to experience more.
to enjoy more people,
to touch more lives
and to be touched.
I don't know whether or not
I will ever be ready to move on.

Unemployment

At different times after high school, I have been unemployed.  It went on for as long as a year and as short as a week.  I have had a job last for as long as six years and as short as four hours.

When I first came home from college, I tried to be a waitress, but I got fired from every waitress job I ever had.  I did things like forgetting the banana on a banana split and pouring coffee in their water glasses.

It was extrememly hard to find a job in Fresno, California.  I actually got a job the first week I was there.  I worked at a snack bar in a grocery store.  They hired me because I told them that I was an experienced waitress.  I didn't tell them that I was fired from every waitress job I ever had.  My employer wanted me to wait on the counter, cook and cashier.  A customer ordered a patty melt.  I had never heard of a patty melt.  I was fired because I asked the customer how to make it.

I took any kind of a job I could get.  I got a job tying tennis shoes together,  I was trying to impress them with how fast I could do it.  Instead, I impressed them by tying all the shoes with the toes pointing out, In other words on the wrong feet.  I was fired.  I felt so stupid.  I cried all the way home.

I did some temporary work with Manpower and I kept checking the board at the unemployment office.  One day a job as a file clerk was put on the board.  When I applied for it, I found out that it was really a telemarketing job and was only one day a week.  I used to call time and pretend I was giving them a sales pitch. 

My family moved to Ventura, California.  When I got there, I got very sick with a cold.  It lasted about a month.  I was supposed to apply for three jobs a week to keep my unemployment check.  I cheated,  I wrote down jobs I had seen in the newspaper and said that I had applied for them.  It was obvious that I was too sick to look for work.  The lady at the unemployment  office told me that she didn't believe me, but she didn't tell on me.

When I got over being sick, I got a job at Sears selling panty hose.  Around Christmas I got a job as a switchboard operator at the local hospital.  I worked there six years.