Sleep Poem

Sleep's call went to voicemail
Only 'cuz I let it
Ring
Ring
Ring

And I stay awake
Wondering
Seeking
Hoping
Living

My breaths are steady
My heart is even
I am at rest
Yet I stir
Again

Jumping

“Twenty minutes!”

My eyes flutter, briefly, then shut.

“Ten minutes!”

Fuck.  My hands are already unbuckling my safety belt clumsily in the shaking plane.

“Get ready!”

Finally unbuckled, I begin to unhook my static line.  Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.  Fuck.

“Outboard personnel, stand up!”

I rise, still unhooking that fucking thing from my reserve.  Already adrenaline has filled my bloodstream, and a nervous energy envelopes me.

“Inboard personnel, stand up!”

Fuck.  I step slightly back to accommodate the trooper ahead of me as I finally unhook that fucking static line.

“Hook up!”

I latch the static line in place, my stomach already queasy from the combination of fear, unspent adrenaline, and the shaking of a plane at 800 feet above ground level in 15 knot winds.  Shit.

“Check static lines!  Last two jumpers turn to the skin of the aircraft, second to last jumper check the last jumper’s static line!”

Well, I’m the chalk pusher, and that fucker in front of me is on his cherry jump, so fuck if his check means dickall.  I check his line, see no problems and let him pretend that he’s checking mine.  The rattle, by the way, is beginning to grate.

“Check equipment!”

I’m checking my straps and tie-downs, even as a safety clambers over us and our gear, looking for what us dumbasses missed in our checks.  He grabs a man ahead of me and pulls him aside, cursing both him and the man behind him for what they missed.  Thank fuck he caught it, and thank double fuck he can fix it.  Shithead’s got the 240, and I do not want to hear about it not being on the fucking DZ from anyone, not at this time of fucking night.

“Sound off for equipment check!”

“OKAY!” I scream at the cherry in front of me, giving him a generous slap on his scared ass.  The pattern repeats all up the chalk.  Now, it’s the shitty wait.

This is the worst of any jump.   This time is just the wait, the dread, the fear, the adrenaline.  Waiting and adrenaline never mix.  I’m tense, waiting for that green light to free me from this.  The fucking cherry makes to puke.

“Fucking don’t you the fuck dare!  I better not slip on your fucking chunder, cherry!  Keep it down or puke in your helmet, I don’t give a fuck which!”  He struggles for the former.  Jesus, I hope I had a sterner stomach when I was a cherry.

The door opens and the jumpmaster leans out.  I can barely make out the one minute signal.  The eternal minute.  My ears are filled with the roar of the engines, screaming wind, my heartbeat…and now the fucking cherry puking all over the fucking floor.  Jesus Christ.

Jumpmaster leans out again, 30 seconds.  The smell of the puke is wreaking havoc on my ability to not puke myself, as the shitty aluminum can we’re in shakes and rattles with the wind couples forcefully with the adrenaline surging through my blood unspent.  That fucking cherry.

The green light hits, and we’re moving.  I almost slip on that fuck’s vomit, that motherfucker.  I’m pushing is stumbling ass onwards, time to get the fuck out.  He barely makes it, and I’m glad I’m the pusher since he fucking forgets to hand the line off to the safety at the end.  I let him grab it, then walk into the abyss.

Sonnet #1

For the record, I had not undergone a recent breakup when I wrote this, nor have I done so now.

Sonnet #1

Should I compare you to a winter’s night

Frigid, harsh, ice-like and frozen

Impassionate, immobile in my sight

Regretting ever being chosen

Or should I compare you to the ocean

Vast and wide, a gulf of blue

Void of sights and of motion

That is what love was to you

A moonless sky held more love

An airless breath more life

A world of conflict held less strife

More filling was the void above

We’re now apart, and I am glad

Here’s to the love we never had.

She Was Cool, Chapter 1

     She was cool.  We met in the woods one summer, near the lake.  I had turned eight just before we moved out to the suburbs, and I was exploring my new surroundings.  I saw her skipping stones across the water, dressed in a manner my parents would have (and, indeed, did) found scandalous:  denim overalls, and literally nothing else.  Her hair was cut short, short enough that I first thought she was a boy.  She had something dangling from her lips that I couldn’t recognize at that distance.  She saw me out of the corner of her eye, gave a smile I’d never forget, and flicked her head back slightly, gesturing me towards her.  I was hesitant at first, but something compelled me onwards, driving my trepidation to the shadows.

                “Hey, wanna see if I can hit that little fucker there?” she asked, gesturing with her head once more to a bird perched on branch.

                I was more shocked at her language than at her suggestion, and I began to stammer an objection, but she cut me off.  “Just kidding, fuxxake!  The look on yer face.  Whas yer name?”

                “Na…Natalie.”

                “Rosalyn.  Call me Ros, though.  Want one?” she asked, producing a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her overalls.  I realized then that was what she had in her mouth smoldering between drags.  She took my reluctance for what it was, withdrawing the proffered pack to her pocket.  “It’s okay, hard enough to steal these from my pa without him catchin’ my ass and beatin’ it raw.”  She flung a stone sidearm, skipping it across the pond in four skips.  “You throw, Nat?”

                I timidly shook my head.  “’S’okay.  Wanna learn?”  She selected another stone from the ground, and held it up.  “See, ya gotta throw like this,” she demonstrated, with another 4-skip throw.  I picked up a stone, and she stopped me.  “Too round—like this one, see?”  She pulled one from the sand, smooth and flat, and placed it in my hand.  “Now, throw.”  My first effort wasn’t very good, just barely skipping once.  “Thas a start.  Get some practice in, you’ll be good at it.”

                She sat down on a large rock, and took a long drag from her cigarette.  “Nice dress.”  She shook the ash away, and flicked the butt into the lake.  “Yer parents know yer here wearin’ it?”  I was suddenly self-conscious of my clothing.  I never considered it to be “nice”, just average for me.  I nodded, but it was a lie.  My father was at work, and my mother was “napping” on the couch.  “Must be nice.”

                I sat down, on the grass at the edge of the sand.  The summer air held the silence well, and we just sat together looking across the lake. “Yer awright, Nat. You commin’ here tomorrow?”  she asked, standing up.  The sun was beginning to sink below the tree line, and the shade began to extend over the lake.  I smiled shyly at her.  She got up, and extended her hand to me.  I took it, and she pulled me up.  She gave that smile again, and sauntered off through the woods.  I stared after her until she disappeared in the trees before turning and heading home. 

                Someone unlike anyone else I had known had just entered my life, and it felt nice.  I got home just as the sky reddened, right before my mother woke from her “mommy nap”, brought upon by her truest friend gin.  My father wouldn’t be home from the city yet; he never was home during daylight hours, even during the summer and weekends, if he could help it.  I came in quietly, and closed the door silently behind me.  My mother stirred as I walked past the couch.  “Mwhat time is it, sweetie?  You hungry?  I’ll order us some pizza, okay?”  she groggily asked as she slowly righted herself to a seating position.

                “Uhh…8?  And pizza sounds good, Mommy.”

                “Why’d you let me nap so long?”

                “I made a friend.”

                “Oh?”  Her eyebrow arched as she picked up the phone.  “What’s her name?”

                “Rosalyn.”

                “What’s she like?”

                I thought for a second, aware of my mother’s sensibilities.  The smoking (especially at our age, goodness!), the manner of dress, the language—all things that would make my mother forbid her.  I settled on a word:  “She’s cool.”

Ode To Gin

The taste of Christmas in my mouth

A pleasant tingle in my feet

Gin you are the one for me

Straight you are a divine mystery

With lime a sonnet on my tongue

Gin you are the one for me

No other holds my fascination

Or gives me quite the stupor

Gin, gin, you’re too good for me

Villanelle 1

Hair of fire, eyes of ice

A woman of wild and wondrous flesh

To be with her too high a price

To gaze upon her visage twice

A view that is ever fresh

Of her hair of fire, eyes of ice

Her wiles are used to entice

Men of mortal do not stand

To be with her too high a price

Her form a master disguise

The greatest in all the land

Hair of fire, eyes of ice

Hers are enchanting lies

Told with malice and with pride

To be with her too high a price

The fools come and not the wise

She can be no mortal’s bride

Hair of fire, eyes of ice

To be with her too high a price