Ruby red slippers, rich with passionate love
for you, dear state, as I search your land,
grazing the colors, the life, and the mystery
of weeds choking gravestones, tangling the dead.
But you, dear state, yourself is so gentle.

Kansas, you stretch to ****** my curls;
to stroke my tender cheek with a
flock of sunflowers, blooming vivid gold and
a mizzle of musicality, too high, too loud for me.

Your screams of country overwhelm me.
Why you, dear state, never treat us to
tangles of concrete nor mazes of glass?

Kansas, your heaven gives me migraine.

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

I was three , no bigger than a west Texas tumbleweed . . . just three .

My mother hung the wash out on the line
and wiped the sweat off her brow with her hand .
Half an hour later the clothes were frozen .
Blue Norther . . . you can see them coming
a hundred miles away .
Wichita Falls , Texas . . . on the Wichita river .

Moses sat on a mountaintop gazing at the promised land but it was out of his hands now .
Leaning on his staff , the one that ate the Pharoh's two serpents . . . sssssssilently a single tear falls to the ground .

No fence could hold me . . . I was over or under in seconds .
A terror at three , a potential runaway .
The police knew me by first name  . . . just three .
The plains of North Texas , jackrabbits , coyotes , rattlesnakes and all . . . were home .

Forty years of desert wilderness ,
till the last man , woman , and child of Egyptian connection had died ,
. . . . . . was such a sacrifice made . . . . . .
Moses was the last to fall .
On a mountaintop of no consequences .

      "Run Rabbit Run"

Moon over in the East, 30 degrees west.
Rise, rise over the meridian line.
Sink below sea level.
Sun on Wichita, Kansas.

Bright red house under the pale clouded sky.
Daffodils on the windows,
Perking when the bees buzz by fluidly.
You let the roses fall between your fingers
Like water dripping from the faucet.
Seven degrees warmer
And we’ll burn in hell.

Lets go to Maine i hear it’s warmer at noon
And the dogs don’t prowl the streets.
Lets move to Iowa where the farms out number people.

You let your hair fall
Like a rock slide down your shoulders.
And you told me you felt a little under the weather.

She wants me to come to Kansas
Said she'd introduce me to the band

I asked her if she'd thought anymore
about letting me be her man

She sings a mean Bonnie Raitt
and she wails it from the heart
Gonna tell the truth about it
Honey, that's the hardest part

There's a white train a'comin
north from Wichita

I want to make it to Lecompton
before the snow begins to fall

I know just what she needs
when she's low and when it's dark

She needs that white train
running north from Wichita

I need to lay beside her
and listen to her heart
Gonna tell the truth about it
Honey, that's the hardest part.


r ~ 12/15/14

My ****.

She is hiding behind her projected frumpiness..
but when my young lovely takes off her glasses;

   Ah,    ****..

Those eyes are the reason men were given theirs.

Group facilitator is Christ incarnate..
                                      I am sure of it.

     "How well do you want to get, Paul"

I look over at her--
curled up on a chair pad..
hiding,  wondering
Looking down.. and then looking up at me
wondering if I'm gonna answer him;

      "Paul?  Are you there?"

I stare at her--  all alone,
biting the back of her fingers
fighting tears few in this world
would understand


There is roll-playing  in the group
using both action and Word
   to climb all over me
   and uncover me from where I hide.

He (my Jesus with an MA)
is staring at me,  inviting
I look back over at her
"I'm not leaving it, Dave"

              "Leaving what. Paul?"

"My brokenness..
its shattering of my soul"

He is staring at me, but begins to smile.
I look over at her,  and just know

  I will be with her forever

I've been all across Texas , and in return Texas has been all across me

Jim Bowie took a stand at the Alamo
When he had been ordered to retreat
He was perhaps protecting his hoard of gold found in some lost central Texas mine next to Mexicans and the twisting mesquite

Austin has a city limits
Full of out of state conceit

And it's a two day crossing
While it's snowing on one side
The other is summer heat
They grow sugar cane in the south
Up north winter wheat

My sister was born forsaken
In Wichita Falls complete
Black widow spiders , scorpions
The backyard full of rattlesnakes
That we used to beat

She was the only rose
that had the Yellow hair
And when she left Texas
She never went back there

I'll probably go visit my parents on Thanksgiving. I'd hate to miss the way my father nods at my mother's sisters and brothers then steps backward into the shadows until he becomes them. We're having the mess at my aunt's in Seminole. Dad always drives separately. He makes his escape without saying goodbye. Leaving my mother, my sister, my brother, and I to explain the hermit.

I never ride with him. Haven't rode in a car -- just him and I -- since high school. I would lay my head against passenger window. Listen to tires press gravel deeper into the red earth. He never asked my thoughts on God, though a minister. He never asked about my classes, though a former teacher. He never asked about girls, though my father. Glen Campbell, however, he'd talk about Glen Campbell. Claimed I always looked like him. When I was a child, he'd even part my hair sharply and take pictures. What a good, little Glen Campbell. If he took his eyes off the road long enough to hone in on a power line, "Wichita Lineman" inevitably became the topic of conversation. That song would delta off into "Rhinestone Cowboy," "Gentle on My Mind," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." Soon we'd be in town, knowing each other no better than before the departure. But we arrived. That's something.

To this day, no occasion could coerce me into parting my hair. With the exception of Mr. Campbell's funeral of course.

Tim will love your family. As I did. Still do. I thought he might only be a consolation, but looks like he's a trophy. Happy Thanksgiving, Ms. Anna Prine. I thank you. The fowl of the air thank you. The beasts of the field thank you. Tell them they're welcome.

I want to ask you if you've ever seen grass
Move like the ocean
(I don't have to ask if you've ever
Seen the ocean;
There's emotion in your eyes-
There's a motion to your eyes
That lets me know you have.)

I want to take you mountain climbing.
I will give you rings that turn
Your fingers green
And I will marvel at the the chemical reaction
That is your skin.

I will drive with you for hours
Until we find that sea of grass
Because we are not two drops in
The ocean but two blades
Grounded but enjoying the breeze,
Rooted but

I mean.

Want.

I want, not I will, because I won't,
Because I don't know your name, quite,
And you could have a nickel allergy
That I don't know about.
You are made of things
Like that,
I know:
Things that I don't know.

my lips burn at the taste of your name
my tongue dry, eyes red
i walk along the pavement in search for
the pieces you’ve left behind
with hopes to put them together somehow
they tell me that you’ve moved
a few weeks ago when i was out of town
at first i didn’t believe them
but i realised you had no reason to stay
i guess it’s best for the both of us
to finally move on
but i’m stuck in this very old picture of us

See here: I’ve been to Arkansas, and New Orleans at Mardi Gras. I’ve traveled south of Panama, did Dublin, Thames, and Wichita, I went, I saw, though full of awe, I couldn’t help but find such flaw in everything and all. An outlaw in my old rickshaw I draw my paths and highways, y’all, and always come back home. I’ve seen the summer, felt the fall, I love the fields and hate the mall I rob from Peter, pay back Paul and haven’t found the wherewithal to turn **** in on time. I do recall a cell phone call, and built up walls to break the fall, lose a little, lose it all, the breaking down, the overhaul, now take me up to Montreal, I’ll see you in the spring.

It was a normal two scorpion and one rattlesnake day at 112° in Wichita Falls , Texas .
Texas . . . they made Hell out of the good parts of Texas and the rest of the state just went there . Fortunately my parents only went there so my little sister could be born there . We left the great state of Texas and moved to the incestuous state of Alabama .
Where the impossible will always remain the same . And the possible will be banned , outlawed , and perpetuated behind countless barns , toolsheds , and the outhouse known as Montgomery , the State Capitol . Called the Heart of Dixie (it should be called ******* of Dixie and thank God for Mississippi , for they have wrest that title away from us . But we gave it a-hell-a-va-fight .)
We are a multicolored society . We have white (the pressence of all color) and black (the absence of all color). Which is strange now because the black people are called colored and the white people are called all kinds of blacked out names (usually on court documents).
Alabama is proud of it's educational system . We measure one's intelligence by how soon they leave the state for better opportunities . In Alabama an educated person is a four letter word , like ******* , or worse . Oops !
Let me see now . . . one , two , three , four . . . got to tale off my shoe  . . . five , six , seven . . . wait a minute . . . ******* ? . . . is that one or two words .

I rode in the black back seat
at the age of three
From Wichita to Selma
in this land where nothing comes free

Across Texas , Arkansas , Mississippi
under stars I dreamed
While a heartbeat
was ever following me

Strange the things we choose
to remember and recall
Are the things maybe trivial
But are another brick in the wall

I lived in Panama City
until I was twelve
Swam with sharks and rays
Fell in love but on it I won't dwell

I ran with wild mustangs
in the wilds of Spokane
Climbed up the Rockies
Trekked the snows in a winter wonderland

I slept in the desert under
the most gorgeous stars
Ate mushrooms and peyote
trying to figure out who I are

But there's no place
No place , like the one
Where you were born

No place
on earth
Can lead you away that's far

There's no where
Like the dirt running
through your veins

There's no place
like the place where
you got your name

What if you were poison. This room was a gurney. My parents garage was a time machine. My drawers were a piece of unwritten elementary homework. My bed was a stalemated chess game. Every pair of shoes I've ever worn is one of the beaches I never went swimming at. My laundry were soldier's garbs. I'm living in four minute increments. Two yellow chairs are an empty wine cellar. Two doorknobs an ancient battle field. I have green pants and they might be the entire state of Florida. My book shelf is a poem by Keats, and the books on it are The Village Green. This printer is actually an English love affair. The paper inside of it a pasture, a meadow, and even parts of a rill but not the water in it. I see words scribbled in notebooks and they don't produce melodies. This is a heavy place to use candles. These are the trousers I wear when no one is watching me. Three DVD's tell a story, but no one listens to stories anymore. A carton of cigarettes is a hospital full of people working, a metaphor that doesn't need to be made but should instead be written down. Chocolate bars are all around us, better to keep them quiet. My childhood is drifting off to sleep in a pair of gray sweatpants and a white crew neck t-shirt. Hush Hush. A god hidden inside a scrap of prose that always wanted to hide away but never could. Here are the limbs I'm beating myself to death with. Here are the headaches that I rubbed from your neck; the apple juice and animal crackers that brought both of us back to life, the Wichita suitcase filled with field grains and soy that only made your Grandfather rich. I'm bruise-bent on discussing the never ending. I've filled my head with the status of ritual, I've crossed my legs and enriched my mind with dozens of proverbs, adverbs, and ad lib; nothing that ever once was could be, and nothing that has been could ever be as easy again. Each hill top is a summit worth standing upon. Every picture is a place worth returning to. If every sentence structure and bomb of the mouth was the furnace heating an article at the end of a sentence, or the sentiment with which to generate a sonnet, then mornings could be the clusters to every ache and evolving vowel. Each and every worry would be a giant and the juggernaut which knocked him down. Maybe your ****** is a tooth brush. Maybe mine is just ******. Maybe every inch of my body is made up of locks and caveats. I could retreat to the wilderness, a place where the trees are ornaments to the sky, and the stars are just the songs we don't hear. Heat is a conundrum, the water and the air too. We're longing our way to infinity, chancing ourselves by adhering to dross and sinching our hearts of blood. What if Chicago was the biggest love story of all and I was just not observant enough to notice. I've gone down in three hundred airplanes. What if worry was the tea I declined, heartache the questions I didn't ask and the wishes I never answered. What if your mother was also poison, your sister the true love I unrequitted, your brothers the Roman soldiers which saved us all. I long to be close to the ocean, I retch and thrash, drawing shivers up and down my spine. Here are the shadows aplenty. The heaviest of the hours that save on us like we were up from zero, still and counting on ourselves. These are the lines that I'm petting heavily, washing up and down, left to right, horrific nightmares that come and go as they please. All is left to be said again. Castes are bids meant to be said again. I've been taught to live well even as a quiet mess, to be white while the day's break is still to come. What if leather was the only way I knew how to fly. Bubblebaths the only luxuries I never settled. Your kitchen the last place I felt fully loved. Here is where I reappear. Countries that I've traveled to in languages I taught myself to speak. Wit the wild bunch of berries I crushed into my own craft cocktails. I'm quaffing and I'm trapping. I'm riddled with night and I still can't stand up straight. This is the last place I remember being. Turning over in my gravest stare, and gazing long into the never ending stereotype of my merchant birth and stately hide. This may be the song that sets my tone. This might be the song that describes me best. Never published or punctuated. Always thriving in bated breaths. Always living just an inch from the soon. Here where the moon men trip and fall. Here where the pronouns leave every thing left unsaid.

broad left side

                  left me wandering


                 Broad Street


                                  in the middle of the day.

Into the depths of untold depravity,
a perfect creation had fallen away;
unimagined grace poured out from our God above -
As His Hand of wrath was firmly stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill...
subtly calls for the World's attention.

Since the dawn of everlasting time,
our Savior awaited His appointed day;
despite humanity's race to certain doom -
His Hand of wrath was intentionally stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill...
continues to demonstrate His gift of Salvation.

The twinkling stars danced across the midnight blue
as songs arose from the angelic array;
quietly the Messianic babe in a manger lay -
As His Hand of wrath was lovingly stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill...
serves as a testament of Love's perfection.

A carpenter's son? He's just a man!
His godly claim on earth displayed
had believers searching for purest faith -
His Hand of wrath was securely stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill...
reminds that our debt was paid for sin's violation.

In the face of false accusations,
Christ held His tongue to Pilate's dismay,
for God's plan played out for all to see -
As His Hand of wrath was purposely stayed.

The Cross, stark and still, standing upon a naked hill...
is a backdrop for a risen Lord calling us with adoration.





Author Notes:

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://www.squidoo.com/book-isbn-1419650513/

This is a collaboration piece with Mr. Jeffrey Jordan of Wichita Falls, Texas.

500 miles to wichita from here. that's a long way to walk
especially in this hot rain
500 miles means 500 long hours from any kind of love, which means i'll swallow up the whole field before i fill up anyway with sweet sorrow (i move slowly).
some lover who will swing from the trees with me
feed me rock candy and butter cookies, drowning the city fish in the lake
we go to church on sundays now, not just for christmas. my ******* are pink how he likes them and we go swimming whenever we want
not just on sundays
everything is green in kansas, warm and sweeter than molasses.
some lover who is going to sing this to me will meet me in the pasture where we slaughter the pigs and the chickens
making melodies from the police sirens
we can't stand cold water, now
and we can't see in the rain
when we're here in wichita
no longer so far away.

In the third grade,
I was diagnosed with
Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
My teachers thought I was lazy and
my parents thought I was under stimulated.
I just thought I was having more fun doodling
and drawing than paying attention in class.
But the school suggested that I see a children’s psychiatrist,
so my parents took me to one in Wichita.
He prescribed me experimental pills and drugs,
but all they did was make me unstable and depressed.
My parents stopped giving me my medicine
and I went back to normal…
Well, aside from the fifty plus pounds I had
put on as a side effect of the drugs.

i moved my son from wichita
to lucas to protect him
and keep him safe from violence
and i took tai chi
and yoga classes from the murderer's mom
in order to have more serenity in my life
and i was scared for years that my son ran away
because he hated me, now i am sad that
my son hadn't ran away because he hated me

When I was younger I experienced emetophobia, an intense fear of *****. I would sit and wonder to myself, “What if I threw up right now?” and sent myself into a spinning cycle of worry, making me feel perpetually nauseous and no doubt making the situation worse overall. During one of my routine check ups at my pediatrician, I worked up the courage to ask my doctor about it. I told her I felt nauseous almost constantly and I’m terrified of throwing up. She told me that fear can be a powerful thing. I was probably just experiencing anxiety that I caused myself. A self-fulfilling prophecy almost.
Both of my wonderful parents have Multiple Sclerosis. I can’t help but wonder if somehow it’s part of a bigger plan. The truth of the matter is, I have nightmares about it. Will I get sick? How will I work a normal job? Will I still be able to pay my bills? Will I be cursed with this setback before my life has really even begun?
I’ve been sick the past couple days. Nausea, physical weakness, tingles in my legs and hands, shaking fingers and a crazy case of the spins. My logical side tells me it’s probably nothing. A vitamin imbalance or my dosage of Lithium is too high. This has only happened once before and it went away in a few days. Regardless of how many times I try to reassure myself, I keep jumping back to the same basic anxiety that fueled my fear of vomiting. The brain’s ability to persuade is a powerful thing. Is it possible my anxiety is just manifesting itself? Is that even possible? I’ve heard of cases where the body mimics symptoms of pregnancy, down to the swollen belly and milk production. If the body is capable of tricking someone into thinking they’re creating life, what makes me think this misery I’m going through now isn’t just some cruel trick my brain is playing on me? Is it really worth spending a thousand bucks I don’t have just to find out I’m just an anxious person? I already knew that.
I’m finding myself at a crossroads here. My new life in Wichita Falls isn’t all I thought it would be. I’ve made no friends, I’m not doing well at work. The only thing I have going for me is my GPA, and I’m scared that if this anxiety keeps up, I won’t even have that. Here I am, rambling to a Google document that can’t do anything to fix me. Am I losing it? Am I just too deep into my own head? I have a tendency to sabotage myself out of success due to fear of failure. Maybe that’s what’s going on.  
If there really is something going on with my health, I’m not sure how I’ll tackle that mentally. It’s like my worst fears are coming to life in front of me. I’m far away from the people that care about me and it seems as though I’m headed toward the worst possible scenario I had cooked up in my head before moving here. I’m not sure if people really do dislike me or if I’m just so socially anxious that I’ve convinced myself to expect the worst. There are some days I think about giving up and moving back home, but I don’t want to be seen as the girl who chickened out of independence because she wasn’t cut out for the success she sought after. I’m scared of failing, but even more so of disappointing those around me. Perhaps I’m scared of not being as good as everyone thinks I am. I don’t know.
If anyone has any advice, that would be highly appreciated.

It is painful in the outback-
those wheat necks
overreaching, wait
a sharp scythe and
an ironic row.

Robin sky summarizes the
warped encapsulation
of cow guts cooling down
in a ridiculous heat.

The butterfly flowers genuflect
toward winds freight
in even temperament.
It's another country day
fostering deference to
whatever comes that may.

Sara Fielder © June 2018

A ride today in Des Moines
that appraise law and counteract
any that country may enact
where Wichita lineman forthwith

and mackinaw shall really embellish
furthermore with Granny Smith
awhile down stream on a riverboat
that foregoing is never behind

where a river is always wide
and bourgeois with a paddle wheel stride
why his atropine smile
reach the delta with such desire
and let him take the home route

in an abode of parish shanty
where river dance makes day long  
a simple beast, a man

with chinchilla wrap round his neck
that sweep her off flourishing deck
these stratospheric ideals now  
for sovereign witness entail campaign.

GLEN CAMPBELL HAS PASSED AWAY
HE WAS THE RHINESTONE COWBOY
HE HAD STYLE CHARACTER AND WIT
BUT MOST OF ALL TRUE GRIT  



I WILL MEET YOU AT BONAPARTE'S RETREAT
I AM THE WICHITA LINEMAN
HIS MUSIC WILL STAY IN OUR HEART
BECAUSE ALL HIS SONGS WE LIKED THEM



THERE ARE SINGERS IN THE WORLD AND THEN
SUPERSTARS THAT JUST PASS BY
BUT TOO LOSE GLEN CAMPBELL
MAKES MY BEATING HEART CRY


A TRUE MUSIC LEGEND

…ah um
quit the pandering and
spin a pipe’s worth of Mingus or
maybe Baker or Parker
(They know how to Say What You're Livin'
a guide to the soul of the sleep
or talkin' like a train on the brink of de-
railing for 30 miles
       but makes it safely to Wichita as planned.)
3:30AM it’s junkies for some kinda animal fix w/
old hip & old ****** tastebuds up
this late, or early I’m trying to re-
   -lapse here;
mechanism too open a-
live nerve
          for ravenous divinations &
spirited conquest(s)

I pray not to other gods but
move on the winds that blow dust in my eyes
let my language blur in-
between
the lines; surgically
to let me
bleed it out
        not betray my civility
not let my opinion
        betray my humility
not let my privileges
in certain contexts negate
my perspective
No I don’t pick between sides that’s where you
over
&
oversimplified
implied a divide
w/ language bastardized
& sanitized;

Ain’t a justice I could speak that would last a sentence
in any good book of his/or/hers who slime
when wet, gush & *****, cold statues
in busy-international-style-hotel-lobbies
silk’d swollen appendages & curly greasy-
    -haired oven spread
                               for POWER, power brunch boardroom glory
gory foreplay mocking dirtypoor magnolia seed, plucking peony petal
like a Shrink in shadow of a pedigree now
a judge, small & snide in righteous court-dress for play-
            time.

...Brothers & Sisters

(they) drink my fluid’s ******
-You, eat the will
of my friend the human pet
Slither your plasmic bones in fetal mix
unclaimed foundlings
        pink genitalias
go you writhe on-top uh i ou-
        -r taxdollars
fossilized uh programmed sickness squirm
in maggotmouthed machinations for
the egg of uh saint in lieu of true hue
Them Birds
          (onna island) of parasites;
crass utensil in aid your digestible
stasis-


You Sheep Boy
You? Sheep Boy
You, Sheep Boy?
You! Sheep Boy!
You Sheep! Boy felt the transformation
          when you were told. How’d it feel?
I lost my madness when I let myself die
inna only dream If I had a voice
half as clever as Joyce…
If I had a voice, it’d make-a disassociated rant
into a plea for sanity! it be a salt-stained sailor up
against his Nature to caress a braindead angry sea into
a wise & benevolent guide;

Not uh god I know
gave me a compelling answer not uh one
an I wish they had b’
         cause I don’t always feel so well
I could use another crutch…
Not uh one
head talking on my TV
can be-hold the spectrum to apply
just one, single colour, in your carnation’s eye
If it was so simple how come uh monkey can’t do it?
Ain’t uh monkey I know
         that-a keep its spine upright
that
ain’t gotta taste for its own kind
You’re right
but so is he right she right we will fight
left        right
up
down
uptown downtown outtatown
North South East West
babble on O babble on everywhere
ah um do please hit your marks
         & follow the rhythm
       of the next body over;
Pass around worn-out clichés uh penny given
you put 2 of them to-
gether
we call that uh valid opinion
where I’m from;
Not uh man I know mean what he say
and
sometimes not uh thought in
my brain make any of those
Words
not any of my
Words
mean anything not even the noise they produce
not like Mingus’ fingers talkin’ on that bass.

Timeless fashion is part of Debbie Hawkins seasonal home decor.

When the Etcetera collection arrives, her living and dining rooms become showrooms, a place where by appointment women can choose classic fashion, well made from high end fabrics, "things you turn to for years."

"We bridge the gap with versatile selections," said Hawkins, an Etcetera sales consultant. "Pieces that bring something special to a wardrobe."

The unique, sell-from-home business us part of the Carlisle Etcetera trademark, a New York based brand that offers women an opportunity to become entrepreneurs. Consultant/stylists are trained to guide fashion choices.

"I had raised my kids and wanted to do something interesting," Hawkins said, "Etcetera came out at the top of the list. I could work at my own pace and hours."

Four times a year Hawkins attends a fashion show, where she and 100 other consultants have a chance to meet designers, look at quality fabrics and learn about techniques used to make the Etcetera collections.

Ordering clothes online isn't the same.

"Pictures don't translate to what we have seen before the trunk show boxes arrive," said Hawkins. "We receive upward of 300 items. We talk with each customer and they get to see in person what is available."

Clients are either referred to Etcetera stylists by friends or through the www.etcetera.com website. They are directed to the consultant closest to them; some of Hawkins' customers drive to Wichita Falls from Oklahoma.

A few have a hard time committing to an Etcetera trunk show because "they feel a little intimidated."

"Once they see it's a very relaxed environment it's much easier," Hawkins explained.

Two appointments are made with each customer, one to check their existing wardrobe for what may work well with Etcetera selections and another to try on what they've picked. Hawkins adapted a bedroom as a dressing room.

"One of the biggest pluses is knowing our customers so well," said Melissa Prigmore, Hawkins' associate assistant. "They know they won't be wearing duplicates of what they've seen at Lord and Taylor."

According to Hawkins, Etcetera's high quality skirts, trousers, blouses, jackets, coats and accessories are priced in the "Neimans and Nordstrom range."

"These are the kind of clothes you don't bury in the back of the closet and never see after the first wear," Hawkins pointed out. "Comfortable style and fabric, they get brought out every season."

Clients can also turn to Hawkins and Prigmore for advice on style, color and fit.

"I'm not good at editing myself on fashion decisions," said Hawkins. "It's nice to have someone else tell you what they think."Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2016 | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses