July in Oktober: Old songs, New Songs-- 7/10

The second song of my first FAWM is important to me. It was also my first FAWMing collab, since Steffan Pitzel dug it so, he made a really great song of it.

The tune, a sort of jazzy snazzy thing, I wrote another song to, since Steffan's slow, bluesy melody had stuck in my mind. I cannot find the full lyric anywhere, so it may get posted later in the month.


The other song posted is older yet, from the summer of 1996. I'll explain when you get there.

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A friend once told me that the last verse wasn't as strong as the others. I agreed, at first, and then after listening to some of my favorite songs by other artists, and this again, I realized that wasn't so: bringing it back to a personal level, makes it stronger, makes it not-preachy. And anyone that has fought for inclusion in a rigid, backward system knows just what it means. This may be the only song ever to get a compliment of: "You had me at 'bullet-proof bible'." In fact, it better be. I wrote that line!


Stronger Than Dogma


drinking my night down
in a local bar, heard a good friend saying,
"They've gone too far. Get yourself a rifle,
and a bulletproof bible.
It could be any day now, that They start the last war."

but i say, you've got to be
stronger than dogma
for the fear to fly--
deeper than the redness
in a kamikaze's eye
to keep afloat, you've got to note the light pollution in the sky,
and move on...

i don't hand out sunshine
but i was told
nastiness echoes in a
hollowed-out soul
if you'd stand for freedom,
please don't stand on my head;
if your faith could move mountains,
let it move your heart instead

you've got to be
stronger than dogma
for your fears to fly
you've got to be
deeper than the redness
in a kamikaze's eye
to keep afloat, you've got to note the evolution of the sky
and move on...

working through the classics
in my college groove
i squeezed on the Canon
but it wouldn't move
i heard, the Forms and Names are sacred
they'll never be dispersed
they may not be the only choice
but they stick because they're first...

you've got to be
stronger than dogma
for your fears to die
you've got to be
deeper than the redness in a drunken poet's eye
to keep afloat, you've got to tote up imperfections with a sigh, and move
on...



© 2009 by Mari Kozlowski

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 My oldest sister, Lynne, died of untreated cancer in April, 1996. I was living in Indianapolis at the time, and so did not have the support system of my family (or my band) here in Buffalo to help me get through. Grief was a slow-growth thing for me, then; it was easier at first, and got worse over the next few years. I had no idea that would happen; I was dealing with the death of a long love, also, living in the corpse of the relationship, in a strange new state.

 When I wrote this, I thought I had a good understanding of death, but I had no understanding of how it would soon overwhelm me. But I had some friendship, some will to heal, some hope. I was staying at a friend's wonderful, relaxing home in Buffalo in late June, early July; and it had stormed the night before. As I sat on my friend's white porch, looking out at the fresh, relieved morning, all my feelings came together and I quickly sang and wrote these words, refining them, paring away any excess.

An hour or two later, I sang them to bandmate Joe Todaro (we were called Diamond Tribe, then) on my way to our violinist's apt. for a rehearsal. Joe had set up over half a dozen gigs for the two week+ period of my visit, and we were rehearsing and/or performing just about everyday. In the car, he thought up the chords for the song. When we arrived at Mary Marciniak's place, he played it for us, and I loved it. It was perfect. Mary felt that strings might overpower the delicate tune, so she tried to come up with a flute part instead-- she could play about 10 instruments. I heard where the part should be, showed her, and she immediately played and expanded on it. We added a partial harmony, and performed it that night at our gig.

 My fondness for this song was such that I put it into a movie soundtrack, on a tape, and in two compilations. We still perform it, doing it with a little country shine here, pure and folk-choral there.

 Still one of my very favorite works.




The Blossom Song


Oh, come to me
When the summer is a storm
And the honey is ready
And the opening's warm

We'll lay in the green
We'll lay in the green
We'll lay in the green
Till the song calls us home

Will you come to me?
When the summer is a storm
And the honey is ready
And the opening's warm

We'll lay in the green
We'll lay in the green
We'll lay in the green
Till the song calls us home

We'll feed the blossoming
And blow our voices to the air
They'll catch our sweetness, then
They'll send it on and on, and on

And we'll lay in the green
We'll lay in the green
We'll lay in the green

Till the song calls us home
Till the song calls us home
Till the song calls us home


© 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001 by Mari Kozlowski & Joe Todaro

July in Oktober: Old Songs, New Songs-- 7/4

 Part of me wants to say, hey, I'll celebrate Independence Day when the friggin' Patriot Act is repealed. Part of me is a sucker for higher ideals... I was born a Pisces, but close to the cusp of Aquarius, those patrons of lofty cause (let's NOT say lost cause, here).

 I refuse to give it up, but I'm not grilling anything, you hear?

 As I eat my politcially incorrect, Monsanto-generated new Belvita breakfast cookies, (sustained energy!) I offer a pair of energetic songs I wrote during the same week a couple summers ago.


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 Mostly I hate this sweaty, awful season. The warm weather in my area has changed, becoming too warm more of the time, and I moved back here, to Buffalo, for the coolness. Too late! But certain days take the edge off, with their ripe loveliness.This came from that experience. It's sung to a sprightly, quick guitar lick with bits of flute to "bird it up."

The Freshness of the Morning

The morning sun makes me forget

What I’m supposed to do today

The morning sun makes me forget

That I don’t much like Summer

The morning sun in early Autumn

Green-gold waving blue-eyed baby

The morning sun makes me feel fuller

With a tiny breeze across my chin

Winter is moving up the queue

Low skies and shortened afternoons

But out here in my slice of blue

I cannot see it coming

The days have been too hot and tense

The air too moist, the heat immense

The crows were sliding off the fence

But I forgive it all

(instrumental with turtle flute)

The morning sun makes me think 

Hopeful dippy thoughts about world peace

The morning sun makes me think I

Could really write that one great novel

The morning sun in early Autumn

Softly tuning up the sky

The morning sun has songs

In passing glints along the shifting leaves

The days have been too hot and tense

The air too moist, the heat immense

The crows were sliding off the fence

But I forgive it all

The morning sun makes me embrace

What I’m supposed to do today

The morning sun is in my face

 And I am fresher for it 

© 2010 by Mari Kozlowski

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I'm not sure what this song was even called, (might have been The Whole Thing) and can't find the archived notes. But it speaks for itself; my answer to that short-term patriotism that says love it or leave it, and means, pretend there's no flaw or get out.

And of course, this does so in a bang-end country guitar anthem style-- what else? It's got a great hooky chorus that rings.

Some say there’s only one kind of patriot here

Some are saying there’s only one way to believe

Some scorn the hopefuls who been scraping at the doors

That always used to be open

Some say if you see a flaw, you oughta leave

But those people got it wrong, ‘cause

I believe in America, oh yeah

In her sickness and in health

I believe in America, oh yeah

As strong as I believe in myself

I was made in America, and I bear the mark of my maker for sure

I believe in America-- her mind’s a little scattered but her heart is pure

I was raised to accept a new idea, if it made sense

I was raised to accept another’s needs

I was raised in a place where people weren’t afraid to help a stranger

At the side of the road

I was raised in a land of word as deed

I won’t concede that

I believe in America, oh yeah

In her sickness and in health

I believe in America, oh yeah

As strong as I believe in myself

I was made in America, and I bear the mark of my maker for sure

I believe in America-- her body may be tattered but her thoughts are pure

 (bridge)

I won’t lie, I don’t love to watch a burning flag

But I’ll defend with every breath the principle that symbol embodies

As it falls to ash

I can’t hide my pride at the true freedom the act implies

Without that trust, the fabric is just a body bag

So let the smoke fill the sky

I believe in America, oh yeah

In her sickness and in health

I believe in America, oh yeah

As strong as I believe in myself

I was made in America, and I bear the mark of my maker for sure

I believe in America-- her body may be tattered but her thoughts are pure

And I believe that the founding parents put in words

Truths they couldn’t fit into their lives

I believe that interpretation is good

And a judgment looks better through compassionate eyes

I believe we can own our mistakes and it won’t destroy our might

What good is a strong arm

If it doesn’t help us separate our wrong from our right?

I believe in America, oh yeah

In her sickness and in health

I believe in America, oh yeah

As strong as I believe in myself

I was made in America, and I bear the mark of my maker for sure

With a natural taste for personal responsibility; the acts may be imperfect but the ideals

Pure…

I believe in America, oh yeah

Not ashamed in her sickness or her health

I believe in America, oh yeah

As strong as I believe in myself

You can come to America, and still belong, wherever you’re from

If you believe in America, oh yeah

Well, the work of true freedom has just begun…

© 2010 by Mari Kozlowski

July in Oktober: Old Songs, New Songs-- 7/3

Here's the first new song of the season. I've written about weather disasters before, but from a different POV. Here's hoping our friends in Colorado, and other afflicted areas, are all safe, and suffer little loss.



The Next Hot Day

grey-green scent of rain
drifting from the pane
slides over my shoulder
moves in curious waves
-------------------------
relief is coming
hear the twitching in the breeze
relief is coming
in motes of some lost sea
--------------------------
tense and eager stems
slurry down crude streams
peeling off the messages
baked onto their skin
-----------------------------
relief is coming
see the scorched and haggard smile
relief is coming
for too short a while
-----------------------
relief is coming
hear the twitching of the breeze
relief is coming
but not for free


© 2012 by Mari Kozlowski

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Written in FAWM 2010, this was influenced by the experience of my next door neighbors-- inspired by, but not truly about them. Tough moments most of us will have to live through. I can't find the recording I made, though....


Endless

for the fourth time
she had seen him
steal a hard breath
when he thought her head was turned away

they were only in their 60's
time to travel
time to explore the world
they'd been too busy for

their 3 children lived in cities
far from the village
they were born in

and the call to hear
their father's final word
was a solid inconvenience

she stood outside
watching the oldest try
a pretense of cheer
covering impatience

the idea was put forth at the funeral
You know, Mom, someone really should
take care of you
this place is clean and nice, i stopped
there on the way in
we should take a guided tour, soon
soon

her memory is a mirror now
she sees just what she did
and wishes she could
take some back
but she moves along
as he urged her
in the moment
when they separated
endlessly
 endlessly


© 2010 by Mari Kozlowski

July in Oktober: Old Songs, New Songs, 7/ 2

Sometimes you can write a song that makes you wonder how you ever gathered the fine, golden threads together: it feels like divine inspiration when it comes, and yet if you know yourself well, you can trace the footprints of your weird mind backwards (or sideways) to the source/s.

These two songs are like that, in their different ways. The first came in a burst of inspiration during a rehearsal with my long-time songwriting partner less than a month after my first FAWM, the second during a prolonged stretch of songwriting in the airy summer challenge of the 50/90.

I hope one, or both, speak to you.

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 This song was written soon after President Obama took office. J. and I, who've worked together musically since the early 90's, were having a band rehearsal that March, when he showed me one of his new guitar riffs. I asked him to play it again, over and over, and in a short stint of frenetic transcribing, the lyric was done. We refined it that very week, and have performed it here and there since; but it's still fresh for us, and barely exposed. Let's face it, songs by Transcendental Folk bands in Buffalo, NY, rarely make it past our own suburbs.

 It's called Soldier Song, and reflects my complicated feelings about armed forces-- grateful for what they give, unhappy with them being called to give it. It is topical, but still relevant, I hope. It was a call to better action, and to thought, and a lashing out against idiocies like The Patriot Act. My ambivalence about the war itself, too, is caught here.

 It doesn't just mean standard soldiers, either. Does that come through? I was thinking, in the back bedrooms of my mind, of the mother who had demonstrated against the war in front of the White House after her son was killed in action. Her bold, passionate actions moved me. So did the young soldier that left the war, refusing to go back due to matters of conscience.

With all of these ingredients bubbling around below the surface, the song could have become a mess, scattered in focus; instead the flow was there, right on. It's a song I love to sing around Independence Day.

As in many songs, the impressions cast from the imagery are as important as the rational details of each line-- parts that don't make logical sense, you know?



Soldier Song

The dirt beneath your eyes

In the melting of your life

Gathers in the desert

Of freedoms left behind--

We are trying

To stand and fight

For the prevailing

Of cooler, clearer minds

The shadow of the child

Her dead son used to be

Plays among the ruins

Of cracked democracy--

We are trying

To set it right

In the unveiling

Of cooler, clearer minds

The dirt beneath your eyes

Doesn’t shade you from the blast

Of high ideals that couldn’t last--

You are dying

In generosity

Patching up the walls

Of cracked democracy

Patching up the walls

Of cracked democracy

Patching up the walls

Of cracked democracy

© 2009 by Joe Todaro & Mari Kozlowski

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12 years or so ago, I took a lit/writing class called Poetry of the Occult. Great class, sort of co-taught by Blakean scholar Jim Watt and the amazing poetry teacher and poet Fran Quinn. It was a night class, near the end of the week, which I found made for more serious classmates; and when you're in college during your thirties, you want to be in class with other people that are dying to be there, too.

 We focused heavily on Blake, and at some point, the whole class was told we would each have to pick one of the Songs of Innocence & Experience, that were we working through then, and sing it that night, acapella, in front of the rest. Not my cup of jasmine tea!

Unlike my classmates, I was a trained vocalist, and a performing songwriter at the time; but I also had a policy of not performing unless prepared. It can make you look bad.

But there was no choice, that night. I picked a song at random, went through the phrasing in my head, and when my turn came, shocked the shit out of the entire class (and probably the surrounding classrooms, due to my volume) by singing a nearly operatic, pretty and high melody to Ah, Sunflower:


Ah Sunflower

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun:

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow

Arise from their graves and aspire

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

 
--William Blake


 I'd been nervous, but it was an easy melody to write, and came out perfectly. The class was stone silent for a minute, staring at me, and then Jim said something like "Well, that raises the ante," or some such. Then, "Who's next?" A brave girl with not much vocal ability plowed through hers, and got a good response. After the class, people surrounded me, asking questions and giving compliments and so on.

 I always loved that song of Blake's, and one soft afternoon during a songwriting marathon, I accidentally began paying tribute to it. It expanded, the meanings shifted, and instead of a rumination on life eternal, it became more of meditation on lost youth and beauty, framed in a sort of fairy-tale, ripe with garden metaphor. It's full of memories, for me, and no one else has ever heard it, yet.

DEFLOWERING

Ahh, Sunflower, why you bother reaching?

Don't you know the squirrel prince is stalking you?
He seeks your tender middle
Your seeds will never harden--
Your children will be squirrels that eat your cousins

Lemon petals gild the grass, now
Your bright face is bowed beneath the weight
Afternoon is your last moment
To count out steps to the sun

Ahh, Sunflower, the bee and bird did love you
In their flittered ways to rile you
Turning your flushed virgin looks towards the ground
Was almost done without violence

Lemon petals gild the grass, now
Your face is bowed to share the guilt
This afternoon is your last moment
To count steps to the sun
To count out steps to the sun

Ahh, Sunflower, have pity on your suitors
The pale youth in his watered down morality
Small and scratching wanderers who never asked your name
The rushing breeze that took your scent for his own consolation

All they wanted was your freshness

And your budded smile

You wished
You wished for
Sweet gold-kissed air
Dropping lamentations while the sun was in your hair

Ahh, Sunflower, why you bother reaching?
All that made you beautiful is gone
Spilled into the bed you made soft with expectation
Savored
By friends and strangers

Ahh, Sunflower
Don't linger out of your season

© 2010 by Mari Kozlowski 

July in Oktober: Old Songs, New Songs, 7/1

 Working on true stories here last month was both liberating, and harrowing. I came to it from a place of having many stressful incidents happen in a row, in my personal and family life. It seemed as if everyone around me was having their lives explode at the same time, and coping with it all put me in the odd mood to spill private truths I've never written about as openly before. I had no idea they would be interesting to others, but as some stories were, I worked to put more out. Only, the weirdness continued, and a few tales are left unfinished, in draft on Blogger. They may appear next June, or another time, but for now I'm done with true stories.

 For several years, July has been a period of increased songwriting for me, as I habitually attempt to nail the challenge of the 50/90-- that is, 50 songs in 90 days, an offshoot of February Album Writing Month, (FAWM) when the challenge is 14 songs in (the usual) 28 days of February.  (Which was an offshoot of NaNoWriMo, of course, and a great one). For a couple years, I've done the challenge twice simulaneously, on two author pages.

 The 50/90 begins on July 4th, and the energy at the official website is pulsing right now. People have talked about what they'll be trying for, style or genre-wise, or with new instruments. Pre-challenge challenges get thrown down and met, but mostly we are all simmering, waiting for the time to let flow our bottled up energy and write some new songs as fast as we can.

After that initial spurt, the feeling in the forums calms down, and people settle in. There's less pressure than February, although it's a greater undertaking. There's also less listening to other people as the months go by-- well, most of us check out just as many or more songs, but as each musician is building a list of fifty, you can't expect your entire catalog of songs to get equal attention.

 And I don't, especially as, for technical reasons mostly, I have posted only lyrics to any of my songs. You have to read them, not hear them, unless another musician takes a fancy to some of them and puts up a collaboration with me. That happens frequently, but still-- most of my songs must be read, even though they are always, always written with a full melody line, (and usually get a quick vocal sketch recorded, so I won't forget the heart of my songs). The upshot of this is, most of my favorite songs, the best songs I feel I have ever written, haven't often been seen or heard by more than one or two people, max. And because my singing and writing skills far outclass my instrumental powers, they may never be properly heard.

 It kills me.

 I understand that my personal favorites may be too esoteric, wordy or poetic for the average reader. I've heard that some feel they don't scan well-- that they wouldn't fit in a proper musical phrase. But most people that write songs are more creative and fluid as musicians than they are as singers. They have a wider, more complex grasp of styles with a guitar or piano, than with their voice. They are usually guitarists first, writing from a different place. And I will never be able to play that well, play the deep layering of notes I hear when I write.

 My lyrics sing perfectly, if you have at least my level of vocal skill, and don't think in 4/4 rhythm. They are sometimes challenging to sing. But they work. I know, I sing as I write them. It shapes the phrases, the chorus, the bridge, the verse. If you don't think it works, you're not hearing it right.

 So for July, at least, I'll be sharing old and newer lyrics, all previously published and copywritten, all recorded somewhere, if not as well as they deserve; they definitely deserve to be seen.

 I'll include tidbits of the original intros, where I have them, that explain part of where the songs come from. I can add on a bit about the process that led to a particular song. But intros and such never explain as much as people take from them. You have to let lyrics explain themselves like poetry; they have internal references, they use metaphor, they may swim around the main subject, or use a red herring before springing out to surprise you. They are never straight up, even when they are.

 Here are a couple of 2, 3 year old songs to start with. I hope you'll enjoy them, however they sound to you.

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21. The Secret Life of Snow**

2009-08-18 @ 05:09pm
tags: choral cold-thought confessional canticle

"It's been a loathesome level of hot-n-humid for days so this is where my mind went today. Sort of a wish, or a self-induced trance toward a cooler mental place. Getting it from inside the myth of no-two-alike."

--Note: written years before Kate's 50 Words for Snow.

**This was a popular enough lyric that two musical friends put up differing collabs of it-- one, by Tim Fatchen, was intrumental (thus far) and is on his wonderful CD, Dark Sparkles. I would love to have him meld his version, and my version, sometime. The other, by my Irish bud Flav, was a lovely guitar version sung with his typical, understated, gravely merry approach.
The thing is-- it's a good song, still.


Lyrics

As the mask of cold begins
To cover anxious cheeks and chins
The startled hearts of snowflakes
Lose their homes...

For they must freeze out on their own, each one
Divided and alone
Gone from
The cool lake of air that bore them
To change and make the crystal
Solitary art that is
The secret life of snow

A quiet, purist freefall jump
They cannot choose
Or slow

The prism-layered secret life of snow

As they lay in wind-moved hills
Building on soft strength of will
And learning they are
Sisters of the skies

Comes the surprise; of giving up the flight
The grounding of their lightness, they must begin
To meld and lose solitude
Shapely singles dripping to a coarsely molded form
Hardened from their own
A glancing masterpiece that is
The secret life of snow

Insensible persuasive union falls
Beneath the shovel, pick and plow
A bitter glinting beauty's end
They cannot help but know

The finely brutal secret life of snow


© 2009 by Mari Kozlowski

**This was a popular enough lyric that two musical friends put up differeing versions of it-- one, by Tim Fatchen, was intrumental (thus far) and is on his wonderful CD, Dark Sparkles. I would love to have him meld his version, and my version, sometime. The other, by my Irish bud Flav, was a lovely guitar version sung with his typical, understated, gravely merry approach.
The thing is-- it's a good song, still.


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From my first-ever FAWM, written while I was still giddily grinding out the longform of my first novel. I was writing at least 12 hours aday, then. Good times. Below are the liner notes I included during that FAWM.

Toads and Diamonds

Tagged As:
grimm whiny fairy-tale folk

"Was watching (again) an old Brit 80's show, Robin of Sherwood (get it on Netflix, people, do) and thought of some furry-tiles. I'm a devotee of all types of fairy-tales, more so the old, un-Disneyfied versions. And thought of this, taking a little bit different perspective. After all, getting married by someone who wants to use your disability to keep them rich probably doesn't ensure much of a happily-ever-after quotient."  (And like the Mary Magdalene/Virgin Mary thing, I decided these sisters were possibly two sides of the same goddess/woman/daughter.)

The man of the house told me to add; this title is from a fairy-tale in the Grimm's Blue Fairy book, if ya don't already know. He didn't.
Also-- a little inspired by FLAV, whose tunes you should listen to, or be cursed forever for your lack of Brigidity.

Lyrics:

you fall into my dense forest
like a man who's lost to green;
then curse me for a harlot
so i'll loose those precious tears
that prove you king...

you collect them, and gift them back to me
so we live, and so we misconstrue
it's always toads and diamonds, with you

when you first came to this leaf-blown place
you saw a path, shone, to my face
what e'er i said,
you clearly heard
and listened closely
to each jeweled word

but time has grimed our gleam, now all you read
are the vip'rous tones you drag from me
it's always toads and diamonds, lately

you say they're coarse and shun my kin
their care is poison on your skin
my response drops
in petals to my knees

you don't understand, you echo
how they love me
it's always toads and diamonds, in my family
toads and diamonds with you and me...

once all i expressed of love
was pearls upon your hands
now you only feel the stony cold
as my demands

an affliction you cannot bear to own
but i speak toads and diamonds
you've always known....


© 2009 by Mari Kozlowski

True Stories-- June in Oktoberland, Con't.

 In a darkened back bedroom, I break from sleep at the sound of soft clicking movements-- the slight scrape of nails or claws against the wood floor. I raise my head from the pillow, fogged in mind and sight, to look for the reason I've woken; to find the disturbance. In that second, it grows quiet.

 A slip of muted light from a hidden source casts the room into a Rembrandt-murky scene of purest chiaroscuro. Our closets have come unclosed; the doors open onto hollowed depths of velvet dark. Subtle motions inside the patchy black there could just be my eyes playing tricks on me. I try hard to focus, searching for the comfort of clarity. Then I see him, terrifyingly real again.



 The robin.



He hobbles towards me, broken-winged,  flapping and menacing, with such an accusatory look that it seems his tiny beak and eyes have been drawn by Friz Freleng for the specific purpose of inducing guilt and horror. And they do...

Because I killed him, and he knows it. It's been years that I've been having this dream-- this recurring nightmare born of remorse. Every year or two since the incident, which happened when I lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, only a ten minute drive from the famous Speedway.


 It was during a bad month sometime after the hubby-man and I had made a full-length feature film together, but before we had financially recovered from the expense to any great degree, (unless you've made a movie, you have no idea how expensive even B&W 16mm film is-- not to mention the developing, promoting, etc.) and I was sick at home with bronchitis again. I'd called in sick to my second job, and wouldn't have to go in to work again for two days. But I had no medical insurance, no cash reserves, no money for a second doctor's appointment to obtain antibiotics-- they always made me come back again, two weeks later, before they'd accept that I had needed antibiotics all along. The fact that it happened annually made no impression on anyone but myself.

 I got bronchitis every year, just like my mother, whose exact body shape, and fertility, I inherited. We both still get bronchitis every year, but we each also suffer from having doctors ignore our understanding of our own body's patterns, and so we both end up spending a minimum of a month sick, which leaves our lives and finances perpetually in catch-up mode. Being sick for a solid month is expensive, in dozens of little ways.

 The month I killed the robin, I had been to the doctor once already, and had him tell me that to be sure I needed drugs they'd have to do a chest x-ray, which I couldn't afford.  I went on with my life, coughing up bloody green chunks when no one was looking and trying not to be physically close enough to the children I took care of to infect them too-- which is impossible. Children from birth to age five own you, when you take care of them regularly. They don't allow boundaries on what they can grab onto-- your arms, your breast, your hair, your tongue, your eyelashes. It all belongs to them, and they will jump into your face or your lap with equal abandon, unstoppable. They want you when then want you.

 It is sweet, in that you're constantly aware how they trust and need you; it's problematic, in that it can put you in odd situations in public or around their parents; and you can't help sharing germs, just like a family. Unlike a family member, you will get some sharp and questioning looks when you hang around the living room pale and coughing, and you may get more than concern when it appears, to the fully insured people whose homes you spend your days working in, that you have not made an effort to secure the health care necessary to maintain your professional lack of contagion.

 Because the class system in America is/was semi-fluid in the middle, it is perfectly possible to be a well spoken, highly trained, well educated pauper. It's easy to mistake yourself for someone that will be able pay back the college loans that the wily admissions department of your chosen university assures you everyone has, only to find (when it's too late to avoid a state of default) that you'd have to be making thrice your current market value to do that and still eat, no matter how much money per hour or day your generous bosses pay you, no matter how big and luscious your Christmas bonuses.

 You can work for upright, socially conscious folks that cannot and will not realize that multiple doctor visits in a month, along with refills of high cost prescriptions, could make you homeless while you're still in their employ. They may be ready to suggest that you find a different doctor or medical group, but not ready to understand that a new patient fee on top of what you've spent before would mean that you could starve, or have to forgo vital brake work on the car, or have your heat shut off.

 Let me admit that I have a great fault, here. It's important for full disclosure, and to set up the situation of this story. I lived then, and somewhat less now, on the Bohemian fringe of an adult life, paying as I went, avoiding both credit debt and savings; consuming what I earned and using it to make art or joy for myself & others, rather than future security. For one, I'm not a materialist by nature. For another, financial security is a tale I can't quite believe in, a myth spun from secret rites I've never learned, entailing a lifestyle I have no blueprint for.

 Growing up poor is a condition you carry with you, that can hamper your ability to become not poor. It's a mindset, which others have written of eloquently; I'll add that it obscures and aggrandizes some possibilities, the life opportunities others might approach calmly. It can puncture determination as easily as spur it on. It creates a relationship with money that is sicker and more co-dependent than a love triangle between abused meth addicted parrots. Some survivors respond by becoming either miserly, or brash with any wealth they can find, some by becoming uber-responsible; some find themselves leery of financial commitments that seemingly everyone else takes for granted, takes on and fulfills.

 I got a little of each. It's been a long struggle, to cast off the confining outlook that poverty engraved on my childhood. Taking out student loans, for instance, had been a bold strike for freedom, one I'd never imagined I'd make. I took the chance and gradually envisioned the amazing idea of a life in Academia, a life where my plethora of talents might be an asset, not a downfall. A life, it turns out, that I became separated from by a sharp scalpel of grief and loss.

 That's another story, though. It's a story that took me out of the race to catch up with the many smart, kind people I used to work for, who hadn't grown up quite as poor, or not poor at all. They could imagine and create lives based on reasonable risks, with reasonable credit. Unlike myself, they could create children without a true worry those children would ever go hungry. They could be sure of their ability to keep those commitments. So the world has different rules for them.

 They may be too consciously and conscientiously trying not to be unaware, to see the small ways that they are, already. So when you're sick, you skip work days, and piss them off, losing more of your income, that way instead. And you know, all the time, that it's your own fault for being irresponsible to normal standards, and a little unconscious of your own societal shortcomings; for not living the way real people live.

 That's how it was on an early autumn morning-- it was cooler than usual, pouring buckets, windy as hell. I moved from the couch in our tiny living room out front into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, hoping to loosen the gunk in my lungs over the steam. Our kitchen was not large, but the back wall was half windows looking out into the double lot yard, with a ramshackle shed to the left and a giant maple in the middle. This gave a wide view and a feeling of openness to the small space. I often looked out the side windows, or the one in the back door, as I worked in there at table, stove or sink. It was my favorite room in the house, a place to gather peace and reconnect with homey pleasures.

 I set a few tea bags into the glass pot, looking out as usual, and saw an animal moving oddly by the roots of the maple. The kettle boiled, got turned off and poured out, and I went to the window in the door to investigate. A variety of wildlife passed through our yard regularly-- raccoons, possums, bluejays, woodpeckers, red-tailed squirrels, chipmunks, a mated pair of mallards that liked to sit and sun themselves in the grass, and once or twice, a hawk. But this was something smaller.

 Some bird was twisting, almost dancing, against the ground, unable to right itself. I watched for a minute, hoping it would rise and fly away, but it kept up the same strange, fitful pattern of flopping, and I had to go help.
 Once outside, I saw clearly that it was a robin. Something had happened to its neck, and the head was thrust back into an unnatural arch. Possibly the work of a cat, but there were no visible scratches, no blood, no ruffled feathers even. It may have been poisoned by some horrible chemical lawn treatment: my neighbors on either side avoided such ridiculous evil, as did we, but some in our neighborhood did not. Or the poor bird may have flown into a windowpane and gotten hurt that way, or been blown into a branch by the high winds.  
 The rain slashed coldly at both of us, and the bird's struggle grew more frantic. His shining small eyes showed terror. I was afraid to touch him, but would have to, I knew. He made not a single sound from his throat as he tossed wildly from side to side, trying to get up, to get his head to go forward. He was not going to live, probably, but I didn't want to let him die like this, cold and soaking and desperate. I set a chair over the area he lay in, for a little shelter, and went in to find a box.

If I brought him inside, warmed him up, maybe he would stop struggling, which could be hurting him more. At least he wouldn't die of exposure. I spent a moment first to call the ASPCA, and ask for help, or a clue. They had no help to give but a phone number-- they didn't take birds, not wild ones.
 It began to thunder, and lightning. I put on a jacket and leather gloves and went out with the box. It was hard to figure out how to approach the patient, though. Each time I reached for him he rolled away, his wings active, feet scratching the air. It made his struggle more horrible. His chest was heaving rapidly in fear, and after a few minutes of trying to get him into the towel-lined box without hurting him, I gave up and went back inside to look for some real help.

 No could help me, it seemed. I called the county Wildlife & Forestry office, and they gave me the number of the Humane Society, who gave me the number of another local animal shelter, who told me they couldn't help. I called an exotic animal place, Wild Birds Unlimited, and spitballed ideas with them. I called the Audubon Society, who didn't deal with robins. I called five vets/animal hospitals, and finally found one who would give the bird a kill-shot for 35 dollars, if I could get it to them within the hour before they closed. They were a forty-five minute drive away, and I had no money, plus my car was low on gas. They wouldn't bill me later, either. It had to be upfront. No one could help me help the robin... it was a wild animal, yes, but a common one, not covered by laws of preservation or mercy. It had fallen through the cracks of our mish-mash attempts at control and coexistence with the natural world. Unlike a cormorant heron or a spotted owl, bobins were everywhere, and no one gave a crap.

 I was getting desperate, now. I called my mother, my sister, my friends, for ideas. Someone suggested I wring the bird's neck, or step on it with a heavy boot, to put it out of its misery. I just didn't have the courage for the first, and the second suggestion would have been absurd. Stomping a bird to death! Every vegetarian's dream sport.

 I realized that I would have to kill it, out of kindness, or watch it die slowly and painfully under my maple tree. While I dealt with that, it got colder outside, and nastier.
 In between calls and silly or brutal suggestions, like backing my car over it (when I couldn't even lift it into a box), or hitting it with a shovel, I braved the storm again to try to bring the dying bird into the warm garage, with no success. We were both getting weaker, and we were both full of despair. We'd been pushed into a bad situation together, a set of shitty circumstances that I would have to resolve, and I felt the lack of preparedness I lived with as a weight around my neck, now.
 Inside again, shivering and much sicker than I'd been a few hours before, I got a return call from a friend that had grown up on a farm, and still lived on one, though not a fully functioning one now. They did keep chickens and a couple of horses, and about eight acres full of mulberry trees. He asked detailed questions about the robin, agreed it was unsavable, and then told me to do what they did with unwanted kittens and the like-- drown the bird in a bucket.

 I was horrified, but as I considered the impossibility of trying to deliberately run over a robin in my driveway (what would my neighbors think of me, then?), it seemed worth a try. We talked about how to do it, and then I hung up and drank a quick shot of my cooled tea, to steel my nerves.
 The biggest bucket I had would do-- it was a forty gallon white tub of food grade plastic, bought for a buck from a donut place I'd worked long ago. They sold the tubs the donut fillings came in, since they couldn't be recycled and took up lots of space in the dumpster. I had two or three, and used them for hauling my homemade compost out to the vegetable garden. I set one in the yard near the tree and filled it from the hose. It was more than wide enough at the top, thankfully. I didn't want to break the wings while killing the bird.

 Today, at this moment, I can't quite recall exactly how I got it into the water-- I believe I lifted it, squirming and shaking, onto a wide shovel, and dropped it into the water from that, where it flapped and tried to swim. I didn't have the heart to hold and push its head under the water, but my friend had assured me it would not take long for it to drown, and he was right. After a minute or so of tortured scrabbling, it stopped moving.

 I left it in the bucket, to make sure it would not revive, and went in the house to shower off the cold, evil feeling that soaked me. When I was clean and warm, I had lost the will to face the rest of the mess-- throwing out the water, putting the corpse in the trash, along with the bucket, which I'd have to toss as well, since it carried a taint I couldn't scour out, mentally. I left the whole thing undone overnight, feeling awful in every possible way.

 In the morning, the body was gone.

  

True Stories-- June in Oktoberland, Con't.

 My father was murdered by loan sharks when I was 11. He was not living with us at the time.

 This is a weird kind of cachet for a daughter to have, and I may never learn to use it correctly; to impress and/or horrify properly, to show the seriousness of my understanding of outsiderhood or trouble, or street cred. Instead, I speak of it matter-of-factly, and people go dead quiet, or sputter a little. If they know me only since adulthood, whenever that happened, they may get a look of wary disbelief, as if I'm putting them on, and will reveal the joke any minute. Some have thought I was lying. But it is true.

 I remember the night we found out-- just a couple of weeks or so after my February birthday, making it March, I guess. It was late, so late it was getting early, and my oldest brother came down the long dark hallway, through my older sister's room, and in to the large unheated back bedroom I, my mother, younger sister, and other brother then shared. Except I'm not sure if my other brother was there or not. I can't recall him on the scene-- I was tired, suddenly waked by the slamming of a door, voices. I was there, and I heard my big brother say clearly, "The old man's dead." It's funny, but even though we hadn't lived with my father since I was a toddler and my little sister a baby, and I had no relationship with him, I knew who my brother meant, instantly-- and not just because his infrequent references to our father were always about "the old man." It was a scary enough set of circumstances to make me question my intuitive belief, though.

 My mother was rocked, broken-up, of course. Leaving someone because of their alcoholism doesn't make you stop caring, and it doesn't kill passion. Then my brother, a hard-ass, tough and almost unfazable, a guy nicknamed The Ox by his trucker co-workers, passed out, from shock I suppose; passed out while near the entrance of the big room, and on the way down scratched his back on an uncovered motherfucker of a long, vicious screw that was sticking out from my big sister's bureau, where the drawer's knob handle had fallen off and not been fixed yet. The scratch must have been 7 inches long-- I'm not sure if tetanus shots were required-- I do know it was discussed at some point. But his fading down the front of the dresser in slo-mo was electrifying to me, unexpected, and gripping to watch.

 I say shock, but from that day to this, I've never remembered to ask him. We haven't been close, primarily because of the more than 10 years between our ages, and then later, geographical distance that grew into other kinds of distance. Well, there are/were other reasons, too. My older four siblings had a radically different experience of childhood than we two younger girls-- they had lived with, loved, been hit by my father. They had gone from a large house in Lancaster, NY, to having creditors at the door, had eaten potato bread three meals a day at times, had witnessed fights and had piggy banks stolen from for booze expenses, and all that goes with a drinking father. Our separate, non-drunken dad life must have seemed a magical tour by comparison. At best, it made us seem spoiled, and made it difficult for our older brothers and sisters to be too sympathetic to our measly problems. 

 Occasionally I remember to wonder-- had my brother been drinking, and blacked out from that? Was that the true measure of how upset he was, having to give my mother the news? I know what that's like, because I was the person to find my maternal grandmother's body, and tell my mother of that loss. But that's another story.

 The untimely death of my father caused a sudden, permanent raise in our standard of living. Instead of being on welfare, as my father was disabled, and a veteran, and the law couldn't get much money from him to support us, we now had an income-- money from his insurance, and his railroad retirement pension. My mother was able to get a job, too, being fresh out of college at 42. Again, another story. We got his car, the dull pine green Dodge Duster I painfully learned to drive on (manual steering, if you can believe); we moved out from the middle of Buffalo to Tonawanda that very summer, going from a rented falling apart flat with an absentee landlord, to a nice rented double with the owner living upstairs and a wide swath of deep, scary fields beyond the backyard.

 I should say, it was a raise in most respects: my younger sister and I had been attending parochial school, just up the street from us and next to SUNY at Buffalo, on a special financial arrangement involving much good will on the part of the school. But in Tonawanda, maybe because of our still-not-posh rating, the Catholic school didn't want us, for any money-- my attendance record, I'm sure, had something to do with that, too, but I hadn't even approached anything like the spectacular spree of school-skipping I would begin in 7th grade, then 7th grade again, then 8th.

 Do I even need to say it, this time?

So, we were forced to attend the excellent, but larger and non-religious, schools in the public school system there. I went to Willow Ridge, after 2 horrid days at Glendale, and it was a trade-off-- at Glendale, my class was huge, because they had merged two big groups into one double classroom. This didn't sit well with small-school me, so I bussed it past the creek everyday to Willow Ridge, where there were six sixth grade classes, but whew! each in their own private, normal classroom. My homeroom teacher, Mr. Murray, was a gentle, kind person, and my first male teacher. We did okay together, except when I frustrated him by speaking too low-- he had hearing loss in one ear, and I was painfully, deathly shy and self-conscious, especially without a familiar uniform to wear. Uniforms are great for keeping teenaged tits in place. But I digress.

 Another small raise was that my little sister and I began to receive a weekly allowance, for the first time in our lives, of a quarter apiece. I usually squandered mine on rocket pops-- those red, white and blue popsicles, which cost exactly my allowance at the time, per popsicle.

 The hard part was, we had to move away from my best friend that lived around the block from us, and my other good pal. Our next door neighbors for the previous few years, were a very cool young couple with three kids-- girls aged the same as my sister and I, to be friends with, and a boy one year older than me, to torture me everyday about my burgeoning booblets. We had to leave them, and none of those relationships were ever the same, though we all tried for a while. Worse, there was really no one accessible, that was either of our ages, in our new neighborhood, except the boy who lived upstairs, and didn't like us much. He certainly didn't play with us, or hang out. There was also no place to go, no place you could walk to but the one convenience store about a half mile away, and they didn't let kids loiter. Suburbs. Yech.

 I have been at pains to verify the salient points of this story, and it hasn't been easy-- my impressions being the impressions of a young and tired mind, and my family not being given to talking about our father much. Some of the lesser details may be swimmy feelings that ran together, but I think not; it was a startling sort of event, the kind that sets up sharp, forever. And the big important parts: the death, the fainting, who said what, have been verifed for me. It's true as true-- my father was murdered by loan sharks.

 The crime was never solved; when my mother sought answers from the powers that be, she was told not to look into it, that that would not be a safe thing for her or her remaining family. She was told outright not to pursue justice, or information. It was only then that she was given the full understanding that her husband's death, left to bleed out in a stairwell from a wound in the head, had not been at all accidental, not a case of an old drunk slipping during a binge. It was murder, and the case was closed. She wisely let it be-- a smart woman with six kids and her own mother to take care of, knows when to let things lie, at least for a long while. Nothing much about the matter has come to light in the intervening decades; a few minor additions to the tale, but not concrete ones.

 My father was buried, and some of my own classmates were the altar boys at his funeral, which I did not attend. I wonder now, how much shit and blame my poor mom had to take from her in-laws on the occasion. I wonder if anyone connected with the killing did go to the funeral or burial, under the guise of friendship, or drinking buddy-ship. I can never know. There are no trails left to follow, if I wanted to. Even his original grave is gone-- his parents moved him, without consulting or telling his widow and children. They preferred to dig up his bones a year or so later rather than let him stay where we'd put him, and we found out while trying to visit his plot. One more indignity, for the road.

My father was 48 when he was beaten to death: the same age I am now. It's an odd, if common, occurence to realize you are outliving a family member by age gained, particularly one of your elders. I already had it happen four years ago, when I hit and then passed the same age as my late, oldest sister. She wasn't murdered, she died of cancer, although the way she handled her illness, you could make a case that she committed suicide by cancer. Or, I could... and have.

 But that is completely another story.

 I truly wish you all a Happy Father's Day, believe me.

 Peace, Mari