Haiku Horizons, DRIFT

 

Fiery red ants climb

 

A human leg three days after coming in brief contact with a fire ant colony (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

drift into tight follicles

 

 

 

 

 

Scratching pink skin raw.

 

 

 

 

 

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Die, near ecstasy

Mother Ocean (Photo credit: belindah-Thank You!-200.000 Views Now)

 

 

 

 

roar, overpowering Life

 

 

 

 

 

Waves, sand, drift away.

 

 

 

 

 

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Driftwood & pebbles (Photo credit: Jerzy Durczak)

 

Driftwood, lies in dirt

 

 

 

 

 

Shaped like a  young bucking foal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to escape.

 

 

 

 

 

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Haiku Heights – Death

Abdominal surgery, HUEH – General Hospital, Haiti (Photo credit: scottmontreal)

Raw bone, blood spurting

gloved hands probe, beep beep, the song

fury, silence, still.

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Black claw, scoops, flings, screams

private hell, waits for no one

A devil’s arcade.

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Finger the hard dirt

shovel, rusty, old, tired

Devil (Photo credit: elycefeliz)

has seen a long day.

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Shrieking hell, stop, go

pain twirls like madness, manic

Crimson blood, wrist, cut.

Home, Sweet, Allergic, Home

We’re keeping a friendly distance from each other, now that we are home and back from the one room we shared in the hotel. Two parents, one teenage daughter and our dog. I think the dog, Callie, misses the ginger snaps that she got lovingly from the lobby of the hotel by her admirers. I bought ginger snaps but she doesn’t have the same lust for them as she did when one of her loyal servants held up a treat and told her to “sit.”

Yesterday, my husband was on the computer as I was trying to sleep and so I reminded him, ever so gently, that we were home now and we really could spread out a little, hint hint.  You get used to something you have done every day for over three months. He finally moved from the bed and went to his office, it’s all a matter of habit.

I can’t find anything in the house, no coffee makers, sponges, clean towels, clothes, sheets. We still use plastic utensils because we have no idea where our knives and forks and spoons are vacationing. We have a new bathtub that I believe I am too short to use. No, seriously. For my Fibromyalagia and chronic pain we ordered a bathtub with jets, like a jacuzzi. The problem is I am so stiff and sore so often, I can barely lift my leg to get into the tub. I see a step stool in my future, like the one I had as a baby, it was painted a bright red and had a painting of a bunny on it. It’s name of course was, Bunny. I see a new Bunny in my not too distant future.

I’m overwhelmed with tiredness, trying to do things I need to do. “Pace yourself” my friends will say but I just shake my head and point to this teeny house with clutter in every room and I don’t see how I can rest and relax with the sheer amount of work ahead. Twenty loads of laundry await me, no, now it’s twenty-two. I need to unload books and papers, clothing and pretty much everything we all own.

The worst part of all is this is that the WORK IS NOT FINISHED. After we paid a large amount of money to have the house cleaned professionally by industrial cleaners from all the toxic chemicals that were sprayed to destroy termites and carpenter ants, the contractor and his helpers neglected to tell us that the work would still go on for several weeks. WTH?  Why on earth did we pay money for a clean house when I am sneezing and wheezing from the piles of sawdust and sheet rock leftovers ALL OVER THE HOUSE?

I’m tired, I better go to sleep. Work starts, at 8am every morning, including Saturdays. The buzz saw seemingly goes straight through my head, that is how I awaken to another new day. I’ll celebrate when they start to paint. In the meantime, I miss my friends at the hotel; I was lucky to run into one of them today at my favorite store, Target. That felt more like home, than home does.  To all the people who were so genuinely nice to us when we were displaced: Wags and Whiskers, Marina and Mike, Dana and Bill, Stephanie at Dr. Kaufman’s Office, my friends at the Holiday Inn, especially, Ashley and Leanne, and Anthony, we say THANK YOU SO MUCH. It’s amazing what you learn about your friends and neighbors when times are really tough AND what unexpected treasures you find in the people with the extra kind hearts; thanks also to the Sterns who welcomed us back with a bottle of wine! It meant so much to us.

Warm wishes for a Happy Holiday Season!

Do You See Me?

I have nothing to write about; I feel empty like the new wooden cabinets in our kitchen, bare without plates and mugs nestled inside them. There’s nothing to do but tiptoe amongst vicious looking tools, a saw with its huge blade on the floor, assorted screws on the wood and carpet. I am not scared for myself but for my dog. ‘What if she walked on it?’ I seethe. I am trying to make progress and doing very little. It’s hard to feel at home with the workers fixing things or re-doing things. The house is always dirty even though we paid quite a lot of money for the industrial cleaning crew. As soon as I clean something, it becomes dirty again.The floor is slippery in places from wood floor shavings or tiny pieces of sawdust and wood that get stuck in the soles of my red, swollen feet.

I’m wandering around in circles, green plastic spoon in my hand, eating bright red pomegranate seeds. Back and forth, upstairs and down, I can’t find anything. Every room is filled with garbage bags and suitcases that don’t belong there. I need to shovel out my son’s bed from his room before he comes home for Christmas break. Whenever I find something I want, I lose it again.

Found objects are playing hide and seek with me, once found, now forgotten. I never liked that game, it’s the element of surprise, any element of surprise, really that scares me. The quick motions of a darting gray mouse, a bat swooping dangerously low, somebody coming at me from behind, I have been known to scream as if a murder was taking place in my room. It’s called the startle reflex and I correlate it with my being six weeks premature and in a hospital for over four weeks. Of course, I despise surprises.

We may have moved in too early as odd as that sounds. We’re in the way of the people working here, the old refrigerator covered by the blue tarp is now our lawn ornament. I had hoped someone would want it and take it away but no one came and the contractor will move it away on his truck. A good deed gone sour.

We have no curtains, we are using black garbage bags on our windows. I can’t cook or bake yet because the kitchen is not clean and there are no clean surfaces; the guys are finishing things in every room, all the time.  Our old oven sits silently, resentfully, among other new shiny items. The dishwasher has pretty blue lights, like that of a bluebird, that make me happy. I don’t have to look at garbage anymore or smell its rotten odor, there’s a garbage can built-in to the cabinet. The wooden cabinets have handles that I picked and I love them, when I look at them they seem to smile back at me.

I am back in our cozy home; how could I still feel lost?

I don’t know the answer.

I Will Pay For This (But I Don’t Care)

Image via Wikipedia

This afternoon was a day that gave birds reason to fly and sing. The budding trees are smiling with green flowers, the sky is light blue with puffy cotton-candy clouds. I wanted to do something that I haven’t done for so long because the pain I have from Fibromyalgia stops me. Today I wouldn’t let it; I refused. I went to the tiny patch of garden we have in the front lawn and replanted a pot full of old flowers into the ground. Granted, I couldn’t kneel because I knew I would never be able to get up but I improvised. I admit digging the dirt with just a little hand shovel was too hard but I gave it my best try. After that I hauled my eighteen year old son out, who cursed the entire time, to dig deeper for me. He doesn’t get gardening, doesn’t understand the point of it but he doesn’t have to; he just needs to help me when I ask. I also bought a little plant  at the grocery store today that looks like a round puffy white ball with red and white edges. I planted this little sweet flower by myself.  I pointed out a worm to my son, forgetting he’s 18 and not 7, and that amused me but not him.

After that I went into our shed and got out bird food for the cardinals. I have wanted to do that, literally, for years. Today, with the weather encouraging me, I did it. I felt bad in the winter when I couldn’t go in the backyard for fear of slipping in a foot of snow and ice but I knew the birds would forgive me. There are black sunflower seeds now in the lopsided bird feeder and some on the grass and the table because I don’t mind feeding squirrels either.

Doing these things made me feel alive even if now I am so stiff and achy I can barely move.  My back already hurts on my right side and my trusty old heating pad is in its proper place. I know I wasn’t standing or  bending the right way; but it doesn’t matter. This was good for my spirit: earth, grass, flowers, birds, sun and the wild wind bouncing off the houses and trees and through my shiny brown hair. Today, I felt normal, human,  real and I felt happy.

I had forgotten how much I like to put my hands in the earth, smell the musky scent, feel the softness of the dirt intertwined with harsh roots. The earth didn’t mind that my fingers were swollen and even my joint pain got swallowed up in the beauty of the sun-kissed daffodils. I will not complain tomorrow even if I am twisted into a painful pretzel. Today, I needed to do this, I needed to feel like I was part of the world. I wanted to feed the chirpy bright red cardinals that wake me up in the morning and even the fuzzy, fat squirrels that my dog wishes she could play with.  I wanted to replant something that was old and try putting something new and dainty in the ground. I brought out my empty plastic jug of pomegranate lemonade, filled it with fresh water and tended to my two plants. My knees are stiff and I had trouble walking down the stairs to get to the kitchen tonight holding on to the banister with every ounce of strength that I had left. Today, I learned, that maybe more pain is worth it if it means feeding your own soul.