Beautiful Things Broken.

My hands were once
beautiful things.

They looked strong.
My hand shake was firm.
But my hands were soft,
beautiful things.

They were the hands,
when run down a woman's bare back,
elicited the response,
"Ah", or "Umm"
My hands were soft,
beautiful things.

A famous friend,
over cheap red wine and smokes,
once spent an evening examining my hands.
She placed her hands against mine.
She compared size,
she compared shape,
she wove her fingers in and over them.
"I love these hands,
protect them."
And then she placed them
delicately against her face,
until the heat rising off of my hands
warmed her soul.
I am certain,
she swooned.

My hands now,
are beaten and broken things.
The index finger
of my right hand
is broken at the knuckle.
It has been this way for three months.
Just when it is almost healed,
It breaks again
under the strain of my labor.

My hands,
over the past ten years
have been shattered,
slashed,
twisted,
crushed,
aged,
toughened.

My hands,
today,
if run down a woman's back
elicit the response,
"Oh" or, "Mmmm", and sometimes, "Ouch!"
Jagged callouses
carve tiny lines
and plow nerves like earth.

My hands are no longer soft.
But they are strong,
powerful, imperfect things.
Hard work
has given them character;
A road map of scars
and thick, tough skin.

And it is all because I build things.
Building comes at a cost.
My hands have suffered.
They were once beautiful things.
But damn the beauty.
These hands have brought me peace.
At the end of each day,
there is something tangible,
that I can lay these broken hands upon;
and feel,
beneath the callouses and scars.
These hands have created and built.
And I am okay with this.

My famous friend
might hate these hands today.
But I know better.
She would love their touch even more.
Now,
these hands
have history,
a road map of callouses
and scars.

These hands have a story,
to finally back their strength.

Mouth Full of Bees.

I am living in silence now.
I have gone days
without hearing the sound of my own voice.
I am in a vocal exile.

I counted recently,
how many times I speak
during the course of an average day.
There were so few utterances
that I imagine,
if words were tangible,
like pebbles,
my words spoken wouldn't fill the hand of a small child.

When I was nine,
I lost the power of speech for two whole weeks.
I was hiking thru the woods with friends.
We trekked with purpose,
in a linear and orderly fashion,
thru the oak and pine behind my parents house.
The line stopped.
The boy at the front yelled, "Bees!"
The boy at the back yelled, "What?"
And I looked down to discover that I was standing on the bees.
And before I had a chance to move
they were upon me.
I quietly watched as they made their way up my body
with speed and purpose.
In an instant I was wearing a burning, teeming, suit of angry insects.
The searing white hot light in my head told me to run.
So I did.
But the pain slowed me down,
and I covered the last few yards home
staggering like a drunk old man leaving the VFW.
My father was working in the garden,
when I finally ambled up.
It took almost an hour to get all the bees off of me.
When the garden hose failed to liberate me from my suit of bees,
my father, joined now by my mother,
used their bare hands to scrape bees from my body.
When this too failed,
my father and my mother
resorted to slapping and killing the bees as they clung,
to my nine year old frame.
And I stood on the concrete patio,
never uttering a word,
as bees stung me
and my parents hit me to make the bees stop.

When the fury had almost subsided,
my mother said this to my father,
"Dear God Mike, they're packed in his ears!"
She started to dig into my ears to get the bees out.
And it was at this moment that my father looked into my eyes
with a love I had never seen from him before this day;
he grabbed my jaw roughly in his hand,
and pried my mouth open.

And bees
both alive and chewed dead,
poured out.

And I didn't speak for two complete weeks.
I knew I could, after the first few days,
but words spoken aloud
had become bees in my mouth.

And I am now living in this silence again.
I go days without hearing the sound of my own voice.
I am in vocal exile.
Words spoken aloud,
have again become bees in my mouth.
And what good are spoken words,
if I am the only one listening?

One Chair.

I have one chair.
It was never meant to be used
as a chair.
It was an art project of my fathers.
It is an object of quiet simple beauty.
I have carried this chair around with me for years.
Until recently,
I have never used it as a chair.
The chair wasn't
a chair,
it was art.
And I wouldn't think of planting my ass on a Monet.

So what happens when a chair,
which was never meant to be a chair,
is forced to put aside it's haughty nature
and self importance,
and become just a chair out of need and necessity?

It has been three months
since I have put the chair to use;
it is my only place to sit in my new surroundings.
She got the house, and most of it's contents.
I left with a bed,
my clothes,
and the art.
And the chair, which was once part of the art collection,
is now just a chair.
The art is hung in the new place,
But the chair is now a chair.
I have forced it to be something it is not.
And it is showing it's wear and disapproval of it's new situation.
Much like me.

Tonight,
I took the chair outside,
for a trip down memory lane.
It became art again,
posed against the backdrop
of a fading sky,
on a broken down pier.

I think I will spend the rest of the week
planting my ass
on my father's Monet.
This weekend I will find another just a chair somewhere,
and let the one chair
become art again.

Just because change
has been forced upon me,
doesn't mean that I have to force change upon art.

Give Me Hope...

            I am five years old.  I am rising and falling on the metal rhythm of the swing-set; beneath the giant screen of the Rockville Drive-in.  Above me, distorted images of dancing popcorn boxes and hot-dogs, melt into the falling blue and orange of a late summer’s night.  And George Harrison is crackling through hand grenades attached to Fury wagon windows, “Give me love; give me hope”.

            My mother is just a few steps away.  She is comforting my twin sister.  They sit together on one end of a see-saw.  No up or down; they are planted firmly in the dusty blue gravel of the playground of my dreams.  And I rise and fall. 

            My sister cries because she cannot find peace amongst the headlights and the false humanity that looms above her.  She is scared to be so close to the spotlight.  She is afraid of just how big this life before her really is.  My mother cradles her in her arms, and together they try to make it all go away.  But it won’t.  And I rise and fall.

            “Help me cope with this heavy load.”

            On the up-swing I keep my head back.  I don’t want to see the station wagon that brought me here.  I want to soar up into the screen and spend my days with H.R. Puffinstuff.  I want to never touch the ground again.  With my head back, on the down swing, I can feel my hair brushing against the gravel, against the earth that won’t let me go.  Gravity, and a purpose, is pulling me back to the place I wish so desperately to fly away from.  I let my hand go free from the chain that promises freedom, and allow it to graze the brittle, jagged surface of a life laid out before me.  On the next down swing, I use my weight to plow my hand deep into the gravel.  I take a handful with me back up into the light from above, and let it sift its way back home through my little-boy fingers.  The blue-grey dust on my hand glows beneath the coming attractions.  I release both hands and clap them together at the apex of my arc.  And like a magician, who has somehow managed to make the dove disappear, there is a small cloud to distract the audience from the truth that this is all smoke and mirrors.  And I rise and fall.

            “Give me life, keep me free from birth.”

            I never want to touch down.  I want to just swing here forever.  I want George Harrison to keep singing through the grenades.  I want the headlights to keep turning on and off, in a Morse code that only I know and understand.  I want the smell of gasoline and cigarettes to fill my lungs and lift me onto the screen.  I want the chains that bind me, the chains that I hold tightly in my five-year old hands, the chains that through science and will, rise me above; I want these chains broken, and I want to fly.  I want to be released.  Yet I rise and I fall.

            My mother lifts my sister onto her shoulders; and together, as one, they approach and watch me soar.  They are grounded, to this place and each other; and I rise and fall before them.  And I realize that I will never be one of them.  I am alone and at flight.  I may swoop down amongst them at the bottom of my journey, but there will always be the rise at both ends of my swing that will keep me from them.  I am a body that has discovered motion, and I cannot rest. 

            “Won’t you please, oh won’t you?”

            It is time.  The music has stopped and the screen above me has gone dark; the main attraction is about to begin.  It is time to make our way back to the Fury wagon that has brought us here.  My sister rides above, on my mothers shoulders.  I hold my mother’s hand as we find our way through the maze of sheet metal and rusty chrome.  And I am on the down-swing.  I am small and tethered once again.  But in the distance I can see my father sitting on a plaid blanket, on the hood of his Fury.  He smiles as we come closer.  He has the look of a man who has accomplished something.  My mother and my sister climb inside the wagon.  They will fall softly asleep in each others arms before the feature begins. 

            My father looks down on me.  He sets out his hand and pulls me up onto the vast, still warm hood.  Together, we will watch Charlie inherit the chocolate factory; and I will fall asleep before John Wayne defeats the Viet Cong.  Like a sailor, who is touching dry land after so many weeks at sea, I will rise and fall during my slumber.

            It is only when I am being carried from the Fury, up the stairs into my home; that I will be bound to this earth once again.  But I will dream this night of soaring.

            I am forty-four now.  And I am still rising and falling.  The Fury has long since gone, and the drive-in has been closed for many years.  But I still seek out swing-sets at dusk.  My urge to rise above, my need to be un-tethered; has not been lost after the passing of such great time.                      

                   -Murdoc.