Black chair

My husband and daughter went to Italy for a long weekend. My son has school, and I’ve taken the day off to lounge around and stare at the walls.

Ha, I wish. I have to paint a wall, buy the paint, finish a story for work (get back to me, people), and pick up a small chair that’s been reupholstered. Black. 

My first Misery poem is up at concis. It’s simply called “Misery 31.” 

I think a recorded reading of a poem can ruin it. The poem on the page is expansive and porous. A voice pierces it. It’s like illustrating a book. You drew a character in your mind, and suddenly a different image barges in.

This is not always so. Some poets are great readers. 

If the department of transportation decides phone calls are OK on board airplanes I will really start reading aloud aloft. I have done this on the subway when someone would not shut up. 

The day before a day off is always the better day. 

Going to put on my paint-splattered pants and bike to the DIY store. At some point. Today.

Mancave Envy

I’m seeing all these mancaves and it makes me super envious. Freud would say my house and I are not physically equipped to have a mancave, but we want one, and the power it represents. I’m going to indulge my boyish nature, appropriate some hormones and rename my little studio. I’ve got some of the accoutrements already.

My mancave has a chair named Bernhard because that’s a man’s name. 

My mancave has a manual typewriter because it’s bromantic.

My mancave has a Native American blanket because bold, masculine graphic.

My mancave has a picture of a beautiful woman, because beautiful women.

My mancave has genuine spiderwebs because Spidermancave.

My mancave has a dog because man’s best friend.

My mancave has an X-Acto knife in it because get off my lawn.

I understand every mancave needs a sign on the door, and you’ll be glad to know mine does have a sign on the door. My daughter (the beautiful woman whose picture graces the cave) gave it to me. It says “Mom,” in honor of Thoreau's mom, who washed his clothes for him. 

I think I could turn and live in the Vitra display window

On the ground floor of my office building there’s an upscale furniture store that sells cool, elegant pieces like the Eames chair and its splendid ottoman. I pass by daily and never see a customer inside. I assume they need sell only a single sofa every month to pay the overhead.

I said to a colleague today my wish is to get a position inhabiting that display window tucked beside the entrance. I could sit beneath the lights there, showing the deep-pocketed how stylish solitude is. 

As you see in the picture, the current display is all black & white - a little bit of pine ringing the stools and trolley, a Tapiovaara chair poised attentively in the corner like a fragile animal.

I think I could abandon all I possess and sit there with a book, tapping the ash of a cigarette onto a black saucer. 

I wouldn’t brood or fret about the future. I wouldn’t obsess about sins I committed half my life ago. I could turn my back on Israel and Palestine. I’d be glad to drink a glass of sparkling water with lime to jolt the color scheme, or import some black-eyed susans from what until then I’d called my backyard. 

All the Presidents' Furniture

I was reading about Freud a month ago and recall someone saying the couch where his patients reclined was the world’s most famous piece of furniture. That made me think about other famous pieces of furniture, such as the chair that Van Gogh immortalized.

If I weren’t American maybe I’d have better examples (the knights’ round table!) but for me a lot of famous furniture is presidential: the desk in the Oval Office, JFK’s rocking chair, and FDR’s wheelchair. When I mentioned this recently it led to a discussion on whether a wheelchair is proper ‘furniture.’ A friend with a loved one in a wheelchair argued it was an instrument of mobility and absolutely not furniture. While primarily a mobilizer, as soon as a wheelchair pulls up to a desk or a table it also serves as furniture. Anyone can park one in the living room, whether they need it to get around or not. Same with a dentist's chair. No disrespect intended.

Many things not designed to be furniture end up as furniture. Take those cable spools that get made into coffee tables. Or milk crates used as modular shelving. A sail can become an indoor hammock. Today I saw a horse carriage seat repurposed as a bench. 

Anyway, back to the presidents. Surely the best piece of “presidential furniture” is Thomas Jefferson’s revolving book stand. I thought of it this President’s Day when I was sitting at my desk, my eyes traveling from a newspaper, to a book to the computer screen. I think of the stand, which holds five books, as a precursor to internet tabs.

Bookbomb

I’ve looked with longing at those bath bombs of dissolving soap you dump in a tub of hot water. They fizz into a scented, soothing foam that must be really pleasant to surrender one's nakedness to. Too bad I invariably lose interest before purchasing one. I don’t know - the perishable pleasure, so what? My inner protestant is like, $6, for one bath? Uh, no. And the ring around the bath tub.

Sadly, my son recently gave up piano. 

The blank wall where the upright used to stand made me frown, exposing the promise wrenched rudely from my life. There was only a faint dust-line along the wall at the height of the absent instrument. Then I had an idea that exploded like a bath bomb on the brain: bookshelf. I know this appears a pretty obvious idea. It is. But like time-released pain reliever it took a while to dawn on me what my son’s giving up piano might mean. Getting some empty shelves was like the swooniest jasmine bath I’ve ever had. And they’re all mine. Don’t tell my husband but I arranged the books so the shelves look full, when actually there’s room for 10-14 more, depending on which books my new books turn out to be.

dear desire

I've been busy in my room building a new continent. It's a modest one, with a peninsula and range of shady mountains. No housing has gone up, meaning the envoys who come bringing news of far away shouldn't stick around. From my desk, there's a lovely view of a lake that spreads out like a soft ballroom. Above it, I've hung my favorite photo of Ingeborg Bachmann - a young woman, rowing a rowboat towards the shore.

I detect the El Supremo from the room at the top of the stairs

The fabulous thing is I got my own room.
Desk, shelves and computer.
I hung up my Macbeth poster.
I hung up my pipe smoker and the pictures of my dad
and my favorite 9/11 photograph.
I carried the fattest dictionary and best books
into the room like brides polygamous.
I beat the blue rug.
With wisteria twisting outside my window now
in peace I can nurse a pleasant greensickness.
I’ve spent too much time enslaved to the staircase.
Ahoy, my sewing basket says goodbye gypsy days!
That pen that’s been traveling the world
behind my ear now has a place to lie down.

Feng Shui

When the bridge between east
and evening lies down to die

and the rain drops as freight
unevenly among the doomed,
I decorate my mind with drapes,

untie the silk ropes and tassels
that cinch them back

and appoint my room with jewels
looted from the later dynasties.
I am among immortals!

Still, there’s just so much
one soul can rearrange.

Also the river tires of coursing.
And the earth gets fed up
wth the burdens put on furniture.

When like most of us
the clouds have had enough
of bunching up and sundering,

I get on my bike,
circle three times the ditch
identified as best for resting

and fall asleep
head first.

homebody

Thanks to Laurel for letting me know my poem "Curtains" is up at Verse Daily today!
A nice start to a Monday for me.