3 Minute Movie- The Snow.

          INT. BREAKFAST NOOK DAY

          HUSBAND, unshaven, early thirties wearing pajama bottoms.
          Juggles a plate of eggs, coffee cup and newspaper onto the
          table. He surveys his meal and digs in.

                              WIFE (Off Camera)
                    Y'know it's supposed to get cold
                    again tomorrow.

                              HUSBAND
                         (mouth full of eggs, reading
                         the paper)
                    uh huh.

          WIFE- early thirties, dressed and made up for the day.

                              WIFE
                         (adjusting the table
                         decorations)
                    And it snowed a bunch last night.

          Husband glances at the table settings.

                              WIFE
                    Oh did you get enough coffee?

                              HUSBAND
                         (back to his paper)
                    Yep, thanks.

                              WIFE
                    It's like forty degrees out there
                    now.

                              HUSBAND
                    Yeah. Forty.

                                                          CUT TO:

          EXT. SNOW COVERED SIDEWALK DAY

          HUSBAND in coat and sorrel boots but still wearing pajama
          pants, pushes the snow back with the door carving a large
          arc through the heavy wet snow. He pulls a snow covered
          plastic shovel out of a snow bank and shakes it off. He
          hurriedly scrapes the sidewalk with the shovel and grunts
          with every scoop. Three scoops in, the snow won't budge. He
          pushes the shovel along the sidewalk and it scrapes to a
          halt. He does it again. With a loud sigh, he picks up the
          shovel, raises it high over his head and bounces it off the
          icy snow. The ice patch is unfazed. He does it again.
          Nothing

                              HUSBAND
                         (reigning down blows with the
                         shovel)
                    erah! erah! erah! ahh...

          Little chunks have broken loose but not much more. He slides
          the shovel up against the ice and kicks the shovel. A chunk
          comes loose, he heaves it off. More ice. He kicks the shovel
          again. His boot cracks through the top of the shovel
          splintering the plastic.

          He pulling his boot free he inspects the shovel. Half the
          shovel hangs limp. He pulls the broken piece off and uses
          the half bladed shovel to scrape snow off of the ice on the
          sidewalk. Tossing the shovel on a snow bank, he ducks inside
          and emerges with an ice-cream pail of salt. He shakes it
          everywhere, surveys his work and nods.

          From inside, WIFE begins rapping on the window.

                              HUSBAND
                    What?!

                              WIFE
                         (muffled hrough the window)
                    The ice!

                              HUSBAND
                    Yeah, I know, I salted it, did you
                    see this?

          He fishes the shovel out of the snowbank and grins as he
          shows it to her.

                              HUSBAND
                         (amused)
                    Lookit that!

                              WIFE
                         (through the window)
                    No no. The ice!

                              HUSBAND
                    Huh?

          She points up. Husband follows the line of her demanding
          finger up, up, up, to:
          Colossal gutter Icicles.

                              HUSBAND
                         (looks back at her)
                    So?

          She mimes swinging the shovel.

                              WIFE
                    The ice!

          Husband looks at his shovel and looks back at his wife who
          stares back at him with folded arms. Husband looks around at
          the empty neighborhood.

                              HUSBAND
                         (to the shovel)
                    Ice!

          Starting above the door, he begins to whack icicles with the
          shovel. The first few shatter with one blow. At the end a
          giant icicle winds it's way down the gutter. He whacks it.
          Nothing. He whacks it again. Nothing. Shifting his grip he
          holds the shovel like an axe. Whack whack whack whack. On
          the final whack the icicle and gutter give way falling
          across the sidewalk and snow cascades down onto the
          sidewalk. Husband covers his head with the shovel as the
          snow pours down on him.

          INT. BREAKFAST NOOK DAY-MOMENTS LATER

          Husband sits down with his paper and a cup of coffee. His
          hair beaded with melting snow. He unfolds the paper and
          begins to read.

                              WIFE (O.C.)
                    Oh would you look at that, it's
                    snowing again.

                         PAN TOWARD THE WINDOW AND FADE TO WHITE.

          The End.

         

A nightmare sequence from in progress script.

-->

Abe’s Nightmare

          INT. ABANDONED BEDROOM NIGHT

          Clothes, dirty newspapers, and the remains of a bed and a few dresser drawers litter the floor. "GREG + ABBY" is spray painted in 4 foot letters across the wall furthest from the door. The room looks empty until a whimper emanates from a bundle in the corner. A small woman huddles under a grey blanket. Her hair matches the dirty yellow paint of the walls behind her. She is a chameleon in the corner.

          The wind blows a gentle mist of snow through the windowless frame. The room is still and quiet.

          CLOSE UP OF:

The once decorative brass door handle. It doesn't move. Suddenly it turns to the left. It turns to the right. It jiggles furiously as the camera backs slowly. The below the knob, a turnkey shakes in the skeleton lock and the brass bolt is visible through the chewed up wood of the door frame.

A sudden crack of a boot coming through the lower door panel is deafening. Stuck, the boot yanks its way back through the door. Two more kicks and the splintered door is nearly limp in the frame.

          SWITCH TO:

The woman in the corner. The noise of the boot kicking the door sends a spasm through her body. Again the sound of the kick and she spasms, but this time the sound of a door swinging and a knob hitting the wall keeps her huddled closer.

The woman stays huddled as a pair of dirty jeans cut in front of the woman. A sob escapes, and then a small cry.

The hand next to the jeans holds a clear liter vodka bottle. The near empty bottle disappears up through the top of the screen and returns with just a swig left in the bottom.

          FULL SCREEN ON:

         
DIRTY GENE, 50's alcoholic fired from a factory up north a few years ago. Dickies and workboots as dirty as his hands.

DIRTY GENE
Well, I was wonderin' what was
behind door number one. Looks like
I gots meself a squatter.

 (Laughs)

The girl looks up and a toddler aged girl is revealed in her arms under the dirty blanket. Her face is dirty but still visible is a fading beauty. The child cries. Her face is stone.

WOMAN 
Get the fuck away from us.

DIRTY GENE
(halting Laugh)

ah he ah heh eh heh.

He reaches down and rips the blanket off of the woman. As the blanket is torn back the woman is revealed as SARAH, ABE'S wife. She is no longer dirty and the boy is not a toddler, he is 4 year old Connor, ABES son, wearing a new pair of Oshgosh overalls and holding a toy police car.

SARAH

Abe! Abe! Abe!

DIRTY GENE

(laughs over SARAH's screams)

Ah heh heh heh.

ABE sits fitfully up in his own bed with his cell phone vibrating on his dresser. "errrr... errrr....errrr"

Four Square

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1

I can feel my ring where it isn’t

I lay my eyes where I shouldn’t

I scoff as they do what I couldn’t

I dream and go where I can’t

2

And the snow wakes me

Squeezes me

Mocking all the notions of death as darkness

Death is the blinding white of endless snow

3

I will spoon out the heart of the air

Clawing wide the moment

I will bruise the second hand

Till it bends and bursts

4

Let me taste

Like a man who can not remember

One more time let me feel

The spike of citrus, her tongue, his laughs, a cold tear on a warm check.

Are you really this close?

-->

Are you really this close?

In the dim

You brush my elbow with your breast

and I think of the beach

and sandy elbows

I built a statue of myself at the breakfast table

Mechanically shoveling bites

Checking phone for signs of life

Your sweater wasn’t’ enough

as you mixed eggs and milk

Winter creeped up your stomach

Like a perve neighbor

who catches you unaware but doesn’t blush

with two granite eyes

I stared into that little box

Scrolling for salvation

As your hair brushed my cheek

And I thought of lines

Painted on the soccer pitch

And the smell of vinyl in grass

I noticed 

that you asked

If I noticed

and I said I had

But you didn’t believe me

And I tried to stare into your eyes

Tried to be so aware

Tried to push a memory

Of me noticing

Into your mind, 

but you wouldn’t have it

Instead you ate your eggs and wondered

Are you really this close?

I break for cars.

These automobile dreams

Have broken my legs in their

Lifeless aluminum and greasy

Glass shinning at me

Shinning me back at me

And I feel so small because

My reflection is redirected

I cannot read about myself in time magazine

I do not see me on the TV

I am two steps away from the fame

I am one step and out of the game

The puddles insult my shoes

As the radio sings the songs

I might have wrote if I’d had

My pen ready, the ink is wet

Against another blank masterpiece

And the man with the camera

Is waiting for the call

I miss you in my belly button.

-->

You.

You!

You weakwilled sonovabitch!

I remember a few months ago

you licked my ear as I dozed in the backyard

Dosing my veins with your golden shots

promising me…

You promised me!

And I was blinded by you.

Now look.

You pale!

You pretend you don’t know me

After running your fingers through my hairs at the beach.

All my hairs!

Turning wet sand into a crispy crust.

Making me glow until everyone could see we’d been together.

Sure I’d blush.

Yeah, beet red, and everyone knew we’d been…

Rolling in that sand

Running in those waters

Laying out where everyone could see.

Those days, You were the only one who saw

how truly white my ass really was…

And now you hide, like said ass

in a shroud.

But the thing is

I can’t stop thinking about you.

I dreamt of you the other night

But I woke to the wicked darkness you’ve left me in.

Come back soon.

I miss you in my belly button.

Come back Sun.

Superman

-->

There’s a little girl with a superman cape that needs me

Her chocolate eyes melt into tears of disappointment

As I turn my back and open the door.

Her cries echo in my footsteps

In the creases of snow

and I hear her in the jingle of car keys

the creak of the door

and the hum of the engine

I see her eyes in the headlights

as I wind through banks mislaid automobiles and crippled intersections

I feel her lips tremble as my hands shiver off the cold

And I kiss her goodnight from miles away

With a dragon’s breath

Warming the world with my life

Pushing the winter back

Before sucking it in again.

No one else gets this.

-->

No one else gets this,

These chin nuzzled mornings

Grasping fingers pulling eye lids apart

Those epic smiles and unrestrained glee

Candle eyes and winter worn cheeks

the dependence on these arms to stop falling bodies

and the ability of these hands to heal, teach, soothe, create, fix

No one else gets this,

In the predawn darkness I pour sleep into the past

Never to sleep again.

Instead, with undead slack jawed grunts,

I pull shit cemented cotton from the reddened ass crack of a banshee

I scrape out the hidden veins of excrement from fatty rolls

And rewrap the soiler in new cotton so we can do it all again.

No one else gets this,

The cheek breaking tooth parade

The rainbow rendering, santa shaming, eye twinkles

The most joyfully incompetent game of hide and seek-

As she tries to hide her diapered ass in a cupboard too small

And giggles in anticipation.

No one else gets my chorus of “PAPAPApaPAPAPApapaPAPAAAA!”

Because she belongs to me.

5 Winter Haiku

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Winter forces us

Into holes, blankets wrapt ‘round

Translucent snow skin

Hope fires the sky red

The sun mocks us like friends with

Postcards from the beach

You said it was too

Cold to lick the metal pole

I gueth you were righth

If you turn the heat

All the way up we can shrug

Off heat bills till spring

Peeing your name is

Easy... You know what’s hard? Yep.

…near impossible…

Kenny.

Kenny kept his emotions all bottled up.

The Politician.

Gift Horse.

Jill knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Any Port In A Storm.

Duluth and the Girl I love.

I'm out here because you're in there. tucking in the kids with clean hands, bloodless hands

Now Warm dozing, dreaming, watching tv and spilling another glass of wine.

You gave me the money and told me up go

You didn't feel safe

You asked me to live with the monsters in the dark so you don't have to. You wanted it all to stop.

Out here the lights don't stop. they fight the darkness.

Out here the silence swarms up from my boots in the snow as I stop to exhale the violence in my heart, and my ears and eyes with every bit of alone this city has to give.

I watch you in your dark in house from my blacked out car; your sleepy shutters drawn.

Out here I watch your suicide son drive his car, fishtailing down backroads and main drags, trying to earn the invincibility he's already been given.

I pull your baby back from the edge thrusting my knuckles deep into her chest pushing life in as she chokes it out. 34 years, & 2 babies of her own. She's still your baby at least for another day.

I leave my own daughter in her bed her tiny fingers pulling at my pockets as I get ready to leave. Pleading with hugs for me to stay.

But you gave me the money. You gave me the gun.

You asked me to live with the monsters in the dark.

Your Lonely

Your Lonely.

Now when we go out
you no longer scream and shout
you just sit there quietly
looking everywhere but me

we dreamt of scattered stars
and rock and roll guitars
like we'd find America
you the Lewis to my Clark

but it's been such a long time
yeah such a long time
and your lonely
makes me
lonely too
yeah your lonely
make me
lonely too

you say I never see
all that could have been
I just see things as they
broken down and torn apart

you offered me the world
said that I would be your girl
you spoke in poems and songs
and they carried me along

what does it take
to raise the dead
how can we shake off
all the voices in our head

but it's been sucha long time
yeah such a long time
and your lonely
makes me
lonely too
yeah your lonely
make me
lonely too

The poem thief

The Poem Theif

Today I woke up and my poems were gone.

So, I became a theif,

First I slunk back into bed, found my lover folded in amongst the pillows and blankets.

“ellen” whispered as I kissed her cracked lips.

But she slips deeper so I

I steal poems off her coffee with cream shoulder which breaks above her shirt .

I untangle the bits of heaven from her hair, which mingles in inky ribbons against the ivory pillows.

Her breath hums against the world, pushing back as dreams are being made, and I steal every one.

In the next room the baby begins to sing her songs of loneliness

Her voice pierces,

shrill silver against so much grey.

Without a noise I slip in…next to her crib…but she sees me.

Her lips curl, into her wide daddy grin and she begins to giggle.

Her eyes squeeze tight, trying to hold her laughs in, but with ten fingers and two kisses her laughter is mine

It bursts from her belly,

I capture each poem written by her pudgy fingers on my whisker face and give them back one my one, by nibbling her nose.

On my way to work I steal poems from the cars as they crush against each other,

Greedy for each inch of blacktop, each stop light, and every open lane.

They pour themselves into the pavement,

trying to be the first one to go no where

But the winner is a broken down hatchback with a busted blinker and jacked up rear tire,

 the driver lays on the hood

resisting the tide of cars,

and gives me his poem as I pass.

I steal poems from the naked trees longing for their summer garments

I steal pomes from the puddles mixing mud and gasoline rainbows

I steal poems from the shadows following each footstep of the postman

I steal poems from a bum on a bike whose whiskers have survived decades of razor blades

I climb the clouds and begin to steal poems from the sun

It’s sonnets, like lightening, transform puddles, chrome bumpers taxicab windshields, and the waterfall rocks on 6 TH ave below the coppertop church,

The sun sets ablaze the dying mass of 1 billion huddled snowflakes,

I take and take and take… until I can take no more…

With a head full of stolen poems and I sit down to write…

My Tree

MY TREE.

-->

My tree is old.

Old and dead.

My tree has been cut down.

Carved up.

Mashed about… Pulverized!

Smeared.

Stained.

My tree is bound with cords.

Fettered

Crammed tight, used, abused…

And loved.

Poured over. 

Brings light,

Brings laughter,

Brings life.

Hope in the darkness? 

A friend to these lonely days.

Wise old days to those without days.

Young days to the old and bent.

My tree has the hearts of generations inscribed on its trunk.

My tree lifts me up and holds me, brings me down and makes me question myself, and opens the world before me like a book…

More Rough Stuff.

I stutter here

trying to pull down words

metaphors

clever twists

that can spell love, thankfulness and desire

I want to leverage them like boulders from my mind

so they could roll down this page

but my hand is weak on the lever

and my mind slow and stuttering

Because thses boulders are too big for a page

too big for a day

too big for me

too big for me

the wieght of your love is five blankets in december keeping me from the cold

the wieght of my thankfulness is the weight of water in june pressing your ears but holding your body free

The weight of my desire is the is the wieght of gravity, unyealding , inevitible , constant

So I stutter

try my hand

determined to return

and attempt to leverage again

I cried a bit. Which is silly really, because it wasn't real at all. Then again, neither were the tears.

Papa, time to get up, he yelled, tugging at the covers. Huh? I plucked my tongue from the roof of my mouth and swallowed twice. That sh** taste didn't leave; it wasn't even lessened. Papa! Here I got a kiss for you, he planted one on the back my unshaved head. Gettup breakfast is ready, he shouted. Uh huh, yes, I replied burying my face deeper into the pillow.

After jumping on me, pulling blankets off me and tickling my toes a bit, I got up.

I pulled on old clothes. Blinked copiously. Wiped drool from my lower lip.

I wasn't sure why I was sad, not just tired but sad. I don't often wake up sad. I wiped my eyes. No tears, just crusties, sand, some goobers in the cracks. I was downstairs in the bathroom when I remembered. I was crying, weeping, sobbing, when was that? I remember my body shaking, my lips like little leaves in the wind. I remember Michael's hand on my shoulder as I fo0und the end of myself and sobbed. I sobbed so hard even he looked surprised. He'd put his hand on my shoulder and then walked away.

And then I remembered. In the fog of him walking away, was a little boy yelling, Papa, Wake UP!

So I can't remember the last time I cried in a dream, but although my pillow was dry this morning, I had that feeling, the release of having a good cry. Which is a bit foolish, because none of it was real.

skin

Skin, a thought.

you are altogether other,
you will not do, but to be you

i've tried on another skin
too slippery, oily, to be in
it slithered, it slack, it slumped
and i gave it back and humped on after another
i found it chaffed
i licked, it molted
but i kept it,
it sprouted
i wrapt it as one does
it grew cankerous and then some fuzz

a stray dog
with too many teeth
and not enough ribs
slobbered and chomped my chaffing skin
and ripped me clean

naked i protested
i set up a committee
and i, er, WE agreed
there must be a skin that could not be knocked or bleed
could be slick and sweet,
with large feet and probing eyes,
made for probing and batting lies
with lips to lock
and chest of barrels
and fists for querrils
and a set jaw for Gerils...

but the Dog came back
and broke up our agenda
bloodied our ears
embodied our fears
till we saw the mutt
drew us in and out
not willing to sit past

boney and bloodied
we walked on owned toes
wiping owned nose
dressing wounds with reality
holding bruises with clarity
(and by we, i mean me)

and we found, feckless and fearful
the sun did not burn us
the gazers did not haunt us
our own, did not roll us out with the empty bottles
we walked in skin
and owned the ones
we found ourselves in