Borderline Psychoses

[Maggie]

Irish Muslim Mo'lasses from the Passes

(for Ogden Nash)

I am the blossom of the X Generation
now watch me go to seed.
Not born in the fifties, unable to really read.

This is true blue flag waving
in a yellow polka dot bikini.
This is me who never watched a single flick Fellini.

Here I am Tonto bound
a prize in a box of carmelled corn.

Up on the mantle is Maya Angelou
she's talking to Big Bird
yet her friend Dr. Seuss thinks deterrence an itsy bit absurd.

Here is a train stub from the Mighty Santa Fe,
and in the drawer near the panties 
are Black Angus and Uncle Ray.


I'm really rather hip
but I'm so far quite unknown
because we have Blue Jesus, a tad bit overblown.

October 2006, Post Israeli Agression

How do people end up on the couches? Is it because society itself has a Freudian problem at hand or in its anus?

I wonder this as I close the phone. Back in Beirut, we closed it. We did not hang it up. So appropriate to close the phone as one closes a conversation and opens up the world of possible explanations for things like saying, "Because I know I am right."

This, to a Christian Palestinian woman whom I've known since I was around 13. Back then we were just tagging along. R was young and was soon to concieve her first child with a man she would later divorce because of the mishandling he did. He then married an old school chum of both R and Meryl Streep (Vassar). R refers to this as "six degrees of separation". How much of that there is you know.

One day, I snuck into my sister's house here in Old Bisbee and hoped to cop a bit of weed. It was snowing. My sister was living up near the city jail where I spent a famous night (no bail for me!) with a would be murderer and an old childhood pal named Francie who would later become one of two witnesses at my marriage to a Shi'i boy from South Lebanon. But that's another story...which you can read here:

http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2006/04/twenty-five-years-on-road-meeting-fred.html

I just ran into Francie the other day. She was outside of the Safeway which sits just a mile or two from the Naco, Sonora border. When I saw her, I picked her up (literally, like a lion I am) and swung her into the air. She was sneaking around the parking lot at the rear and was so anxious that I come and take a look at something in the bushes. Well, I didn't want to really because I had dreamed of seeing my Francie for so long and wanted to catch up a bit by just talking for a moment. But she insisted and I went around the side to look at what she was pointing at. There they were: little red baseball caps and white collared shirts, crouched in the bushes in the noon day sun. Illegal Aliens. Indigenous peoples looking for a way up to Tucson or Phoenix or who knows, Carmel.

Jailbirds to wedding days to this here and now that I'm in.

Once I was inside myy sister's house on that snowy day so long ago (yet not really when you consider the age of the planet), I found I was not alone. R was there too and for the same reason: to steal some pot from my sister. R forgets that but I've reminded her a time or two. Who would have guessed that R's brother would be writing about the invasion and war crimes of Israel in Lebanon as the editor of a rather large ME periodical, appearing on CNN to discuss "foreign affairs" with William Jefferson Clinton at a Beirut campus just a few weeks ago? Our kismets fan out wide you know but how do people end up on couches?

Once again, after I closed the phone with R today, I contemplate her admission of "therapy". It is the second time she mentioned it since our reunion here in Bisbee, Arizona. What is it that she said about hypnosis? Ah, yes. She was hypnotized to recollect the damage done to her mother because of the illegal occupation of Palestine.

What? It is no secret is it?

What then, is it?

Now tell me. Please tell me someone. How is it we, as a people end up on the psychiatrist's couches?

What if, I mean, what if? What if all the liars finally told the Doc their real stories. Would it be that many people would be able to ditch that Xanax and Prozac and finally understand their very own genocide of the Native Americans? The commercials for tranquilizers and psychotropic drugs in America amaze and disturb me as they should disturb everyone.

This, as the border is being secured with the Wall of China to keep out the indigenous tribes of North America. Which will, in turn, prevent the migration of the animals we, "in the West' so love to protect. This, as the overwhelming silence continues on the part of so many regarding the Wall Israel has constructed, "for security reasons". Well sure. If I'd have stolen such a huge portion of land and set my sight on some more of it, I'd build a effing wall to protect myself too. I'd need one because stealing horses, land, water and souls is a CRIME and in my estimation, they've not only built a prison for the indigenous people they've been torturing for over a half century with outrageous accuations and sadistic mental and physical acts, but they've also WALLED themselves into a fire ring of their own making.

This, as I close the phone and think: I could never achieve anything on a couch or with a pill or with a drink. I've already reached the conclusion by the door and now, it is only a time of waiting and watching the Walls in purgatory go up again. I can hardly wait to get out of here forever. It's a Shia thing you know and we watch and wait for the wall to come on down. There aren't any where we are going.