For JP upon receiving – Elaine’s Tape

Listening

Track after track

To steal a phrase

Watercolor memories

Of a million

Or maybe

Just forty years ago

Not fair

Not fair of you

To dare

Stir the bottom

Of my heart

Buried emotions

Flailing to the surface

Not fair

Low blow

Wouldn’t act

Couldn’t act

Afraid or incapable?

Reserved or guarded

Or just terrified

Of it being too much

A pot boiling over

A heart bursting

Souls merging

Not fair

Not fair of you

To dare

Stir the bottom

Of my heart

Still listening

Track after track

To steal a phrase

Watercolor memories

Of a million

Or maybe

Just forty years ago

                              Elaine Mills

image

Moon Rise for JP 

Coyote and Me

Coyote and Me

Rising above indigo mountains

November’s dessert moon

Casts shadows, lights paths

Through red rock canyons

Bathing me in purity

Coyote sitting on a high rock

Releases throaty moans

Howling into the void

     I howl back

     He howls again

Coyote and me,

     Howling

     Howling

     Howling

                                       Elaine Mills

                                      November sometime in the late 70’s The Valley of                                       Fire in Southern Nevada

www.elainemills.com

Men Never Make Passes...

image

Today is the birthday of the wonderfully malicious, humorous, brilliant writer Dorothy Parker.  It is quite possible that those under 60 may not know who she was, but in her day she was quoted by virtually everyone….even my mother

               Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.

Parker was a member of the famous round table at the Algonquin Hotel in NYC, a poet, a reviewer and writer for the New Yorker, a Hollywood screen writer and she even managed to make it onto the wretched Blacklist during the McCarthy reign of terror.  

These are a few of my favorite Parker one liners:

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

I’ve never been a millionaire but I just know I’d be darling at it.

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

And perhaps the most tacky review ever received by the beloved Katherine Hepburn. 

She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

Happy Birthday Ms. Parker wherever you are.

Elaine Mills

Absolution

made my peace with God

that sunday morning

while the golden sea

showed it’s’ calm smooth temperament

i watched your nude

aristocratic hips

in the early morning shadows

my heart swelled with joy

the beauty of it all

absolution had been granted

sinners don’t have such mornings

                                Elaine Mills     

                                Fall, 1972 

image

www.elainemills.com

In the cemetery in Albiano

Against a marble wall

     The name and photograph

     of grandfather Toni

     Is placed in letters of bronze

     His bones rest on a hill

     Overlooking a small town in Colorado

     He would like his bones

     To be here

                        Elaine Mills

Written in Albiano, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy

On one of my trips 

image

Midnight Riots in #Ferguson

The last two nights I have stayed up and watched so called “riots” develop in #Ferguson.   These are not riots these are a group of rowdy young men who are the neighborhood trouble makers.  I have listened to Rachael Maddow impatiently wait for Chris Hayes of #MSNBC to report that something was happening.  Yes the police were dressed in riot gear and yes a water bottle was thrown, it is all captured on video, but to call these punks rioters is to elevate their status.   I remember the real riots, the ones in NYC, LA, and Chicago where thousands participated. 

image

AT WAR AGAINST EACH OTHER

Although my series on guns was not in reference to their use by police perhaps it should have been.   We in Missouri are living with the consequences of polices forces that have been given weapons and vehicles designed to be used in wars.   Department of Defense weapons/vehicles are now being used against citizens. Just yesterday an AME minister was shot with a rubber bullet for standing between police and protestors. The weapons change the dynamic, no longer are police given the job to protect the people but to be at war against the people.

Just imagine the number of small towns in Missouri that are KLAN governed being given such weapons.  Explosive situations happen.   People are shot in this ‘us against them’ environment.  International news sources are showing a war zone in “Ferguson”.   People around the world are shocked by video and photographs coming out of America.   It is time for a major reappraisal of what we are doing with the excessive amount of weapons left over from unnecessary wars.   Do we really want to arm the police like an army? Are we so desperate to be at war with someone that we are willing to be at war against our fellow citizens?

                                                                                     Elaine Mills

                    image