Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Paul Newman's Eyes



An astronaut

Moves into a mobile home outside of Keller, Arizona;

If she wants to visit Cindy's Salon and get her hair highlighted,

She has to unscrew her helmet

As if she were a big white jar of ketchup.


One day the postman, with evidently nothing better to do,

Asks her, "What was it like on other planets?"

She tells him it was the same as here,

Except that the tv programs were a little different.


She no longer attends the tedious NASA reunions;

When they would start to go on about the honor of being a part of the space program,

The fork would slip from her big gloved hand

And she would fall asleep in her soup.


"All I ever really wanted,

Was to go someplace where I could hear myself think."

But now her thoughts devour her

And she can never get far enough away

To make them finally shut up.


"You look like an ice cream bar with legs," says a little boy in the Kwik Mart.

She stands there,

With the fluorescent lights reflecting in her visor,

And remembers the first time she ever saw the earth from space;

It was so blue, like

Paul Newman's eyes,

With clouds sprayed gracefully across its face

Like a woman's hair on a windy day.


She clomps out to her car

In her great awkward boots,

And grips the wheel with her fat white fingers,

Then just sits there.


Keller, Arizona

Is a place where a lady can cry in her car

And not be stared at as if she'd just flown in from Mars;

And though it is so dry there,

It is still part of the blue,

And it is sometimes windy

As well.

_________

16 comments:

  1. What was the inspiration for this one?

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  2. Oh I don't know, Kitty. My lady astronaut never finds more than a whiff of any sense of belonging and neither do I. And she never takes off her space suit, which I found amusing as i wrote it, but we are all trapped in our physicality, aren't we? And she's never impressed with anything she's done, because it hasn't brought peace, a thing she has only glimpsed from a great distance.

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  3. So...where does peace come from or where does one go to find it??

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  4. You described Arizona very well; I'm thinking it's very similar to San Antonio. I part I liked best was when(ad-lib)... her fork fell out of her fat gloved fingers and she slumped into her soup snoring. That was good.

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  5. A hot bath is the only place I know for sure, Scarlet. ;-)

    Ha, Pouty, I smirked when I wrote that. I could just see it.

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  6. And, that's exactly what happens when you can hear yourself think!

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  7. I value being able to hear myself think.

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  8. I hope there isn't too much car crying going on (although I think we've all been there).

    I never appreciated the beauty of silence until I became a mother. Now I get up super early so I can have an hour to myself before anybody wakes up and starts making noise.

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  9. Nice one! the hear myself think line is very good, and he did have very blue eyes

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  10. Wellll, if you KNEW, then why didn't you TELL me, Mama Z??? LOL.

    Hi Debbie, nice to see you back again!

    K, you're not the only mom that I've heard say that. I think it's neat you take that time for yourself. :-)

    Wow, that line seems to be the one that jumped out at my readers today. And he sure did, Art & P. It's too bad he's gone.

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  11. Gol-darn, woman you write the awesomest stuff, fluttering around my senses like a heartbreak of a butterflies wings.

    And this "You look like an ice cream bar with legs," says a little boy in the Kwik Mart."

    made me Totally Crack Up!

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  12. I like to quack you up, Jannie Funster! ;-) And hey, thank you for your unflagging support and kind comments. I really appreciate all of them. :-)

    Coming from you, David, that's a huge compliment. Thank you so very much!

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  13. Okay, so, your mind obviously works in mysterious ways too. However did you come up with this? I really, really enjoyed it.
    Read your latest post too, have to read it another couple of times before I really understand it (if ever). Not being of English-speaking origin, you miss the finer things and lots of it gets lost in 'translation'. Ah well, nothing like a good challenge.
    Big smile!

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  14. Good morning Fireblossom, congrats on POTD mention today. Encore!

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