Life in the time of Coronavirus 2020

Posted on February 8, 2022February 8, 2022 by Anelemc · 4 Comments

Sometimes…

Sometimes…
It’s hard to get out of bed in the morning
To begin a new day when you’d rather linger
under the covers in the past

Sometimes…
It’s impossible to eat healthy
When you have to prep and cook
and the corner bodega is…at the corner

Sometimes…
It’s hard to breathe fresh air
When the windows are shut
holding in stale memories

Sometimes…
The overgrown garden
Once tended by mom and you
should stay overgrown.

Sometimes…
Rain really sucks
Thumping down cold
on my bare head

Sometimes…
A mean and ugly person
Takes up space in your brain
squatting, rent free

Sometimes…
You want to scream so loud
Igniting car alarms up and down the block
but the scream is nothing but a whimper

Sometimes…
The body cries for help
As a fat revolution takes hold
obliterating muscle in its path

Sometimes…
Despair should be my first name
Followed by Anguish as a middle
Mourning as the last

Sometimes…
A cardinal brings hope
Except when its fighting with the sparrows
and the sparrows win

Sometimes…
You pray to HIM
Asking and asking
and never receiving

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Anelemc

Isolated and the deaths of my felines, a brother and sister, two days apart was the ‘woke’ to my consumption of alcohol. What went from drinking after 5pm morphed into drinking at 10am. Half bottle of vino to full bottle. Full bottle thrown in as a chaser for bourbon.

Bourbon and wine intertwined.

Sobriety literally began as one day at a time. One day drinking, one day not drinking, repeat for two weeks. Get the wine from around the corner, then go four blocks over for the bourbon. Next day wine from two blocks up to bourbon two down and four over. Then repeat every day, seven days a week. “Silly rabbit…!” Buying one day reserves instead of a grate and handle make me a control drinker.

Bourbon and wine intertwined.

July 1^st, 2020 arrived and no drink that day. Or the next, or the next. Reached out for help on week three of no drink. Completed a ninety day program of no drink. Met others who no drink and others who gave up and drank falling off the continuum of no drink.

Bourbon and wine no longer intertwined.

Three months, six months and now 9 months free. A mind not terribly wasted in a hangover pool brings hope to the present. On occasion I’ll jaunt down memory lane in my mind to remember all the gains with no drink. The future is not for me to see. Hoping no drink will follow me.

Bourbon and wine no longer intertwined.

The glasses made to hold wine sit on the top, top, shelf of the kitchen cabinet. Shapes, colours, pieces of artwork not to be tossed. The bourbon glasses now hold plants swimming in water, toothbrushes and pastes of the human and greyhound kind.

Remnants of what once and is no longer.

Posted on December 24, 2020 by Anelemc

Nig…

At the age of 56, last night on a Zoom meeting that was ‘bombed’ I was called a nigger.

‘Elena is a nigger’ is what someone wrote on their screen at the AA Zoom meeting that was ‘bombed’

Interesting fact, I guess.

Can’t say that I didn’t already know I was a nigger. Knew from the age of 11 when an Italian classmate enlighten me at the Italian/Irish Catholic school.

But an AA meeting?

A Zoom meeting not password protected nor protected with adequate bouncers to monitor the room? An AA meeting where sobriety is sacred and protected at all cost?

Not when you’re a nigger.

So last night during an AA zoom meeting that was ‘bombed’ someone called me a nigger.

Society has been using nigger from the time of slavery or even beyond and I’ve been privileged to hear it all through my days on this earth. Although, I stopped hearing it in my 40’s. I guess those people knew better to call a nigger a nigger especially in the workplace, in church, not on the subways though or on the street.

Nigger/Nigga

I heard the rappers take it and turn it into our own. No longer nigger but nigga. How quaint, how eloquent, how ballsy to take what They branded us and turn it into our own brand that They do not hesitate to use, to be cool, to be hip, to be damn bloody fools in my worldly view. But as Jay Z says during the Ballad of OJ, “Still Nigga”.

Being called a nigger in your 50’s hurts just like it did at 11.

I ain’t your nigger though I may be a nigga, but being a nigga to me is not being a nigger to you and you best not call me a nigger to my face because after this bullshit on zoom I just may cut you deep, really deep but not with a knife as I see in my mind but with words that flow from the scarred vault that holds the many, many, niggers I was called by the ones I choose to call They.

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Anelemc

All About Eve…or The Snake Made Me Do It

ACCORDING…

to the King James bible, GOD created Adam in his own image using dust from the ground and the breath of life from his own mouth.

Thus, Adam became a living entity sown in the Garden of Eden constructed purposely for his tending.

He was immediately given charge of keeper of the garden, named every beast, cattle and fowl and could eat freely of every tree in the garden.

EXCEPT…

from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

“Why not?”, one may ask.

Because, he would surely die!

AS…

God told him so.

Adam needed a helper since the beasts did not serve this purpose so while he slept, God removed a rib and constructed woman. Both naked and not ashamed they carried on in the garden

UNTIL…

The woman ate fruit from that tree at the urging of a snake. Both were punished when God found out.

The snake?

Forever to crawl on its belly in the dust for the rest of its life, its head to be bruised by the seed of the woman.

The woman now called, Eve?

The heel of her seed will be bruised by the snake and her sorrows multiplied in the conception and delivery of children. Subservient to her husband she will always be.

Adam?

He will eat of that tree, the root of all this ruckus, transformed to thorns and thistle the rest of his life. Bread he will consume until he returns to the dust he was taken from.

Eve is forever vilified for falling for the snake’s temptation. It was surely her fault and her fault alone for eating the fruit (now accepted as an apple).

BUT…

Her apple eating was

DISCOVERY AND FREEDOM!!!

Nakedness-God had to make them clothing.

Child-bearing-She could now have children (along with sex).

Banishment-She could get out of the garden and watchful eyes.

Passive aggressive-Adam does all the work.

Her offspring’s, offspring, lived hundreds of years.

I guess it really was all about Eve and thanks to the snake that made her do it.

Posted on July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 by Anelemc

Daydreams or…Mini Vacations of the mind

Daydreams are mini vacations of the mind
I carried this flower throughout the first hour of my shift at work
It was cumbersome as only one hand could stock

But…
This once vital and youthful inflorescence
Deserved a final romp through the Co op grounds

Daydreams are mini vacations of the mind
My determination of being present in the moment
Was disrupted by the fragile flower in my hand
And I thought, ‘Oh my, you are dying’
And then I thought, ‘I am too’
But…
Your life lived was way shorter than my life living

Daydreams are mini vacations of the mind
You started as a seedling, plucked when mature
Roots guillotined leaving sap to seep
Thrusted into cold, cold and so cold water
Transported from one state to another in a cardboard box
Bunched up tightly in a bucket with others from your tribe
No room to droop, only to stand tall and upright
But…
You survived the journey

Daydreams are mini vacations of the mind
Unloaded from a cool truck in the daylight hours
Of a hot, hot and so hot NYC morning
You and the others made your way into the Co op
Where unpacked by produce workers
You were put on display on top of a wooden pallet
Above your head the sticker price of $1.25 per stem
But…
Still standing strong, almost defiant, your blossoms raised high

Daydreams are mini vacations of the mind
So your journey towards dying continues
For the next day when I returned to work
The bucket was half empty and not half full
And to be honest I couldn’t tell from the wilted flowers who.
Stayed behind for another day of sale
If you were gone or not
Because you all do look alike anyway
But…
My mind stayed in that moment of the day before
Of knowing that all
Must die in some way