Poetry Friday: The Word is HIDE

It finally occurred to me this morning why there is a preponderance of movies that revolve around people not remembering their lives, or reliving their lives, or getting it in the wrong order...Memento, Groundhog Day, The Lookout, Premonition. That season of Dallas when Bobby was killed and reappeared in the shower ("Oh Bobby, I had the weirdest dream....").

It's because the screenwriters sleep like me.

Fitfully. Confusingly. The line between sleep and awake blurring.

Last night I dreamt that I was watching myself sleeping and dreaming of sleeping and dreaming. I woke up at 3 a.m. (in real life, not dreaming), then went back to sleep where I watched myself sleeping and dreaming. Woke up again 10 minutes before the alarm went off (in real life), thinking I'd slept through the alarm, but realized I had only dreamed it, then fell asleep where I dreamed I was dreaming. When the alarm did go off, real-life time, I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or awake or dreaming of dreaming. It took a while to shake it all off. After two cups of coffee and a sucky granola bar, I think I've finally woken up.

The Poetry Friday Word for today is HIDE. Please feel free to use it in your blog post today, in whatever fancy glass holds your martini...story, poem, photo, recitation of "Casey at the Bat", recipe for Blackbird Pie....

I have a list today, and a poem. At least I think I do. Maybe I'm not so awake after all.

Have a good weekend, y'all!

A Short List of Hide

1) When my brother was 5, and I was 7, we decided to run away from home. As is usual with all running-away-from-home scenes, it was over nothing. Something Mom wouldn’t let us do. Like kids everywhere, we thought, yeah, if we ran away, THEN she’d be sorry. But we were scared. We didn’t “really” want to run away. Where could we hide that wouldn’t be too far, and would get mom’s attention? We lived in the country, and the mailbox was across the road, in No-Man’s Land, surrounded by weeds and thistles. Perfect. I grabbed my brother’s hand, and we snuck (in full view of neighbors and mom) behind the mailbox, crouching down, heavy in the hot summer wind and humidity and bees wondering if we were new flowers. “Now what?”, my brother asked me. “Well, we wait, I guess,” I said. After a few minutes of swatting and sweating, and cars passing dangerously by, we decided Mom had had punishment enough. We ran across the road and burst into the kitchen, yelling, “Mom! We’re back! Did you miss us?” Mom looked up from the floor, where she was cleaning up yet another mess of Baby Sister’s, while simultaneously washing dishes and folding clothes, and she said, “Oh…you were gone?” After that, we would just hide in our rooms and read. At least there were no bees there.

2) In “A Fish Called Wanda”, John Cleese’s character, Archie, taunts Kevin Kline’s character, Otto, in a fake Amer-can cowboy drawl:
Otto: You know your problem? You don't like winners.
Archie: Winners?
Otto: Yeah. Winners.
Archie: Winners, like North Vietnam?
Otto: Shut up. We didn't lose Vietnam. It was a tie.
Archie: [going into a cowboy-like drawl] I'm tellin' ya baby, they kicked your little ass there. Boy, they whooped yer hide REAL GOOD

3) Sometimes when I’m trying to avoid the Crazy Night Operator Guy in the morning, I’ll hide in the bathroom. For just a minute. Until I hear his keys jingle-jangling down the hall and through a door. It’s better than a 45-minute conversation about printer ink you can neither run away from nor ignore.


Skin

Hey boy,
You wanna hide
in my skin
for a while?

Take a break
From that skin
You’re in
For a while?

Slip inside
Wiggle down

Feel how soft
The world is?
Feel how heavy
The world is?

It’s okay by me
If you want to

Explore
Run your hands here
There
Over and around
The landscape

Of

Breasts
And
Bottom
The curve of the neck
The hills of shoulders sloping
Back
To back the spine
Between

Thighs nestled
In the oven of sheets
Over

Hipbones
Down
To anxious
Folds
Waiting the touch of
fingers

Take a break from your skin, boy.

Come hide in mine for a while.

Slip out of your skin
And into mine