Waiting
By Nancy Aronie
I'm waiting for water to boil, grass to grow, paint to dry.
I'm waiting for politicians to play nice and tell the truth.
I'm waiting for schools to expand their art departments and towns to appoint a music mayor.
I'm waiting to see murals on all the public buildings and hear choral groups from every intersection.
I'm waiting for food trucks to line the junior high parking lot offering brown rice and millet, a complete raw menu, gluten free spaghetti, and turkey meatballs.
I'm waiting for campaign finance reform.
I'm waiting for little kids to have no schedule, no car pool, no lessons no shrink appointments, no drugs for ADHD, no labels.
I'm waiting to hear children described as extra exuberant, and applauded for that trait, and other kids described as not painfully shy, but interestingly thoughtful.
I'm waiting for a woman host of a late night talk show. I'm waiting for Amy Schumer to actually be funny.
I'm waiting for cars to have wild and beautiful colors again. And I'm waiting for the new Mercedes to not look like the old plymouths.
I'm waiting. I'm waiting . I'm waiting. But if be here now is still my mantra then waiting implies a future so maybe instead of so much waiting I shall be content to accept what is and not anticipate what will be. Turns out What is, is fine when I'm not doing do much waiting.
Waiting
By Pam Benjamin
I am also waiting for people to realize what they need to do to confirm that Trump will not get elected and the polls to say that Hillary is way ahead. And, for people to listen to the Dalai Lama, their inner consciousness and be more compassionate, loving, kind and gracious and for there to be no more war. I am waiting for schools to have Montessori materials for learning and experiential history topics so that they can embrace a subject on all levels, math, language arts, science. Or bring the creative arts into the classrooms to help them learn in three dimensions and participate in educational theater.
I am waiting for schools in America to have long lunch times with plates knives and forks, sitting at a table and being served, no homework and patient and loving teachers. I am waiting for America to stop wasting 40% of their food and we can give it to the rest of the world so they will not be starving and die. I am waiting for people to look others in the eye and say hello and smile when they are walking down 5th avenue or any other street in the world.
I am waiting for kindness to be the number one goal in the world. I am waiting for our congress to make laws to prevent banking CEO’s from taking advantage of poor people. I am waiting for President Obama to wake up and realize that he is promoting the wrong strategy in Syria. I am waiting for lots more things, but I better stop now because I did not realize this topic would pull so many words out of my fingers.
Waiting
By Jerry Storrow
Waiting?
I have done it all my life--the world
Of pendingness attended every move. There was nothing I could love.
Dark Energy
Kevin Funabashi
I tap the lamp switch on the night table next to the bed but the light won’t go on. The bulb must’ve burnt out. The overhead light works or at least it did last night, but that switch is by the door on the other side of the bedroom and the suddenness of its light is overwhelming when I’m hardly awake. Still, I need some light to make my way to the scale in the bathroom, so that I can check my weight – not for how much it is, but to chart whether it’s going up or down – whether or not I’ve still got some physical substance, more or less, or to confirm that I’m simply having a weightless, out of body, end of life moment as I wait in bed to wakeup. If I’m thinking about things like this in the dark, can it be said that, “I’m awake?”
I’ve been renting this body since birth, and frankly, it’s not what it used to be. It started out in a middle class neighborhood, but after years of wear and tear, it’s relocated itself into the high rent, high maintenance, Medicare neighborhood when all I ever wanted was a rent controlled or maybe a rent stabilized place to rest my old bones.
Having some light would be helpful in avoiding things as I make my way across the bedroom, but I don’t think light is as helpful as it once was, what with the floaters in my eyes and fading low light vision, I can’t see things the way I used to. Mostly, I sense things, sense where they are by bumping into them – a navigational practice which invokes “mother” as in “mother fucker, where did that come from?”
Maybe the scale can wait because I feel the need to get up and take a shit - to get rid of the old stuff, emotions, and make room for new age stuff - feelings. It’s amazing how much old stuff is always with me. According to science my guts are a microbiome, a mini-world where bacteria outnumber my DNA. If that’s true, does that make my body a biodome? If so, let it be known that it’s leaking air, as in farting all the time – making me eligible for the unwanted and unwelcomed title of, “old fart”.
Truth be told, laying here in the dark I’ve got no idea how anything works inside or outside of me. Maybe, the answer is “dark energy” – the invisible stuff scientists know is there but can’t find. I know what they’re going through. More and more, I journey through the space of one room to another but I can’t remember what I’m searching for when I get there – just that it’s out there, in front of me, invisible and will remain so - unless I get lucky and have a ‘memory flashback’. Sometimes, if I snap my fingers twice, I can trigger a flashback – but the odds are it’ll prompt another forgotten memory – one, like me, that’s about passed its expiration date.
Okay, if I’m careful, I can sit up, swing my legs off the side of the bed and stumble to the bathroom. I’ve done this before. The last time was a couple of hours ago. Shrinking “prostate” or, as I often mispronounce it, “prostrate” because it’s always bending me to its will – which now includes insufficient bladder capacity. In my younger days, it pumped out testosterone that made me want to have a lot of sex. At this point in time, it’s squeezing new meaning into the words “slowly pissing your life away” - which is what I do when I’m not sleeping.
After the bathroom, I’ll need to get to the kitchen. The freezer is full of Dixie cups. Large Dixie cups full of ice - not the ice cream kind that I scarfed as a kid. The knee, the knees are killing me. Arthritis. Bursitis. If I ice massage the knees for twenty minutes maybe I can hobble back to bed and wakeup - later.
After I wakeup, maybe I’ll get lucky and remember to replace the light bulb. If I forget, I wonder if I can get the light to work on…dark energy. Maybe it’s already working on dark energy but I just can’t see it, just like I can hardly see the life that I used to live…the one that’s almost burned out.