Billie Dee: Selected Poems -- Nowadays This ...

... a Ford Mustang has parked itself on your living room rug ... the neighbor's dog craps on your Astro Turf lawn ... someone has stolen all your left shoes ... .from the smog of Los Angeles, poet Billie Dee writes her way through heavy traffic. BYO oxygen.

Billie Dee: Nowadays This ...

Sonnet for Lotus Land

You know
               for three months straight it's rained like heck
So I forgot to water the chihuahua.
My daughter's husband's kids are selling crack --
So what
             if no one cares in LaLaLand
Where traffic lights are set to jack up speed;
Where life is cheap but my new car is worth
A lot.
         But here's what really fries my gourd:
                   The neighbor's dog craps on my AstroTurf;
                   The Federal judge who lives next door sobs
                   All night;
                                 how every time I get the flu
                   It's on a three-day-weekend;
                                                             how fast-food slobs
                   Leave litter in the better malls.
                                                              It's true
I need analysis, but once I round
My cars keys up
                        I'll try and blow this town.

Bad Horsy

So then it's like my head explodes when that Ford Mustang skitters sideways on the asphalt and comes across the lawn and through the window in the living room cause I had told those crazy kids time and time again hey you guys don't drive so fast so then the Mustang dies on the oval braided rug beside the fireplace and my husband Mike who's outside by the pool is barbecuing shark fillets and doesn't know what's hit us just our little schnauzer Mitzie's flipped her nut and run outside and crumped behind the bird of paradise so now he freaks out and screams at me turn that goddamn TV down you've killed the dog but here's what really gets me -- how the green plush recliner does a somersault over the hood and lands next to the wet bar and drops the crocheted arm doilies on the car's front fenders one on each side so now the Mustang looks like a big broken Laz-E-Boy and all the kids are yelling and the neighbors keep on gawking through the chain link fence and I'm just saying whoa! -- life is so weird.

Dormitory

The pile of junk and dirty clothes
is growing, has a life of its own.
It's been eight months since I cleaned
my room or opened the window.

Last weekend, the pile sprouted
a coat of green hair, shifted on its base
a little, moved from the corner
to the center of the floor.

Things keep disappearing
from my room: car keys, homework
guitar picks, today -- all my left shoes.
Sure, I know where they're going, but

once something has entered
the mystery pile, I abandon it.
I'm not a brave person,
and these ransom notes have me worried.