Nostalgia

The old days are back, Russian troops massing on a border. It was a nice try, I guess. Wasn’t Putin once head of the KGB? Isn’t there some phrase about a tiger changing its stripes or a leopard its spots? Bears are notoriously unpredictable. Things are a bit shakier these days, I think. Hopefully the talk about the lack of upkeep and moral of the Soviet (Are the still Soviets? It’s hard to keep up these days.) military isn’t all talk. Anyway, I can’t see US doing much about it except bluster. It’ will be interesting watching it play out. The Ukraine has nukes, right?

Stain

Winter lingers with a vengeance, another blast to come. I remember waiting for the school bus in eye stabbing cold. I remember getting my face rubber in the snow by Byron because he could. I remember big piles of snow with holes in them, with a hollowed out chamber we called igloos. There was the toboggan run, maybe up Austin, a ride anyway. I remember a big piece of sheet metal, ten, fifteen of us on it, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, flying down the cinder pile. I remember grabbing a back bumper skitching part way, to and from high school. I only like it now in the quiet evening, freshly falling, glittering white. It diffuses sound. It makes me believe in purity and truth, that everything can be made clean. For that small time I like it, before I have to shovel it, drive in it, before it is stained by our industrious obsession with the falseness of ease.

Gooney Bird

I feel like I’ve taken that long leap again, the one where I can’t tell if I’ve been conned or not and I’ve been up there wondering how it’s going to end. And it’s not just me this time risking a crash landing, and I’m not young anymore. The stakes are higher. The repercussion of a false hope, if that’s what it is, I will not be bouncing back from. If I land hard, others land hard with me. I’ve said before, faith is not for the squeamish, it looks a lot like denial, and it is built in fear. It pushes you right to the edge, leans you over a bit for the panoramic view. Faith is not blind to its precarious position, relying on the unknown. It gives no guaranties for this side of the veil and my ability to self-deceive, my penchant for it, makes at least some denial inevitable. I am in that place of waiting in between the now and the not yet, relying on mercy as much as anything else. Oblivion waits around every corner. My failure to cover all the bases is the human condition. Mercy and grace are the only shield. 

Blink

It is another day, no denying that. I have woke once again to the infinite possibilities of time. Who knows what will happen today? The sun is up. Light and heat stream from an impossible distance to warm a planet coalesced out of star dust and teaming with life despite our wildly inept mismanagement. Big bang or God’s finger, both are astoundingly improbable. Our existence makes as much sense as a moon made out of cheese. Yet here we find ourselves, notwithstanding our best efforts to the contrary, masters of the planet, still pretending we have all the time in the world. It’s been life as we know it so far, but it is becoming life as we don’t know it. The Arab Spring, Fukushima, The Yellowstone caldera, global warming, who knows? Time will run out before we know it. We’ll blink and it will be gone. 

Bootstraps

I long to watch the woods from a little covered place, with time to linger for days, months on end like Annie Dillard, and notice the small changes from moment to moment, to walk a forest path at leisure, returning time after time to learn what comes with the arc of the sun, in storm and heat and cold and days with a gentle breeze or nights with a bright moon. This would work well with a little furniture shop close by. Nothing fancy. A converted garage maybe. It seems in line with who I was created to be, if you buy that notion, or just who I am if you don’t. I’ve chosen the former, which I suppose is at least somewhat self-serving, as it make this a prayer rather than wishful thinking or idle daydream. If I find myself there some may choose to believe I’ve pulled myself there by my bootstraps. That’s their choice but, to me, bootstraps seem a poor thing to put much faith in.

Making Things Simpler

It would be nice if there was a descaler for the brain like I use on my fancy espresso maker. I add the descaler to the reservoir push a button and it cleans the system out.  It only takes a half hour and then you rinse it. You would think after many years of operation, however faulty, some calcification of thought builds up to clog the mechanism.  It would be nice if you could drink the stuff and let it circulate in the regular way but I’m guessing most of it would be absorbed along the way and very little would make it to the brain. Maybe a port could be installed at the top of the head with an attachment to slowly introducing the cleansing solution and a little bell to let you know when it was done.

I think politicians should be required to wear logos like the one they plaster on race cars, defining who they are sponsored by, so instead of announcing the representative from Texas, it would be the honorable representative from Exon Mobile, Johnson and Johnson, or Chase Morgan. It would simplify so much, especially during elections. Who would you vote for, the representative from Northrop Grumman, or The National Endowment for the Arts? You, say you’re an independent farmer, could tell at a glance who had you best interest at heart, the guy with Monsanto tattooed on his forehead, or the woman representing Independent Organics. You could switch out pictures on keys of the cash registers like they use at Burger King with logos and use them for voting machines. 

What’s Good for You

When did we forget our history, the Haymarket riots and Ford’s thugs, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, coal mines and child labor? I guess we’ll find out if history repeats itself. If it does, I am not looking forward to the burning sweat shops, collapsing mines, children’s grubby faces. But maybe I’m wrong and the leopard will change its spots, industrial capitalists will have a sudden change of heart and place the wellbeing of workers over profits. They’ll scour there workplace for dangerous working conditions before accidents happen. They’ll place worker satisfaction as high on the agenda of productivity. Women and minorities will get equal pay. Corporations will consider you in their decision making process. We will not need more Norma Rae’s. The next Grapes of Wrath will not need to be written. A film like On the Waterfront, will not need to be made. There will be no work for another Upton Sinclair. So when the next union shuts down, don’t linger here. Go about your business, if you know what’s good for you.

Caribbean Blues

It was at Roosevelt Roads where I teased a pissed of eel to get him to show himself by jabbing with my foot the rock he was under in bathtub warm, Caribbean waters while perfect tubes of ice-blue sea rolled ashore. The 151 was duty free along with the whores in San Jaun I couldn’t afford and instead passed out on the base beach. We were there demagnetizing our submarine before it could be loaded with missiles and we went out to practice in case we had to blow everything up. I passed out on my stomach in the tropical sun and the next day was cited for destruction of the government property of my back and so did not participate in the crew’s construction of the beer can tree but commiserated with friends who swam out to an small island and stepped on some sea urchins breaking sharp little spines off in their feet.

Four Eyes

Not knowing what to say has been my default operating profile since Sister Thorette washed my mouth out with flax soap repeatedly for days on end. There’s a picture of me from that time dressed maybe for church. I have on a checkered vest and bow tie. I’m wearing a pained expression and glasses crooked on my face. Later, sometime in public grade school, on a dare, Nancy Bishop sat next to me in the Ritz Movie Theater. She had been sitting several rows in front of me with other girls from class twittering and looking back and then she got up and came back and sat with me. She told me why she sat there so I shouldn’t think she liked me or anything. She was one of the acknowledged cute girls, small and thin with straight hair. I remember understanding the girls in front thought it was all a great joke and I could tell Nancy felt bad about it. I remember being curious, fascinated by the social phenomena of it. I felt bad for Nancy’s uncomforable fidgeting. I think we held hands as part of the dare. She sat there for a while and then went back with the other girls. I don’t know that we were friends after that, but we said hi and she never played any more tricks on me.

Seditious Little Soul

I used to dream I could fly. It was like I was walking just above the ground with very long steps. I’d take one step and cover a long city block. The ability started when I was small, late at night when I was supposed to be sleeping in my bedroom upstairs. Feeling the cold linoleum through my stocking feet, I listened to muffled adult voices from the top of the stairs, reach out with one foot, and fly down to the bottom. As I grew older I began to skim over the sidewalks as fast as the boxy, cartoonish cars, jumping over them if need be. I never got anywhere when I was flying. I was always in transit, always wanting to be somewhere else, always waking in my own bed. As I lay there in between dream and everyday living I thought maybe I could actually manage it if I got right the trick of the first step. My father always said it’s no good being a dreamer and I’d have to learn to keep my feet on the ground. I guess he knew my seditious little soul wanted just the opposite.

Aiming at Spry

I hear the cold hard scrap of the shovel on concrete, the old man pausing amide the fog of his breath, asking how long he will be up to it, how many more winters will he muster the strength to move the bones inside his skin. Or maybe the strength of mind will go first, the mechanics of shoveling dropping away, blurring like eyesight, the fog of breath becoming the ever present fog of mind. How it turns out is all mystery. Age has taught him that. He intends to be one of those spry old codgers, sharp as a tack, as the say. He laughs at that, thinking maybe sharp as a blunt nail? Spry, anyway, one of those old guys with a walking stick you meet on the trail whose slow steady pace can go all day, but he doesn’t because he’s finally learned reaching the destination means the journey’s over and it’s the journey that got him up in the first place, and the end will come soon enough.

The Rag Man's Horse

I can hear the huffing snort of the rag man’s cart horse, uncomfortable with standing still in his harness, shaking his old head and blonde mane and shit-flecked tail. The rag man let me feed him sugar cubes, leathery lips snatching them from my palm while the rag man waited to see if anyone wanted rags or knifes sharpened. He came calling, “Rags. Rags for sale. Rags,” the orangey/brown horse clomping his shag-skirted hooves up Peoria Street. I remember the horse more than the old man, both weathered, wet smelling, obsolete, moving into things gone by, the clopping hooves, and the rag man’s cry, echoes come and gone. The rag man snapped his reins and clicked his tongue. His old horse leaned into her traces one last time.

The Only Saving Grace

Time is running out. Time slips away moment by moment, a nonrenewable resource, like water evaporating away with no atmosphere to turn it back. The stream of the past is held only by fading memory or desiccated fragments encased in solidified mud. It is born away with increasing speed making absurdity of what I thought mattered much. Insignificant seeming decisions are small turns of destiny multiplying geometrically building to a crescendo I did not count on. I am where I am. There is no forgetting. There is no exorcism for the things that haunt me. I can still only put one foot in front of the other, live and breathe through the world I live in. Opening one’s eyes without prejudice is the only saving grace there is. 

Inspirational Thoughts

I suppose I’ll just start typing on those morning when nothing apparent seem at hand under the assumption that if I type, it will come. It worked for Keven Costner in that baseball movie that assumed God would want a baseball field built in a corn field. Some people think God would not be concerned with such trivialities as sports stadiums, but beside the fact baseball, even considering the heretical notion that football is taking its place, is the national religion, the assumption that God would not be concerned is highly presumptuous.

If there is a god, all powerful, omnipresent, omnipotent, all that stuff, the idea we tiny, finite humans have any idea about where the boundaries of God’s care lie is absurd. He might very well care about baseball or on the other hand might be a curling fan. I suppose He may even had something to do with the writing of the script because He really wanted to see that Waterworld movie made for some reason beyond human understanding. My point is, God is mysterious and I like the idea of living in a world where the indwelling of the Spirit is not subject to our notions of what is or is not trivial and God does not view our thoughts and dream, fears and joys, whatever it is that goes on with us, as unimportant and never stops working in our lives for reasons beyond our speculations.

Support

     Support. To be in with. To leave where you are and join with. To be present for. To set oneself aside in the service of another. To be there for someone other than yourself, setting aside your own emotional response and focusing solely on the needs of another. To be about the other. To set oneself aside, observing oneself, keeping oneself in check so as not to bleed over and pollute with a dysfunctional response meant to placate one’s own fears and doubts. To follow in a supporting role to ensure another finds their way to completion of a task or an emotional ah-ha. To not make it about you or what you would or think they should do.  

Form and Function

I am switching to prose to see what change if the way I put down words make any difference, if the paragraph instead of the line make a difference as the structure makes any more difference than impelling me to you more words due to the compact efficiency of the form. You would assume it would if you believe that “form follows function” stuff, though maybe it makes more sense the other way around since I’m starting with the form to see what follows? Anyway, I’ll see where it leads for a while, at least down the page a ways, you can be sure of that unless I write some very pithy, one line piece that says it all and leads only from point a to point b in a straight line with no further elucidation, though I guess you could call it a side trip. 

Blame it on Weeds

One year ago today I started these

Things I have been calling poems

For the lack of a better translation

Or formal training maybe, groupings of words

I first heard long ago at Weeds

And decided I could do that,

Stand in front of people

With the license of an open mike

And G’s introduction

Under Sergio’s watchful eye and donated shots,

In the company of The Fly,

Joffery Stewart and the Renaissance Man,

The Vege-dude, his paramour,

And others of like ilk.

We slid our late night words under the table

And out the door in the memories of

Unsuspecting patrons of fifth column,

Politically incorrect provocateurs,

Unleashing them with intention

Into the swirl of the city’s dreams.

Old Enough to Write

I am approaching that age

Where it might be okay to write,

To sit and stare of into space and think

About what I want to say.

Leave him alone, they’ll say,

He must be tired.

They’ll say, look. He’s writing.

Isn't that quaint,

He’s found something to do.

When I’m reading back, mumbling to myself,

They’ll smile wistfully

Wondering where I've gone,

Eventually concluding I’m off

In my own little world.

They’ll have got the size wrong.

Hoping for Good Bricks

My mind seems blank, poem-wise,

Though some might disagree on that limitation.

It has been almost a year

With perhaps a week or so of missed words.

I know they don’t run out;

The scroll in my head seems

To keep going as long as my fingers hold out.

My theory is there is no such thing as

Writers block, you just have to be willing

To write crap now and then.

The hardest part is deciding the part’s that aren't.

I've not, for the sake of the experiment,

Chosen to spend much time on that

To see what came out over the year.

It’s been good for me so far

And contrary to the original year-long intention

I will leave it opened and go past tomorrow.

Thanks to all who have been reading.

I hope there hasn't been too many clinkers,

Which I believe refers to bad bricks.

Miracles

I’m waiting for a miracle.

Not the one where I open my eyes,

Get out of bed in the morning and breathe,

Or the one when I look back

And see you still sleeping.

I've also gotten the one

Where I get up in the dark

And out the back window the sun comes up.

And it’s not any of all those

Other everyday miracles either,

Or the one where everything is held together.

It’s always the ones you don’t know about

That are the trickiest to spot,

But I think I’ll know it

When it gets here.

Rips and Cuts

My thumb has been healing nicely

After its altercation with a powered up

Carbide table saw blade.

For those in the know

It was a rip on the under side

Missing the bone,

Rather than a cross cut.

A rabbit cut, strictly speaking.

There has been surprisingly little pain

And no permanent damage.

It is unfortunate the hard-to-see

Rips and cuts of the psyche

Over the course of life

Are not as pain free

Nor do they heal as readily.

They never seem to fail to hit the bone,

The damage is almost always permanent,

And the pain is spread

Wider than you can possible imagine.

Slow Motion Deceptions

So, the tree. It’s in the sun now

Looking all bright with its white lacy trim,

Being deceptive, pretending it can’t move.

If I had one of those cameras

That speeds up time

I could catch it doing its kung fu moves,

Or some graceful ballet

Or Thai hand dancing.

As it is

I’d have to stare at the sneaky bastard

For months on end to find out

What it’s really up to.

Even then,

I still wouldn't know

The underhanded things it’s engaged in

Below the surface.

Morning Light

The light comes up over the alley

Reveling the deep ruts in the snow

Running over each other,

Maneuvers from the early birds

Going to work.

The light continues over our house

To the clean snow of our pristine yard

Deep enough to offer suggestive definitions

Of our lawn furniture and planters.

Continuing its quiet exciting journey

The light steps over the big bush,

The sidewalk, the street,

Leaps over trees, rushes to the horizon

Relentlessly fleeing before it.

My stoic tree;

It doesn't even blink.

Tree in Winter

My nose is running like a sieve,

Unlike the stoic tree outside

Who mostly doesn't mind the pummeling of winter.

I cower inside fearful of the accumulation

Of the blowing white flecks

Needing removal from the sidewalk.

The big strong tree could rescue me,

Remove the snow with a few sweeps of its arms,

But like I said, the tree’s a stoic.

It will just stand there and watch

And not lift a finger,

Pretending to ignore me.

The Secret Life of Trees

The tree outside my front picture window,

Snow laced and frozen,

Has its thick arms open wide

Waiting for the morning sun,

Paying homage to the sky,

Necked and unashamed.

It is in the spring when she begins to get girlish,

Breaks out in a fit of shyness

And begins to cover herself,

Then sways all summer long

In her most seductive attire,

Totally drunk on the sun.

Then fall comes along and steals her clothes.

She doesn't care. She’s a nature lover.

She sleeps the winter through in the nude

Waiting for the next spring

When all the people come out

And point and smile the more she buds,

Making her shy again. 

Spring

I’m waiting for the trees

To kick back their shredded blankets of snow

And suck the spring in through their toes

They’ve dug into the soil,

Squint their eyes hard enough

To squeeze out their many budding tongues

So their green mouths can grow around them

And chew up all that healthy chlorophyll,

Dance in the wind and rain,

And forget about their stiff frozen limbs.

Everyday Magic

I want to say it’s never too late,

To believe despite the years and

The aches and pains of being alive

Long enough to get the senior discount

On coffee at McDonalds without asking,

There is still time to be who I am.

I guess it’s a faith thing to believe

Morning mercies are real.

To even get out of bed

It is necessary to believe something

Is worth getting up to,

Something new may happen,

Even to take a breath I’ve

Never taken before.

After all, breathing itself is a miracle,

A bit of magic, and isn’t it a joy

To live with the possibility of magic

Every time you get out of bed

Snow Job

It’s snowing again,

Maybe some god trying to cover things up,

Ashamed at how bad things have gotten,

What with lunch trays being pulled from little kids hands

While Jamie Dimon gets a ridiculous check.

Maybe Chase can fork over a check

To pay for school lunches for a year?

It’s interesting banks these days

Will only approve loans for those

Who can prove they don’t need one.

Maybe it’s them causing the snow?

What with all the snow jobs we’ve heard from them

They’ve got the experience.