This is in its own way a true story. I just hate it when I’m the source of these things in my own life. Like when I lost that job one time, got so fired. You couldn’t get more fired. I still don’t really understand how that all went down but that only shows how over my head that job was. It was just like an avalanche catching up with me. I was ten years sober and ten years with the company that gave me that assignment. They thought I should be able to handle it. I was building a crew around me just like the bosses wanted. The crew survived. I did not.
Oh well.
Probably
I'm pushing myself,
hot dogging it down the slope,
my skis so well waxed.
I look behind me
and see a huge avalanche
bearing down on me,
wonder if it's me
that started this mass rolling
by my hot dog style.
March 12, 2009 12:16 PM
Contraction
1 week ago
I do this too often, get lost in the splash of it, instead of just focusing on getting to the bottom alive. Why is it that i constantly need to be realigned? I guess those hills don't necessarily go straight down.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry. I wonder if I'm to see you in your poems. Your poems are tiny mirrors reflecting back just bits of me.
xo
erin
Erin, perhaps you and I are quite alike in some essential way. Perhaps when you see me you see yourself. Perhaps you see yourself because I am unafraid to play it straight in the poems.
ReplyDeletexoxox
We're all "hot dogs" every once in a while, and we all have to run from avalanches, don't we?
ReplyDeleteKaren, I am quite certain I have no right to claim I have taken a universal elevation. I take a posture of clarity, as if I see farther or deeper or broader, wider, or hold a more spacious territory than I perhaps deserve.
ReplyDeleteThe hilltop I have taken for my own may indeed afford a view. I have no actual clue of its context. It may be isolate or it may be part of the main range, may be in the foothills or hard up against the spinal crags. It may be in an ancillary range.
I can only be sure that I follow my destiny as best as I have been permitted to do and even then I cannot claim a remarkable courage, more a terrible necessity. So often I have done what I must and formed my principle from necessity, calling in the midst of the storm for love and forgiveness as if it were in my power to bestow them. I am an arrogant man.
On the other hand, one of the colors in my landscape seems to be a permission to make bold statements, statements that sound authoritative. I am afraid I must leave it to others whether or not any authority I display is genuine beyond my own freehold. I may simply be full of crap. No. I am full of crap. This is unequivocal. The question is what else is in me.
I am a fantasist and dreamer. I leave it to you whether I am truly God's man. That I am in thrall to my own story is unquestioned. I have willingly and long ago placed myself in that service.
I believe that you are indeed God's man. Full of crap? Human, aren't you? So, yes, I believe that part of you, too - of all of us - but godlike and full of possibilities, as well. That's the challenge of living, I think, deciding which of those two qualities will rise to the top.
ReplyDeletexoxo
Human? I deny it! :D
ReplyDeleteNo one in his right mind would admit that!
Hot Doggin' never comes to a good end. It is the stuff of movies, and well...you know, I always root for the underdog. But, we all have to show boat once, and then we know.
ReplyDeleteonce i'm buried under snow
ReplyDeleteit doesn't really matter much
who started it or what
all i have to know
which way is up
so i'm glad to hear your voice
that's the direction i will go
and when i fianlly dig myself out
i'll be glad to have that hot dog
:)
Annie, yes, it seems to start avalanches. Though there is a window of opportunity. I knew a dope dealer that got in and got out in time, sort of like that... Hot Dogging can work but mostly we get over-attached and can't stop in time. We are now in Portland's snow storm. We get one a year.
ReplyDeletejozien, I will get the bar-b-que going and go buy Ball Park Franks. I will get catsup and mustard and dice up a Walla-Walla Sweet if I can find it, or another lesser onion if I can't. I will have the buns ready. :D
We've all been there, I swear! That's such a familiar feeling. That dratted avalanche, if only we could ski faster!
ReplyDeleteHeh. Rachel, it may be so. Has it happened lately?
ReplyDelete