View From The Northern Wall

29 Years Dry Today

2012-02-10T09:33:00.000-08:00

Today marks the 29th anniversary. About two weeks previous to this day 29 years ago, my wife took the risk. She told me I was to leave our house and take my bottle with me should I choose to continue drinking. She said that if I stopped drinking, we would see if we could continue married. She pointed out that her medical insurance would pay for my 20 some odd days of inpatient treatment for alcoholism. She thought I should go there but that would be up to me.

I spent the next two weeks in extreme distress and then collapsed into my fate. On my last night I drank as usual and woke more or less sober in the morning as usual. She drove me to treatment. I went to my first AA meeting under treatment direction a week later. I have not had another drink since that morning.

The Red Sands Of Gnome

The gnomes under me
have stirred and clatter awake,
troubled with your scent
much like we dislike
the signs left by hissing cats.

They are the displaced
mud river gnomes dumped
here last time God rumbled by
in His dwarf humvee,
all militarist
in His latest gruff pretense.
They do hate the dry.

February 10, 2012 8:00 AM

You too can write weird poetry like this. All you have to do is not drink and not die for twenty nine years. Well...perhaps not all. Thanks to my friend Wander over at Wander Without Being Lost for his reminder of my responsibilities toward the gnomes.

A Flutter Of Friends

2012-02-09T19:38:00.000-08:00

Lunar Light

"There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does." - John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

A Flutter Of Friends

Like moths to a flame
the ones willing to hold you
gather near this place
as if fluttering
wings would block the steel blue shades
and keep you in light.

This is what we have,
the flutter of friends within
the fall of this night,
and under it all
the hum of love sustains us
and our ragged flight.

March 2, 2010 8:40 AM

Jeckyll And Hyde

2012-02-08T16:40:00.000-08:00

Once again, I am joining with the Three Word Wednesday (3WW) crowd. You can touch base with them by clicking *3WW*

Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words. Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). I invite everyone to check back often to read and comment on other contributions. This week's words:

Control; Flesh; Razor.

Jeckyll And Hyde

It must be bad speed
or some awful concoction,
of nightmare powders.
I've lost all control,
it's supposed to be all peace
and love, what they claimed -
maybe bad acid -
but damn! ribbons of raw flesh,
a bloody razor??

Low Pressure

2012-02-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

Blowing a Gale

++ Stormy Weather at Fort Foster. Beaufort Scale definition of a moderate gale: Sea heaps up. Some foam from breaking waves is blown into streaks along wind direction. Moderate amounts of airborne spray.

This photo was taken by N. Houlihan on March 1, 2005 in Kittery Point, Maine, US

Low Pressure

The wind is a hole
in the flatulence of sky,
a shift to fall in
or out. We release
the last ropes of inquiry
and stop declaring
edges among them.
The wind is a hole that breaks
all my frayed straight lines.

‎February ‎7, ‎2012 9:58 AM

Songsmiths

2012-02-07T01:58:00.000-08:00

Songsmiths

We ply the old trade,
and wandering from one far place
to another down
the stream of true song,
we seek to find love's turned key
in the locks of life.

The dream child dances
beside the bed we have made
for our hope, where we
lie down in moonlight
after the last song is sung,
after the smith has
banked back all the fire.

February 28, 2010 10:01 AM

Too Far Gone

2012-02-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

A grave at the Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.

Too Far Gone

You cradle my lines
in the sculpted hands we gave
the world right after
your revolution.

Oh I know how you feel now,
the outlaw strains on
your inner fathoms
and I would give anything
to settle this all down.

February 5, 2012 1:50 PM
********

Written for this week's Magpie Tales

Click on this link: The Mag 103 to see the work others have done with this image.

The Pivot On Which I Turn

2012-02-05T02:34:00.000-08:00

The Center of the Universe is in the Fremont District of Seattle.

The Pivot On Which I Turn

What I have is not
a secret, not abnormal
stuff, ancient honor
distilled into my
present life from countless lives
of questions, answers
which are more questions.
It is only that I saw
so clearly this time -
but saw just that once
and by now quite a long time
past, decades, decades.

February 5, 2012 2:02 AM

A close up. Nice to know Atlantis has been found.

Object Lesson

2012-02-02T12:56:00.000-08:00

Object Lesson

Birds suffer silence
and steely dark eyed after
the fatal world bite
and me, I snivel
at far less even while I
watch them - instruction
in how to die well
of the cruelty handed
out so freely here.

February 2, 2012 12:46 PM

With The Jugglers

2012-01-31T21:31:00.000-08:00

With The Jugglers

We all need the fool
to dance the edge of the world
ahead of our song,
the two dogs as well,
who snuff up future's long scent
and give back the pace
we take as we go.

We shall be jugglers of want
and of need, tangled,
marbled fat with meat,
with dreams and the grand high art
of crimson, of spice.

February 28, 2010 9:31 AM

Small Stone #30

2012-01-30T07:46:00.000-08:00

The Wee Folk of Eilenburg Castle in Saxony celebrate a marriage.

Who Knew This Would Happen

The veil between worlds
is torn now. The small folk peer
around this corner.

January 30, 2012 7:34 AM

Small Stone #29

2012-01-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

I Saw You On TV

Your kind touch - you lie
with me if I'm a lucky
man - oh I see stars!

**************

There is more than one way to read the word "lie". I intend at least two of them. :D

Small Stone #28

2012-01-28T05:56:00.000-08:00

It Is Ever Thus

And still her children
wanted to play in the park
one more time, just one.

‎January ‎27, ‎2012 4:20 AM

Small Stone #27

2012-01-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

Betelgeuse As Seen From A Hypothetical Planet

Due For Incineration In The Coming Storm

News Item, sometime soon: Today the star Betelgeuse, the upper left star of the constellation Orion, went supernova. It is no longer one of the largest of the red giants. Instead it is rapidly collapsing into a neutron star and the core will no longer be easily visible to the naked eye. Of course the remnant of the supernova will slowly change and fade for quite a long time. All across the world astrophysicists are having a heyday taking measures after measures. They were alerted early this morning, local time, when a storm of neutrinos and antineutrinos tripped the detectors and the source pointed back to Betelgeuse. The timing was perfect and many principle supernova observatories on the night side had time to align themselves with the upcoming event. The light began arriving just three hours later. Neutrinos come first because they are virtually massless and are not affected much by gravity or anything else. Even light must struggle to reach the surface of a star from within it because of the density and mass opposing it's travel. This is what accounts for the neutrinos' early arrival.

Of course, we must recall that Betelgeuse is some 640 light years distant and this means that the events of today are 640 years old and "actually" happened back in 1372 AD.

This evening, Astrophysicist Jeremy Pinchot wrote in his journal:

Ringing The Bell

Neutrinos sparking
in the heavy water tell
supernova tales
before the light comes
and a good thing too this is,
early news of things,
like you telling me
at long last you do love me
after all, thank God!

January 26, 2012 6:10 PM

(This post could not have happened without the nudge from Ethan Siegel and his latest post to his blog, Starts With A Bang. If you like things like this then please go there for the real thing.)

Gimme Shelter

2012-01-26T12:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a grand video produced by "Playing For Change" who have gathered around the vision of attaining peace through music. This kind of effort cannot happen without the internet so God Bless the Internet and God Bless the technicians and musicians who participate. May peace come that much closer as you get the idea of global musicians playing with each other across the world.

An old friend, a musician, Richard by name tipped me to this. There are many other songs posted at the Playing For Change website.

Small Stone #26

2012-01-25T12:35:00.000-08:00

Thom writes:

"Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words. Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday."

*click here* to visit this week's Three Word Wednesday

The three words Thom chose are: Bubble, Lumber (as a verb), and Wreck (either verb or noun).

In local news:
"An elephant was spied today wandering the city's landfill. No one knows where it has come from. It is not yet determined who has jurisdiction nor what to do. Some have said that the elephant was overheard to mutter and grumble strangely as if chanting."

The Elephant's Chant

I don't know from trash,
from ash, bubble or wreck
what comes next as I
just lumber along.

Small Stones #25

2012-01-24T18:42:00.000-08:00

Against The Wall

What will keep me kind
in the middle of the mean
sting of hot hot tears?

It's fading all too soon
looking for something more than
the rain, how it falls.

Here is a gift song from one of the women who have my heart, Dar Williams. I recommend nearly any song she has written. So here are two stones for Dar, taken as I needed and have now given back. (0) (0)

Small Stone #24

2012-01-24T10:14:00.000-08:00

An Old Story

I have lost the fire.
Now I must push my luck back
up the stony hill.

Small Stone #23

2012-01-23T18:50:00.000-08:00

There Was Sweet Grass

When are you coming
home? This town is dry dust now,
Please, I take it back.

********************

There. Caught up.

Small Stone #22

2012-01-23T18:35:00.000-08:00

Weather Report

Windy and warm but
if I told you, you would not
believe me, not now.

Small Stone #21

2012-01-23T18:17:00.000-08:00

Reminded Of John

I'm not the only
dreamer, the world as one world,
true love at the door
a stash of warm guns
puffing happy rings of smoke.

**************

For me the Beatles were one. John solo, Paul solo, George solo, Ringo... Even with new bands, they did not measure up to the sheer amazing genius they handed to me personally in their psychedelic years. But then I like complexity far too much, perhaps.

Bluegrass blows me away too.

However, when John was killed my heart broke in a unique way, proving how he bonded me to him in his soul and his success - and I couldn't hate his killer. I understood how John could make people crazy let alone abet pre-existing insanity.

Small Stone #20

2012-01-23T04:46:00.000-08:00

I Need To Practice

Attachments dangle
from piercings all over me
causing dripping skin
and clouded vision.

Small Stone #19

2012-01-22T21:21:00.000-08:00

Surviving The Black Death

To my knees, my grace
fallen into erosions
left by bugs beneath
the gripe of my crackled voice.

*****************

I have been unable to do much other than keep myself fed and clean for most of a week. I am climbing out of the pit now.

Small Stone #18

2012-01-18T01:50:00.000-08:00

The Gainer

This itch pulls my brain
to dive deep no matter how
much the cost may be.

Small Stone #17

2012-01-17T05:21:00.000-08:00

Under Water

I'm gravid, drowning
in the bitter of old dreams,
pining for a bit
of the noonday sun.

Thanks to Tess Kincaid's Magpie Tales and Jason deCaires Taylor for the idea.

Small Stone #16

2012-01-16T02:33:00.001-08:00

A Decisive Moment

I have delivered
the razor's slash as if there
was a dragon's egg.

From The Central Committee

2012-01-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

From "Silent Evolution" by Jason deCaires Taylor, courtesy Tess Kincaid's Mag 100

Wiki says:

"Jason deCaires Taylor (born 12 August 1974) is an English sculptor specialising in the creation of contemporary underwater sculptures which over time develop into artificial coral reefs. Taylor integrates his skills as a conservationist, underwater photographer and scuba diving instructor to produce unique installations that encourage the habitation and growth of corals and marine life."

He's been very busy. One of Jason's sites *click here*

From The Central Committee

We have all come here
to stand around and ponder
why we do all this
as if that would change
the unwashed odor we know
and the legacy
already staining
the sky above the surface
and those who swim near.

We promise to stand,
to let corals grow on us,
to give this color
back to the gray world
we have left heavy on you
who still live in air.

January 15, 2012 10:23 AM

Written for "The Mag 100" *click here* to visit the site

Small Stone #15

2012-01-15T04:10:00.000-08:00

Out Of The Fire

The play of your words,
dragon scales across the wind,
fully hot blooded.

Small Stone #14

2012-01-14T04:43:00.001-08:00

Gardening

I received your tree,
planted a kiss in the sky,
watched it grow feathers.

Small Stone #13

2012-01-13T03:57:00.000-08:00

The Demand

You wrote love me right
across my back, using your
index finger nail.

Small Stone #12

2012-01-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

Double Oh Six And A Half

We got the skinny,
the whispers, rumors, sneaking
around as if spies
on the run again.

Small Stone #11

2012-01-11T04:49:00.000-08:00

It's A Cold Morning

I approach you from behind,
you with your hand axe,
another blow shaving wood.
Your hair escapes to hang loose.

January 8, 2012 5:15 AM

Fearing The Plague

2012-01-11T04:44:00.000-08:00

Thom writes:

"Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday."

This week the words are:

Brutal; Sullen; Trust

To connect with the site, *click here*

Wiki writes: "The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".

"The outback is home to a diverse set of animal species, such as the kangaroo, emu and dingo. The Dingo Fence was built to restrict dingo movements into agricultural areas towards the south east of the continent. The marginally fertile parts are primarily utilised as rangelands and have been traditionally used for sheep or cattle grazing, on cattle stations which are leased from the Federal Government. While small areas of the outback consist of clay soils the majority has exceedingly infertile palaeosols. Riversleigh, in Queensland, is one of Australia's most renowned fossil sites and was recorded as a World Heritage site in 1994. The 100 km2 (39 sq mi) area contains fossil remains of ancient mammals, birds and reptiles of Oligocene and Miocene age."

Fearing The Plague

Let's not be brutal,
tearing skin away to bleed
across the dry sand
of the far outback
nor find the sullen dirty
sky above our shame.
Instead we shall trust
this fence to keep the snaggle
toothed vermin away.

January 11, 2012 4:29 AM

Small Stone #10

2012-01-10T04:52:00.000-08:00

In Monasteries
They Use Bamboo Slats

Can I shock you up?
Can I reach past the gravel
and plant in the loam?
Won't you see? That's all
I ask, if you'll fucking see.

Small Stone #9

2012-01-09T04:38:00.000-08:00

It's All Timing

Death keeps an orchard
just for me he says, hoping
I will visit soon.
I'm thinking not yet.

Yearning For Change

2012-01-08T13:24:00.000-08:00

Image from Lee Friedlander's work in the streets of New York

courtesy of Tess Kincaid at The Mag (Mag 99)

This one is an honest recounting of inner life in my own childhood.

Since Tess has written a similar poem I must wonder how many children of a certain age saw in Yul a father figure.

In my case the line of his face and his stern appearance plus his baldness added up to my dad in simple enough ways that allowed me to fantasize about another life. The travail in my life came from my own soul sickness (no matter where it came from) and then from social backwardness because of the isolation my illness caused.

My parents were decent and sophisticated folk, teachers, and they had my best interests at heart. They loved me as best they could. I yearned for a different set of circumstances, a feeling that persisted unrelenting from at least second grade on and came to a head in my adolescence. It peaked at the age of nineteen and nearly killed me.

How I survived my crisis, which involved yet another bout of illness at its start, a meningitis I caught at Fort Ord in 1964 is a complex story. I knew I was dying from age nineteen, a stress that lasted two years, and when I was "saved" at age 21 I knew that too, though I went mad at salvation's beginning. I went mad because the reframings caused by my inner changes were too radical to fit within my adolescent structure and I shattered in the key events. "All you need is love". Hah! Yes indeed, but beware.

In those days I could not talk about any of this. I did not have the words. In fact I have never really felt I have the words and don't still. Not really. That's why poetry and mythical story telling work best.

Yearning For Change

In all the other
ways I could think of to change
who or where I was
one was my dad as
someone else, as Yul Brynner.
My dad looked like him
to me though not to
others that much I must say.
I was a pale child.

January 8, 2012 1:23 PM

Small Stone #8

2012-01-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

Later We Moved Away

Why we swam in crap
I'm not sure, polluted streams
were the only ones
we knew in those days.

Small Stone #7

2012-01-07T05:46:00.000-08:00

Making Up

Silk upon your silk
slippery sweet after all
the strife has ended.

Small Stone #6

2012-01-06T04:58:00.000-08:00

That Special Ache

Her nose filled with scent,
the dog peers beyond the park
to yearn for passing
cars on the highway.

Small Stone #5

2012-01-05T04:53:00.000-08:00

Life After Life

Once we were soldiers
in combat. You killed me then.
I will forgive you
in some longer life.

The Torture Garden, Three Word Wednesday

2012-01-04T05:18:00.000-08:00

Shunan Bamboo Forest, China

Thom writes

"Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words. Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday. I invite everyone to check back often to read and comment on other contributions."

This week's words:

Naughty

Tactic

Zenith

For this week's Three Word Wednesday, *click here*

I must remark at this point that "naughty" is an interesting attitudinal word. It is literally "of the zero", that is, using "naught" in that mathematical sense. English relates that idea to immorality or bad behavior. Thus it is that hidden in the idea of "naughty" is the judgment that to outlaw oneself over moral behavior is to become a zero socially.

I find it really interesting that at least in American society the idea of "naughty" has gotten a cachet, especially in sexual matters, such that now "bad is good". "Oh she's such a naughty girl," is a great example. Another is when a girl responds flirtatiously to a male's advance, "You naughty boy!"

The Torture Garden

I receive bamboo
at this point, receive the frond,
the naughty sliver
under my thumbnail
that is your tactic this day
as the sun climbs up
to its bright zenith,
exposing my nudity
and the bloody stripes
you leave across me.

January 4, 2012 5:07 AM

Hokokuji Bamboo Forest, Kamakura, Japan

Small Stone #4

2012-01-04T04:43:00.000-08:00

Different Strokes

We sure are of two
different sorts, you and I.
I won't cut my hair.
You won't go to Crete.

Small Stone #3

2012-01-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

Global Warming

The jasmine asks me,
"where's the frost, the ice and snow?"
The crocuses gave
notice, moving north.

January 2, 2012 11:40 AM
Posted January 3, 2012 no matter what blogger says :P

The Morning After

2012-01-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

The River, Marina Moevs, 2005
The photo courtesy Tess at Magie Tales

The Morning After

I'm a lucky man.
What a ride. The hangover
is huge and my bed's
a wreck and I hate
climbing over wrack and goo
to get out of there
after the downstream
tumble but the water's gone
down and I'm still here,
proving one more time
that God loves sloppy old drunks
and worn out old fools.

January 2, 2012 8:39 AM

Written for Magpie Tales *click here*

Small Stone #2

2012-01-02T08:20:00.001-08:00

Loneliness

I let my dope run
out. Now what?

January 2, 2012 8:01 AM

The First Small Stone

2012-01-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

Elsewhere The War Continues

Halfway to Mount Hood
in the forest a small stone
gleams in the river
after my spinning
sidearm cast, four skips before
coming to its rest.

January 1, 2012 1:56 PM

Nearing The End

2012-01-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

The Corridor

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

The earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace. - Colman McCarthy

Colman McCarthy (born March 24, 1938), an American journalist, teacher, lecturer, pacifist, an anarchist and long-time peace activist, directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C. From 1969 to 1997, he wrote columns for The Washington Post. His topics ranged from politics, religion, health, and sports to education, poverty, and peacemaking. Washingtonian magazine called him "the liberal conscience of The Washington Post." Smithsonian magazine said he is "a man of profound spiritual awareness." He has written for The New Yorker, The Nation, The Progressive, The Atlantic, and Reader's Digest. Since 1999, he has written biweekly columns for National Catholic Reporter.

Since 1982, he has been teaching courses on nonviolence and the literature of peace. In the fall semester of 2006, he taught at seven schools: Georgetown University Law Center, American University, the University of Maryland, The Washington Center for Internships, Wilson High School, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and School Without Walls.

Nearing The End

There is a scratching
at my door and light beneath
slices my back wall
as I lie with eyes
tight shut against all the glare
of your call to me
with colors beyond
my understanding of light.

I am so ready.

February 26, 2010 12:44 PM

The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

What I Would Do

2011-12-31T19:01:00.000-08:00

Yearning

On this New Years Eve, 2011 the neighbor cat named Hellboy and I join in wishing you and yours a fruitfuytgytgytgytgytgytgytgytgytgytgytg (that was Hellboy stepping on my keys) fruitful 2012. May all the naysayers come to naught. May we in the US get the President we deserve.

I am currently in eclipse. I am hopeful the light will return.

I awoke this morning and on my Facebook, Michelle was wishing Happy New Year and I realized something. Michelle lives in Australia. As it hit midnight last night at the International Date Line it was January 1, 2012 there and so it was in Australia where Michelle lives. January 1 is coming to us hour by hour as it moves across the planet, as the planet revolves around the poles in its orbit, winter here in the north and summer in the south. Thus in Australia, Christmas and New Years Day take place in the long and the heat of summer. So also in Buenos Aires in Argentina. We do not all experience the same.

So in my life it is unique in many ways and yet the same in others. There is no doubt a northern and southern hemisphere in my life and an International Date Line too. Also in yours.

What I Would Do

I would reach far out
beyond the wrap of matter
into the quaking
gap of almost not
ever here again to try
to tell you the truth.

I would spin within
the celestial dream of time,
spin on the point blank
sweep of light, of light
that plays your face in shadow
and in hues of love.

I would hold with you,
keep the faith with you and yours,
leave nearby my heart.

February 13, 2010 3:37 PM

Calling In The Year

The Raven And Coyote

2011-12-30T20:06:00.000-08:00

The Raven And Coyote

Raven looks at her,
old coyote in the warming
snow that clogs the pads
of her cold cold feet.

Coyote ignores raven, her
one eye on the trail.
I know she hears me,
the click of the camera.
She ignores me too.

Raven keeps one eye on
me even though she is high
up that naked tree.

February 7, 2010 1:51 PM

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. - Melody Beattie

Melody Beattie is the author of Codependent No More, published in 1987 by the Hazelden Foundation. The book was successful and influential within the self-help movement, selling over eight million copies and introducing the word codependent to the general public.

Following the success of Codependent No More, Beattie authored over a dozen other books, including Beyond Codependency and The Language of Letting Go. Her most recent book is Make Miracles in Forty Days: Turning What You Have into What You Want, published in 2010. Several of her books have been published in other languages.

Similar to the work of Bill W. and Alcoholics Anonymous five decades earlier, Beattie's early work synthesizes psychoanalytic theory (especially object relations and the work of Heinz Kohut, Wilfrid Bion, and Otto Kernberg) into language people can easily grasp and use. In Codependent No More, Beattie also functioned as a popularizer of science, especially the work of psychiatrist Timmen Cermak, author of Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence.

Interested in what Melody might have to say to you?
*click here*

Might Be I Took A Wrong Turn

2011-12-29T20:21:00.001-08:00

"I took a wrong turn," said Brother Rabbit.

Might Be I Took A Wrong Turn

The hare of friendship
cannot find me because dark
rime from the rubber
sprayed slush coats my paw
and I clench and clench it up
from age old habit,
sure I am the one,
the very truthfully right
hare all alone here
on the night spread road
of my fearsome destiny
so I breathe and pray.

‎December ‎29, ‎2011 7:33 PM

The Wrecking Crew

2011-12-28T04:59:00.000-08:00

Fashion for The New York Times (the backdrop in a foggy day) 1956

Tom Palumbo - www.tompalumbo.com

Thom writes: "Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

"Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

"I invite everyone to check back often to read and comment on other contributions. This is, after all, a community for writers who clamor for feedback."

To find this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words: Demolish; Resolution; Transform.

The Wrecking Crew

The watery thin
sun of year's end rose today
behind lower clouds
than usual, not fog,
not that, but still they mask well
your scheduled structure.

We shall demolish
this old relic and transform
the vacancy left
according to rules
of the new resolution
handed down to us.

December 28, 2011 4:41 AM

"A Foggy Day" is a song composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1937 film A Damsel in Distress. It was originally titled "A Foggy Day (In London Town)", and is often still referred to as such.

A Damsel in Distress(RKO) is a 1937 English-themed Hollywood musical comedy film starring Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, George Burns, and Gracie Allen. With a screenplay by P. G. Wodehouse, loosely based on his novel of the same name, music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, it is directed by George Stevens.

Soon They'll Find Her

2011-12-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

Laughing Marilyn Monroe by Bert Stern Pearls

Picture offered by Tess at Magpie Tales

Marilyn was a smart but troubled lady. I had an aunt who grew up like her when our family on my Mom's side exploded. My Mom too went to a kind of foster situation, but she was older and turned it to her advantage. Her little sis (half sister with different fathers) ran in the streets while my Mom took a college degree.

Soon They'll Find Her

She looks for promise
in the glitter of the night
just as they said to.
She's obedient,
sex kitten on their command
and innocent too,
just that way, fellas.
She's a student of our lives
and you'd think jaded
but the whispers come
slinking in the graying smoke
suggesting her pain.
She's tried to untie
all the knots she's come here with,
to simplify things
picking at the strings
so she can smile at us now
just once for damn real.

Written in memory of Nan Wire (nee Hogg)
and Marilyn Monroe, December 27, 2011 12:48 PM

Written for Magpie Tales #97 *click here*

Buried Treasure

2011-12-26T15:54:00.000-08:00

Miserere Nobis

I was reading at Paula's House of Toast a poem she wrote with this passage:

"Their song, halfway
between a boatman's yo and ho,
part miserere nobis, part deo gratias,
hovers on the wind."

Miserere nobis means (God,) have mercy on us. Deo gratias means Thanks be to God. Even though I am thoroughly familiar with the phrases from singing Latin in choir, I had to look the translations up. I am ever more grateful for the internet and my ability in my dotage to easily research stuff.

I shall add that Paula is a medical doctor who lives and practices back east and is a remarkable photographer of the humbler aspects of nature found around her in her neighborhood. I have followed her blog from the first, having found it via Lucy in France who suggested Dale here in Portland. I found Paula listed on his site and fell in love with both her photography and her unabashed expression concerning her religious practice and other things.

Miserere Nobis

To me that was too great to pass up, so I wrote a haiku there in reply. Then I took that haiku, the first three lines of this poem and added the next nine lines.

Buried Treasure

If you remember
anything from this sermon
let it be "yo ho!"
taken from pirates
as they gather their booty
for burial under
special marked boulders
and draw their maps together
while they look askance
as if under threat
and I imagine they are
just that, wouldn't you?

‎December ‎26, ‎2011 3:02 PM

Playing On The Sly

2011-12-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

"Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence. I am not remotely interested in just being good." - Vince Lombardi (during his first talk with the Green Bay Packers as their coach)

"Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow." - Norman Vincent Peale

"Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it." - Rabindranath Tagore

I don't know if this happens to many people but my hair has changed over the decades. My hair is thinning now but at sixty-six nowhere near bald, nor am I gray haired. My hair is the sort of nondescript brown that you almost call no color at all but turns out brown for the sake of driver's license descriptions. It is almost perfectly straight though I notice it is easily trained into things when damp. I suppose that is fairly normal.

When I was a small boy my hair was straight and I was blonde. Slowly my hair turned brown. As it did, I started to get a curl too. By the time I was in high school I was curly brown haired with the kind of waviness that often gets complimented. Me, I hated it. I wanted more control than the curls allowed, even though I knew I was "fortunate" from common points of view. That situation lasted to my forties, when my hair started to straighten out. I used to ask the barber to thin my hair. I no longer do that. I think this hair thing may have had to do with adult male sex hormones. I wouldn't mind if my hair turned back to blonde. I know even if I gray significantly I will not darken my hair as some do. One disappointing thing, I have had to shave my ears for years now. Shit.

Knowing what I know now, would I want to go back to an earlier time, say nineteen, or fifteen and do it all again knowing what I know now? I am sure this is not an easy question. I have thought about it many times. How about going all the way back to near the beginning? After considerable thought, my answer is clear.

Playing On The Sly

Sometimes I've wished for
a return to my small blonde size
and the caves, burrows,
the crevices I found
but not often. I have found
such good games to play
with you and sometimes
with the one who left me here.
We play on the sly.

February 7, 2010 9:16 AM

What Is Truth?

2011-12-23T20:58:00.000-08:00

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth. - Lillian Hellman

In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable. - Madame de Stael

Wiki says: Lillian Florence "Lilly" Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American authors of plays, screenplays, and memoirs, linked throughout her life with many left-wing political causes.

A poem written after midnight in winter...what do you expect? At least Lillian also believed truth is a snake. I found that quote tonight but I wrote the poem nearly two years ago.

What Is Truth?

The truth is a snake
of many colors, and eyes
that flash cold and hard
if there is no heat,
dim sun above stormy clouds
and me at a loss
fearing the sharp bite
of all the serpent scaled hues
and the snaky breath.

February 6, 2010 12:30 AM

We know who Gandhi is, and I have introduced Lillian, but who is Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein?

Do I Have To Make Sense?

2011-12-21T05:11:00.000-08:00

Fat Tuesday

Thom at Three Word Wednesday offers:

Belief; noun: An acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists; (belief in) trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.

Festive; adjective: Of or relating to a festival, cheerful and jovially celebratory.

Rumple; verb: Give a creased, ruffled, or disheveled appearance to; noun: An untidy state.

As ever, Thom writes

Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words. Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

*****

Do I Have To Make Sense?
(This is poetry, after all, serious stuff! zzzzz)

For the fun of it
I shall add one Fat Tuesday
to the other joys
his belief displays
on the festive mantlepiece
of the Stiltskin home.
Rumple is his name
and he will grumble sometimes.
Not brown today though,
nor any dark hue.

I really don't know just what
this is all about.

December 12, 2011 5:05AM

For the rest of the gang *click here*

ps, because of TWW I am leaving this poem alone here. However this evening I discovered I like the poem better with the second line in the title and a change I have made. I wonder if you will like it better. I will say this. The poem is a killer when spoken aloud with a dramatic voice. I have one and in reading it aloud, I think there is much more meaning to it. You might try it. Here is my second version.

Do I Have To Make Sense?
(This is poetry, after all, serious stuff! zzzzz)

For the fun of it
I shall add one Fat Tuesday
to the other joys
placed by disbelief
on the festive mantlepiece
of the Stiltskin home.
Rumple is his name
and he will grumble sometimes.
Not brown today though,
nor any dark hue.

I really don't know just what
this is all about.
*********************
See what changing one line can do?

Out For A Ride

2011-12-19T20:36:00.000-08:00

North Carolina Back Road

My Dad (step-father) lived in Columbia, South Carolina for years. He married a woman who came from modest family money, whose father was nearby and growing older. She had family duty and eventually a full share of family money. This was fortunate for my Dad because he had run afoul the politics of advanced degrees in education and never could get his doctorate though he tried three times. My Dad was a poor politician and you have to be good at that both with educators themselves and with the parents too. He had a job for several years, first overseas, two tours as an administrator for the American Schools set up to support the diplomatic and business communities in foreign postings, such as Tehran, Iran and Dacca, East Pakistan. Then he worked in the states after his last doctoral attempt in Arizona as a Superintendent of Schools in Geyserville, California for about five years. After that he never worked in his field again.

When I returned from overseas with the family after the East Pakistan posting I watched the dissolution of an eighteen year marriage between my Mom and Dad. I was twenty-three at that time. My Mom eventually picked herself up and became a Unity School of Christianity Minister. My Dad went off to school in Tucson, Arizona for his third attempt at his PhD in Education. That's where he met his next wife, the woman who gave him the child he always wanted and couldn't have with my Mother.
They tried but she spontaneously aborted each of several times, even though she had birthed me with almost no trouble at all.

I had picked up a pair of women friends, younger and still in high school while overseas. One of them returned to the midwest if I remember right, and the other to Birmingham, Alabama. I was sweet on the one in the midwest and was in awe of the one in Ala. but thought her far above my pay grade. She invited us to Thanksgiving that first year back, so I went to Birmingham for a Russian ethnic Thanksgiving feast (in honor of her grandparents who emigrated from Russia) but I blew it big time. I was anxious to connect with the midwest girl and was completely surprised when the Alabama girl thought I had come to Alabama for her. If I had been smooth and willing to shift my affection it may have completely changed my life, but I lost them both of course. I would have happily lost my head and heart over the Alabama girl had I known that was possible.

So Birmingham, Alabama and Columbia, South Carolina. I flew to Birmingham and back to San Jose, Ca, already sick at heart for my mistake. The South for me is about the one that got away. The Columbia thing was a road trip from McLean, Va. through Virginia, North Carolina, and then South Carolina, there to stay for a week and then back home to Portland by air.

I think of the back roads of North Carolina in this poem. Some of the poorest people in the US live there.

Out For A Ride

What am I to make
of the back roads, the dirt roads
of the deep old lands
where the tobacco
grows even though we need quit
it's use, and ditch hemp
grows too and the heat
and humidity takes you
at mid summer noon?

What will I do if
my car breaks down in the dust
billowed up behind?

February 4, 2010 10:09 AM

In Dim Light

2011-12-18T11:22:00.000-08:00

Lee Friedlander (born July 14, 1934) is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of the photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street-signs. Friedlander now works primarily with medium format cameras (e.g. Hasselblad Superwide). While suffering from arthritis and housebound, he focused on photographing his surroundings. His book, Stems, reflects his life during the time of his knee replacement surgery. He has said that his "limbs" reminded him of plant stems.

From his collection Stems:

From his work in New York in the 60's:

Offered up by Tess as a Magpie prompt:

In Dim Light

You have shadowed me
for years, taking your cold shots
and covering me,
blocking what light shines
on me, dim at best most times.
I can't shake you off.
You say it's your art
And I say it's a damn pain.
I don't know what she
says, but she loves you.
Go figure that one, you shit.
Figure why she should.

December 18, 2011 11:18 AM

For the Magpie Tales contributor list *click here*

Waiting For Your Call

2011-12-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

Phone cards donated to soldiers

Waiting for the woman I love who is deployed in Afghanistan...I sent her a phone card of course, one of the fancy expensive ones, because she is not calling me so often these days. From what she tells me, she is in harm's way frequently. The emails are slowing down too. The words are more generic. WTF.

Or.

She has emigrated to Peru, working for Doctors Without Borders on the wet side of the Andes. I do not know if she will ever return. There is no phone service there but there is in the town nearby. It is higher in the mountains and between that clarity and satellites there is a way to call. I really, really miss her. She says she misses me, but she isn't coming home.

Or.

We came apart a couple years ago, her decision, and she has gone to Germany while I stay in Amsterdam. What I do to pay my bills, I can't really do anywhere else...I am too old now and no one will take me on. She has a goal and is following her own way. She saw I couldn't come and worked it out over several months that her goal was more important than our intimate daily life. We got along really well in most ways. One of the hardest things I have done is reconcile to the idea that she has rejected me. We are still friends. She visits, short visits, frequently, but not only me, never only me. Then she goes back to Germany and her new life.

Or...

Waiting For Your Call

I pace or at least
I dream of pacing, waiting,
hoping you will call
using your new card
to cross international
lines, to reach me here
in my secrecy,
in the jail of my tangled
hope and turbulence.

February 5, 2010 10:48 PM

Gold And Silk Ribbons

2011-12-15T04:42:00.000-08:00

On one of the streets to the south and east of the San Jose State campus someone planted a row of ginkgoes. Those trees were in those days 1967-1969 fully mature with large diameter trunks, reaching high into the sky. As is typical of ginkgoes they had a bold and splayed crown, reaching toward each other and across the street too. When the leaves dropped in fall, the yellow gold color dominated everything, and the light passing through the ginkoes would turn an ethereal shade all its own. The thing with the light tended to happen at all times of year on that street. Once when I was so in love with Katy, walking up that street something very strange happened to the light. First I loved the light, then in short order it scared me and I hurried back home. It was too real and I didn't know what it meant, except that it was meant for me. Ginkgo trees gather together and together have power.

Wiki says: Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba; also spelled gingko and known as the Maidenhair Tree, is a unique species of tree with no close living relatives. The tree is widely cultivated and introduced, since an early period in human history, and has various uses as a food and traditional medicine. The Ginkgo is a living fossil, with fossils recognizably related to modern Ginkgo from the Permian, dating back 270 million years. The most plausible ancestral group for the order Ginkgoales is the Pteridospermatophyta, also known as the "seed ferns," specifically the order Peltaspermales.

Although Ginkgo biloba and other species of the genus were once widespread throughout the world, their range shrank until by two million years ago it was restricted to a small area of China. For centuries it was thought to be extinct in the wild, but is now known to grow in at least two small areas in Zhejiang province in Eastern China, in the Tian Mu Shan Reserve. However, recent studies indicate high genetic uniformity among ginkgo trees from these areas, arguing against a natural origin of these populations and suggesting that the ginkgo trees in these areas may have been planted and preserved by Chinese monks over a period of about 1,000 years. Whether native ginkgo populations still exist has not been demonstrated unequivocally.

Where it occurs in the wild it is found infrequently in deciduous forests and valleys on acidic loess (i.e. fine, silty soil) with good drainage.

In many areas of China it has been long cultivated and it is common in the southern third of the country. It has also been commonly cultivated in North America for over 200 years, but during that time it has never become significantly naturalised.

Gold And Silk Ribbons

I had another
dream of the time long ago
we were together -
remember the place
where even the ginkgo trees
grew taller and spring
lasted half the year?

You wore gold and silk ribbons
in your shining hair.

January 27, 2010 11:15 PM

That's A Song, You Know

2011-12-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

Along with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane are regarded as the most successful San Francisco band of the late 60s.

Three Word Wednesday: Immobile, Proximity, Retribution
For this week's gathering *click here*

That's A Song, You Know

I was once full of
slithers and wiggles, gathered
in loose red bundles.

Now I'm immobile,
anchored to you, an oak tree
in proximity
to your granite face.

It's retribution, I know.
You've found ways to root
me and now I've got
the sit down, can't cry, Oh Lord
I'm gonna die blues.

Most who know of the Airplane remember Grace Slick, but Signe Anderson was first, and the Jefferson Airplane had no girl singer at the very start. I saw both Jorma Kaukonen (finger picking country and blues, of course) and Paul Kantner (classical guitar) as solo acts before they came out as the Airplane. They performed in a pizza parlor turned folk music coffee house south of the San Jose State campus run by Paul Zeigler. I also saw Skip Spence perform there solo. As a wannabe folkie myself, I modeled my singing and playing on Paul Zeigler. He had previously had a long run at a coffee house called The Brass Knocker, located in Saratoga, California. I was there in the audience learning Paul's style as often as I could get there. I even went one weekend AWOL from Fort Ord, and when the owner found out I was AWOL, he threw me out. Zeigler did High Flying Bird too. That's where I smoked my first dope.

Looking Past The Hand

2011-12-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

Bond Of Union

Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972), usually referred to as M. C. Escher (nicknamed Mauk) was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.

Here is a self portrait:

1929

I have had a special relationship with Mauk (me and millions of others) for my whole life, not only loving the puzzles and cleverness of his work, but the way he mostly deals with images of other worlds, even though it is obvious that he can draw this one if he wants to. I think I have some of that going on. I hope I can be forgiven my arrogance.

Looking Past The Hand

I had this good friend
would shove his nose flat using
the palm of his hand,
his eyes wide open,
"Get the picture?" he would ask.

"It's too close!" I'd say.
"Exactly!" He'd say.

Now you ask how I see you,
see your heart so plain.
It's not much I do
but this: look back past your hand,
from out your blue eyes.

January 30, 2010 4:44 AM
changed one word, December 12, 2011 7:19 PM

In honor of Mick D., who has been my friend for over twenty years and who asks, "Get the picture?"

Cancer Rising

2011-12-11T08:16:00.001-08:00

Through Tess at Magpie Tales, image by Mostafa Habibi

I write this poem for this week's Magpie Tales
For Magpie Tales #95 *click here*

Cancer Rising

The abandoned boat resting
on the verge of things caught me
and I am amazed
that this beach ate me
alive like a crab fearing
the coming noontide
crowds, the gulls intent
on piercing my soft salt shell.
I need your help now.
I can't dig me out
alone at this point. Please come,
or my eyes will be plucked out.

written December 11, 2011 8:42 AM

The crab is the sign Cancer becomes cancer and the tide rising is a foretelling and so astrology becomes the abandoned boat and illness is me buried in the sand on the shore of mortality. Finally, cancer becomes a broken heart. That is the poet path, where the muse led me on this one.

By the way, I suffer the broken heart, not the cancer.

My call holds, for it is universal,
"Please come, or my eyes will be plucked out!"

Heartache

2011-12-10T04:15:00.001-08:00

"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence." - Henry David Thoreau

"Keep close to Nature's heart. Break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." - John Muir

"I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water." - D. H. Lawrence

I am on a path begun in November of 1966. Along the way I have suffered terrible deflections and also have received amazing grace. Most of the time I simply trudge, informed by the topology of my inner life, and my inner life guided by the vision I received that long ago November, when I turned twenty-one. I have appeared a fool much of the time and I respect the singular nature of guidance.

As Thomas Jefferson knew, the principal relation between man and God is individual to the human soul, and while it may not be personal in any ordinary sense, it is certainly a private matter. Yet as Thoreau and Emerson knew, there is no individual without his embedding in the landscape of the universe. He is located. He is related. Even a rigorous isolation has its limits and so it is better to acknowledge such a radical dependency and in the end revere it in some way.

Every fantasy of my inner life is yet another arrow aiming at my place in things. I arose, my beginnings in bewilderment and my every breath yearns for a return I have yet to understand even this late in my passage.

Heartache

I stood to the left
of the narrow midnight spring
watching the water
finger out over
the slab of granite laying
flat, letting the flow
drop a foot into
the pool below.

I prayed for your mum, for you.
I prayed for us all.

January 28, 2010 8:41 PM

"For as long as space endures
And for as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then may I too abide,
To dispel the misery of the world."

--Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

He Writes Gold Rings

2011-12-08T19:47:00.001-08:00

He shall remain nameless. I shall not embarrass him. It is sufficient to say that I learned this principle as a small boy watching a movie called "The Fastest Gun Alive." There is always someone faster, better, wiser, richer, more this, more that. Always. Well, not always... That might keep you going.

Directed by
Russell Rouse
Produced by
Clarence Greene
Written by
Frank D. Gilroy
Russell Rouse
Starring
Glenn Ford
Jeanne Crain
Broderick Crawford
Russ Tamblyn
Allyn Joslyn
Cinematography
George J. Folsey
Editing by
Harry V. Knapp
Ferris Webster
Distributed by MGM
Release date April 12, 1956
Running time 89 minutes

He Writes Gold Rings

I have this young friend
who writes gold rings around me,
that contain my wool
as it unravels,
as I spin yarns of my own.
It’s all true, hollers
this wild eyed magus
as he is contained by gold
sliding down his form.
It’s all true, whispers
the world of my amazement
as I shiver, golden.

January 28, 2010 7:43 PM

Old Age

2011-12-07T05:23:00.001-08:00

This week's words:
flag
might
passive

The words Thom has handed to us weave a vision that leads me back to my personal fantasy, forged in the life I lived at the end of the century as I engaged the deepest heart work I will probably do in this life. This work carried me past the transition from my middle years to the beginnings of my old age. This work freed me to express myself as I now do, in words and in music too. However, I must do all this with what is left to me and much of what I was in the last century is no longer with me in this one. Here I confess undying love and gratitude to Maire of the Shining Moon, the lady who carried my heart during this transition.

What happened in the next decade is a different chapter filled with returns and new beginnings, new refreshments and new kinds of love. I am grateful for this as well. That too has now passed as I am compelled along my way.

The Passing Of The Age
The Mage's Lament

Oh sweet love, darling queen of my ages,
the shield of my being, I shall raise
your standard, the vermilion flag
tied to the pole I hold close to my side,
though my pain seeps past the cloth
once tied around me by your hand.

I might stand on the rampart at evening
or else deeper within your keep and yet
have I been torn from the old ways,
torn open by our forced passage
from this darker time to the coming newer light.
You have firmly said I must be passive,
must stay my hand, must stay behind.

Your enemies and mine have prevailed.

I confess I flag. I would hold with all
the might left to my hand
in the setting of the wild light,
all I can muster under this gray sun.
Yes, I am passive now, slow and swollen
from within, from the burdens that beset me,
the steady crazing of my shocked bones,

but still shall I lift your color
as I salute our song deep within,
salute the memory that echoes,
salute the way we once were,
the way it all once was.

December 7, 2011 6:46 AM
Written for Three Word Wednesday CCXLIX *click here*

The Messenger

2011-12-04T11:03:00.001-08:00

Lunch, George Tooker, 1964, Columbus Museum of Art

George Clair Tooker, Jr. (August 5, 1920 – March 27, 2011) was a figurative painter whose works are associated with the Magic realism and Social realism movements. Tooker did not care for this label. He was one of nine recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 2007. Working with the then-revitalized tradition of egg tempera, Tooker addressed issues of modern-day alienation with subtly eerie and often visually literal depictions of social withdrawal and isolation. He died of kidney failure at the age of ninety with a life's work of over 150 paintings, many of which sold for $300,000-400,000. Even so, because he shunned publicity, not many know of him or his work.

Poem written for Tess Kincaid's Magpie Tales *click here*

The Messenger

I did not come here
for lunch, though it is that hour.
I have a message
for one of you here.
Will J. D. please stand up now?
That's John Doe perhaps?
Why are there only
two women here? That's crazy
in this day and age.
I feel funny, strange,
not a good way to feel in
this hazy brass light.
Where in Hell's Hall can
I be? And where is that guy?
I have this damned note.

written December 4, 2011 10:45 AM

How To Handle Pain

2011-12-02T20:15:00.001-08:00

"The Hopi Indians of Arizona believe that our daily rituals and prayers literally keep this world spinning on its axis. For me, feeding the seagulls is one of those everyday prayers." - Brenda Peterson
________________________________________________
For me, feeding a neighborhood cat is like this.
________________________________________________
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -- it is, rather, a light by which we may see -- and what we see is life." - Robert Penn Warren
__________________________________________________________
Robert Penn Warren is a poet. So am I. I agree with him.
__________________________________________________________
"The moment of change is the only poem." - Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich (born May 16, 1929) is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."

How To Handle Pain

I heard you speak so
low, just above a whisper
of pain, sharp as ice,
and my first thought was
we should run, steal a fast car,
rob the bank nearby,
head to Mexico
and not look back, not at all
no matter who calls.

January 27, 2010 10:40 PM

It's Dicey Now

2011-11-30T10:16:00.001-08:00

Cats who behave badly

Once again, joining Three Word Wednesday. Click here for the site: 3WW CCXLVIII

An aircraft jettison switch cover

Thom explains:
"Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words. Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday."

The three words for this last day of November, 2011: Behave; Jettison; Mob.

An Angry Mob

It's Dicey Now

Oh, I just don't know
how I'll get you to behave
in these latter days -
the cover is up,
the jettison switch exposed -
I'm about to dump
all in a clean sweep
and outside the gates the mob
is shouting, pressing
on the shaky fence,
this all because you exposed
the situation.

Written November 30, 2011 10:58 AM

Love's Tapestry

2011-11-29T20:20:00.001-08:00

Sunrise

Love's Tapestry

You've caught the windy
song as it threads past us here.
You rise, hold my light,
my lowering light.

I feel the spacious welcome
in your heart, your eyes
as you rise above.
We shall lift our days toward
the gold flame beyond
the gray sun hanging
low in this odd aged land.

We are now entranced,
woven together
as true as ever we've been
life and life and love.

January 18, 2010 7:23 AM

The Meaning Of Hope

2011-11-28T19:18:00.001-08:00

Doorway Into Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul.
And sings the tune
Without the words,
and never stops at all.
Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

"If you know the point of balance, You can settle the details. If you can settle the details, You can stop running around. Your mind will become calm. If your mind becomes calm, You can think in front of a tiger. If you can think in front of a tiger, You will surely succeed." - Mencius

Mencius, most accepted dates: 372 – 289 BCE, was a Chinese philosopher who was arguably the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself. Mencius' interpretation of Confucianism has generally been considered the orthodox version by subsequent Chinese philosophers, especially by the Neo-Confucians of the Song dynasty. Mencius' disciples included a large number of feudal lords, and he was actually more influential than Confucius had been. The Mencius (also spelled Mengzi or Meng-tzu), a book of his conversations with kings of the time, is one of the Four Books that Zhu Xi grouped as the core of orthodox Neo-Confucian thought. In contrast to the sayings of Confucius, which are short and self-contained, The Mencius consists of long dialogues, including arguments, with extensive prose. While Confucius himself did not explicitly focus on the subject of human nature, Mencius asserted the innate goodness of the individual, believing that it was society's influence – its lack of a positive cultivating influence – that caused bad moral character. "He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature" and "the way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind".

Christopher writes:

The Meaning Of Hope

I shall choose my hope
like I choose my gait after
falling like I have.
There is no native
walk left in me after all.
The impact shook me down.
I've been spun and slammed
and knocked upside my old head
to the point I call
uncle in this game
yet I shall choose to have hope
and I believe you.

January 17, 2010 5:07 PM

"Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--Wait and hope." - Alexandre Dumas (1802 - 1870), The Count of Monte Cristo

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up." - Anne Lamott

"Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have." - H. Jackson Brown Jr.

The Discarded Sofa

2011-11-27T11:12:00.001-08:00

photo: Christine Donnier-Valentin via Tess at
Magpie Tales 93

The Discarded Sofa

If I sat down here
waiting for you while you ply
your trade - as you fly
and then wade right in,
picking up dangerous kin
and loving wee ones
as if you welcome
the entire green scaly world
of dark styled dragons -
you could be my love
if I hold your place right here
below the siege line
and the hollow things,
the discarded parlor trade -
will you cover me?

written November 27, 2011 11:32 PM

"Baby Dragon" courtesy Elena Dudina, found on her latest profile *click here*

The poem written for Magpie Tales 93. To see all the contributors *click here*

In The Wind

2011-11-24T20:04:00.001-08:00

This photo is part of a series posted on Picasa by Ronald Gruijters

To see his work, *go here*

Love can travel through time. We all know that. Poetry can too. Some of us know it. In fact words reside in the heart of magic and mages and shamans know this well.

I hope my US readers all had a fulfilling Thanksgiving Day. One thing that happened around here, I listened to a man try and save another man's life through loving and acknowledging him publicly today. This was a powerful moment in my otherwise serene day. I cried too. From time to time I am privileged to witness like this. This kind of love is priceless and powerful, and I think highly effective. We shall see. I mean I was not alone. There were perhaps twenty witnesses. I know many of them were as moved as I was. We may get a chance to know the rest of the story as it unfolds. I hope so.

In the Wind

I wrote you some lines
so long ago I forget
when, before we met...
but I know they are
your lines because they slanted
in the wind like you,
and the wind took them
like it takes your tangled curls
on this autumn day.

January 16, 2010 7:58 PM

Solar Fire

2011-11-23T16:50:00.001-08:00

This is so cool. Rachel and I are in a cycle again, playing off one another in poesy. *Go Here* to see my poem in its context. It appears there as a comment to her poem, just as that poem first appeared as a comment to my post. For that context *go here* But that blog post was written because Rachel started the cycle by posting this poem. *go here* There is something very special in this. We both agree we are better poets with each other. I have never met in person with this woman who lives in the Yukon and me in the Willamette Valley in Oregon but we have been in the poetry together for a few years now. This is intimacy of a special kind. I really, really value what we have had. God blesses me with you, Rachel.

Sometimes I am just amazed at what she does and I know she has the same sense of me from time to time. So this is actually simple (but how rare? how rare?) We actually understand each other at some deep level that reaches beyond place and time.

I wrote this poem yesterday but had an obligation to my participation in Three Word Wednesday. She told me she has a reply ready to go. Hooah. Poetic power rising! I envision the muses weaving in among themselves with complex design, sleek and filled with us and what we do for we are obedient to the gods and goddesses of creativity.

Solar Fire

Even though I go
all the way to the sharp chill
of the farther ice
clouds where from time to
time I might fall free to draw
a singular streak,
even there I feel
the tug of your nuclear
song.

Your solar edge
gives the harmonic:
you wind the tonic drum beat
of my sloven soul.

November 22, 2011 12:42 PM

Sundogs

for access to Kuljit Athwal, the photographer who took this photo in Scotland and who holds all rights to this photo publicly posted in Picasa albums, *go here* He says email him at this address: newvibes@gmail.com

Holiday Dreams Arrive

2011-11-23T01:51:00.001-08:00

Holiday Dreams Arrive*

My voice fills your form,
the particular hollow
right here - it frees me
of the misery
otherwise that might be mine.
It's no shallow thing,
no shallow gesture.
This glitter of holiday
sound could be a pain,
misery - false chord -
but here you are now to true
things for me. You fill
in the hollow spot
in my quavering presence
in this old city.

November 23, 2011 2:24 AM

*Editor's note: If this is difficult to take either because you do not hold the same sentiment or you know the writer's personal view on Christmas and all holidays in general, then you are invited to switch channels to parody...

This week Thom gives us these three words: hollow, misery, and shallow. As always, he writes,

"Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words. Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday. But I invite everyone to check back often to read and comment on other contributions. This is, after all, a community for writers who clamor for feedback."

To access Three Word Wednesday's current week and 3WW's list of links *click here*

Planetary Motions

2011-11-21T19:22:00.001-08:00

"I've gotten convinced that there's something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn't have that much to do with talent, even glittering talent. Talent's just an instrument. It's like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn't. I'm not saying I'm able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved." - David Foster Wallace

Planetary Motions

I am in aspect
to you, within orb, stately
moving but nearing
my time, retrograde
very soon now, slowing down
as I must, it's law
you know, withdrawing
according to the goddam
law, the average
within my small heart.

I do not want this for you.
If only you could.

November 21, 2011 7:48 PM

written in tandem to Rachel of the Waxing Moon *go here*

November, 1975

2011-11-20T09:56:00.001-08:00

Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman
offered by Tess on her Mag 92 posting

Wiki says:
"Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman. She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award winning role in The Three Faces of Eve (1957)."

"Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.

"With writer A.E. Hotchner, Newman founded Newman's Own, a line of food products, in 1982. Newman's Own donates all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2011, these donations exceeded $300 million.

"Newman was married to Jackie Witte from 1949 to 1957. Newman met actress Joanne Woodward in 1953. Shortly after filming The Long, Hot Summer, in which he starred with Woodward, in 1957 he divorced Witte. He married Woodward early in 1958. They remained married for fifty years until his death in 2008."

Newman died of cancer most probably. He kept his last years and especially the state of his health quite private and so we only know obliquely.

I greatly admire Newman for his constancy with women and his willingness for philanthropy with his life partner Woodward. I use Newman's Own lemonade regularly.

November, 1975

When I married you
I nearly died from my fear
of commitment. Life
seems too long for me
to think of, souls spot welded
then full strength full depth
penetration joins
all along the edge of me
and you no matter
what, not even that,
the shore of land and ocean,
lines of ground and air.

When I married you
I got so drunk, stupid grin
on swollen wet face,
a sure harbinger
I did not then heed at all
though you might have known
and you married me
anyway.

That's ironic,
inevitable.

November 20, 2011 11:30AM

I was married until the summer of 1997. The ending of our marriage was a nightmare but not the usual sort. We did not hate each other nor were we in conflict in the usual way. She was at the last severely physically, financially and mentally ill. Divorce was her solution to our life dilemma but we mutually supported the action. I no longer had heart for our union. It seemed to us both that staying together longer was lethal. She retained a lawyer to guarantee the paperwork but we had no quarrels at all over property. I had an interview with a lawyer but was so turned off by the idea that I walked away and trusted my wife and her lawyer to do the right thing. They did. I continue grateful that our divorce turned out that way. I have not married again.

Friday Night Arias

2011-11-18T19:42:00.001-08:00

The coyote (Canis latrans), also known as the American jackal or the prairie wolf, is a species of canine found throughout North and Central America, ranging from Panama in the south, north through Mexico, the United States and Canada. It occurs as far north as Alaska and all but the northernmost portions of Canada.

There are currently 19 recognized subspecies, with 16 in Canada, Mexico and the United States, and 3 in Central America. Unlike its cousin the gray wolf, which is Eurasian in origin, evolutionary theory suggests the coyote evolved in North America during the Pleistocene epoch 1.81 million years ago alongside the Dire Wolf. Unlike the wolf, the coyote's range has expanded in the wake of human civilization, and coyotes readily reproduce in metropolitan areas.

The name "coyote" is borrowed from Mexican Spanish coyote, ultimately derived from the Nahuatl word cóyotl. Its scientific name, Canis latrans, means "barking dog" in Latin. Preliminary genetic evidence, however, has shown that "coyotes" in some areas are, genetically speaking, 85–90% Canis latrans, and from 10 to 15% Canis lupus (gray wolf), along with some domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) DNA; this prompted one researcher to suggest, jokingly, that they be called "Canis soupus," as they are a "soup" (mixture) of canid species.

Coyote is also a mixture in the old stories.

I have affinity for Coyote. I love the idea of him, of his wisdom and his foolishness. He suffers from human frailties and that's dangerous for any being who possesses real power. Coyote occasionally has divine powers. Coyote is very old, but he is childlike and is often quite childish and irresponsible, inexplicable in one so ancient. The truth is coyote is born anew quite often and he may be old as hills are old and worn, as the Siberian Traps and the Deccan Traps are old and persist despite great age, but when born anew, his enthusiasm and presence are decidedly youthful. His place in the new world is shared in the old. Hermes has some of him as does Pan. Some of the others as well have some of his stuff. He is diffuse in the old world but Aesop presented stories in which other totems acted in his stead. There are times when things deserve a good howl.

In the Major Arcana Tarot card of The Fool Coyote appears in disguise. In the Rider-Waite deck, sometimes he is the little dog, sometimes the youth. That's just my opinion. There are other Tarot decks and many other opinions.

Friday Night Arias

Coyote sings moon
white songs, pale bone songs, silver
streams of young young dreams
from deep inner troves,
ancient wisdom, starry keys.

And I've heard your voice.
I commend the way
you rose from exile, new songs
near my long gray lines.

January 16, 2010 3:59 AM
Modified November 18, 2011 7:02 PM

Blood Trail

2011-11-18T04:36:00.001-08:00

"Action has meaning only in relationship and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti (May 12, 1895 – February 17, 1986) was a renowned writer and speaker on philosophical and spiritual subjects. His subject matter included: psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, human relationships, and bringing about positive change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.

Blood Trail

I tried to help you
on the long shadowy trail
where all the blood spilled
and covered the tracks
we tried to follow as if
God walked here, was first
to leave small footprints
before that army followed,
scuffed away all sign.

January 15, 2010 2:12 AM

Computer Illness

2011-11-17T04:40:00.001-08:00

I am seriously compromised by malware and not sure what it will take nor how long.
sorry

Same Old, Same Old

2011-11-16T05:13:00.000-08:00

The words Thom offered us today:

Impetus; noun: The force or energy with which a body moves; the force that makes something happen or happen more quickly.

Solace; noun: Comfort or consolation in a time of distress or sadness; verb: Give solace to.

Vindication; verb: Clear (someone) of blame or suspicion; show or prove to be right, reasonable, or justified.

I would win the argument, drive her to tears in the evening, taste the victory for a few seconds and then go home to stew, confused and distressed, this over and over, only to come back in the morning, knowing I was right but she had won nonetheless. In that time I would humble myself for my behavior, again, and it would all subside til next time. Underneath it all, I never lost knowing I was right.

Is being right the hill on which I should perish?

Same Old, Same Old

Clear vindication
but there's so little solace
in it. A puzzle -
I was completely
sure these stupid times would change
when I won this game.
I, stalwart, on top
of the verbal pinnacle,
the impetus all mine,
the shining moment
all my own doing, poised to
lift into the air
of permanence, brave
new world, that's what you should say
and all I taste is
the back of your head.

November 16, 2011 4:56 AM

This poem written for Three Word Wednesday *click here* to see the different ways we have handled these three words.

Making My Choice

2011-11-15T18:01:00.001-08:00

Golden Gate Bridge on a foggy morning
with the SanFrancisco Bay Bridge in the background

This picture was taken from the headland on the seaward side and north of the Golden Gate Bridge, from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area looking back into the San Francisco Bay. In the background on the extreme left Treasure and Yerba Buena Islands are seen and the part of the Bay Bridge shown is the span from the islands to San Francisco.

Making My Choice

You convince me, love.

I shall choose this very day
to return to dream
though dream may turn drab
because I like the quickness
of all the changes,
and do not mind how
sense is razored, sacrificed
in the dark wildness

of my fishy brain.

January 14, 2010 5:35 AM

"We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving. And we all have some power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing." - Louisa May Alcott

"The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." - Douglas Adam

"Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth." - Jean-Paul Sartre

That last quote is very powerful and suggests how complex this all can be. The truth according to Sartre can side with the dream rather than with its disenchantment. Keep this in mind when someone tells you how myths are superstitions. Yes Virginia, sometimes there really is a Santa Claus. Of course this depends on how you mean it.

How I Used Photoshop Yesterday

2011-11-13T10:04:00.001-08:00

Courtesy of Google Images, through
Tess at Willow Manor

"Ever since happiness heard your name, she has been running through the streets trying to find you." - Hafiz of Persia

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often." - Erich Fromm

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh." - Kahlil Gibran

How I Used Photoshop Yesterday

You tested me, running
through the city streets. I drove
through your inner states.
All I could find were
the chairs you left sitting out
on the misty lawn
so I shopped you in
as this anonymous girl,
an uncredited
image to be found
by future poets, to be
ambiguously
the source for broken
hearts or toyed with, their images.
I'm taking a nap.

November 13, 2011 10:33 AM

Written for Magpie Tales. *click here*

Getting The News

2011-11-12T19:18:00.001-08:00

Getting The News

Today the trees pray.

Dressed in their white crust of ice
they stretch to heaven
just like I once did
when I found out what was next,
what froze my heart strings
as I found the note
you left so casually
by the kitchen sink.

January 13, 2010 9:19 AM

"Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before." - Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance." - Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."

"I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface; they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are supposed to write, I believe are in your heart." - Judy Collins

Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk, show tunes, pop, rock and roll and standards); and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.

Spiritual Judo - Reprise

2011-11-11T20:22:00.001-08:00

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" - A question asked by Henry David Thoreau

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something." - Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) (properly pronounced Thaw-roe) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes.

Spiritual Judo

When you give me looks
like that, I know you are just
about to tell me
what's good for me, what's
right by God, if I'll listen
to you this one time.
I long ago learned
how to use your force to throw
you past me, to give
you to God, saying
You deal with her, my Brother,
she's too much for me.

Written March 9, 2009 7:23 PM
First Posted December 18, 2009

Open Wider - Reprise

2011-11-10T20:18:00.001-08:00

Material first posted November 25, 2008, edited for posting tonight.

Each moment is new. There is a real sense in which the entire whole (holy) thing is created entirely in each instant. This is true of experience in the way the brain works (there are intervals of duration which are too fast, can't be experienced, and so our apprehension of things is literally more like movie frames than we think) with the smooth flow of things a filling in of the gaps. I happen to believe that this is merely a mirror of the cosmic process, though the gapping is very small and quick. I believe that quantum mechanics basically forces this view. It makes a kind of quantum "sense" to know that I am brand new this moment.

Open Wider

Where am I? Empty.
Stripped of form in the holy,
What is left can't hold.

I shall not shut down, not now.
Open wider if I can - yes.

When I return, I'll sing.
I'll step easy in gardens,
And I'll remember.

This poem deals with a notion of spiritual life that is actually echoed in at least some of the martial arts. If life is too big, the spirit too warm, the light too bright, the adversary too severe, the pain too intense, then open wider. If I have opened myself wider I have given somewhere for the encounter to go. So don't hold back. This is counter-intuitive in general, though perhaps not to experienced mothers in the middle of giving birth.

Drunkard's Plight

2011-11-09T04:52:00.000-08:00

The Structure of the Proton

Wiki says:
"A quark ( /ˈkwɔrk/ or /ˈkwɑrk/) is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. Due to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never directly observed or found in isolation; they can only be found within hadrons. For this reason, much of what is known about quarks has been drawn from observations of the hadrons themselves.

"The quark model was independently proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig in 1964. Quarks were introduced as parts of an ordering scheme for hadrons, and there was little evidence for their physical existence until deep inelastic scattering experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1968. All six flavors of quark have since been observed in accelerator experiments; the top quark, first observed at Fermilab in 1995, was the last to be discovered.

"Gell-Mann originally named the quark after the sound made by ducks. For some time, he was undecided on an actual spelling for the term he intended to coin, until he found the word quark in James Joyce's book Finnegans Wake:

"Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he has not got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake"

Notice Muster Mark

Thom suggests these three words:

Drank

Hitch

Muster

Go to Three Word Wednesday to see these words used in many different ways.

Here's mine

Drunkard's Plight

There's a hitch in me.
I limp inside, use my cane
to warn the right side
of what's left of me
now that I drank the whole bar
in one awful night
of truth's dissembly.
And the last I remember,
Three quarts for Muster!
I, hoarse, cried and cried.

written November 9, 2011 4:48 AM

It's Complicated

2011-11-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

"I like to imagine a persons psyche to be like a boardinghouse full of characters. The ones who show up regularly and who habitually follow the house rules may not have met other long-term residents who stay behind closed doors, or who only appear at night. An adequate theory of character must make room for character actors, for the stuntmen and animal handlers, for all the figures who play bit parts and produce unexpected acts. They often make the show fateful, or tragic, or farcically absurd." - James Hillman

Wiki says: James Hillman (April 12, 1926 – October 27, 2011) was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, founded a movement toward archetypal (he might say imaginal) psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut on October 27, 2011, from bone cancer.

Ouch. My Dad died of this cancer and it really hurt. I am told it is one of the worst. I wish to honor Jim. This is the first I have heard of his death and he was a giant among the psychologists in the manner of Jung. Jung wanted no followers. He wanted compatriots, comrades, peers. Hillman actually complied with that, enough so that it is possible to contemplate someone coming along and gathering his works with the intention of creating a Hillmanian psychology of the imagination.

My friend Erin who blogs from Northern Ontario posted a poem today that inspired this one. To see her wonderful work *click here*

It's Complicated

You are granular
in your placement of your time
in the midst of mine.
Gravelly featured
and corrugated of soul,
that's how I'll play it
trying to forget
the divinity we left
behind on purpose
or at least as we
agreed at the start of things.
Who we once were, that
can't be helped as we
are now, too rugged to smooth
things over but I
do miss my white wings.

November 7, 2011 1:04 PM

I am amused. This is the third poem I have named It's Complicated. I don't see why not. I pulled them up side by side and I almost posted all three just to show how complicated it really is... Someday I will do that perhaps. Not today.

How To Spend Memorial Day

2011-11-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

This post was written in tangent to this photo take from Tess' blogsite, placed there as the topic driver for her Magpie Tales gathering. You may *click here* to get to the links that her contributors leave there. This session is marked as the 90th post and I presume this means ninety weeks, nearing two years of activity.

***********
Some of the better reasons to visit New England are the old graveyards. We had friends to visit in Vermont and I fell in love with Revolutionary War graveyards. I loved the immediacy of the past in the dates on the stones, the preservation of some of them and the neglected quality of others. As a migratory child of World War II California, I found the compressed distance to the 1700s was palpable and delicious.

My family has not been among those who bury our dead. We cremate.

I had to wait a number of years more to have someone personal to me buried in a cemetery. Now I have a couple nearby in the local national cemetery and I have used that site as a power point on the planet, a place somehow closer to God's ear. When my wife of over twenty years died I took a portion of her ashes up there - the cemetery is placed elevated on the side of a steep hill near the top - and I sprinkled her ashes in the summer dry crack behind the marble plaque that identified her aunt and uncle. I visited at least once a year for over a decade.

At one point a few years ago I went up there and made my amends to my wife's shade. Since that time I have not returned but once.

How To Spend Memorial Day

Set marble stubs, wood
painted or not in lines
drawn on the forest
floor and fenced by men
entrusted to build for us
the reservation
of the dead within
what was once not ours at all
except to pass through.
We plant our dry lives
as seeds of dissolution,
wait for them to grow.
I pledge to visit
but then declare that one day
a day better used
as a day of rest.

November 6, 2011 8:00 AM

Stress Reduction

2011-11-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

Stress Reduction

I have no advice
to give, no grand instruction,
only a viewpoint
that repaints the way.

I say stress strongly flows,
a river between
close high banks that press
and force the rising tumult.

So open wide, wide,
so wide that all goes
quiet, placid in the way
of soft meanders.

January 13, 2010 8:45 AM

That Is All & The State Of Things

2011-11-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

Dreaming Of The Afterlife

"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge." - Thomas Carlyle

"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives." - C. S. Lewis

"All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name." - Andre Breton

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." - Lao Tzu

"All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need." - John Lennon

That Is All

Love is not only
happy horseshit nor even
the McCoy. Love is
not just sunshine and hope
but is the grim job watching
my wife die, also
my Mom take her last
breath while I said, "It's okay
with us, dear, let go."
Those who gathered stayed
silent at that finality
and then I began
to weep. That is all.

written November 3, 2011 7:05 PM

written in tangent to a poem I found here

The State Of Things

I am blessed, no doubt.
So why have I found complaints
Like vines choking me?

Just today I felt
mortality rising up
like river systems
in flood as I stood
at my mirror saying, "You!
you are bound to die,
and soon, sad bastard!"

But truth is, I guess, I want
death to come to me.
I am okay with it
and wish for a mate to be
with me anyway.

Nothing's more selfish than that...

written, November 3, 2011 12:50 PM

written in tangent to a poem I found here

Going To The Afghans

2011-11-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

Thom writes: "3WW CCLXV Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words. Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

But I invite everyone to check back often to read and comment on other contributions. This is, after all, a community for writers who clamor for feedback.

This week's words: Carnage, Jerk, Puncture

Click here for the link: Three Word Wednesday

Going To The Afghans

"Slip loose the dogs of
war!" you roared, quoting Shakespeare.
What a real jerk off.
The carnage is yours.
I hope you find your own fate.
Red pain, blood slick pools
Of courage - we fools
fell on this killing ground you
set for us this day -
devotion's damned dance
of heroes, of death's sharp prick.
I weep for us all.
This puncture of rage
has holed my heart and my hope
for the human race.

November 2, 2011 5:28 AM

I Am Indisposed

2011-10-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

The Broken Crown

I Am Indisposed

You asked it of me,
tapping the lucidity
of my aging skin,
feeling the shape of
my familiar, the old bear,
grieving my broken
crown and seat thrown down
by brigands and thieves who came
by sea and by land
too if truth be known,
so beseiged I've been in this
last open season.

You asked it of me
and I have tried to tell you,
but this hound don't hunt.

October 31, 2011 6:54 PM

The Old Bear and Friend

Thirty Years Ago

2011-10-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

Thirty Years Ago

Your words were not friends,
not that time. They slapped me down,
then they ran away.
My words, abashed, turned
despairing from the dim light
of that last day's dawn.

I then sat me down
in front of wheezing cupped keys,
that tinned fount of words
tasting like bad brass.
I held still looking for ways
to say one deep thing
because so many
times my sense appeared right there,
some thread through the night.

October 30, 2011 7:44 AM

This one took a little effort. Most lines changed completely at least once. At the last moment the poem transformed its tense from a current expression to a memory. I am grateful I am as much an editor as a writer, a relationship with words begun the thirty years ago of the title.

The picture is the prompt Tess gave us for Mag 89. Click this link.

Night Visitor

2011-10-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

"Fairytales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story."
- Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman (born March 16, 1952) is an American novelist and young-adult and children's writer, best known for her 1996 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism and contain elements of magic, irony, and non-standard romances and relationships.

"I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house:
18 rooms
$37,000
I'm yours
ghosts and all." - Richard Brautigan

Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935 – ca. September 14, 1984) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. His work often employs black comedy, parody, and satire. He is best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America.

Oh I am particularly fond of this one...

Night Visitor

You look back over
your shoulder at me like I
would at you were I
the one bounding off
in shoulder high moonlit snow.
You say nothing now
though I have heard you
snuff at my ragged edges
and felt your hot breath
in back of my house,
where you searched, but not for me.
Then your tail winks out.

written by me, January 13, 2010 8:26 AM

The Ice Witch

2011-10-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

In the Grip of the Ice Witch

DrAchoo

Silver Falls State Park, near Silverton, Oregon, February, 2011

Photograph by and holder of copyright:
Name: Jason Friesen
Username: DrAchoo
Eugene, OR

Sorry to steal but it was too good to pass up. I of course, having been there more than once, recognized the location instantly. I am trying to do the right thing here...

Realm of the Ice Witch

Since ancient times, Cholizar the ice witch has dwelled in the frozen lands north of the empires of men, held back each year by the warm hand of spring. But now she has let loose demons of cold to invade the warm southern lands and wrap them in her icy grip! Only the most hardy of heroes can venture into her frozen realm to stop her, before all the world is embraced by her winter spell.

On Her Throne

Sorry for the poor quality of this illustration. The Ice Witch is a wily creature and it is very hard to get her cooperation. She abhors the risk of losing her soul in the images. Immediately after I captured this one, she flounced off to run a protection on her entire estate and another ramped up one on herself. I am not sure if the following poem will appease her. If not, then I am in for it, I fear.

The Ice Witch

I gave the ice witch
a ticket to Bermuda.
Immediately
her eyes flashed. She stroked
my nose with frostbite, showing
me the gratitude
she should, considering.
She's packing her bags right now,
ready to scoot south.

January 7, 2010 2:04 PM

Arrogance Of Place

2011-10-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

3WW CCLXIV
Each week, Thom posts three words. You write something using the words. Then you come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday. Click on the link above to see all the participants and their work. Join us if you like.

Here are the words.
Figment; noun: A thing that someone believes to be real but that exists only in their imagination.
Inclined; verb: Feel willing or favorably disposed toward (an action, belief, or attitude); have a tendency to do something; noun: An inclined surface or plane; a slope, esp. on a road or railway.
Vulnerable; adjective: susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm.

I once went for a three month review in the company where I began my career. This happened after six years away from them working for a major corporation and standing alone as a designer among other things I did to make my career track a bit remarkable.

I had hired back in to the company who gave me my start and received a substantial raise to do it. I was made a team leader. What the guy said to me during my review, his primary criticism, "You're arrogant!" It crushed me. I had no idea.

It never happened again. I don't mean I stopped being arrogant. What I mean, I have been so overt and clear while working on my arrogance that everyone knows I already know all about it and am trying not to be. It's tricky. I am paid to know stuff or at least how to learn, paid to not make mistakes, paid essentially to show off and have real substance firmly placed beneath the flash. My boss wants to not lie when he claims I am the best machine designer he knows. That is not true, but I am better than average, I think.

Arrogance Of Place

Vulnerable you...
So inclined you are to lean
on a figment, you
forget your low place
in the scheme of things, you toad.

You will lose your head
for this infraction
if you are not real careful.

From here on you'll till
my soul first before
your own. If you wed
(you understand this)
I will get first nights for sure
unless I deign not.

Written October 26, 2011 6:51 PM

I am reading historical fiction by Bernard Cornwell at the breakfast table these days so this sort of thing is uppermost in my thinking practice. I wonder how it is to write extended work in that kind of historical discipline. Cornwell writes so convincingly of another time and place. He really journeys far afield while sitting, I presume, at a computer or a typewriter or at pages and pages of penmanship. Maybe he dictates for himself or someone else to write up later. He is so rich, I presume he researches extensively too. Hours, days, weeks spent building another time and place well enough to enthrall some of us.

Arrogance: It helps when the little people understand you are simply better than they are, for example, Dick Cheney.
or A strange disease that makes everybody sick except the person actually afflicted with it, for example, Charley Sheen.
There are people in my work life who prove that it's only arrogance if you're wrong.
When you're better than others it's best to let them know in no uncertain terms so that they don't embarrass themselves by questioning your plans and designs.
Those of you who think you know it all annoy those of us who know we do.

Time To Smoke

2011-10-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

David Foster Wallace

"We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog's yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum's scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother's retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we.

That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what's brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd." - David Foster Wallace

Time To Smoke Some Dope

I know I'm not in
Kansas anymore. Black skies,
but just before that
the skies were yellow
with a sick green tinge and my
neck puckered with it
and the sound of it
comes as if searching for me
and the papaya
in the back yard snaps
leaving only the bare trunk
while I've gone back in
to my air controlled
full blast cold inner sanctum
free of the monsoon.

October 24, 2011 6:43 PM

This poem is gratefully received from the muse, a memory from the summer of 1968 in the midst of the seasonal monsoon in East Pakistan. We just had the winds. The tornado touched down south of us and sent the corrugated tin roofs flying edgewise like giant knives. The cuts given at least had a pretty corrugated design to them. These roofs were held down by weights, bricks and other heavy objects, laid on them. The roofs were not fastened. The muse shook me by the neck as I was reading this blog post by Erin Tornado at Whiskey Lake

I smoked a great deal of dope, ganja, that I bought behind the main stores in the New Market from a government licensed ganja shop. I also occasionally smoked (and ate) hashish, illegal because smuggled in from West Pakistan but still easy to get. I sometimes smoked with others, but mostly I smoked alone. I did not usually smoke in my room. Instead, like cigarette smokers today, I would go outside in deference to the other people in the house. I would come back in high and write or draw or practice guitar.

On The Run

2011-10-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Lee Freidlander, From America By Car
From Tess Kincaid's "Magpie Tales"

On Sundays, Tess posts a photo she intends to be an illustration for a Magpie Tale. *Click Here* to see the other offerings

For reasons best left to mystery I often use the idea of robbing banks as examples of choices left open to me or others. I am not on the edge of anything but my own mortality. I do have a criminal mind. I am actually not nearly brave or foolish enough to actually live like this. I think.

Once, while headed southbound home, I saw a car headed northbound on a local freeway smack the guard rail square enough and hard enough to twist in the air and show me its underside while totally airborne across my path. It landed hard on the hood of the first car just yards in front of me. It bounced and then landed on the hood of a second car, bounced again and landed on the verge, skidding on its side into the berm and staying that way. It was driver's door down. The freeway was at dead stop of course.

It turned out that the driver, a woman had been clipped in the rear by a cop as they are wont to do, after a long run up the freeway from the US Bank in Oregon City where she had been passing bad payroll checks. This chase was the head end of a long investigation into a bogus check cashing ring. Yeah, eff em if they can't take a joke.

The woman was badly bruised is all but she had some other trouble quite soon. This freeway was totally shut down as a crime scene. It was afternoon drive time. We all had some trouble that day.

On The Run

I have to leave town
though I don't know where to go
and the money's spent.
I've asked you for gas
and you've shown me pocket moths.
So with nothing left
to do I'll rob banks
along the way. The cash they
keep now's just for me.
To Hell with them all
if they can't take a damn joke.
That's what I'll say
when they catch me flat
with my rusty gun, with my
shifty hopeless eyes.

written October 23, 2011 10:23 AM

Geometry

2011-10-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

In 1973 I started working for a Portland engineering group called Timberman's Engineering, a company serving the wood products industry, sawmills and such. I started as a complete trainee. I not only knew nothing, I had no clue how much I didn't know. They trained me. In two years they created of my rough cloth a junior drafter who could stand alone.

Ann and I moved to the Oregon Coast, to Newport in 1975 and while she began her social work career working for the state in child welfare, I found a job as a member of the engineering team at a paper mill eight miles inland in a town called Toledo. There I began to see what life was like in certain segments of corporate America and as well I learned to function without the support of a closely focused project team as a solo supplier of engineering. When I left that position three years later, I was no longer just a drafter. I had become a designer of machines, machine lines, processes and supporting structural features suited to heavy industry.

Everything shown here may also exist
as part of a set of plans drawn by some designer.

Georgia Pacific at Toledo Oregon

Newport, Rhode Island

Newport, Oregon

(Now I have named three cities in Oregon, Portland (Maine), Newport (Rhode Island), and Toledo (Ohio). Each of them are named the same as three other cities elsewhere much further east in the US of A as I have noted. Oregon is nothing if not a land of immigrants. There are certain remote locations where the immigrant trail of the 1800s was so heavily used that the ruts still exist.)

Oregon Trail Rut near Guernsey, Wyoming

Engineering as I am called to practice it as an actual machine designer is a discipline of applied geometry and trigonometry. I use these tools on a daily basis on the macro level all the way down to rather small and precise applications. I once had to design the shape of a cam to operate a switch. That switch worked as a push button that activated in a few thousandths of an inch and I had to translate motion on a much larger scale to that tiny motion. In another job I designed a belt conveyor over a hundred yards long, following changes in topography, starting and ending in precise locations.

Geometry

I need to hold place,
a geometer, precise,
standing in your shapes
geometrically
waiting, willing to
draw the new circle, bisect
your new line, create
the triangle we
will determine, hold closer
as we intersect
the wild parallels.

Written January 4, 2010 12:26 PM

Hoping You Would Notice Me

2011-10-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

The Girl With The Clean Scent

What a fantasy. The real girl with the clean scent, I was a Senior all right and I remember her name. The thing is, however fresh she was then, she's been rode hard and put up wet just like me probably now. She like me would be in her mid sixties. I just remembered this, haven't thought of it in years. Her clean girl scent was distinctive and among the best smells of my senior year. I remember her scent now and if I sniffed it again I would hoot and holler for a while. I really would lay my head down just so I could get close enough to sniff her back. I never had the courage to speak with her. The class was advanced algebra and trigonometry. Unlike Jennifer Aniston above, my classmate was dark and curly haired. She was a definite looker in her way all right.

The thing is, I use the math taught me in that class in my work life routinely today. I'm happy I actually passed the course no matter how distracted I was.

Hoping You Would Notice Me

I sat behind you
passed his notes like in third grade
wishing they were mine.
Often I would lean
forward to catch your clean scent
like I did with Jenn
at my desk in math.
That was in my Senior year.
I passed notes to you
like a snake shedding
skin not mine hoping you would
never notice my
arousal.

October 20, 2011 12:49 PM