Where The Cougars Live - Reprise

This post is re-posted from December 30, 2009, images and the demon story added today.

Not everything is revealed. Look in the golden eyes of the big cat. Pick up the scent of the territorial markings. Watch the moon rise in the late afternoon. Find the right spot and right time. Inhale. Howl.

Where The Cougars Live

I have something here
but nothing to show for it,
nothing but clean air
this high in mountains
where cougars live, where vision
questers might set up
to pass the crystal
night centered in God's long sight,
nothing but my heart
punching my old chest.

I have something here, value
added by stars, cold
light warbling among
the aspen giving shadows
life and me secrets.

March 13, 2009 12:33 PM

Of course, the babies are much cuter...and as many cats do, have blue eyes.

Cougars, also known as Pumas, are New World cats and range thus

"One evening Milarepa returned to his cave after gathering firewood, only to find it filled with demons. They were cooking his food, reading his books, sleeping in his bed. They had taken over. He knew about nonduality of self and other, but he still didn't quite know how to get these demons out of his cave. Even though he had the sense that they were just a projection of his own mind - all the unwanted parts of himself - he didn't know how to get rid of them. So first he taught them the dharma. He sat on this seat that was higher than they were and said things to them about how we are all one. He talked about compassion and shunyata and how poison is medicine. Nothing happened. The demons were still there. Then he lost his patience and got angry and ran at them. They just laughed at him. Finally, he gave up and just sat down on the floor, saying, "I'm not going away and it looks like you're not either, so let's just live here together." At that point, all of them left, except one. Milarepa said, "Oh, this one is particularly vicious." (We all know that one. Sometimes we have lots of them like that. Sometimes we feel that's all we've got.) He didn't know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of the demon and said, "Just eat me up if you want to." And that demon left too." - Pema Chödrön

Just In Time

I love this poem. I have no idea what I am trying to say.

Just In Time

It is so strangely
tangled, this life. I leap from
body to body
before the moment,
rising from the waters to
glide in the sun glint
air, riding the gale,
seeking your lithe running form,
your dappled gray lines.

March 28, 2010 12:25 AM

". . . reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye." - Vladimir Nabokov

It's Just My Job - A Magpie Tale

from Tess Kincaid, posted on Mag 112 *link here* also found on a Deviant Art site *link here* - an Indonesian artist and photo manipulator.

Here is an example of a poem writing itself. I started with the line "thin shelled majesty" which has the required five syllables and the second line completed the sentence in seven with the words, "arid land". Nothing of what happened next connected to that thought. I had to go back and puzzle over the first two lines to make them fit back in. Then to make sense of things, the title had to be something banal. I realize that claiming this poem makes sense is debatable.

It's Just My Job

My shelled conveyance
arrived in that arid land.
I stepped from my egg
and watched as you broke
free from yours, and the dog did
too, seeking markers.
You were not my choice
of travelling companion,
nor was he, high strung
mutt, but there it is
as ever. I don't get to
choose my company.

April 8, 2012 8:44 AM

The Blessing In The Wind

One of the deep times, returning home from two years overseas, passing through Greece, on a day trip from Athens to the ruins at Delphi. I wrote a poem on that day in August, 1969. In that poem I claimed that the ruined columns looked like remnant trees to me, divine trees belonging to the God. In a few days I would be in Sorrento, on the coast of Italy south of Naples looking across to the Isle of Capri. In an empty ballroom of the Parco De Principi Hotel I watched Italian TV while an American astronaut set foot on the moon with Italian commentary telling me what was happening.

But before Italy we would journey to a Greek island and there I would swim in the Mediterranean. The island was the emerged top of an undersea mountain. There was no bottom to the sea. Swim out twenty feet and you could not see the bottom below. Before Sorrento was a couple days in Rome. After Sorrento was a day in Naples and then embarkation on an ocean liner for the week's journey to New York. On that ship I had a shipboard romance. On the last night at sea I threw my hashish overboard while grieving the loss of the drug. I could not risk putting my mother and father into the soup like that. It had seemed to me quite correctly that a family unit where I was the son passing through customs in the other countries under the authority of an American passport was safe. I was not certain that was true of American customs. Indeed the agent gave me a weird look. I stared him down, clean but determined to get high again at the earliest possibility.

My mother and father (actually my step-father of eighteen years, me on the way to age twenty-three) were enacting a complex and painful ritual. They were engaged in ending their marriage. My mother was barely holding it together. There was really no other way to do this but to go home following the travel plans in place from before the start of the divorce. How crazy can you get?

The Blessing In The Wind

On this goat grazed hill
I stand in the holy wind
that twists past your salt,
past the oracle
near the top, past the grotto
where the priestess kneels
to gather her breath.
I take you all into me,
harmony of scents.
Even the goats kneel
in this wind driven moment
on this thrice blessed hill.

March 13, 2010 7:27 PM

Fading

Russell Hoban, 2010

"More and more I find that life is a series of disappearances followed usually but not always by reappearances; you disappear from your morning self and reappear as your afternoon self; you disappear from feeling good and reappear feeling bad. And people, even face to face and clasped in each other's arms, disappear from each other."
- Russell Conwell Hoban (February 4, 1925 – December 13, 2011) was an American expatriate writer of fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magic realism, poetry, and children's books.

And as there are slightly larger numbers of disappearances than reappearances, slowly as we age, and sometimes more rapidly than that, we perceive that we are becoming solitary. The wisest among us are even so never alone, however solitary we may be.

Fading

Thin tendrils of soul
like smoke, rising above you
in your grief, matching
the final rising
of life force from the small one
left behind the cage,
a departure's shade,
a fading found in the heat
and in the day's light.

March 12, 2010 9:49 PM

"There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into. There's a rest point between the heart's muscle's close and open - an instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest there."
- Mary Karr (born January 16, 1955 in Groves, Texas) is an American poet, essayist and memoirist. She rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir The Liars' Club. She is the Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University.

Considering the harrowing stories of her Texas youth — plagued by the alcohol, drugs, violence and general mayhem she recounted in The Liars’ Club (1995) and Cherry (2000) — it is a minor miracle that Mary Karr lived to tell her tale.

I Know You Better Than That - 3WW

Thom writes: 3WW CCLXVI - Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words. To link back to Three Word Wednesday *click here*

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:

Growl; Hype; Justify.

I Know You Better Than That

I look past the blaze,
see your eyes gleam, hear your growl
rising from the hot
low places in you.
I just know it's hype despite
your fierce blodshot signs.
You justify things,
butress your fiery distress,
demand my belief.
I will not knuckle
under this time. I've drawn lines
in my gray sad sand.

April 4, 2012 4:26 AM

Geology

Notice that the rain in the distance falls into sky so arid that the rain does not reach the ground.

Geology

These days find me in
the Sahara, the Gobi,
beyond boundaries
investigating
my aridity, as if
the Bleeding Hearts lost
every last drop
in the passing of our time,
of who we once were.

March 12, 2010 10:25 AM

Infidelities - Magpie Tales

Thanks to Tess Kincaid of The Mag for the first image and the inspiration...*click here*

Infidelities

Ever since I dropped
the ball, let my eye scatter
when you flipped me off
(a cosmic acid
test) I've taken several
jaunts away from here
trying to make things
turn out.

It doesn't help me
that this world of ours
has gotten really
weird of late, me fermenting
in an eagle's nest,
you down under ground,
and there are strange eruptions
on my shooting arm.

I'm infected with
a bad case of butterflies
since loving her up.

April 1, 2012 10:15 AM

All images by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Written for Magpie Tales

In The Moonshine

On occasion someone really does seem to understand. This is rare, though. It requires not only that you do understand but that you can communicate with me, and that I get what you say and what you do as well. No matter how well you understand me, if I do not get it that you do, there is no way that I end up feeling understood. There is timing involved in this somehow, because yesterday you said it and it worked but today you say it again and it doesn't. This is one of the struggles of my entire life and it is so extremely self involved it embarrasses me to admit it. I have built stories to explain it, all about family and my childhood and all that. I have no idea if my stories, sort of true, are really explanatory as I intend them to be, but they do illustrate that I am touchy about being understood.

I have had to be vigilant for example, because I am badly allergic to a couple really common foods. I also abhor a couple other common foods. I cannot trust that you understand this. You can forget. I cannot forget. My lack of trust in part seems to generalize from here. Maybe that's actual. Probably not, but still I have to assume you will forget my allergies and I cannot. When I was a kid, like third grade or something, this could be a real difficulty because I might be in the charge of adults who genuinely did not know and might insist I eat what was "on my plate". I might have to go into defiance and that is awkward when you are in third grade. It insults adults, something a little kid finds problematic. It never actually happened like that as I recall but I certainly feared the situation. Of that I have no doubt. I avoided getting into the situation as best I could. I still do. Nearly all fast food places are out of bounds for me just because I don't want to deal with all that food restriction stuff. Not because I don't think there are ways around my food restrictions, but because I don't trust someone else to understand and respond to them very well. They forget in twenty seconds sometimes. I have had that experience and I don't want to work with the mistakes. It's all just embarrassing.

My food illustration is so basic. How much more tangled up can the emotional life be? What next? Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

In The Moonshine

I don't know if you
can get how this is for me
as you stand beneath
the moon in silver
rays, unearthly as you are
in this raw moment.

You said you just might
understand me this one time
and the ache in me,
the ache in my bones
has begun to part like reeds
on the verge of things.

March 11, 2010 7:39 PM

This Is What We Know

By the way, the stones depicted here are larger than man height.

Wiki says: The Carnac stones are an exceptionally dense collection of megalithic sites around the French village of Carnac, in Brittany, consisting of alignments, dolmens, tumuli and single menhirs. The more than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones were hewn from local rock and erected by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany, and are the largest such collection in the world. Local tradition claims that the reason they stand in such perfectly straight lines is that they are a Roman legion turned to stone by Merlin or Saint Cornelius – Brittany has its own local versions of the Arthurian cycle. A Christian legend associated with the stones held that they were pagan soldiers in pursuit of Pope Cornelius when he turned them to stone.

Most of the stones are within the Breton village of Carnac, but some to the east are within La Trinité-sur-Mer. The stones were erected at some stage during the Neolithic period, probably around 3300 BC, but some may date to as old as 4500 BC. In recent centuries, many of the sites have been neglected, with reports of dolmens being used as sheep shelters, chicken sheds or even ovens. Even more commonly, stones have been removed to make way for roads, or as building materials. The continuing management of the sites remains a controversial topic.

This Is What We Know

We are all just shards
and fractured snaky visions
eeling through sawgrass
searching for the heel
of the goddess and trying
to avoid smelly
goats and the dark mounds
of goat scat scattered about
this sacred hillside.

March 11, 2010 10:08 AM

Chasing The Goddess

I have to teleport to get here anymore. My body doesn't support the land quest. Life is hard. Then you die. Corky taught me that in 1983.



Chasing The Goddess

There are finer points
in this pursuit. I am mad
for you but don't show
it for fear of snakes
issuing forth from your heart,
but I modestly
will say now this is
my hill, these are my goats
and my oracle.
You are on my turf.

March 10, 2010 7:14 PM

Dark Matter

Without dark matter, the gravitational attractions at the galactic cluster scale do not work.

Without dark energy driving the universal business the expansion of the universe that is undeniably there does not work.

Not only that, these two dark things are 95% of everything to make it all work.

The cosmologists have created a mathematics that includes dark energy and dark matter and works descriptively quite well to present the universe as we know it.

Either the universe is really odd as we think it is now and we know very little, or we know almost nothing yet and something else will be in the eventual description of things.

Wanna bet??

Dark Matter

Oh dear what can that
matter be in between things,
between the wide wheels
of heaven's carriage,
oozing between God's splay toes?

They say space doesn't
hold together right
without this invisible
stuff and yes, weeping
is called for after
forced invisibility,
bowlegged lightyears.

March 10, 2010 2:09 PM

Dark Matter

We believe that most of the matter in the universe is dark - it cannot be detected from the light which it emits (or fails to emit). Its presence is inferred indirectly from the motions of astronomical objects - specifically stellar, galactic, and galaxy cluster/supercluster observations. Dark matter has measurable effects on the anisotropies observed in the cosmic microwave background and plays a central role in the modeling of structure formation and galaxy evolution (shown in this NASA ESA image).

We have four lines of evidence for dark matter in cosmology: the formation of large scale structure in the length of time since decoupling requires it; the limits on the baryon density from primordial nucleosynthesis requires it; the velocities of stars within galaxies and of galaxies with clusters require it; leading theories of particle physics predict it. The cosmological effects of dark matter on cosmic structure provide one of the best windows on this physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.

Dark matter was postulated by Fritz Zwicky in 1934, to account for evidence of "missing mass" in the orbital velocities of galaxies in clusters. According to new supernova observations and Big Bang cosmology, dark matter accounts for 23 percent of the total mass-energy of the observable universe. Dark matter comprises about 6 times more matter than ordinary baryons do.

Witchcraft - 3 Word Wednesday

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. Here's the link to the site: 3WW CCLXV

This week's words: Fragrant; Jostle; Remnant.

Witchcraft

Fragrant like jasmine
near my nestlings, in my dream
where you jostle tunes
free from the remnant
songs of my deliverance
I stumble in my rise
to final judgement
and watch black shadows gather
in the old designs.

March 28, 2012 3:23 AM

Elizabeth Searle Lamb says:

"Pausing is the doorway to awakening.

"We pause not only with our body but also with our mind. And sometimes we can be attentive and sometimes we cannot, but that is all right, for the next moment always brings us the fresh possibility to pause and be present again. There are no steps to follow, there is no enlightenment to work toward - there is only the simplicity of relaxing into this very moment that is complete in itself. This naked moment is the only guide that we need to relax our mind. We need to trust this: in the midst of our daily life activities, the possibility to slow down, to stop, and then to appreciate naturally unfolds. For a fleeting moment we pause and note the sunlight on the sheets as we make the bed, note the warm sun on our cup as we sip tea, or note the fading light on the curtain as we enter the room. And we let out a breath or sigh. Pausing."

I say:

"To survive the craft, one must find the way to pause."

Moon Worship

Moon Worship

I receive my life
from the blood you shed for me
and give to the earth.

I shall turn to fire
worship, blazing from the source,
then bathe in white snow
and wrap in the moss
from your bed, knowing at last
the truth of night's sky.

March 9, 2010 11:26 PM

Upside Down

Upside Down

You released your scent
and everything changed up.
I was the hunter,
but you no longer
were the prey, so hot the day
became between us.
I am upside down,
heart surely broken and now
I must not let you
know you have spiked me,
taken my soul from my grasp,
laid my plans to waste.

March 10, 2010 7:34 AM

Wiki says: "In journalistic parlance, spiking refers to withholding a story from publication for reasons pertaining to its veracity (whether or not it conforms to the facts). Spiking is relatively rare and usually happens late in the editing process (after the assigning editor has signed off on it). It is only required when a simple edit or questioning the reporter or assigning editor cannot fix the problem.
Reasons for spiking include a clear bias (someone on an opposing side of an issue did not respond, despite the fact that said response is central to the story), a major hole (many, if not most, readers will have a question after reading the story) or a sudden change in events (three more people have died, but getting details from officials is impossible on deadline).

"In some cases, a story may be spiked if it is deemed to conflict with the commercial interests of the newspaper's publisher - if, for example, it concerns a company with whom the publisher has a close relationship. This is more likely at a local level, where small newspapers are dependent on advertising revenue from businesses such as estate agents and recruitment agencies.

"Stories are spiked for other reasons, but in any case, the decision is not taken lightly, as a valid, usually detailed explanation will be solicited by those further up the chain of command, often at the behest of the reporter."

Now I have revealed my age in deep language. That I would use "spike", meaning that I have been forcibly shut down, knowing the newspaper usage from the age when newspapers were the dominant form, means I have memory of a world without calculators, let alone computers, when slide rules were the engineering tool, and books of logarithms and calculated trig functions were on every engineering desk. In those days, we used slang terms from the hot work of the time. Newspapers were happening things.

Of course this could be a baseball term too... If I am working second base, then the runner sliding in high from first might spike me to break up the double play.

Any sports team wearing spikes can use them this way.

How about getting esoteric and theological in the far background, because Jesus was spiked to the tree.

I like the main newspaper reference: "...withholding a story from publication for reasons pertaining to its veracity (whether or not it conforms to the facts)..." which clearly describes what I call lying by telling the truth. Lying by telling the truth is the highest and most subtle dishonesty, the top end tool in the skill kit of a liar.

Oh yes, here's another reference for the use of "spiked"...a woman in "spike" heels can use her shoe as a weapon as we were taught in the sixties.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
- Jack Gilbert
from A Brief For The Defense

The Photo Album

from Tess Kincaid's Magpie Tales, Mag 110

The Photo Album

I am caught between
frames as if little silver
dots in emulsion.
This is what you do
when you flash into my eyes,
a pulse of white light
and then you again
are charged and new in my life,
ready to capture,
to paste all right down
in sequences and grand themes,
titled and arranged.
So I pay you back,
write these tall tales of your grit,
send them far off world.

March 25, 2012 3:22 PM

Photos by Duane Michals, who apparently is one of the creative New York crowd that included Andy Warhol. He is also outspokenly if low keyed and non-politically gay and as of 2011 marked 51 years with the same partner.

Tune Up

image: from Tess Kincaid for Mag 109, by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Robert and Shana write: "We create works in response to the ever-bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. These works feature an ambiguous narrative that offers insight into the dilemma posed by science and technology's failed promise to fix our problems, provide explanations, and furnish certainty pertaining to the human condition. Strange scenes of hybridizing forces, swarming elements, and bleeding overabundance portray Nature unleashed by technology and the human hand.

"Rich colors and surrealistic imagery merge to reveal the poetic roots of the works on display. The use of color is intentional but abstract; proportion and space are compositional rather than natural; movement is blurred; objects and people juxtaposed as if by chance in a visual improvisation that unfolds choreographically. At once formally arresting and immeasurably loaded with sensations—this work attempts to provide powerful impact both visually and viscerally."

For the site ParkeHarrison.com, *click here*

Tune Up

You peel me back raw
just like you did the whole world,
revealing the gears
within my split skin,
me watching my life's blood flow
in red rivulets
from the razor's edge
of the embodied terror
I am left holding
in my bag of tricks.

The spanner you use to tune
me up is so cold.

Written for Magpie Tales, Mag 109. *click here*
March 18, 2012 3:53 PM

Spider Talk

The bright and interesting Camel Spider is also known as Sun Spider or Wind Scorpion. A camel spider can run at 30 mph and they have a very high pitched scream. They are 7 cm in length. According to a test, their venom caused paralysis in 7 out of 10 lizards which were injected with their venom. They are found in deserts and hence got their name, Camel Spiders.

Solifugae are not true spiders, which are from a different order, Araneae. Like scorpions and harvestmen, they belong to a distinct arachnid order. There are about 1065 species of Solifugae known, grouped in about 153 genera and 12 families belonging to the order Solifugae.



This poem, which has never been published yet, is over two years old. I have been busy writing new stuff and publishing that instead. I still have 380 or so that are just hanging around, unpublished, waiting, languishing. Alas!

Spider Talk

So the spider says
come to me baby, never
mind the tall sawgrass,
the holes between us,
the snakes. Don't think of the snakes.
Don't think of the fangs
glistening, dripping
venom as they lie in wait
for you. Come to me.

March 9, 2010 8:14 PM

You Gotta Do What You Can

You Gotta Do What You Can

I cannot sit still,
not right now my friend, fuzzy
logic anyhow.
I have wrestled that
to the mat more than one time
but my knees freak out
and my back. My head
hurts from the hot spite I spend
trying to balance
so much clotted oil
girding my spiny red soul,
which blurts, "Whatever,
Dude!"

written March 14, 2012 9:08 PM

A Hard Decision

Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Style: Northern Renaissance

Thom writes: 3WW CCLXIII - 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. Here's the link to the site: *click here*

This week's words:

Baffle; elegant; negate.

A Hard Decision

That's what I built up,
a baffle to slow the flow
of your elegant
and crucial desire.
A figure of pain, bleeding
above us, the cross
groaning - I negate
all that matters to me now
having turned away.

March 14, 2012 4:38 AM

A Japanese Crucifixion

Hot Tuna, 2009

I love these guys. Old farts now but in 1971 they were cutting a swath, well, not these particular guys except Jorma. In those days it was Papa John on violin and of course Jack on bass. And then there were a whole township of people wanting to sit in. They would go to a bar in the mountains east of Santa Cruz and the whole place would go psychedelic while these guys did this bluesy shit. Now everyone is basically old and mostly sober. Or dead, like Skip.

Jorma has a music ranch in the Midwest. Google it. My friend Bill Groff just posted a video of Hot Tuna shot in 1971. There is a bunch of Hot Tuna and Jorma on YouTube.

I spent a semester with Jorma at Santa Clara U. in 1963 fall or 64 spring. He was without question the strangest guy on campus with his already long black hair and his all black clothes. I had no idea. Neither did he, but of course he was hungry for music already. I was a freshman and he an upperclassman. I have no idea where he got his money. Santa Clara U. was private and not cheap. I was there financed by my Dad because my appointment to West Point crashed and burned and only SCU was in a position to take my transfer. I nearly flunked out and had to go to Community College next to bring my grade point back up so I could go to San Jose State.

But first I was going active in the Army, and there I caught meningitis and nearly died. What happened next, my Dad got the chance to be a school administrator, Superintendant of the American Family School in Teheran, Iran, the Shah's Iran. I got kicked out of the house before I could sign on for that two year deal. My sister got to go while I tried to put my life together. I was living with brain damage from the meningitis. All this before I was twenty. At twenty one I spent four months in a mental institution. Damn. Sorta weird and really busy. I actually got to the edge of Junior in college status but my major was a shambles.

I am still pretty much nuts. Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck. Ooooh, pretty colors!

Reform School

Reform School

The rich feel of things
has deepened my clarity,
flipped into whipped cream.
Years ago I ate
whipped cream by the gobs and got
a headache from my
hunger for sweet fat.
You've gone and changed my thieving,
Sweetie, just like that.

‎March ‎12, ‎2012 7:32 PM

Another Kind Of Whipped Cream

Although "only" about 250,000 galaxies are shown in the above image, the entire Universe is estimated to have at least hundreds of billions of galaxies, spread out over a spherical region about a million times larger in diameter than our galaxy is.

Image of the visible universe by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.