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“Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.”

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What Do I Want?


by-dan-stockholm
Sculpture by Dan Stockholm

I came to this gig late in life,
so what do I want out of it?
It’s a fair question.
I’ve just started digging the answers out
of the rock that holds me.

It can’t be money, because there isn’t any.
Maybe it’s fame?
According to Harrison, Lorca was
shot on a hillside overlooking Granada.
Mandlestaum fell in love with a Mexican girl,
but they both died poor, and recited
poetry to each other in heaven.
And Vallejo died in Paris one rainy afternoon,
selling used wine bottles
for pennies to buy bread.

I think I just want to be untethered for a time.
Then decide what to do.
I’ll cruise the ocean’s bottom
above the unbelievable creatures
who go on as though I were not there;
do a bit of time-travel, go and watch Julius Caesar
pee against a tree in Gaul, bored. He’s just
waiting for the siege of Alesia to bring him
Vercingetorix in chains, an empire in his grasp.
Then I’d cut in line for the first shuttle to Mars.
Deal faro in Deadwood in the dirty saloon where
Wild Bill got shot, and watch how a legend starts.

On Thursday, I’ll cruise above some alien moon and
spend time talking to the giant gas-bag
creatures who sing long, monotonous poems
no one understands.
creative-spirit-womens-program-340x225Then when it’s time to rest, I’ll doze in front
of a fire in a big, stone fireplace, enchanted by
the shining faces of the spirit women who,
always beautiful and adventurous,
travel with me. They dance
in the flames, storing up light and
loveliness and combustion to
feed my imagination.
And I’ll keep grabbing handfuls of water
with my clumsy stone hands
from the bucket, trying to get a drink.

1

The Limits of Democracy and Some Guy in Coach


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The New Yorker

 

1

Come Out To The Edge


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I may look normal, but I’m not normal, whatever that means. On the outside, my life looks conventional. But this is the kind of place I live in my head. It’s a constant battle between doing stuff I’m afraid of and running away. Out on the edge….

“You think I’m insane?” said Finnerty. Apparently he wanted more of a reaction than Paul had given him.
“You’re still in touch. I guess that’s the test.”
“Barely — barely.”
“A psychiatrist could help. There’s a good man in Albany.”
Finnerty shook his head.

“He’d pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” He nodded, “Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
0

Come Here, Young Man


Keys To The Kingdom
Keys To The Kingdom Photo by: Igor Morski

Young man, I wish someone had
told me these things.
An older woman would
have been perfect
When I was your age.
But no such luck.

So here’s the thing.
Your chest hurts when you see her,
You feel like you’re on fire.
You’re afraid to stand up for fear
someone will see. It.
(What do you mean? You know what I’m talking about).
And you can only think of one thing.
You are a walking dumb bomb.

But you can redeem yourself.
The rules are really pretty simple.
Take a deep breath and try to bring
your brain back up above your belt now.

The keys to the kingdom are plain to see.
Focus up there, on her mind and spirit, and she will be
so pleasantly surprised and grateful that she might,
(after a little testing to see if you’re another liar),
invite you into the Party of Her.
Believe me, you want to go.

After that, there are only two other rules.

Be kind.

Listen.

She’ll need the first, because
she is probably very hard on herself,
and needs someone to love her.
And the second is to listen, in two ways:
For what she says
with her lips-
(skip all advice, though;
it’s usually stupid and unwelcome)
—but also for what her body tells you it needs.
Then just do that.
Worry about yourself later.
She’ll probably help.

Three rules.
Easy-peasy.

Well, there is a fourth:
Don’t screw up.

4

Talismans In The Wind


 

daro-darosyndy
Photo by DARO @darosyndy

We spend our lives
collecting things
our kids
will sell
in the auction.

In drawers and closets,
in dusty attics with
useless tax returns from 2002
and Christmas ornaments,
we store bits of their
lives, too.
Talismans. Medicine bags.
Of age 8, of high school.
It is we who can’t let go.
A rock collection and
medals in a closet
in a spare bedroom
where we turn the heat off in the winter because
no child sleeps there now.
Talismans of our lives.
Little flames to light
our way for a time
in the darkness.

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I’m a Seenager Now


Yesterday was the last day of work. I was feeling a little weird this morning- not bad, just feeling the change in the routine. A friend shared this with me (I don’t know the source):

GREAT NEWS !!!!!

I’m a Seenager. (Senior teenager)

I have everything that I wanted as a

teenager, only 60 years later.

I don’t have to go to school, or to work.

I get an allowance but they call it a pension.

I have my own pad.

I don’t have a curfew.

I have a driver’s license and my own car.

I have ID that gets me into bars and the Beer Store.

The people I hang around with are not afraid of getting pregnant.

And I don’t have acne.

Life is great!

10

Man Who Slept Through 2016


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Once Upon a Time


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Art by Jennifer Lommers

Once upon a time,
When women were birds,
There was the simple understanding
That to sing at dawn
And to sing at dusk
Was to heal the world through joy.
The birds still remember what we have forgotten,
That the world is meant to be celebrated.

- Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

Just so you know, we men know this deep down, and treasure you for it. Women make things better.

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basho

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“Spirit” For New Year’s Day


by Jim Harrison

Rumi advised me to keep my spirit
up in the branches of a tree and not peek
out too far, so I keep mine in the very tall
willows along the irrigation ditch out back,
a safe place to remain unspoiled by the filthy
culture of greed and murder of the spirit.
People forget their spirits easily suffocate
so they must keep them far up in tree
branches where they can be summoned any moment.
It’s better if you’re outside as it’s hard for spirits
to get into houses or buildings or airplanes.
In New York City I used to reach my spirit in front
of the gorilla cage in the children’s zoo in Central Park.
It wouldn’t come in the Carlyle Hotel, which
was too expensive for its last. In Chicago
it won’t come in the Drake though I can see it
out the window hovering over the surface
of Lake Michigan. The spirit above anything
else is attracted to humility. If I slept
in the streets it would be under the cardboard with me.

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Vows


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I was 21 when I took the official vows,
but had really taken the important ones
some months earlier. When I proposed
on April Fools Day and she said ‘yes.’
And like two fools,
we thought that was just fine.
Turns out, nearly 50 years later, it was.

But vows are merciless things, and they don’t
tell you the whole story. You can’t listen, anyway,
with your eyes full of hunger for each other’s bodies
and your ears full of music and laughter and dreams.

It’s easy to make promises when you
don’t know all that will be asked of you,
the blood and the bone and the griefs.
You find out the truth bit by bit,
day by day. You find out
where you’re weak and where strong,
and whether you’re someone people
can count on.

But you never learn these things unless
you have solemnly vowed, and keep the promises
made in hope and ignorance.

You learn the lessons that come
only with walking a long road,
until your feet are worn as thin as paper
and the dust of the road is your new skin.
And, if you’re lucky, keeping promises
has, with much practice, become second nature.

I found all this out the hard way,
and not until I listened to a still, small voice
and started writing again.
I was asleep for 50 years, more or less,
but when I awoke, it was
to shorter days and cool nights.
And I wasn’t sure
if I was fully awake or not.

8

What It Is Not


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Let’s talk “Poetry” for a moment, if you will.
I’ve been reading some of yours…

So many lost lusts,
So many ‘why doesn’t he love me’s’
So many sacrifices of dignity,
Conflations of attraction and connection,
So many confusions of sex and love
So many dear diary’s, soulful sobs, self-pity,
So many anguished tears on so many pillows.
So many tearful gazes over the waters,
Like so many before, like your great-great-grandparents,
As though tears alone justify, define poetry.
As though that’s enough.

So many odes to aimlessness,
So much self-indulgence,
So much teenager-like angst,
So many assumptions that
The most common feelings in the
History of the planet… the galaxy, maybe…
Are at all insightful, fresh, helpful.

Continue reading “What It Is Not” →

7

A Ballad of Love and Death About Elsa


Jim Harrison
Jim Harrison

by Jim Harrison

The ambulance driver told me in a bar
about the car accident-Elsa’s head torn off
and her eyes stayed open.
I went to the site with a bouquet of flowers.
The road’s shoulder was short green grass and along
the fence there were primroses and California
poppies. In the field a brown-and-white cow
watched me wander around. I wondered
how long Elsa could see, and what.
I found a patch of blood-crisp grass
where her head must have rested
surrounded by shards of windshield.
She was a fine gardener with a sweet,
warm voice.

Published in “Dead Man’s Float,” Copper Canyon Press, © 2016
Triggered this piece this morning.

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A Small Death in the Afternoon


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From memory triggered back to life by this poem by Jim Harrison.

The newsroom’s police scanner squawked around 3:30 one afternoon and my editor sent me out with camera and notebook.

It was a cloudy day in early Spring, the roadside grass was fresh and green, the
baby wheat plants covered the fields on either side in a fuzzy carpet.

The scene was very ordinary-looking at first, and it confused me. This was my first fatal accident as a reporter and I didn’t know what to expect.

A sheriff’s department cruiser was off the road with lights flashing behind a family wagon, Continue reading “A Small Death in the Afternoon” →

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neologism

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Hitting the High Notes


the_odeon_of_herodes_atticus

I write younger than I am,
but my voice cracks on the high notes now,
imagesand I don’t know how much longer I can fake it.
I wish I had a daughter, who would sit and listen,
and forgive me in the way only daughters can.

Instead, I sit with my laptop facing a bank of windows
with a view of a mountain, snow flurries in the sun.
I’m encountering many me’s, from many times,
in various stages of becoming.
It’s as though I walk into a Greek amphitheater
in Corinth, and my many selves are sitting
on the old blocks
of stone, twitching, and I point to one and say
“OK, come on down.Today’s your turn
to whine about your life.”
And we all lean in, ready to pounce,
evaluating the honesty, the growth,
knowing that one of us
will be judged next
and found wanting.

3

The First


The leap into the unknown
It was in the fall of eighth grade.
A bunch of us piled into a friend’s car.
I remember lots of laughing, goofing around.
Nearly new teenagers filled with the thrill of being alive.
A girl with jet-black hair I’d known since first grade squeezed in
Next to me and the entire length of her thigh
pressed into mine by the crush of bodies in the back seat.
I fell in love for the first time.
Just like that.

We never dated, and it wasn’t long before my
family moved overseas and our paths never crossed again. .

Continue reading “The First” →

2

Darkness and Light


hs-2003-28-a-1440x960_wallpaper
What is “Dark Matter?”
No one’s ever been able to catch any
in a quart canning jar, as we did as kids
in the summer nights with lightening bugs.

As nearly as my math-less writer’s brain can tell,
it is the power of something unseen, deduced only
by observed gravitational effects on stars, on galaxies.

Something very big, but still a guess, in other words.
Subject to experimentation. Grants. Scholarly papers.

Astrophysicists say this is important, which may be true;
I also suspect sometimes they’ve been smoking weed up
there on the high, cold mountain outside the
telescope house, huddled around campfires,
telling math jokes and giggling, high as fuck.

Continue reading “Darkness and Light” →

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yes (again)


7da0799a
e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

~ e.e. cummings ~

1

Time


steampunk-hourglass-passing-time-sand-hourglass-d8de33e363e9f38a

I tried running downstream once
And realized I could not
Step into the same river twice.

I was asleep for 50 years,
More or less, and, now awake,
Fear there is not enough time to finish my work.

Come to me, all of you.
We don’t have time to be clever,
Show me what I have missed.

We have time in order to keep everything
From happening all at once,
Yet we judge it by our own lifespans.

Barely able to cry “I am here”
Before we are gone.
Like fireworks to the stars
Without the shell.

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You want to be an editor, you can’t be a mere rule-follower - Baltimore Sun


“…Many of my students have been ill-served by their education. Some have been taught writing as self-expression and are largely innocent of formal grammar and usage. Some have been through the five-paragraph-essay mill. Some have been taught the zombie rules and have to be disabused. (Great Fowler’s ghost! one commenter on my blog appears to impose the default masculine on his unfortunate charges.) So the first three weeks of my editing class are a desperate effort to accomplish some basic learning and unlearning before we can get to actual editing….”

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/language-blog/bal-you-want-to-be-an-editor-you-can-t-be-a-mere-rule-follower-20161226-story.html

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Things Before the New Year 3: Truth and Lies


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We are reminded lately how many lies fill the air. This is no different, of course, except they can be spread faster, and in greater volume, than used to be the case. But the fact of a constant barrage of lies from outside, and to that person in the mirror, is nothing new. I’m looking at the new year as a time to wrestle with the issue of truth, lies and personal improvement.

What is your favorite thought about truth and lies? If you wish to share, please leave it in a comment. Please include the source.

“It is much harder to lie to someone’s face.
But.
It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone’s face.”
― David Levithan, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
-Flannery O’Conor

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
― Virginia Woolf

Continue reading “Things Before the New Year 3: Truth and Lies” →

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Things Before The New Year 2


Ah. What to make of the coming year? War, pestilence, famine, chaos, Donald Trump, uncertainty.

But it’s not all gloom and doom, either. A macabre old joke has it that at a certain age, any day you wake up on the top side of the dirt is a good one. Or, when someone asks how you are, you are supposed to wink and say, slyly, “Well, considering the alternative, I’m great!”

Too dark? I’m sorry. That’s not my intent and I really don’t think this way very often. But keeping it real is the real point of doing these little exercises. It keeps one focused. Pauper or king, the final destination is the same, and there’s the end of it. If you are young, you probably don’t think this way, nor should you. There’s plenty of time. Just make each day count and the final amount will be taken care of.

So why worry? We can’t see the future anyway. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Prepare for what you can.

Feel free to ignore these: Don’t take easy paths, or indulge in cheap diversions. You’ll just end up growing donkey ears. Hone your inner steel and crave the edge, but also keep your heart open, childlike and reachable. Find things that matter, find your passion, don’t mope when things go wrong (and they will) but get up and live each day out loud.

It’s simple, really. It just takes all you have, and that’s the joy of it.🙂

That’s a way to live, and considering the alternatives, it’s not too bad. Let the pale, creeping dampness of depression, doubt and insecurity go down the drain with the next shower. Any day can be a turning point. As Picard would say, “make it so.”

Show the way to others, love deeply and truely and never miss an opportunity to be kind.

1

Things Before The New Year 1


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It’s a somber season now, between the festive feeling of Christmas and the new year’s inevitable arrival, and all that will come. I am reading more, writing less, and trying to use this time to stay close to the truth of things. When 2017 comes, the work will bear fruit, I hope.

I’ll share some things here, and I hope you will feel free to react and use these things as you will find most useful. Share your thoughts, question things. This is where fermentation can make a good beer.

 

6

Somewhere I Have Never Traveled


ee cummings
ee cummings

E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Someone said: to get better, read the best
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And In A Mystery To Be


ee cummings
ee cummings

 

by ee cummings

in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so (forgetting seem)

in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me.

e.e. cummings

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A Request


It’s come to my attention that I’ve been nominated for Author of the Month at Spillwords. I’m happy about it, of course, but it came as a surprise.

I also had a poem, “Letter to a Young Friend” nominated as publication of the month for December.

The editors nominate a few authors and poems each month, but then readers make the final choice by voting for their choice. I’d be honored if you would consider doing that at the link below.

It does require that you register on the site so that each voter only votes once, and another registration might not be your cup of tea. I understand if that’s you’re position.

But it you have the time and are so inclined to send some pixie dust my way, I would be grateful

http://spillwords.com/vote

-H-

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Hi, Kid. This is Miss.


A beautiful and touching take on the season from a teacher.

Just Left Awkward, Suddenly Approaching Old

My daughter’s favorite story was one she called “Daniel’s Rock.” A far cry from Frosty the Snowman, I could count on being asked to recite it as Christmas approached. I’d begin when she’d picked up the small rock that sat on the southeast corner of my desk and had nestled herself in my lap.

The opening words never changed. “The last time I ever saw Daniel, he gave me this rock and told me about his boxes. It was a long time ago, before you were born.”

Daniel entered my life when I was a teacher. Before entering the room, he leaned against the doorjamb of Room 202, where I taught 5th grade. For a moment, he just eyed all of us. Blond bangs obscured half his face. His sneakers and checkered shirt were too big for him. His jeans had rips in the knees.

He had made his…

View original post 697 more words

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Dreams


tiantanbuddha

 

I dreamt once I traveled to the little village
in Ohio where I was born, this time.
Everyone was glad to see me, and I them.
I went from house to house and visited people
who had been dead for 50 years. I was a happy 85,
and realized I could only see them because I must be dead, too.
It dawned on me just before I woke that I had been given
a glimpse of something and I should pay attention,
that my span of years on this earth this time is to be
eight and one-half decades, no more, no less.
And it made me smile. I could live with that.

I also dreamt once of a place very distant in years and geography,
and surprised to see I was a young girl
just at the threshold of adulthood, bare-breasted,
racing many others through an Indian jungle.
And I realized when I awoke that
I had been given a glimpse of something
I should pay attention to, so I wrote it down.

But in the dream I ran and ran, heart thrilling to the race.
I ran until I came to a plateau, trees stretching high above,
and there was a massive statue of the Buddha looming.
I lay a hand on the ancient, cool, damp, moss-covered base as I passed, and
felt an energy flowing through it, slow and deep and with the ache of eternity.
A strange monk sat with me later, while I ate a bowl of rice, and told me
the only things that mattered in life were effort and simplicity.

Then there was another dream
of a life I’d lived in the 1890s as a sod-buster on the
Nebraska prairie. Fought the land and the weather,
had children, buried some there,
and it came to me that my bones still lie in the
black earth, deep under the grasses on a little rise
above where my earthen home once stood, but of which
there is no longer any trace, except in
that one, fleeting dream, like most of us.

Then last night I dreamt I was in Montana,
in the middle of a group of men arguing about
whether to drill for oil in a particular spot.
On one hand were serious dangers, on the other vast wealth,
the two main things, other than a woman, that men will kill for.
I remember feeling in a moment of absolute clarity
That I had the perfect solution, and knew it
would prevent the bloodshed that was coming.
But I woke up, breathing hard, unable to go back.
I wonder if I could have made a difference?

These messages seemed different than the
run-of-the-mill dances of the mind in sleep.
These carried some sense of import and meaning.
So after each I lay staring at the ceiling
as dawn slowly restores the room to sight,
and I ponder them and try to pay attention.

3

After IKKYU: Number 30


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by Jim Harrison

It’s difficult to imagine the conversations
between Jesus and Buddha this very moment
These androgynous blood brothers demand our imagination.
They could ask Shakespeare and Mozart to write words
and music, and perhaps a dozen others, but they’ve done so.
The vast asteroid on its way toward LA goes unmentioned.

____________

in “The Shape of the Journey,” 1998. Copper Canyon Press

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DEATH at a Preschool Christmas Party — Flash 365


So, at a Christmas party in Russia, Death comes up and asks for a cigarette….

 

In the mirror, I attach the fake ears and tug the hat onto my head. “It’s the wealthiest preschool in St. Peters,” K had said, “they’ll pay you a boat load to just stand around as an elf for their Christmas party.” I sigh now, as I did then, resigned. I wash my hands and […]

via DEATH at a Preschool Christmas Party — Flash 365

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Vacation


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After 60 years of work, more or less,
I’ve decided to take a working vacation.
I’m booking a cruise and extended
train travels for the next 60 years
To go exploring along the coasts,
Poking my canoe up the inlets and rivers,
Probing the veins and wires and memories of
Some unfamiliar parts of me, and some
I’ve been missing for a while, to
See whether there’s anything
Worth saving, or maybe just toss it all out.

I hope to sit down at a cafe, occasionally,
Order hot, strong coffee and a bag of beignets,
Look sufficiently safe and vulnerable and mysterious,
Have a young Cajun girl with dark eyes come over,
Take a chair and steal one of my pastries,
Smile and flirt and tease with her youth and beauty,
Kiss me like she means to make a habit of it and
Say she finds me interesting enough for that, and not creepy.
(Old men’s dreams never tire of that one.)

The old chess pieces are all there, still covered in blood.
Time eats us alive and today I am one day older
Yet still younger than tomorrow.
I’ll get back to you about next month. I am
Set out on an uncertain enterprise,
With uncertain plans and unknown consequences.
Save me from myself, Oh Lord,
The cry in every throat.
Usually ignored by God
After so many sincere failures.

#Amtrak

 

 

2

Life in Our Bubbles


soap bubble
Turbulent and temporary

Bubbles in the bathtub, bubbles in the news,
Bubbles blown from fantasies, others made of blues.

The farmer’s bubble in the field
The bubble of the boy, forgotten
by the girl he can’t forget.
The doctor’s hero bubble that pays for that Corvette.
The bubble of the longhaul trucker, and
The Mercedes, passing, teasing with a flash of thigh.

The angry white guy’s bubble,
And the angry black guy’s too.
The bubble of a poor girl who wonders which must do.

And over at the Pentagon:
the soldier’s bubble marches, the sailor’s, the Marine’s.
The small-town bubbles of porches and shady streets,
And bubbling battles brewing over things like flu vaccines.
The tribal identity bubbles fought with high school games.
Bubbles of teenagers sleeping rough in the park,
A generation on mental benches, living in the dark.

The city’s bubble, the country’s, the village’s and the farm’s.
Gender’s bubbles mix it up: the myths, desires, the charms
Being sexy’s another bubble, yet you’re never quite sure you are.

The bubble of the man-boys, costumed in beards and plaid,
The laughing girl-herd bubble, strategically underclad.
Pastors in pulpits, Bible bubbles fired into the air,
Sinners in their secret guilt just recite the old Lord’s Prayer.

And all the rich folk’s bubbles… where should I begin?
They keep their teeth past old age,
With gold-plated dental plans.
Then new cars every year, parked in heated garages.
And vacation cruises in the islands, on floating casino barages.
They hire pricey doctors who lounge in those Corvettes,
And look in every mirror for new bulges in silhouettes.

Of course, all are in the bigger bubble, the one we call delusion,
Which only brings on worser woes, and more confused conclusions.
So look ye to the birds above, who neither reap nor sow,
Who- nearly as any ear can tell-
Choose song and freedom,
not a fake and freakish game show.

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https://therightactblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/colorfull/


“Each of us must keep to our true colors for our world to be colorful…. ”

https://therightactblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/colorfull/

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Skidding By A Woods On A Snowy Evening*


 

car-overturned-in-snow-583648880-57e9c59d5f9b586c35079f79

 

Whose tracks those are I think I know
His auto’s by trees yonder, though;
He cannot see me skidding past
(His windows buried deep in snow.)

My Subaru must think it queer
To try to stop in any gear
Trapped ‘tween ditch and looming truck
Whee! First ice storm in this crappy year!

Safety brakes cause wheels to shake
Miss the truck? ‘Tis a grim sweepstake
The only other sound the squeals
Of a useless scream and semi’s brakes.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
And I now wish I’d picked the Jeep,
But tears’ll freeze if now I weep,
But tears’ll freeze if now I weep.

*With apologies to Robert Frost

12

On Writing


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“The first eight drafts are terrible.”
-Malcom Gladwell.

And I’m only on number four.

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“Somethin’s Happenin’ Here,” Garden Club Warned


”There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.”

That was the central — and only — “conclusion” of a report submitted Thursday by an investigative committee of the local garden club.

“There’s a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware,” said Jim Holderman, chair of the committee and prize rose grower. The crowd murmured and nodded. He added: “I think it’s time we stop, children — what’s that sound? Everybody look! What’s going down!”

The sub-committee had been empaneled to make recommendations to the group after the results of a contentious and nearly psychedelic board election were eventually certified. Everyone was still confused.

Retired trout whisperer, Courtney Scales, stepped briefly from the shadows at the back of the room into the flickering old-timey moody candlelight and said:

“There’s battle lines being drawn.” Heads nodded in the gloom.

“Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong,” Scales continued, encouraged. “There’s young people speakin’ their minds, but getting so much resistance from behind.”

“It’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?… Holderman said again, then slumped back into his seat. No one took notice, as he did that a lot.

Everyone grew silent as Ruth Broadbottom rose with a great deal of rustling. (It was how she did everything, and gave off the smell of lavender. Always.)

She was the oldest member of the group and had lived through the great Rubber Duck Fiasco of 1962, and the Gingerbread Restoration Wars in town in the early 70s and late 80s. People wanted to hear what she had to say. She waited until the room was absolutely still, cleared her throat delicately and said:

“Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep.” She paused and looked at every face turned toward her.

“It starts when you’re always afraid. Step out of line, the men come and take you away.”

At that, she rustled out the back door, trailing a cloud of lavender, and the meeting broke up. The people left murmuring in small groups as they went out into the night. The comments were all the same….

“We better stop. Hey, what’s that sound? — Everybody look! What’s going down?”

 

“For What It’s Worth,” The Buffalo Springfield. 1966
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Are You a Loyalty Club Member? Press Y/N.


Yes! Yes! Yesssssss!

Almost Iowa

pumpIt is -14 °F at 5:00 a.m. and I am pumping gas at the Quicki-Mart.

Out on the highway, cars sputter by on the highway dragging long tails of condensation.

I hope to join them soon but before I go anywhere, the pump has a few questions.

“Are you a loyalty club member… Y/N?”

I try to recall if my wife signed us up but I can’t focus. It is cold and the pop music blasting from the canopy overhead makes concentration impossible.

If I answer yes, the pump will demand that I document my loyalty by producing a plastic card. If I do nothing, hopefully it will move on.

The pumps sulks for a few moments before repeating the question.

“Are you a loyalty club member… Y/N?”

I press the “NO” button.

Now it wants to know if I want a car wash. The wash is closed because the doors are frozen…

View original post 365 more words

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Sailing To Byzantium


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William Butler Yeats

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
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https://marple25mary.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/the-wrong-woman/


Another lovely piece by a favorite

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“Pain That Cannot Forget”


That was a terrible year, all those years ago, and was in a long string of terrible years. I had thought that was the worst, though. By a shrinking margin, it still is. But this year, and probably the next, are closing fast.

In order for us to learn, it has been true that we have to suffer. Maybe it never ends, the learning.

This speech is one of the most remarkable I’ve heard. Imagine if someone running for president could talk like this today, who had the kind of mind and education to be able to quote someone like Aeschylus from memory. Just imagine. I don’t see anyone who fits the job description.

Not this year.

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
-Aeschylus of Athens

6

Like Each Is Your Last


When the sun comes up like thunder
When the sun comes up like thunder

“I just want to see how long the string is. This never gets old. It gets more interesting, actually.” — Keith Richards, Rolling Stones

Each day is here then gone, a brief chance to
roll the salt and savor of it on the tongue, to enjoy
each passing smile and twinkling eye and lovely curve,
reminding me I am still alive.
Teaching me why, in the now.

Each sunset red on the world,
a hint at what becomes of us all.

Each day at 5 a.m. when the birds
wake and start yapping at each other
about territory and nests, about the
thrill of rising air under their wings,
the taste of freedom in the climb closer to God.

Each dawn when the sun
comes up like thunder
to set the edge of the
world on fire, and my mind,.

Each night, the deep comfort from my love’s hand,
slid under my clothes to rest warm on my waist,
and the times she does more,
or I do (which is none of your business).

It is so common to hear someone say,
“live like this is your last day”.
That’s harder than it sounds,
especially when you’re young.

And when you’re old, it’s all too real,
but it is still hard to
change the dumb habits
of a lifetime of mostly mindless routines,
of buying into the herd’s opinion
and preference for bland ignorance,
and migrating out of habit toward
a dreamlike future, always
scheming, fearing, guessing,
hoping you don’t die
in the swift waters of the rivers
the dumb herd seems to feel it
must cross.

Then, after years of this,
you must pretend you’re not surprised
when everything turns out differently,
when few things actually work as planned.

When you get to a certain point, this happens.
At first, you make up stories about
a life of heroic triumphs, never
talking about more numerous failures.
Then, you will look around, and back, and
laugh at the absurdity of
a young fool who had it
all figured out.

That’s when it’s good to
pull a love close and
fall asleep under the comfort
of the touch of someone who
knows you, and likes the feel
of your skin.

1

Broom


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Jim Harrison

by Jim Harrison

To remember you’re alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you’ve made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalian
odor that you are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone’s inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard, as it must.
Now to home without looking back,
enough is enough.
en route buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out the window and begin sweeping.
Sweep until the walls are
bare of paint and at your feet sweep
until the floor disappears. Finish the wine
in this field of air, return to the cemetery
in evening and wind through the stones
a slow dance of your name visible only to birds.

From: “Songs of Unreason”, 2013

1

Photographer Captures Fog Waves That Look Like Oceans in the Sky — TwistedSifter


For the last 8 years, self-professed ‘fogaholic’ Nicholas Steinberg has been photographing fog around the San Francisco Bay area (an ideal location for a fogaholic!). During the summer months, Steinberg says the fog gets too high to shoot in the bay area so he has to seek higher ground to get his fix. This…

via Photographer Captures Fog Waves That Look Like Oceans in the Sky — TwistedSifter

1

Perfect Love


and-now-that-you-dont-have-to-be-perfect-steinbeck

“First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you. Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had. …And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”

— John Steinbeck, in a letter to his son

1

Muse


Photo by Dmitry Rogozhkin
Photo by Dmitry Rogozhkin
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Christmas Newsletters


With no further comment….

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