Pretty lady,

I truly believe there are currents in our beings that transmit these 'thoughts' one might have toward an individual or someone they are close to. Yesterday afternoon you popped in my head while I was laying on my back porch staring at the sky. I don't know why?

"What ever happened," I similarly thought to myself. Why are we as humans so anxious to feel appreciated and embraced, but just as easily swayed to question and doubt everything that feels natural and secure? I believe it's a new adaptation, one humans developed in the last 200 years, as our idea of 'socializing' and 'intimacy' have been reinvented with each passing decade. It's the devil and heaven all in one. Even with all of our simplicity and luxuries, life for a 21st century Homo sapien sapiens is a difficult road, particularly if one strives to be moral and just.

That being said, I don't know what happened. And I don't believe it can be known, or is worth discovering.

I really am humbled by your email and that you took the time to share your thoughts. Thank you, it truly puts me at peace. I've learned over the years that I tend to thrive on forming bonds, relationships; meeting new people and learning, sharing. I also know that my life has been quite an erratic and transient one, which makes it difficult to have a predisposition toward people and love. And though I've learned and acclimated myself to let go, it would be a lie to say I don't hold on. These things linger for a long time in me. And I honestly don't think I could have it any other way.

It would be wonderful if you would update on your life, wheabouts, etc. I tried to pull you up on facebook but see we are no longer friends. I shall request it.

be well, stay gorgeous and please stay in touch

yours

Mitchell Robert Robinson

Wendell Berry on Corporate Personhood

The folly at the root of this foolish economy began with the idea that a corporation should be regarded, legally, as “a person.” But the limitless destructiveness of this economy comes about precisely because a corporation is not a person. A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. Unlike a person, a corporation does not age. It does not arrive, as most persons finally do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives; it does not come to see the future as the lifetime of the children and grandchildren of anybody in particular. It can experience no personal hope or remorse, no change of heart. It cannot humble itself. It goes about its business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of becoming a bigger pile of money. The stockholders essentially are usurers, people who “let their money work for them,” expecting high pay in return for causing others to work for low pay. The World Trade Organization enlarges the old idea of the corporation-as-person by giving the global corporate economy the status of a super-government with the power to overrule nations.

Berry, Wendell; Daly, Herman (2010-04-23). What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth (pp. 185-186).

Home

Home is one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is a place of confidence. It is where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule.
- Frederick W. Robertson

poetry

Poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers.
Leonard Cohen

I am the greatest!

A man may be lying on his bed;
his house may be cold;
he may be covered with a torn blanket;
he may be alone in the world without a penny to his name;
and yet in his heart he may think
"I am the greatest! I am the best who ever lived!"
Rebbe Raphael of Bershad
from David Berman's blog, Menthol Mountains

Cold Cold Heart

I try so hard my dear to say
That you’re my every dream.
Yet you’re afraid each thing I do
Is just some evil scheme
Some mem’ry from your lonesome past
Keeps us so far apart.
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind
And melt your cold, cold heart
-- Harlan Howard, "Cold Cold Heart"

3/24/11

It took one I couldn't have

to make it right.

Took being shown what is out there

to know what I don't have.

Should've settled up a long time ago;

made myself aware

that it's all at my fingertips, just waiting.

I know that one day I'll get it all right,

meet the smart one

who makes me smile and makes me shy.

I've learned so much from the past ones, and for that I am grateful.

And from this one so to I have learned.

truth

All of humanity is searching for truth, justice, and beauty. We are on an emotional search for the truth because we only believe in the lies we have stored in our mind. We are searching for justice because in the belief system we have, there is no justice. We search for beauty because it doesn't matter how beautiful a person is, we don't believe that person has beauty. We keep searching and searching, when everything is already within us. There is no truth to find. Wherever we turn our heads, all we see is the truth, but with the agreements and beliefs we have stored in our mind, we have no eyes for the truth.

-- Don Miguel Ruiz

Field Notes

A wonderful photo essay on the beauty and lost art of field notes, from Wired.com http://bit.ly/oMIoBa

"I dislike schedules, and on the river the idea that I'd let myself come to count on getting to any one spot at any particular time enraged me more than the accident my ineptitude has caused."

-- John Graves, Goodbye To A River

6.22.11

It's always best

to write

when you can't

read

More appropriate

to cast grievances

when you're hoping

to

'figure it out'

I once ran the future

I made everyone cattle

The mountains loomed over the valley like a physical presence, a source and mirror of nervous influences, emotions, subtle and unlabeled aspirations; no man could ignore that presence; in an underground poker game, in the vaults of the First National Bank, in the secret chambers of the Factory, in the backroom of the realtor's office during the composition of an intricate swindle, in the heart of a sexual embrace, the emanations of mountain and sky imprinted some analogue of their nature on the evolution and shape of every soul. -- from The Brave Cowboy, by Ed Abbey

2/22/11

She couldn't let go

of that which she never had.

Couldn't comprehend

what was out of her grasp.

So often she had wondered

where she went astray,

how here intentions

proved counter

to her childhood visions

of sanctity and grace.

When she thought

it was permissible

to lament her heartache

and promote his absence

of emotion,

that emotion that seemed

almost prevalent,

that of being unaffected,

detached.

It was his only choice

not to commit himself

to another season of dread,

another round of appeasement.

He wasn't giving up

but getting free.

4/5/11

He wanted to write

a novel of songs,

of singing.

What it's like to breathe

after a year's held breath.

Seasons can change so swiftly

when we're numb,

when life's journeys are

held as obligations.

We all must be challenged

and driven by our own quests.

You can't force

a man to breathe differently,

to understand your patterns.

Each ear is affixed

to what it wants to hear.

His grandfather said,

"Any cedar will grow

where'er she damn well pleases.

You just keep an eye on

what nurses beneath 'er."

Just found this in a notebook. No recollection

12.24.10

Having ventured back a time and again, I now exist in a time which was never mine, in a situation I always saw but never knew, never dared to question or seek a part of. I'm better off not knowing or understanding, better served when I'm forced to scavenge and seek.

So much changes in the instant of a year, in the particulars and absent transgressions. What we fight and quarrel, admire and detest, is fleeting in that non-human scope, in that everlasting life.

I'm content in recognizing my actions as rude, in pursuing vistas whose ominous proclivities would be certain to a child.

For we aren't here to explain our actions or justify kind omissions. Our journey had no date of departure nor possesses a projected arrival. Because we never truly leave.

Everything experienced saturates our self to some degree; recognized or not. And we similarly never arrive at our admired grace. All existence is in flux, a climb and descent with intermittent holds and ephemeral states of feeling grounded.

Rocks, ropes, limbs and grips are nothing but molecules in separate configurations. A bleating goat and screeching brake, but wavelengths of varied compressions. As we extrapolate ourselves, as we attempt to exempt the nature of our humanness, our true existence conversely diminishes; we become less with each attempt to elevate ourselves - that self promulgation rampantly raping our true humanity, that which is the inherent glue of our kind.

Can I continue assuming so? Assuming I exist and interact beyond the norm or am stronger than the delicate Madrone or more hearty than the Ashe juniper?

My bark is thin. I must tread lightly if I'm to never stop.

Our children no longer learn how to read

the great Book of Nature

from their own direct experience or how to

interact creatively

with the seasonal transformations of the planet.

They seldom learn where their water comes from

or where it goes.

We no longer coordinate our human celebration with

the great liturgy of the heavens.

--- Wendell Berry

It is terribly difficult to say honestly, without posing or faking, what one truly and fundamentally believes. Reticence or an itch to make public confession may distort or dramatize what is really there to be said, and public expressions of belief are so closely associated with inspirational activity, and in fact so often stem from someone's desire to buck up the downhearted and raise the general morale, that belief becomes an evangelical matter.

Wallace Stegner, This I Believe

The flexibility of his insight was of the kind that comes sometimes from not owning anything or anybody and therefore not being obliged by your interests to shape your thought narrowly. People of that kind are good to be around, though they're fairly rare even among have-nots, since the quality depends on some brains and an absence of envy.

-- Goodbye To A River, John Graves

In a time that breaks

in cutting pieces all around,

when men, voiceless

against thing-ridden men,

set themselves on fire, it seems

too difficult and rare

to think of the life of a man

grown whole in the world,

at peace and in place.

But having thought of it

I am beyond the time

I might have sold my hands

or sold my voice and mind

to the arguments of power

that go blind against

what they would destroy.

-- Wendell Berry

3/6/10

Had he flown, the storms mass would have arrived sooner, with less trepidation. To be caught bare in the surge was a blessing to him, kinder than knowing in advance. When his mind was built, he was twelve. He had never possessed trouble in mind. By eighteen, he had walked in silence for six years. Occasionally wading in joy, he awaited the solitude of life's downward slope, those final decades.

Had he flown, he'd have never known. Though each step appeared heavier, he was told it only eased with time. Days, thoughts, that notion of time was common only in winter, when it actually stopped.

Had he followed the common man's central flyway, floating in assumed complacency, he'd have never loved; his hate would seem meager. Had he never loved, his hate would be meager.

Each time he conquered another, it was a different vein of the same rhythmic pulse. The hunt always elating, the kill never satiating. A jingoist, a sybarite, he would soar those first days following a kill. He would carry that affectation till they met it head-on, till he realized his own ineptitude.

It usually arrives

after the second

layover.

When time becomes

irrelevent

and the eight dollar beers

begin to remind you

of the last time

you saw her,

or even the last time

you had sex.

You can't begin again

till your perception acknowledges

the absurdity of air travel,

the world's shortcomings.

The pen and ink,

they're everything,

once everything again means

nothing.

It's hard to sleep

when your phone's

dead,

when your pits reek

of booze.

But that's when it arrives,

when you can think

of nothing else,

when only regret can loosen

your bowels,

and the pen can move itself.

5/13/10

The boy weeps

like an orphaned

fawn

comprehending

the vastness

of the ocean's

depth

after watching

a summer storm

for the first time

as an ethereal

satellite scans

the intricacies

of continental

drift

5/12/10

We become

dissatisfied

when we have

nothing

to complain

of

12/2?/10

He often guessed and struck at the air hoping to grasp any notion of how he arrived, what crux propelled the decisions to reach his current standing. But he felt alive, he was well.

What strikes so prominently each time she entered his thought, he sought with energies immersed in wonder. Standing atop a mountain, he looked beyond, hoping to find his contentment in others. Yet his confusion was never in what he found; it was the assumed certainty with which he sought answers, comfort, solace. So taxing were his vain attempts for revelations he tried to force prudence upon. Any glimpse of appreciation would drown those anxieties, however much removed their duration; he would have killed for one vantage, he would eternally mourn for one returning smile of contentment. His conclusions were amiss, his faith ramshackle.

And now he is swaddled in the warmth of bestowed grace, a horizon of new reality. The searching ceased, he sits in mere wonder, astonished at the beauty the world can hold, the creeds that love can promulgate. What awe love can stimulate in the lights of truth, the hues of what we never knew capable. The intricacies of existence, of intimacy, affection, appreciation and care. It is unsettling the wasted words once purported as truth. Oh grace, how much we have yet to learn and more so will never know.

Another season passed so suddenly, airing an ambivalence to caution. How January suns can reveal so much in low looming cumulus. So many trials await, causing sensations, the anticipation in those kindred souls; a constant search for destinations already reached. And he begins, he hopes, to overcome the weight of uncertainty as the days are tackled. Calling upon strengths and dissecting failed attempts, but letting the notions vanish of feeling at fault. He moves on asking

Where are you now?

What are you doing?

What are your hopes?

What is your purpose?

5/8/10 #2

A breast coat

wraps shoulders

sweetly

carrying pride

assumed relevance

buttoning

elevated ancestry

to present passioning.

Suspenders hold more

than sagging shorts

or wayside wonderings.

4/??/10

Wake and rise,

to push and crawl

over hills of accomplished

deeds and doubts.

Someone is always first

and everyone the next.

The darting vireo

searching the shrubs

of the present,

escaping sumacs

of our past.

We gotta follow her down

leave the protecting

windrows,

barreling to the

burnt south.

Black-capped,

white-cheeked

the warmth is all

she seeks

from the home-scape

of our doubt.

The other comes

loud and brash

with love forsaken,

self-fixed and tumbling,

their eyes know

no aversion

for they carry

all lost.

5/9/10

Monsters curl their claws

under lids,

pawing at

microbial mulch

that separate
the telling signs

of past summers

crisply burnt,

forgotten flakes

of scabs, peelings

hiding, fearing

the false purity

that arrives beneath

smothering blanket

snowscapes.

4/29/10

Creep virginia,

up the bark

It's inherent, premordial

the companionship sought

Alone we consume

everything about us,

with pondering

evasive and unyielding

So was a time,

when hearths breathed

non-sensory comforts,

when one's heart,

the hearth.

5/8/10

The leather

is pulled taut

over the tall stool,

the intestinal skin

of a yearling fowl

standing,

a stork perched

upon legs once study,

above pools

of sublime scum,

glowing and effervescent

rendering

the fleeting feelings
of a child's scabbed knee

watching the ball

saunter towards

the goal

half-hoped

and lastly recognizing

I don't know what I have seen or where I went wrong. With time I'll know what I can't see. I'll arrive at clarity. For life is strong if time's my guide and days carry me off. If I can begin where I stopped, my slate will clear and I will be found.

The mortar of my mind, the translucent binding is the hope for new memories - the replacement. The fans of the sky blow away what once was and now know to never have been; letting traces of sunlight scatter the prior night's twilight, till the morn' rises to the warbler's hymen song - the marriage of the season, perceptions past and new. Calling through the woodlands, floating, scattered, the purpose the same for all: succeed, depart. And turn their boots and head back south. Arrive and comply, for next season will carry itself.

Our barks vary, all different from one to one. Sycamore, revealing, crisp and sure. Oak, seeming coarse, though simply soft inside. They all wait as we do, loving their fate, as we can only dream of. But we're aware: each of the songs, leaves and blades distinct.

Threads

Until they reveal to me, or make
it apparent, I have no reason
to admire their absence.
I have no reason, except
to let on my own distaste.

If we walk in the meadows,
without breezing grass or
taking a scent,
then what of our saunters,
of our incessant wanderings
and unknown worries.
Who is it if not us?

I've never arrived
when they were at my shoulder,
breaths thick, pervasive and full.
It was only attempts,
glimpses at what once was,
what could have been.
I'm a long way from Canton
and cotton and kind, empty faces -
those that carry nothing -
those that are only that:
faces.

If not for the children
than what's it worth?
Those shit heads pushing smiles,
smirks and tears.
I'm just another, an onlooker
and seeker.
Give me enough grace to wake;
I'll comply.
Leather kills me,
but I guess there's worse.

Cemetery seekers were among the visitors, the horsemen passing through. Stomping, snorting, their ease slipping. She was a girl a week ago before they arrived, as the sotol blooms ceased.
All seemed estranged, more salty, except the vultures. Their change is only in numbers. Like the gristle, the vultures proverbial quest, the horsemen scanned the windows, glinting at the darting eyes: it never appears, a mirage through the dust over scabbed iron skillets.
Somehow she was c aught, entangled as she went for a better look, cognizant and seemingly unknowing.
The spittle on the brim of his chin was an amalgamation of wind and drought, falsely supple after days of futile foraging. They were only seeking water, something other than fire smoke and smoldering mornings. When he spotted her, her eyes were sullen through the shadows, before their ocular contact. The focus was vague for both, the emotions more so. For time to move, motion was irrelevant - their harmony was ugly and perfect.
With spring waning, the moon arrived accordingly, seething with the cicada's and kettle's first songs.

After the screams ceased, they rolled apart moist and human. With the morn' he would strap his boots and again turn south, always assuming the winds were teh sole source of change. In time he would recall her brow and clinched eyelids - no different than his daily kills and evening sighs.

Theirs was a time brief and eternal. Forgotten like fallen leaves, forever incorporated into the next season's bloom.

24 January 2008

The issue is a common one, prevalent and continual in my mind. How do I address it being so? Never having been more attached to a soul in my life, it seems the words would come with ease. And maybe it's cause she is here now, resting upon my breast, nothing except cherubic to me. Her breathes are short and unnoticed, irrelevant when it comes to that stare, eyes deeper than any man has grasped. This benevolent beast blessing me beyond all that she or I will ever know.
And I know it won't last forever, for forever is only written in the skies, the landscapes of our dreams, and the wishes of our forefathers.
We exist to dream this highway, to live in the pristine world of our neighbor, where the warmth through the window is sufficient enough to see our own breath. Where our stories bring the most solace, though we always yearn to be a part of theirs. And isn't this the case for all of life, wanting appreciation for our shortcomings while admiring the great downfall of Billy Blake... How can we achieve anything if we don't continually reiterate what once was and all we've lost? Can our existence be anything but pecuniary if we never recognize the past?
So here she breathes on my earlobe, unaware of all I hope and fear. Could she remain indifferent, were she made cognizant of humanity and my atrocities?
I can't imagine she would change a bit.

USC vs. UT

It's a strange change between the ticket window and the man's last attempt.
Amazing what can happen between a bottle and a buckle.
I'd offer myself a totem if I was better known.
They don't yet know me enough to hate me.

There's a quiet few who don't pay.
It's a stretch to attempt to conglomerate them so.

If I didn't strive so hard for what was never possible, the element of grace wouldn't arrive so kindly.

December 2nd Saunter

Though the vegetation in this frigidity changes little, static would be a false image. Evolution and growth are imminent in all seasons and wane only through degradation, an absence of observation. You can't force a blossom or a bloom, or deter erosion on these terraced rocks.

How gorgeous the poison ivy appears in contrast to these evergreen 'scapes. Hiding below the fresh lime and lemon hews of the emerging yaupon, the ivy shines an illuminating blessing for my day. Nature breathes dichotomies, allowing saplings to tangle with towering willows, the hints of winter warmth only evident as they stretch through benevolent gaps toward he lapping tongues of sunlight.

Each step is a descent through another realm, a breath of arrival, passing alternating communities of laurel and silktassel. And then the outcrop, returning to sunlight I stand in and the yuccas, their ability to hold steadfastly in lingering fissures since ancient seafloors. How resilient and stoic they seem, surviving these downpours of late after a summer of mundane and dredging heat. Amazing still how a day's rain can initiate second bloom upon the sumacs, such regal red stems abounding in fruit for the last birds heading south. Maybe they knew these rains were sure to come; maybe it was their plan all along.

Heading off trail, I approach the terror emanating from Highway 360, the fumes almost visible, the rubber loud and quick. A small caterpillar waits for a bit more sun, hiding among the seep mulley, wondering if he can metamorphose before the first frost bites. The Mulley is pervasive, overstretching every niche across these slopes. As I bound downward, the rains bless me with the juiciest nostoc I’ve ever encountered. It’s as if it has been awaiting these rains its whole life. To believe it once wasn’t so is equally difficult and simple; how could this land be so if not for millennia of xeric lives. No less troubling is the attempt to recount the snowscapes that our forebears purported from three scores past.

The impressive displays are always the least encountered, and are so justly because. Sliding off a ledge, I stumble to a tributary bed of Bee Creek and crossing spot a magnificent burrow with a dual entrance, as if the beast was is cognizant of escape routes. Needing to relieve myself upon absorbing this creeks majestic flow, I think better of it and find ignorance in the foolish consideration of leaving my scent near their homestead. I press on up the creek.

The turbulence was once great here as the rocks can attest to; a true microcosm of Appalachia and her tumbling slopes. A sycamore leaf hints to its ancestors, floating in the stream, a monstrosity among her fellow foliage. And trailing with gaining speed, the oil sheens reflect what lies beyond these preserved bounds. If only the stream’s scream was able to obscure the shrieks of the world speeding by. Though it me minimal, there exists among this wonder the detritus of society, the disposable coffee lids of forgotten conference calls.

The smell was secondary as I moved further west up the creek. The buck was young I noticed quickly, recognizing his two initial antlers protruding a the upper end of a foot long ruler, a perfect specimen of a spike. Though pungent, it was refreshing to be engulfed, knowing that this place is breathing, breathing beyond the intrusion from the road and the trash among the leaves.

His skeletal companion’s demise was recent, the marrow and blood still prevalent, thick and syrupy. The consumer was only interested in the torso at this location, possibly transporting the limbs to preferred vistas. I appreciate its dining here, the near water now ample. Upon turning on my rear, I find its trail, the limbs still meaty, fleshed and likely to be visited again. I deliver my thanks and apologies for tainting this hallowed ground and retire, promising to not return for a season.

I leave noting how heavy the water is with iron near the upper reaches of the creek, making note to return with sampling equipment.

The snow is to arrive Friday. I hope the caterpillar has made his amends.

A Gross Anticipation

It was always the same for him, the sadder for her.  That same sensation rising after the first morn, ther first time and stare.  He had a way of hooking them, quick; maybe it was some off kilter genetic thrust, melding with the openness of toes and sheets and honesty.  And in the end it was sad for them, but for him, always in the beginning; for him it was the initiation and in their first time apart that made those wet ducts shatter and perception glared.  In longing he dreaded what was assumed to come, it only mattered how many spent hours would accumulate to its arrival.

It was unsettling how distinct each one was, though succenctly repetitive.  No tww had ever appeared similar, nor had any differed in his gross anticipation of their future.  What was so difficult about patience?  Why did he continually play his best hands at the opening bell?  Not to say it didn't work, it was striking how 'successful' his most recent pursuits (?) had been.  Yet it obviously changed nothing of their outcome, or his lofty appraisals at the onset.

I often pondered if the resilience in his attempts would ever warrant what he deserved.  Sadly, or not, none of it was in vain, or rather, half-hearted.  I think he truly loved some of them, the less they loved him and the more he affected, wounded.  His sister and best men would confer it, though it was strangely skewed with his mother.  She saw beauty in every of his encounters; us seeing a measuring scale and bovine sale; his sister seeming irreverent, finding each demeaning to their family character.  But his mother bad been through one of those seperations, she had to remember how to love when you don't feel loved.  And she knew that he was trying.  But it was harder for him to love, having felt and feeling he couldn't be loved, he the undeserving.

It was more difficult to believe than it was to be involved, for he, they and us.  He truly believed in it its sanctity, aware of so much ugliness around him, he blindly sought for it, for beauty, companionship, putting faith in Platonic admiration and unfettered grace.  Not to say he was faultless, but I never met a canine he didn't adore.

Dear Someone

Dear Someone,

I've been trying for sometime now, seeking like a wary traveler, just enough sustenance to make it home for Christmas. And I've often tasted it, a hint or false version: scented and veiled and assuming. And I've made a lot of assumptions, conjectures along the way. I don't know what certitude is left for you or me, but I'm glad you're here - and with me now. I once thought myself incapable of such wanderings or growing fondness for regret as I've now found. Only failure and regret, or a geranium kiss, can recall the intricacies of that progression toward our present stature. the generals always pondered if we'd ever arrive and receive their blessing and acceptance.

And likely that's why it's so arduous, transgressing, feeling warmth and acceptance from veiled pessimism and incapable notions. Though appreciated so much greatly, presently, it's culpable to harp upon those tragedies, that ugliness. Wanton days can cloud so much through the drizzling rain, making you declare, "I musta been mad; Not a penny on my name." And thusly it's hard to get back home and make it, hit the pawn shop before you hit the highway. In times like these, you wish your brakes didn't cinch so tight, and the abrupt interruptions were not so frequent. Driving across those levees, it's hard to never make a few stops and layovers. Or those Indian mounds along the Natchez Trace... You make conjectures, again, assumptions over what they withhold, or even provided beyond reverence. For that's all we seek.

It's the approbation of innocence everyone yearns and pains for in the end. We were there at the close and sensed the iceberg before it was even in sight. Ms. Someone, I just want you to be aware and that is all. Take and bring whatever you can and be forgetful of all you dread losing. Departure from all those constraints and lost hope. The amends made, you'll likely forget and make again. Trying to coll your brow without drawing attention, or seeing their eyes. It makes you want to run so hard and go far abroad, just to arrive a little out of sight. And I can't deny that bluebird in my heart. She'll keep pestering as long as my heart keeps burning. We'll let her out one day, soon, I hope. But I like it there, having the pain to keep me in check; I revere it and it rewards thusly.

But we're almost there. I know you can taste it; just don't drink too much before I get there. I'm tacking time.

Mitch

He was African

ecstatic beyond what can be
kept in
It’s a smiling affair, which
Only the suits
complain
incapable of grounding
their aspirations

Lofty and feathery, fluttered
they look upon
the content and continuing
unevaded, unaffected
How can you object 
or surmise anything
less
when he’s lived in 
the bush
and swallowed harder than
Lions.

“I think he’s half
Chinese,” an off
one emits above
the ping-pong pitch.
I thing his beauty is darker
than an angel
his affability
softer than cotton

I can’t care when I 
watch such grace
You can’t
compare
with a door open,
a porch screen
locked.
They advised the fashion
of the athletic-
fit shirt
black and obvious
for impression and 
introduction

Sponge-like I am
remaining open to 
any wave of color
ambivalent to certainty
and assuming of grace

the buttons are stitched
at a lesser to
his once buckled bucks.
Smile.

I am waiting

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting 
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle 
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting 
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am seriously waiting 
for Billy Graham and Elvis Presley
to exchange roles seriously
and I am waiting
to see god on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find the right channel to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the living end
and I am waiting
for dad to come home
his pockets full
of irradiated silver dollars
and I am waiting 
for the atomic tests to end
and I am waiting happily for things to get much worse
before they improve 
and I am waiting 
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the human crowd
to wander off a cliff somewhere
clutching its atomic umbrella
and I am waiting for Ike to act
and I am waiting 
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting 
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and save me forever from certain death
and I am waiting
for life to begin
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting 
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting
for Ole Man River
to just stop rolling along
past the country club
and I am waiting
for the deepest South
to just stop Reconstructing itself
in its own image
and I am waiting 
for a sweet desegregated chariot
to swing low
and carry me back to Ole Virginie
and I am waiting
for Old Virginie to discover
just why Darkies are born
and I am waiting
for God to lookout
from Lookout Mountain
and see the Ode to the Confederate Dead
as a real farce
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting 
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am awaiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth's dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace 
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

10.20.09

A man scolded me

as I cruised the speed limit,

he pushing a stroller and

jaywalking this autumn rising.

He wasn't ready.

Not this morning,

not for what he carried.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a huge influence on one Robert Zimmerman in his earliest writings and epistulary wanderings. Enjoy

Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
At the stoplight waiting for the light
nine a.m. downtown San Francisco
a bright yellow garbage truck
with two garbagemen in red plastic blazers
standing on the back stoop
one on each side hanging on
and looking down into
an elegant open Mercedes
with an elegant couple in it
The man
in a hip three-piece linen suit
with shoulder-lenght blond hair&sunglassed
The young blond woman so casually coifed
with short skirt and coloured stokings
on the way to his architect's office

And the two scavengers up since four a.m.
grungy from their route
on the way home
The older of the two with grey iron hair
and hunched back
looking down like some
gargoyle Quasimodo
And the younger of the two
also with sunglasses&long hair
about the same age as the Mercedes dirver

And both scavengers gazinf down
as from a great distance
at the cool couple
as if they were watching some odorless TV ad
in which everything is always possible

And the very red light for an instant
holding all four close together
as if anything at all were possible
between them
across that small gulf
in the high sea
of this democracy

Cold Owl Blues

My skeleton sings my sorrow
with strings, like lightening
rumbling towards your horizon.
Window to the world
seeks proper placement.
We're corralling them indefinitely.
Bluebird in my heart
bleeds songs of sorrow.

She wants to be free
she wants to be free
she wants to be free
she wants
Maybe she'll arrive triumphantly
maybe she'll arrive
maybe she'll arrive
We shall end this strife tonight
We'll unwill their ransom
Skeleton sings my sorrow
skeleton sings my sorrow
Come on babe, just one more try
Can you just believe
in one thing like me.
It's only one thing, one man, one thing
But I can't tell you how

Come on babe just a little try
cause you know I tried
you know I tried, so hard
Bum I'm not lonely now
But if you'll try to see how
Just put on my boots
try and point you toes south
Open the blinds and shut your mouth
And I'll move along
and I'll just write
one more
cold owl song
one more

And if you just want one more
cold owl song
One more hope

So open the blinds
so shut your mouth
If you want more
want more

How bout one more
How bout one more

If only

If not for the misleading,
we'd have no need for lawyers.
If not for the tears,
we'd have no need for consoling gestures
If not for the downtrodden,
the disparate, the helpless
and cold
we'd have no need for kindness
and warm embraces.

If not for Faulkner
we'd never have written a thesis
or pondered the possibility of
pen and ink.
If not for forgetfulness, misunderstanding
or failed gestures
We'd have no need for apologies.

If not for her abeyance of forethought
and communication
then I'd have been better-
suited to accept her well-wishes
today on my birthday

But they exist, pervasive,
thorough and frighteningly.
We'd all be better if
veils didn't exist,
if smiles could not be mustered
when knowingly unwarranted

I thinks myself closer to truth
when I can override such
atrocities.
I find goodness in hatred
when I know it's unfounded
and only a callous attempt
by them to reassure they
didn't care
weren't hurt
are beyond the realm of guilt

It all made sense
when the day's duties required
nothing beyond taking notes
and remembering your bag-lunch.
when destinations were more erudite
than the journey
when we could not discern
between gratefulness and assumed
gratitude.

If only.

muddy veils

I like to watch
and pick 'em out
the ones I might
could have a beer with
the one's who may enjoy
vespertinal drifting
and the thrill of
a meeting.
It's always more simple
picking between the guys.
Because there's so many
of all those girls.
It's overwhelming,
like drinks at a
wedding.
and they're so elusive
like bride's maids
in Boston.
Perplexed, we wonder
if such encounters
will prove anything,
or explicitly nothing.

Hell, they're all seeking the same gig,
the general assumptions.
And if you can't appreciate
that beauty, you might
as well resign.

We've only got time, and
wonderings, hopes of
acquaintance and possible
acceptance.
But if the moon weren't
so illuminating and bright,
if our ventures weren't
so self-absorbed
it's amazing to imagine
the potential
of such paths,
to ponder every pretty
proportioned face.
We're as lucky as
we imagine and equally
are as lovely as we get.

A Sermon to You

Transcribed from an oration this afternoon, to my dog:


It’s not just leaving a sanctuary, it’s not just returning to a sanctuary, or feeling that you are suppose to be in some safe haven, some reserved area for contemplation or awareness. It’s not being in a space or avoiding some space, it’s about being in the absence of space. It’s just being, getting outside of what you feel is confining, what is suffocating you. And it’s not anyone or any thing; it’s just ‘it’: being suffocated. And it’s getting out of that realm which suffocates you, getting out of that existence, moving beyond, knowing that you’re more than that, knowing that you can’t let anything limit you, or anyone or any…place. Cause your sanctuary is not where you live, it’s not where you hole yourself up, it’s not where you lock the door and put the world on hold; it’s inside you, man. Fuck churches, fuck any of it. Fuck mosques. Fuck schools. Fuck your mother’s house or your father’s passenger seat. Fuck all that man, it’s not about a warm fire; it’s about not being anywhere, except in yourself. All you can do is reside in what you have, find your perception. It’s nothing else, nothing more, nothing less; it’s all it is. You can’t assume that one thing is influencing everything, that one instance, one motion, one decision or indecision is going to have a play on the rest of your existence or maybe just today’s. Because that’s not what it is; everything is in fucking cycles, everything comes and goes, everything is beautiful and ugly. Everything is moving so fast; you assume that you can’t handle it or it’s too much, or you need to slow down but…it’s not gonna slow down, you can’t slow any of it down except the way you perceive it and how much you’re willing to except what is there and what’s gonna be there regardless of you acknowledging it. It’s what it is, it’s what we are, it’s what everyone is. And you can deny it, but your denial is not gonna be accepted, not even by you. So settle with that. Settle with whatever you think it is you are suppose to settle with. Choose whatever battles you want to fight and fight them to their erroneous and irrelevant end. Cause it’s nothing more than pen and ink, nothing is, and that’s just it.



And if it was an invasion of some privacy, or some imperial standing, I apologize. You know, I had no idea there was such sanctity among those quarters. It was never made apparent to me that this haven was restricted from serendipitous beings. But you make the calls on what you want to do with everything, if your existence is that and your sanctuary is being there and being consumed in contemplation or the lack of, then that’s the hand you’re gonna play, and that’s the deal you’re gonna get. And no one can complain, especially yourself, because that’s what you’ve chosen. But you mustn’t come around in weeks’ time wondering what could have been or what wasn’t or what you’re glad you didn’t do or regret not having done. Because that’s it, everything passes, everything is in cycle, everything moves, and nature takes the easiest path possible, water will choose the path of least resistance. And that’s what we tend to do in our natural wanderings, but that’s not what is shown here man. I couldn’t find more fallacy and obstruction then what’s been present. It baffles me, absolutely baffles me; it’s fucking crazy, man. Who would have known this would have been the mission of someone that I assumed so differently about. And maybe that’s just it; maybe assumptions are the plague of everything that’s wrong in this world. Maybe assumptions are what lead us into such dark recesses, believing we will never see sunshine again, assuming things won’t get better or they always will. But whether assumptions are bleak, or ambivalent or rewarding, they are there and we will keep making them and keep faulting from them. I just hope it’s a lot less, and I hope we are made aware, whether we continue or not. Because it’s all we got, time, it’s all we’ll ever have, and we just try to make the best of it. And I hope you can, I hope this world can. I hope we can reconcile everything we have ruined, that we can have some chance of getting out, getting by, and getting on and making due. But I don’t know if it’s possible, I don’t know if anything is possible anymore. But I know that I’ll move on to…something else, something worse before better, then better before going back again. So is life, and so is reality and everything we’ve encountered and will encounter again, until the time comes when we stop assuming and everything will make sense and be without reticence, in it’s place and proper and beautiful…and ugly and real. Because it can’t be right and it can’t be good, unless there is pain and unless there is some ugliness. Because otherwise everything is beauty and everything is empty. And that’s it.



Of course I wish it wasn’t so, wish there wasn’t a vendetta against…those who admire or those who want to be a part. I wish there wasn’t so much hatred and misunderstanding that came with those assumptions. Because it’s not all hatred, there’s so much beauty in it all, if we’d only take the time to not overanalyze, take the time not to explore. Just let things be for what they are, nothing more, nothing more. We can’t go on predicting what we want; deterring what we think is bad. Because it’s all gonna arrive, and fall and ascend and climb, produce, regardless of whether we extinguish it, it’s gonna happen. And denial, I guess, is part of it, denial is part of understanding what we are, and what we have and don’t have; denial is part of growth, denial is part of everything, and it’s death and birth incarnate. But there is love unbridled somewhere in the world and I try to seek it out. I try to find it in anything, in what was and what we can’t explain, because it’s out there; that’s all we have, knowing there is something out there unbridled, that there is something wild about us, about all this. Something that’s beyond classes and work, waiting tables and tips, and emails and phone calls, and late night ramblings, lonely well-wishings; there is something beyond it. And there is something that makes it all seem alright, that we’re not just striving for something that is empty, something that has moved on, something that is extinct or has evolved. But fuck, evolution is everything; evolution is why we’re here, evolution is what made us, evolution is the most beautiful thing we can conceive, and that’s it. Once more, that’s it. It’s death and resurrection, it’s evolution and mutation, it’s beauty…unbridled. Cause the hemlocks can’t arrive without the limestone eroding, and the roots can’t reach the water without there being a surplus or deficency, some reason to keep going, some reason to keep growing, some reason, I guess, just to believe. And I’m trying, like anything else…



So take it back, whatever consequences serve you. Take back whatever keeps you afloat or makes you sing. Whatever serves the dichotomy you are trying to make due with. Whatever odds and ends make your transition. Everybit, take it.

Take the well-wishes, the good intentions, the kindness, the happy smiles, the orgasms; take the gestures, the anger and sadness, man; take every part of it inside and out. Take the little kisses and big embraces, take the warm and cold, take the sheets and fan. Take the foil that keeps it warm and the hands that keep the ticket. Take the petal and bloom before the bud, cause if you never wanted it, it shouldn’t have been planted. Pull the plug on the drain, and take it with you, in case you need to stop up something else down the road. Because this one has drained, and it will be seasons before it returns. But you seem to have a good grasp, a good understanding; you seem to know what you want, and maybe we just don’t.

If this is it, call off the guard and throw in the towel. Return the books, but keep the rest, for whatever sake it might serve. Maybe it will give a reason to hate, or hope, or love.

Waiting

It needs to coalesce
before it can arrive,
expire before it may
exist.
it won't be, until
recognized
make sense
till passed.

You can't appreciate or
taste anything till
you've finished it, or
it's complete.
And it's terrible, waiting,
it's the worst passage
of all.
Waiting;
Fucking,
waiting.

Patience is a virtue
we must swallow
but what is a virtue
unless revered by all?
Otherwise it's a pass,
a move of hope
an impression of ... desire?
Wish the words just
weren't so harsh.

But it's the only reason we
keep on
keep knowingly failing
to get the front
the acknowledgment
of dismissal.

What else is there
when we're alone
but to be overt
and a contagion,
oppressive and
playless.

God dammit,
just a minute would be
enough,
at least a press
of chance.

When you've only had
emptiness, anything
foreign is empty, and
all that fails you
is sustenance.

more finite than we wish

When the fuck did
you get so pious,
Sir Lancelot?
You act as though
you've never been
there.
Go ride another
horse, Juarez
the hills are closer
than you think

Give it a day
a week
let it settle
in the leachate
There ain't a whole
lot more to
wait for.
It's all legal tender
whether she touched it
or not
The American Disabilities Act
can't put an access ramp
in every niche,
bunk, or building;
we're more finite
than we wish

I want it in my living room

Is she an american
American?!?
mound the mass,
the scope
the lunge.
Where do they arrive from
suck unattainable
effervescent silk
Predict how you must
make those 'gressions
the timely transgressions
progressions
I hope it works
I hope it convinces
the lender the
decider
You're protector

I'll be on the wire
whether you are
in or not.
Spit on you hand, just
in case, you let the
lion know

What is any degenerate
suppose to do
How can you justify
any such behavoir
Deplorable is the
epic notion of the
times, seemingly
attainable, yet the
same as its title.
It's tragic the energy
wasted. the synergy
that was possible
God bless it. Every lasting
fucking bit of it. The
semen, the
Sechilles,
I want it all in my
living room.

Such a girl when it comes to women

It's not the specifics
the hair, curves or hues
and it's different with each

The first time it was easy
We were nine and she had doe eyes
With my sweaty bangs, not much seemed better
Even then we knew it was more
than a bullet point
or conjecture
usually wasn't realized till it was gone
like most things of the sort

And it's still the same
ever elusive, but there
and prominent
The grad student can call it Achilles's great dichotomy
going to war with a shield of farming
of family
of love

It's when it's harder
to muster the courage not to call
to restrain from checking the phone
between each lonesome paragraph

When they serve whiskey in to-go cups
you would think the journey easier
the saunter more in tune
with the cogs of grandfather clocks
But if we could just ring the bell
just let them know that we're around
then maybe we could overcome
the moons' alignment
and estrogen unbridled

We're a turtle, on wind-swept shores at dawn
hoping the pigs haven't caught our scent
pleading the rain's abundance
won't wash our fledglings
out to the salty sea

The moon carries so much uncertainty
when the clouds have returned
and the gray-scale becomes our pallet
Like a bag of wheat thins left out in the rain
we nod our hat to the ambivalent cat

In avoidance we strive to be noticed, thinking
in absence they'll long for us
That unknown notion propels our irrationality
our estranged decisions
We can't reach the hilltop
without dynamiting the foundation
or descend without balding the dome

It's inevitable that it will progress as such
That we'll continue with the guesswork
ineptitude, inability, ignorance
It all goes back to that rib
it's removal and loss
it's our innate emptiness
born inside the Gates of Eden
In creating their beauty
from us
they are us
And maybe that's it
that elusive entity
that keeps our leash taut
It's all we seek, 'our' calcite
'our' rib
and it's theirs

Just wish Sunday school
hadn't been so boring

The Yearling, Portland, and Misgivings

I miss the rain, the looming clouds and misty ponytails along the morning bus rides; the spit from bicycle tires seemed so pure and timely, appropriate for my longing and warm enough for my yearning heart. I hope you haven't forgotten; forgotten my yearling eyes and fanciful yawns. I'll always be waiting by the wire, in hopes of hearing your tenor call my name. The mountains arn't as high as they once stood, though the glaciers keep time with the tears of spin-the-bottle and missed opportunities. I pray your love is as pure as I remember, and that your smile still heats the air of basement wanderings. Though we can't live in the breath of past pains, it's nice to know they are remembered, and that reminders only hurt initially. If your find the time, let those in heaven know your name and remind the garbage man that not all the trash should be dismissed. We all get soiled from time to time and my rag's still wet.
With love from the Grotto,
Stella