Love Is Just Pen & Ink

2012-02-09T17:09:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-10T09:12:00.001-08:00

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

2012-01-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

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

I am the greatest!

2011-12-24T16:48:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-24T15:50:00.000-08:00

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

2011-08-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-18T09:00:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-06T11:48:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-06-23T06:03:00.001-07:00

It's always best

to write

when you can't

read

More appropriate

to cast grievances

when you're hoping

'figure it out'

I once ran the future

I made everyone cattle

2011-05-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

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."

2011-04-04T16:13:00.001-07:00

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.

2011-03-28T17:52:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-28T17:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

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.

2011-03-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-16T15:23:00.002-07:00

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

2010-05-16T15:23:00.001-07:00

We become

dissatisfied

when we have

nothing

to complain

12/2?/10

2010-05-10T16:49:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-09T17:33:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-28T17:43:00.002-07:00

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

2010-04-14T11:51:00.001-07:00

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.

2010-03-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-23T18:17:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-11T12:25:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-03T09:06:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-13T10:18:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-23T13:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

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

If it's love, he will know

2009-09-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

Somehow the absence always makes the heart seem weaker. How a day missed can make one assume that beauty now empty, removed and displaced. It seems it’s been weeks, both since he saw her or introduced himself; years since he first absorbed that warm embrace, as if he’s praying for a hug just for old time’s sake.

He can only wake up alone so many times, so many more late evenings and early morns before something grows, or dies, or ages beyond memory. In all this quest for sempiternal existence, to continue rolling in that eternal wheel and hay bale of yearning. They tell him it’s only the rain and the stain of those olden pains, that he’s just tired and crazed in the mind. He wishes he could be silent, that the times didn’t propel his guessing, his hopeless wanderings.

But I hope he finds it, whatever it is he’s been rambling about, anxiously sweating with. I wish the pain didn’t help so much, the emptiness didn’t restore with such grace. I hate that she knows, that he has to ascend that hill in fluorescent effervescent quilts to cry for shelter, and warmth and the lupine. If resistance didn’t fail, if only guilt was painless and straightforward to ascertain, it would be better or seem as such.

There is only so much he can do before it’s gone, before the drain empties and the flag quits wavering and is silenced. Each string is forever tuned to remain quiet, atleast enough to cool his brow and lessen life’s reverse. Maybe he’ll stand up for his one chance; maybe he’ll stand up for love. We get no second chance in this life, but if it’s love he will know.

Epistulary Wanderings III

2009-09-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

Hank
Make the call you wack
Merrily gay in fact
I can't call the judge
Those bugs take it all these days
Greedy knats taking the cake
and not eating too, fools
Find the cut cliff, stiff
on the face side,
the pretty view.

Golden Jimmy

It makes you wonder

2009-09-08T07:12:00.001-07:00

But I still wonder, wonder, question and ponder. How can such grace arrive so fittingly, like water at crest, snugging the sky's womb. Such purity wasn't meant for ignominious Sapiens like we. The grackles, carrying SO MUCH HATE, enough to kill a school or any of you. Such cherubic grace was not our destiny, or pure utterances meant to fall from our ugly, clumsy jowls.
But we're here. And it does.
Such wondrous whisperings were meant for the others, the monarch winging it homeward again; for the doe and yearling, waiting for echos of the dwindling wildfire's screams to drift south. Like a back road in winter, when the sheen is neither ice nor water, and you can't tell whether it's a wake or a birth.
It's the stuff that failed redwoods and built arks, a beauty of the highest accord, that somehow fell in our wicked paws. What vengeful god would bestow such an atrocity upon his children, would give such crude implements to manage such purity. How is one to exchange gifts when the rain blinds like stars?
You would think only a right hook, from a tortured soul, would be able to carry and deliver such weight, or that only planks of cedar would carry such a strong scent. But a week has now passed, and the wonder remains. All that subsides is the fear; all anxious nightmares abandoned and dismissed, for every arising cold sweat is just the exit of terror, the past trying to rekindle what we've moved beyond.
I hope she isn't in situ, that she's ready to strap her boots and step off the porch. My palms are likely rough, and my soul weary, but there's a bluebird in my heart that want's out and the stars are too bright to hide in the shadows.
Let me take you along and throw your experience and wisdom to westerly winds. Because I can't stop without running, and this is no place to hide.

We thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver

2009-09-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

Ecclesiastes 1
Everything Is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher, [a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."
3 What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
"Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.

What is there, but ascensions and endings? Is the apex any more substantial then the initial arousal, or the hope, an anticipation of guesswork? Kingdoms are slain over presumptions, assumptions and the demotions that arrive with the reality of our cyclic tendencies. Granitic intrusions are merely the Pharaoh’s sand hills, the delusions of ant lions. In conquest, in writing, in running, in consumption, all is tuned in the key of finites. Our thoughts are uniform, direct, intentional; but when we’ve gone mad, when psychosis wracks our senses, it seems there is no end, that we are absent of lines and lineaments. Distinction is the catalyst for assumption; as coitus is to tactic purpose?
“Original sin is not something man did to god but something god did to man, so monstrous that to this day man cannot understand what happened to him. He shakes his head groggily and rubs his eyes in disbelief.
The great secrets of the ages is that man has evolved, is born, lives, and dies for one end and one end only: to commit a sexual assault on another human or to submit to such an assault.” Walker Percy, Lancelot

What is this assault but a continuation of the wrath initiated in the original ‘monstrous’ sin? We propagate for an existence we’ll never see; Abraham IS Issac, as Jacob is Judah, and I am Krishna; the stray black cat: GW; the Sassafras: the cup of salvation. The leaves turn with the pumping of the rig, as CONOCO and Chrysler yet again reassess, ponder and probe for new ways to control waves, to reinvent the leaf, the detritus, to peat, to lignite, the coal, covered, subducted, exposed, evaporating, to salt to gypsum, consumed and covered, in sequence, the bouma sequence; all in time, all of cyclic exposition, it faults, it fractures, the salt plumes, moving like fire, like water, like nature, in taking the path of least resistance, in filling the fissures most apt., and again evolving, like Lucy, like Lepidodendron, like Coleoptera, like Nyssa Sylvatica, it arrives, subsides
and becomes…
it becomes and is and continues, the coal miners lament, the rice pickers waning twilight. We aren’t worthy or ready to ever conceive it, of it, about it. We are it, or were it, or will be it, worship it, smoke it, destroy it, love it, dig it and leave it.

“The one thing we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.
The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man’s relations. We thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “Circles”

For the soul of man walks all paths
The soul walks not upon a line,
neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself,
like a lotus of countless petals.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

2009-09-02T11:05:00.001-07:00

It makes you wonder if it's real. If such hours are truly existent, such gestures unfeigned. It seems unfair that such beauty can exist, that fortune could really be so nurturing. It makes you want to destroy ugliness, to ravage the rancid ones beyond the screen door. It's hard even to step off the porch, when you know the sun's brighter inside, and the snow a lighter pallid.
Innocence is only novel in retrospect, and it's naive to assume the world knows this. Or that she has cognizance of my wonder. I'm no innocent son. Ask my dog, ask the one's back east, inquire my dad and take in his revealing sighs. I wish it wasn't so hard to love a man that can't make right; that she wasn't such an unctuous sycophant; that she wasn't so pleasant at dawn. It gives me sickness, dissuades my hunger.
But people mean well and goodness does exist: the requisite condition for this is believing it. If mother's can still render altruistic affection after my atrocities, then children deserve Handi Snacks and Kool-Aid from used syrup bottles. It's ok for the mutt to swallow wholly the fat of the steak. But she'll never know how regal and succulent a finely seared piece can be. And the other she will never understand my doubts, as I'll never have a true conviction.
So I just keep writing and hoping, hoping she won't smarten up too soon, or worse, deny she's sensed it. The point in hiding out is to wait to be found; in eating, to pass what was just put in; in being kind so you're not remembered as unpleasant. You grin and roll down the frozen food aisle so you seem as kind as they assume themselves, and Jesus, and the Pope, and a cop, and the rabbit.

Run Rabbit Run, cause my den's a caving in.

Rice Ferguson

Farewell Transmission

2009-08-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

Songs: Ohia - Farewell Transmission, from the album Magnolia Electric Co.

Recorded on Blueridge acoustic.
Key of C#m, ... believe.

http://www.filedropper.com/thefarewelltransmission

A Song For You

2009-08-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

Gram Parsons - A Song for You, off of the album GP
Recorded on Blueridge acoustic
Key of A

http://www.filedropper.com/asongforyou

Sun Waddle

2009-08-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Rice Ferguson,
from the Big Stacey Pool recordings, at 507 Leland, B
First recorded song on the vintage tenor guitar.
Key of C#

Botched lyrics, but refer to the severe drought ravaging our dear Austin.

http://www.filedropper.com/sunwaddle3

Summerslam

2009-08-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

Mr. Perfect,
Big event this
Sunday. The Hitman
in the cage. I'll
see you Saturday
on Superstars.

Hall of Famer,
Gorilla Monsoon

I pay in change

2009-08-27T08:08:00.000-07:00

Scotch is midnight
when dogs seem asleep
the cats hoarse and purring
your tongue has to be saturated
cloaked, carpeted
The zest was lost after the
great war, that seeming
separation
Now its for the MEEK
the trident thieves

I pay in change.
Odelay,
Rice Ferguson

the past, recycled

2009-08-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

it use to make me sick. seeing photos of her
getting along so well without me.
an overwhelming,encompassing, consuming wrath
of emotion, of time lost, of kisses wasted.
my only fault was loving her too much, worshiping
the presence I assumed she carried.

each month, assuredly, blindly hoping it would ease.
the empty stomach would gradually begin to fill.
each night, I would awake, with a mind absent of images
of her.

I can still sense her hair, smell her on my hands, feel
the warmth of her hips.

and this too shall pass, every week, says the sermon.
our time is transient, says Emerson,
just another circle.

I can’t keep crying for her, can’t keep wishing she
possessed more empathy.

it’s tragic the time wasted. it’s unhealthy the insomnia
transgressed.

it's unfortunate, my inability to forget.

epistolary 1

2009-08-14T08:55:00.001-07:00

Lillybeth,
I found max and
the trunk. seems a bit
lite for the surcharg’.
lay me a five on 9 and
12. I’m betting on the
muse.
hoofs hoping,
Harold H

Aunt Aida,
rear view mirr’
knock’d bent, sames saz
lasttime. thirty’ll do it.
yer boy,
Ingram

Dear Lidia,
I open in telling you,
sumptuous, and nothing short
of it, is all I may conjecture,
or recall, of last eve’s rumba.
Delectably Yours,
Sebastian Kindly

Chair,
Ma ain’t the same,
the bouts, the lil’ debbies.
Freddi Lees makin the river
route.
holding the storms,
Sands

Genevieve,
Can’t say we’ll make it this season.
Factory’s only offering so many hours.
Give the little ones our love.
In Spirit and Love,
Aunt Josephine

Sorry pawpaw, but I
couldn’t let’em
jus talk bout Mimi
‘n her claw foot. See
you in five to ten.
Eustice

Pa, Ma
It’s overwhelming me and I must move. I promise to
write, though I can’t yet picture where abouts I’ll be come
Crismas. Suns a peakin’ and my postaponings run up.
Give jello and sissy my love.
Ponygirl

white lace

2009-08-14T08:50:00.001-07:00

Embrace it my

love.

now irrespective of your past outpourings,

your once-resolute intentions.

Immerse yourself in your coming

wanton days,

your true ecclesiastical existence has arrived.

Swiftly so it blossomed

this loft assumption

of commitment.

never “imagining you would be where you are right now:

about to marry the man you can’t wait to spend the rest of your life with…”

It’s hard for me to ‘imagine’,

or any of us who knew you then.

When your joy

Spread like fire

your complacency

Like hemlock.

“stir up some passion

with Uncle Ben’s…”

cause all that’s left is somber Sundays,

and bowls of spicy rice,

to compliment movie night.

maybe the wine

tastes sweeter,

or so we hope.

It’s all we got,

to bestow our blessings

and

hope.

hope you can hold on

and keep from

remembering

what made you,

from

shattering

the horizon he’s painted.

maybe he never started,

but I know he smells

like the locker room,

the chapter room.

But I hope you haven’t lost your scent,

your gaze;

I pray it’s not

dead.

But don’t kill yourself

trying;

know the smiles fade,

running with mascara

through culverts of summer

storms,

and the dew of the rising red.

we can’t govern the tides,

tame the whippoorwill.

everyone’s ship sails

and I know you’ll never

reach new lands

without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a long time.

safe travels,

I’ll be checking the mail.

forever yours,

Rice Ferguson

life as sacrifice

2009-08-13T12:18:00.001-07:00

Now what is history? It is th centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That's why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that's why they write symphonies. Now, you can't advance in this direction without a certain faith. You can't make such discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements of this equipment are in the Gospels. What are they? to being with, love of one's neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then the two basic ideals of mondern man--without them he is unthinkable--the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice.

from Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak

from, Texts from Nothing

2009-07-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

When I reflect now on the recurrent problems of what, with all proper modesty, might be called the heroic period, on one in particular so arduous and elusive that it literally ceased to be formulable, I suspect that our pains were those inherent in the simple and necessary and yet so unattainable proposition that their way of being we, was not our way and that our way of being they, was not their way. It is only fair to say that many of us have never been abroad.
- from, Texts from Nothing, by Samuel Beckett

It's Just a Poem

2009-07-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

Done
Finished
Clear the cannons.
Slip back under your sheets
With your putative,
Mascara stained eyes.
You can’t handle
The morning after?
Go back east
To your daddy
And his Saab.
Take your teasing tongue
And ignominious tendencies,
I’ve had my fill.

“When are you gonna
Write me a poem?”
You pester and plea.
“It takes time, you see,”
I encourage.
“You can’t force such things.”
Certainly you’ve made the moment ripe,
Your reason has arrived.
Enjoy it,
You homage,
Your petroglyph.
Read it to your friends,
Remember it for your kids,
But remind ‘em
You ain’t the first.

The torpid stoicism
Settling in you,
It’s normal,
They’re always shocked
Wondering where they went wrong.
You can’t write this kind of shit.
You can’t imagine this sort of drama.
Only in the conception
Of this death,
In finally conceiving
What the mirror returns,
You can hope
To look beyond
Your cherubic perception,
Glance at what your daddy
Was most afraid of.

Your shades won’t cut it
The mascara can’t hide it.
You’ve been revealed
Everyone’s smelled your stench.
Just pray the world’s still got
An ounce of sympathy
Cause my well’s run dry
And you’ve sucked my soul clean

Stop crying.
I can’t help my precocial soul
My itinerant existence.
I’m the vagabond
Your daddy warned you about
I’m the jerk
Your momma lusted for.
Cuss me
Kiss me
Curse me
Fuck me
I’m hanging
By a thread
And have too many patches
Left to stitch.

In any case,
It’s just a poem;
Don’t take it so hard
You knew it was coming
You could feel it
In your bowels.

Take your Pepto
Light a candle
You’ll forget about it soon enough
Well…
Except for this poem.

who knows what knots your daddy taught

2009-07-23T08:28:00.001-07:00

a Monday to be remembered.
with so little at stake
and so much to be assumed.
We always belittle our hopes
and reiterate the fears
of all the bandits,
vagrants, and
non-abusers.
We tackle ourselves
in an attempt to dilute our surroundings.
Crush our psyche and disavow all that we've ever stood for.
Resolution is for the meek and
the intrepid beasts,
for cognizance is pragmatic
only when you're on top.

your cat eyes keep me down
your cat eyes pin me down

purr up another tree,
your whiskers are forgotten.
Blind Blaek bleeds
for the sight of our youth, and
little Jimmy,
who pains for nothing
but to be old.
I can't kill myself without taking you down.
I'm forever lonely
with someone else around.

I'd kill myself to stay alive,
shoot my father to fill his love.
Eat money to remember I'm trying,
bite my mutt just to taste her blood.
It ain't a wake without the sun
or winter without a birth.
The showers are all equal under the sky,
preach the fish from stream to sea.
A grain of sand ain't nothing, screams the ant
till it gets between you and me.
So I'll pull up my boot straps
and point my toes south.
for my belongings ain't worth much
when I can't fill my mouth.
the lands of the Bible
today shake with Thor's thunder,
and we're in the dark without a spark
among our electrified existence.
I can't keep wearing plaid and corduroy,
with boots with tread and socks that match.
My hat ain't got a hole yet and
my dog's still got all 'er legs.
My teeth have yet to rot and
my ass don't bleed like it use to.
but I still got plenty reason
to give you up and
more hatred to deliver your way.

I wish the hard times weren't so easy,
that the asphalt didn't taste so good.
but with a gut like mine and
all my healing
it's hard to not imagine moving on.
as dark as it seems,
I can always taste morning,
though it gets too bright
I can still see death.

Grant me a pardon from my sorrow,
so I might obtain a key to my grace.
For transgressions taunt timidly
with such a hole in your face.
My time is too tight
to tie a knot with you,
but who knows what knots
your daddy taught.

about the pen conference

2009-07-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning.

about the Pen conference
Charles Bukowski

from Dylan's Tarantula

2009-07-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

got too drunk last nite. musta drank too much. woke up this morning with my mind on freedom and my head feeling like the inside of a prune ... am planning to lecture today on police brutatlity. come if you can get away. see you when you arrive. write me when you're coming.
your friend,
Homer the Slut

from Boby Dylan's Tarantula

the bluebird

2009-07-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery store clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say.
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
You want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're in there,
so don't be
sad.

then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

The bluebird
Charles Bukowski

everywhere, everywhere

2009-07-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

amazing, how grimly we hold onto our
misery,
ever defensive, thwarted by
the forces.
amazing, the energy we burn
fueling our anger.
amazing, how one moment we can be
snarling like a beast, then
a few moments later,
forgetting what or
why.

not hours of this or days or
months or years of this
but decades,
lifetimes
completely used up,
given over
to the pettiest
rancor and
hatred.

finally
there is nothing here for death to
take away.

----
everywhere, everywhere
from - what matters most is how well you walk through the fire
Charles Bukowski

St. Catherine's Village

2009-07-22T13:26:00.000-07:00

3.5.08, en route back to Jackson

Last night
I met a man of peace,
assured and calm
in his mother's time of need.
He told me he's from Eugene,
that land of Kesey
and the book I was reading.
Last night
I told him
that I once too
knew Oregon.
He smiles
at my admiration.

Our elders
share a nursing home,
an estate of sorts,
his mother
and my mother's mother.
"They say she's declining,"
he says. She is ninety-six.
"I understand," I say.
I'm twenty-three
and without work.
We land in Mississippi,
issue condolences
and gather our things.

A realization

2009-07-22T13:24:00.001-07:00

At the sight of a lovely being,
I find myself
in consternation,
unsure if I've ever truly loved.
And upon realizing such
I equate my dismay
to the equal discomfort
that I may have never loved myself;
not my appearance,
my standing,
depth or ability,
but my nature
and true being.

for sacrifice is a consequence of time

2009-07-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

I don't know what she told him or
how her language could ever skew such a mind.
But it happened, it exists,
though he fights from every breath
he's known.
It was written in the mud,
that which seeps through all strata,
that he
would change it all for the better,
bubbling up and rising forth
from that never thought or foreseen.
That he
would breed on the love
thought incapable
and issue to those thought
to 'know' the breath
of a life never seen.

For triumph bleeds struggles
forever encompassed and requisite
of each other.
No victory fought
may nor ever existed
without loss,
for sacrifice is a consequence
of time.

A Tuesday

2009-07-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

2.26.08 a visit to Austin

A Tuesday

We concern ourselves
with that which we
once knew
when contemplation plagues
our mind and
our horizons shrink
with each passing
has been.

Consternation and diplomacy,
the politicians of our psyche debate.
Justifying who deserves what,
issuing sentences according to
past lives and
present absences.

When we were the chosen
one,
and our skin could
carry no stain,
our bowels would breathe
angel's breath
for ushers to lead
down the aisle.

And solace arrived
when we awoke,
forgiving all the night's revelries
and giving admission
for that day's faults.
There we stood assured,
for all existence was gold
and love was our only fear.

And today we remain
evolved and ever unsure.
Because all we have
is time
and all we seek
is a place.
For today
uncertainty plagues
incessantly,
like the yawn
from a twenty year sleep,
signifying nothing
except what is not,
and keeping a wonder
of what being
is.

flunking sunday school

2009-07-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

Is a grave digger aware
of suicide-season?
Does he begin
to set his alarm earlier
once November starts
and make sure to use all his sick days
before summer is up?
If a new drug hits the streets,
do the clear the lots in preparation?

When does a fish know
to stop eating,
or that it's arrived,
when all tastes the same
and the water never rises?

Can a saint be a martyr
if they flunked sunday school?

What an incredible gimmick
to sell a pen that can be disassembled;
the company can never go broke

Junko Ono

2009-07-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

Joyner,
the coin ain't shit for the corn
the blood gets thicker,
but I can't shake the tick
Make mama go outside,
I'll be there before she dies

saving grace,
Junko Ono

Learn to spell Wednesday

2009-07-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

Lear to spell Wednesday
you boston rag top leaning,
scheming for whom the bell tolls
with cracks she snaps her whip
to get in line,
harassing the younglings and Junglings
rants, raves of she to the moon,
its cheese too skunk for that skank
blesses bad noise, those erotic toys
breast erect, with Levon
the atomic nipple,
rippling Constantine
among his chubby chauffeurs
he can't pay to remove amongst her
she locking the lace
of her brown bottom boots,
so she trips his mind
at each quarter of the clock
turn, turn the space face demeanor,
the meaner true to thyme.

2009-07-22T12:41:00.000-07:00

Call it quality control

2009-07-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

Bill,
Steve made a mess
of the cake / surprise a
birthday guest, guess we'll
ear mark the bill of rights,
let senator wrong preach
his doctrine of simplicity /
our world is stain glass
and you lost the damn baseball

Call it quality control,
Col. Jerky

Hank

2009-07-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

Hank,
Make the call you wack
Gay in fact, I can't call the judge
those bugs take it all these days
Greedy knats taking the cake
and not eating it either, fools
Find the cut cliff, stiff
on the face side, the
pretty view.

Watching,
Marv Gunther

Merrily Patchwork

2009-07-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

2.27.07 Tuesday

Peters make the mark
Ms. Queenbee, her lame duck spark
We can't change her, that force
I make the move unknown
Make it happen, push the realm
Col. Helm on the line, a sign
for thymen and Rosemary McGee
has lost her wit
Make it happen Boss
I'm in route

Dearily,
Merrily Patchwork

She dreamed she was St. Augustine

2009-07-22T12:21:00.000-07:00

3.26.07 Monday, 10 am

And with each morn' our faces awaken, groggy, unsure and confused. We fell fast asleep, knowing our gravest dangers lay not in our dreams but with the morning's glory. Think of those sunrises at the beach, that peace and solitude that remains unknown to so many dear souls. And who is to reckon with this and remain content in their existence? What livelihood can account for these beauties of our time, so rich in truth and absent of disgrace. How can we let those moments remain untapped and continue this banal existence? I can't wait and I won't. I will not allow my soul to deter my growth, to slow my progression. Dangerous souls remain at each turn, and our environment will never be rid of them. With a cape and a cane they walk so proud. Dealing with this trivia of life, unbeknownst to they or their peers. And why would they leave this life, knowing nothing outside it and uncaring nontethelss.

How virtuous history appears before our eyes, dancing off the page in radiance of admiration and esteem. We remain loyal to those we never knew, believeing the admonisment of our own time to be vain and lacking truth. Yet we dredge on with our ankles restrained, lifting the masses on each heave in step. We proclaim from on high, our chests full of valor, our brows narrowing to the auspices of the day. The sun opens our eyelids, drawing means to no visible end. One knows only that which remains unspoken; that which can never be contested by the swine of this age, carried six feet under, remaining inherent in the spirit of which it was born.

Dreamed she was St. Augustine,
mean, lean, the go between
God and men, syntac
attack the swine, thou time
is upon us kind sir, deter
not your sister's cry, making
haste of waste, confess in jest

On Sewanee

2009-07-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

April 2007

There are things we believe we might forget, hoping in a sense for our own sympathy. We have resided the last four years, secluded upon a pedestal towering above all we take no regard for. These times are ones we each pray to never loose, an utopia with all the hoopla of being adults and the ignorance of adolescents. In these times we feel secure, regardless of the goings of the world beyond us. We are safe here; a haven for endless possibilities, taking each and every day what we desire, promoting what we hope for. But when will we have what we desire? Will we arrive at knowledge or the capacity for what is enough? In these days we muck about, extending any and every inquisition to our soul's delight. We reside uninhibited, free of those shackles we believe hang beyond our convenient bubble.

What will that realization be? Growling in our midst, gauging and grinding, ready to break that mold. It's strange this place we name complacent. A beer and a bowl. Maybe a cig' and a shit, if there's time. "Ah fuck," he says, the garbage man blasting his thumb again. It seems you can'
t win with oil on your hands, or grit in your teeth, shirt without sleeves. "You ain't one of them, " he says. "Not those that found it. Them boys have it all down. Yeh that's right. Been reelin' in it for years."

And so the good guy squeals, he can't take the heat. And this guy's a sweatin', I mean churnin' in his belly, inwards pretzeled every which way. I tell ya, I thought the guy was a warrior till they broke 'em.

In Portland

2009-07-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

In Portland
7/11/07

The swine arrives, another evening ensues. My time here in this scene is slowly closing, bringing about strange sensations. The move is immense and I doubt its repercussions will be made immediately evident. Nevertheless I find solace in these uncertain times, knowing I have a purpose and it shall be fulfilled.

Soon enough work and love will make a man out of you. Through and through. These trials and tests are true necessities to our growth; to comprehending that which is real, that which is truth. People move and make changes, some provoked, others unnecessary and uncertain. We know not why we do these things, though the flagrant action is clear. So where to go from here. We find ourselves time and again in these states, hoping our forethought and good intentions carry us through. Where to? Does a resolution exist.

In my mind, in my heart, the issue is absent, yet the presence remains in a lingering sweat, bitter and relentless. Unyielding is its source, and unsound its motives. I await that day and maybe it will arrive at dawn. It's arrival might be elusive, remaining unnoticed till the hour is ripe. We go amongst our friends, leading life with continual casualness, losing these hurtful thoughts in the bliss of faithful company and fruitful gatherings. The benevolence of a kind word, a true smile, a caring reassurance. These things uncounted, amiss, forgotten and limitless. Nonagression, the path, the way. A non-judgmental conscious leaves one tired and filled with empty anger.

Yet this is passion, this is zest, life, breath, all that propels us in life, in love, in lust. We creep ever so slowly thinking time is endless and our passions fleeting. Hoping this is the one, the part, the place, the time, the girl, the past, the end of the beginning. We are clueless as to the convictions we hold under our breath, bounding, tittering with the notion. "That mocking bird is gonna sail away, we're gonna let it, we won't regret it."

And what of this land, this piece of earth open to the endless, the unknown. Where my road will lead is certainly uncertain ... though the direction is general and the driver ... the driver, he is broad in vision, yet meticulous in his perceptions. You see, this road he drives is filled with exits, road blocks, speed bumps and dangerous curves. But that is why he drives, that is the pursuit of all like he, hoping for the life of content-ness and yield-less understanding.

His father is loving, supportive, faithful, trusting. Their time is still yet to c0me. It's as if a standoff betwix the two, though either continually remained neutral. Neutral, scared, mad, and hurt, it continued and seems sad. Yet the transgression approached, and fearless they confronted. Axe and blade, tongue unrestrained, appetite starving. Though not ruthless, the intention forgiven, less than amiable.

A gift, what does one make of it. Money give to one, a favor, a gift, smile, favor, sacrifice, displeasure, to the benefit of another. Is one to give for the sake of the self-congratulation? Found treasures of unknown origin is their benefactor to be revealed. No ... What is this desire to help others without their knowing, without their thanks. These keen thoughts are not revealing.

The scene, the utter brutal ugliness of such a beautiful and benign experience. Has he crossed a border, a line of wretched treachery? It seems the devil incarnate has emerged in him and continues, no matter the nature, demeanor, congenial or quiet. But what should we expect of one of such ineptitude. Sly, sly they lurk. Praying those they want for no solace, love, reason or lust. Certainly pure power, talk and agenda drive their pursuit.

I don't need a conversation, an apology, forgiving departure or recognition of fault. The issue stands as it ended and is. As it remains. I expect nothing of her and this will remain. It's such a pity, that one would hold such prejudices, such grudges, crying over broken bones, things unable to be mended. A heartbreak can never be justified, no matter the amount of rightful reason. Some things are necessary, urgent to the health of the soul, to the betterment of what exists, and could fruitfully in the future.

But this bull shit writing gives no answer to the situation of the time.
And fuck it, because no one even cares.

For Stella

2009-07-22T11:22:00.001-07:00

If only my dog got paid
to sit
and watch
the house all day
She just might have
something for me
when I get home

When I struggle up to the door
to open a way
for her shits
She clawing my being,
there under
the sheets
testing
daunting is she

But if
she got paid
than I might have
incentive enough
to treat her
the way
she treats me

I'm not there

2009-07-22T11:15:00.001-07:00

I'm not there

You can sense it in their voice
No matter the intonations
No matter their glee
their joyful banter
the notion resides in the air
unneeding of recognition
or acknowledgment
There it is
plain as sunbeam
And we make no attempt
no salute
to it's putrid presence
Why do it
What need requires it
I am here,
cognizant and able
and for what

So I take my days in stride
keeping to myself
What reason do I have
to let on these feelings
these empty emotions
I am here
I'm not there
I'm not there
You hear!
I'm not there!
And you are
and you know it
And is there a care
And is there suppose to be
And who would have it
And why would they

I can only speculate
speculate and masturbate
And where does it get me
And where does that leave you
I can't force your emotions
I am here
I'm not there
Nothing more
Nothing less
So go on in your ways
Fill your time with it
Because you can't have
I'm not there

who's to say what is rain

2009-07-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

how bright and shining
the world seems
when in all its glory
far from home
off in space
a distant place, no one
really seems
to know
about.

"Don't leave me alone
in the twilight"
when the rains hit from both sides
where the clouds move the tides

you can't bring
a sick man to the vet
you can't bring
a wounded wolf to the gyno
Because if it's all just beer
and if tin cans
are a better measure of time
than needle pointing or
naming grandkids
whose to say what's rain
and
what's not

2009-07-22T11:01:00.001-07:00

the creep, that snake
take awake along the side
the kid pierces the bubble's ascent
with known bylaws hovering in the air
fare is the fun,
circus amongst our wits
along fabled widows' paths of knit,
ans slit stitch the niche
to the cell phone
making all alone
in touch,
and with animal lust
lack the fires
building light years

her exit makes me quiver
a shiver never delivered, yet
equivocated with my own self lust,
or bust on her self righteousness
and grind her gongily presence
making life real
and reality alive

For Your Consideration

2009-07-22T10:56:00.003-07:00

underwear is for those who lack the fortitude to appreciate the testicular freedom the Almighty bestowed upon us, following the rib-conception of our illustrious being

2009-07-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

The crisis

The night holds itself upright,
so proud
it breathes a cacophony
of its own kind.
It seems we've lost all control
these days.
The world spins,
wobbles and turns,
wavering, a dreidal,
but with excessive care.
Balance
the great virtue of the times is found.
We ignore the scales
that allowed for our existence.
We have dismissed nature
and all of its
lessons.
It's the climate crisis
the housing crisis
the energy crisis
the terror crisis
the morality crisis
the immigrant crisis
the yet unopened crisis,
another unwelcome guest.
These ideas
we plant in each others heads,
incessantly picking apart ourselves.
For the praise or benefit
of no savior,
no great idea or being.
We dissect ourselves beyond recognition,
mutilating toward dishonor.
The Lord made a dog
incapable of thinking of itself
as lowly as we.

In Passing

2009-07-22T10:52:00.001-07:00

It's attained unknowingly
that complacency,
solitude.
And it seems they're
in their passing
before they even
realize.
But I can see
it in their
eyes.
The distant focus.
Unaware of the
atrocities
that've come
with time.
They exist
in a realm beyond
our experience.
Remaining aloof,
unnerved by the
pervasive plagues.

And I know
I'll be there
one day.
And they'll ask,
"When did he
arrive?"
They'll wonder,
"How did he get
there?"

But the owl's
mystery
is it's existence.
And the moon
reveals
no more than
it should.

For time will proceed
regardless of
acknowledgment.
Though our scope
has trouble
with such notions.
We are the
itinerants,
the despised, the
one's we were
warned about.
We can't place
ourselves,
nor explicate
any relevance
to such passings.

For one never reaches
new lands,
without consenting to
lose sight of the shore
for a very long
time.
Each departure
an arrival.
Every loss
an acquisition.

We are always
in passing;
and steadfastly
we exist.

2009-07-22T10:50:00.000-07:00

And I guess that's your world..

They seemed so true,
those letters;
surprised even me
they could be from you.
"You've changed my horizon,"
they'd say,
"made me aware
of a world I never knew."

I guess that's my world:
Planet Swine.
Where locusts are delicacies
and Ziplocks hold the
president's seal.

I guess that's my world
where the bell tolls
for the beggar's aching belly
where street singers
toss nickles down
to the Senate floor

I guess that's my world
where groceries are bought
with egg shells
and rye whiskey remains
atop America's most wanted

You see the letters
they weren't from you
as much as they were to me
As my own parables
weren't for you
as much as they were by me

I guess that's your world
where the pen
resolves all arguments
and a smile serves
as a trump card
to any dissent

And I guess that's your world
where a side hug
shows enough care
to keep you out of trouble
and an affable front
allows it all
to remain irrelevant.

Love Is Just Pen & Ink

2009-07-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Love Is Just Pen & Ink

Some actually receive the letters,
the promised confirmations.
And we’re always reminded
of the postal service’s inconsistencies,
The 1’s drawn too long in the zip code,
the 7’s lifted too soon.
“Ah, it’s Lindsey with an ‘e’…
It’s too bad, ya know,” he sighs.
“The note was pure honesty,
that’s all I really recall."

They appear complacent
and understanding,
their facades teeming
with ingenuousness.
But they are always more aware
than they let on.
Because it's that hope
that propels the one's
that actually are written.
It's that naivete
that fuels that babbling masturbation,
spilt upon those lines
late at night.

It's
the subconscious purpose.
It's
all that's left of romance.

And maybe she'll get that letter
one day.
When guilt has shadowed
my morns,
and longing diminished
my purpose.
After a disheartening phone call
from your mother.
After blacking out
at another wedding.
It's
your detox.
It's
your confessional.

And she'll toss it
in the box under her bed.
Throw it in with
all the others.
Returning
to her make-up and mirror,
she'll wonder what you're up to.
Imagining
how drunk you became
as you compiled.

And you'll walk it off.
At least till the next one comes along,
till you hear
your best friend's getting a divorce.
You'll keep your cool
till your sickly gay uncle finally passes.

Because that's the thing that makes sense.
We write
to see our imagined perceptions.
We lust
to keep the loneliness from hurting so much.
Lust
for the vantage of Tennessee Williams.
Lust
for a child's drawings.
Lust
for a dog's cherubic gray-scale complacency.

Because
love is
just pen & ink.