Igloo castle

We all live in here and now at this time in an unfair, unjust, undone and unrelenting existence where everyone else has it easier, better, luckier, more fortunate than We-

We dwell in our own developed Hell, long overdue to be rezoned, remapped, re-charted, retrofitted and updated to the current year, the Now-

The only way to tell where you are at this time is by landmarks scarring the sand and the wounds we call seasons.

Seasons are unstoppable, stopping and starting on their own accord. 

A revolution was in order, a new day waits around the corner, this makes our angles sharp and pointed.

The point being, after drawing so many circles, our weary hands loosen their grip. The circle becomes an ellipse and we are made blunt through exposure, worn down by corrosion and loosened from our rounded structures. 

By Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress, 'Two members of Frederick Cook's Expedition' 1909 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Arch-i-texture of the moon

It was good vibes, I said in a teenage mocking tone -poking jabs at my generation.
And then, it was said on the television that way, as if I had become a preview machine.
And so I feel you, I do. I even said to myself, I (am) hear and am listening,  I shall be careful where I step. And then I fainted for the first time in middle age, at the end of the hall. Saw myself. Convulsed as I came back in-side. There was the connection between things that stood and things that fell.
I was warned. The moons disentanglement was coming. I was being let go. I wondered how this would work.

At the job site, looking for the job site, in the general vicinity, I found myself cowered under the architecture; the churches and archdiocese and the way the woman we asked-for directions,
looked at me, looked -at- me, well, I see now that nobody can see through me. She simply said the blueprints weren't specific enough. We found it and I knew where it was, suggested it lightly, was rejected and so just went with the flow.

I feel it still, like vertigo, the spinning, perhaps the free fall from the moon, a sense of horizon at my toes.

And I knew it wasn’t done, it only looked like I was just going with the flow. Steady as she goes. Balancing on beams builds strength. One foot in front of the other.
The foreman told me about the man-made river in Mexico-Bente minutos of floating in clear, aqua warm water-fishes too!
Beautiful, I said Prague was more my feel. Casting a long glance at me, he saw the ocean. Most people do. It's true, I like the sun and more and more I feel a coming around.

Meanwhile, with no choices or control, baited breath at times, I stand on my needles and pins and know that it all begins again and again.
I am hopeful, it keeps my feet from bleeding, karma keeps me from standing my ground too firm or settling (in)...
Things are changing. I eat my words. Things change, and that is a sign of life I always say, and it was.





Image credit By NASA John W. Young (Great Images in NASA Description) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Bump(her) Stick(her)s

We were running late, behind schedule this morning. I drove my son to his college classes this morning, I let the elementary school children cross, the crossing guard was not at her post, and then another grandmother with three children approached, I let them cross too.

That was nice, my son observed a tad impatiently. 

The children are just starting to learn. 

Bumpers were put on cars to absorb impact, a little ding, a dimple, a dent-and it could be so much worse. Low and behind, as the sayings go-here. Autos Advertising Beliefs-AdBe, vote for-, save-, free-, I love-, my other bumper is on a-, honk (if there is a near impact). I thought horns were for the symphony. All these (un)common courtesies strike a chord, middle c is barely passing. 

When bumper stickers ask us to coexist does it change the way the driver merges?

To get a discount on car insurance, I needed a letter from my son's college to prove he is a full-time student. As I entered the administrative building, a women came out the doors cradling papers, a jacket and I am not sure what else. Her eyes squinted attempting to adjust to the noon sun when a white slip of paper escaped her clutch, spinning in the air and skipping on the ground, “Maam,” I said “you dropped something,”picking it up for seeing that she had no free hands, I handed it to her. She smiled, exasperated and slightly surprised, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” 

I know how identities are easily stolen from loose-leaf sheets. For the record, we are what we do.

Without any pre-planning or blueprints, today I was kind

of nice

holding the door open at the cafe when I left for a self-conscious Hispanic construction worker in steel-toed boots and cement splotches all over his flannel shirt,

surprised to find me waiting for him and holding the door open. He picked up his boots as if he were barefoot and flashed me a newly built and shiny yellow smile, “Gracias Senorita!” 

I was grateful not to hear Senora. 

Small acts of random kindness are supposed to be good for you,

which implies a personal benefit as the primary motivation 

hence making the kindness a bartering chip in the gambol for karma

and thereby reducing randomness into a simplified calculation of roots and (co)sines, plus or minus consideration for others in-kind(ness). 

Painting by Jacob van Oost (III), c. 1673 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Viral

The jetliner makes an Emergency landing in a flat open wheat field somewhere in the middle of the North American continent.
The inflatable Emergency exit slide unfurls and inflates outside of the rounded door on the port side of the plane.
It takes 4.6 seconds for each person to get out, and get down to solid ground, one at a time.
It takes 11.5 minutes for all bodies, pilot and crew included, to escape the Emergency situation and certain impending danger.
Smoke billows out of nooks and crannies, gaping holes and through welded seams, the pilot sweating,
inside the plane reaches 122 degrees, meanwhile powdered sugar snow lay in sporadic piles waiting for rain to make icing.
The one hundred and twenty-eight passengers run and scatter like birds flying the coup, while flames lick the oval windows, they run for their lives-
And then-upon reaching 53.3 yards distance away, they all stop to a screaming halt, fan out and reversing course, approach the engulfed jetliner, arms raised, their eyes locked on a wreck-tangled screen, not seeing the Emergency vehicles, the red dots spread.



Photo credited by www.Pixel.la Free Stock Photos (flight-plane-accident-crash) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

In the act of composition

If not full-blown superstitious by nature, all writers are somestitious (minimally).

It’s the words. The words that follow us, the words that taunt and haunt, the words that sing for no reason, the words that hurt and sting, all the annoying ones, poky ones, the deliciously pert and apt ones, it is the words themselves that make writers tick and clack way pushing hot buttons with black keys trying to dispel them as if cleansing a curse.

It is also paradolia, or the fault of seeing human faces in random things such as corn flakes and Cheetos, or the Virgin Mary on a chicken nugget, or even more naturally, an angel in a cloud or David Bowie on a peach. Faces are everywhere, faces are elusive, faces need names, people need to say the names.

Names are given to us of course. Words find us, they also escape all of us, just like names. Writer or not, we all lose face(s) sometimes.

It is nothing short of miraculous that we arrive in our cultures born with a ready compressed language file in a zip format just waiting to for the set-up to be executed and unfolded. It seems that way anyway. Our chords are wired for sound. We become words. All the words collected, collated, conjugated, and put away in their appropriate compartments and drawers make us, define a certain experience that is the gist of us.

Some words like ‘serendipitous’, ‘peace’ and ‘vibe’ aren’t specific to anyone or any thing and yet they are concepts that resonate with each of us for different reasons and at different times evoke different responses. They are dynamic and possess infinite potential. The word ‘narrative’ has begun to sound like nails on a chalkboard to me-why have all politicians and news anchors decided to constantly chew on this word like a breath mint, to spit it out at every crossroad between Point and Dead End? Their ‘same ol’ story’ makes me nauseous. There is no plot in that ‘narrative’ and the characters are all weak.

As a writer and lover of words, it is offensive that politicians have grammar-napped such a beautiful round concept as the word ‘narrative’ and made it mean something plastic wrapped, like ‘motive’ or used it synonymous to ‘story’ or (gasp)‘myth’ because it sounds fiction-esque and hence less vulnerable to dispute.

Words won't save us all. Some words we have to eat and those are often the poisonous ones.

Writers are often so hyper-focused on where the story starts or how to start, that the writing can kill the story before the real beginning begins (endings are always easier since there is no real end). Writing is much like science that way. Will we ever know what happened at the beginning and before the beginning and before that?

Anyway...a life is born, a writer is born in February and against all odds is born but not a writer, or the other way around. My mother was on birth control when she had me on a rainy day in 1976. Something saved this life and somehow I don’t remember what. I honestly don’t remember being a baby but I do remember not being wanted, perhaps thought of as a fetus. My mother was married-for a short time, I did not know my biological ‘father’. He ran over my legs (under age 2) while doing mechanic work on a forest green “bitchin’ Camaro”. I have fond and terrifying memories in that car. He, the ‘father’, did two tours in Vietnam, his second was voluntary. I am an only child-break the break the mold kind they say-and with me they meant it literally. I wonder if there is a mold for a generic fetus like Rodin who recycled body pieces. I had some doctors remove a fetus from me as if it were an infection. At the time-it would have killed me. If none of this has made sense to you it is intentional nonsense, an urge to scribble or babble like fish or fish, verb or noun. And it will stink when I eventually reread it.

I am entitled to say the truth-and I only mean my truth. There is no such thing as THE Truth for all. Paperwork? I don’t have the papers that show the title to this body, but I am the only one who knows how freaking heavy she is and after carrying her nagging voice around for all these years, I see her point and I raise it-that is my entitlement. Proof? Oh, you mean, “Experience”? Nah-okay, some, but that’s not the thing that retains or grows value or wealth. The only thing worth owning the title to is yourself. This is where you should invest and direct your energies of criticism and applause. Have you looked in the mirror lately? I mean really looked at yourself- as if you were someone you know, someone that drives you crazy at times? More important, have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror with genuine care or dare I say-love? To love what you see behind the eyes and underneath the grey matter, loving who you are or are becoming before its too late, we are all entitled to this Truth.

If I was confessing a truth to a total stranger, like you, I would tell you I lost my virginity to a gay male. Some of my best friends were gay men growing up. Did I know he was gay? Yes. Did he know? Yes. His mother and father loved me. He loved them too. I wonder why the word ‘unconditional’ has not come under scrutiny the way that ‘loyalty’ or ‘pursuit’ has. Where are all the parents with unconditional love? Things have changed since I was growing up, acceptance of gay or transgender is acceptable in most cultures and cities but I don’t think much has changed with the eldest family members or extended families. There are transgender bathrooms in my favorite burger joint. It is a ‘known thing’ that the men's rooms are always messier than the women's restrooms- naturally, we can only speculate about what will happen to ‘known things’.

I have known that gravity waves exist since I could walk. I nibbled on photons when bored, stacked rocks like legos, known the time by the sky, but I am no Einstein. I’ve always preferred poetry to math, I do have a fascination with fractals (and pi), but words were always my thing, my noun, my adjective, my verbiage, my everything. Science in words is philosophy, no? What took so long to discover gravity waves? The body must catch up to the brain. We needed proof and more concurrence and further confirmation and then we can say we have evidence and make predictions. Or we could just guess and say the first thing that comes to mind and call these decisions and statements -evidence-based. I wonder what would happen...your guess is as good as mine.

All art is science-based. The two need to cross the aisles and begin a new narrative.

Math and money are forms of censorship and sponsorship. Both are intangibly American. 

My daughter is waiting for decisions to come in from her college applications. College is a big deal for (the little) us. She has a lot riding on her essays. All of the schools she has applied to are seeking ‘diversity’. They all decide on the ‘whole package’ they say. If all universities want diversity, is it still diversity?

Scientists and artists are more alike than different, both explore unknown regions.

My daughter is going to be an artist and a scientist.

Writers are well-practiced liars whom enjoy their craft. Scientists make things up and then make up solutions and even politicians and preachers, live and die by the word and the power to use it.

Censorship is like superstition, it is fear based on what is in the mind. In our endless quest for truth and justice we must say where we have been and where we need to go so others don’t get lost and yet, so many are at a loss for words-even without someone trying to take them away...

And it could all just be a ‘fiction’ of our imagination anyway.


The words in bold are from the list of words the 45th President has ordered to stricken from all CDC reports during his term. A poem written on this topic was also published on the CDC Poetry Project website (here).

Painting by Santiago Rusiñol [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Hawking Radiation

Weighting keeps us here.
The day that Stephen Hawking died,
the day Albert Einstein was born 139 years before,
Hawking born the day Galileo died 300 hundred years before
and someone was born on this day. Pi day, the day the chasm opened
and dark matter was ejected from the light.
I suppose we all got to where are by quantum leaps, by climbing, rolling moving across and over greater fields-we succumb, we are nowhere, we rest in solitude.
My own shoulders are up to my ears, I keep my weariness behind my shoulder blades and I feel my own mortality jutting out-I cannot look directly,
like microwaves and radiation, these invisibilities are equally scary like dark matters and dark energy without heat.

As my daughter says frequently, ‘Be sweeter’,
we should all kneel more, perhaps it would amplify the tiny voices
and it may allow the light to penetrate and diffuse itself further if we could only muster the energy to move out of our own way. It is all about the angular momentum and perspective. Rainbows are only visible in certain conditions. Rainbows are always sweet.

What goes around comes around this sphere eventually. We all find ourselves back to where we started at some point even if we never walk the same path. The choices are limited. For now we can only see things set at twenty-three degrees in relation to the sun and a shrinking two and a half light years is suspended between our galaxy and the hungry Andromeda, I am reminded of Benzine or the Ouroboros and the spiral enlongated in our DNA which may make all of this swallowed whole by more than one ellipse, or black hole singing at 432 Hz carrying a message for us all about the birth and death of stars and the inevitable darkness out of which new light is born.




Image credit Hewholooks at en.wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Chit for chat

How do you think he spends his days?

What do you mean?

I mean, the hour by hour stuff. He can’t possibly do it all in one day...

Well, like all the rest of us I guess. Just trying to get it all done.

Yeah, I guess. But how does he get so much done? Like that video, he put it together himself, you can tell.

Yeah, he is incredible. No doubt about it. Remember, he has ‘people’.

Of course. I am not saying he is solely responsible for any of it. You can’t argue the fact that he’s the inspiration for all the organizations, he is the ‘special sauce’.

Absolutely.

So I guess what I am asking is really, how does he have time to be inspirational?

Now I really don’t understand what you are asking.

Inspiration takes time.

Doing takes time.

So, even if inspiration were instantaneous, creating something out of nothing is certainly doing something.

Ok.

*

What about Oprah?

I don’t know about Oprah, I’m the wrong person to ask.

You know enough. She has a ranch with animals, a lush vegetable garden, a long time boyfriend, she reads books and then there is all the ‘work’ she manages....

And…the people.

Some people are more work than they are worth. She doesn’t look overworked. Ever. And she is still inspiring others, excuse me, women.

Yes, I concede your point there. Perhaps these two have hacked time. Have you googled it?

That is the question I am asking you. I'm googling you. How do they spend their time accruing free time? Are you not an accountant?

I don’t do payroll. I outsource.

Well, that was time well spent.

*

Look at Smokey, he’s such a handsome cat. So happy he is today. He looks like a lion. 

He sleeps all day, he gets treats from you, he hogged the bed again last night...I’d be in a good mood too.

A restful sleep is priceless. Likewise, a peaceful mind is invaluable.

Ignorance is bliss...

No, that’s not what I was alluding to. I was thinking that brilliance is magnetized toward those stepping out of the light.

Now I’m in the dark. Weren’t we talking about Time or Money?

Electrodynamics, Economics, GDP, IP and bright people. Bright people make time. It is inspiring.

And you're adorable.

I'd rather be wise.

Painting by Jean Béraud [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Family dinner Table

It is impossible not to catch onto the continental drift, meaning feeling the spreading and slip faults, under-foot-in-mouth-

there is boiling just beneath the surface.

And Oh how we have known this volcanology for centuries, the flow of temperature, electromagnetism, schisms,  and the cosmic microwave background re-distributes energies,

It becomes hard to focus on one spot when things as small as photons erode before us into virtual reality and augmenting this pseudo-civilization we insist on polarization.

It was the Generation they said 

And problems with the country, I stand form moving more than a mile a minute, 

It is dizzying, the speed of progress and the discomfort was apparent on the surfaces,

so we built borders, walls without windows, so we cannot see what is coming.

And since we have all been blindsided, and are famished for justice, parched for freedom and ripe for decomposition,

And despite all this preservation of self and species, all the worlds problems lie on the table,

And my adult children and I discuss in depth and debate all aspects of these prickly problems-

And great progress is underway.

Just today, we gnawed on the dispute between Pinker and Musk,

about the pursuit of intelligence whence, it is not our own,

and the syllabic sparring proved artificial anyway-

Yet the issue remains

an ethical one, anyway, Thy will be done.

Should we proceed with constructing intelligence-artificially?

If we don’t understand the question-it remains unanswered.

Do we flip a coin; heads we shall be Gods, tails, we are asses?

What is really at stake? Fear? Being surpassed by what we make?

I look at my children.

Suddenly, we are all responsible for finding solutions

And securing ourselves against outside elements known to be corrosive-

Violent.

Someone suggested that mental health screenings for all adolescents should be required,

which is a hair closer to the trigger than the finger.

And the finger is pointed-inward-to the nuclear family, WMD’s and

There it is, 

The landmine, the nuclei, the main dish, the pyramid.

The jumpy microcosmic scale that mirrors the macro-cosmic tragedies,

It is the net effect of families that combust, decay, repel, rebel, squander energy,

that assemble negatives and positives, displace energies and shatter these proximal covalent bonds with such force hitherto unknown,

the annihilation of love,

demonstrates how naturally things can fall apart while still connected

and that a nucleus is nourished by positive traits and hot plates. 

Photo By White, Clarence H., 1871-1925, photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cowboys and Indians

He told the story of how his mind was changed. He and his wife Michelle were being chauffeured through a desolate stretch of rural American back-country highway. The low rolling hills barely had any definition against the chasmic moonless sky and they held hands. They both gazed comfortably out of their windows when they each happened noticed a faint light piercing the darkness in the distance. It seemed to blink, as a lighthouse does, yet yellowish-orange in the distance it fluttered like a trapped firefly in the web of empty night, of course, the flashing was an illusion. Well, it was Michelle that broke the silence. From what I recall she said something like, “I can imagine being alone there…”

“Hmmm,” he responded, prodding her on.

“Imagine it was me. Home alone. And up that long dirt road comes a stranger-really out of nowhere,” she exaggerated the empty panorama with her hands.

“Yeah,”
"There's a prison near here."
"Yes."

“Well, I guess I’d want a gun.”

They were silent for a few seconds and she added, “Even if there were no prison. And not that I would use it-“

“I understand,” he agreed, knowing her as he knew himself.

And also knowing there are always two sides, light and dark, rural and urban, and weighing them accurately is a skill. Perhaps the true measure of a leader, or President. This was the story told by the Frmr. President Barack Obama, I don’t remember when or where-I was half listening. Note: this retelling has been embellished by my memory. And he said this following the worst school shooting in US history during his two-term reign as Chief. Now again, we face another school or mass shooting in America. Seventeen dead. Revenge, anger, justice, righteousness is on everyone's lips.

There have been 'lockdowns', a drill we did not have when I was in school, at each of my children's schools growing up (elementary, middle and high school) and all were real threats, not merely drills. I used to be grateful that the images and stories of war-torn and violent, dilapidated and bombed out places where all 'other places'. I felt safe here in America. Now I know safety is my own luggage. Admittedly, I have recently become envious of peaceful and prosperous, kind and progressive places that exist on this red earth. I don’t own a passport and this often makes me feel chained here. Enslaved, under the thumb, perhaps by money-but that’s another type of loaded gun. 

The thing is-the aim is off in this country. America is angry, and very often the anger is pointed the wrong way, such as at guns-like today. 

Of course, the N.R.A., the Constitution and its protection of our right to ‘bear arms’ are as well sewn into to our flag as a cowboys hat stays on his head, but really, Rights and groups holding up Ideals are not tangible things to aim at.

A firearm is aptly named. Man/woman-kind treats this apparatus as if it were an add-on appendage, a firing-arm. And according to capital H-History, we created fire, hence these implements of Dr. Death, the ones that exterminate, are inherently ours to have and to hold-like Liberty.

I understand the anger. I learned how to shoot a gun just in case I found myself in a situation where I had to use a gun to save my own life (or my childrens). It made me feel powerful. Our household has an airsoft BB gun and a rifle BB gun in the camping equipment-other than that we have plenty of garden variety weapons, a machete, a hoe, an ax and all that, but no real gun. A friend who is single with no kids or girlfriend has one and goes to the shooting range often. The thought of spending money on ammunition is about as fun as buying toilet paper to me. To each their own. Hobbies that involve blowing things up were not created by guns. 

Do guns make people crazy or is it just crazy people that shouldn’t have guns?
Many people scream for all guns to be banned (maybe banned only for private citizens-but clearly the implementation of body cams on law enforcement is an indicator that authority often has their own ill-bred issues with guns and power). Banning guns won't keep us safe. It is not guns that kill people anyway, it is people that kill people.

In grade school, one single gum chewer can ruin a little freedom for the whole class. This is an early lesson in democracy. That kid, the one that took away privileges for all, he doesn’t care about the consequences for others, he/she may even relish sharing the pain (caused by them) with their peers. So you see, the problems are all caused by the people, the sheeple. Call it operator error, misuse or abuse, murder is murder. There can be no further growth in the canopy of humanity unless we examine the roots of the tree.

Let’s just take school shootings-how did the perpetrator(s) get the guns? Who taught them –and not just about guns and death, but about life and health? Is that a parent? Sorry-but often this is where the problems are created. This kid had problems. They tried to get him help, his mother knew he was a bad seed, even dangerous-but what can be done until he does something bad? She watched his wick burn down. She did not know what to do. It is sad, she tried, but not hard enough. Even law enforcement was handcuffed, and the FBI, well, I guess they have been suffering from a lack of updates in the decision theory software. 

I have a neighbor whose young adult daughter recently overdosed and died. The girl was violent-toward herself. She had been in serious trouble before. It was sad, but I was not surprised. Opioids, heroin, and other lethal drugs offer the same illusion of power as a gun. It is life in our hands, to make or break, to shoot or shoot up-it is the same. It is the audacity of the human to dangle life-even our own from our fingertips.

Safety, security, trust, these things are like marriage, if you believe in them they are as real as Jesus. I don’t have a strong faith-especially, not in humanity. As a species, we have been focused on controlling the weather, each other, the future, the past, and have stagnated when it comes to self-control and furthering our potential. Murder prevails, disasters ensue, we pick up the pieces, draw the chalk outlines, put the evidence and offender in a box, wash our hands and move on to the next human tragedy touting strength and survival against the odds.

Seriously, deadly serious, gun control is in the hands of the human. A trigger has been designed for the human fingertip, the barrel for our handshake. It is an object arisen out of a deal with the devil, but one we made nonetheless and cannot ever undo. We must come to the fine print terms. 

If we want solutions, we cannot blame the objects of our desire, the drugs in our veins, the guns on the street, the knives in the chopping block, the poison in the drive thru's, the rope in the tree-which we seem to always have just enough of, just in case.



Painting By Glyn Warren Philpot RA (5 October 1884 – 16 December 1937) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Gravitas

Gravitas

The tower of Babel was a mere 300 feet,

the Liverpool Cathedral ascends to just over 330 feet

and remains the longest cathedral

ever constructed by man

by geographical area.

**Nimrod (curiously notes)**

What have we learned from imitating mountains

and pushing our rocks uphill

in order to better gain a view of heaven,

perhaps catch a glimpse of what lies further beyond

what can be seen from the lowly human range?

It goes without saying…

there are no words of ours

that work like keys unlocking the holy gates,

unlocking the treasure chest of the universe,

it is sealed in strata for all eternity

as the sword is swallowed by the stone.

In the 21^st century it is time we ask the question(s):

How far have we ascended up the Ivory tower of Babel with our 600 and more tongues being spoken all around the globe still today?

What have we learned about conveying meaning?

Has progress been made toward the land of understanding?

Excluding the household or familial dialect,

if these forged and folded words as concepts

stand alone, each forged an edge-ward step,

the myriad of these systems lead us

to very different plateaus

called under-standing.

Have letters dissipated into dreams,

the things we cannot grasp or approach

without the total evaporation of the original conception?

As if communication had fallen out of favor as a preferred method of thought to thing,

as if definition itself had plummeted out of a too large window and flown away with the lines of knowledge,

we treat these utterances as hollow sounds,

as if communication were an old custom that bored people entertained themselves with like humming and chit chat instead of rolling up ones sleeves,

taking a deep breath full of intention and exhaling the verse in converse, letting its high notes linger over the heads of scavengers rooting their noses in the mud for the dregs of evidence that something foul took place,

something sinister is underfoot.

The weight of the words were sinking,

holding us down,

adding volume to our being

and resisting movement or ascent through feeling

and not needing to say,

the same discreet way the angels do with waves, light, thought,

and as heat pass through these bodies by breath and through chemical realms unimpeded,

we watch and take notes, proclaiming a miracle has taken place,

what matters is not longer solid.

These matters make up ones soul,

filling in empty spaces where words have not recognized themselves in truth,

words have tried on concepts like robes and fail to cloak such protrusions as shape and presence.

And inside, the light was absent, the air damp, the space left vacant for a new dawn, a thin spectral line that never existed between this and that,

meaning you and your meaning.

I apologize for making such an exasperated and dejected claim,

as if my meek voice would be elevated off the page,

as if sand were more gold than coal,

I was initially thinking of the inadequacy in so many ways to say the same thing that never equals the same thing or the thing itself.

With such little effort put forth in understanding something so wholly different from our own conception of real, it seems not surprising that there is no bridge or codex for mutual understanding,

a natural willingness to stand on another’s side,

to peer out from their shoulders is non-existent, unrecognizable, unfathomable utopia...

Why bother?

The intent toward comprehension, like fishing, not catching, the line lays limp,

the line falls flat

and plummets in a spiral of disbelief,

not knowing how deep and dark one may go into the abyss,

this is when none care to know

about the existence of others,

all is echo, your own shadow.

A change of view,

a decision to move

from one soft rock to a precipice

where life teeters with possibility and fear,

but steady,

a glance around gives direction

a point to focus on.

Below,

you know,

one is listening,

someone else hears your mutterings and is making out the words,

is carving the granite slab to find your mouth and has taken a chisel,

desperately trying to give death a shape,

to give crystals back their light

and to make shadows with movement

in opposition of time.

Etched, scrolled, craved,

these stories did not use you as a character,

the words do not ring true

and there is no recognition of relevance.

Why go on...

how often the endings change in the mouths of the mutes,

overtime these scratches on the skin and gashes,

called valleys,

carve the ways and means

the giants needed to pass through the slog

and trod over crumbled

mountains like ant hills.

Now,

only time is in our dark corner

where the light is too exhausted to reach our impenetrable body-

where has the mind ventured without tether,

taken by wind and covered in clouds,

the soft weight of water,

a blanket that stops the shivering,

disrobed, disarmed, distracted

left to wilt and curl in the careless air.

And nothing moves forward

but I can feel our relentless spin,

I can see the avocado tree that is in bloom

as it alternates its energies from yin to yang

and I sang this body electrically,

flowers stretching toward the dawning sun,

alternating currents and histories

such as plagiarism and innovation,

insanity and productivity,

everything has been said before…

now

if ones listens inside the white noise,

the hum of everything not saying anything,

thick as fog soaking the pores and short of conducting all things that may carry meaning or purpose or goodwill, a life, a rock, a word, gets buried under the alphabet called grain, silt, quarry, and mud,

seeks its own to level with.  

Image credits in order of appearance:

Photo By Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Art By Reginald Gray (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo By Jebulon (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo By Fryslan0109 at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Blinking

When I tell my daughter adventure stories from my youth, she usually reaches a point,
less than a minute in, when she rolls her eyes, and this is
when things get most precarious-
because she thinks I am lying.
Because she says that 'not having a cell phone is inexcusable, how did you do it? The waiting, eye contact and
uncomfortable stuff...'

And against all odds, survival still happened before the opening of hotlines like
nine-one-one or Poison Control, before Alex rang his Graham Bells in our pockets replacing the change with a pal that pays,
before push notifications, before the weather was watched only on doppler before Amber sent out mass Alerts,
milk cartons were sold in paper boxes with pictures of missing innocence in the morning
white as milk, meant to scare children just escaping from the grips of the Boogie or Sand man and plunging them into
cold hormone infected milk product laced with lines of white sugar which in some places is also called White Death.
These things happened before towers tried looking like trees, before there were clear signals none saw, before we had never enough bars to keep us sated nor contained.
She reminds me she only ate Cheerios.

We both know it will never be the same as it never was before us, the way things change, technology-wise or foolish investors.
She tries to act old fashioned at times. She likes to listen to Frank Sinatra on a record player and sometimes she leaves her phone at home. This can cause mild anxiety.
And again, it was different when I was her age, but the same games were played.
Messages were left, comments had been made,  he said, she said, she saw
that the blue lights were always on like on the webcams...
I told her of  The Dark Ages when we had real darkness. It was an age sans filters or emoji's, pre-selfies.
Her eyes squinted, to her, it all sounded like, bar-bar-bar-3 bars for Barbarians. Parents. Sand? She spake. "What? Sand? I'm not following...that sounds scary."
"It was," I say. Just like today. "Sans. Sans means without."
"Like 'unfortunate'?"

Now all the answers ever given asked or not, right and wrong, left and long, short and sour,
are recorded for all time-sans quality assurance, fact-checking, intent, or meaning
and made most misinformation is easily available for preferential retrieval and re-use in part or as a whole however best adaptable to survival of the self-protecting species, such as us.
"That is why I don't pay attention to the news."
Facts are facts. CD-ROMS only last ten years. Paper books may make it to fifty. Photographs,
Paintings, Papyrus and the Pyramids are more permanent than entire populations and pixels. Now people may live shorter or longer than a lifespan, depending on what they build or mark they make.

She asks, "how long do clouds last?"
I say, in my limited perspective, as far as one can see,
maybe as long as a day,
but the cloud could come back-but never exactly the same-
hoping she won't recognize this resemblance to all other things and ages.
"You didn't check the weather-"
"I was trying the old method called, 'Leaving it up in the Air'."
"So you don't know? I'll look it up," she sighed.
"You're Googling."
"I smell rain."




Photo of Consuelo Vanderbilt taken 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Where the witches were

Awoken and
"lost in thought, [s]he taps his knee with his wandlike pencil, and at the same instant a car (NewYork [California] license plate) passes along the road, a child bangs the screen door of a neighboring porch, an old man yawns in a misty Turkestan [citrus] orchard, a granule of cinder-grey sand is rolled by the wind on Venus, a Doctor (Jacques Hirsch) in Grenoble [Oceanside] puts on his reading glasses and trillions of other such triffles occur-all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism of events, of which the poet (sitting in a lawn chair, at Ithica, N.Y. [desk chair in the bario of olde Carlsbad]) is the nucleus." 
"Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov [edited & adapted]

The fates had been particularly cruel at the top of the witching hour.
The Tomcat, named Timmy was screaming, warning another Tom, Harry or Richard to keep their
distance.
The sirens blared by, red lights revolving on the blue walls under street lamps filled blanks with black.
The wild dog, who resembles a wolf down the street, begins to howl, chiming in the chorus of the sirens song, chasing high and low notes, he purses his lips and points his jowls.
A baby cries-deep in heavy fever, a door slams, and
then the upstairs people are making seesaw love on rickety furniture
and I lie
awake, refusing to rise and face the cacophony drawing me to rise up.

The woman must be mad.
She screams obscenities alone in her front yard, throwing cuss words like skipping rocks
in a low tide lagoon. She stabs herself and her imaginary foes with daggers of dialog-
directed at herself-
until I yell across the street, "SHUT UP!" and she whimpers 'sorry',
slinking away in the dark-
before erupting in a final plume "DIE! DIE! DIE!"
meaning me, my daughter, my family, she is haunted by these angels among us.

The other woman on the street backed into a parked car-
left a note.
And another other woman, that she lives with, hit a skateboarder in her car and drove off.
I agree with the man who was able to walk away with tire-tread on his board and only obscenities on his lips-
what if it had been a child?

The elementary school sits dutifully around the corner. Before and after school, the kids walk on our side of the street-to avoid the Hippie House from where the mad woman is still screaming at my house, "YOU LOUD B-" she screams toward me-
The cops are coming...hopefully...

Now, it is too late to sleep, early to rise.
Now I can only guess the ghosts got lonely, bored, mischevious, so the moon mixed up
a new batch of lunacy for the fates to spread,
liberally, locally,
on weak-willed ladies whose greatest fear is the mirror.

A woman wanes, watches,
grows wary with her words
and speaks only when spoken to, she is called Meek, she keeps everything inside.
It is the sound of body and mind collaborating, this is heartbeat,
a door pounds, the head throbs, the first train comes, the street admits defeat.

Finally,
the brutish bicep of the savior, our oiled and golden sun-had never been so desired,
lusted after-after this witch-
the moonlit madness was done painting garrish screams with brushes of danger,
pulling out long sharp notes from shallow depths while
prone bodies, zombies, robots, and warming up all combustion engines.

With curses
The king rises to day, the Queen rains
grey skies
hail with hate
making many more mirrors to break along the street.

The street sweeper comes on the second Tuesday.




Painting by Jerome Myers [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Borges on a train entering a tunnel and losing his eyesight while reading at dusk…

The nightmare arrives without formal warning. Our worst fears dressed for the occasion and summoned upon the main stage, leading us around with spotlights and antics as if this audience were ensnared in a web of marionette strings. 

Like children, we gasp and flinch at the mute clown whose loudest gestures we recognize as jesters of our own expressions clamoring for attentive eyes and diamond focus but with chins chained to chest, we gift our gaze on the narrow gravel road reciting, Left, Right, Left Right.

The shine comes in on the sides.

The tunnel approaches. It to we-not we to it. Willingly we accept this sinking into darkness, feeling the bends on our bodies and resisting the urge to vocalize the high screech of metal upon metal, friction made to mimic terror or prayer. 

The corners fill with as much darkness as they can manage to save for sacred things and on-lookers limited by right angles.

The movement came before we lost our balance.

A fine tune for depth perception like middle C, all was lost when he came out the other side. And although he managed to feel his way on rails, inside the steel lines, the white noise made the colorful words sing with sharper clarity amid the fog that marries the man, floats its burden or necessity for water, never lifting the veil or the pall that bears the name Borges. 

Fingers down spines one feels gilt different from the rest. Dimes in the mines, dust did not mask the irony. The writer, the reader, the dance, the proper forms.

The dusk haze came with the warning, “Do Not Read in dim light”, the dream played live, the reeling words and fading vision, the black hole in the mountain that approaches its target, the train pushes on a winter’s night for willing travelers, shearing snow with pointed blades to suspend belief like vision and baggage, and an able composer setting the tempo as all rush and silence, a sensation of propulsion faster than the speed of life can make out in numbers. Wind rattles the windows.

The final destination felt like Home in bed.

Image credit By Julie Méndez Ezcurra (Escaneo Negativo Original) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.