Too soon?

'You had to be there',

was what we used to say back in the dumb days not quite dark ages, before smartphones and googling.

Now, it is all there, unfaded, in easily reassembled pixels, or virtual memory, clouds.

Both of us, born before Search and Share and compare versions of history, or alternative facts, we can crop and auto-adjust the lighting, or apply filters-for warmth.

It is the way he shows me, pointing down the rabbit hole, we were just bunnies.

He says I will come across these pictures myself in the morning so he should explain.

I prepare for the confession, he is pointing to a collage of She’s, some he has known since high school.

The photo of the old school developing film paper type, a bit blurry some seem hazy with sun,

I squint and see girls, maybe sixteen, all dressed and posed as Cinderella’s, he points and says that party was fun, costumes of trying to look twenty-one. I see these young ladies racing, smiling, at what lie ahead.

He asks if I recognize the birthday girl and I do. The others seem more of interest to he, smiling fondly. 

It was obvious. 

Teen girls wishing to become-and portraying to be-savvy little ladies, married to Mr. Right, looking marvelous and wealthy- now -really--only miserly unfair maidens merely mulling over memories and what could be's, looking strangely silly to me.  

Weren't smartphones supposed to parse us all through this?

Some of the photos were duplicates, I had seen them before. Recently.

I have no photos of myself at that same time, at the same age, the boys did not take pictures back then. And then I am thankful. What an opportunity to forget…a thing of the past.

He still stares at his hands and I see sun spots, in case you were wondering. 

These women all worried the men may forget-what was then, what they looked like in a Kodak moment, when they had unlimited possibilities and poorer photo qualities, sadly they say they see

Then as the Best time, now it is too late. I never went to Pity Parties. 

Lately, he has shown me many, he agrees. He must be hungry for the plumped up past. He enjoys a reheated repast. I am never hungry (for leftovers).

He says, see there’s Me and un-pinches the post to zoom in, close as he can. I see.

That is not where he has been looking. He does not confess, he laughs it off walking away.

Close enough.

Things never were the same. He is googling away. I am deleting photos. 

Painting by Édouard Manet, On the Beach (1873) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Drive

The middle-aged man scissor strides wide down the empty sidewalk across the freeway overpass around lunchtime. The intersection is always busy.

Blue painters tape he has wrapped around the left boot, black steel-tipped toed hooves which smack carelessly atop the gold and silver glittering cement in a usual left, right way.

He twists his swaying hands in fists, turning them clenched in and out of sync with his inefficient gait.
He sneers around and his hair is trim. He wears a buttoned-up baby blue collared shirt with light black bulging cargo pants, masking knobby legs to show he was prepared for anything.

He wasn't, clearly.

It was hard to tell where he was going faster than all the fancy new cars jammed atop the asphalt
all around him.

Two million dollars blowing smoke and going nowhere faster than he fidgets.

It is easy to think of all the miles he must have traveled and all the wealth he has casually passed by and free ways he must have walked over, all the while, the important ones are collectively waiting in line and he is wearing out his durable souls going somewhere, believing the blue tape will work better than becoming a new man,
just before I lost sight of him
for good.

Our Glasses

Something went wrong. It is not for me to judge the degree by which this may have led to the inevitable consequences that unfold like light impervious to degrees good or bad.

Something just went wrong. This was the effect of due course and not the cause or point of origin as though could be specified succinctly where the beginning of blame is compact and obvious by distinction between layers of strata in Earth, this was then, then this was now, this happened thus caused this blood red dirt; this era-something went wrong. There were clues, globules, and hints that worked their way to the surface by usual volcanic activity calling themselves tiny coincidences, granite is a stoic collector an enduring supporter, an acquired eye. Yes, clues, scree, I wiped my feet. 

By assemblage, it would be best to use a logic puzzle grid and if all else fails, guess and check. Usually, in eliminating all impertinent information or relevant and most necessary negative extrapolations, we come closer to what we are not.

Some words were strange, numerically out of context, standing in for something greater than one possibility which makes it difficult to decide if we should be made an ex or a why…

Those outward signs, the nose, the fingers and weak organs, not so subtly and not easily dismissed by nature or lack of nurture, this only made this one stand out from the others. The odd cast out so as not to interfere with even, truth, or interrupt the act of Life. All the world is a black stage, I only intend to learn my part as the understudy, minimally working on my costume, I exhume the dream of anyone seeing me, it was a dream.

Captive audience or made hostage, either way I do not recognize this scene so I am rapt up temporarily and I am convinced a line I know will come along soon even if it is not mine.

I have not found heart, I never looked outside. These people are not my peers. There are public spectacles with wire frames paneled in glass and called anyone’s dream home. I scream at that ugly transparency, opaque in an alabaster way, permeable and subject to influence and wavelength, shale and sand-stone, color yourself like granite!

Something went wrong. I wasn’t supposed to find out. Stranger in a stranger land, the hourglass sucks in sand. Something went wrong. It should be empty by now. It cannot express infinity that way but does, with or without me, good or bad, always.   

Painting by William Orpen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dis-order

Alone, I tried desperately, throwing myself like a slingshot to see how far I could get before being reminded I was still a baby boomerang until I finally had to marry someone to cut the ties to get far enough away from my past-my little town- the small minds and tiny tree cages or giant semper virens prison I grew out of, fathoms enough away to not hear or at least unintelligibly muffle the moans, which originated as screams it seems, the empty echoes, broken boughs, and out of tune heart-strings only to be yanked right back there, teleported as I took out the trash, and there-traveling down the street, coming at me, over fences instead of between trunks, the barking, the dogs voice, his protective tone, the accusatory way this bark comes at me and says, no matter where you think you live, your permanent resident is at my back and calling me to another place-time out of this distant expanding private space, and I shake slightly, trembling at the thought, this is PTSD…

I wash my hands of all GSR and trash after having aimed at the moon, shot an evil eye at the neighbor and caught a star that fell randomly into my lap. It told me its name was Experienca.

Artwork By McBey, James [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Do you have change

Just when we are confident we have it all worked out. Experience, observation and wisdom have all lined up, the necessary pieces not fit together and lo and behold, along comes a wrench when we really needed a flathead...

And so we go back to the box, drawing plane, surface situation and jam pack it with things for things or  whatchamacallits for thingamajigs that jimmy rigged together. For now, all went make to a humming working order; fixed and figured up from out of order to smooth sailing, for now we feel like Master Craftsmen and ultimately it feels good to be needed, a take it not a lever, our ingenuity to be necessary for some end, the right job for the right tool and all that.

Now, just what in the world are we talking about? Just about everything. Life is a series of working-on-it-fixing-it-thing-a-ma-jigs or some such sequence of events-some repetitive, others seemingly (k)new.

The anarchist in the village is change and the little devil is ruining the peace, his presence spells CHANGE, I know it is scary. It is offensive. It is personal, it is a dirty harsh word. 

Change is change-worthy, that is the one thing that never changes with change, it never changes to one thing without changing again. Change, for better or worse, finds us. Change changes us.  It changes situations, it can appear good or bad, it can be quick or calculating but never lingers too long in any one location.

The day it all breaks down, when change decides to stay too long, the day we notice it changing the way we live while we are busy living someway building up resistances, walls, and barriers, we will realize our bricks were made with straw and are starting to break down under current circumstances, that is the changing, the current of energy, the flux swung wider.

At the outset, we knew we need the AC and DC to work with electricity properly, and it is shocking-the resistance to change at our fingertips-at failure to understand proper conductivity and the power to change.

Climate changes. Yes, it does. We have seen this and every generation calls it new, a revelation in cycles. We make our homes so cozy and relatively free of quantum jitters, from inside we are protected from erratic tsunamis of gravity and this keeps most of us calm, accepting and willing to try change if only to move to higher ground.

Our cars, our planes, our holograms and computers are coming in stronger but we still do not see the necessity for change, who asks a baby not to grow? Every mother, of course-but that is love and something (holy) inexplicable. Wait until our computer fall short…Next we think we can direct the comets were to free fall-not too close-now-stay safe-stay alert. There may be patterns bigger than you or I can see, or correlate and restate as experience and knowing. It’s not personal, this change wasn’t about you. Look up! That is no rainbow, it’s a silver lining-come stand over here.

See, it wish I wrote faster-it already changed again.   



Image courtesy of By NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute [Public domain], Peering into storm (Earth) via Wikimedia Commons.

Get on the Write Mentor-ship

There is no competition in Writing.

Writers are generous. Writers possess empathy. Writers are professional communicators.

There is no competition among writers.  

The most successful people are held up by their mentors, not their inspiration or muse or any invisible character, a mentor is a real human who has already had success in their profession because they had a mentor to hold them up, and they also felt indebted to their own mentor(s).

Did you want examples? Look at the best-seller list, then look seven degrees to the write.

Writers are not competitive towards other writers, other writers writer other things.

Writers are the products of all the words they have read, starting with the alphabet multiplied by experience equals a life sentence in language. This is a blessing, a challenge to the writer, to make the sentence fit the crime.

Writers make sense of things that make the most sense to them, to some this is nonsense, to the writer it is common sense.

Writers are not competitive because their closest literati linguist competitors are all dead, or classically outdated, meaning they are not publishing new work.

Writers are hermits that desperately want stroking. Writers are sensitive to light and laughter. Writers have a special touch, often able to thaw cryogenic hearts, able bend stained steel wills and lift the eyes of millions of humans in one small package of prose.

Writers are proud of other writers writing other things that meet great success. Writers are most proud of their other successes.

Successful writers are to be heard and not seen. Successful writers do not overshadow their work, the work is allowed to step out of the shadows leaving the writer in the dark and considers themselves an on-call chauffeur. The work will guide the way through the labyrinth, the writer invents the wheel to keep things rolling and pays for fuel.

All writers are successful if they are writing what they want and it is good. All good writers are not as successful as they want.

Writers are not competitive with other writers, they are writing their own stories, win or lose, breaking rules and keeping their “I”’s on the ISBN.

Writers writing are not competitive careerists, they are too busy writing their way past the competition.

All writers are winners at the end of the human race. They make up the ends, they make up the beginnings, they make up what they do with their time, they make up time most of the time. All Writers are chasing time and have no time for silly competition.

All writers are somewhat silly ( anice word-don't you think?), at least they think they are. This is why they talk to themselves and call it work.  Silliness. Writers even write about writing.

Writers take their work very seriously and writers learn to leave their work lightly.

Some writers are righting wrongs, often the wrong writers are writing the right things, but the righters are writing it all wrong, and writers know the difference between write from rite. Although everything writers write may not be always right. Writers do not fight (with other writers), it gets too touche. 

Writers write and do not compete with other writers struggling to write their own way.

Writers are running their own race at their own pace. Each writer to his or her own creative case not trying to reach the finish line, but save face and conserve stamina while simultaneously surpassing others.

Writers are inspired by other writers dazzling capabilities of combined speed and efficiency. Output is income. Is this competition?

Writers only compete for dazzling. Come-in, I put-out, this cover says. There are shelves for that. Romance and Fantasy both pulped from the same tree. See, there is no write way to say you may not be the right one for all but you can confidently know that you are always write for one. 

There is no competition like there is in writing.

(Our Literary Journal would like to 'thank you for your submission'. We appreciate the opportunity to discuss our writing further without competition for your time and although we did not have the time to read your submission personally, we are certain it is not as good as the ones we did read, namely, the ones we were familiar with. Please keep in mind that this Journal is not for profit, subsequently, we make no profit off of other peoples' poetry or prose like all the other Literary Journals. 

FYI: This years' competition was tough! There were a whopping total of 11 electronic submissions which were then filtered by our diligent Copy-editor, to make certain it reads like everyone else-copied and bland, or non-offensive and that we liked which left 3 to choose from, not including your own! Please continue to submit to next year's contest, we really need the submission fees to keep reading others work and giving them your money. Thanks for your on-going support in the Arts of Rejection.)


Painting by Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

How much have you done?

Oh Progress? Yes, yes, I am making this. And Eminent Domain. That is right, more to come. Demand and still short supply, short straw, pick this-not your friends' nose.

Please--Puff out your chest feathers when you say Anthropocene, strut and utter, hashtag lives matter, protest and remember? Revolutions. Terror-ism. The latest pill? So many choices of cereal and drugs, how can we know what will help? What will kill it-or cure it? Sugar. Will we know things have changed? Is this thing on? Does it feel good? 

How could a woman not know they are carrying a baby? It comes as no surprise.

How could a parent walk away from their own child? They believe in their own lies.

How can anyone prefer to live in a cloud than clarity? Blurry is better. How is it better to dwell on depression and deceit? Easy Street leads to a dead end. 

How can chemicals be chosen over people? Machines over mankind? Disillusionment preferred; imagination deterred. 

Didn't they know they would forget what is real? What is real? 

How can we ignore screams from the neighbors house?

How did they not see it coming? Did they close their eyes? Mind their own business to become bankrupt again? What's new? Not regret. 

How did they not care to know? How did they feel going forward without realizing they were going back? This looks familiar....

How did they live? 

They didn't. 

Painting by Lilly Martin Spencer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Five double you's and one H

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."-Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

            The News Paper reads-Bob Dylan

               I think this-- 
is the wrong Dylan? The man with the words for all ages. The man with words--on pages-not on stages...rouse myself from enuch dreams must crust my eyes...

              
But what do I know, that is not my company. I own no stock in precious medals.

The shareholders have spoken. The country will now be run like a company.

By majority, the minorities must follow en mass, encompassing silence, facilitating their own resilience-

(not by inheritance) and we worry about privacy and freedom while working with none of these:

the Internet is tapped, your phone is traced in space, we may not speak in vain of things like kings, disgraced queens, leaders astray.

Corporations are icons and we are the employees, yet we shall (still) call it 'Democracy'.

By vote?

We are living in a serious time. Tyranny taunts expression and art is the only release.

Self-destruction is a constant temptation that knows our middle name and the past we 

say we have passed is always a guarantee however we remember it, it never sits as it       were

without participation, we must throw in our added effort to eliminate what we did not know then,

illuminate what we always knew, easily we annihilate our amnesia of details-the heat namely,

how close we've come to the flames, cold-blooded we are compelled to mark the moment-

significant-look at me! Crazy. Collected and coerced, alone attracted toward that which 

hungers for our hours, fueled by all that we made in fusion-resistance is futile, that is why

they smile and look the other way, there is nothing to do but start seeing fire differently,

where would we be without it?

"This is the world; the lying likeness of 

Our strips of stuff that tatter as we move

Loving and being loth;

The dream that kicks the buried from their sack

And lets their trash be honoured as the quick.

This is the world. Have faith." (IV)

Why? A brown butterfly flew into the toaster oven his morning and it was delicious

being the most important meal of the day. I am no longer hungry. 

Painting by James Guthrie [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Scenic drive

It was one of those times that shock would be a gift-a present. A time that slowed to enunciate its meaning. A moment that is more than a moment, yet thankfully, is still contained in a wincing short period of time, shorter than it takes to tell a tale, shorter than a breath taken away, one of many-only a moment in time, by definition of duration, three seconds.

Inside the adrenaline 'present', you are made inherently aware of the nowness and the predictable future simultaneously, but like running in a dream, you are unable to escape the moment you are in. We are all stuck together here, running for our lives and gaining no distance.

You must have seen the heavenly shafts of light beaming through trees, the golden glow, the dancing white light. You have witnessed the mist beading and rising from wet wood as the morning dew becomes exposed to the steamy sun and transcends into steam, thick and nearly choking you have sometime seen dust in a dance swirling in its dirty misery...I have sensed the spirit stirred from nothing but new air, like you.

As individual bodies, we were still falling together around the man whose body lay twisted and flat, lifeless in the road. See, stained glass, all in fragments, shuffled photos, squares with light and dark edges, no faces, just the red wooded, cold-blooded earth now stained with oil, an oozing puddle of inky blood on asphalt, a pile of metal pieces sneezed, plastic melted, knobs twisted, and frozen bodies, gravestones stood around the body alive and marking the spot.

Memorable moments make themselves known when they arrive. They announce themselves by silencing all else, by walking heavy and slow across our timeline, across our chest. Death is so natural, as natural as being born. We are biodegradable, most of us. We should not be baffled or afraid, there will be nothing we can do to reverse the course, to turn the clock back, to wait a moment.

This is where we are, on a two-lane narrow and snaky mountain road. Natural springs occasionally burst out of the cloddish mountain side whereby a fallen tree protrudes as if a giant archer missed his aim. Our latitude set is at thirty-six degrees, and we are approximately thirty minutes driving distance from any type of township, storefront or place with streetlamps. There are houses tucked away deep in those hills, do not think it is desolate. No Trespassing signs mean ominous things, you should not get lost in these woods; hermits and hemp farms, loaded shotguns held by shaky hands and blood hungry wolf-hybrid guard dogs nestled under trees filled with booby traps set by Vietnam Veterans and a variety of other power and fear mongrels, assorted such boogie men, convicts and ex-killers, anyone with something to hide hid there. A feral forest in the Wild West. We are facing those demons on this day. They watched us watching over this body.

It is not for us to ask why we may be meant to be in a place at a certain time, to see a stranger die before our eyes-a fellow man or woman leave their lifeless body where they last found it. It happens to all of us, we lose ourselves. As witnesses, we all looked the same. In death as empty vessels, hollow bodies, burnt out trees, shells of what they used to be, suddenly we find a stranger before us.

For 5 minutes or 100 moments, sound waves were swallowed by light waves. No cars-or bike(s) came on the road for a time. After a couple of awkward human coughs meant to clear all air, someone said something about medical school and having no service and we knew that all of us together were alone. The body had been hit or lost control while riding his motorcycle.

The Ducati motorcycle lay wedged deep in the slope of the soft crumbling cliff, its front wheel was buried near an exposed tree root, the back wheel was still spinning and the mans shoes were on. His helmet lay head side up like a bowl in a ditch, the face plate shattered. His appendages were contorted and badly broken. Two approached him while I stood frozen looking upward in between the trees to see if I could catch his spirit.

A loud whine came up in the distance, louder, closer, and then 3 motorcycles appeared around the bend in the road. All at once, laying their bikes in the road and shouting, screaming, they shouted like banging drums, throwing blame, as if an incantation of life by volume or praying for rain or dropping salt, as if any of that would help him now. There was no ceremony for time to turn around and come back, like they decided to. The ride was over. We went on our way.

No. Nothing could be done about what has been done. We were simply meant to see. We were meant to be stopped, dead in our tracks, to notice the silence, to hear these stories, to pause and take a moment to go.

Image credit By NPS Photo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Time running out (of Space)

As I am leafing through my notes parked under a shedding oak tree

about the Explorations of Rocket Science on a rare heat wave October day

while waiting for my daughter to be let out of high school, which is 

adjacent to the community pool, where I am parked illegally 

between the hours of 11 and 5, Monday thru Friday-this includes this Tuesday

I guess unless I am there to take a plunge or have some membership. 

The lot is more than half empty. My daughter, a junior two ways, 

sits in AP Spanish class right now staring out the window 

over the pool toward the football field. How do I know? 

She told me. She does this. 

And I also know she too, can faintly hear the band practicing to the right 

of me on the field, just beyond the backs of the rows of bleachers.

The metronome fills in all the blanks. 

I look down to scrutinize and find "Non est ad astra mollis e terris via" 

scribbled in blue, this was Seneca who said-

"There is no easy way to the stars from earth"

And I stress over more pressing matters such as;

escape velocity, nominal thrust levels, specific impulses and loop momenta.

I am hyper aware of my SSA, or Space Situational Awareness and forget scattering

all together be cause time is running out and I never explained why I started to 

tell you what I realized with the help of a metronome and nostalgic thoughts 

of leaving home, crossing thresholds and hitting all the right notes, or passing them-

the minutes that is or by taking notes, making maps and studying plans 

to abort this mission none control in seconds or firsts

if something go catastrophically wrong or if lives were in serious jeopardy. 

A rocket trying to break geostationary orbit must be tight,

ruts and steady beats, white noise and dark matter mixes and commingles and

like all subsequent attempts, it is easier the next time. 

Older modeling has been shown to spontaneously implode, 

or make (more) matter I think...

Alarm-no bell-

my junior walks toward me,  and the pen is drying, 

all further exploration has been scrapped to be recycled as cacophony. 

Image credit By נאס"א [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The second life of dreams

*

From the collective symptoms, it seems I have reversed my polarity, no longer am I attracted to shiny metal objects, or glittering and jingly things meant to occupy menial minds...for a time, for money, for the future.

**

There is plenty of pull to go around, I've taken the slack, sometimes defiantly looking back at others as they rest peacefully in overstuffed beds made tight and I, not on my back, look up at the big top, blurring my eyes and the ceiling comes together over me. In observance, this is where the mystery of me is dissolved.

***

I occupy my space in another time not taken and I wonder if I stole it, will it be collected in the back end, build up like wax and wonder secretly if twenty hour days are ways to die faster forgetting to eat, feeding on famished fuel and forgone poisons. Pleasure is more pungent.

****

I have not an after taste of bitter since awake, my circadian clock keeps its own tempo on my time left. I live most fully while others are dreaming in real life.

Hypothetically AWOL

So you can relate, let me paint the peopled scene-
We have all walked into a crowded room, where strangers try to keep their space all to themselves, even after you enter more keep filing in, and you look around at these faces of strangers not quite petals of the same flower, but blooms of beings nonetheless and all there under the ultra-violet lamps at this specific time because we were supposed to be by some higher command they all seem strange to you before you realize you are stranger too. And yet you may try to gravitate toward gender or age or smell or smile, yet you will find no profile lined out the same in these stark unforgiving lights. Similarly, you are proud to be just you, the only one, all the same, just like all of them.

In this room, all are equal, and equally free-to leave. Those that forgot their patience do. None notice, except billing I am sure. Don't be fooled, there is no order. The priority changes moment to moment. Everyone is waiting to be seen, indivisibly, for special attention, their time in the headlamps. To bide the time you may notice they often congregate and speculate all the while they wait for answers in a room full of multiple choices. By process of elimination, big choices become clear. It is the same test we are all taking. Some will pass. Some will fail to see and often tend to obtain a second opinion-if it matches their own.
Some, like me, will read all of the fine print, disclaimer, directions,opinion, by case studies and percentages and try to remember all of my high and low numbers like social insecurity and insurance-against what-there were no guarantees-should I change my plan-what good is a health plan, can we plan health-I guess-we do what we can and then get sick, or injured, or confused...
Vividly-
You can see it over there, right where everyone else can see too. Eye level on the hallway wall, per the OSHA requirements, an oversized poster that reads in sweeping bold cursive letters "US Constitution", and if you squint you can just make out in the first row, like an eye test, it says Union and in the second-row you can see the images of Tranquility and Blessings...hmmm, sounds like a nice policy.
Adjacent to that is the Emergency Exit door where it says Smile, you are on Camera' and 'Alarm will Sound'...I wonder what the alarm will sound like-a warning? Impishly before my name is called and I act like it's not my name, I scan the room, skipping over faces and wrong names. Not moving instead, I pull out a book and read.
After overly admiring some mass replication artwork of pastorals on the walls, about an hour or so later, I notice the words public Trust. I finally rise and I walk casually out the front door feeling significantly better being outside. I look back at the sign where it says Welcome or Closed, depending on which side you're on.


Image By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Making a man from a boy

When your son tells you something--listen.
When your son tells you-
about his first girlfriend at the age of eighteen,
he was listening when you told him about high school girls
and saw for himself.
When your son tells you he is in pain, physically-his stomach hurts and his face is contorted in pain-
exactly like yours--listen,
he may need surgery.
When the nurse tells you your newborn baby boy has a hole in his heart, maybe she misheard.
And when his doctors say they can hear a flutter
through (out) life--listen. Every time.
When your son asks you for advice
about relationships, instead of  your ex-husband, you have raised a fine young man.
When your son tells you something by not telling you anything-listen real hard.
When your son tells you something you already know--listen (softly).
You cannot plan
for any of this,
especially the part where
He listens.

“It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men.” 

-Frederick Douglass