waiting

We were laughing so hard.  But it was late at night and the lady downstairs was angry because we woke her.  But we kept laughing, rolling on the floor, exaggerating the moment, doing all we could to capture the feeling.  Somehow, we knew it would be something we’d always remember.  We played the part.  We kicked our feet in the air.  Our faces were red and merry; tears tickled their way out of corners.  It was obnoxious, maybe.  So, we imagined her in curlers, a nighttime mask making her face ghoulish and cucumber-green, painted mouth parting to reveal grimacing teeth as she pounded away with her broomstick on the ceiling.  Maybe she was balanced on a chair.

She was yelling something muted by stucco and gaps of air.  As our laughter ebbed and her pounding grew louder and more furious, we were struck by the potential gravity of the moment.  There, catching our breath on a hard carpet floor littered with humour and crumbs, we felt the angst of all the knocking.  Our heartbeats pumping in our ears, we were struck with discomfort giving way to childish fear.  I’ll come up there, she shouted.  Perhaps she was not joking, perhaps she was on her way up to confront us.  Maybe she would snag us and feed us in her gingerbread home.  She would stoke her furnace in the open.

In our newfound seriousness, we crouched with ears to the ground.  Bandits and hobos might listen for a distant train that way.

I looked at you for guidance.

Slowly, we opened the door and felt her presence at the bottom of the stairs; we were trapped.  So, hand-in-hand, we climbed upward past the ferns of floor five, the peeling paint of floor six, swallowed by a midnight audience cheer leaking through the thin doors on floor seven.  And all the while, despite our tiptoeing and careful breathing, I knew she was chasing, every shadow skipping toward our trembling backsides.  You were older and there at the big metal door, you gave shove and there was the night air up on the rooftop moistening gravel and condensating chimney pipes.

You were quiet and looking back, you were scared in your own older practical way.   But it was a sight surreal up there and I didn’t know where we were.  We ambled across rooftops, making small leaps building to building, tenements crammed tightly capturing the sweat and hopeless buzz of lonely people caught up in poor lonely lives.  I do remember smelling that strange chemical smell you find in beauty salons; it’s the smell of perms.  Scampering along, I was unaware the potential fall, all I knew was that a woman was in pursuit; her smell gave her away.

We entered a door and winded down stairs with hands brushing the iron rail.  Like that, we were outside on an unfamiliar street.  With total sincerity, I thought I was in heaven.  Walking silently, you didn’t act like I was there and I followed you past dark bagel shops and newspaper stands closed with simple metal locks.  I wondered why you would lock anything up in a place like heaven but I thought it nice to see that it was not so different.  Warming their hands over a crackling trashcan fire, black men wearing beanies and scarves sang old songs and I thought that the songs were better than the hymns we sing in church.

So, this is heaven.  Safe from the angry.  But you did not hear me and you kept walking, unaware of my awesome words and slack-jawed stare for the markings of heaven at night.  There were stains of chalk lightly noting an earlier game of hopscotch.  I imagined angels tossing stones, cheating with their wings.  I was amazed that they played like that.  And in the dark: so, the sun sets in heaven too.  Maybe I’ll find it to be a mystery some day but I liked that it was familiar and full of human potential.

newspapers piled on my lawn

With a pop, life burst on the scene.

On Wednesday, I read the morning paper. 

It’s Wednesday.  I flip through the sports section and read about Sosa and his broken bat.  I read through the Arts section and pretend that I am cultured.  I skim through the classifieds and look for juicy deals.  I read the front page and float abreast of the news.  The world is swirling around me as I sip my cup and watch how the cream floats in concentric circles – whatever I’ve mixed is a mistake because I simply pour and drink; I’ll let the sugar and cows settle where life’s math demands.  Standing on my balcony overlooking an ugly city, it’s achingly early and the caffeine feels just right.

I look myself in the mirror supporting my body on elbows pink from the pressure.  I’ll shave soon, cutting away these hard nighttime strands of rugged life gone dead.  The sound of water runs around an ivory basin telling me to whisper.  I am readily quiet and with each stroke, there’s another layer of me that’s chafed and clean.  My eyebrows come from my mother, my chin comes from my dad and I whisk it bald before I begin.  I look myself in the mirror and it’s a different me because it’s a different morning.  I hear the rumbling.

Try sitting in the kitchen with the lights off; it’s better.

I dreamt last night of an atomic explosion.  I remember looking out the window, seeing a bright light suddenly appear.  The flash was sharply silent and bright like the presence of God.  For a moment, I was blind but recovering my senses, you and I huddled in the closet corner, feeling the house shake because the blast was at a distance.  I don’t know how but I remember being warned of the attack somewhat in advance and yet, I did nothing to prepare.

There is always something to report.  We are always reporting on TV and to our boss.

Did I wake you?  Well, it was only the rumbling; it’s the engine chomping at the bit.  I put on my smile, dimpling it right; my best suit covers my birthday.  I gather pens and paper, books and old letters.  I want to read War and Peace in a better setting.  The sun is rising and the frost melts on the grass in my backyard.  Good morning, my dog is barking.

A head start is ineffectual.  Time doesn’t move faster because you crack the whip.

I touch the glass door and see the old swing rattle its chains, reddish brown from rain.  It is cold to the touch and it is sapping heat from mug-warm palms.  I make my way outside.  A gray sky is turning blue. 

The grass breaks beneath me.

It’s been waiting ready for weeks.  I open the hatch and settle down nicely; this is my millennium home.  I flick switches, push buttons, nod my head to a gobbledygook of lines flashing.  The rumbling pushes through the seat and rattles my teeth which mimics the engine.  The sun is blooming; the city is waking.  I will forgo my routine bagel but business will be none the worse for wear.  I will not be there to smile at the lunchtime waitress today.  She is a complicated girl but regardless, we are of a different pedigree.

In the news, there will be something breaking.

The countdown is over.  It’s time and there’s a fiery cloud billowing and trailing; the supports fall away.  Through a thick window, I see a house growing smaller.  There’s something sweet about it.  It circles and it rises up and it’s caught in the wind.  I ruffle feathers along the way and entire flocks of geese are knocked from their path.  Machines dance elliptically around the globe and send songs with their signals.  With time, I lose my green-blue reference point and I can no longer say I am moving upwards.  But I am far, far away.  When I talk, everything is a whisper.  Gaining speed, I am pressed pink against my seat.

There is a pop in my ears.

                               Pop.

Now, if you make your way up the hill where the bus stops twice a day and turn to the East, it behooves you to take a picture.  If it’s sunny, you’ll capture my home in a frame, my favorite window caught between the tops of yoshino cherry trees swaying.  Look past the manicured lawn and carefully examine the cedar gateway.  That’s the door where you should enter; note the dent from much inquiring.  Look even closer and study the mat where you will stand.  This picture will serve as a map when you make your way there. 

Welcome: that’s where I used to live, see.  

—   



Man with Dog (B. Fernando)

—

American Landscape, 1920

Hopper was conscious of this background, though he merely obliquely alludes to it, reducing the elements in the picture to a minimum: a few cattle, a railroad line, a house in an indeterminate landscape.  Sheeler, in contrast, in a painting of the same title, strove for absolute clairty and definition.  Hopper’s standpoint was not critical, but merely dispassionate.  He depicted things as he saw them without making value judgments.  (Ivo Kranzfelder, Hopper.) 

—

Thunderstorms here!  It started raining so hard that I could barely see ten feet ahead.  A fun but harrowing experience. 

—

Now enjoying:


Burrito

Matt11:28

the scent of stale cedar

The black leather luster of my boots
Gathering dust under moth-eaten stripes

Blue on grey,

Are full of ghosts insisting

On a proper burial.

Did God grab us by the tails,

Our engines buzzing and throbbing,

Ebbing into the scenic backdrop

Of blue peppered grey

Popping and sending vibrations

Like heated charges or swooping rivals.

Beneath,

There was an exchange of words

Trailed by white-foamed specks

Like the Channel lapping

Where we heard whistling and
Climbed through barbs
To make our mark.

When the gate fell,

I was absorbed completely.

I scaled the edifice

Grappling for divots or

Cracks like those wrinkled faces 

Blue and grey,
Looking back harmlessly

With palsy.

—




—

Matt11:28

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. – Camus

Activities

Just for a moment, I’m
Going to step off the spinning world
To breathe space
Between the rafters
Cheering
Sometimes stomping 
For the winners.

Shooting off into the night, I’m
Drifting slantwise and
Crosswise like mirrors
Mouth likewise.

In the passing, I’ll
Rest my feet on
The oaken veneer
Waiting patiently for
The sartorial burping
Of an aloof Meursault.

There is no exit here;
We are nodding to mysteries
Breathing space like a fan
On stickiest days
Or whispering lips.

—



—-

in the town where I was born (jack and jill sat on a wall)

Slow like a snake through weeds, a periscope telescopes up the side of a cloudy mountain home, hugging the countours, stopping at the second window for a peek.  Hunched over bones and a steaming mug, a large hulk of a man bows his head with sleep and satisfaction.  Blinking, an eye examines a solitary room, straining like a candle flicker.

There were questions about his allegiance.  Here was the paperback writer penning notes for future reference.  He was not trusting.  He would not trust his eyes, searching for the colorless noumena wrapped in the folds of origami cranes buried in a rainbow jar.  He makes his own, hoarding a thousand, each crease a labor of love.  Captured in lonesome confinement, he made use of his time.

He was a spy at first cry, tiny arms flailing in a stale room; blue henchmen wore skullcaps and masks.  Bright lights flashed before tracers in a little man’s eyes and he squinted, shaken by the world around him.  They would have their way with this perspicacious wordsmith; he would not escape.  His back and shoulders were well-known, kept on file, seen perpetually up-close in a binocular world.

He was yet a spy at the age of ten, ducking behind couches, wrapping himself in curtains, shooting guns at the spiral slide, and catching cryptic notes falling from the sky.  Here’s what they say: Old Mother Hubbard sat on her tuffet.

Cows jump into the curds and whey.

He sneezed; they blinked.  He donned his fedora and was out the door.  There was a chase.  Cars weaving through tiny streets, shouldering through poor alleyways, spilling onto the main thoroughfare.  Each car gathered cart souvenirs, trout from the fishmonger, rugs from broken fences, bits of cabbage splashed on windshields.  He could not shake them.

There was a loud crash.

He was surrounded by villains too.  Gathering secrets in hand, stuffing them hastily down his corduroy shirt, he grabs his briefcase, slips into the shadows where an ambush lies in wait.  Light shining through a bottleneck exit, they nab him at the elbows.  He coughs at the tightening of his Windsor.  In the surprise, he drops goods and papers fly.  They go through his things.

The cranes start flapping, each bearing a clue in words written on wings.  He has graduated to real life and in celebration, like doves released, they pepper the sky.  First as a darkened clump, then as dollops of color.

They questioned him through unspeakable means but he had nothing to tell them but for name, rank and serial number; his secrets had flown away and they were drifting at thirty thousand feet.

In a cold granite cell, they would visit him, one at a time, playfully alive, resting between the crooked bars of a window.  Some flew in from Bleeker Street; some came in through Fort Bragg; some came in from Pennsylvania Avenue.  All were were scrawled with decency, violence and moral life.  Squinting at daylight, he fed them hardtack crumbs. 

Suffering is wrapped in many ways like sleepless nights for a hundred days.

They grew fatter and he was leaner.  And each day, they flew away with his whispers, culling new voices from the city blocks and power centers around him.  A little spy in a dank little cell, he had enough secrets of his own.  So there, in a private city under beams of moonlight sneaking through cracks, he built clay men from the floor beneath him.  He put his feeling into the effort and soon, he had population.  The birds grew fatter; he was wizened; his grey people were completed devoted.

He has an army of fliers and footsoldiers, colorful secrets and burgeoning emotions.  He is a spy and a general; his job is to keep it all together.  They will ask him questions and this time, arms flailing, he will have means to escape.  

There was a struggle. 

—



—

Honey Pie

–

I’m swamped!

Matt11:28

Near the Reagan Building

When work disappears, there is dissipation.
The world of the new urban poor is overly weepy.
Standing on your corner
Leaning haphazardly on flashing lights,
You look at me and my spinning wheels
Catching your reflection with rimmed eyes
Aware that we will not meet again -
Nor will any of us care.

Moving fast, I still see that
Calendar section and syntax
Serve as a blanket.

As an immigrant child, I felt pity for the man at McDonald’s
Eating his lonely cow alone; he was scraggly.
We had just watched
A movie.

—

—

Mao’s Little Red Book

Enter the whistling piccolo, whoop for the drummer boy.  The Eastern Bloc stirs a wind and somewhere in the distance, the strains of the Battle Hymn fly high o’er the Republic.

Red and ready, a silent hunter navigates the Marianas.  She’s cold; she’s vicious; she swims with sickle and hammer, paddling uneven through the swirling cold.  It’s dark here, that’s what I think under the weight of an intermittent ping, searching for movement.   In my gun-metal bunk, my hands interlock and form a pillow to hold my neck steady.  I am reading Mao’s book and in my ears sound the stomp of slate-suited peasants, weapons held high and proud, Marxist caps making them look like newsboys.  I will read all about it in the morning, if there is such a thing down where the only light is a caged bulb, flickering with moisture.  It’s a stale, sweaty air and to sneeze is to wake this corner of the vessel.  Like the luddites of yesteryear, they stick wedges through capitalist gears; they roust the chicken coop and take what’s theirs; they run a sword through watercolor; they drink from the same artless cups.  

When I sleep, I dream I’m still here.  Under the drone of pistons and the turning screw, I know we are moving, lost to the world above.  I dream of children running to the lake’s edge, laughing and leaping high, knees tucked tightly to their chins.  Then, in the maddening volume of so much machinery, the lights turn red and we rush to our stations.  The muffled explosions of lazy barrels finds us weeping as we weave our way through these hidden trenches.  In my dreams, he is sleeping and I run to ask him if he cares that we drown.
 
We flood the tubes with brine and catch a mackerel.

In the dark, we sing a secular hymn for fortitude.  With pipes dancing and spitting heat, we refuse to be caught with our eyes closed.  In faded pictures, I see how they found him cooking fish on the shore; he looked different.  Once, on a bankrupt afternoon for fishing, they took his advice and gave their nets one last dipping; there was tearing.  A line circles in front of me, marking their advance and I am now wearing Ceausescu’s dainty shoes, standing on the terrace of his mansion’s balcony.  Foreign pings tickle us like Elena once did.  

Things fall apart with the yaw and pitch.  I am lost to the shouting.

—
 

—

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
(Margaret Atwood)

—

Living for glory – just for glory – is a bit lame. 

Man, time moves so quickly. 

I want to see the world!  We’re truckin’.

Matt11:28

surprises

My grandfather was by all accounts a big man and bald too.  His humor was dry and wry and his goodness surpassed that of most.  He died this week and though it’s been awhile since I last saw him, I lost something deep.  He was an outdoorsman, fond of hiking mountain trails, even climbing back in the day.  The picture I best remember is of him standing on some oriental mountaintop, spelunking ensemble akin to something Hemingway might wear.  He was broad and tall and exceptionally generous, often taken advantage of, but so successful that it could be written off for the taxes of living and trying to live clean, simple, and well.  There’s something to be said for men like that.  He loved his first wife who gave him six daughters and his heart broke when she went terminally ill after their last girl.  My grandmother was a beautiful woman who loved to sing just like my mother does now.  But slowly, her mind drifted and became distant, lost to another realm.  Her body followed years later, by then an emaciated woman bit by cancer.  He married again, I think for companionship, and in secret, he pined for his first love.  Over the past year, with the passing of his second wife, he found himself a girlfriend, sweet and nice but with a love for gifts and things – not a bad woman though.

My mom always thought I took after him in a number of ways.  Still, I can do without the shiny head and I’m holding on to the young man strands I yet have.  I think of that photo of him on the mountaintop, rugged cap on his head.  I remember how he wasn’t a big talker; he wasn’t private but he spoke with measured tones and with a hint of irony having seen all man’s good and bad in his big factories, in his daughters’ churches, in the grit of a condensed, high-rise city and even in the sweet countryside home where my brother and I used to catch and torture dragonflies like curious, blissfully cruel kids do.  In my youth, I remember respecting and fearing him because here too was my family but full of mystery.  He was never mean.  He was calm.  He called my mom his favorite and he told her fun things about his first love.  When they took a trip out to Yosemite on a big American tour bus, he shared things my mom never knew, things that made her laugh and cry.  Walking a guided path, he blew snot onto the ground because that’s okay where he’s from and my mom laughed and told him it wasn’t proper etiquette; he just thought of it as nature.  Dry, wry and kind, he died this week and it came as a surprise.  It hit me with force and as I talk to people, looking skyward or at my shoes when alone, I know that I wanted to make him proud.  I wanted this man to see me grow up to significance.  I’m working my way there, see.

This is the numbing throb of a dull quiet room.  My faith is inescapable and my Christianity is ultimately who I am.  But he was such a good man even to cynical eyes and though his faith was tenuous at best, his was a surpassing, big goodness.  As I live harder and busier, full of open and secret dreams, introspection fades and through all the life noise, I’m ignorant of those inner things that drive me – some godly, some worldly, some strange if only I knew.  I laughed and worked and studied and led and tried my best today.  My grandfather died this week and I wanted to show him or I wanted him to at least hear someday of what I am becoming.  Isn’t it strange how a mind and heart are layered and wrapped up with all these hidden things.   

I’d like to ask how he wooed my grandmother. 

I’m choked up by the worries and concerns of this world and I’m yet muscling the vine out of the soil, missing the point entirely.  I hope to see him again someday and as another kind, spelunking and climbing man, I’d like to sit and share a drink with him, asking him questions, willingly taking his wisdom.  From his vantage point, I pray from the clouds, I’m sure he’d have words to say.

—



Blue Mountain (Hung Liu)

—-

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
- Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

Matt11:28

FireHouse

At the 16th Street Baptist Church
I am surrounded by children,
Youth alive in their lack of knowing
Or not
That in minutes
They’ll be gnawed on.

Come morning, they were grave
Yet laughing, my
Brothers giggling,
Mock-fighting, making
Faces grim and crooked
With bacon for no appetite,
Eggs and a mother’s hollow chagrin.

When we drank from the fountain
Our lips touched the same water;
Yet when the water hit me -
Cold and prickly -
My shocked body was pretzled
My spirit pummeled & soaring
My arm cocked in dismissal.

When you followed me,
Equally drenched in their scorn,
You reached out chasing
Like the Deity once did.

By them, we were senseless.

——–



—–



Baptism Back Then (Marla Marla)

——



–

Edwards would make it anyone’s game.  Nobody should underestimate a likable person.



Liking:

      
Monroe Mustang       BT – ET

—–

wind and waves

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let’s go over to the other side.”  Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.  Mark 4:35-38

Matt11:28

what is and is not

We left the garden.

kate spade of aces high on drugs are not the answer to the question authority is about power play it again sam spade private eye ball at the world series of comic books burning in germany is not America is free at last, free at last night we were dancing like nobody was watching the world news tonight show girls in bikini wax for surfboards in California girls are from Jupiter to get more stupider is not a word to your mother mary wife of joseph not stalin during the second war is not the answers are hard to come by the waterfront not waterback when I was your age is just a number of ways we can do that is not a good ideas can change the world spinning on an axis of evil ways and means committees make decisions are difficult personalities are rare is not common man is not woman is not man like Adam made at the start to finish the story: God. 

Or:

Sex, drugs and rock&roll.  God sees everything.  Sex, drugs and rock&roll.  It makes sense to Him.  Sex, drugs and rock&roll.  It doesn’t make sense to me.  Sex, drugs and rock&roll.  I don’t understand Him.  Sex, drugs and rock&roll.  God sees everything. 

Or:

Our lives intertwine in a million different ways. Our ideas, our convictions, our libidos clash with history and societies mixing and matching and finally it all settles into a daily living that’s simple: we were just here.

Or:

Life for all of us looks and feels quite different.  We’d like to think we’re different too.  We’d like to think that we stand out from the crowd, one shining face in a sea of grey.  Walking through the city, our senses are rapt by the phenomena of the world around us.  There’s the tactile feel of cold asphault crunching or the bone rumbling feel of a snow plough doing its thing.  Our eyes have been hard at work since we left the womb crying when we first found love in the arms of our mothers.  But when you were born, a plane flew above the hospital and while most travelers slept through the flight, a few passengers looked out the window eating their peanuts, seeing a city so vast and tall and lonely.  As your eyes opened and adjusted to the light, they were already gone.

Or:

It’s all and, or, but.

Or:

God sees everything.  That too. 
That works for me.

—


Guang Niu (Reuters)

—

From the true tales of NPR’s National Story Project (compiled by Paul Auster):

As I was walking down Stanton Street early on Sunday morning, I saw a chicken a few yards ahead of me.  I was walking faster than the chicken, so I gradually caught up.  By the time we approached Eighteenth Avenue, I was close behind.  The chicken turned south on Eighteenth.  At the fourth house along, it turned in at the walk, hopped up the front steps, and rapped sharply on the metal storm door with its beak.  After a moment, the door opened and the chicken went in.  – Linda Elegant of Portland, Oregon

—



somme 4 (max pechstein)

—

I think John Edwards would be a good president.  On principle and electability, he should be the Democrats’ choice.  His policy proposals actually have substance (and they’re written in detail).  He’s smart, good-looking, charismatic and the most genuine of the bunch.  Well, Gephardt’s genuine too but his trade policies are kooky/unreasonable.  Dean would kill the Democratic party and his policies are the most vague (and ANGRY! Run away… Run away…).

In terms of temperament, Edwards or Gephardt.  But policy tips scale in favor of Edwards.  And he’s as positive as heck (or I mean, heaven).  Man, you can’t not like this guy.  Clark is turning out to be a real sell-out.

—

Enjoying:


musicforthemorningafter

Matt11:28

quiet lives

On our beds

—

Somme 6 (Max Pechstein)

—

Matter of Fact

 Matt11:28

Pacific

In far-flung corners of the world, we toss around in a timeless game.

Driving through middle-class, small town zip codes, I happened upon a rural county.

I see a gaunt cow scratching her rump on the splintered wood of a fence, chewing slowly, each gulp traveling four stomachs’ distance with little haste.  Even the flies are nicer here.  Buzzing around every warm-bodied, sweet-blooded creature, they zip a song past ears at lazily syncopated intervals.  Listening to small-town radio, I hear quaint country preaching and the sweet sinner’s invitation spilling through my car with a twang.  I’ve had a fly-friend to keep me company for the past forty miles, playing gleefully with the slow swat of my bothered hands.  Dented aluminum mailboxes stand at attention as I drive near; flags raised, they hold letters and gifts and none of the city junk.  Running low on fuel, I pull over at a dusty, rusty station and though I half-expect a dirty man in overalls and a wad of chaw, the place is quiet and empty.  I slide a ten-dollar bill under a locked door and help myself to a few thirsty gallons.  I’d like to hear a y’all-come-back-now-y’here?  But I get in my car and keep moving.

I come upon a fork in the road and the radio fades in mumbling gradations.  I don’t know where I’m going but I know the general direction – west; I’m going west.  But to be sure, I park and pull out a map.  My chummy fly continues to buzz and he offers me his advice – well meant but hopelessly garbled.  Still, circling my head like a dirty, short-living halo, I see the world through a thousand shiny eyes.  I see a thousand kisses for a slice of summer watermelon, a thousand bats taken to a head for friends.  I learn the ten thousand ways to fall in love, the million ways to heartache.  I count twelve thousand tribes ignoring God in a hundred thousand heathen ways.  I see five thousand loaves of bread turn into twelve thousand baskets and I taste a thousand cups of wine for a body, sipped in remembrance of one. 

He zooms away in search of decay and I’m left looking at my map.  With the sun beating down on my head, a single bead of sweat reminds me that I’m making my way through life, covered in the slow-moving salt of all those emotions, thoughts, ideals that make me who I am.

The map is unhelpful with these hidden roads so I go with my gut and choose the way that’s paved.  Five radio songs and two bags of chips later, I see where the crowds have gone; there’s a baseball game.  And they’ve come in droves to watch the championship.  Peanuts and Crackerjacks sound about right but I’ve me a destination and I won’t stop now.  It’s a long stretch but it’s still a small corner.  As I pass, I imagine the sound of a loud crack and the crowd goes wild, shaking the bleachers.

So, there’s one man who’s made a name for himself, fame caught in the seams of a screaming baseball, knocked into the next county, over Asia, through the clouds, into space.  Unbeknownst to us, my fly has hitched a ride and with a garbled whoop, holds on for life.  Unable to blink, zooming through the moment, his eyes catch the blinding glare of a thousand glorious suns.  Short-lived and dirtier than us, he has a thousand epiphanies like Armstrong’s giant step or the birth of a first.  Old, mottled cheese looks like the moon and so, my fly breaks free from his homerun ride, drawn by his primordial, natural appetite. 

A six-legged satellite, he circles the planet, unable to break free from the perpetual fall of gravity.  He will not live where he is.

It’s dusk.  Above, a stray bird floats and pursues me.  I’ve found another friend.  She knows the way because in her wings, I taste the brine of two oceans.  My knees guiding the wheel, I undo my seatbelt and stretch back for a sweater.  Deftly, I pull it over my head, just in time to swerve in a near-miss.  I throw a cracker out the window and she dives, chasing the saltine straight into the ground.  With her eyes, I see before and behind.  In her squawk, I hear the massive gears of a rig, bit digging deep somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  I follow her dive and through her ears, I hear the swarthy cussing of fishermen, hauling in their burgeoning nets, spilling over with flipping life.  She burrows hard, straight through the core, and emerges new in a foreign place where fishmongers sleep on their junkets, their tiny eyes straining to see her.  Down is now up and she banks left and is gone to the tune of a gull’s song.

Time passes.  Ambling along, silver light shines above the trees and I buzz, squawk and whistle.  I shake the dust from my sandals as I leave small towns behind me.  Beneath and high above, life is pastoral.  I eat my sandwich, packed weeks ago with cured ham and slices of moon.  On the radio, they play the Gambler and I’m alive – lost but alive, making my way through America.

——

  “When there was no lunch
   to take to school, 
   I blew up a brown paper sack
   to make it look full.”
   George Foreman

  “I don’t gamble, because
   winning a hundred dollars doesn’t
   give me great pleasure.  But
   losing a hundred dollars
   pisses me off.”
   Alex Trebek


The Volunteers (Kathe Kollwitz)

—–

Enjoying:


       doves