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Archive for the ‘prose’ Category

Bones About It

Posted in beat poetry, corona, covid, mindfulness, ordinary madness, poetry, poetry in motion, prose, Uncategorized on December 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Equate me with foot dragging on carpeted stairs to squat quick & pensive at the outlet-God of cheap-thrill shock-therapy, for my inner-child needs a cold-water start to wake up from the monotonous boredom that’s got us all tangled up; dragging beneath the slowest car, riding on puro rims- over potholes & pits, with a blackout blotch smeared right over arrival time.

2 weeks that bled into 2 months, that bled into 9 months- at present, that bleed still. A vacuous wound unresponsive to tourniquets, & the pressure persists, but no mind, no mind.

I used to take my thinking-saw when I’d grown into my shadows & saw my skull open to let my head-moths fly around & land in unlikely places, & write about what came home, attached to their feet. I’d witness a white crow 2 times in an unmistakable flock of black ones & felt closer to the mystics; and stranger to common concerns like days of the week. I touched magic more often but also got my feet dirtier in the process. You can’t walk through a long field & not step in shit.

I struggle with recognizing my own web of fault. Have I trapped myself in the monotony or am I too close to my own nose to see my victimhood in having little to do for months? Everyday is a grand Groundhog of reminder, edging margins of subtle variation.

And now with cold cold air to wrap reliably around my leggys & weave it’s way through my hair & around my scalp, & penetrate my body top down & bottom up- I trap further into myself in inaction & the dullard’s company of a grey, cloth couch. My guitar will call & I will answer, but where once I had magic beans that rolled around my pockets of song snippets & poetry shreds I had hung without protest- on thin blue lines of spiral bound pages; storing them like orphans hoping to get chosen when I pull up in my petticoat & emerge from my Cadillac Roadster with clicky heels & feather hat. Dahling~ I am ready for you now. Prepackaged sentence pluckery. Those beans- where are they now?

My tea leaves carry-on unread, for my cup filleth & filleth again, I sip on & on all day long, working with my hands, trying & forgetting, repeat repeat repeat- to steady my mind- & search for cheap thrills or expensive thrills or I’m-open-to-suggestion-thrills-please-change-out-my-tea-now-I’m-ready-for-a-new-flavor-of-thrills.

Time is my sweet, yellow dog growing older. It passes without asking or telling, as it takes without the same pleasantries. One day we’ll look back with rosier lenses, while now we must find our way through the darkness of the un-knowing. Generating our own sparks again.

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Pink Crown

Posted in corona, covid, flowers, gratitude, nature, prose on April 27, 2020| 1 Comment »

Life is pretty pink right now. I kick it up with my toes; trail it home- stow aways’ in the crannies of my trainers. Everything in eye shot is blooming and sloughing. The earth: a post Thanksgiving meal eater, undoing its belt and letting it all hang out. All bets off. Ready for a shake. Like being through an earthquake without the tremors. Like a silent letter: the K in knife. Cut off. We’re all left, standing for safety in the door jamb, watching blossoms act so innocent, in part providing reassurance that the beat goes on, and in other part- seeming duplicitous, as if to say, simply- “come”.

But we can’t come now. Most of us can- at liberty- walk the blocks, though ill advised to venture from home far, as fear is the new dominant, dictating monger. We must avoid one another, and swallow fear when foreign objects enter our homes. Clean our hands with vigor and discipline, and learn to trust the cleanliness of others in our proximity.
You know you’re in deep when your nightmares consist of a faceless somebody petting your dog.
Here we are on our couches, absorbing movie after movie; ringing out our creative juices to get even a few amenable drops; cooking test run recipes from our mother’s lineage; spending quality-time, or alone-time, or terrible-too-small-world -time with loved ones, or old friends, or no one, or proximal, newly minted enemies. No matter how you slice it, everything is amplified. The light shines bright on every second, stretching them out like Coney Island taffy in July.
Streets, yards and sidewalks are covered in messy, carefree beauty that only an equinox can get away with. The natural-order and the parasitic-human dance to the same music at different beats, a Junior High-hands-free dance with a nun at the helm, monitoring touch with a stinging ruler. We are in perfectly juxtaposed tandem and its all awkward moves. Our mortal terror bowing to the elegance of the bold bearded Iris, the puffy Cherry blossoms, blushing Dogwoods, the auspicious Wisteria.
I walk past them, air kissing their pigment through my eyes, thankful for the distraction provided, and their involuntary reminder that washes in and out like the ocean waves at the shore, to focus on the passing colors and settle me into the weird, waking dream.IMG_7032IMG_7239

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Like Love

Posted in beat poetry, love, poetry, prose, random, Uncategorized on August 15, 2019| 3 Comments »

When heated, coals become incandescent, glowing red-hot.
When were you the most coal?
Where did the spark start?
Lightning-footed before your head even knew it, till suddenly: poof– hairs are on end; your body electric?
Were you then pulled in? Washed over? Was it warm, did you let yourself burn, or were you magnetized in moment? In momentum? In monumental feeling? Familiar and old as bones?
Like moon;
With gravitational pull, consequently prompting the oceans to tide. All approximately 67% water of us.
Have you overflown, salty-wet? Basked in spilled star light, reflecting in lovers’ eyes? Awake awake awake and not in mind for sentence assembly, as something else occupied your mouth? Full. Filled.
We would likely quake when over-swept with thoughts to imagine the other side of this closeness emptied and airless; Before love, or without it.
Once that taste is stoked, palettes evolve standards, and these are models of desire, and this want is driving force, and resistance is no dice. So we keep at it, poke it, feed it.
When filled, thy cuppeth runneth over. And have you lately? Please, please.
Been crowded with passion. All red and heart hued. Exotic butterflies dancing in stomach, reminding us of the good stuff. The reason. The prompt. The time to tend to. And did you manage complete presence, and achieve surrender?
Fresh-out-the-kitchen, hot-off-the-griddle, flushed pie, ready to eat, just made for lovers with nose to nose kind of mornings. Skin to skin kind of nights.
The world, our oyster. The sea- ever-bearing.
It just takes a flicker to glow. Bioluminescent fervor.

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Blotting Block

Posted in beat poetry, poetry, prose, random, Uncategorized, writers block on May 7, 2018| 2 Comments »

Picture me- an explorer voyaging the chopping, sailor, mermaid, school-of-fish, sunken-ship, Jacques Cousteau-eat-your-heart-out spaces in between places where feet have their solid, favored terrain so far from their bodies, traded,
searching new full flavor seasoning, adrift- in the name of it,
seeking to sprinkle more than pepper or turmeric or saffron upon my pallet anew; kindling tastebuds unknown
by my own hand
from my own glory, salt of sea and evolving flavor,
ever-lasting-gobstopper, unraveling in first, second, third, fourth course
all French and sophisticated, all cobweb and torment, all fresh tortilla, all squirrel feed, all bursting contentment, all raspberry-velvet-ganache, all sweaty panties, all hyphen, too many commas, all “surprise- look who’s here for dinner”, all stumbly wino, all exquisite, all vile, all gutter grease-straw-sipping, all gravely voice, all angel’s bells, all hammer of justice, all swift motion with arm-fulls overloaded of fragrant, pillowy, white blossoms that ring of early Spring nights festooned in bare-bulb-strung-lights, trailing behind me and scented of subtle jasmine in the warm, lit, dark,
whilst stirring and stirring to amend
my own soil where-which I will plant these gleaned exotic seeds of 15 year blooms, annuals, noninvasives, and perennials, brilliant orange pink yams from Southern bioregions, original dates of the Fertile Crescent, rubble with some green sprouts interspersed from Palestine and hope hope hope to raise a tree to a forest, strawberry juicy Hawaiian papaya, tall sugar cane groves to run amongst, 3 sister’s silky corn, plump beans, striped squash,
and bleed
into surrounding soil and imagine
and contribute,
and discover
what delicate monster bounding bony, spined hills, straddling trickle creeks of sodden  zygote or embryo fresh possibility of holding black floral, private scarlet intoxicating emergence promise that maybe/ might/ would occur as a result of this witch’s brew. Chocolate reminiscence in the floral world. Over loaded arm fulls of the blossoms. Amalgamating. Tumbling behind my flight.
When you must write to stoke.
When you must type on and on to provoke.
Stream of consciousness.
String of theory
tied
from tree to tree.
Limbs full swing and purpose. Petals on fleek.
All in mercurial motion that you can’t place a bet on.
I’ll go high and low for it. The buzz I’m constantly chasing.
Help me find my way to God’s contract; never need to write one more ode to writer’s block.

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Looking

Posted in beat poetry, poetry, prose, Uncategorized on April 14, 2018| 2 Comments »

The thing about poetry is that it can live anywhere.

Like reindeer moss deprived of rain or light still flourishing after years of neglect.

It can hide in plain sight.

It can be on the tip of your toe as you kick a stone off the sidewalk.

It can be tucked up some country road with countless potholes leading up to a seemingly  forgotten, stumpy clear-cut that  just about wrenches your gut, as it should; and ends you up snapping photos of yourself there, envisioning saplings strengthening.

It could be in the way that you catch your own eyes reflecting off your own red blouse, this poetry- and how it echoes your anger, your passions, or your effortlessly coursing, very alive and platelet rich blood.

It can surprise you, while you peek back upon someone else’s story in your mind, & find the tale ready to be regurgitated in reflective fashion, touched with artistic licensure.

It can be in the seagull that approaches you & makes you feel shame for having the sense of being slighted with its head cocked all judgy like. *What dude?*

There’s this rampant ambivalence that’s sure to be the leading cause of fruitless pages & stilled pens.

You must show up for yourself.

Give yourself time in this land.

You are the gardener. And it is not an easy harvest.

Some poem trails lay fallow or demand of you to over step those washed-out, cliche illuminations like a biblical plague of frogs raining sideways, causing hairline fractures in the south-facing, sun-emitting windows of your concept collecting place.

We must use refrain from once more addressing the grandiose of the moon or sky or rose blooms or lovers eyes that tug for  yet another cameo as it’s so damn easy to include, but would demand space like kudzu or catnip, choking out the roots of other gentle flower thoughts yet to be planted. New growth.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

So throw your ass in your car. Drive out to the coast in the rain. Sit in your mobile monsoon box, eat your leftovers on a perch overlooking the great sea, & write something new. Listen to the whispers beyond the waves.

Our words await us. And the time is wow.

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Flotsam

Posted in maritime, musings, photography, poetry, prose, Uncategorized, tagged on March 1, 2018| 10 Comments »

We spent days in mist. Ocean dust.
My hair looked like a $90 job. A 10 rating.
I was training myself to walk backwards, parallel to the shore without looking behind or falling in. All core, hope, imagination, determination.
Seagulls crested in unison; scattering sporadically like the response to a secret boom or big bear sneeze; returning to formation like an answer to lots of questions unasked.
You’d rolled up your pants and still got soaked, just like every time we’d come before
Submitting our tarnished souls
To our repetitive salt water baptism.

In the small beach-town little matted dogs’d do erratic dances behind worn, corroded fences of tetanus-threatening rust. Do not touch. Beware of dog.
They’d bark their heads off ruthless, and untrustworthy.
4 legged Napoleons. Land piranhas.
My mutt wasn’t having it.

Beneath the bridge connecting coastal access to sleepy commerce center, congregated the bums, whoopin’ and slipping around, catching alarmed crawdads, drinking Old Grand Dad, having a helluvatime.

It’s important to share booze with strangers. The spirits encircle. Your lips are the same lips. Kiss purified by alcohol, don’t fret and the more road-wary the better. They give you pause and ease your mind with uncharted thoughts, though I’d nonetheless really liked to have spared the crawdad.

A furtive pocket-full of notes I fumbled to extract a poet’s name  to match our moment to their word-song. Income the spirit of Mary Oliver as the breeze picked up, whispering wild and precious, wild and precious, wild and precious life, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life… knocking cattail’s hollow sound and grass-scratch blades joining in.

Everything is coated in a filmy dew of sea and the world there feels small and briny; the longshore men sure look longingly back from a decent woman and forth to the empty possible space aboard their barnacle-scraped boats. What man you walkin’ with? Don’t see none.
One can fantasize right quick about sending off to another land with warmer breezes and new poets to ponder. Making love in the hull with inescapable sand inbetween the buns, hun. Clams for currency. Hundreds of nautical miles.

But the breeze- a melody of crashing waves and the maritime’s half-full loneliness all surf-stretched, and you’re simply incapable of good decision making in wet dungarees, so on we shuffled through the sand and kept watch of the birds.

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Confused Kitchen

Posted in cooking, creativity, fiction, food, musings, poetry in motion, prose, random, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 31, 2018| 10 Comments »

 

Pea soup on the stove
stinking up the place.

If someone were to pop in right now
I’d say “I’m making pea-soup” to explain the smell
Save from embarrassment.

I’d invite them to stay and eat
I always make too much soup.
Who makes just enough?
Is there such a thing?

If they came over they’d notice the piles of papers.
I’d apologize.
I’d say “I’m normally cleaner”. And mean it. Because that’s how I see myself.

How do people maintain their paper piles?
Does anyone? Are there small files that the rest of people hide in another room?

The papers sit next to the boxes to be considered for recycling.
They get walked out incrementally. There’s no rush aside from the guilt
So much tree-waste.
I bought reusable cloths dipped in beeswax to use in lieu of foil.
My tupperware collection is nothing to sneeze at.
This throw-away culture is shame.

If a tree came over right now
I’d extend my sincerest condolences and I’d blush and admonish my own self
I’d say “I try”, though I’ve heard there is no trying.

There’s doing
and there’s not doing.

Once I had a teacher who pulled a tissue from the box.
He told us to try to pick it up, as he let it fall from his hand.
We scrambled for it.
I don’t remember who picked it up, but it was safe and upon the return to his hand
he said “See? There is no trying. You do or you don’t do”.

The tissue was used only for a lesson.
If that tissue walked through my door right now
I would refrain from rubbing my nose on him.
I’d fear him absorbing too much pea soup, so I don’t think I’d extend the offer.
Plus I need to slumber peacefully
without perplexing dreams about animate tissues eating my home cooking.
Though I’d say something like “I’m sorry for your purposeless life and that you must go
hungry
dry
and used in nothing but a questionable metaphoric lesson”.

If someone came over at the same time as the tissue and tree came
I’d have a lot of explaining to do.
And I’d have to do it, according to law, as there is no try.

Maybe I could blame it on the pea soup.
Distract them with health food.
Apologize to it later.

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So Close Love/ Too Far Sun

Posted in love, poetry, prose, random, relationships, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 28, 2018| 9 Comments »

You sun-spot you
you bright-but-tempered
you worn soul.
You don’t hug your path, do you know
you cling to the gutters?
In one place?
You need more butter. To slide you along.

Can an aura be sideways?
Because you radiate different.
Your colors interupted
by the cover you wear.
You deny your brilliance to the people
by coloring yourself with dull, dollar-store crayons
with a Prisma-set just beside you.

You sun-spot you
more deflected than refracted,
pierced and pocked
It’s all beneath your shell
That hides your bed sores.
That’s very heavy.
You are a frightful site
You make a terrible crustacean.

With just one life
When will you be ready to bask in your own light?

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Considering Wall Witnessing

Posted in art, musings, ordinary madness, photography, poetry in motion, prose, random, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 26, 2018| 2 Comments »

Is anyone out there known to have learned skills of building just so that they could destroy, to start anew? If these walls could talk. If they could absorb.
Would they swell, well, wail?
With grief of past renters? Laden with uncomfortable memories of someone’s poor sitcom taste? Or  spooked by the inability to comprehend an old tenants’ idolatry? Or find humor in and joy of private dancing with the likes of us they contain?
Are they pleased with the blush-colored tiles that coat their kitchen parts?
Do they revel in the bed banging against them ferocious, and ache for more as well?
Because if everything has energy, then there stands a chance at a secret life that we know as much of as to think that birds just migrate without communication, but magnetism and instinct? Greedy, narrow, humankind.
So then, am I their favorite thus far?
Should I lean up against them and divine their favorite music? It must be Nina- the album with her in front of a pond in Central Park…
The walls. Inert and unable to grow, only wither in time. Unable to self-fortify. But- able to hear? God ears? You are probably not alone.
Turn off your halogens. Be true be true! If someone or something is always the witness, could you really be you?
You can find a hammer and smash till you’re blue. Or bang out a window to let the air through.
If these walls could listen. If they’ve been listening all along- how would you do? IMG_8144 (2).jpg

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Clouds are Easy

Posted in art, creativity, inspiration, love, meditation, musings, nature, photography, prose, random, travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2018| 8 Comments »

Eves-dropping on neighboring cloud watchers across the isle:

–Young girl- maybe age 7- speaking in absolutes: “I see a hand.”
–Man beside her- maybe mother’s boyfriend: “I see it.”
Pause. Watch. Stillness. “I see some mashed potatoes.”
–Girl -calm: “Oh yeah. Yeah.”
“I see a coyote without legs. Do you see it?
Planes are huge. Almost bigger than the world. We’re almost to space. Did you know that?”
–Man attempts an explanation about atmosphere, stratosphere… starts out strong. Flounders. Reverts to talking about library books on the subject.

Girl turns her head from the window of Largest Views. She finds a heated shaft of sunlight taken to sitting on the top of her hand from the other side of the plane. My side.
Reflection projection.
Steady she holds it; her sun-hand. Her free hand whirling small fingers atop its partner’s radiance. Spinning a small dance above orphic golden. She wants to show her mother who sleeps;
Looking back and forth from mother to glow, mother to glow, mother to glow.
She is a kind child. I can tell. Her mother rests on, while dutifully with providence, she hosts the light.
Girl sees me looking and offers a soft-kid smile my way. It’s too late to look away. I’ve been indulgent in my dreamy observing.
Down she puts the sun.

Back to cloud-watch; the line between boredom and the ease of nothing else to do, giving call to the deciphering of true existences.
High game, low stakes.
Infinite interpretive possibility.
A pooh-bah baby; she tells what’s what. The crown in passing light.
In a flash I’m brought back too.
Times no linear thing when you’re suspended in the air and have exhausted your ink pad and reading resources and suddenly… I’m young again, head-scratching, squinting wonder, looking for what’s really out there.
By and by eking out that dolphin pattern of automatic coordination involving focus, locus and vergence.
If I’d stare hard enough… If she’d stare hard enough…

Now the mother’s eyes are opened and the three talk of sun. I hang on their words like heavy warm suds sky bath; well intentioned interloper that I am.
They share curiosities over cardinal directions; the great Atlantic acting to anchor the origin. Wondering just what they’re flying over. Wondering where the man’s house might be very right now.

In an instant the plane tilts- revealing a ground covered in snow. A secret held from us by the simple act of sheltering our eyes. Covered in snow, dotted in trees. All small far down. Snow inside of snow.

The clouds have begun to thread, actively uniting, they soon mimic the land below as a blanket and a few levels higher measured by hundreds of feet, or thousands if you’re good at guessing jelly-bean-jar-quantities; filtering sun, laying across us fly-ers, dressing us in riches of watermelon and orange juice two hues.

Girl, Man, Mother are quiet. My mind quite quiet. And the clouds- speak silence full into the figures we see of them. Wipe away to white. Begin again if you please.

stard

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