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Posts Tagged ‘prose’

Slow Summer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The butters’ been soft for over a month.

The sky turns a fuzzy pink around 8, reliably.

And speaking of pink- the Satin Flowers have proven their might in the backyard; pushing their elegant heads out of the cracked, compacted earth where the kiddie-pool once stood.

It’s summer in the Northwest, which means evening temps-of-your-dreams when the days are unbearable, which they’ve mostly been.

And speaking of pink- everyone’s walking around like they’ve spent too much time around aunt Dotty, cheeks all pinched-up.

And the crickets have so much to say.
Year after year I wish I could be privy.

A friend said the other day that she was ready for autumn but I told her “no”.

Times’ pulling all my extremities in different directions, asymmetrically. I’m like a wicked little star, shining, pulling. I’m mixed up & twinkly. It feels like it’s been a very long 2 months, that feels like 5 months, that feels like 2 weeks.
I just don’t know anymore.

If I measured the time in zucchini bread I’d be old enough to buy cigarettes, which means tiny flames, which means fire, which means sun, which means long summer nights, walking around aimless with sand in my pockets.

And speaking of pink- my toes are the color of tropical fish bellies. And speaking of sparkly: that too. It’s nice to wear peep-toe shoes when it’s warm, as the rest of the year my skin longs for breeze-contact.

There’s a little dog before me now. Her fur feels of soft, toasty hay. She’s my newest friend. We’re doing summer together from here on in.

I’m not sure she likes the heat terribly, but she certainly likes the butter on the counter & would like to know it better… with her pink tongue.

We’ll celebrate the season some more, sleeping outside in our clunky, well-worn trailer. We’ll pee out in the bushes under the cover of night. Come morning we’ll toast with fresh coffee & some creamy Baileys. And milk the last bit of heaven out of this time while we can.

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Nada Mas

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »

The 1st time I got my own apartment & had my 1st lone sit inside was my 1st big nothing.

Held by one of those clunky papasan chairs that are hard to get into & harder to get out of; creaky & boney. I sat.
Looking at a wall of blank & white being all I wanted to do; realizing- I could.
No one was going to walk in, questioning my inaction.

Never before had I taken such liberties, nor had it occurred to me as an option.

Busy brain owner extraordinaire, my mind is likely like yours; always diligently working to produce fruits.
A perpetual growing season.

When traveling alone I sit on the bed & have another big nothing. It comes over me.

The luxury of this
is everything.

Life doesn’t seem to crop up with these moments very often.

Being beside a forest stream is sweet. There’s a whole different kind of calm. A care & connection that are sparked. And full of so much. Our linkage is summoned. Our hearts become busy. The ocean is much of the same; as is a city in a foreign country full of floating strangers’ heads.

I suppose this is the draw of meditation. Where the emptiness grants a fulfillment.

Is it much like when the night is so quiet that it’s loud?

Try to tell a kid these days the value of vacancy & they might understand better than how I’d have received it as a child. These are over-stimulated times, & I wonder what’s around the corner for this, as we can only crest so high before descending. That is nature, which we still are.

In this hotel room the traffic whirs past, seems to sound out of the thin wall holding me apart from the interstate highway. The lights here cast a soft, welcomed glow. The television is flat before me, but it does not beckon.
My brain is happy as a clam with the gift pile of nothings sitting naked, out of their wrapping.

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Maybe It’s Time to Ride

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 8, 2018| 8 Comments »

To walk the same ground. Different shoes. Different paces. Different people throughout time to walk beside. But, same ground- for too long? Those years’ll oftentimes revolt- real threats to start rubbing together. Melting, one into the next- funneling memories heads into memories asses, making an undecipherable, lumpy chain. Or maybe the times’ll chafe. Summer thighs. Hot without room to give. Furthering from comfort. Friction. Pillaging an Eagle Scout’s deep pocket to find flint and steel.
A spark.
Approaching the apex, to ignite embers to a great flame. After all that time- dreaming of the big burn. The big burn, after all that time- made manifest.

To use these flames to propel forward motion. Call to action. Impetus to blast off.
Mobilizing 4 tires to black-top. Passing  marbled fields, flecked with still cattle. Passing beneath dragged out cotton-candy clouds becoming moon-washed-white before soft, passive eyes. Intercepting lines of human lives of some with thumbs stuck out in the air, shadows growing tall against the dawn, and an eased pull of the wheel and a slowed roll to the right shoulder for a gambled rider. Obliterating stranger danger. Or being plum in the muck of it. Forms and figures.
In forms of different lovers in different beds in different counties, across state-lines, in different ways they call me baby, and hold my face, in different love lusts. Different starchy, faded flower print sheets to tangle in. Different bed springs poking my neck.
In forms of country-side, moment-determined-marvels rewarded only to few witnesses. In forms of passing pickups- brimming with hay bundles, stinkin’ onions, dirty coal, unknowns unnamed, shit-splattered damned livestock, pink weeping lumber, fresh watermelons threatening to tumble out and create ruckus. Imagine losing your life to a melon flying out at your windshield. (Six million ways to die.) Someone somewhere must’ve been this victim. Did you hear about old Josephine..

Highways: full of location-specific vices. Distinctly pertinent to mile pile upon mile of mostly smoothed concrete, stretching out like uncoiling arms in the longest known gravely hug, releasing. Warmth evaporating, forming snake like, peripheral heat dances, fuzzing sights of road sides with the forward world zooming bye. Tumble weed. Abandoned cars, restless, unseen, tadpole filled ponds, far off trailers, ghost stories, squats of tin, the feel of someone’s stare, dust dust dust. Nothing to see, everything to see. Don’t bother time with your has-been-metaphors, we’re here now. Just stay awake with frequent stops to fill up with the kind of coffee that sits snugly between quotation marks, stuffed in scolded-vanilla field flavors- strangled and spanked in hydrogenated ingredients. Settling right into the paunch. Yes, vices. Or glory holes in $4 truck stop showers, good glory leave it be, but entertain curiosity if you must. Life is art.

To travel is the judicious way to live for the writer. For the story teller. For the profane or profound seeker. To be sleepy while at it: the bi-product; the battle; the menace.
To give way and sleep roadside, pitching tents in quarries, behind lean-to’s, forgotten, untended structures, or weedy, wildflower meadows. Or geothermal magic pools.
To wake to the smell of uva ursi, wet earth, and piñon wood-fed-fire’s sourceless smoke. To light the Coleman burner and have tea time surrounded by cricket song and new rays of sun in splendor. To hitch a hammock between the Ponderosas and rub cheek to bark, waking up the nose to the knowledge of consistent presence of that phenomenal albite  subtle scent of root beer. My goodness. Or the desert plants that smell of rain a long while of time away from watering. The peace of morning; the cool bite of it. No other life can know the cumulative sense of freedom. Can’t I show you what my heart has known? I’ve hitchhiked across the divide before.

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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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Chueco

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2015| 2 Comments »

The strangeness of days. The lopsided magic that elbows you from the sidelines. You hold your ribs, shaking your head. It happens. “Did that really happen?” You’ll say,cued up, but you’ll know. YES.
Eye-rubber, head-scratcher days. Where synchronicities pip, pop, pap and you watch. You know something is right- for you at least- in some way- but what an unorthodox display.
When moments and days segue and transcend perfectly into the next. The foreshadowing-of-strange-life-events feature revving.
As we grow, we become more aware- hopefully of the simple one door closed/ another opened equation. It’s genuine application. It’s mystery promise.
Go on, slap your normativity across the face with a wind up and see what comes. It might be giant. A slow giant, with watchful eye’s yet sloth-like timing. Like a continental drift. Before you know it you’re on the other side of the equator. Eating the same cereal all the while.
It’s moves like this that occur when you were sleeping. Be it literally or physically. Suddenly you might be 35 years old, in a kitchen that’s giving up the battle of white walls, a long and scratchy-floored corridor, old mouldings, access to the roof where you’ll take in first-of-morning moments, big ol’ bay windows at your head where you do your best to rest under your prized Pendleton.
Maybe you’ll have gone to a show 2 nights ago that you were looking forward to. One who’s performer you had seen before, who’s lyrics inspired and tickled you; a voice so soft you wanted to make slippers out of it. And maybe that show turned out to be an absolute flop- mimicking a pitiful freshmen art school project on staccato affects on the audience, and an undeterminable counterpart person on stage to remain turning potentially purposeless knobs and staring, full face into the eyes of your singing sweety who would soon melt before you as a bore. And maybe they would remain, staring and staring some more into each other’s eyes, ignoring the crowd at large, and whispering near the microphone; said counterpart looking plain Jane, but when the light hit her just right somehow Alice Cooper would emerge. Sans light tricks. Just a disco ball 20 some odd feet above. Let’s just say. And you told your friends. And the Alice Cooper thing was just undeniable and so-fucking-trippy and it kept happening. A devil woman!
And then you’re in this place, devising a get away plan, when the show ends early anyway, and you decide “Oh how nice, I shall ride my bike home and retire to bed quite early, making up for lack of sleep. How divine”, or something to that effect.
Home you go. Sleep you do. Until 3:37am when bullets ring out. Maybe 6 maybe 7 you can’t be sure because waking up with jolts and orientation isn’t your strong suit. And then a man wailing begins. And you call the police, and you go to the living room and you watch the man writhing on the sidewalk, 1 story below and about 7 yards from your building and punctured with bullets, and you; helpless in your robe, holding your mouth and wishing for a hug. Reevaluating the definition of loneliness.
Cops come after not too long and your eyes won’t budge until you forcibly pull yourself back to bed with silver brown black red sparks jittering your spinal column, heavying the pit of your back and lay there as the police commence taking witness testimonies right below your bedroom window until 6:50am.
And then your day has begun with sleep being a lost design, and you are nothing more than shot with rubber-band-brain thoughts continually slinging back to the sounds of what is to be a man the most alone in the world when consolation is the most important. And-oh-the-humanity.
And big baby, suck it up because you’re in the city now and it’s time to get tough and cut the gasps.
And then the day passes until the moment where you return home from the long-ass work day, to unwind with your pup-beast-filthy-love-animal-dog, and you go a walkin’ and a talkin'(on the phone), and as you round the dark corner, you emit a silent scream because… a gun! On the pavement. Too much. Your friend awaits on the other side of the phone afraid and waiting to be informed, as you realize- it’s not so much a gun as an abnormally large and angular shaped, 90 degree turd, in the perfect shape of a big big revolver. And you release in laughter and your friend remarks “I don’t know which is worse”, as your dog has begun to help himself to perimeterless snack, so you tell her what’s worse. And you know you have discovered a whole new level of turd burglar.
The continuous line, having been so for a while now; curious, unpredictable, colorful, undeniable. It’s the strangeness of days, when you as the observer skirt harm, eyes alert and concerned, yet an energy of still and constant, if not necessarily detached- lightness of being. Atypical stage. The comedy, the tragedy, roller coaster magic, continuos turn. Wheel gears gripping and moving forward as we ride. It’s all happening.
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Tramps pt. 1

Posted in art, creativity, fiction, graffiti, musings, ordinary madness, poetry in motion, random, tramps, travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2014| 2 Comments »

Some people will never know peppermint tea.
There will be a wedge between them and this.
These are the same people who seldom see downy pillows, subject to innocent giggle-moment feather loss where that one puffs out. Where your head lays down, and then out it comes, or put on a fresh pillow case, and out it comes. Hardly a thing to notice; yet a subtle representation of rest and comfort. And it falter-sways to the floor. Maybe it’ll attract the curiosity of the nearest dog, causing a little head cock, that feather.
Perhaps these people saw and knew those pillow-feather moments once, but that was a long time ago and many trades have been made. Far, ever farther from places with such bed-luck.
The people of no tea. On land where whistles represent alerts grander than hot water proclaiming readiness. More of a can-cup, heat sourced from over shabby fire scraped together with treated lumber that busies itself turning concerning hues. The tea peace idea replaced with Jimmy Dean’s neans with factory in Milwaukee, where disgruntled employees full of creaks and muscle spasms (who also remain in the dark on peppermint tea) slowly mill. Replacing tea-soft-moments in nuzzling chairs with pink cheeks, down the line to dusty denim around the fire and hardened cheek bones. And scrapes and scratches and scars. And hobo songs. And plastic bottles and hooch. And whiskey-wet ground in respect to those gone before.

Hobo hobo hobo song. A life unknown and not very long. Plenty adventure, enough wrong. Find a quick home, then move along..

Where hopes of red headed waitresses taking orders in diners in light blue dresses for 3 lucky dimes worth bring steaming cups of bottomless black coffee and extra sugar packets in the next town- soon to dream about her on the way to the next one after that. Though no rush of course, though not slow enough for that dern peppermint tea.

Tea has to be held just right. Tea is open wide and higher maintenance than one might realize without being given the right platform. It’s booze that comes in a bottle neck. And it’s booze that warms longer. It’s swishless. It’s tip resistant. You can’t hold tea in an open train car. The racket movement that stays rumbling in kidneys even with two feet on solid earth. Tea wouldn’t know how to act. The stars governing the sky with exposed souls beneath it, roofless, riding rails, bargaining, whittling, asking for mercy, sharpening shank, or challenging the night’s deep abyss with a staring contest.
Tea wouldn’t know this life. Too soft and soothing. Never told in conjunction to characters like Nebraska Pete or Bozo Rider.
Some people will never know peppermint tea.
There will be a wedge between this and them.


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Two R’s

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2013| 6 Comments »

Popular vote favors math due to it’s predictability.

However, not all maths be linear. Take for example, the addition of air with words. There is no probability. Subtract what you thought was a solid prime. What have you?

I am reluctant to call myself a writer, because the amount of writing I have produced over the last two months, since your switch from a positive to a negative, has been a big, fat, zero. Two entire months shadowed in you.

You were your own, and there was just one of you- even if your magnitude might be confusing. Sometimes you would split into more when you swallowed a certain elixir that wasn’t very magical, though in your final act it did make you disappear.

I had thought of adding to you. When you’d ask me to be your Valentine. When you would invite me to Little Africa. Or Christmas. Or cave with private, tailored confessions. I’d thought of our equation. But ultimately I feared our factoring, as I had already been in that class before.

From the beginning moment that I saw you at the hospital, two months ago, my two eyes on your half-way-there-self, I began concocting deals with the spirit world, crunching numbers, flinging promises at the heavens, summoning spells. Anything to keep you whole.

The look upon your limbo lips. You lay and you tremored. When I talked softly to you and told you secrets, and you moved your left hand- coma be damned- and we all saw. You were amidst. I did not believe you could actually be gone.

And since that day, my brain- most affected by your absence- has been coated in memory and remorse. Something is stuck to the back of my head, thus far preventing me from proceeding. Cigarette tar to lungs. I want unstuck and I still want you. Here. Now. I hope you know I would have stayed longer. And if you lived and you had a long recovery I would have stayed by your side and celebrated your health when it returned…

Amazing how the act of your omission- can disrupt my whole whole.  My entirety at times. Upon my wake. My sleep. Throughout my day. This heavy heart.

All you did is go away. But you were a constant and I didn’t believe you would die before obtaining higher numbers.

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The Summoning

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2013| 10 Comments »

Soft breath came out in undulose roll, a serenity given to understanding incidences of stolen moments receding. Time time time, just a moment away.

All she ever wanted was a muse by her standards which were seemingly not set too high. It didn’t take much to ignite the visionary exacting that lay inside her, but love was indubitably, formidably, the key. The world could speed up for all it wanted, or creak slowly in orbit, if-to-when that one would enter stage left. Or right. Or come climbing down downy, silken spun, dream-fire-escapes and just come on in. The water is oh so fine.

Her inner workings were a scramble. Try she might, but the holes inside were waxing and waning with the tides and the moon. Her fits of full and lonely nipping at her heels just the same.

Sometimes the vibe was self-evident. A physically provable thing, probable thing, displayed in sights of messy hair, tired from tugging. Showed up in baggy eyes, bruised from booze. Achey muscles, self-induced over-workings, awaiting their holy massage.

Thank the greatest ones for her breath. The flowers were with gratitude. The trees felt younger for it. Where she could finally slow her roll and simply believe… just a moment away.

xo

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Saturday Night After

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2012| 10 Comments »

Set the ships to drunken sails and recognize a second rate, land dwelling pirate’s tale as it’s spun from the gallows. The recesses of the places where the brain’s gone swimmy. If it’s that time again, then you know better than to pause and reach for the remote, but to go for a long shot and pour a stiff, demanding, engaging, glass of golden whiskey from the beveled decanter of your fantasies because we are about to tie one on.

It’s what goes bump in the night that makes it worth living. It’s the serendipitous encounters and casual, unhinged conversations laced with unintentional, impassioned, stranger spit in your face, or incessant arm squeezes in the name of emphatics and whoa! that make the night. It’s the soft feeling of ahh, and the loss of interest in being proper on any level where the buttons may be too tight. Where hair comes down and the neighboring table becomes your best friends, never to be seen again.

It’s these moments that make me wonder in their wake. What lies behind being intoxicated- to the fullest extent of the word. What spirit level of the decadent Gods do we submit ourselves to  and is it in safe keeping? Are our soul’s viels spread thin or are we safe in our temporary state? Do we all come equipped with our own self defeating mechanism? Is it a balance regulator? What we feel feels so true and then reason and logic inevitably show their disaproving faces in the morning time.

It’s 3 something in the morning. I drove myself home and I probably shouldn’t have, though it sure is hard to tell these days. My estimated average being 5-6 drinks in four hours. Normalcy? I accomplished a small amount of karaoke and am still trying to get to the bottom of why it’s very important for the human race, but fall sleepily upon these keys at my attempts to spew what have you at what who you. It was a nice night, watching everyone dance and sing. That is some company I can keep and can get behind this every now and again.

Welcome to the feverish swells, in a world where the protagonist, a young woman, had to pull over on her way home and purge-write the ramblings down. These days find her like a fisherman, grasping a giant net and hooping stars to ride, hoping for trails of new theory to push into pockets and come out producing beautiful  print worthy pieces. Under the glory of a squat, humble, halved moon- the only witness to the madness, the love, the atrocities, the unspeakable acts of devotion. I’ll be the first to admit that I did briefly wonder the secrets and what that glowing orb did see and what she knew and how it may link back to me. It was a night of fun where we sang from our depths and drank like sailors, though nothing unknown. Momentarily did I wonder about where the ghost of the heart that is not mine yet and that I couldn’t call for because the phone would ring to nowhere was. But I put my blinker on again and kept driving.

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