Various and Sundry

In the cadence of Moby's "Run On"

Spring thaws
with a
drip-drip-drip-drip

and water
in pools,
accumulates;

(mossy bits
stirred up
and rising)

- even moss rises
when ya
stir it up.

 

Dekalb
Dec 2014

Spider at Papi's

Papi's place

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Xmas 2014

 

Chi-town Shoreline

Corn Country

Christmas Monkey

Night light

Rude Awakening

4 a.m., day before last, I found myself shambling through the house like a golem, recently expelled from a dark and twisted dream.

I'd insert a 'bunghole' metaphor here - ala Bukowski - but just can't seem to bring it off. Suffice it to say I felt sh*tty and slightly off kilter.

Passing through our dimly lit bathroom, I noticed movement and looked up to lock eyes with my own startling reflection.

The thick lipped and squinty-eyed face looking back at me could've been that of a stocking-faced intruder with its sleep and age distorted features.

The eyes, especially, were odd, and I was reminded of a 70's commercial where you could carve someone's likeness from an apple, then bake it til it shriveled up into a shrunken head.

I remember being fascinated with those eyes as a child - how life-like and human, the bags and creases around them.

Now looking at myself through crab-apple eyes, it struck me I was wearing a mask of my own face, which didn't quite fit.

More and more, I find myself resembling an Old White-Guy.

Which is not entirely surprising, of course, but...

Recently, my father told me I looked like Mit Romney. 

F*cking Perfect.

Seasons Greetings 2014

Moving on

I dreamt last night I was on a small island in Malaysia or Thailand.

The water was warm and chalky blue, teeming with little dark-eyed crustaceans - a cross between pill bugs and shrimp - pinching me as I swam.

Earlier, I'd been lounging in a glass booth within a large hut-like restaurant, regaled with food and drink, when I realized something was amiss.

I made eye contact with a man chopping fish in the market below,  looking at me through what I'd thought was two-way glass - myself, naked to the waist in preparation for some ceremony.

I pointed at my eyes to confirm and he gave a kurt nod in response, looking down and away.

I was apparently on display, perhaps in danger.

I slipped outside the booth, vaulted the railing, and plunged into the blue water.

Minutes later I emerged on the other side of the bay with a familiar couple from my past. We climbed the wide concrete steps emerging from the water and continued up them and over the dune.

I looked back to see a sand volleyball player I'd once known, crouched on the landing.

He, too, gave me a nod - but seemed disinterested.

He was from another life and it seemed I was moving on to the next.

  

all things converging

Just another day

We were walking on a well worn path worn through a grove of large cottonwood trees.

It meandered, the path, curbed by great shaggy trunks and little boulder filled hillocks, with tree roots and cobble stones here and there.

It was beautiful but slow going and I soon decided to fly - glide really - and I pushed forward into the air about chest high, leaving my feet and letting momentum carry me, kind of like skate boarding only not.

You really should learn, I said.

I know, you replied, and at that same moment what we thought had been another hillock started to move just ahead of us.

It was a guinea pig (the size of a VW Bus) and it snuffled once, in gentle exasperation, and then ambled off into the forest.

It was all so normal.

cottonwood 

cityscape

Morning Routine

From darkness,
warmth
and bedsheets,

our limbs intertwined,

a siren's distant warbling
beckons us

outside...

while
Sun waits
low

behind the hedge
to spring
(crouched and ready)

to devour us
with flaming teeth

and

another day's mundanities.

On the third night

I dreamt I was a young woman with a complete drum set out in the woods waiting to be played.

I could see it in my mind, surrounded by snow laden pine boughs, gleaming in the mist.

The second night

I dreamt I was a character played by James Gandolfini.

He'd broken into the house of his estranged wife with the crash of a splintered door, and maybe hurt a person or two but they were blurry images at best, in the face of his need.

She was small and half naked in a thin, half robe, with a blonde helmet of hair and eyes like a deGrazia painting, and he found her by the big open shower at the back of of the bungalow.

It was more like a stage than a shower and when he started taking off his clothes, she looked at him with dead eyes and said "I won't do it, I deserve a day off."

Only she wasn't talking to him, she was talking to the people watching her through the bubble eye lens in the shower wall.

I guess they were in charge.

From a dream this morning between 4 and 6

"Its a sarupe" said the little girl, "to keep dogs from biting themselves."

It was a giant plastic cone with the point cut off, and I knew what it was for, just never heard it called that.

She looked old timey, with curled blonde hair and and a checked pink dress - but the colors were faded, as if she'd just stepped out of an old photo.

She handed me the "sarupe".

And now I'm typing this with the thought of it around my neck. 

Autumnal sunrise down Knoxville way

Homage

What I see
when da toaster sees me
Doo dah.

Driving down a dirt road north of Phoenix, just before dusk;

I saw him running, the man, with cleft chin thrust grimly forward, elbows swinging high and fists forward into uppercuts.

He was in his late 50's/early 60's, with the look of someone who might've once been a captain of industry.

His strides, too, were exaggerated, as if bounding but without much bounce.

In fact, he looked more like a man imitating a superhero (the Flash maybe?) then someone actually running and I slowed to catch his eye as I drove past, expecting to see a little sparkle there, hinting at the performance he was putting on.

Instead, he seemed to be within himself - with a glassy-eyed, vacant stare that belied his physical hyperbole.

"Hunh," I thought to myself, and drove on.

A few days later I found myself out with the boys, tearing up the night (read: too many drinks and too few credit cards - still haven't found that last one!) until we wound our way to Crescent Ballroom, and myself, joined by LB, out on the dance floor.

There was a young woman DJ spinning and I soon approached to challenge and beguile her with my wisdom, insight, and diverse musical knowledge:*

"Got any Devo?" I asked.

"That was Devo," she retorted.

Which didn't make any sense, 'cause it hadn't been - but the club was loud and either of us might've misheard so I forged on, trying to rejoin with a request for "The Specials" - at which point, she rolls her eyes, cuts me off mid-sentence, and says:

"I'm gonna play what I'm gonna play."

The record didn't come to a screeching halt, but man it felt like that.

And I thought of the guy running down the dirt road.

What I'd thought had been a playful gesture, had been called out as self-important grandiosity. And irrelevant.

I turned, and with that just-kicked-in-the-nuts feeling, left the DJ's area.

Went back to the table, drank half a beer, got fully distracted, then 2 minutes later, LB and I were out on the dance floor, cuttin' it up.

The good news?

1. The DJ didn't suck.
2. The flipside to being old (and maybe a few sheets in the wind) is that sh*t rolls pretty easily off your shoulders.

We danced the night away, and it was… delightful - irrelevance be damned!

Now if I can just find that debit card.

Hallow's Eve

two-fer

Controlled Burn

West of Flagstaff
(near Kendrick Mtn)
10.18.14

Down but not out

The grandmother
like a golem
lies dormant under the bed,

awaits
the plaintive cries of her children's children

- themselves,
bright eyed and pink toed,
peering into the darkness:

a detritus of dog's hair, dust bunnies,
old skin cells
and dreams
unrealized -

"I need you, Grandma!"
her summons.

With the sound of a frozen tire,
mis-shapen and thumping over hard ground,
she rolls out

into the light

(as dog's claws clatter on hardwood floors,
scrabbling for purchase);

wide-eyed
and wild-haired,
she peers up at them

- lips pulled back revealing
gleaming gums and teeth, smiling
and not smiling -

exclaims,
voice indignant and abuzz,
"no son of mine will grow a beard!"

and
quickly spins
back towards the void

-but-

"wait, Grandma, wait!"
stops her dead

(in motion)

and pulling her towards
(her daughter's sons and daughters,
faces beaming)
the light,

what was gnarled inside her,
unknotted
rises.

There's life in this old girl, yet.

Head

Here's a secret

I'm in disguise
and so are you...

now gaily dance we all. 

Hamlet had it wrong

To do

and 

not do;

pretty much the same...


A thought which occurred to me at the bare ass end of meditating this morning. Something I hadn't done in a while.

And while this may seem to be the recipe for antipathy it's actually the opposite.

There is a poem which bespeaks the agony of indecision:

head says stay 

heart says go 

(the town is half a mile away)

Or there's the Clash, in days of yor, ask/singing "should I stay or should I go?"

If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay there will be double.

You get the idea.

But at the heart of the torment is indecision. Once decided, the clouds part, the sun shines forth and everything is illuminated...

Unless, of course, you double back.

***

Poop. I may've bitten off more than I can chew in a pre-work segue.

More later? :)

Kansas City

There and back

Morning of the night we flew to Kansas

Trotted the dogs down to Nami, a local watering hole (read: vegan coffee house) in prep for our trip.

Saw these flowers in the window and liked the industrial frame narrative.

Post effing of image, compliments of Camerabag.

All very exciting, I'm sure.

Tra-la-la.

More random stuff

Omni-mnemonic - 1. A word I made up 2. the name of my new band 3. an adjective imbuing an object with the ability to remind us of everything all at once!

Interactive poem snippet #97
(you fill in the blank)

The slope of his shoulders
like crested dunes,
slip faces eroded,

and
bare boned buddha-
like
(blank)
in repose

*

Shaved my beard day before last. Well, part of it, anyway. The old wolf's gray beard bottom.

Was left with what was alternately described as "the molest-ash" (a molester's mustache for the uninitiated) and meth dealer couture.

I'd left the sideburns long and pointy - sorta mutton-chop-esque - and with them flowing, unbroken, into my mustache, thought I'd look a bit period, and/or steampunk.

This, apparently, was not the case.

Here's a somewhat flattering pic of same. Blurry and dark helps:

And yeah, those are hipstamatic-ized cellphone pics, mimicking the colloidal photo process. Photo above was snapped as I caught some hot chic randomly walking through my living room necked, btw.

Is this a great country or what?

Speaking of colloidal photography:

1. Think I'd like to do that*
2. Here's some links to a coupla peeps I found online and me likey:

    a. this one
    b. the other one

*Not that I'd ever do something to actually make this happen, like say, go somewhere and be so instructed. The universe will, no doubt, provide such an opportunity as deemed necessary. This has worked so well for me in the past.

Untitled Poem

PART 1

I think
the things

we think

think us;

like raindrops
cast from clouds

bejeweled and sparkling
(in blades of light)

we
fall
upon
the earth's
fissured skin,

accumulate
in ruts & crevices

and
soaked
up by the loamy soil,

with roots
and mitochondria
co-mingled,

succumb

and in the darkness

sleep

(azured skies
and honeyed light
beckoning).

Yet another installment of the universe in my head

a.k.a. Mental Colon Blow

(Apology to follow)

Hey.

Saw Frank last weekend and it was a hoot.

This is a movie about a guy who wears a paper mache head.
And he's a musician.

Okay "hoot" may be a misnomer, but enjoyable?

Way.

For me anyway.

I should mention for my "half-tempted" friend, not so much.

(and as these words are typed I hear a pseudo-subliminal rumbling sound - distant, rhythmic and beguiling, like drums or ants marching or dwarves singing under the earth - building louder and clearer til the mumbled rumblings erupt in croaked, heavily trebled words:  

"…THERE'S a JUMBLE in your HEAD! YES - word JUMBLE in your HEAD!"  

Only it's more like an experiential jumble, really, with everything trying to come out all at once. Omni-mnenomic*, maybe? Like that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. book - where he experiences different events in his life simultaneously - Slaughterhouse 5? All very zen, btw, with each point of the river separate and yet connected {and are these pertinent ponderings I posit -or- just another attempt at self-aggrandizement or even mental masturbation?}… 

{sound of record screeching to a halt} 

Holy Poop, peepahs! We gots ta get back on track! 

{sound of dogs ears flapping while shaking its head}  

Where was I? 

Oh yeah, time jumble. But we'll get back to that.  

There's a rythym to things, after all.) 

But why this movie?

Because the ramblings of a madman are revealed in the light of truth and beauty.

Hunh?

You know…  like how a single strand of shag carpet - magically imbued with the universality of human existence - can represent loneliness and/or stoicism.

All you gotta do is put an idea into words, create music random and atypical as the lyrics, and then play with fervored virtuosity. To be frank, that is.

Easy, right? :)

And, yeah, there's some narcissism involved (surprise!). After all, it wouldn't resonate without a certain sense of self-identification.

"Half-tempted" and LB paid me the compliment of my life, saying I reminded them of the guy.

"The guy who sucked or the other guy?" I asked.

The other guy, as it turns out.

So there's that. Plus I can't get the last scene out of my head (and it's been days now):

As Frank fumbles his way back to a semblance of sanity - no, more like peeps thru the curtain of sanity at the lights of hearth and home (which, for him, is the band and his music) he starts muttering something about himself and the sh*t-hole honky tonk where he's found them, something like: 

"Dirty wall paper and the fumbling digits of his fingers…" 

Which feels like a look into the dirty corners of his mind - until - he's handed a microphone and the  mutterings evolve into a mantra, then a verse, which builds in intensity, until with tears in his eyes he looks up at them and sings, resplendent: 

"I love you all.   

I LOVE YOU ALL. "

To which I can only retort... "ditto."

AFTERWORD - All apologies for the previous blather, gentle reader - in particular, the 1st parenthetical paragraph above leading to nowhere. But there's been this log jam in my head of late - with the key log elusive (a single log, that when re-moved, frees up all others)** and previous to now it's all been "Log Jammin!"***

*"Omni-mnenomic - say that three times fast. And yes, I just made this up.
**Key Log - a concept once gleaned in one of the Dune books by Frank Herbert. Don't know if it's an actual historic term, but sure feels like one.
***Log Jammin'- fake porn from The Big Lebowski

Postpartum Sum Up - Frank is the "Jack-in-the-Box" guy putting his existential crisis to music.
Alternate Title to this Article - "The Importance of Being Frank"

feet
awash in
faded
light,

faintly,
saintly
in
repose...

plastic flowers in dying light

Dem Bones

Down Mexico Way

Effing with my Phone Cam on the Mexican Border

Luminous

unseen

Go behind the scenes

and everything 

(it seems)

takes on a twinkly light.

Witness 

concrete and glass

(just beneath the overpass)

gleaming, glowing

in the night.

Everything's beautiful

yes

everything divine

as you tromp

(with pomp)

besottedly

behind the great divide...

Portrait of the Artist in a Toilet

Hammer Time

Aspire

waltzing
with my baby
to the Tennessee Waltz