Musing

Poetic musing

The bright side

part of this whole thing

and the sun in one direction

in space

light and dark sides

highs and lows (ok)

but it is not the sun moving through changes

it is this mass of elements

The house is a mess

I've been collecting too many things

Most of it is junk

It just catches the light and blocks it

I need a shave and an antihistamine

I'll start with coffee black

and that muffin which should have been in plastic

two days ago

The sunny side is more flowers in my

front yard than in every other yard in

three blocks combined

On the inside is a bag with about 15 lbs

of peas I need to shell and freeze.

Feeling well worked and tired but

a bit restored from the earlier

pain.

I shall sleep well enough tonight.

Night.

A dimly lit room.

I hear the sprinkler running,

and the crackle of an electric bug killer.

My life line is short

but if I hold my hand just right

there are three extensions that touch

the main line.

The Azaleas are confused

They bloom all year long

one branch at a time.

I don't think they were meant to be house plants.

I have my biggest garden ever.

I could be a vegetarian again --

peas, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, four members of the cabbage family --

but when I get hungry I have my burger with fries.

I have a long list of things to do --

cleaning and organizing,

mowing, planting, framing and check balancing.

I like to sit and rock this chair.

The wind blows through an empty house

and carries the vapors of my life away.

On hard wood floors

I reach out with my drum

gathering up a new life

that I had not considered an option before.

Stiff fingers with dirty yellow nails.

A head that hangs low on a stiff, pained neck.

False start.

Killer coffee in a collapsing chair.

Sleep pressed hair standing up in back.

Ear wet with fresh wax.

The yard needs water. The laundry needs folding.

The right channel of my car stereo doesn't work on really hot days

but returns at night.

I desire. I avoid the pain.

It is a sunny day. Not so hot as yesterday.

A nap would be nice.

Fart, scratch, pick, rub.

More coffee and some abdominal breathing.

It is all automatic

I can hear the garbage truck.

I didn't put out the can today.

That's ok. It was not full.

Dry burning eyes straining to see.

If I were blind I would still touch these things.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to let go of the ten thousand things.

I see the problem, the illusion, the truth of it,

but still I feel attached and full of desire.

Heat

and oil on my face.

Pain

and stiffness in my legs.

I can hear the tick of too many clocks,

the gurgle of too many pumps.

Hunger rips at me as I

sit silently

watching her reactions.

I've climbed out of the river but it's icy

current tempts me. Wrapped up on the

bank I watch it make its way to a deep

and silent sea.

Sleep. Shiver. Shifting my mind. Losing

my train of thought.

I can't remember the question

though I was sure so much depended on it.

I was certain.

One man under arrest

and he can't remember why he started.

Is it OK to dream about freedoms anymore?

Can you build a house without having to ask permission?

High on a wire.

I'm too far out now.

I look back at my life

and it is no longer an option.

I have to keep on moving now

There will be no rest on this road.

Is this more than I want?

It cuts me up like they said it would.

So I can't claim to be surprised

or claim illusions about what comes next.

My fear and violence

My blood and scars

My fight worn frame

Is on your threshold tonight.

God what was I thinking?

I step back from the abyss,

but the security of darkness

is an option I still consider.

The needle's deep and comes out the other side.

So mine, I see, is not the only blood on the floor,

Nor is mine the only knife.

Walking the edge tonight.

It could still go either way.

Barking dogs.

It is going to be a hot day.

I am full and feeling rather tired.

It is 9:13 AM and feels like its 80º in here.

I could kill you.

I could shoot or stab you.

I could kick you in the balls so hard

you would drop to your knees with watery eyes.

I could spend all day writing letters to a friend.

I could stop to clean my house.

I could spend the day tending my garden,

or designing a house or a work of art.

I am hot and tired and full of violence.

I have a list of dreams one hundred years long.

There is a month of chores before I reach

the first of them.

I guess, the chores are one of the dreams.

It is a good time to clean the fish pond.

Vertigo.

From what or where does violence spring?

Irrational violence. The impulse to bash

your face in when you stand next to

me being so civil. Like standing

on a balcony twenty stories high and

fighting the urge to fling myself

off. I stand next to you talking

about simple things all the while fighting

the urge to smash my fist into your

face as hard as I possibly can.

And what about desire? I stand next

to you fighting the urge to kiss and

embrace you. We are just standing here

talking about simple things and I want

to press my lips and tongue against yours.

I want to solidly embrace your back, your

shoulder, your neck, head and thigh. I want

to get so close we cannot be distinguished as

separate people.

There is a killer

and a man of great compassion

within me.

In this life

I did not buy a gun.

a difficult place to be free

pain in my skull

my ear and neck

I sleep for days

don't know why I'm tired. Why shouldn't I be.

don't know why I'm still alive. Why should I be.

I'm all out of pat answers for existence,

all that is left is unknowing.

I feel good about that.

There is more freedom in not knowing,

freedom to see what doesn't fit the explanations,

freedom to look across the void

into the face of god,

into the face of man.

Free because you don't have to control anything.

Free because it's ok if you get burnt to a crisp.

Looking at the mountain.

(what the hell am I doing on this road?)

The light cool air opens my soul.

Old wounds seem to have healed

Oh sure, scars litter my flesh but the blood,

the mud, the throbbing infections are

hardly more than memories.

I feel good and the bags are packed.

I've stepped out of a comfortable cottage

for the first day in years.

Infinite isotropic universe.

Which way do I look?

Infinite horizons divided by frames.

Bars that keep me out,

keep me from falling in.

Proportions intuitive and spontaneous.

Structures a priori, absolute and archetypal.

Space.

Infinite space with constant change and expantion

in every direction, through every layer of time, scale and atmosphere,

through layers of physics, philosophy, metaphysics and

poetry.

Expanded through constellations, cosmologies,

conjunctive numbers, and planetary alignments.

Geometric configurations of creation

(creation myths that is.)

Levels of order.

The circle and the square and the circle squared,

geometric tautologies generated and regenerating

throughout all generations.

Archetypal mythologies deeply embedded in or

arising from deeply within the consciously

observing minds through time and space.

It is night and there are blocks on these infinite horizons.

Could be anything.

Mental blocks, the artists blocks, the cities blocks,

some kind of arresting form,

some immobile primary form,

rules to follow, choices to make

(maybe I should get a real job so I can

fix my television and keep my phone.)

So I return to the desert with tattered shoes, rotting teeth and an empty stomach where the sage, yarrow and Russian olives have rooted in my heart. I wonder if I'll have to make shallow decorative landscapes (sofa art) for the masses or if I'll have to get a part time job and be half an artist. Is it true that an artist must die before his work is considered valuable? That's no fun.

Standing under the clear night sky taking in the universe in an instant. The light of every star converging on my mind in the sublime present and only the present in which to draw that instant out. Perhaps that is reward enough, just to be alive watching the cooling embers from the big bang. It's like finding something you never knew was lost until you feel the cavern it fills in your soul.

It's better.

Oh sure, I'm sore from hard labor

and I blow my nose too much

but there is progress.

The goals do not seem so vague tonight.

The man is some four thousand years old.

Or at least that is what he can remember.

She has just come of age, come to this

age, to our age. She is outside time.

Tonight their bodies stand face to face. This is

larger than they are able to imagine.

This moment takes them. It enlarges them.

It changes them. The times and the timeless merge

and twist and fold and press and bend.

And they stand there. And they see through the

pupils of each others eyes. And they roll and

stretch and pull and see each other wide awake.

Fragments

Orange and violet thistles

Sun bleached trunk of sage

split and peppered with orange lichens.

There was a time when the blue heron

didn't summer by the pond.

The sluggish river has begun to make the

sounds of rivulets and trickles over stones again.

The crickets never left and the skunk

gives me time to walk another way

by rustling in the brush the way

no other mammal would.

The stars. I could swear I hear them too.

A quiet, silent roar over the sound of the highway.

Coyotes however are not even within my distant memories

but are only imagined.