rearview solstice

they said it was the shortest day not a D-Day but a December diurnal one a solstice they said something about the sun earth nexus something about the failing light flailing to find itself on the upswing stretching out the light the definition of day and now I am flailing to see that in my February-drenched rearview mirror the one with the solstice memory the one with the solstice promise winking at me the driver me the one masquerading as something someone whose name escapes me

echo chamber

Say it again. And again n n n n . Re-re-re-re-reverb erb erb erb. Anyone here? Anyone hear? Echo and Narcissus. Waves. Repercussions. Re-echo. sierra echo x-ray. A room of one's own. Cathedral choral. Chamber music. Sacred sound. Ordinary space. Ordinary sound. Rippling. Less less less less less gone. Repeat beat. Narcissus and Echo. Solo. Vox. Voice. Void. Hollow. Hallow. Hollow. Hallow. Hollow.

increasingly disappearing

oxymoron of love or whatever you call it Leonard Cohen called it room service to disappear increasingly meaning the apex of detachment the antithesis of attachment currying favor with the healthy self opposite the poisonous spice of obsequious pandering apposite the embrace of fullness of time other side of waning decrease withering wallowing Joyce is dead nobody does this crap anymore this fancy tapdance this diamond studded diversion increasingly disappearing into equanimity tempered balance buoyant serenity unfathomable steadiness floating oceans of oh-my-this  

3 hardest words

I was wrong
you were right
we were wrong
they were right
I guessed wrong
thought I knew
had it figured
assumed it was
love or hate
hate or love
won't you try
try I did
we found out
maybe next time
no next time
time passes quickly
long story short
short story shorter
you and me
you and I
we three kings
you three queens
paper or plastic
not like that
is it real
is it over
I feel fine
stop right here

couldn't

tie my shoes
blow bubblegum bubbles
ride a bike
float
lose my virginity
or anyone else's
get sober
behave
not say it
say it
be celibate
stay married
remarry
divorce
stay divorced
lie

and then I could

Hymn to Heavy Metal

Crumpled metal as if sculpted. Dangling wires. Sagging wires with frayed skin connected to transformer. Weeds growing from cracks. Rust. Graffiti. "Hence False" on the nearby rolling freightcar. Fissures in skyscraping iron structures. Cogen plant. Dead. Unburied. Absence of steam, vapor, exhaust, particulate matter. Wind-rippling silence. Clarion call of afternoon sunlight. Solemn parade of dead turbines in the foreground. Failed saplings spawned in heavy metal. Groaning background freightcars. Hum of paper recycling plant to my back. Trucks delivering gypsum. Drooping sheet metal. Unround holes. Swallowing silence.

as if possessed

we called it a loan so give it back

you got behind on your payments, didn't you

so did I so did I, I did

return to sender became our mantra

who owes whom, you said

we signed no papers

I didn't owe nobody nothing triple negative

we lost count not that we ever counted

 on anything

payments you ask what payments

no cash no credit no receipts

no currency no coin of the realm

and now they're talking repo

as in repo man or woman

as in repossess a heart take it back

as if a heart could be possessed, owned, loaned

in possession of one's faculties

self-possessed

forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors

possession is nine tenths of the law

search and seizure as if possessed

breach the peace

round up your posse

reply by replevin

in other words give back

what never was  

the night dawn

before the dew burns off 

burying the dead, and others

this interment no death dirt tossed the blue yellow butterfly flowers curlicued on the tabled urn her hard-earned urn beside the appointed Book of Common Prayer petitions we recite in common we mouth to the wind her uncommon age virtues demeanor generosity laughter tears we leave these severed maternal ashes for others for strangers to plant no not ashes cremains into the ground it is not her and it is not the ground yet the table the surrogate altar and it is not her here not quite do not look here said the angels at the tomb the gardener a simple hole in the ground a pale rose on the table an alstroemeria bouquet on the gravestone ashes to ashes burying the dead burying this dead engraving her memory what remains

let the dead bury the dead let the dead bury their own dead Jesus snapped hurried harried not my problem as if to say more urgent matters burn at hand such as now and the living above the dirt those of us still born still breathing

bury as in hide conceal protect shelter preserve

others

as for others entomb their reckless ecstasies those exalted maelstroms we loved to call love singing o happy fault o happy day night

bury it all bury it cheap or dear bury it deep

where every singed seed 

stalks the grave ground's readiness

where watered ripeness raves

My Last Hurrah

Give it one more try. Let's go out with a bang, shall we? One more shot. A last fling. My last hurrah. Throw caution to the winds. Three sheets to the wind, one more time. Some equation. Unmoored, head-first toward the shoals. Huzza. He who laughs last. Cries: "Hooray, hurry, oh hell." Gonna wait till the midnight hour. It'll be different this time. I promise. A look in the mirror: "No more." My swan song sung. My dregs done drained. My last hoorah. Hand over flame. How long, lord? The firing squad at dawn. Last requests? Sink or swim. Sunken treasure. Abandoned ship. Grace unnamed. Surrendered me. And salvaged self. We white flag waved. All aboard. We sure set sail. Wind at our backs. Into the sun. Under the wing. My first hurrah. Our shelter from the storm. Your brooding love. Our anchors aweigh.

thesaurus rex regina

Now you search the books in vain for a better word for lonely . . . 

 "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore," Phil Ochs

adrift unmoored broken islanded hungry stranded abridged severed cut fractured vacant zeroed parched drowned halved kenneled asunder rent null quods torn unned x'ed entrailed gutted lost jonesed moitiéd wasted only yearning  

 

winter solstice

now that that has passed we can say with confidence that summer is on the way not almost here no none of that but lightening the journey lighting the way leaving a crack tilting the door open and what is the origin of the word solstice anyway I'd venture a tipping toward or away from the sun sonny boy

positing possibility

Seven posts in one day invites a comment I shall not be so rude as to make, which if I were to articulate it, might be a bit of braggadocio (is that how you spell it?) echoing back to my youth, my so-called salad days, whose statements are prone to excess and pomp anyway -- and which assume a form of fiction in the latter years.

into the virtual void

I wonder how many posts it will take before I can conjure one legitimate comment from somewhere on the planet, in any language, and without explicit invitation begging for validation? If I were to let loose with a slew of naughty, raunchy words, dub them keywords, would the SEO gods and goddesses, the SEO daemons, vouchsafe to reward me with visitations from kindred spirits? And would such visitation(s) (the Visitation, one of the mysteries of the Rosary, a mystery that salutes hospitality, radical hospitality) be meaningful in any real way, or merely cyber-community masquerading as touching me/them/you in some undefined but visceral, vital way? Too many words, too many syllables. So, into the virtual void, I tap tap tap upon the ivory keys of an off-white keyboard, wondering again that if I typed a string of sex sex sex sex sex sex [that secular pseudo-sacrament that knows no bounds] ad infinitum ahem sex sex sex sex someone in the former Soviet Union or one of its satellites would sneak a peak here and either smirk or confess or more likely instantly skip off to somewhere more scintillating, at least more graphic, photos, images, flash, kazow, kapow, firework crackle of pleasure's boulevards. Wasn't Pinocchio exiled to Pleasure Island? How hellish Disney made it, a Puritan streak running from Nathaniel Hawthorne straight to Anaheim or Orlando, not in bloom or in bloom, take your pick. If I write enough words, enough topics -- say, from Moby-Dick to the San Francisco Giants, from Central Park to Kazakhstan, someone's bell is bound to chime, someone's solipsism is apt to be tickled, don't you think? Speaking of thinking (or thinking of speaking), neurologists inform us that thinking and feeling go hand in hand, they are indivisible, so take that [insert vocative comma here] Mr. Descartes. And therefore as St. Stephen's Day or Boxing Day draws to a close, at least in some time zones, cue up the old anthem of the son, the Saint Stephen ode that the Grateful Dead sang out, the hymn to the sun, as night falls in swirling wintry wolf-whistle wind in the northern climes.

Lake Effect Meditation

Windswept snow, coming from where or when we can only guess, just past the verge of light, on the other side of arid; the effect of the lake is fluff, moisture to moisture, lashes to lashes, spindrift spun, moody madness, baleful blizzard. Cause and effect, lake and effect, noun and noun, verve to verb, rippling through raptures of featherweight white affecting those who are showered by Ontario's halo by a lacustrine lustre. Lake effect: dust upon dust upon swirl upon silent upon crystal upon flake upon land upon hill and plain and dale and upon Onondaga upon stutter of wind and warp and weave. Lake effect.

The Hit Charade

Jokingly, we used to say, sitting at a restaurant in Manhattan, any restaurant, don't sit with your back to the entrance door, sit facing the door, as if we were important enough to be rubbed out in a mob hit, and as if this seating arrangement would protect any one of us. This was in the days when Paul "Big Paulie" Castellano was in fact assassinated just outside Sparks restaurant off or on Third Avenue, not far from where I worked, and not too distant in time from when I, Pawlie Kokonuts, had walked by the steakhouse, which is now probably closed. Of course, it's not like one has to be important to be felled by mob bullets, or by anyone's bullets, or by anything. Collateral damage is the military term, ain't it. But the biggest fallacy of all, as we were saying at breakfast Saturday at the Good News Cafe, the biggest pretense of all is the illusion of control. Sure, if you had a machine gun, a Tommy gun, as it was called in the Al Capone days, you might be able to spray your attackers with hot metal before they got you. Maybe. But unlikely. You might more likely be in mid-bite of your ravioli or mid-dip of your bread into the olive oil or spreading butter on your bread or in latter-day modern life feeling your cellphone vibrate in your pants, only to realize it's your leg going numb from the onslaught of the loss of consciousness and blood in the final nanoseconds, just as you were formulating the syllables of a final joke about vibrators vibrate get it haha a joke they all have heard from you countless times haha as it dawns on you in the darkest of dawns that your dawns are over, buddy. The utter conceit of it all, to think you are not powerless, to think that your position, your positioning, your placement, your posturing, your posing, your pronouncing, your protecting will stave it off, will delay it, will forestall it, will spin a cocoon around it, will armor you against arms and the man, or woman, or transgendered, will make you quicker, safer, surer, you or yours, if only you had faced the entrance, if only sooner, later, this, that, a little over here, there, anywhere, everywhere, if maybe why not if that or this. The utter hubris of it. They say alcoholism is the disease of denial but the disease of denial is called by something else, a tiny four-lettered L word we all conspire to and with and for (and other prepositional propositions), something we all aspire to as we pray for its continuance fending off respirable dust unto dust, just as Father Luke once intoned or invoked, or maybe even choked on the words, I don't know.

And that, I postulate, as a poor postulant, is why the last episode of The Sopranos was right and fitting, in the familiar family way.

Snapshot

On a hillock by the park's entrance, a three-iron shot from my back door, stands a cluster of pines, in the city confines, and at the foot of these pines a bed of needles burnished a burnt sienna, beckoning me to lie down in their autumnal comfort, their soft cushion with last year's fragrances and brittle repose, so yielding, so inviting.

But I keep walking.

Gone With The Windy Drafts

Disclaimer in Fine Print: Well, it's a good thing this blog has nothing to do with real life, and that it chronicles the misadventures of an impurely fictional persona, Pawlie Kokonuts. Yeah, what a relief that it's more factoid than fact. Sure.

Why is it that so-called experts (called subject matter experts, or SMEs, in some fields) think more is better? They wallow in bloviated, turgid, verbose prose. The wings of their condescension sail loftily on windy drafts of repetitive redundant redundancy. If you can say it, spray it (all over the page).

Of course, redactors (those of us in an editorial role) are mere "wordsmiths," respected for the polished veneer of their diction, certainly not valued for their substantive contributions. We prettify; SMEs solve ponderous problems with tumefacient efficiency.

Call it a rough day in the mines.

We all have them.

Oh well. I don't care if the final product ends up in Swahili; I get paid the same.

Mapenzi salama

Kondomu

Kama unahisi uko tayari kufanya mapenzi, au tayari unashiriki katika ngono, ni vyema kuchukua tahadhari. Hakikisha katika harakati zako za kufanya mapenzi, unajali afya yako kwa kufanya ngono iliyo salama. Inaweza kuwa vigumu, na jambo unalolionea haya kujadiliana na mapenzi wako, swala la uwezekano wa kuambukizwa magonjwa ya zinaa, na kutumia njia za kuzuia mimba.

Asante*


* thank you

Bird Man Alert

I'm thinking maybe the Secretary of Dawns is morphing into the Bird Man Chronicler Imam Shaman.

Wings of prose taking flight.