All things good....

And there you sit, across the oaken plank
Me with my high ideals
And you, stealing the salt and pepper shakers
From my existential meal.

Nothing here is sacred,
In turn, is it not all sacred?

BET and Ultimate fighting
Diamond Vision Preaching and
Unfailing partnership.

The thought arises,
Something I read once,
A notion to my imagination.
That which has no form
Penetrating that which has no pores....

So, again, I have dissected the moment.
Appraised each precious facet.
Only to find it flawless.
Thank you.

Now the analytical ends
And the pure enjoyment begins.

The Fountain

Add another ring to my finger

And I'll meet you as the first snow falls.

My lips on the ciliated barkskin of your neck

To re-awaken the green of your leaves

The deepness of your eyes.

Everything is all right

We're almost there.

The quest and the wait worth the blood

And time

Has no hold on the heart.

The steep temple stairs

Leading to your altar

And the dying star.

My soul burdened with aged maps

And I will find you.

And I will be with you.

And I will sow a single seed

In the dirt where you lay, Alma Dulce,

And the stars will explode when we touch.

Choctaw Ridge

Sometimes it just comes....and the pen has a hard time keeping up.

"The day that Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchee Bridge..." Played today on the hit parade.  Found myself moved to the point of weepy eyes.  Gestalt? Hormones?  Most likely the latter.  I've always loved the song.  Today, mozier and I choose to discuss....Sung from such an innocent point of view.  Youthful love ending too soon.  Or is she to blame?  A push?  His jumping a result of unrequited love?  And throughout, the song becomes an infusion of deep south sweet tea.  Molasses and Moss and humid regret.  Searching for the wrong eyed Jesus.  Jarring in its sinister subtlety.  "and me, I spend a lot of time up on Choctaw Ridge, throwing flowers in the water off the Tallahatchee Bridge..."

Mysteriously unaffected mourning.  Misery as a way of life.....

Lines become words become lines.

Misery as a way of life.  Choctaw Ridge.  Bridge. Burning. Battle of Blackjack. Sheriff Jones Saks Fifth Avenue.

Photograph at La Prima Tazza, copyrighted by DM Horkmans, of the great Lawrence Flood of 1903.    And here it comes.....

Our fifty year floods now are twenty.  No longer a resultant Vector of Nature.  More accurately a man-made victory in the Man V. Nature Battle Royale.  With cheese.  Headlong into the blinking lights arcade.  Flashes of epileptic glory.  Fades.  Sig Transit Gloria.....Dulce et decorum est.how sweet an honor.roll off the tongue.cunnilingus.and them.bones them bones them beefy (?) bones.sticks and stones.playing Kiss covers.story.Tale. cat o' nine. lives. re-birth.  nirvana. samadhi.said she said.is dead,baby.face.the music.

And out of this rambling, the only gem is the serendipitous discovery of two band names :  Sheriff Jones Saks Fifth Avenue.....or.  Samadhi Said She Said.

Sorry to waste your time.  It won't happen again...

All things good,

Deacon.

   

Sumario

Sumario

Estoy contento con tantos deberes

que me impuse, en mi vida

se amasaron extranos materiales:

tiernos fantasmas que me despeinaban,

categoricas manos minerales,

un viento sin razon que me agitaba

la espina de unos besos lacerantes, la dura realidad

de mis hermanos,

mi deber imperioso de vigia

mi inclinacion a ser solo yo mismo

en la debilidad de mis placeres,

por eso - agua en la piedra - fue mi vida

cantando entre la dicha y la dureza.

                                                -Neruda.

               

Summation

I am glad of the great obligations

I imposed on myself.  In my life

many strange and material things have crowded together -

fragile wraiths that entangle me,

categorical mineral hands,

an irrational wind that dismayed me,

barbed kisses that scarred me, the hard reality

of my brothers,

my implacable vow to keep watchful,

my penchant for loneliness - to keep to myself

in the frailty of my personal whims.

That is why - water on stone - my whole life has

sung itself out between chance and austerity.

                                               - Neruda.

Crash.

Upside down in a car caught fire.

And would you reach your hand to me?

And would I let you pull me out?

Alone in the department store.

And would you say hello?

And would I meet your eye?

This fear held over us. 

Passed through blood and newsprint lines. 

Unacknowledged by the muted ear. 

Unknown to the oatmeal mind.

Stereo surround sound typing holds our weakened hearts. 

Who will tell us it's all right? 

To puncture  the Bell Jar.. . .

To tell the ones we love....

To love the ones we haven't met...

To trust ourselves again...

And to listen to the man wearing socks on his hands.

The Choir has my undivided attention.

And I'm afraid. 

Better than.....

Better than a stick in the eye.

Heard him say it more than once. 

Better than a stick in the eye. 

And in his words wisdom plays

As I listen to them again.

The long walk home is

The late nights are

The politics of democracy. The flooded basement. The cuts on the hand. The humming of technology.  The bills in the mail.   The blisters on the knees. The weight of your bag.  The shit on your shoes. 

And in the end,  all of it is......

Better than a stick in the eye.

And now all I want is

A stick in the eye.

To start these tears.

To wake  from this dream.

To appreciate these flaming hoops that need jumping through.

And to borrow a suit and bear his body beyond.

Demolition

My path lead me here.  Along with hundreds of others who also followed their paths to this place.

  Dirt track Demolition Derby. 

Saturated olfactory sensations.  Necrotic mud, engine coolant and exhaust.

Aural pleasures.  High decibel combustion, metal to metal, AM mono announcer.

  Visual stimulation.  Heaping nacho plates, small town girls dressed for a night at the track, friends and strangers.

Flavor.  Smuggled Weller's and Royal Crown Cola. 

And how to assign value to such a thing?  An intangible.  An experience.   This moment. 

These are the important things,  these moments that have no weight.  A tiny brush stroke in the background of a sofa-size oil landscape in a gilded frame.  Collective memories combining to a whole.  Never to appear on a resume.  Never adding to the piles of grain stored for the future.

But I know.  Someday.  As light filters through my sterile room with crisp white sheets. And an uneaten mush meal next to my soaking teeth on a tray by the bed.  I know. I will remember this mud and oil night.  And it will bring deep pleasure to a mind that has begun to forget the unimportant things.

But I've already said to much about a moment that means nothing.

Badges

So if you know Peter, you know Hobbs -
One with two feet, the other four
But both of one mind.

Rooted to this earth,
But not attached
Defiantly unique,
                          Spiritually nomadic.

-----
That son of a bitch
(Hobbs, not Peter)
Once nipped me on the nose.
The Old Man
Drawing his line.

His big balls hung low
His bark deep as thunder,
Serious and Proud.

And Hobbs wears his spots
Like Airstream badges
Collected from the places He's seen.
Lawrence, San Francisco
Gila, El Paso
New Hampshire

And all the two lane pavement  in between.

No matter.

Where Peter has friends
Hobbs has friends.

So now Hobbs wears a new badge -
Bartered for at a cantina
In a place I've imagined,
But never seen.

Barking at the Saints,
Chasing after the Politicians.
Sitting with Jung and Mr. Campbell,
Holding audience with Gandhi and Lao Tzu
And all the good people.

And no matter.

Where Hobbs has friends, Peter has friends.

.

Curve against the Grid.

There it is.
In the middle of it all,
A Moment of Serendipity.

Stone and concrete - permanent fluidity.
The altar of human endeavor.
Essential anamation in a progressively technological scheme.

What led me to this Moment?
The construction of this branded image. 
Thirty-four years of roaming, a lifetime of wonder.
Here I am. 
Here is the Grid.
And here is her shoe.

I did not seek this moment of clarity.
But here it is. Thank you.

My mind races. 
How we lay grids on every scale,  to analyze and understand.
And the grid itself becomes beautiful.
Repetition ad infinatum.

And the curve of her foot, too, is beautiful.
Unique. 
The sculpture of a higher being
Or the collision of millions of random atoms.

But the real beauty comes in the overlap.
That which is without substance entering that which has no pores.
Each one alone hinting at eternity,
The two superimposed magnifying a deity.

So I will build a stone church. 
With no name on the altar.
And plant it with three hard Maples.
And watch the two entities
Become one.

Chaos and order
And back again.
Darwin or Tao
Allah or Frankenstein

Tell me what you have been taught to know.

Unchanged forever.

WHAT WE KEEP IN MEMORY IS

OURS UNCHANGED FOREVER.

This is the headstone of my Grandmother's grave.  Unnoticed until this past weekend's visit.   Sweet saline tears. 

And the question comes to me.

The temporal body and the eternal soul.

The Atman. 

The dents and dings of the pysche, the scars of pleasure and pain.

And the beauty of it all. 

The constant struggle to see beyond the moment.   

Her name is Alma.  Alma Anna Brenton. 

I was just a child. 

And I barely knew her. 

Her temporal mind rusted by Alzheimer's. 

She would call me Charles, or Bradley, or Loren.  But I sat on her divan, played her out-of-tune piano, bathed in her green tile tub. 

Summer days.  Peppermint patch on the South side of her humble home.  The smell of her musty basement - saturated with ancient incense.   

The smell of her.

Lotion on the softest spotted hands.

---

So I am grateful.

For what little I know of her. 

The few moments we shared. 

The precious nights.

The thunder would roll and the windows rattle. 

And the walls of Jerico, felled by trumpets. 

And I do believe in forever. Again.

Thank you.

Now I know her.

And she remembers my name. 

Memory.  Unchanged forever.  Ours.