Chasing Chaff With A Spoon

So much going on inside and outside, I'm dizzy and struggling with what I wanted to say next. The Shiny Things are bright and plentiful in the moment. I wanted to be eloquent and witty with a point...

...but I keep losing focus. I think it is fatigue combined with politics-induced exasperation. My brain is full and my tolerance level is way low. The thing is, I want to avoid getting sucked into the quagmire looming before the 2012 election.

But the idiots and the liars, they won't shut up. Can't seem to avoid them. This election year in particular has seemed one long case of the Nasties, and the lunatics in charge of the asylum. The continuing spew from the Party of the Tea, and right-wing bigots, and the downright hatred some Americans seem to have for everyone who isn't like them...makes me sad and sleepy. The latest abhorrent remarks by Ann Coulter regarding 'stupid single mothers' is a case in point.

Bah. I'm too worn out for a rant. It's there, folks, and I don't mean to disappoint. It will just have to be a post for another time, as I am sure I will have to get it out of my system.

Then I can get back to something truly invigorating and creative. You know, stuff that really matters, like good stories.

Blasphemers Know All The Cool Bands

"Ellis."

"Wake up."

(silence)

"Ellis!" The Inquisitor slams a hand down on the table. "Wake up! We have more to discuss!"

Ellis groaned, and lifted his head up just high enough to peer at the Inquisitor through his swollen left eye. The orbit around hurt like the hell with which he had always been threatened. His right eye stubbornly refused to open, the crust of blood and mucus cemented it shut. He sighed wetly while his head dropped down again. The pain was hot, and the dizziness from the interrogation serums they had forced into his system made him want to puke. Ellis hated puking.

He sighed again, trying to get comfortable. A rope of drool dangled from the corner of Ellis' mouth, thick and bloody. Streams of it had stained his t-shirt, one of Ellis' favorites, the deep purple "Jesus Puppies" concert shirt from their infamous "Kibble Krucifix" tour of three summers back. The front had a gaudy monochrome outline of a mans' body sporting a dog's head. The creature was dressed in a robe and was holding aloft a cross made out of dog biscuits. At his feet lay a semi-circle of smaller dog-headed creatures, prostrate before the dog-man and staring up at the cross with tongues hanging out. The dog-man was breaking off a piece of the cross, hand poised to drop the tidbit in his mouth.

The images were disappearing under a layer of drool and dried blood. Ellis grunted in shock, filled with a surge of anger. The anger gave him the energy to look back up at his bald-headed tormentor. The Inquisitor sat vulture-like, perched on the edge of his chair. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his shaved head, darkening the tattoos of rank placed there by the Regime. The optics in his eyes swiveled slightly, emitting a faint whirr as the Seeker of Truth studied the boy's face, so distorted by drugs and the "Hands of the Lord".

The slight sneer on his surgically enhanced lip inspired Ellis to spit at it.

The Inquisitor leaned back, with the economical slithery grace of a serpent, to watch the gob of bloody sputum hit the table with a wet smack. He smiled wearily and removed a rag from  a box at the end of the table. Ellis noticed that the smile did not reach up to the onyx marbles of the Inquisitor's eyes, who slowly wiped the spittle from the table. He daintily folded the rag and tossed it into a nearby wastebin.

"Ellis. You shouldn't have done that. But I would expect nothing less than vulgarity from a blasphemer such as yourself. Tell me, young man, do look forward to your time in Hell?" the Inquisitor asked.

"It's Mephistophilis," said Ellis, thickly and with a small, twisted smile, "and this is Hell, and I'm not out of it. So don't threaten me with Hell, you tool. And you are going to pay to replace my shirt."

The Inquisitor's eyes widened, a flush sweeping over his head and neck. "Don't you treat me with impudence, little boy, I will MAKE you understand the meaning of Hell!" he roared, standing straight up with his palms flat on the table. The regime-issued black ballistic holy vestments clung to muscles honed by fanatical adherence to the Physical Vespers, and Ellis knew the Inquisitor could probably dislocate every joint in his body without cracking a holy sweat.

The Inquisitor leaned over the table, sneering, his modified ceramic alloy teeth just inches from Ellis' face. The young man leaned back, more to escape the Inquisitor's fetid breath, which reeked of eucalyptus and machine oil. Spit showered Ellis' face as the Avatar of the Regime growled "Don't make it worse for yourself, sinner. Just tell us what your were doing with that crate full of memory we found in the panniers on your zipcycle. You can still repent." Snake eyes scanned Ellis, recording, waiting.  Ellis leaned back as far as he could go. He drew in a deep breath.

"I'm telling you nothing. You know why? Because you are a tool. And tools are useless and dumb in the wrong hands. The hands on you are very, very wrong." He lunged forward, swift like a adder, and drove his forehead as hard as he could into the Inquisitor's nose. The sharp crack of bone in meat echoed off the sweating concrete walls of the holding cell, drowned out by the scream of the Inquisitor as he fell back over the chair behind him. His body jerked and twitched, and as Ellis pitched forward in a blackout, he could only hope his strike had hit a control node.

Alarms blared in duet with the wet moans of the Inquisitor. Ellis sprawled unconscious across the table, a thin thread of blood oozing off the table edge to spatter on the floor. Not a single drop made its way onto the image of the dog-man and the puppy disciples eagerly awaiting their kibble.

--

To be continued...

Forks, Branches and Right Path: The Search

“If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.”
― Neil Gaiman

Thanks, Neil.  Like I really need the reminder that I may be a decent poet (but I can't be objective about that), and that I may never be a novelist. (sigh).  These days, I'm far from inspired.

I have been chewing on this bon mot for a few days.  There has been much going on in the alternate universe that is Gumbo's Brain, much of it fueled by the relentless pressure of the Job Hunt.  As the saying goes, looking for a job is a full-time job. It isn't physically strenuous, but mentally, it can really abrade the contact surfaces, you dig?  On the good days, it is a faint fatigue on the soul.  On the bad days...well, then it is like a big bag of wet cement laid across the head and shoulders.  It is heavy, and it presses you into the floor.  A big bucket o' suck, it is.

So what does that have to do with being a novelist?  Nothing and everything, I suppose.  My current job search has to play to my resume in order to have the most chance of success.  The search has to cleave closely to my documentable (i.e., 'paid and credentialed'), and that is nowhere near the territory of a novelist.  So there is the Nothing.

Tantalizingly, there are a number of conceptual parallels between writing and architecture.  There are also many direct intersections.  A lot of what I do (did) as an architect involved writing.  Writing notes, reports, specifications, proposals, estimates, you name it.  A careful describing of all sorts of things, written in dense paragraphs and splashed across brochures, coded into permit applications and construction cost spreadsheets.  There is a certain need for attention to detail and language and craft, even if much of it was technical and not truly creative.

"Being A Writer" is my big idea, an alternate path to gainful use of my time; becoming a Novelist would be the culmination of a dream-seed that has been germinating in my head for some years now.  I hadn't considered it as a full-time pursuit, because of the necessity of the real-life job.

A job that went away last October.  Leaving me in a free-fall of which I am still not in control.

This leads back to the Everything I mentioned above.  I am now at a crossroads.  I have been searching for a job in the field in which I have training and credentials; as a matter of common sense and necessity, I am obligated for it.

As a matter of survival and adaptability, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that I have to make a transition from writer to Writer, if I want to keep the wheels turning.  I must consider blazing a new trail, climbing a new cliff.  It is a new world order, and I cannot keep going back to the same things, performing the same actions, and expecting a different result. 

I'm weary, dear friends.  The drain of my predicament (but make no mistake, I know it could be worse, and I'm glad it is not) has me at an impasse.  I am in a creative slump, I am horribly unsure of which way to go, there are threads I cannot grasp.  I know what I have done, and could continue to do; I cannot abandon the field but it is mostly barren at the moment.  I know now what I could do, if only I had the energy, fortitude and most important of all, the imagination to forge a path into pastures new.  Alas, my imagination is choking on the splinters of the present.

This is maddening.  There has to be a way forward, there just has to be.  If only I could find the right path. If only I could write the novel that fuels my dreams.

The Shakes

Bobby Sack grunted, reaching for the bucket by the side of the bed just in time to catch the foulness gushing from his mouth.  He coughed like a geyser, trying hard not to puke on the bed again.  His head hung weakly over the edge of the bed, his sweating face inches away from the sick.  Even in his nauseated haze, that offended his sensibilities.  Flashbacks to some of the worst he endured in the infantry, back in the Burmese jungle, and he realized he just couldn't take it anymore.

Peeling leeches the size of pencils off my legs was nothing compared to this, he thought.  Time for it to be over.  In his line of work, booze made for bad business.

Two dry heaves later, Bobby rolls over on his back, the bucket like a vile bell dangling from his fingers.  He set it down gently so as not to spill it.  The ground-down carpet was in bad shape, he considered, but adding the contents of his stomach to the filth would just be insult on injury.  Bobby blinked slow, a lizard in the heat.  His stomach cramped and he winced.  The flies, goddamn flies, why they gotta be so loud? he thought.

Heat. The room reeked of hot sick and sweat.  The ceiling fan was moving but the air was so thick the fan seemed like a joke.  Bobby slapped at the bedside table, desperate for a smoke.  The cellophane of the packet crackled like static, bringing a momentary recall of combat radios and call signs.  "Fuck me," Bobby rasped up at the dusty plaster on the ceiling.  One day to the next job, and he was a hot mess.  He brought a cigarette up to his lips, hands trembling like palm fronds in rotor wash.  He cursed as he singed the tip of his nose.  It was a minor miracle that the damage wasn't worse.

Bobby looked at his hands.  The shaking was worse, much worse, this time.  The last job he had nearly ditched on because of the shakes. The voice started up in his head, another diatribe waiting to happen. Can't.  Can't do it this time, either, the words tracking neon-like across his mind. But what choice do I have?

Outside in the street, a screech of tires followed by the brassy blare of horns.  The sound wave pierced the thin wall of the cottage, driving a subzero spike of pain through  Bobby's head.  A wave of nausea wracked his body as he clutched his temples hard to keep himself from puking again.  The throbbing nearly drowned out the argument going on.  Bobby could not make out what they were fighting about; it sounded like Thai but his fluency was just enough for him to order a beer and politely turn down a hooker's come-on.

The trembling in his pain-wracked, wiry frame subsided.  The noise faded away as the dispute seemed to be resolved.  Bobby took another drag, coughed on the harshness of the Vietnamese tobacco, and slowly sat up.  His feet bracketed the bucket.  The surface of the vile liquid shimmered slightly under the influence of some small tremor Bobby couldn't feel.

Standing up slowly, he picked up the bucket, holding it gingerly as he padded slowly to the small closet under the steps that held a toilet and a sink.  On the way there, his glance caught the glint of sunlight on the battered aluminum gun case he had set down beside the antique wicker cabinet holding the few clothes he kept.  His steps faltered, briefly, and one hand reflexively grasped at his sunken belly.

Bobby shook his head to clear it.  The bucket shook, a thick slopping sound rising to his ears.  He started to cry and continued on to the toilet, emptying the bucket.  Flushing the ancient bowl, he watched the foulness swirl away to nothing.  The bucket he rinsed as best he could, in the sink, while he sobbed.  He felt a dark kinship with the bucket, it not being lost on him that they were both battered, dirty vessels, never quite clean.

As he swabbed out the bucket with a dirty rag, Bobby told himself that maybe, just maybe, this could be the last job he ever had to do.  And when he was done, he would never have the shakes again.

Bitter Apples

So Steve Jobs has passed away.  How about that.

Another businessman has left this mortal coil, and our lives go on as they were.  I'm confident even those addicted to their shiny things will be fine.

I feel sympathy for his wife and kids, his family, his friends.  They knew him best, some of them even loved him, I am sure.  Smart guy, had some big ideas and wicked good business acumen.

But this isn't the death of some techno-Jesus, a silicon messiah spreading the computer gospels.  While he accomplished noteworthy things, in the end its all toys, and the flash and dazzle doesn't save anyone from dying. 

Don't worry, you "fans" of apples, life will go on, and you will be okay.

Living In The Synapse

An odd phenomenon here on the People's Republic of Gumbolia.  I had approached the computer with vigor and purpose, certain I had a gem of story to tell, and when I sat down to write it, it disappeared.  This pleases me not.  I felt no need to reach for a notebook, because I was convinced the story would make it to the page.

I was wrong.  I should have known better.

This happens to me on a regular basis, that I have a great idea, only to have it vanish.  Well, who knows if it was great, if I can't write it down for all to see.  Not to worry, I suppose.  It's Saturday, the weekend is in full swing.  Perhaps I'll live a little...then come back to tell the tale.

Puzzle Box

The crickets an orchestra
whilst hands flutter and wave
turning the idea of the heart
over and over in figures
the mind ticks and grinds,
overheated gears and cogs
churning to spit answers
it never quite has, so,
dry coughs, ermms and uhs
and Huh! What to do?
Puzzle box holds true  life
but the mind can't get it open

I'll Not Be A Pr*ck

September 2, 2011 - Mind akimbo.

Mind wandering, careening back and forth across the pavement like a wheel that fell off a bus.  All because I was directed to do something that would have made me seem like a prick.

What I was directed to do was not illegal, immoral or unethical.  It did not go against the tenets of my profession.  It was nothing major, but just the same...it would have made me seem like a prick.  All because someone else was acting like one, but was "too busy" to do the thing itself.  I was acting on earlier directions, following instructions and exercising my professional discretion to get things done.  When I relayed the news that the information we sought would probably not be available in time to get it into the project, I was directed to give an ultimatum to the person providing the information: get it to us by X, or have your name removed from consideration.

An ultimatum given for no other reason than it could be, flexing muscles for the sake of flexing.  I asked if that was really necessary, given that the issue in question would not delay the project, could easily be added after it went out (when it was apparent that other, bigger things will have to be added), and was it worth it?

I was rewarded with spite, pissiness and dismissal.  I was told "never mind, I'll do it myself".

On a late afternoon in September, I was directed to do something unnecessary, that would have made me look like a prick.  All in the service to another's apparent insecurities.

I didn't do it.  I'll not be a prick as a surrogate for someone else.  Never again.

That Which Fills The Cracks In Our Foundations

August 21st, 2011 3:53 pm

"I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in, and stops my mind from wandering..." sang the Beatles.  In the aftermath of the storms we have been having I need to get on that.  I've rain coming in through the chimney and rain seeping through the walls in the basement and it needs to stop.

But how do I let my mind continue wandering?  It sees the rain coming in and wants to fix it but wants to run, to hide, to not have to deal with disruption yet again.  The disruption never stops, it seems.  Rain makes the flowers grow, but other things grow, too, and if the water freezes in the cracks it will only get worse.  That is, if the damp and the seep don't crumble the foundations first.

I've been inspecting my foundations on a regular basis as of late.  They still hold but there are some cracks to fix and holes to plug.  Problem is, I haven't been able to fight the urge to just pull up a chair and watch the water well up or the cracks widen.  Weariness plays a role, I'm sure.  Sort of like life's version of the old defragmenter screen on some computers I use to use.  You turn the thing on and then sit slackjawed, watching the little boxes blink and shift, not getting any real work done but convincing yourself it is necessary, plus you wouldn't want to miss anything, in those blinking little boxes.

I do know this:  it is time for me to move off center, stop staring at the cracks in the wall and the water seeping through the joints.  I'll have the stem the split, mop up the spill.  Far too often in my past life I've been content to watch the houses slowly slide into the sinkhole, and it is high time that stopped.

It has to.  I have things to do, people to see, and places to go.  Especially home.  I need to go home and fix the leaks, shore up the foundation.  It's around here somewhere, I can feel it, I have touched it...now I have to hold onto it.  This time, I will.

Please Welcome the 52nd State

Full Metal Jacket Heart

Be careful before you open a six-gun mouth

to pull the trigger with words ballistic

or spray the room with linguistic pellets

without a choke, at the speed of sound

because high-velocity physics is a tricky thing

for anyone to control, anger and scorn hard cases

that may not strike at calculated angles, instead,

a beating heart abused by blowback and ricochet

A Discourse On DNA

I read somewhere, don't remember where, it was a long time ago, but what I read was that two things that separate us humans from them animals are 1) the ability to curse and B) the ability to write poetry, well, shee-it, brothers and sisters, how about that? Guess that makes me one of the most human-like human beings I know...at least if more weight is given to the cursing rather than the poetry Yeah, yeah, I know, I write stuff that at least resembles poetry, at least in the same sense that a house cat resembles a jaguar, but to my shame I seem to be better at cursing and really, cursing gets so boring after a while its too repetitive Too narrow-minded...although i do allow that sometimes? In the right circumstances? A well-placed curse is the only thing that will serve to make ones true thoughts and feelings known.  Hmm.  Trick, the trick is to know the Right Time and the Right Place, you know?  No sense in dropping an F-bomb in church, you get my drift.  Dig it? I knew that you could.  But hold on, back to that idea of poetry, really, I try and I scrape and I bow before the words and it seems like I never quite get them to say what I really meant, the idea in my Gray Matter seems so grand and powerful, like the sun, but the words hit the page or the screen and its only shadows.  You might ask me "Why do you care so much? What does it really matter?  Its word, only words, and you know a lot of them so if it isn't right one time, you can always write more, try try again, yes?"  Right, yeah, I know I hear what you are saying (at least, I hear what the voice in my mind that I imagine to be you, is saying) and I console myself with the notion of writing something again and again, always trying to find the right way to describe the sun or love or heart or whatever is on the tip of my (mind)tongue...but I confess, my lovelies, I do, even though I am far from a religious creature, I confess to you...

...that if I don't ever get the words right, if I don't ever really write that thing called a Poem...

...I fear I'll not be able to convince myself...

...that I am more than just an animal, who knows how to curse.

River God

It sleeps as you fear,

there below the darkness,

wavelets and silt

to awaken when gorged

on the tears of the sky

but it is blind, and senseless

it does not love you

even though it feeds you,

nor does it hate you

drowned homes to the contrary

it simply exists, as it has

forever and a day,

as it will when you do not.

It cannot aim for you

as blindness does not allow.

It cannot demand your blood,

there is no tongue to taste.

The river god is hungry,

an implacable sloth

moving at speeds outside

of time until stirring violently,

flowing as it must,

Gaia demands it so.

So take heart, survivors

and future victims:

Rage is not the fuel,

hatred is not the fire

That is impossible.

The river god is senseless,

yet that it is awake

is beyond any human doubt.

That it will forget you,

when it returns to sleep,

is knowledge eternal.

Ad Hoc Industries, LLC

Caleb Stine has a fine song called "I Wasn't Built For A Life Like This", off of the album of the same name.  It's sad, but beautiful, and it just about hit my frame of mind tonight.  It knocked me off my pins, what with the great weather and the gainful employment I have been experiencing.  So it was disorienting to find myself watering the flowers on the porch, shoulders slumping, and asking myself "What's wrong with this picture?".

A puzzle, really. There was no obvious reason for melancholy.  I was home from work, safe and dry, with a full belly to boot.  The cool quiet evening was just the thing for a tired mind.  But...

There is a hanging basket on my porch, the plant it contains is surely dead.  The shriveled blossoms hang limp over the sides and looking uncomfortably like hair.  It used to be a pansy.  It is dead because I haven't watered it in about two weeks.  I'm slightly uneasy about that, but it didn't get watered because a robin built a nest in the pot and promptly laid four eggs in it.  I know that because I peeked in it once when the mother bird was absent.

Fatigue surely played a role here.  Maybe it was the faint music on the air, too.  I stood and watered the flowers, peering at the bird perched on her nest when something coalesced out of the air and wrapped my heart in a faint, cool hug.

Like that bird nest suddenly appearing, things in my life have this tendency to take me by surprise.  And this past year, especially this past winter and now spring, feels like it has been full of surprises (some good, some bad).  The net result is frequent change of course, reconsideration of options, sudden outbursts of epithets.  The daily fabric of existence gets woven out of living "on the fly", and I've never been too good at living an ad hoc life.

Or maybe its all been ad hoc to this point, and I've been laboring under the misconception that there was a plan, an order to the unfolding of my life.

I'm rambling now, aren't I?  Is this now ad hoc, in and of itself?  Should I cease and desist on this idea of an order to everything, all the time and embrace my inner Rube Goldberg?

It makes me wonder if I was built for a life like this. If not, I need to rebuild or reconfigure.  But how?

Overheard In The Temple: A Short Play

Teacher: "It is our attachments to things that cause us anxiety and grief. We must lose our attachments if we want to find peace."

Student: "If that is so, Master, then perhaps I should lose my attachment to God. Only then will I cease being anxious over wondering if He really loves me."

Teacher: (stunned silence)

Student: (blows out candle; exits)

The Crow is Really a Mockingbird

Desk placed just so

monitor wedged in the corner

field of vision bounded

by wall and window

Banal tarmac and beige cars

between the stocks and the trees

where one indeed has a crows' nest

Figuratively, because its only a perch

Crows sit there everyday, he sees,

ebony question marks against

pearly skies and blue, raspy calls

mocking, cursing, he cannot tell

They sit and stare, watching his moves,

Late afternoons when shadows fall,

he rubs his eyes, his ears, unsure if

he sits in an office or a graveyard

Organ Grinder Monkey

A vampire-based economy
Anesthetic money coats the needle
that pierces the heart, tunnels the spine
yet you don't feel a thing

except maybe a pang in the collapse
of a soul gone numb, hallucinating
choices of free will, with brittle smiles
to cover betrayal of itself

But the stomach knows, it swats against
dollar bills blackening the skin like
mosquitos in an arctic summer,
that slowly drain the body white

Left behind to dream are the husk and bones
encased in amber of banker's green,
Because beating heart and breathing lungs
are in the bowels of the organ grinder

Next There Will Be a 'No Cough' List

Warning:  This post has been floating around for a few days, always had something better to post up.  I wrote it in a fit of pique.  But even second-string work eventually makes it to the top of the slush pile, and sometimes it is better to just publish and get it out of the way.  I promise, better things are on the way.

---

Almost two weeks ago in Arizona, a person who had no business to possess firearms easily purchases equipment to make a deadly device even deadlier.  As we know, tragedy ensued.

This past Sunday in my home state of Maryland, I was asked to show my driver's license to purchase one bottle of over-the-counter liquid cold and flu medicine, from a large, national retailer (rhymes with "Arrgh-het!).  Not only that, I was told by the cashier that she couldn't just look at in while it was still in my wallet.  She had to scan it.

Scan it. At the register.  I'll give you a moment to let that sink in.  (whistling)

Seriously?  They think I might be trying to get high, or make my own narcotics?  Really?  This 40-ish guy with a salt and pepper beard who was also purchasing paper towels, windshield washer fluid and a box of Band-Aids?

It was one bottle.  Good thing they checked, because otherwise I might do something dangerous and irresponsible...like take it as directed, and then fall asleep.

No wonder things seem so out of kilter these days.

Sound of Semi-Silence

Another quiet night here at the homestead, finally, after more time running myself into the ground, full up on activities and work and stuff.  The radio is off, had to give my ears a break.  I was listening to the iPod all day, then put a CD in the player while driving hither and yon.  Slow traffic makes for interesting listening sometimes, and in this case I was diggin' the grooves laid down by Cut Chemist and Shortkut, two California-based DJ's who reminded me that turntable scratch, in the right hands, is just good stuff.  A colleague of mine loaned me a CD of a collaborative project they did back in 1997, and it is earworthy, no doubt.

So, as I was saying, a quiet night.  The noises are refrigerator hum, an airplane and faint wind plus traffic.  Soothing in their own way.  Funny, on nights like this, I don't often think of the click of the keyboard as 'noise'.  It most certainly is, though.  I wonder why.  Maybe its like fish think of water: it's there, all around them, they are fully immersed in the stuff...so it ceases to register.

Writing is like that for me.  No, its more accurate to say typing, but typing as a function of writing.  When I write for myself, which is a lot, I tend not to notice the clicks.  When I'm typing at work?  Then the clicking really starts to grate.  Fortunately, I am home, and writing.

And listening.

To the cars outside.  The sound of my breath.  The hum of the appliances.  In this house, when the radio is off, the sounds tend to fall off faster than I had come to expect, from living in newer apartments and houses prior to this one.  Maybe its the plaster interior walls, or the mass of the brick and stone.  Whatever the reason, I like it.  This place is, on average, a lot quieter than my previous house and certainly over the apartment I lived in last year.  It makes me feel calm.

Which I need.  Calm, that is.

The calm makes me introspective in a way different than being wired or anxious.  It's slower, more contemplative.  Earlier I looked at myself in the mirror while trimming my beard, and in the snicksnick of the scissors I flashed on the notion that my life is not really under my control, nor is it completely out of my control, and that I really don't know where I am regarding just who I think I am, what I want, and how to figure it out.  To wit, in the past five days, I felt like running away to Rio, becoming a potter, learning how to weld stuff, staying home and doing nothing but cook good food and taking up the art of DJ'ing.  Go figure.

At that realization, I looked at myself again in the mirror, just stared.  I had the feeling that I didn't really know that person staring back at me...but I felt like I really wanted to know him.  To make that happen, I suppose I'll have to sit down with him and listen, really, truly, listen.

There's something going on in there, behind those blue-gray eyes...and I want to know what it is.

Electioneering

Surfeit of color and noise
and that was just the crap
in the mailbox, every day
Forests bled to extinction

More shiny noises from the box
Bright hues and gaudy wraps
So many promises! like God and
Marilyn Monroe delivered to your door

The palate dulls, hearing fades
eyesight dims under sensory fatigue
No, under siege! Because you cannot escape
bleat, blather and bother, beyond the end

Necessary evil, this binge and purge
of the body politic, they tell us to care,
we must care, but too many broken promises,
shattered hopes, have eaten our trust.