*A Certain Bearing*
*The Mix*
*Art*
*So What?*
*Tears*
*Give A Damn*
*If Ever*
*A Comfortable Mix*
*Trash*
*The Day After*
*Resolve*
*The Gift #1*
*The Gift #2*
*One of the Many*
*Baggage*
*It's What I Do*
*And*
*Ho Hum*
A Certain Bearing
Definition starts at home.
If not there, then where?
Without it
all hell would break loose,
or at least seem to.
What really happens tho,
is like a cool breeze taking heat away
from the city.
Its hardened edges soften
into almost manageable curves.
(Laugh, go ahead laugh -
The heat of it went to my head :)
Even those softened edges of the city
(the comfort, the familiarity, the nonchalance),
all of that, that dwells there,
has a certain definition,
a certain bearing
requiring heat.
Cooling off sometimes gives off
clouds of smoke
clouds of steam
clouds of air,
(and we all know what happens when
"Hot Air Rises" )
Balloons!, Celebrations!, Distractions!
So when those hardened edges
soften,
all heaven or hell breaks loose.
The Mix
The little of my life that resembles
a storybook life,
paves the way
for either a smooth ride
or
a bumpy one.
It all depends on you.
Smooth, if the mix is right,
bumpy, if wrong.
Either way,
the way is paved,
for interpretations -
yours or mine.
It's all in the mix.
Art
Everything I do,
Everything,
gets colored according to
the crayon I'm holding.
Nowadays,
when anybody creates anything at all,
it's considered Art.
As long as there's a reason
to look at it and
the reason's well articulated -
viola! - it's Art!
Being thought Art isn't good or bad,
it just Is.
It's just a matter of taste.
When enough people notice something
anew,
Art's created.
So What!?
What's the big deal?
I am a child of the universe.
So are you.
We're all children of God.
So what?
All of that painstaking glory
of sunsets,
is wasted on me.
Those big,
red,
low,
long,
logs of cloud,
aren't as dark as the sky holding
them.
No.
And that cool ocean breeze
ruffling my shirt,
would be better spent
on the legs of some lovers.
On me it's wasted.
Tears
So What!
People shed them all the time!
Let's anal-ize them. Let's trivial-ize
them.
Yes! That's It!
We'll con-str-uct a poem about them.
It'll be far better than our best.
I'm so sorry,
don't mean to be so mean, but really!
Let me tell you a story...
There was a time when I believed
that what you believed
was all
that really mattered.
Needless to say,
I ran into some problems.
1) was in my refusal to hold fast to
the reigns of my own life
you know -
the day-to-day stuff,
the stuff I didn't want to think
about
stuff like calendars,
memos,
bathrooms, drawers,
closets, doors,
cabinets, locks,
keys and dust.
2) was in my refusal to hold fast to my own direction.
Instead,
I let the tempest steer me.
3) was in not claiming the power
that choice gave me.
I let people choose other stuff:
other things,
other directions,
instead of allowing myself to be
directed by who knew what was best for me.
ME
Give A Damn
The thin skin of my identity
went and got itself stretched some
and tore.
And when it did,
it did the usual thing -
it bled.
What can I say - I'm human,
so what else is new?
I'm sorry to hear tho,
that the life you're leading
isn't turning out
the way you wanted it to.
Obviously,
those "i"s that you dotted,
and those "t"s that you crossed,
weren't enough.
It's a big problem, I know,
but how are you gonna handle it?
If you could only Return It,
you know
Trade Up. :)
But where would the learning be in
that?
Isn't this 3D, re-incarnating thing,
all about that?
All about learning?
All about dealing with Loss?
Don't you loose something every time you do this living thing?
I do.
Every time!
I continue to loose something!
Everyday, I loose something!
It's as if I'm on a sailboat,
riding a windless sea,
with the sun beating down
on my already leathered skin
baked and stretched,
to fearlessly glisten,
in the sun
the way it does now.
I don't own the water
and it sure as hell don't own me.
I don't own the sun and
it sure as hell don't own me.
So much for ownership.
So much for "Trading Up".
Well, my identity went and got itself
stretched
again.
It got stretched so much
it bled,
but now I don't care.
What I do care about is my crew.
To see them smile,
to see teeth
under those baked and stretched
faces,
puts wind in my sail.
The destination is just the
destination,
the journey's the real thing
to give a damn about.
If Ever
If ever there was a time,
when watches where just fads,
when whiter whites were the norm,
when very, very soft pillows existed,
when there was a black so black
that it made India ink look down,
when a sound was so loud,
it drowned out Niagara,
when lines were so well known
there'd be no question 'bout where
the city began
or
where it ended,
when a guess was so simple,
it became a certainty,
when time itself traveled so fast,
it stopped,
or
when a color could be made
from all the other colors...
ah we do, we have that,
(back to that whiter white).
Well, if you'd put all that together,
then you'd have a limited but
adequate knowledge of God.
A Comfortable Mix
All of these well-scrubbed, old folk
gathered 'round this lazy, smoking,
barbecue pit,
holdin' on to their splashing,
trembling, drinks,
got to this picnic thru all kinds of
weather.
Eventho that sun burns brightly now,
and as friendly as it seems now,
it still makes shadows.
And it's in those shadows
that those fine lines of distinction get
blurred
into something other,
something old ,
something mysterious.
It's there, in that "other" place,
that the weather that got them here,
helped make those:
humored smiles,
those mildly surprised, tilted, listening faces,
that nonchalant, brushing away
of a pesky fly,
or that tolerant shifting of weight
around a cane.
All of that came too.
That weather also made wrinkles
on those otherwise smooth faces.
What they do,
(these special gatherings),
is that they help us to organize,
in their own quiet way,
our own day-to-day weather.
Hopefully
the nonchalance, the patience,
the good humor,
the weather-worn gestures,
will rub off onto us
or etch smiles onto
our own rock-hard faces.
Trash
The nooks and crannies of any
textured surface,
(like this wooden desk),
can become like any other
textured surface.
Take this clutter for instance -
it could be clutter anywhere,
any debris.
(I Know! I know! I used the word
"any" 4 times.)
If you were more critical
you'd say something like
"This
is good writing?"
But you're not.
One of the "textures" of this poem
is the fact
that I used repetition of the word
"any"
to evoke an emotional response from
you.
No two people feel the same
for the same word (like "any" or
"clutter")
or dispose of it the same way.
The Day After
Rubble. Everywhere!
Rubble. Everywhere!
Airless balloons! Wet confetti!
Broken bottles!
Everywhere!
All celebrations must come to an end,
and when they do,
the place has to be swept.
Quite often,
the hilarity that bubbles-up at parties
gets itself airborne,
and when it does, it lands
someplace else.
Resolve
There are plenty of categories
that we've used
to organize the details
of our lives, concerning loss.
Some of them are even helpful!
For every dad that's watched,
helplessly,
while his son did it "his way"
and got hurt;
or every mom who knows the pain
of childbirth,
they both have
the gift of Resolve.
The Gift #1
We all know that
when we get anything at all,
the thing that we get the most of
is the Gestalt of the giver.
Right?
Say that we're loved somehow
and that that "somehow"
is a veritable litany
of "blue sky" days.
That litany itself
belongs on a shelf somewhere
in the land of flights of fancy.
But there, it's - gathering dust.
Never-the-less,
Whenever we get anything at all
the thing we get the most of
is the Gestalt of the giver.
Plain and simple.
The examples of that
are far too many to list here.
Suffice it to say that,
if you want to start anything at all,
start a club,
the sole purpose of which would be
the shedding of light on
the many and the various ways
we've devised
for the giving and receiving of gifts.
Otherwise...listen up,
We've ALL got something to give,
but like rain,
it puddles in places of high traffic.
That doesn't mean that
it's a nuisance,
it just means that it's been put in the
wrong place
at the wrong time.
Get better at it.
The Gift #2
Just because we get it,
doesn't mean we GET it.
One of the ways we've devised
for the giving and receiving of gifts
is called The Holiday.
Preparation for "The Holiday"
is often as telling and as complex
as the gift itself
and often taken as poorly.
"You did this today."
or "This meant absolutely nothing
to you."
are some of the phrases used
when gifts are taken poorly,
and a sure sign
that they haven't been GOTTEN.
One of the Many
That curly head sunken into
those shoulders,
or that slouch,
or that shuffle,
or that averted gaze,
or that furtive look,
or that fake smile,
or that forgetfulness,
or that ease of distraction,
or that preoccupation,
or that phony laugh -
All of them
are opportunities
to better define
just who the hell we are.
In a very real way
they're gifts.
So maybe we should just shut up
and say
"Thanks".
Baggage
With all the hoop-de-da these days
about parenting,
the thing that gets overlooked the
most
is called...
Being A Good Example.
Of course!
No parent wants their kid
to carry around unnecessary baggage,
and of course
they don't want to carry it around
themselves
either.
But they don't have a clue
as to what it is or
what to do about not carrying it
around
anymore.
It's got something to do
with
how they dealt with loss.
How they dealt with it
gets mimicked and mimicked
repeatedly,
until finally
it became Behavior
Be a good example.
It's What I Do
A window needed to be opened
somewhere.
Everything freewheeling and bright
was out there.
Each tree had its own bark.
each flower - its own scent.
The tangle of undergrowth
was made up of hundreds
of individual plants.
It stretched out and relaxed
in the sun, dozing
like a cat.
In here however,
it's a different story.
Shrapnel whistles by,
targets abound!
Ducking is considered natural.
To be trusted,
be shot.
Being wounded is good and heroic.
but being killed is even better.
Being killed means that you no longer have to suffer
someone else's idea
of what's right or wrong.
Dead, you're just a tangle
of undergrowth.
And
Men walk.
Women talk.
Children play,
Men walk.
Women talk, and
Children play,
Winds blow,
seasons change,
rains come,
rains go.
Winds blow,
seasons change,
rains come, and
rains go.
Ho Hum
Yawn.
Eeeeuuu!
Yawn.
Well... my arms go out pretty damn
far.
And my legs do too.
Ah choo!
Scratch. Scratch.
I'll hide under the covers some more.
It sure is dark in here.
