BUILDING BIGGER BETTER (6/28/21)

Just completed a post yesterday, now starting a new one.

It still bothers me, writing a post in plain view, seeing it posted live before I ever have a chance to review, edit, or proof it.

I consider the possibility that I'm doing it wrong and will investigate as I work on this one.

Readers, just remember, this is "under construction." Keep scrolling for the completed posts that follow. 

I

In the meantime, here's a "story."


lunatics - a short morning inventory
​
ovoid moon
behind a lacy curtain
of thin, translucent clouds

a lunatic bird
sings all alone
at the roundabout...

a lone cowboy
limps in through the door

sharp-toed boots
a hat with
a silver band
and a mustache
thick and
wild

settles slowly
in his chair, like a good cowboy
takes off his hat
and stores it under his chair

like the bird
he would prefer
to be alone, howling
at the night sky
as it slips away to another
day

instead
he welcomes the ovoid moon
with a smile
and a sip
of morning sarsaparilla...

hard-faced woman
across the room, once a beauty,
now a mask of cold indifference,
glares at her eggs,
has no interest in an ovoid moon
even as it stirs the tide
of her discontent...

fella in the corner booth,
fingers a-fly
on his laptop keyboard
as his coffee gets cold

another solitary lunatic,
obsessed with
lunatics
and ovoid moons

​

Fairies flee a sequestered moon

regarding evil - in a few words
​
people speak
of defeating evil

but evil is part of us
and cannot be defeated,
only constrained
until it rises
in all of its varied forms
again

a Pandora’s box
opened from the inside...

the Devil made us do it
we say,
but the Devil is our creation
and cannot make us do
anything
that is not in our nature

~~~

we are the Creator,
both prince and victim of all
we create, the Evil Angel,
forever lurking
behind the smiles of our better twin...




​

 
​





Even as i worked on them, I had doubts that anyone was likely to be out there to buy a 4 to 5 foot, spray painted, 10 -to 12 inch wide boards. so I hung several of them on my own wall to test the effect, leaving me not entirely confident, but hopeful that there will be a few who wish to celebrate life with a painted piece of forest. Probably not this many in such a small room though.

okay, not entirely promising, but probably better if they were hung evenly. However, not allowed to make new holes in the wall so can only hang were something else is taken down.

But they do all come with titles, left to right "Chihuahua Sunset," "Alien Encounter," "Red Tide," " Mystery at the Bottom of the Devil's Blue Hole," and "The Big Lie" (I excel at titles). All my boards are priced at $200 to $250, except the two on the right, my statement makers, "Mystery"- $400, and "Big Lie" - $850, neither of which do I expect to ever sell.

---

​A PLAN

voices from the sky

the mysteries of faith…

it’s not that I’m
against it,
it’s just that I don’t understand
it

the room behind me is full
of two dozen
older men, sharp-eyed men,
and the old priest
I see often here, skinny,
like he doesn’t get to eat
except for the free breakfasts
he gets for showing up to provide
a priestly presence
to meetings of little old ladies
with blue hair and bumpy
legs, or,
as in this case, a room-full
of elder men, meeting, weekly it seems,
for quiet religious purposes…

I don’t know these particular men
but I’ve known men like them
most of my life, acts of piety
an afterthought through the course
of most of their days, sharp-
penciled, green-eye-shade guys
applying evidence and reason
to all their affairs, unimpressed
by flights of fancy,
not subject to paranormal events
or expectations,
except…

for that corner of their brain
they keep separate from the part
that functions daily, a place where
the reason and evidence they normally count on
are not allowed, a space they reserve
for gods and angels and devils
and ghosts and goblins and all sorts of fancy
they would not allow to intrude in any portion
of the rest of their lives…

that’s the part I don’t understand, not faith itself,
but these believers who turn their rational brains into
mewling kittens, flat on their backs, legs spread
high and wild, awaiting celestial visitation…

what, I wonder, is it
they miss in the rest of their lives
that makes them so vulnerable
to such mind-dulling darkness…

I’m always made uncomfortable
by leaders who profess such faith - I’d rather not
hear about it, reminding me as it does
of how my fate might be in the hands of
a leader susceptible to the undependable
quirks of faith in magic and magical
beings

pray for him, some say when a leader
faces quandaries and difficult
decisions, and I can only think how much more
reassuring it would be
to have a leader who wasn't dependent
on my prayers, a leader unwilling to place my future
in the hands of a voices from the
sky
 
and worst of all, how history shows us how
these same honest, practical-minded honorable
can be convinced by a voice from the sky
to commit the most the most horrible,
indecent, inhuman and cruel acts imaginable
against their fellow man and woman
 
it is not what they are that worries me
about these men,
it is what history shows us
they can be…




​

Jellyfish jamboree

A reason to always write it all down. This sounds like an interesting night at a favorite coffeehouse. But except for reading this story. I remember none of it.



art  show

my mother
took up art when my father died,
a pretty good amateur
before her eyes got too dim
and her hands too
shaky to control her brush...

she sold her paintings
at arts and crafts fairs and did well enough
to cover expenses
with enough left over for a Luann liver and onion special
at Luby’s cafeteria

she learned quickly
that people who buy original art
at arts and crafts fairs
want two things:

they want their art to be cheap
and they want colors that match their drapes
and sofa…

the artist at last night’s art opening,
a rock band drummer in another part of his life,
was way better than a gifted amateur
and his paintings sold for way more than Mother
ever sold a painting for…

his work is bright and sharp,
with vivid colors that he explained to another artist,
talking about mixing and overlaying acrylic,
sometimes overlaying that with oils, nothing
I understood, though I did nod as it seemed
appropriate, but leaving the other artist impressed
and listening intently…

…impressed, she was,
as were the visitors to the show, mostly
other musicians and family,
and his art, well, I liked most of it,
but, except for a piece or two,
none of it would match
my drapes and sofa…

~~~

but then,
my old-timers social security budget
is much more in line
with my mother’s prices than his
so I wasn’t likely to buy anything anyway…

mostly,
I was there as the “house poet,”
watching, remembering, preparing myself
to write tomorrow’s poem -

which would be this one
unless
a better idea falls my way

a hole in time

all these years later,
there are moments when something,
some sight, some sound,
just something,
triggers the past, a hole in time and in the instant of an eye-blink
I am back in it…

this morning,
passing a hotel in the dark,
a side door, light burning, and
seen through the door a long hotel hallway,
blue carpet, hotel wallpaper color walls,
and I am standing outside such a door
in early morning dark forty years ago,
waiting for the mayor so I can take
him into a meeting room
and introduce him to assembled out-of-town VIPs…

Luther Jones,
such a lovely and beloved man who, after his political life was over,
would stop by every couple of weeks to talk
to the children at the elementary school
named after him, known
to everyone from his sparkling city by the sea,
for me and many others,
a mentor and champion over the years,
passed on in his 80s in 2001…

it was a funeral large and crowded full of friends and citizens,
but simple, like the man…

a hotel’s bright-lit side door, a beacon to memory
this dark morning, and I am awash in remembering
times and so many good men passed…

sweet sadness begins my day...

Watchers from afar

​First new story in a long time, so don't be harsh

I AM

I am where I’ve been going
All of my life

Now there’s a thought…

Does that mean this is it,
4-bedroom house in the 800 block of Clearview Drive,
In San Antonio in the near middle of the state of Texas,
Not the intellectual capital of the country,
But often pretends to be anyway

4-bedroom house
With a backyard that tumbles down to a creek
Like I appear to have tumbled through a life to this place,
This time

Is this thought supposed to offer me a consolation
As the near end of the tumbling appears on the horizon,
A life done, it suggests approaching an end not half bad,
A life of modest adventure and occasional welcome surprise,
A life with the blessing to have loved and been loved in return,
An end with a roof to cover my head,
protection from rain and cold, and vicious summer heat
A bed to sleep on and wake from every day,
Waking every day, a blessing often assumed, food on our table,
Friends, family, a life of fellows of my kind to know if I wish, or not…

All this, where I’ve been going all of my life, is it a denouement,
Does this suggest a celebration, a graduation,
Or a reminder
A reminder of how little of where I have gone
Has merited the going…

A reminder perhaps that time remains to still find that
Place and time where my nature was bent to find an end

Perhaps this thought is saying that this place and time
Is a resting moment, like a tree shaded park along a long
And sometimes treacherous highway,
A place to rest,
Not a place
To stop

what  we found in Grandma's  attic

memories,
boxes of  memories,
trinkets and seashell treasures
from county fairs
and rodeos
and neighborhood garage sales...

a straw hat,
a guitar with three broken strings
and two missing frets,
a cane pole, with lead sinkers
and a red and white bobber, a  catcher's mitt
and a wooden bat, a
tiny ring inscribed
"Baby Charles"
and none of us know who
Baby Charles is or was, a train ticket,
Laredo to Del Rio,
never used,
a sun bonnet, yellow
with purple flowers,
a collection of Comanche arrowheads,
old maps
with lines drawn in dark, soft pencil lead,
tracing country
roads long since abandoned,
rebuilt for faster, sleeker cars
than ever drove there before, an
old wallet with two five dollar bills
tucked away in a secret pocket,
a bundle of letters
written
in a fine, feminine hand -
we read the first
and no more, for from the first
it was clear the thin, jasmine scented
letters, still smelling so sweet
after so many years since
sent and received,
were saved
for her to read again
and not for
us...

and
photographs,
like memories, old,
faded, torn,  and blurred

forget-me-nots mostly
forgot,

the only one who might remember
now lying still beneath soft
grass in an after-life park of the dead

all
left behind for us
to try to understand,
to try to know a person
familiar to us all our life, but
still at the end
unknown...

a last chance for her to speak...

a last chance for us to
listen

Mystery at the bottom of the Devil's blue hole

I should quit and go home, but it's hot outside and cool and quiet and comfortable here in my Capej coffeehouse and I don't want to leave.

So, another story.



I’ll be watching for you

I love to drive, even though I can do less 
of it now than before..

going places I’ve been before,
finding new ways to get
there

seeing what there is to see,
stopping
to take-in a closer look
at a tree, blazing in autumn colors,
or grand vistas
from crooked narrow mountain roads, or
a tiny side road to get to
something seen in the distance,
like an iron railroad bridge
somewhere in Arizona,
bright red, about a quarter mile
off the highway, nestled
between
hills, seen clearly from the road,
but never found, settling
for a jackrabbit in a field beside the road,
standing tall on his haunches,
ears like furred yardsticks,
exposing the flag of his soft pink inner ear,
posing for me while I find my camera...

so much to see, forests, mountains cresting
before  a blue horizon,
animals on hill sides, little farmhouses,
a cemetery in Tennessee,
white stone
crosses
climbing a hillside beside
a tall-steepled
church…

~~~

Dee wants to go someplace
and do something;
I want to go someplace
and sit and watch the different world
I’ve come to, the different
people who live in that world,
in the end,
not so different as, from far away,
you might imagine

~~~

four great places for sidewalk sitting
and people seeing…

Santa Fe, New Mexico
Durango, Colorado
Seattle, Washington
San Antonio Riverwalk…

I’ll be watching for you
next time I’m
there

​

Before finishing this I am posting several examples of my other self-proclaimed artistry, photography.

Have not been taking pictures, lately. I'm at a point where making it across a supermarket parking lot takes all I've got, so there is not much chance of stomping around in the hills or strolling through downtown or down the Riverwalk looking for pictures to take. Instead I'm limited to fruit and flower still lifes or nudes. Fruit and flower still lifes bore the hell out of me and I can't afford a model for a nude, so my camera is semi-retired, at best.

This completes this post.

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