Month: January 2016

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David Bowie

No doubt music marks our days, sometimes quick phases, oftentimes longer, a decade or a lifetime. Bowie marks a near lifetime for me. Not too many artists have kept me listening as I pass through the decades with morphing styles and tastes befitting the ages, mine and the world’s.

I first heard Bowie in late 75, Ziggy Stardust most prominently but all of his early albums. I remember his young scratchy nasal voice (“Oh cacti find a home…”) that blossomed into that deep sonorous sometimes bass trilled at the edges full of flair and drama. My sister adored him and played his albums continuously in the basement room we shared back in Long Island. And when she slipped off the edge a bit, Bowie seeped into her paranoid delusions. She saw prophecy in him. Even in her mania, she appeared to capture the essence of him–enigmatic and forging.

We saw him, my sister and I, in the late 70’s, maybe early 80’s, if my poor memory serves me (and it rarely does), at the Forum in LA during the Low tour (or maybe the early 80’s Serious Moonlight tour–or both). He had already abandoned Ziggy and the thin white duke by then. I remember feeling nostalgic every year or two when he changed his style yet again, transformed into someone else, some other alien, sliding into the latest (industrial/Eno influenced) or setting the trend himself (Ziggy).

Some might characterize him as a chameleon or a dragon of sorts with his commanding fire burning everyone and everything up in frenzied delight or disintegrated fury if you read the stories of his professional and personal life, a long list of gone-throughs. But there is no doubt that the music world has been much influenced like a meteor scar on the earth, the crater of his prolific creative output over several media–music, art, film, drama–ever communing with the stars he brought our eyes to time and again.

Up to his probable scripted death by the seemingly indomitable cancer yesterday, he was in charge. He made the trends, first had us look gender fluidity in the eyes on such a grand scale. And glam rock, I believe, would not have come to the fore with its serious spark without him (okay Queen was pretty cool too).

Of course I am no music historian nor critic, just a listener, appreciator and star gazer. But as a fan, I know I will sorely miss the years’ passings without a Bowie change-up around the corner (just when you think he’s resting comfortably…). He seems to have synchronized my days, kept me abreast of the new, the old-new, the new-new and the new-old. But just as I said it as I watched his Lazarus video from his just-released BlackStar, “amazing”, as I’ve exclaimed it so many times before when he sent chills down my spine with some profound lyric, performance and/or song.

Peace, bro. I will miss the latest and greatest you sorely.

 

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This is for all the lonely, broken people

 
 
“Her name was like an echo of an ache in her.”  Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Some texts are memorable by a single, sublime sentence: “Call me Ishmael.” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” “Gregor Samsa awoke one day to find himself an enormous vermin.”

Rothfuss’ Auri story reads like a long prose poem, so lovely for the logophile in its wonderland of creative and created words (I looked them up) and specificity in naming things.

On to Book 2 of The Kingskiller Chronicle, a place I have enjoyed inhabiting almost as much as living in Middle Earth 40 years ago. Feels as good to wend my way through the words of this world as it was to learn to speak Elvish. 

However, Rothfuss’ little side venture tale of one of the mysterious waif characters in the main plot appeals more to the poet in me than the entire lengthy two-volume story appeals to the fantasy-adventurer. And this from a Game of Thrones fan. 

A short but delicately sensual read, I recommend the novella–an echo of an ache itself–to all the beautiful broken people the author addresses through it.
 

credit: sagacomic.blogspot.com

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Cave

 
 

My cave surrounds me wherever I go, shrouding my aura in darkness, oft-colored midnight, even then rich cabernet red and other so charcoal and dirt, depending where the eyes.
 
A child’s pinched lips and piercing wail at a dropped candy in a sweet shop, an obsessive loss and raging irreconcilable remedy no time will heal, deflects from the walls of my helmet.
 
But inside this dank hollow lie dusty old book traces by the scores with yellowed leaves of lingering tales in smidgeons of dribs and drabs hooked on peek-ish memory bites and
 
Tasty morsels of cookbook glossy tongue shots gleaming moist bread puddings, fired sugar crisp tops of creme brulet fine firm fork poked and 77 chicken crockpot recipes.
 
Flickering in the black are 35 millimeter reels spinning snowy memories cast in 60’s vintage plastic coating like clear crunchy couch covers that thigh-stick on humid summer days.
 
My cave halos me in shadows, protects me from seeing too crisply, feeling too widely and stepping too recklessly from coral blue wave-walls framing family, clutter, oranges and Picasso.
 
Within I carry the cavernous dim where the entryway light blazes shimmer on passersby or then again, maybe yet, the innumerably shot clear through rays shine outside in. 

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 Strung Out on Life Haiku

 
 
Beef stew in the air

Stairwell walls’ sticky with it.

Breathe, run, count 10, breathe.
______________________________________
Color in the lines

She could not stay inside them

Failed kindergarten.
______________________________________
Married on a whim

Each good deed deserves better

Still waiting on gifts.
______________________________________
Two lives turn to one

Children’s bare feet pat down halls

tripping on carpet.
_______________________________________
Rumors replace truth

The papers sell story lies

no consequences.
________________________________________
Writing life haiku

Art belies the craft poorly

no skill for an ear.  

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The Two of Us

  

There is a photograph of you and me, our heads are contorted from sleeping upright in the back of a car, your face clearly lost to sleep, my long neck extended bent as far back as humanly possible without losing the head–only my head is actually cut off. My face stops at the chin; only the widely exposed distorted neck, almost serpentinely composed, and your sleeping face suggests that I have surrendered to what I could no longer fight.

Your haircut reflects the 80s, mullets being the fashion, which you sported briefly. I had one too, though straight hair does more justice to outline the do than my curly hair. We were young, maybe our mid-twenties and traveling, exhausted with too much caffeine and too little sleep. Our clothing suggests spring time or fall, light half sleeved unjacketed shirts and jeans. 

I cannot place the specific occasion of our sleeping in the back of a car or who took the picture. Our sister in law gave it to us this past holiday season and laughed, saying she had meant to give this picture to us for years, each time she came across it in her belongings. And this year was the year, though I don’t know why. The randomness of things stuns me slightly.

You and I share so much history, large and small, remembered and forgotten, largely the latter, and not for lack of significance so much as sheer length of time, the innumerable moments we have lived together. We grew ourselves from teenagers til these current waning years of our youth, of our lives. 

And we have suffered and joyed in measure to most, all of life’s gifts and trials. We have fared well you and I, though you would look askance on that affirmation. And then I would remind you about the synaptic net you form in your brain with such negativity. 

Thus it is with us, we who co-exist inhaling the dust of our pasts every day, lugging it inside us like weightless trunks of paperless snapshots and report cards and love letters we never kept or even wrote except in the air, in the doing and being of us, so that when life folds up neatly to square off a life lived, we’ll have nothing left to us but shared time, the illusion of being.

Lord knows, I cannot imagine having shared illusions with anyone else.

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In the Dim Day Afternoon

 We are an enclave of two, me in my wool sweater bunched big over my shoulders and you in that mottled  calico talc fur slung silkily about you like steam covered hot linen hung to dry in the crisp morning. 

While the rain whispers rumors of quiet mountain tops billowing powder mists, we settle the dark day in motel rhymes and figures, you curled stilly into yourself, me in half open heavy lids of thick thoughts.

Dripping gray afternoons go like this sometimes, lamp light and halogen halos smoldering light in echoes across the gritty wall as if the moon had been kept eons in a closet but then finally sprung.

The haunting mesh of daylight dim and nighttime kindle lit fuses daymares and nightdreams–you flinching in confused sleep, me somnambulantly signing a screen–prompting trees to twitch lies.

Outside the torrents settle into a storm’s afterthought, the sieve of fury dying out in mere frowns and hisses like the dancing crickets scraping leg music behind your closed lids audible to half mast mine.

Willow and me, no one else telepaths the wind’s significance, the rain’s history, nor the weather’s detritus quite like we two in certain dusty climes and time of day, when the nodding light slants true.

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What’s in a name?

  

Achunal the aleuts call it. Israelis say רוּחַ.

In Spain, they curse el viento tearing at hats and dresses 

but matacabras, goat killer, infuriates the shepherd

while angin or lilit in Malay mystifies most outsiders: 

Are there distinct names for degree, duration or character? 

Like a picnic zephyr delights an English gent or ahe a Hawaiian.

Puhe denotes the ordinary, common or imperceptible island condition.

When apples fly forcefully, a Russian complains of ветреный ветер.

What is the word for the puff left leafing pages in a book?

The sea brings Kadja in Bali sweeping aside sand softly

like a cat’s paw over the pond in the back bay.

But no, I’d never be caught dead in a Cock-Eyed-Bob down under.

Not while the night coromell caresses California’s toes this time of year

past Diablo and the doldrums thrumming silence into an ear 

merely at the thought of a place where nothing tossles hair, moves air

carries a wink and knowing stare caught glimpsing a drifting folded paper:

unraveled, it reveals your name, wordless moan escaping a window.

What is the name of your child, Shu?
 

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Orange and Blue

  

I colored your feet orange and blue while you called me names like “whore” and “cunt”, 

your toes brimming like the koi pond pressed in a steely concrete commercial center, juxtaposed erupted urchins of God’s flashing tongue dimmed by man’s dull blunt greed.

You promised me a cutting inscription of flesh, bled poem to my thighs, while I raised my glass to meet your eyes, full of razor smiles and pinned suggestion.

And while we slashed each other’s will, the poison mist encircled our ears, making rhymes echo, fall flat down the canals and pool in pelvic hollows of warm, viscous amethyst paramnesia.

“Get lost!” you roared. Startled, I gazed upon you, the words traversing lacrimal streams teleprompting your dread: Lose me inside and bring me home to your harbors, belly deep in the will of cabined fear and vicious distraint.

Aloud, my response came: “Let me paint the coraled sea around you orange and blue.” 

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War

  

The war raged a life time, blood and brains dashed to the ground only to be resurrected repeatedly like an ungrateful Lazarus or an unrepentant Prometheus caught in an eternal circle.

One side fought for the good of progress, bravery, cleverness and right action. This side delivered the goods, made the world go round and fed the hungry, sheltered the vulnerable from the elements by sheer will to control.

The other side ceded control, refused to fight and surrendered before the battle began. This side stomped itself invisible, passive and weakly withdrawn, drawn to a light no one could see, a lost vision never achieved, destination never reached.

While one side won the battle, the other won the war. While one side walked in the light, the other created it. However, neither side rested in confidence nor in peace, both sides claiming no victory in vanquishing the other.

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Cheers to You

  

 

“Have a good day. Stay out of trouble,” she says as she pats his naked ass and then flies out the door, already late for work.

Here’s to a year of self-possession and comfort, independence and fulfilling your own expectations. Here’s to love and familiarity, trained fingers and lips finding all the right grooves. Here’s to kindness of kin, those who have your back and keep you no matter what. Here’s to the empathy of strangers and believers. Here’s to compassion and good samaritans, accidental heroes and intentional fools. Here’s to health and good cheer. Here’s to you.

To another year with you in it. 

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