....From The Tree Of........................Isolation & Thought
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_______________________________________________________ Identification The America the car is a symbol of the person. I may deny it but it's there, planted by Wall Street just as though Svengali had some access to my brain, I remain a certain make, year, model. Who can explain the way I'm sorry for the 1980 Galaxie- shine gone, bumper tied by twine to some guy who wears his face like an unmade bed, his backseat stuffed with children, his workman overalls the same dull blue as life. Or the Mercedes, insufferably smug, who cuts in front of me, the driver with a car phone wrapped around an ear above a bored Moroccan tan, his rich Corinthian leather life, intent on next year's Mazzarati and The Market. I started out: a 1976 secondhand Scamp, a new Chevette, then the only Horizon Car of The Year that wouldn't run in '88. After that, a Tracker, previously owned, showed all the world my adventurous soul, but that one died and now I'm a Neon- solid and sporty, handle corners like a cheetah; color, a buttery cinammon 2000 LX, top of the line. Protected by the airbags for the first time in my life; they didn't deploy. A sideways collison can outsmart- it's the sideway collisons that damage us the most she's crunched and spoiled just as all the things I love turn out to be. I am a rental waiting for the damaged goods to be returned. Not new, not even solid anymore... No Rest, No Redemption Addictions are those things that itch so badly, even after layers of skin are gone. The addict will scratch to the bone, try to get at it; after the bone it's the mind, strafed and scraped until the fingers find the eyes... but once the eyes are jellied out the thing imagined, that illusive atom of desire, remains- aways seen, and always just a fingernail away. My advice: give wide berth to the addicted. They will have your skin and eyes and mind as well, before they amble down the road; a new name claimed, a brand new suit of clothes, the same Old Scratch ing soul. Finding Its Level If something is not a solid, not a gas- it's a liquid, fluid thing; moving, always moving, not the kind of thing you'd want tied to... if it grew too large it'd drown you and the worst thing about a liquid-y thing: it seeks the lowest ground. You wonder how far down it'll go, but cunningly, it finds a lower, darker depth where even the rats are spooked, and tonight I caught a glimpse of two red eyes. Pieces It is only that it's late, my mind becomes more pliable, more apt to leak what's mortared in, under brightest sun, but I remember many night feeling fingers- I remember it. I dream of foods- sausages, strawberries in bowls of cream and secrets caught in curtains and a spring wind. The curtains, hypnotize and just the voice drones on and on but carries out the window into nowhere and I'm safe until I speak and it is late, and I wonder what the statute is on memories? Dowser Don't know when my hatred of exclamation points began; lord knows, I loved them as a youngster. Slapped a bat and ball at the end of every breathless thought; fought exaggeration, exaggeration always won. Over the top is where kids like to be and there I sat, with a ball and a bat and a powerful urge to hit something out of the park, up into the cheap seats, where easy emotion hung its hat, in Tammy Baker makeup ready to run. I cried for joy, I cried for sadness. Later on when my feelings got their sea legs, those who still emoted free as taps, made me suspect; they either didn't grow as deep or were hanging on to the grenade pin way too long, then yelling to disguise the fact they never really had the guts to pull it, blow up once in life, for real. When that happens, when you lose your mind in grief or anger or even joy you also lose the need to try and show the highs and lows and continually exclaim. Places too deep to know are what I respect as true, in the same way I love violets by the side of road, sprung there by the grace of God; they're prettier than a flashy, arranged bouquet could be. A thing should be more than it says to move me to a place an exclamation point tries taking me by force. An old man and his dog screams louder of loneliness than any painted Gethsemane I can think of: Jesus with His lady-face contorted, exclamation strokes of eyebrows, done in gesso weeping angels all around have nothing on a mutt, his tail tucked down between his legs, keeping pace with a whitehaired master hardly keeping pace with anything anymore, shuffling home to room and bed: that is a picture of exquisite, understated love and sadness both. It is my heart that tells me so, not punctuation. Give me the coin to bite on: I'll decide if it's silver or it's lead is all I'm saying. One Born Every Minute Had a psychic reading done last week, the ten dollar version. Consisted of reading my aura, 'murder aura', she said which was alarming till it dawned on me that she'd said 'murky', not murder, but murder's what I heard combined with me being a fire sign, moon in Taurus, morning baby to boot which the Wiccan said sucks anger like a sponge; I was ready to kill her then and there. I've got the karma for it, surely. Felt like Ma Barker out of touch with my bloodlust on the darkling plain I wander this time round until she told me: 'office worker' 'accounting', 'hate it'- should have been much more'- 'it's not too late'- but of course it is. The healer she saw when I took off my glasses, when she read my muddy halo knows the truth, but I swear to God I should've iced her just the same. Redemptive Dropped marbles do not make a sound on slate if ears are closed and pillows cannot comfort grown from granite. It's not the thrown, but the receiver must be placed just so and ready with a pocket, worked and worked with linseed lovingly molded for the landing, pointed upward. The time, the place the ears must work in symphony. There's an importance in conjunctions to make a Star of Bethlehem: we are saved when saving has its day and not a moment before. As A Dog Eats Those who know how to savor, taking a morsel, letting it press against the tongue and touch the teeth, then melt down slow, so drip by drip it kisses the throat and each pink taste bud blinks its codes, finds names for it: remembering. Those who savor cannot comprehend the shovelers of food, the anxious gulpers, those who cannot fit enough inside as though one slice is like another they cannot brothers be to those who count their loaf a host of sorts, a miracle, a stunning singularity given ample space to be the thing it is apart from every other meal. This is true of food, and likewise true of physical love: there's appetite and hunger. One is filled, the other compounds itself by filling up the stomach before the mouth or mind has equal chance to know it. Ask a dog his memory of meat. Thoughts On The Loss Of Teeth The world has been something to chew on, really tear and gnaw to get the juice and goods of it. I often use eating metaphors, so important to me the act of rending, masticating the cold mush of everyday to warm it up -take it in: assimilate, absorb. So now that I am losing a near-bicuspid that could have been saved but for my procrastination and the wisdom molars farther back, weak but needed stand-ins all these years I wonder if I'll gulp or puree everything- life included. If my tendency to rip open the envelope with teeth will be gone for good, replaced by milder baby meat, the gentler version; a Brahm's life not the battling brow of Beethoven making thunder, clashing clouds and intentions one against the other just to hear the bang. Will days go quietly on little baby feet--- and who will burp me? Bringing In October Seasonal rewindings: playing over the old bad tape that skips and catches but always makes a go of it one more time. The 1940's furnace, double burner with its cheery, curlicued Sears, scripted on each honest, clanging iron door as I check the pilot lights- the right one always higher so the left stays lit and taking off the noisy, sheetmetal door to change the peaked, four-filter cardtrick two little tents bivouacked in there; pointed, leaning together to prevent a fraction of the dust and years that cling to the ducts of this old house to keep it from escaping. Creaks and snaps of breathing metal beneath the floor. The heat that sneaks from registers to please my toes, each of the twelve Octobers it has done so. The smell. The familiar homey smell of dusty heat, the bang of ductwork; then, the blower starts and I put away my checkbook and my prayers. Another year, another fall ritual and this old friend as big as three refrigerators mounted on a twenty inch, solid base of concrete, motor fastened five feet from the floor so even an idiot would have known the creek rises- basement floods but not this fool who thinks, perhaps this relic lasted; why not me- here. On To Page 16 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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