....From The Tree Of............Sudden Joys
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_______________________________________________________ The Girl With The Glow Whenever Caroline came down the street, people swept out to the curb or headed for the building side of walkway; gave her passage. Riding in her wake were dancing pieces of her psyche that she trailed behind, the weirdest kind of comet tail, all gears and gore, a Guernica. Bulls- disjointed arms and legs, and people with their faces rearranged. Above her danced a bear, and on each side were all the birthdays where they cut her up like cake. Faces from her past who grinned and chatted, and made wishes as they sliced her up and ate. Caroline kept on, the girl walked straight ahead and smiled. She'd learned to keep on going, never taking notice, never breaking stride. She didn't try to hide it or deny what people saw; Caroline just never let it slow her down. She dragged her nightmares like an invisible gown, its train by Hieronymous Bosch, with the brightest dignity I know. Not Isaac Newton, But Close Let us start by saying that nothing big happened; by big I mean there were no deaths or explosion, no one was born or saved and nobody had anything named after them. Let us say it was a day like any other; that there were bugs in the runners of the double-hung windows and I wondered what they die of, beating their wings against air. .......There were familiar tufts of .......cat hair clinging to the risers .......on the stairs and cats hiding behind curtains, delighting .......in their spring, hunting my toes .......as usual. There was coffee to be made ...and haste .......but that is beyond me .......in the wee hours of earnest and groggy awakening, still in the underwater wavyness of alpha movement clinging to the last log of 'otherness'; I am a careful stepper into the wide up world, loathe to leave covers and the shift of irre sponsibility I wear there. Let us say this was the day ......I realized that I would die; o, not 'today'- not ...that- I'm not pre ...cognizant and certainly not a suicide but today I knew the meaning of an end to this. This taking it all for granted: dust and dirty laundry, birdsong, lack of pain, watching morning come in grays and bluish grays to blue white light and how at some quite finite point ......it would all just ...................................stop so this is how it happened, how I opened up my eyes to what is passing through me every minute. How I feel the life, the precious, honest ping of beating muscle in the chest and how the rest is really ......a piece of ...cake and we should realize we're all such starving bastards, waiting for our piece to come our way when all we have to do is reach and bite there is enough to go around and all of it's good, and there are flavors never heard of yet but might be the big one, might even be a taste much like today so to all of us I say bon ....appetit. Get Up Ye Bastards Of The Lord Get up ye bastards of the Lord, who never knew your Father. Never felt His arms, nor held were you against the rumble of his chest- never mind the fear, come sneer at night; snatch a newer sun, run on coltish legs. Dance a morning dance around the winter lilacs, yes, the bush is frozen but the roots are deep. At The Moment Of Moment when the icepick of pure understanding reaches the pleasure center of the brain, that single instant it atom bombs and mushrooms up- I believe God and the devil both are riding me barebacked: devil, with his heels dug into the mare and God, still trying to wrap his arms around old Lucifer, bygones be bygones, giving good hard switch to mare's ass as I go gallop galloping up the spiral stair to heaven, shuck those riders like a dog shakes off a lake to lay in total puzzlement of where that image came from, knowing that my heart beat hard, and I am far from prayers before I fall asleep. High Five In this mire of unending tiredness, age, and dropping off of faculties, of fey goodlooks- the hooks that hold to glue my eyes wide open, lids yet stuck to somewhere near the eyebrow, eyes that still say, "wow, now that was something", these strong tethers can be found in just the simplest things: a peach, a sky of postcard blue when every day around it for a month had been a battleship metal gray. Best of all, is when it's something unexpected from the old ones, like this story that I'm thinking of--"He wasn't himself. Became unmanagable. Gone dim-bulbed dumb and sad. Confused and hardly eating, so they took him to the nursing home, afraid that time had finally crept inside the skull to nullify what made the octogenarian, who and what he was. And in the midst of triage, asked if he could pick a word to best describe himself, he got a shot of his old magic, something clicked right back together, and he looked and grinned and offered them "ebullient"- I've never heard a finer word in life. It's worth a bushel full of synonyms for god and angels both; it somehow makes the striving worth it and they'd tell you that themselves if they weren't off somewhere just up above those gun-metal clouds, stingy with the rainbows where they're right this minute, laughing hard and toasting him. Something Stroked The Heart Listening to a preacher on the radio in my car on Sunday evening driving back from mum's, away from fretting and her eighty two year struggle with anxiety and worry he said something- made a wash of cool, bright sense and that is this: contentment is a decision, not a gift. I was aware that I could right that moment, decide to be as happy as I ever was in life. The sun in blazes, dipping burnished into night- my two hands on the wheel- my two hands always my two hands, the thing that drives it. I can drive right on to Jordan on those words. signalman you itch and i scratch you tense and i ratchet up a notch of glandular drumbeat when the song plays and you tap your feet my hips are moving back and forth within my seat, not knowing where the rhythm's coming from, but ride it yes, i will there are signs of transmigration- the finest kind of thread has sewn a piece of you along my sensitive side: the one with all the feelers, an under water thing that finds the fish The Slippery Slope One thing I missed growing up, and that was a Donna Reed kind of house with banisters, beautiful banisters to slide my emerging sexuality against, confirming once and for all how wonderful a woodie is. As I See It It's not in the nature of man to be free of desire and that crap zen, that is the biggest lie of all. I want not the absence but the hunger, vying hungers, and a heart big enough to war in. I am opposites: my task is to learn to live with it, do as little harm as possible to those who share this air. I do not deny that there are razorblades in lilies, death in life in every moment waking up and going forward despite the fact that in the end it's dust that waits. I want the steel courage of the lion- and the helplessness of the lamb who stands and bleats before him: I am kill, and I am teeth. I am alive and I am struggling fully aware that after all the murderous sunrises, remorse at the hour of sleep, I am a creature of appetite- desire. I want no other way- numb comes inside soil by and by. Hell's Half Acre The British have such wonderful H towns: Hadleigh, Haworth, Horsham, Hull- if I were an English girl porcelain pale, a Royal Dalton English rose, I'd read Agatha Christie mysteries and tight-assed Christopher Marlowe till the cows came home all Hereford proud and crumple-horned adorned with bell, and bonny bagful bucket worth of fresh-squirt cream; dream of misty leas and ruddy cheeks. I'd prefer it to the urban life; the 'H' I live in isn't Henley-on -Thames: not a milker or a shepherdess in sight just plenty of SUV's cellphone users, drug abusers, New Age eastern religion pigeoning every coop; I'd like a scoop of something genuine- cow manure in pasture for a Shropshire Lad would be good. On To Page 10 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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