Pancakes in the Woods

Drying Off

The birds,
we were them --
and lizards before crawled we;

That which is not yet
covered with water
is not necessarily land.

Barren branches scrape the startrek-backdrop sky,
scratching at mercury vapor colored clouds
as if the starry nighttime underneath
itches just to shine on through.

Sometimes trees are more zen to watch
than clouds. I watch them moving now,
above the fog this winter night --
barely New Year's past yet warm as witchcraft --
and not all dancing to one song at that.

The trees invented wind you know
just to move without suspicion ...
to talk across meadows;
bow gracefully to flowers.

And we hog it all now
flying our stupid metal machines
literally upon their air --

Dropping death from high above
on defenseless skeletons,
starving in the camps,
closed off until, for desperation of will itself,
send toy rockets over prison walls.

Will man stay and watch this murder blind,
while even trees are not standing still?

Pictures of People in the Hospital after the Bombs and Shooting

I'm going through my Health Plan's website. First, becuase it's such a rainy day anyway, I used the Physician Finder to find a really cute Primary Care physician at the new hospital facility nearby - that was awesome. But when I was reading through all my exclusions in my insurance contract, I found (more than) a couple of disturbing things.

One, if I am ever just "under observation" in the hospital, they're not paying the bills. Wow. That's pretty deep. "Well," said the new cute doctor man to the hospital, his voice deep and serious on the phone, "he could go any minute - you'd better put him under observation."

Too bad for little ol' poor me. But thank you anyway, ROWR MD.

And two -- here's the kicker now -- if madmen or our even our very own ever attack our streets and invade our houses, when they bandage me up my bleeding from bricks and bombs at the hospital or medical tent -- I am not covered for the treatment! I gotta pay for geting hurt even if they aim right at me! From my medical plan's Master Agreement Exclusions section:

Limitations and exclusions
Unless specifically stated otherwise, no benefits will be provided for or on account of the following items: H211200

Any loss contributed to, or caused by:
War or any act of war, whether declared or not;
Insurrection; or
Any conflict involving armed forces of any authority

What? ANY authority? Holy crap! What do they know is coming I don't? Welcome to the Land of the Free my friends. Apparently, where you're free to pay for war and getting shot in the ass during it too.

Most Pompous Horoscope

Others may be leaning on you for support today
and you will be there for them,
even if you are tired
of always being the hero.

With chatty Mercury now in expressive Leo,
you might consider
letting someone know that you would be happier
if everyone
participated more.

You don't mind doing your share;
it's doing everyone else's work
that makes you annoyed.

That's REALLY my horoscope for today.

Well, blahdy-dah!

Squirrelrun

I first think the squirrels they are us
that the crackling noise of mayhem be mine
only soon come to realize, like cloud or sky --
this TREE is us, this growth of ages ours.
I study from afar its scored lines on old skin
gashed from the searing tracks of Rodentia
all these many years, cold Christmas and the
Fourth of July four times forty times the free.

Two squirrels run
each and every summer night
round old, such old Southern crusty bark
up and down and all around
a ribbon around each bend they always run,
to the broken limb across the pavement
its asphalt deep enough to sell a house
but never cover up the River Styx.

on a bridge of broken limbs
now I'm glancing over to the light
electric, poled and paid for
and then along the side
to a house of birds
to a feeder of birds
to a bath of birds

All of which seem empty in this heat,
dry, maybe even forgotten
but scarecrow vigilant nonetheless
across the street from Home Sweet Home.
The black driveway splits it all,
room enough for passage in permanent style
perhaps even that of time.

Chrome Never Ends

PERSONALITY GOING FOR CHEAP

OKAY so all my friends constantly made fun of me for decorating the PT Cruiser like a Christmas tree with chrome trinkets. It was always fun, you can't deny that. And it looks nice! One can never have enough chrome.

Well, heartless as I am, I traded it in for a new Saturn last week. Gas and mileage, really. And here it is for sale, at my dealership a week later than the bloodmoney, all dressed up shiny and... CLEAN ... so says the sign on its roof. Is that ALL they could say?

Well they must have been impressed by that at least and not distracted by those perfect retro chrome moon wheels I put on there. I loved that car, and the dealer was surprised at how she cleaned up, wasn't it? Aw. I wish it to the driver who most appreciate his shiny matchbox car with glue-on parts and shiny, shiny wheels. Now as for laughing at the chrome.

Click on the picture above. It will take you to the active listing for my old car at the dealership. Now, look down the page to the very, very bottom where nobody looks. There!

I told you. Now that's just sick. Chrome on everything, and you thought it was just me.

Gay Pajamas

The sky is so gay.
(go ahead, click on his yummy tummy)

Breadcrumbs Are So Yummy

Oh Mojo, stop! It's always been a clever exchange, we both know that. I was only aghast at the audacity of hires out of jurisdiction. But building in the Tech on that blogpost is just plain misguided, chum. Remember not every overt is what it seems. Some things move on their own, and motivation is just an ugly word. Context is everything, and I heard it said once that communication is only possible between equals.

Still Looney

Dogs barking as usual. Traffic sounds whooshing through the pines like fake wind.

Suddenly my neighbor drives up and, headlights ruining my exclusive and private affair, parks his truck in his driveway-- thereby illuminating me in the back yard, his engine still running. He just sits there in the car, headlights still on me like an eclipse of the sun, oblivious to that which I am looking heavenly toward.

Of course he doesn't get out to watch Nature's rare offer. After siting there a while he'll just shut down the car, grab his keys and run with them jingling into the night air, and duck into the incandescent security of modern man (called a house), forgetting his roots like everyone else.

Oblivious to the show. Like so many people in these trying times.

As I gaze into the now dull red sphere, I wonder how much is happening on this rock beneath it at this very moment. Death, for one thing. War. Pain. Suffering. But good things too, like new babies and teenage love. I call some friends to tell them to go outside but they are all either busy or not answering.

Oh well, more for me.

Better than any TV show, Netflix rental, or even neighborly affair is this drama unfolding above me in the sky as I write these words. A total lunar eclipse. The last one now 'till 2010 apparently. I just came in from watching theater of the sky's ballet movement, and it was the best SciFi ever. Even the passing clouds were in on it. As I gazed into blackness, a ruddy disk whose previous performances spawned so many archetypal stories throughout history, was beatifically bookended by Saturn and Regulus.

This is special sky tonight!

Regulus is Latin for 'prince' or 'little king'. The Greek variant Basiliscus is also used. It is known as Qalb Al Asad, from the Arabic قلب لأسد or Qalb[u] Al-´asad, meaning 'the heart of the lion'. This phrase is sometimes approximated as Kabelaced and translates into Latin as Cor Leonis. It is known in Chinese as ??十四, the Fourteenth Star of Xuanyuan, the Yellow Emperor. In Hindu Astronomy, Regulus corresponds to the Nakshatra Magha. -- wikipedia

Night winter full moon brightness overtaken by a chance alignment in heaven.

If you think about it, all that orbiting going on up there night and day ... we are all totally oblivious to the wonder of it. Motion we do not feel: The sun is busy moving across the sky. The moon too. Every day. And night, which is really day somewhere else. The stars seem to move around. And then once in a while it all lines up. Eh, but nobody watches any more. In fact, in some great cosmic mockery, people all look at things CALLED watches instead. Hehehe.

The Earth's orbit and the moon's -- these are ellipses of routine. And yet, in this rare aligning of gods in the Great Empty Space, the Hidden Mover plays his Great Show in the Sky with the very light and shadow on which we build "good" and "evil." From Out There. All the full moons you have ever seen mean the sun is simply out of your human view now, yet shining on some other part of the globe while you are in darkness, yet still warming the closely distant face of the moon as well.

The benevolent Light.

But not tonight. Not now. How her face is Red! Its shimmering has been blocked and reddened for a while by something called Chance. We call it that, but I wonder if it is all that random. Alignment of three bodies is surely a plane, right? And there again the joke - people will gaze upward at a plane. Mostly, because it makes noise.

If only this eclipse was noisy, I think to myself. Maybe more folks would really stop for a minute, crane their necks skyward, and look out into the eternal moment rather than to their past or tomorrow, and ponder the greatness of it all.

It could do us all a bit of good.

Of Harbingers and Goodbyes

Many say I'm superstitious and some will say a kook, but when a sparrow flew into my house the other night (for a second time I might add, just to bring the message home), I just knew it was a sign. An old tale is it signals a death in the family when that happens.

And, it did.

Today we had to put our beloved pet, Tallulah, down. She was a 10-year old fat black cat who was the most lovable companion and squeezable of true friends. It was a very sad morning, and it's going to be a tough weekend of empty spaces. She's been there from our return from Los Angeles in 1997 all the way to the Mason Dixie line a few years back. Born in a South Attleboro trailer park (how she had the railroad-track moxie in her from a kitten!), she quickly came to be the spoiled-rotten royal daughter of two queens living in West Warwick luxury.

We had to drug her on the drive South. I only gave her a half of the pill, and for several hours she had one drunken eye. It was hysterical and precious as she fumbled all over the back of the PT Cruiser on the way down here, acting all Dean Martin out the window.

An indoor lioness without claws, Keeten (that's our nickname for her) basically thought she was one of the pups. Always right there begging for scraps with the other two, her little bell around her fat neck ringing with every elephantal step. Heh. I will miss that heavy stride. You should never hear a cat walk, but you could hear her pads hit the floor let me tell you.

Her sickness though has been rather quick. We knew it was coming and that somehow makes it tougher. For the last month she hadn't been eating really. Not her usual jelly-bowl belly self. Not going in her catbox either. Her personality was certainly there, but her cry became weak and faded and she would only walk a few feet before plopping down for a rest. We took her to the emergency room last week to be sure.

After X-rays and bloodwork and antibiotics all week, she didn't fare much better. She sat all day and peered out the window. I knew in my heart of hearts it was time. We had late-night talks, her and I. I asked her if she was leaving, and she squinted up at me a couple of times. How she purred and purred though! As if happy. As if knowing the game was up and real living would begin soon. The porch has a full-length window door where she laid all day, peering out. If she were an outdoor kitty, she would surely have trudged off to the woods to die in grace, as all felines somehow hear the call to do.

But Miss Thang sat on her royal red cushion behind the glass and peered out at the birds and wind, night and day. Until this morning.

We took her to the clinic first thing, and somehow deep down all three of us in the car knew it would be her last ride. Her cry from the pet carrier in the back seat was there, and penetrated time, because it had grace within it. And love. More consultation and more bloodwork delivered the news. The very caring lady vet gave us two choices no human should ever have. The prognosis was surgical, medical maimery or sweet peace. How we both cried, oh my. But as she lay on the cold silver metallic table, I know her rolling over and purring like a small plane right to the end meant she was not upset with us; that she knew it was time to say goodbye.

But of course, I just couldn't squeeze her hard enough to believe her at the time. Our tears fell openly onto her black fur and wet it with our desperate love, and she didn't even flinch. At one point, she even reached out her paw to me as Bobby held her too, and I know she was reaching out to say something beyond human words. Of course I am heartbroken, as is Bobby. But the cards and times are all played out. I understand she is at rest, and did not go alone while we were not at home to be with her. And I understand there is a purpose to it - one I may not yet recognize but know will profoundly mean something later in reflection.

I understand that harbingers and signs are real if you watch for them, and peace and grace come in very small packages. Like little black kittens born in trailer parks.

Like little sparrows caught in my room.

Literal, Literature and Liturgy: Book of Lee

Okay it's the holidays and that ALWAYS means Mom. She loved collecting Santas and talking at kitchen tables with snacks. And then, we let men in white coats backed by corporate deacons and the church of Health, Medicine & Wellbeing poison and radiate her to death at the ripe old age of 54, right before my sibling's and lost father's eyes.

Of course, as the Book would have it, I was far away in Hollywood, but I did come home to see The End.

Ah yes, and then there's him. Daddy. After a few short years with his only friend gone and two years barely into retirement, alone in a stripped-down house with NO SANTAS, no color, and no spirit, it finally was his turn.

His lungs of all things; what a Lucky Strike. I remember being sent on the errands, money in hand and a short bribe on top, to go walk to the gas station each weekend and buy the cigarettes that killed him.

Oh, how I'm Witness!

Yeah so holidays always kinda brought me down. I was gonna say "bring" but nah, I feel the spirit this season -- I do. But it ain't no Jesus spurring me on. It's Light as a theme and love of Home. Bu

t they won't stop reading the wrong book out there! He's the reason for the season, they all say, and cite that stupid, Kubric monolith (one rock) of a Black Book everyone still thinks is really history.

The only Bible is the book you live every day, and you read this Book by noting all the irony and synchronicity of your each and every hour -- the silly coincidences that only Authors can come up with. And then it Dawns on you. You ARE the Bible, not God! Wow! Just a pretty Damned-Good Read. See? Both ways the Word "read," -- one Way Once Done, and the other -- to Do. So Merry Christmas.

Happy Jesus.

To the Three Magicians and a Star!

To a poor bastard kid.

[a stubborn life] || sweet boy, the hive came crashing down today | cracked open on the driveway | sweet boy, the bee queen fled here from the smoke | the day i burned the roses | i dreamed i gave her new wings for her flight | the once she owned just didn't fit right | sweet boy, there is this stubborn life | cracking me open like the bee hive | somewhere somewhere somewhere inside | sweet boy, if you ever made me cry, | it was from all the tender things you've said | sleep tight, and when you wake up again | it is my time to go to bed | like every every every night, okay? ||

"That which triggers off an affect, that which effectuates a power to be affected, is called a signal: the web stirs, the scalp creases, a little skin is bared. Nothing but a few signs like stars in an immense black night. Spider-becoming, flea-becoming, tick-becoming, an unknown, resilient, obscure, stubborn life." (Dialogues, 61)

a footnote to Mom and Dad - their Bibles were beautiful books, and are still, and holy; I have rite and live their stories every day. Heck, I've even created hymns. They are Genesis to me.

A Shadow Without Eyes and Growing

SO LATELY I've had to wear the glasses everywhere because the hard lenses just gave out -- the edges get jagged when they get ragged. Time for new ones. I have to wear thick THICK ant-burning magnifiers, my eyes are so bad.

So it got me to remembering when I was a kid and had to wear them all the time. Beat up and made fun of for having them on back then. And now I go to work wearing them! Anyway, at night, as a kid, they had to come off when you went to bed. That's scary, because everything in the room instantly takes on a bigger, cloudier shape just when you don't want it to. And your wee sleepy mind stays awake, trying to make things out all night.

Worse than most kids, I saw all your same scary things, only much bigger and more horrifying because my canvas was a hell of a lot broader. If your mind plays tricks on you with a closet light in the dark, imagine the cardgames it throws when all that shit's blobby and moving.

You see things in the night.

So yeah, where was I? Oh yeah. Because of all this I would always have this recurring nightmare, well into my prepubescent days I might add, that was more like lucid nightmaring. It was no dream that's for sure. I would try to lay there, terrified, and fall asleep. Closing eyes never helped. The simplest of themes, even all shut up tight I would feel the presence of EYES. But when I looked (the fear response) all I would see was this SHADOW WITHOUT EYES AND GROWING persistent in the corner of the ceiling, way over there in the dark.

Not on the ceiling, nor on the walls either. But in the corner, hoisted or floating, and looking down and all over at once at the same time. Like one corner of a triangle filling in with swirls of oil, if you will. Man I was scared; but in a very personal way. How do you tell people about something you can't see? And this was every night! I saw the eyes with my whole being; felt the darkness like heavier air, always approaching the shoreline of my blanket but never getting close enough on land.

Now skip ahead into adulthood, with me working for the Rhode Island Tourism Division. I was with my colleagues on a "familiarity tour" (FAM) of historic houses, maybe mansions -- who's to say really -- but it surely was the Masons I remember. (an aside for later: Mom worked as a nurse at the OES nursing home in RI).

In that musty museum with heavy drapes and shiny floors you walk through velvet roped-off rooms into the family quarters of the rich, still bedecked in original 18th century opulence. Then the children's rooms. Man, they used to PAINT murals on the ceiling of their kids' rooms -- sky scenes with clouds and stuff, and then I saw it. The all-seeing Eye! Propped up in the sky! Along with symbols and stars and shit. Like, George Washington Mason stuff. Creepy! How many of these little brats looked up at night and saw things too? Only this was programming.

Mine was just a shadow of what theirs would always be. Open to the impressions of my fertile mind. So, my many builders of the Temple, look at how I've Turned Out.

The first imprinting. Not painted Vegas skies above my pillow, but right there in my head. Root consciousness. Basically, like the counted semicircle stars and symbolism gazed at by the spawn of important bloodlines, my fear track was my own and contained much more absolute power. Claymation from only my hands.

Skip back to present day, and it's the same thing, I am thinking, as I strip off the goggles and head to bed.

The blurry things bring me back. One day you finally realize all the fear under the bed on the ceiling and in the closet was only YOU looking back, and this makes for the simplest banning ritual in both worlds once you grow up and see that it was yourself, inner and outer unresolved, all along the Way. What better way to hide from the Eye than to realize there are none but yours?

Is that you? That you? (squint) Oh hi! How the Hell are ya?