Monday, October 19, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
No More the 4th
He had known Shannon for a few years in school, but their private lives had only just begun to intertwine: they had exchanged phone numbers. Smiling, shaky-handed, written on paper just-before they were out-for-the-summer.
They would find love in those hot months; in that sweltering, free limbo of pollen, grass clipping cloud dreams, soccer, and drifting dogs from other-towns, they would make sense of their bodies and hearts in ways that had not, before, been formed into questions.
June had come and gone with beady sweat joy from running shins, and now the fourth of July was upon them. The delighted days of bursting fire-crackers and screeching Penny-Whistle Chinese-Towers with Neapolitan sparks from all the cardboard gilding; the spires and fountains and torpedo mortar shells of sparkle-flame not only reflected, but amplified the whimsy of their palpating desires and their illusions.
Red, white and blue in the face, the ladies ran to and from the stores with chain links-of-meat and prime cuts of watermelon. They watched from the curb with bare skinned knees, bottles of soda and cheap sun glasses, glinting the men’s trucks, blazing in the parking lots, with school-mates peering out of the passenger windows, excited for explosives and killer bees with candied-apple smiles.
They had spent all their lemonade change, lit all the fuzzes and blistered a few fingers, and now dusk was cooling the vigor of their bodies; the night, like a creek from the horizon, adored the coursing torrents in their veins, but welcomed them to gentleness on their backs, in the bluff park, near Tommie’s house.
People collected. Magnetized to any patch of lawn, swirling around them, splaying out blankets, spreading bread and beer and cherries on plastic sheets, unfurling rusty lawn chairs, kissing and laughing, they swirled around them, on their backs, drinking in the shadows, and exhaling a calm contented anticipation for the pitch that would break open in blooms of star-light and soon-shatter with booming accomplishments of splendid, elegant destruction, and then: the seductively choking smell of sulfur-clouds, glowing in the street lamps.
From their dusky perch they could see men duck under orange ribbons of warning tape and stand, professionally teetering around boxes of dangerous magic. Waste high cannons were erected to the swallows and bats who devoured mosquitoes, gnats and June bugs in hungry, oblivious summersaults and curly-cue-swoops. For the two youths the world had already begun to dissolve: their parents long forgotten, now even the friends-by-their-side and the warm earth faded away like hamburgers digesting in their bellies; another hunger evolved. Their arms lightly touching, stuck stronger than a band aide and their fingers timidly fidgeting as though each were searching for something in the slow reading of the other’s palm.
Time fell away and the blackness just rolled over, enveloping their indifference, it was all they could both want, and have. A sound like crickets, the chuckles and whispers of people beside them on the earth, the stereo music and potato chip crunching under feet, running-of-screeching-children, dogs panting on juice, poured into glasses, clinked, silenced, by the booming-roar of patriot-bombs, bursting bubbles of sparks, shuddering the bay windows, mighty, exploding war-on-heaven, celebrating cheers for being in command of this piece of earth: all of it, washed-out under the straining, of their ears, to hear the other breath more quickly at the stroke of a finger, over a wrist. These flowers, falling through space, above their shining eyes, meant nothing about The Presidents they had learned of, so long ago, in school; had nothing to-do-with any declaration ever written about anyone’s independence; there was no connection to the crossing of the Delaware, and the synchronizations of red, white and blue were nothing but a pretty combination to celebrate the splendor of the two-of-them being together, at last.
How had they done it for so long?
There was no line drawn from this point in time to-the-war that grandfather had fought in.
How could they have ever not been like this?
There was no thought of the-current-war, which had only just begun to infiltrate their occupied ears.
Why had they waited for-so-long to say the things they had said?
There was no desire to make this event into anything more than the feeling of the arm beside them, the hope of lips, or, the longing for something more, something that yet had no words, but surely would come, even better than this. Surely things would only get better, but when, oh God when, would they say the things they longed to say?
They would find love in those hot months; in that sweltering, free limbo of pollen, grass clipping cloud dreams, soccer, and drifting dogs from other-towns, they would make sense of their bodies and hearts in ways that had not, before, been formed into questions.
June had come and gone with beady sweat joy from running shins, and now the fourth of July was upon them. The delighted days of bursting fire-crackers and screeching Penny-Whistle Chinese-Towers with Neapolitan sparks from all the cardboard gilding; the spires and fountains and torpedo mortar shells of sparkle-flame not only reflected, but amplified the whimsy of their palpating desires and their illusions.
Red, white and blue in the face, the ladies ran to and from the stores with chain links-of-meat and prime cuts of watermelon. They watched from the curb with bare skinned knees, bottles of soda and cheap sun glasses, glinting the men’s trucks, blazing in the parking lots, with school-mates peering out of the passenger windows, excited for explosives and killer bees with candied-apple smiles.
They had spent all their lemonade change, lit all the fuzzes and blistered a few fingers, and now dusk was cooling the vigor of their bodies; the night, like a creek from the horizon, adored the coursing torrents in their veins, but welcomed them to gentleness on their backs, in the bluff park, near Tommie’s house.
People collected. Magnetized to any patch of lawn, swirling around them, splaying out blankets, spreading bread and beer and cherries on plastic sheets, unfurling rusty lawn chairs, kissing and laughing, they swirled around them, on their backs, drinking in the shadows, and exhaling a calm contented anticipation for the pitch that would break open in blooms of star-light and soon-shatter with booming accomplishments of splendid, elegant destruction, and then: the seductively choking smell of sulfur-clouds, glowing in the street lamps.
From their dusky perch they could see men duck under orange ribbons of warning tape and stand, professionally teetering around boxes of dangerous magic. Waste high cannons were erected to the swallows and bats who devoured mosquitoes, gnats and June bugs in hungry, oblivious summersaults and curly-cue-swoops. For the two youths the world had already begun to dissolve: their parents long forgotten, now even the friends-by-their-side and the warm earth faded away like hamburgers digesting in their bellies; another hunger evolved. Their arms lightly touching, stuck stronger than a band aide and their fingers timidly fidgeting as though each were searching for something in the slow reading of the other’s palm.
Time fell away and the blackness just rolled over, enveloping their indifference, it was all they could both want, and have. A sound like crickets, the chuckles and whispers of people beside them on the earth, the stereo music and potato chip crunching under feet, running-of-screeching-children, dogs panting on juice, poured into glasses, clinked, silenced, by the booming-roar of patriot-bombs, bursting bubbles of sparks, shuddering the bay windows, mighty, exploding war-on-heaven, celebrating cheers for being in command of this piece of earth: all of it, washed-out under the straining, of their ears, to hear the other breath more quickly at the stroke of a finger, over a wrist. These flowers, falling through space, above their shining eyes, meant nothing about The Presidents they had learned of, so long ago, in school; had nothing to-do-with any declaration ever written about anyone’s independence; there was no connection to the crossing of the Delaware, and the synchronizations of red, white and blue were nothing but a pretty combination to celebrate the splendor of the two-of-them being together, at last.
How had they done it for so long?
There was no line drawn from this point in time to-the-war that grandfather had fought in.
How could they have ever not been like this?
There was no thought of the-current-war, which had only just begun to infiltrate their occupied ears.
Why had they waited for-so-long to say the things they had said?
There was no desire to make this event into anything more than the feeling of the arm beside them, the hope of lips, or, the longing for something more, something that yet had no words, but surely would come, even better than this. Surely things would only get better, but when, oh God when, would they say the things they longed to say?
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Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Shoalman
A tiny rock stabs out of the rolling glass. They bark at our tiny boat as we close the distance. A few scuffle and leap to the tide in search of scraps and, as we grow closer, we see him: in the midst of them, crouched, huddled, enmeshed in oil-slicked fur coats, rising out of the blubber and the flippers and the barking, a cloaked figure, his garb black as their pelts, but dull as ore.
He turns his head to us as we approach, dark, obscured by the setting sun behind and the philosophic, crashing waves. His beard, from his hood, we could see, twisted in the wind, algae and barnacles. We all swayed, enthralled, our boat now idling along side, the sun no longer in align with his perch we stare into his eyes, like the gaze of a tempest, grey-blue and ancient, holding it, as long as we could, at bay. His head follows us, his comrades still barking or plunging into the water.
Another wave struck the island as we reach his back and he seemed to vanish, like a needle bird, into the crest, but as the spray cleared, we saw him, shot up from the rock as a geyser, his cloak having shed in his wake, we now perceived his full form and in that same instant realized with horror that all of his company had scattered from the rock to converge on our vessel, and he remained, a column of indignation. They began to strike blows to the hull with the crowns of head, seeking weak planks. Our ship shook violently in the placid, dead wind waters and still, he had us mesmerized: where feet should have supported him, he balanced on a silky tail of supple muscle and ragged fur and above the ripples of his stomach, two full breasts hung like the sea had filled him up and bloomed there and in his vein twined fist he brandished a triton. This was like no pitchfork for throwing hay, it seemed the moon and sun had shaved off splinters and fashioned this harpoon. His eyes were still, soft, and gentle as the silent lightening on the horizon and they seemed to span ages.
After what must have been the better part of the season all wrapped into a single breath of salt, one of the locals we hired on as extra hand screamed a single word over the thunder beneath the waves, which now shook the nails from our deck. I looked to Roman as he, clutching my shoulder in passing to go support the men below, defending against the lions that leaped up from the sea, told me it was the name given one of the lesser gods said to preserve this coast; I would later learn that once a servant of Poseidon, now having forsaken that order, he was beyond even pagan prayers.
We knew now, as he raised his glimmering triton to the sky, that the sea lions had never intended only scraps, and we understood that, the native superstition, which had long kept out commercial operations such as ours, was in fact, wisdom.
Those of us who survived with only bruises and cuts from the sea lions dragging us to shore have no delusions that this was not a rescue for our sakes, but for the life of our story.
He turns his head to us as we approach, dark, obscured by the setting sun behind and the philosophic, crashing waves. His beard, from his hood, we could see, twisted in the wind, algae and barnacles. We all swayed, enthralled, our boat now idling along side, the sun no longer in align with his perch we stare into his eyes, like the gaze of a tempest, grey-blue and ancient, holding it, as long as we could, at bay. His head follows us, his comrades still barking or plunging into the water.
Another wave struck the island as we reach his back and he seemed to vanish, like a needle bird, into the crest, but as the spray cleared, we saw him, shot up from the rock as a geyser, his cloak having shed in his wake, we now perceived his full form and in that same instant realized with horror that all of his company had scattered from the rock to converge on our vessel, and he remained, a column of indignation. They began to strike blows to the hull with the crowns of head, seeking weak planks. Our ship shook violently in the placid, dead wind waters and still, he had us mesmerized: where feet should have supported him, he balanced on a silky tail of supple muscle and ragged fur and above the ripples of his stomach, two full breasts hung like the sea had filled him up and bloomed there and in his vein twined fist he brandished a triton. This was like no pitchfork for throwing hay, it seemed the moon and sun had shaved off splinters and fashioned this harpoon. His eyes were still, soft, and gentle as the silent lightening on the horizon and they seemed to span ages.
After what must have been the better part of the season all wrapped into a single breath of salt, one of the locals we hired on as extra hand screamed a single word over the thunder beneath the waves, which now shook the nails from our deck. I looked to Roman as he, clutching my shoulder in passing to go support the men below, defending against the lions that leaped up from the sea, told me it was the name given one of the lesser gods said to preserve this coast; I would later learn that once a servant of Poseidon, now having forsaken that order, he was beyond even pagan prayers.
We knew now, as he raised his glimmering triton to the sky, that the sea lions had never intended only scraps, and we understood that, the native superstition, which had long kept out commercial operations such as ours, was in fact, wisdom.
Those of us who survived with only bruises and cuts from the sea lions dragging us to shore have no delusions that this was not a rescue for our sakes, but for the life of our story.
Friday, September 18, 2009
At the memorial, wanting to paint
This too delicious,
she meant the hammock,
it was white & green and woven
warm in a cool breeze and not too
high from the ground and delicious
was the right word.
I wanted music,
beautiful, gentle, melodic, but skipping,
leaping, graceful:
We were in the woods and people would
not stop talking to each other
with concerns & cares & sharp rhythm
that emotional investments bring to the grace
of any language: sharp, hard stops,
retorts, no's, opinions,
I did not want concerns in my ears
I wanted kisses
or tears
moans, or sobs,
I did not care,
except that I did not care for concerns.
I wanted paint:
I had smoked and the filmy, rotten,
full, sweet taste of the tobacco was in my mouth and brain
I had smoked and I wanted to paint.
she meant the hammock,
it was white & green and woven
warm in a cool breeze and not too
high from the ground and delicious
was the right word.
I wanted music,
beautiful, gentle, melodic, but skipping,
leaping, graceful:
We were in the woods and people would
not stop talking to each other
with concerns & cares & sharp rhythm
that emotional investments bring to the grace
of any language: sharp, hard stops,
retorts, no's, opinions,
I did not want concerns in my ears
I wanted kisses
or tears
moans, or sobs,
I did not care,
except that I did not care for concerns.
I wanted paint:
I had smoked and the filmy, rotten,
full, sweet taste of the tobacco was in my mouth and brain
I had smoked and I wanted to paint.
Monday, June 1, 2009
To the North, Kendal Moutain, the Rum distillers, Portugues Antique
Chipped a tooth today and found work,
trying to open a bottle of vanilla
and walking through the rain, of the muddy streets.
The people are good here
they are like people everyhwere,
there is less to distract the eye here though
There is still Grand Turismo 4,
there is still pot,
there is still liquor,
there are always choices.
There are many more elders here,
they are here,
I can feel how young and naive I am,
I am learning,
I am alive and cutting my teeth
and I love it.
I bought a bike from a man who has a bunch of bikes lined along his house and in a chain link fenced cage.
I wasn't sure what the distinction was.
I looked at his two men's bikes that would fit me. One white with thick tires and a rusty chain,
the other thin tired and green. Both made for the mountains.
"How much are each of these?"
"They'r all 10."
A man of few words.
"I'll take the green one. Can I get more air in the tires?"
Round back at the pump, I open my wallet to pay him.
When I left Boulder I took all my money out of the bank, closed the account, cut the line.
so:
"I have 4 dollars and I have a 100...Maybe I should come back tommorrow?"
He laughs and begins to look in the breast pocket of his coveralls. Then, looking at the 5 bills in my hand, thinks again.
"Maybe you should just take off with it today, and if you don't come back tomoro'
I'll shoot you.
He has warm and serious, cloudy blue eyes.
as I ride down the dirt street I realize I didn't check the true of the tires
and the back is wobbling. Still, I have already fallen in love,
and will figure out the details tommorow.
Friday, May 29, 2009
What we call power lines, the road out of town, The San Juan Mountains, To the West
It is quiet enough I can do my work here.
There are no distractions.
I do not intend to make any.
You can write,
you can paint,
you can draw,
realy you can.
Is the speed of the city worth it?
I don't know yet,
but I'm interested in softening my bonds with it.
Your dreams will always out weigh your livelihood. You were not put here to make money and die. It is helpful to remind one self from time to time. Here there is more time. Look: its only 12:21. You don't have the whole day ahead of you...but you have enough.
The sign makers shop, Oldy Timey Photo and a Slow Train
Not only in town,
But all along the corridor from Silverton to Durango,
There is Land,
For sale and cheaper than it thas been in my life time.
I don't know how but we will buy some
We will build a community,
we will farm
I don't know where the money is coming from
it is not up to me
I am a part of it,
I am up to it
This was brought to me,
I just took the bus and met it here.
If you are interested you are welcome to join:
This is the way
the great way,
the old way,
We can remember.
We can remember together.
City Life
No one goes more than 15 any where in town.
An old shcool bus rusts and sings.
And there is land for sale,
potentiality,
"You have to carve your own niche," I was told. You can't just look for work, although there is more work than people to do it. You have to go out and find it. You have to build your own life.
And everyone knows all about everyone.
It is calm and I am exstatic.
Technology and the Elements
Bringing down radio waves from heaven. We got hail in May. I hear Silverton has had snow in every month of the year. Everyone has junk in their yard here. "You know why I like junk?" One man told another, "I like junk because it keeps the rich folks away."
Afternoon storms, the streets muddy and run. Only the sound of dogs and thunder.
Its not just a valley, its a caldera
The aspen leaves are returning, the pine never abandon. Many of the residents exodus in winter, leaving their homes, boarded up for the season, some come for ths skiing.
What is a dead end,
city limits
The license plate says "cupcake."
Kendal Mt, Mineral Creek,
Getting into town was like shell shock. So small, so quiet, and I recognize I am affraid of wild animals at night. In washington the clouds came down to us. Here we are risen into the clouds.
Everyone is an artist here.
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